Saint­hood and incal­cu­la­ble influ­ence aside, John Coltrane didn’t always break new ground in the stu­dio. “If you heard the John Coltrane Quar­tet live in the ear­ly-to-mid 1960s,” writes Gio­van­ni Rus­sonel­lo at The New York Times—refer­ring to the clas­sic line­up of bassist Jim­my Gar­ri­son, drum­mer Elvin Jones, and pianist McCoy Tyner—you heard “a ground-shak­ing band, an almost phys­i­cal being, bear­ing a promise that seemed to reach far beyond music.”

Pri­or to 1965’s super­nat­ur­al A Love Supreme, how­ev­er, few of the eight albums the clas­sic quar­tet record­ed for Impulse! Records cap­tured “the band’s live eth­ic.” The “fun­ny prob­lem” Coltrane had was his com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, which made the label eschew record­ing the quartet’s con­sid­er­ably exper­i­men­tal ten­den­cies in favor of “con­cept-dri­ven and con­sumer-friend­ly projects.” Now, Rus­sonel­lo writes, “that sto­ry needs a major foot­note.” A lost Coltrane album from 1963 has emerged, dis­cov­ered by the fam­i­ly of his first wife, Naima.

Coltrane his­to­ry may be rewrit­ten on June 29th when the album, Both Direc­tions at Once, gets its release. We have a glimpse at what fans have been miss­ing for the past 55 years in the soar­ing first track, “Unti­tled Orig­i­nal 11383,” above, a “brisk minor blues.” The album’s remain­ing trea­sures may jus­ti­fy Son­ny Rollin’s com­par­i­son of this dis­cov­ery to “find­ing a new room in the Great Pyra­mid.” In addi­tion to two pre­vi­ous­ly unheard orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions, the album fea­tures some very intrigu­ing record­ings.

The final track, a stu­dio ver­sion of “One Up, One Down,” was “pre­vi­ous­ly heard only on a boot­leg record­ing made at the Bird­land jazz club,” notes Fact Mag­a­zine. “One of Coltrane’s most famous com­po­si­tions, ‘Impres­sions,’ is fea­tured in a trio with­out piano,” and the album also con­tains the first record­ing of “Nature Boy,” which lat­er appeared on The John Coltrane Quar­tet Plays. (See Fact Mag for a full track­list­ing of the stan­dard and two-CD deluxe edi­tions of the album.) This col­lec­tion comes very close “to the breadth of what Coltrane and his asso­ciates were deliv­er­ing onstage,” claims Rus­sonel­lo.

It may also rep­re­sent a pre­scient­ly tran­si­tion­al doc­u­ment, as its title sug­gests. As Coltrane’s son Ravi puts it, “you do get a sense of John with one foot in the past and one foot head­ed toward his future.” After the album’s 1963 record­ing at the Rudy Van Gelder Stu­dio in New Jer­sey, the mas­ter tapes some­how went miss­ing, but Coltrane had tak­en home the ref­er­ence tape that only recent­ly sur­faced. Both Direc­tions at Once fills in a gap between the “mar­velous” albums Coltrane and Cres­cent, show­ing off the band’s dynamism in the peri­od between “spring 1962 to spring 1964” and let­ting them cut loose while stay­ing with­in famil­iar har­mon­ic forms.

Coltrane’s avant-garde bril­liance may have changed the course of mod­ern music, but some of his most for­ward-think­ing exper­i­ments can be dif­fi­cult lis­ten­ing for those unini­ti­at­ed in the rites of modal free jazz. Accord­ing to pianist and schol­ar Lewis Porter, com­ment­ing on an advance copy of Both Direc­tions at Once, the redis­cov­ered album, con­tains “a lot of that musi­cal meat” that Coltrane’s quar­tet deliv­ered to live audi­ences in the ear­ly-to-mid-six­ties, “but in a con­text that will be more acces­si­ble to a lot of lis­ten­ers.”

Maybe more con­ser­v­a­tive lis­ten­ers, how­ev­er, can find in the lost album a key that unlocks the incred­i­ble mys­ter­ies of lat­er record­ings like Ascen­sion, Med­i­ta­tions, and the wild, posthu­mous­ly-released Inter­stel­lar Space.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

John Coltrane Draws a Mys­te­ri­ous Dia­gram Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­i­cal & Mys­ti­cal Qual­i­ties of Music

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme (1964)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les was an accom­plished gui­tar play­er with a dis­tinc­tive solo­ing style. So you might think that with a song as per­son­al and gui­tar-cen­tric as “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” he would do his own play­ing. In fact, the song fea­tures gui­tar play­ing by Eric Clap­ton.

It was record­ed on Sep­tem­ber 6, 1968, dur­ing the acri­mo­nious White Album ses­sions. Har­ri­son had been strug­gling off and on for over a month to get the song right. He first tried it with his own play­ing on a Gib­son J‑200 gui­tar along with an over­dubbed har­mo­ni­um. He lat­er exper­i­ment­ed by run­ning the gui­tar solo back­wards. Noth­ing seemed to work.

So final­ly Har­ri­son asked his friend Clap­ton for a lit­tle help. When Har­ri­son walked into Abbey Road Stu­dios with Clap­ton, the oth­er Bea­t­les start­ed tak­ing the song seri­ous­ly. In a 1987 inter­view with Gui­tar Play­er mag­a­zine, Har­ri­son was asked whether it had bruised his ego to ask Clap­ton to play on the song.

No, my ego would rather have Eric play on it. I’ll tell you, I worked on that song with John, Paul, and Ringo one day, and they were not inter­est­ed in it at all. And I knew inside of me that it was a nice song. The next day I was with Eric, and I was going into the ses­sion, and I said, “We’re going to do this song. Come on and play on it.” He said, “Oh, no. I can’t do that. Nobody ever plays on the Bea­t­les records.” I said, “Look, it’s my song, and I want you to play on it.” So Eric came in, and the oth­er guys were as good as gold–because he was there. Also, it left me free to just play the rhythm and do the vocal. So Eric played that, and I thought it was real­ly good. Then we lis­tened to it back, and he said, “Ah, there’s a prob­lem, though; it’s not Beat­ley enough”–so we put it through the ADT [auto­mat­ic dou­ble-track­er], to wob­ble it a bit.

For the impres­sion of a per­son weep­ing and wail­ing, Clap­ton used the fin­gers on his fret­ting hand to bend the strings deeply, in a high­ly expres­sive descend­ing vibra­to. He was play­ing a 1957 Gib­son Les Paul, a gui­tar he had once owned but had giv­en to Har­ri­son, who nick­named it “Lucy.” You can hear Clap­ton’s iso­lat­ed play­ing above. And for a reminder of how it all came togeth­er, you can lis­ten to the offi­cial ver­sion here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in May, 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lost Gui­tar Solo for “Here Comes the Sun” by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Last month, rock band Weez­er per­formed a remark­able bit of fan ser­vice: tak­ing a request from a fan’s Twit­ter and grant­i­ng it. A user called, appro­pri­ate­ly, “Weez­er Cov­er Africa by Toto,” has been bad­ger­ing the band since Decem­ber of 2017 to do just that. The per­son behind the account is 15-year-old Mary from Ohio, who is both a seri­ous fan of Weez­er and of “Africa,” which she first heard on an episode of “Stranger Things.”

Though the band decid­ed to help Mary out, they had a lit­tle bit of fun first, trolling her and cov­er­ing “Rosan­na,” Toto’s big­ger hit (it won Record of the Year at the 1983 Gram­mys ). A few days lat­er, they dropped “Africa”…and watched as it sailed to the top of the iTunes charts. (If you’re won­der­ing, the orig­i­nal reached the top spot in the Bill­board 100 back in 1983).

Now, if you know the orig­i­nal, Weezer’s cov­er is pret­ty note-for-note. One could argue that Toto, mocked for its smooth pop lean­ings, actu­al­ly rock hard­er than Weez­er, espe­cial­ly in the song’s cho­rus.
But Mary’s obses­sion with “Africa” doesn’t come out of nowhere. YouTube is full of odd cov­ers of the song.

Here’s a loop ped­al and piano ver­sion from Peter Bence:

Or how about a choral group’s ver­sion, com­plete with a ASMR-tas­tic recre­ation of a rain­storm.

You could also watch a rub­ber chick­en have a go:

But my cur­rent favorite is this very enthu­si­as­tic Nordic met­al cov­er from Leo Morac­chi­oli and friends:

Why do peo­ple more than ever love “Africa”? When it came out it was def­i­nite­ly a hit, but over 35 years or so it’s tran­scend­ed its cheesy pop sta­tus to become a “clas­sic” of pop con­struc­tion, filled with dynam­ic changes, mul­ti­part har­monies, and a com­plex arrange­ment. There’s noth­ing iron­ic in lov­ing it.

Annie Zales­ki, in her Salon arti­cle on the song’s endur­ing pow­er, describes its world music indul­gences and its rhythm:

With­out flash or fan­fare, “Africa” incor­po­rates con­gas, marim­bas, the gong and oth­er per­cus­sion flour­ish­es, giv­ing the song a tex­tured veloc­i­ty. Under­neath it all is a hyp­not­ic groove, resem­bling a con­stant, gen­tle push — one that keeps the song pul­sat­ing for­ward. When lis­ten­ing to “Africa,” it’s impos­si­ble to stay still; the song’s innate move­ment is infec­tious.

Co-writer David Paich (Toto’s key­boardist) explained the thoughts behind the lyrics in a Grant­land inter­view, explain­ing they stemmed from his days as a Catholic school­boy and hear­ing tales of mis­sion­ary work:

I had all these things rat­tling about in my brain when I was writ­ing the song. All these thoughts about priests and young social work­ers that have gone over there, devot­ing their lives to help­ing peo­ple, and hav­ing to choose what kind of life they’re going to have — whether to keep doing this, what I’m doing here, or can I have a life, get mar­ried, have kids, and do that kind of thing. So it was a life choice mixed in with a geo­graph­i­cal fas­ci­na­tion there.

But as he also says, the line “I bless the rains down in Africa” just popped out when he first start­ed work­ing on the cho­rus. The vers­es were writ­ten after to explain the mys­tery of the cho­rus. Also: the song was added at the last minute, clos­ing off the album, which opens with “Rosan­na,” per­fect book­ends which the rest of the album can’t reach.

And final­ly, if you’re still fas­ci­nat­ed with the song, Rick Beato checks out the indi­vid­ual mul­ti-tracks on his series “What Makes This Song So Great.” By the end, you might just have the answer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Feel Strange­ly Nos­tal­gic as You Hear Clas­sic Songs Reworked to Sound as If They’re Play­ing in an Emp­ty Shop­ping Mall: David Bowie, Toto, Ah-ha & More

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

James Hill, an award-win­ning ukulele play­er and song­writer from Cana­da, has been called a “ukulele wun­derkind,” and an artist who “gives the ukulele its dig­ni­ty back with­out ever tak­ing him­self too seri­ous­ly.” The video above puts Hill’s lighter side and wun­derkind tal­ents on full dis­play.

Per­form­ing live for a crowd in Cal­i­for­nia, Hill and his “imag­i­nary band” per­form an enchant­i­ng ver­sion of Michael Jack­son’s “Bil­lie Jean.” With just a uke, Hill plays the bass line, per­cus­sion, and piano parts. Put it all togeth­er, and you have a fas­ci­nat­ing one-man ukulele per­for­mance. But wait until you see what he can do with a uke, chop­sticks and comb…

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

19-Year-Old Russ­ian Gui­tarist Plays an Inge­nious Cov­er of Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean”

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Name any clas­sic rock band — or maybe any band, peri­od — and you can rest assured that their biggest, most obses­sive fan lives in Japan. Though it pos­sess­es a native musi­cal cul­ture of its own, with a rich his­to­ry and a dis­tinc­tive set of aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, that coun­try has also cul­ti­vat­ed great enthu­si­asm for the music of oth­er lands. Just as 21st-cen­tu­ry Japan con­tin­ues to pro­duce mas­ters of such tra­di­tion­al instru­ments as the stringed koto, the bam­boo shakuhachi flute, and the taiko drum, it also con­tin­ues to pro­duce increas­ing­ly all-know­ing, all-col­lect­ing fol­low­ers of bands like AC/DC, Guns N’ Ros­es, and Led Zep­pelin.

Sel­dom have those cur­rents of Japan’s music world had a venue to reli­ably meet — or at least it had­n’t before the advent of NHK Blends. Pro­duced by NHK World, the inter­na­tion­al chan­nel of Japan­ese nation­al broad­cast­er NHK, the show offers per­for­mances of well-known West­ern songs, usu­al­ly rock and pop hits, inter­pret­ed with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese instru­ments played in tra­di­tion­al set­tings by musi­cians in tra­di­tion­al dress.

Here we’ve embed­ded NHK Blends’ ren­di­tions of “Back in Black,” “Stair­way to Heav­en,” and “Wel­come to the Jun­gle,” and on their videos page you can find many more: Michael Jack­son’s “Smooth Crim­i­nal” and “Beat It,” Toto’s “Africa,” and the Bea­t­les’ “Let It Be.”

Those all rank among NHK Blends’ most pop­u­lar videos, hav­ing racked up hun­dreds of thou­sands and even mil­lions of views. This sug­gests that, no mat­ter how many count­less times we hear these songs on the car radio, at the gym, or while gro­cery-shop­ping, a suf­fi­cient­ly rad­i­cal re-inter­pre­ta­tion can still breathe new life into them. Some per­for­mances pull off extra dimen­sions of cul­tur­al trans­po­si­tion: the NHK Blends ver­sion of “Misir­lou,” for instance, takes a tra­di­tion­al piece of music from the East­ern Mediter­ranean and inter­prets it for the kokyo, a stringed instru­ment that orig­i­nal­ly came to Japan from Chi­na. Or rather, it inter­prets French gui­tarist Jean-Pierre Danel’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “surf gui­tar” king Dick Dale’s famous ver­sion from 1961. Close your eyes and you can very near­ly imag­ine the samu­rai pic­ture Quentin Taran­ti­no some­how has­n’t yet made.

See the full list of songs here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Bowie/Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold The World” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment from the 6th Cen­tu­ry

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Ste­vie Ray Vaughan’s Ver­sion of “Lit­tle Wing” Played on Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment, the Gayageum

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“Anger is an ener­gy,” shouts John Lydon, aka John­ny Rot­ten, on Pub­lic Image Limited’s “Rise,” the 1986 sin­gle writ­ten in reac­tion to Apartheid South African and North­ern Irish inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, Lydon suc­cinct­ly sums up the motive force of punk, in a song, as he told MTV’s Kevin Seal, about “all kinds of tor­ture,” which “doesn’t real­ly achieve any­thing. Vio­lence doesn’t real­ly achieve any­thing.”

Some angry ener­gy cre­ates, and some does noth­ing but destroy. A few years lat­er, Nir­vana brought the angry ener­gy of punk back into main­stream con­scious­ness, with a front­man who spoke out fre­quent­ly against sex­ism and sex­ist vio­lence. In 1992, the band—already a glob­al phe­nom­e­non after the release of Nev­er­mind and the explo­sive suc­cess of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”—per­formed a par­tic­u­lar­ly pissed-off-yet-cre­ative live set. They did so in reac­tion to a wave of abuse hurled at their open­ing act by a crowd of 50,000 in Buenos Aires.

“We brought this all-girl band over from Port­land called Calami­ty Jane,” Kurt Cobain lat­er remem­bered. “Dur­ing their entire set, the whole audi­ence… was throw­ing mon­ey and every­thing out of their pock­ets, mud and rocks, just pelt­ing them. Even­tu­al­ly the girls stormed off cry­ing. It was ter­ri­ble, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen, such a mass of sex­ism all at once.”

Enraged, Cobain threat­ened to can­cel, but was talked out of it by bassist Krist Novasel­ic. Instead, the band took the stage and “open­ly mocked the audi­ence,” writes Alex Young at Con­se­quence of Sound, “by play­ing most­ly rar­i­ties and the back­end of Nev­er­mind.” Cobain at least man­aged to turn the ugly moment into a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence for his band.

We end­ed up hav­ing fun, laugh­ing at them (the audi­ence). Before every song, I’d play the intro to ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ and then stop. They didn’t real­ize that we were protest­ing against what they’d done. We played for about forty min­utes, and most of the songs were off Inces­ti­cide, so they didn’t rec­og­nize any­thing. We wound up play­ing the secret noise song (‘End­less, Name­less’) that’s at the end of Nev­er­mind, and because we were so in a rage and were just so pissed off about this whole sit­u­a­tion, that song and whole set were one of the great­est expe­ri­ences I’ve ever had.

The whole show was cap­tured on film by a pro­fes­sion­al crew, and you can watch it above to see what the expe­ri­ence was like for the audi­ence. The open­ing track, “Nobody Knows I’m New Wave,” is “one of only a hand­ful of Nir­vana songs,” notes Young, “nev­er to be released. Nir­vana archivists the­o­rize the impromp­tu jam was made up on the spot.”

You’ll also see from the track­list below that Cobain “was mis­re­mem­ber­ing or embell­ish­ing a bit here and there,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds. “While they did unearth a hand­ful of rar­i­ties from their odds-n-ends col­lec­tion Ins­es­ti­cide… as well as ‘All Apolo­gies’ (it lat­er turned up on In Utero)… they also played most of Nev­er­mind.” Nonethe­less, we can see the show, with its abra­sive open­ing jam (“I promise to shit on your head”) as an attempt to both alien­ate obnox­ious fans and turn rage into a cre­ative force.

Setlist:
Nobody Knows I’m New Wave
Aneurysm
Breed
Drain You
Beeswax
Spank Thru
School
Come as You Are
Lithi­um
Lounge Act
Sliv­er
About a Girl
Pol­ly
Jam
In Bloom
Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Piss­ings
Been a Son
On a Plain
Neg­a­tive Creep
Blew

Encore:
All Apolo­gies
End­less, Name­less

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Nirvana’s Last Con­cert: Audio/ Video Record­ed on March 1, 1994

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness