Watch Rare Videos Showing Steely Dan Performing Live During the Early 1970s

in Music, Television | August 23rd, 2023

The band per­form­ing in the video above is Steely Dan. Yet it does­n’t sound quite like Steely Dan, an impres­sion par­tial­ly explained by it being a live show rather than the kind of per­fec­tion­ist stu­dio record­ings for whose metic­u­lous con­struc­tion (and repeat­ed recon­struc­tion) the group’s very name has long been a byword. But its found­ing mas­ter­minds Wal­ter Beck­er and Don­ald Fagen had­n’t yet set­tled into that com­plex­ly pris­tine aes­thet­ic at the time of this appear­ance, which aired fifty years ago next week on The Mid­night Spe­cial. Back then, hav­ing put out only their first cou­ple of albums, they could still present their project as a rel­a­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al ear­ly-sev­en­ties rock band.

It helped that they had a rel­a­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al front­man in singer David Palmer, who han­dles lead vocals on their Mid­night Spe­cial per­for­mance of “Do It Again,” Steely Dan’s first hit. That he did­n’t do so on the stu­dio record­ing under­scores that the band is gen­uine­ly play­ing live, not mim­ing to a back­ing track, as was stan­dard prac­tice on oth­er music shows.

It also con­sti­tutes anoth­er rea­son this ver­sion sounds “off” to a seri­ous Dan­fan, but it would take a tru­ly blink­ered purism (a con­di­tion wide­spread among the ranks of Dan­fans, admit­ted­ly) not to appre­ci­ate this per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly when it gets around to the solo by the band’s orig­i­nal gui­tarist Den­ny Dias — anoth­er of which comes along in “Reel­in’ in the Years,” played in the video just above.

Not that one gui­tarist could suf­fice for Steely Dan, even in this ear­ly line­up: they also had Jeff “Skunk” Bax­ter, now regard­ed as one of the finest stu­dio play­ers in the sub­genre of “yacht rock.” Bax­ter appears promi­nent­ly in their live ren­di­tion of “Show Biz Kids,” albeit as just one ele­ment of the full stage nec­es­sary to repro­duce that song live. Unlike “Do It Again” and “Reel­in’ in the Years,” two sin­gles from Steely Dan’s album Can’t Buy a Thrill, “Show Biz Kids” comes from their then-new­ly released fol­low-up Count­down to Ecsta­sy, which offered a rich­er real­iza­tion of both Steely Dan’s dis­tinc­tive sound and even more dis­tinc­tive world­view. To the refine­ment of that sound and world­view Beck­er and Fagen would devote them­selves less than a year after their Mid­night Spe­cial broad­cast, when they quit live per­for­mance entire­ly for the com­forts and rig­ors of their nat­ur­al habi­tat: the record­ing stu­dio.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Decon­struct­ing Steely Dan: The Band That Was More Than Just a Band

How Steely Dan Wrote “Dea­con Blues,” the Song Audio­philes Use to Test High-End Stere­os

Steely Dan Cre­ates the Deadhead/Danfan Con­ver­sion Chart: A Wit­ty Guide Explain­ing How You Can Go From Lov­ing the Dead to Idol­iz­ing Steely Dan

How Steely Dan Went Through Sev­en Gui­tarists and Dozens of Hours of Tape to Get the Per­fect Gui­tar Solo on “Peg”

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Per­form Togeth­er in 1973: An Unex­pect­ed Video from The Mid­night Spe­cial Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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The Psychedelic Animated Video for Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” (1979)

in Animation, Music | August 22nd, 2023

Ah, yes, “Auto­bahn.” From the moment the door slams and the igni­tion starts, prog rock­ers and pre-new wavers know a jour­ney is afoot. Though the mem­bers of Kraftwerk made three albums before this, the mem­bers still look­ing like well mean­ing book­ish hip­pies, 1974’s “Auto­bahn” is con­sid­ered Year Zero for the denizens of the elec­tric cafe, the four Ger­man robots who made human music with machines.

Cre­at­ed in 1979, but bop­ping around again in pop cul­ture orbit is this cel-drawn ani­ma­tion by Roger Main­wood, cre­at­ed to pro­mote “Auto­bahn” after most of the cul­ture had caught up. By that last year of the ’70s Omni mag­a­zine was a year old, music was sift­ing through the shock­waves left by Bowie’s Low and Heroes, ana­log was flirt­ing with dig­i­tal, and the world was ready to dri­ve on that long, elec­tric high­way.

Mainwood’s pro­tag­o­nist is part alien, part human, and he begins look­ing around in awe in his hip gog­gles, then set­ting off for a run straight out of a Muy­bridge loop, only to wind up float­ing, fly­ing, sail­ing and swim­ming through a land­scape indebt­ed to Peter Max, Push­Pin Stu­dios, under­ground comix, and 1930 mod­ernism.

Main­wood had just grad­u­at­ed from London’s Roy­al Col­lege of Art Film and Tele­vi­sion School, and was com­mis­sioned by John Halas, the Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who became known as the Father of British Ani­ma­tion, for Kraftwerk’s record label. The label want­ed to put out one of the first music Laserdiscs. (Halas, by the way, direct­ed a very UPA-influ­enced short called “Auto­ma­nia” in 1963). Accord­ing to Main­wood, he still doesn’t know if the band liked the short or even if they watched it.

Main­wood avoid­ed any direct rep­re­sen­ta­tion of dri­ving or auto­mo­biles, much to his cred­it, which may be why the film holds its fas­ci­na­tion. The ani­ma­tor con­tin­ued in his field, wind­ing up a pro­duc­er of sev­er­al clas­sics of British ani­ma­tion, includ­ing The Snow­man and the chill­ing When the Wind Blows. As for the mean­ing of “Auto­bahn,” we’ll let Main­wood have the last word:

Think­ing back to my thought process­es at that time, I remem­ber want­i­ng to specif­i­cal­ly not have con­ven­tion­al cars in the film. I want­ed a sense of a repet­i­tive jour­ney, and alien­ation, which I took to be what the music was about…hence the soli­tary futur­is­tic fig­ure, pro­tect­ed by large gog­gles, mov­ing through and try­ing to con­nect with the jour­ney he is tak­ing. The auto­mo­bile “mon­sters” are delib­er­ate­ly threat­en­ing (I have nev­er been a big fan of cars or motor­ways!) and when our “hero” tries to make human con­tact (with dif­fer­ent coloured clones of him­self) he can nev­er do it. In the end he realis­es he is mak­ing the repet­i­tive and cir­cu­lar jour­ney alone but strides for­ward pur­pose­ful­ly at the end as he did in the begin­ning. All of which sounds rather pretentious…but I was a young thing in those days!

You can read more of an inter­view with Main­wood here.

Find more ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

When Kraftwerk Issued Their Own Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor Syn­the­siz­er — to Play Their Song “Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor” (1981)

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man 1st Graders in Cute Card­board Robot Cos­tumes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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.

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Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Perform Together in 1973: An Unexpected Video from The Midnight Special Archive

in Music | August 21st, 2023

Dur­ing the 1970s, Burt Sug­ar­man pro­duced The Mid­night Spe­cial, a late-night musi­cal vari­ety show that fea­tured great rock and pop music per­for­mances. In recent months, Sug­ar­man has start­ed bring­ing the show’s archive to YouTube, allow­ing you to revis­it vin­tage per­for­mances by David Bowie, Steely Dan, Tina Turn­er, Fleet­wood Mac, Blondie, Richard Pry­or and much more. Above, you can watch one such gem in the archive–that is, Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees per­form­ing Reel­in’ and Rockin’ (a song orig­i­nal­ly released as a B‑side with “Sweet Lit­tle Six­teen” in 1957). As one YouTu­ber put it, “what an odd com­bi­na­tion that absolute­ly works; one of Chuck’s most sat­is­fy­ing per­for­mances of this era; his guitar’s in tune, the band is hot & sup­port­ive (who’s that piano play­er?!), and it’s always cool to hear Mau­rice sing solo.” The per­for­mance took place on Octo­ber 12, 1973. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch David Bowie’s Final Per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust, Singing “I Got You Babe” with Mar­i­anne Faith­full, on The Mid­night Spe­cial (1973)

Chuck Berry Jams Out “John­ny B. Goode” with Eric Clap­ton, Kei­th Richards, John Lennon & Bruce Spring­steen

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

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Neuroscientists Reconstruct a Pink Floyd Song from Listeners’ Brain Activity, with a Little Help from AI

in Music, Neuroscience | August 17th, 2023

Any­one who’s worked in an oper­at­ing room knows that many sur­geons like to put on music while they do their job, and that their work­ing sound­tracks often include sur­pris­ing artists. It hard­ly requires a leap of imag­i­na­tion to assume that there are more than a few scalpel-wield­ing Pink Floyd fans out there — scalpel-wield­ing Pink Floyd fans who will sure­ly feel their musi­cal taste vin­di­cat­ed by a study that involved play­ing “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” to patients under­go­ing epilep­sy-relat­ed neu­ro­surgery. After­ward, with help from arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, the researchers were able to recon­struct the song from those patients’ record­ed brain­waves.

That this turns out to be pos­si­ble offers “a first step toward cre­at­ing more expres­sive devices to assist peo­ple who can’t speak,” writes the New York Times’ Hana Kiros. “Over the past few years, sci­en­tists have made major break­throughs in extract­ing words from the elec­tri­cal sig­nals pro­duced by the brains of peo­ple with mus­cle paral­y­sis when they attempt to speak. But a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the infor­ma­tion con­veyed through speech comes from what lin­guists call ‘prosod­ic’ ele­ments, like tone.”

It is the musi­cal ele­ments of speech, one might say, that have so far elud­ed repro­duc­tion by exist­ing brain-machine inter­faces, whose sen­tences “have a robot­ic qual­i­ty akin to how the late Stephen Hawk­ing sound­ed when he used a speech-gen­er­at­ing device,” as Robert Sanders writes in Berke­ley News.

You can hear a clip of “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” as gen­er­at­ed from the researchers’ AI work with brain­wave data in the Euronews video above. Indis­tinct though it may sound, the song will come through rec­og­niz­ably even to the ears of casu­al Pink Floyd fans (irked though they’ll be by the video’s accom­pa­ny­ing it with the cov­er image from The Dark Side of the Moon). They may also feel the urge to con­tin­ue lis­ten­ing to the rest of The Wall, espe­cial­ly “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 2),” with its school-choir deliv­ered dec­la­ra­tion that we don’t need no mind con­trol. But as for just-dawn­ing tech­nolo­gies that allow us to con­trol things with our minds — well, that would­n’t be so bad, would it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neu­rosym­pho­ny: A High-Res­o­lu­tion Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

Hear a Neu­ro­sci­en­tist-Curat­ed 712-Track Playlist of Music that Caus­es Fris­son, or Musi­cal Chills

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

How Pink Floyd Built The Wall: The Album, Tour & Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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Paul Simon Plays a Partially-Finished Version of “Still Crazy After All These Years” for Dick Cavett, Then Tries to Figure Out How to Finish It (1974)

in Music, Television | August 16th, 2023

It’s hard to imag­ine one of today’s nation­al­ly known singer-song­writ­ers vol­un­tar­i­ly shar­ing an unfin­ished com­po­si­tion on late night TV, then ask­ing for advice on how to wrap things up.

That’s exact­ly what Paul Simon did on The Dick Cavett Show on Sep­tem­ber 5, 1974, when he shared the first two vers­es of “Still Crazy After All These Years,” accom­pa­ny­ing him­self on acoustic gui­tar:

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

And we talked about some old times

And we drank our­selves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

I’m not the kind of man

Who tends to social­ize

I seem to lean on

Old famil­iar ways

And I ain’t no fool for love songs

That whis­per in my ears

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years


Next, he pre­sent­ed Cavett and the stu­dio audi­ence with options, warn­ing that they would be musi­cal choic­es, “because lyri­cal­ly, I real­ly don’t know what I have to say.”

Simon quick­ly demon­strat­ed what a fol­low up might sound like in G major or G sharp minor, explain­ing that the wis­est move from a music the­o­ry stand­point, would be an as yet unused C nat­ur­al or C sharp, to sub­lim­i­nal­ly refresh listener’s ears, a tac­tic he likened to the comedic Rule of Threes.

When the song was released the fol­low­ing year, the key had gone up to G and the gui­tar had mor­phed into piano backed by the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion, with a jazzy sax solo after the bridge.

All in all, a slick­er, less intro­spec­tive sound.

In an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer, Simon not only delves fur­ther into Still Crazy’s chord pro­gres­sions, he pegs its famous­ly enig­mat­ic lyrics as an unhap­py assess­ment of his per­son­al life at the time of their writ­ing:

That was a long time ago. I’ve long since stopped feel­ing that way. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t describe myself that way. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t think that way at all.

The words are per­son­al. It sounds like I was talk­ing about where I was then. I have the same instinct as all writ­ers: if some­thing from my life works, I use it. If I have to change it and exag­ger­ate it because that works, I’ll change it and exag­ger­ate it. 

I’m not com­mit­ted to telling the truth. I’m com­mit­ted to find­ing what the truth is in the song. But that’s not a com­mit­ment to telling every­one what’s going on with you. That’s very com­mon.

True. But would he still agree to per­form the song in a turkey suit if threat­ened with the sobri­quet “Mr. Alien­ation”?

Here are the lyrics that stuck, from the album that shares the song’s title:

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

And we talked about some old times

And we drank our­selves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

I’m not the kind of man

Who tends to social­ize

I seem to lean on

Old famil­iar ways

And I ain’t no fool for love songs

That whis­per in my ears

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

Four in the morn­ing

Crapped out

Yawn­ing

Long­ing my life away

I’ll nev­er wor­ry

Why should I?

It’s all gonna fade

Now I sit by my win­dow

And I watch the cars

I fear I’ll do some dam­age

One fine day

But I would not be con­vict­ed

By a jury of my peers

Still crazy

Still crazy

Still crazy after all these years

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Jazz Vir­tu­oso Oscar Peter­son Gives Dick Cavett a Daz­zling Piano Les­son (1979)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Nina Simone’s Flawless Tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach on The Ed Sullivan Show (1960)

in Jazz, Music | August 11th, 2023

Some 80 years ago, in a small North Car­oli­na town, Eunice Way­mon, a musi­cal­ly gift­ed, nine-year-old black girl, began tak­ing piano lessons in the home of an exact­ing Eng­lish­woman named Muriel Maz­zanovich.

At first, young Eunice — the giv­en name of jazz super­star Nina Simone — felt intim­i­dat­ed, recall­ing in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, I Put a Spell on You, that they “only played Bach and he seemed so com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fer­ent:”

In those first lessons, it seemed like the only thing she said was, “You must do it this way, Eunice. Bach would like it this way. Do it again.” And so I would.

As time went on I under­stood why Mrs. Maz­zanovich only allowed me to prac­tice Bach and soon I loved him as much as she did. He is tech­ni­cal­ly per­fect… Once I under­stood Bach’s music I nev­er want­ed to be any­thing oth­er than a con­cert pianist. Bach made me ded­i­cate my life to music.

Her tal­ent, com­mit­ment, and progress were such that oth­er cit­i­zens of Try­on, North Car­oli­na pitched in to help her afford a sum­mer ses­sion at New York City’s famed Juil­liard School, pri­or to audi­tion­ing for Philadelphia’s Cur­tis Insti­tute of Music.

“I knew I was good enough, but (the Cur­tis Insti­tute) turned me down,” she says in the doc­u­men­tary, What Hap­pened, Miss Simone? “And it took me about six months to real­ize it was because I was Black. I nev­er real­ly got over that jolt of racism at the time.”

And yet, she per­se­vered, becom­ing active in the Civ­il Rights move­ment and using the pro­ceeds from her debut album, Lit­tle Girl Blue, to fur­ther her clas­si­cal train­ing.

On Sep­tem­ber 11, 1960, Simone, who had scored a Top 20 hit the pre­vi­ous year with a cov­er of “I Loves You, Por­gy” from George Gershwin’s Por­gy and Bess, made her nation­al tele­vi­sion debut on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

Per­form­ing before an all-white stu­dio audi­ence, she paid trib­ute to both her ear­ly train­ing and the genre that would make her a star, imbu­ing the 1928 jazz stan­dard “Love Me Or Leave Me,” above, with a coun­ter­point solo in the style of Bach’s Inven­tions.

It was a skill she had devel­oped dur­ing a stand­ing piano gig at Atlantic City’s Mid­town Bar and Grill. Its own­er demand­ed that she sing as well as play, and she agreed out of neces­si­ty, impro­vis­ing, exper­i­ment­ing, and occa­sion­al­ly allow­ing her­self flights of clas­si­cal fan­cy that did not go unno­ticed by local music afi­ciona­dos.

She prid­ed her­self on bring­ing a clas­si­cal musi­cian’s absolute con­cen­tra­tion to these per­for­mances, and expect­ed the audi­ence to abide by a sim­i­lar code, tak­ing her hands off the keys if a row­dy drunk talked over her, not­ing that “if they don’t want to lis­ten, I don’t want to play:”

When you play Bach’s music, you have to under­stand that he’s a math­e­mati­cian and all the notes you play add up to some­thing — they make sense. They always add up to cli­max­es, like ocean waves get­ting big­ger and big­ger until after a while so many waves have gath­ered you have a great storm. Each note you play is con­nect­ed to the next note, and every note has to be exe­cut­ed per­fect­ly or the whole effect is lost.

Through­out her sto­ried career, she found ways to weave Bach-like fugues and oth­er clas­si­cal ref­er­ences into her work. Wit­ness her 1987 per­for­mance of “My Baby Just Cares For Me” at the Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Nina Simone Became Hip Hop’s “Secret Weapon”: From Lau­ryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West

Nina Simone Writes an Admir­ing Let­ter to Langston Hugh­es: “Broth­er, You’ve Got a Fan Now!” (1966)

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

Nina Simone Song “Col­or Is a Beau­ti­ful Thing” Ani­mat­ed in a Gor­geous Video

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Band’s Classic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Robbie Robertson (RIP) and Musicians Around the World

in Life, Music | August 10th, 2023

Yes­ter­day Rob­bie Robert­son, the Cana­di­an song­writer and gui­tarist for The Band, passed away at age 80 after a long ill­ness. As a trib­ute, we’re bring­ing back a video that pays homage to “The Weight,” a song Robert­son wrote for The Band’s influ­en­tial 1968 album, “Music from Big Pink.” The video fea­tures cameos of Robert­son him­self, and also Ringo Starr and oth­er spe­cial guests. Enjoy…

Rob­bie Robertson’s “The Weight,” the Band’s most beloved song, has the qual­i­ty of Dylan’s impres­sion­is­tic nar­ra­tives. Ellip­ti­cal vignettes that seem to make very lit­tle sense at first lis­ten, with a cho­rus that cuts right to the heart of the human predica­ment. “Robert­son admits in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” notes Patrick Doyle at Rolling Stone, “that he strug­gled to artic­u­late to pro­duc­er John Simon what the song was even about.” An artist needn’t under­stand a cre­ation for it to res­onate with lis­ten­ers.

A read of “The Weight”’s lyrics make its poignant themes evident—each stan­za intro­duces char­ac­ters who illus­trate some sor­row or small kind­ness. The cho­rus offers what so many peo­ple seem to crave these days: a promise of rest from cease­less toil, free­dom from con­stant trans­ac­tions, a com­mu­ni­ty that shoul­ders everyone’s bur­dens…. “It’s almost like it’s good med­i­cine,” Robert­son told Doyle, “and it’s so suit­able right now.” He refers specif­i­cal­ly to the song’s revival in a dom­i­nant musi­cal form of our iso­la­tion days—the online sing-along.

Though its lyrics aren’t near­ly as easy to remem­ber as, say, “Lean on Me,” Robertson’s clas­sic, espe­cial­ly the big har­monies of its cho­rus (which every­one knows by heart), is ide­al for big ensem­bles like the globe-span­ning col­lec­tion assem­bled by Play­ing for Change, “a group ded­i­cat­ed to ‘open­ing up how peo­ple see the world through the lens of music and art.” The group’s pro­duc­ers, Doyle writes, “recent­ly spent two years film­ing artists around the world, from Japan to Bahrain to Los Ange­les, per­form­ing the song,” with Ringo Starr on drums and Robert­son on rhythm gui­tar. They began on the 50th anniver­sary of the song’s release.

The per­for­mances they cap­tured are flaw­less, and mixed togeth­er seam­less­ly. If you want to know how this was achieved, watch the short behind-the-scenes video above with pro­duc­er Sebas­t­ian Robert­son, who hap­pens to be Rob­bie’s son. He starts by prais­ing the stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions of Larkin Poe, two sis­ters whose root­sy coun­try rock updates the All­man Broth­ers for the 21st cen­tu­ry. But there are no slouch­es in the bunch (don’t be inti­mat­ed out of your own group sing-alongs by the tal­ent on dis­play here). The song res­onates in a way that con­nects, as “The Weight”’s cho­rus con­nects its non-sequitur stan­zas, many dis­parate sto­ries and voic­es.

Robert­son was thrilled with the final prod­uct. “There’s a guy on a sitar!” he enthus­es. “There’s a guy play­ing an oud, one of my favorite instru­ments.” The song sug­gests there’s “some­thing spir­i­tu­al, mag­i­cal, unsus­pect­ing” that can come from times of dark­ness, and that we’d all feel a whole lot bet­ter if we learned to take care of each oth­er. The Play­ing for Change ver­sion “screams of uni­ty,” he says, “and I hope it spreads.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s and The Band’s Base­ment Tapes

Stream Marc Maron’s Excel­lent, Long Inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

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

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The Live Music Archive Lets You Stream/Download More Than 250,000 Concert Recordings–for Free

in Internet Archive, Music | August 10th, 2023

The Inter­net Archive main­tains an enor­mous Live Music Archive of con­cert record­ings, not all of them by the Grate­ful Dead. There are more than 17,000 such record­ings in its Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion — 2,000 more than when last we fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture — but one must com­pare that fig­ure to the 250,000 items now in the whole of the LMA. “It would be a great sto­ry to have the first item as part of the col­lec­tion to be some rare Grate­ful Dead record­ing from 1968,” says a post at the Inter­net Archive blog reflect­ing on the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of the LMA last year, “but it is actu­al­ly an unas­sum­ing Rust­ed Root audi­ence record­ing from August 24, 2001.”

In addi­tion to Rust­ed Root and the Grate­ful Dead, you can stream or down­load a wealth of record­ed live shows from bands like Lit­tle Feat, Blues Trav­el­er, My Morn­ing Jack­et, Los Lobos, and the Smash­ing Pump­kins, as well as singer-song­writ­ers like War­ren Zevon, Elliott Smith, Jack John­son, Robyn Hitch­cock, and John May­er.

How wide or nar­row a vari­ety of musi­cal expe­ri­ences these names con­jure up will, of course, depend on your per­spec­tive. But if they do share a major char­ac­ter­is­tic in com­mon, it’s the fact, to their true fans, their live per­for­mances count for as much as — or, often, more than — their stu­dio record­ings. The truest (or at least most tech­ni­cal­ly adept) such fans have donat­ed their time and skills to make these live per­for­mances freely acces­si­ble and end­less­ly reliv­able on the LMA.

“For years, con­cert-goers record­ed and trad­ed tapes, but in 2002, the Inter­net Archive offered a reli­able infra­struc­ture to pre­serve per­for­mances files,” writes the Inter­net Archive’s Car­alee Adams in a blog post mark­ing the upload­ing of 250,000 record­ings. “Part­ner­ing with the etree music com­mu­ni­ty, the Live Music Archive was estab­lished to pro­vide ongo­ing, free access to loss­less and MP3-encod­ed audio record­ings.” Over the past 21 years, “more than 8,000 artists have giv­en per­mis­sion to have record­ings of their shows archived on the Live Music Archive, and users from around the world have lis­tened to files more than 600 mil­lion times.” Whether or not you’re into jam bands, if you’ve ever enjoyed live music, have a look through the LMA’s 250 ter­abytes of record­ings made in venues from sta­di­ums to neigh­bor­hood cof­fee shops. There’ll be a con­cert for you, no charge for admis­sion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jam­Base Launch­es a New Video Archive of 100,000 Stream­ing Con­certs: Phish, Wilco, the Avett Broth­ers, Grate­ful Dead & Much More

Stream 385,000 Vin­tage 78 RPM Records at the Inter­net Archive: Louis Arm­strong, Glenn Miller, Bil­lie Hol­i­day & More

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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