Hear Rick Wakeman’s Musical Adaptation of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, “One of Prog Rock’s Crowning Achievements”

in Literature, Music | February 27th, 2018

So unfash­ion­able for so long, pro­gres­sive rock has late­ly come in for a re-eval­u­a­tion. The qual­i­ties that cur­rent music crit­ics have come to appre­ci­ate — often the very same ones that both­ered so many of their col­leagues in the 1970s — include its tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty, its com­po­si­tion­al inven­tive­ness, its sheer per­for­ma­tive unabashed­ness, and its will­ing­ness to draw from oth­er forms of art, espe­cial­ly lit­er­a­ture. Or lit­er­a­ture of a cer­tain kind, any­way: hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured prog-rock adap­ta­tions of Isaac Asi­mov’s I, Robot by the Alan Par­sons Project, George Orwell’s 1984 by Rick Wake­man, and H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds by Jeff Wayne, today we give you Jules Verne’s Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of the Earth as adapt­ed by Wake­man in 1974.

You can lis­ten to the album, which All Music Guide’s Mike DeGagne calls “one of pro­gres­sive rock­’s crown­ing achieve­ments,” on Spo­ti­fy (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here). “With the help of the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and the Eng­lish Cham­ber Choir, Rick Wake­man turns this clas­sic Jules Verne tale into an excit­ing and sus­pense­ful instru­men­tal nar­ra­tive,” using not just his own Ham­mond organ and Moog syn­the­siz­er but Blow-Up star David Hem­mings’ recita­tion of Verne’s words as well.

“Record­ed at Lon­don’s Roy­al Fes­ti­val Hall, the tale of a group of explor­ers who wan­der into the fan­tas­tic liv­ing world that exists in the Earth­’s core is told musi­cal­ly through Wake­man’s syn­the­sized the­atrics and enriched by the haunt­ing vocals of a cham­ber choir.”

Wake­man’s Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of the Earth demon­strates what not just Verne’s sub­ter­ranean explor­ers but all the best prog-rock­ers have in spades: ambi­tion. And though the work evi­dences deep famil­iar­i­ty with the nov­el on Wake­man’s part, you need­n’t have read a page of Verne — nor of the recent books attempt­ing to bring prog-rock to respectabil­i­ty — to enjoy it.  You don’t even need to take it seri­ous­ly, as one All Music Guide user-review­er, present as a wide-eyed teenag­er at the Roy­al Fes­ti­val Record­ing, adds: “It was all very avant garde and I felt quite sophis­ti­cat­ed as a 16-year-old attend­ing the show with smart kids who use to sit around crossed legged on the floor lis­ten­ing to Dark Side Of The Moon.” For him, the album now pro­vides “a view back to the oh so earnest days of grandiose prog-rock and for that rea­son alone it can be seen as some­thing it nev­er was at the time… fun!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Prog-Rock Adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Mil­lion Copies World­wide

Rick Wakeman’s Prog-Rock Opera Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s 1984

Hear The Alan Par­son Project’s Prog-Rock Inter­pre­ta­tion of Isaac Asimov’s, I Robot (1977)

The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Sem­i­nal Sci-Fi Nov­el The War of the Worlds

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.

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Underrated Albums That You Want the World to Know About: What’s on Your List?

in Music | February 23rd, 2018

This is not an easy post to write. I am going to talk about some­thing per­son­al. Yes, it’s time to dis­cuss under­rat­ed albums, a term that can mean so many things to so many peo­ple that we might as well talk about under­rat­ed dreams. But dreams can be shared, at least in pop cul­ture and the sub­cul­tur­al cav­erns beneath it. And peo­ple can share opin­ions about an under­rat­ed album, espe­cial­ly in the dis­parate com­mu­ni­ties of the inter­net, where devo­tees can find each oth­er eas­i­ly.

When I was younger this was not so easy. One might dis­cov­er an album at a local indie record shop and buy it just for the cov­er, hav­ing no idea what lay with­in. There were no songs on YouTube, Spo­ti­fy, or iTunes. (My generation’s walk­ing to school in the snow, uphill both ways.) One made chance dis­cov­er­ies at live shows and in the pages of print mag­a­zines. In such prim­i­tive con­di­tions, it was easy to find records that you and only you loved, from start to fin­ish, some­times believ­ing you must be the only per­son who had ever heard them.

As Richard Met­zger puts it at Dan­ger­ous Minds, in writ­ing about an under­rat­ed EP from a high­ly under­rat­ed band, “In the pre-Inter­net days, record col­lec­tion was more than mere­ly a hob­by. It was almost like… a way of life.”

I take this lit­tle nos­tal­gic trip to say that for me, under­rat­ed albums tend to fold into the cat­e­go­ry of under­rat­ed artists. Dis­cov­er­ing them wasn’t a mat­ter of cred—not at first. It was a secre­tive and pri­vate act, a tiny ado­les­cent rebel­lion against the bad taste of friends and fam­i­ly. Giv­en such musi­cal solip­sism, I find it hard to gauge what makes an album under­rat­ed. You’ll find lists aplen­ty, and they are odysseys of dis­cov­ery for the adven­tur­ous. Lists filled with less­er-known records from very well-known artists. Lists made of pic­ture gal­leries. Lists quot­ing such high-cred stars as Kurt Cobain, Björk, and Arcade Fire.

As for myself, I could go on for days, but humbly offer here a few eclec­tic albums that—start to finish—have cap­ti­vat­ed me over the years for var­i­ous rea­sons. At the top, hear “Which Witch,” from TK Webb’s crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed 2006 Phan­tom Parade, an album of plain­tive laments that sounds like a truck stop ashtray—hypnotic road­house coun­try blues played by the Vel­vet Under­ground with vocals parked some­where between Tom Waits and Cap­tain Beef­heart.

Below it, hear a short excerpt from what is very like­ly the strangest live album ever record­ed: Wire’s 1981 Doc­u­ment & Eye­wit­ness. It’s hard to imag­ine lis­ten­ing to it with­out the lin­er notes in hand, but the over­dubbed con­ver­sa­tion on “Everything’s Going to Be Nice” will give you a taste of what the con­cert was like. The band, writes Pitch­fork, “had pushed their art-stu­dent ten­den­cies to the break­ing point, turn­ing what was expect­ed to be a pogo-fueled punk show into a Dadaist, per­for­mance-art spec­ta­cle com­plete with Mor­ris-danc­ing bells and a live goose.”

This track rep­re­sents a brief inter­lude in the midst of record­ings that cap­ture the sound of a band tak­ing itself apart onstage before a bewil­dered audi­ence clam­or­ing for the hits (or, rather, the hit, “I2XU” from their clas­sic debut Pink Flag.)

In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, in addi­tion to these two albums, hear for­mer Scream­ing Trees singer Mark Lanegan’s Bub­ble Gum, Eng­lish rock­a­bil­ly revival­ist Hol­ly Golight­ly & Dan Melchoir’s Des­per­ate Lit­tle Town, Afro-Turk­ish singer Esmeray’s 2013 col­lec­tion of hits En lyi­leriyle Esmer­ay (hits in her native land, maybe, but sad­ly not well known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world), post-rock pio­neers Bark Psy­chosis’s 1994 Hex; the alter­na­tive­ly hyp­not­ic and hys­ter­i­cal Cana­di­an indie rock­ers Frog Eyes’ 2002 debut The Bloody Hand; Pissed Jeans’ most­ly ter­ri­fy­ing Hope for Men; Gillian Welch’s trad folk/country Soul Jour­ney (don’t miss clos­er “Wreck­ing Ball”); and the Sta­ple Singers under­rat­ed ear­ly albums Uncloudy Day & Will the Cir­cle Be Unbro­ken.

Depend­ing on my mood, these are albums I lis­ten to straight through—and think, while doing so, every­one should hear this. But of course the list is biased. Like telling peo­ple about your dreams, telling peo­ple about your favorite, under­rat­ed albums can nev­er approach the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to them your­self. Nonethe­less, read­er, a per­son­al ques­tion: what would you put on your list? What albums do you want fel­low OC read­ers to put on their radar? Tell us in the com­ments below. And if we get enough good replies, who knows, maybe we’ll pull togeth­er a big meta playlist we all could share.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Lis­ten to Rolling Stone’s “500 Great­est Songs of All Time” in One Stream­able Playlist

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

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Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972)

in Music | February 22nd, 2018

Joan Baez was already her­ald­ed as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zim­mer­man aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the bur­geon­ing folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his tele­vi­sion set long before he met her. He was smit­ten. He would write much lat­er in Chron­i­cles, Vol. 1, that she had “A voice that drove out bad spir­its… she sang in a voice straight to God… Noth­ing she did didn’t work.”

And for a cou­ple of years they became col­lab­o­ra­tors, part­ners, lovers, and folk roy­al­ty. It was Baez who intro­duced a then-unknown Dylan to the crowds at the 1963 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. But soon, for­tunes changed: Dylan became an unstop­pable cul­tur­al force and Baez would be on the receiv­ing end of sev­er­al betray­als, artis­tic and oth­er­wise.

An excerpt from an Earl Scrug­gs doc­u­men­tary, the cute video above, shot by David Hoff­man and post­ed on his YouTube chan­nel, shows Baez imi­tat­ing Dylan after she sings a verse of “It Ain’t Me Babe”. (She does this while hold­ing her baby and try­ing to get it to drink from a pitch­er, too.) A 16-year-old Ricky Skaggs—not look­ing any­thing like a teenager—accompanies her on gui­tar.

For one thing she does a crackin’ good Dylan impres­sion. The oth­er is watch­ing the emo­tion behind that impression—there’s a lot of his­to­ry there, a bit of sad­ness, a bit of nos­tal­gia, noth­ing bit­ter or mean, but evi­dence of a shared life togeth­er that once exist­ed.

By this time in 1972, Dylan’s voice had matured. The croon­er on Nashville Sky­line was a dif­fer­ent per­son from the man on Blonde on Blonde, all those rough cor­ners sand­ed off and the reg­is­ter deep­ened. Yet when any­one imi­tates Dylan, they head on back to those mid-‘60s albums, the “bray­ing beat­nik” as writer Rob Jones calls him. (Jones posits that Dylan has had eight par­tic­u­lar voic­es dur­ing his career.)

Remem­ber, as Slate’s Carl Wil­son points out, when Dylan first start­ed out, he was com­mend­ed for his voice, and was con­sid­ered  “one of the most com­pelling white blues singers ever record­ed,” by Robert Shel­ton, who wrote the copy on the back cov­er of Dylan’s 1962 debut album. He came from a tra­di­tion of both Woody Guthrie and Howl­in’ Wolf, and sev­er­al oth­er idio­syn­crat­ic singers who didn’t sound like Frank Sina­tra. (Although Dylan’s last few projects have been cov­ers from the Great Amer­i­can Song­book.)

Dylan him­self, in a 2015 award accep­tance speech, turned his ire towards crit­ics of his voice:

Crit­ics have been giv­ing me a hard time since Day One. Crit­ics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t crit­ics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Crit­ics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. [Why] don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get spe­cial treat­ment? Crit­ics say I can’t car­ry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Real­ly? I’ve nev­er heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? … Slur my words, got no dic­tion. Have you peo­ple ever lis­tened to Charley Pat­ton or Robert John­son, Mud­dy Waters? … “Why me, Lord?” I would say that to myself.

Fast for­ward to the present and Dylan’s voice shows the wear of years of per­form­ing and years of indul­gence. It’s grav­el­ly and phleg­mat­ic, smoky and whiskey-soaked, but Wil­son points out: “Even the rasp and burr of his late voice, sev­er­al keen lis­ten­ers have noticed, is very much like a more gen­uine copy of the old-blues­man tim­bre he pre­ten­tious­ly affect­ed as a young man. It’s almost like this is what he’s been aim­ing toward.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly-Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

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.

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Massive Archive of 78RPM Records Now Digitized & Put Online: Stream 78,000 Early 20th Century Records from Around the World

in Archives, Music | February 21st, 2018

Last sum­mer we checked in with the Inter­net Archive’s Great 78 Project, a vol­un­teer effort to dig­i­tize thou­sands of 78rpm records—the old­est mass-pro­duced record­ing medi­um. Draw­ing on the exper­tise and vast hold­ings of preser­va­tion com­pa­ny George Blood, L.P., the ARChive of Con­tem­po­rary Music, and over 20 more insti­tu­tions from around the world, the project aims to save the record­ed sounds of the past, and not only those that have come down to us through the efforts of high­ly selec­tive cura­tors. What we think of as the sound of the ear­ly 20th century—the blues, jazz, coun­try, clas­si­cal, rag­time, gospel, blue­grass, etc.—only rep­re­sents a pop­u­lar sam­ple.

Inter­net Archive founder Brew­ster Kahle wants to widen our son­ic appre­ci­a­tion of the peri­od, and include every­thing, “Mid­west, dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent social class­es, dif­fer­ent immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties and their loves and fears.”

This mas­sive archive will even­tu­al­ly num­ber in the mil­lions, up to 3 mil­lion record­ings, to be exact, and con­tin­ues apace at the rate of about 5,000 new uploads per month.

Last August, the record­ings in the archive num­bered over 25,000. Now, the Great 78 Project con­tains more than 78,000 and count­ing dig­i­tal trans­fers of frag­ile 78rpm records—everything from Prokofiev to the Carter Fam­i­ly (fur­ther up) to Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt from 1928 (above) to inter­na­tion­al folk dances to field record­ings of ani­mal sounds.

The col­lect­ed works of Al Jol­son, span­ning the years 1911 to 1926, appear (above), as does a fas­ci­nat­ing col­lec­tion from Argenti­na, brought to the U.S. by Tina Argume­do, who began col­lect­ing 78s in the 30s and con­tin­ued to do so for anoth­er 20 years before mov­ing to the States. Her dig­i­tized col­lec­tion of almost 700 records “com­pris­es pri­mar­i­ly tan­go music, with boleros, sam­bas, mam­bo, and oth­er dance music,” like the Argen­tine swing of Dajos Bela y su Orques­tra from 1932 below.

As we not­ed in our pre­vi­ous post, the utmost care has gone into pre­serv­ing the orig­i­nal sound of these records, with a vari­ety of dig­i­tal trans­fers made with dif­fer­ent vin­tage sty­lus­es to rep­re­sent the dif­fer­ences in play­back sys­tems. The process also pre­serves all the orig­i­nal records’ crack­le and hiss—sometimes the music seems to swim below the sur­face noise, which only enhances the effect of hear­ing, trans­port­ed through time, music from 80, 90, and 100 years ago and more.

Enter the 78 archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25,000+ 78RPM Records Now Pro­fes­sion­al­ly Dig­i­tized & Stream­ing Online: A Trea­sure Trove of Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry Music

The Boston Pub­lic Library Will Dig­i­tize & Put Online 200,000+ Vin­tage Records

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

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

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What Made John Entwistle One of the Great Rock Bassists? Hear Isolated Tracks from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley” & “Pinball Wizard”

in Music | February 21st, 2018

Drum­mer Kei­th Moon was sure­ly the most kinet­ic mem­ber of The Who—which is real­ly say­ing a lot—but he was not the band’s best musi­cian, even if he is rou­tine­ly named one of the best drum­mers of all time. Moon knew the appeal of his play­ing often lay in the fact that it was like no one else’s: he described him­self as the “great­est Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer in the world.” Noth­ing in rock approached his untamed excess, mod­eled after the far more dis­ci­plined flights of his hero, Gene Kru­pa.

But if the band “can be said to have an instru­men­tal vir­tu­oso,” writes Chris Jisi at Drum! mag­a­zine, “it is John Alec Entwistle,” their true sol­id cen­ter (they called him “The Ox”) and the per­fect rhyth­mic foil to Moon, who “could sound like a drum kit falling down­stairs,” Entwistle says. The bass play­er not only kept time, he tells Jisi, since Moon didn’t, and fol­lowed Moon’s “mess of cym­bals” and “all over the place” snare drum, but he also filled in for a rhythm gui­tarist as Pete Town­shend slashed away.

He kept his bass riffs rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple, he had to, and he “added top end or tre­ble… to cut through the rest of the noise.” It works, for sure. He is right­ful­ly sin­gled out as one of the great­est rock bass play­ers ever for his phe­nom­e­nal skill and poise.

A less­er play­er try­ing to com­pete with Moon’s wall of drums and Townshend’s mas­sive pow­er chords might dis­ap­pear entire­ly. Entwistle always stands out. His com­ments about Moon’s play­ing might sound dis­parag­ing, but they come off in con­text as hon­est and accu­rate, as do his descrip­tions of his own play­ing.

Entwistle sug­gests he wouldn’t be the play­er he became with­out Moon and the rest of the band. “We con­struct­ed our music to fit ‘round each oth­er,” he says. “It was some­thing very pecu­liar that none of us played the same way as oth­er peo­ple.” In their best moments, some parts “slid togeth­er by mag­ic and were gone for­ev­er.” This is the essence, real­ly, of rock and roll, the serendip­i­tous tran­scen­dence that aris­es from wild­ly col­lid­ing waves of sound.

But such con­trolled chaos can require, espe­cial­ly in a band like The Who, one cool, well-trained vir­tu­oso who can­not be ruf­fled, no mat­ter what, whose per­fec­tion looks effort­less and who nev­er breaks a sweat. The eter­nal arche­type of that play­er is John Entwistle. At the top, hear Entwistle’s iso­lat­ed bass in a live take of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” (He comes in at 1:45, after a much-extend­ed intro). Below it, you’ll eas­i­ly pick out his every note in the stu­dio ver­sion. And fur­ther up, after anoth­er extend­ed syn­the­siz­er intro, hear him solo at 1:25 on “Baba O’Ri­ley,” also live at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in 1978. (The stu­dio record­ing is above).

And just above, in one of his most ener­getic per­for­mances, hear him play a live ver­sion of “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” (start­ing at 0:36). And then catch one more jaw-drop­ping solo, just for good mea­sure, record­ed live at Roy­al Albert Hall.

Entwistle is some­times com­pared to Jimi Hen­drix, but in some ways, The Ox came first with his fuzzed-out sound. The mild-man­nered play­er “pio­neered the use of feed­back in music and smash­ing his instru­ment,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “with Jimi Hen­drix fol­low­ing suit after see­ing Entwistle do it.” For all his reserved Eng­lish cool­ness, Entwistle first pushed the bound­aries of loud­ness, “using 200 watts of pow­er when most bands used 50,” just one of the rea­sons, as you’ll hear in these tracks, for his oth­er nick­name: “Thun­derfin­gers.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

The Jimi Hen­drix of the Bass: Watch a Busker Shred the Bass on the Streets of New­cas­tle

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

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Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Experimental Film That Takes You on a Visual Journey Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

in Art, Film, Music | February 21st, 2018

Even if we can’t name them, we’ve all seen hun­dreds of the most impor­tant paint­ings in art his­to­ry, and even if we can’t name it, we’ve all heard “Clas­si­cal Gas.” 3000 Years of Art, the 1968 exper­i­men­tal film above, offi­ci­ates an aes­thet­ic union of about 2500 of those much-seen, high­ly influ­en­tial images and Mason Williams’ instru­men­tal hit song, all in just over three min­utes.

Ini­tial­ly released on The Mason Williams Phono­graph Record in 1967, the track went on, with the help of 3000 Years of Art, to become “one of the ear­li­est records that used a visu­al to help pro­mote it on tele­vi­sion, which prob­a­bly qual­i­fies it as one of the ear­li­est music videos.” Those words come from Williams him­self, who post­ed the video to his own Youtube chan­nel.

When “Clas­si­cal Gas” first became a hit, he writes, “I was also the head writer for The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour on CBS. I had seen a film titled God Is Dog Spelled Back­wards at The Encore, an off beat movie house in L.A. The film was a col­lec­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2500 clas­si­cal works of art, most­ly paint­ings, that flashed by in three min­utes. Each image last­ed only two film frames, or twelve images a sec­ond! At the end of the film the view­er was pro­nounced ‘cul­tur­al’ since they had just cov­ered ‘3000 years of art in 3 min­utes!’ ”

Con­tact­ing the short­’s cre­ator, a UCLA stu­dent by the name of Dan McLaugh­lin, Williams asked if he could re-cut its imagery to “Clas­si­cal Gas” for a Smoth­ers Broth­ers seg­ment. First air­ing on the show in the sum­mer of 1968 — the same year that saw anoth­er of the show’s writ­ers, a young man by the name of Steve Mar­tin, bring his tal­ents direct­ly to the air — the result­ing pro­to-music-video rock­et­ed Williams’ song to anoth­er sphere of pop­u­lar­i­ty entire­ly. Not only that, it “opened the door to real­iza­tions that the view­er’s mind could absorb this intense lev­el of visu­al input” with its use of kines­ta­sis, the phe­nom­e­non where­by a mon­tage of still images cre­ates its own kind of motion.

Fol­low­ing the idea to its then-log­i­cal con­clu­sion, Williams soon after wrote a skit for the Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour “pro­ject­ing the idea that some­day VJs would be play­ing hit tapes on TV.” And so the tra­jec­to­ries of easy-lis­ten­ing instru­men­tal music, gen­tly sub­ver­sive tele­vi­sion com­e­dy, and art his­to­ry inter­sect­ed to give the world an ear­ly glimpse of MTV, Youtube, and whichev­er host of even short­er-form, intenser view­ing expe­ri­ences comes next.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

One Minute Art His­to­ry: Cen­turies of Artis­tic Styles Get Packed Into a Short Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion

100,000 Free Art His­to­ry Texts Now Avail­able Online Thanks to the Get­ty Research Por­tal

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

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.

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Hear a 19-Hour Playlist of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Favorite Music: Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and… Yvette Guilbert

in Music, Philosophy | February 20th, 2018

Among his many var­ied interests—which, in addi­tion to phi­los­o­phy, includ­ed aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer­ing and archi­tec­ture—Lud­wig Wittgen­stein was also a great lover of music. Giv­en his well-deserved rep­u­ta­tion for intel­lec­tu­al aus­ter­i­ty, we might assume his musi­cal tastes would tend toward min­i­mal­ist com­posers of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry like fel­low Aus­tri­an Arnold Schoen­berg. The “order­ly seri­al­ism,” of Schoenberg’s aton­al music “does seem an obvi­ous com­ple­ment to Wittgenstein’s phi­los­o­phy,” writes Grant Chu Cov­ell. “Observers have won­dered why the famous­ly arro­gant thinker who attempt­ed to infuse phi­los­o­phy with log­ic didn’t find Schoenberg’s 12-tone sys­tem attrac­tive.”

But indeed, he did not—in fact, Wittgen­stein despised almost all mod­ern music and seemed to believe that “noth­ing of val­ue had been com­posed after the 19th century’s demise.” While his philo­soph­i­cal work made as rad­i­cal a break with the past as Schoenberg’s the­o­ry, when it came to music, the philoso­pher was a strict tra­di­tion­al­ist who “liked to say that there were only six tru­ly great com­posers: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schu­bert, Brahms and Labor.”

This last name will hard­ly be famil­iar to most read­ers. Labor, a blind organ­ist and com­pos­er, was a close friend of the Wittgen­stein fam­i­ly and a teacher of Ludwig’s broth­er Paul (and of Schoen­berg as well). Although he lived into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Labor main­ly drew his influ­ence from ear­ly music.

The extrav­a­gant­ly wealthy Wittgen­steins were a musi­cal family—both Ludwig’s old­er broth­ers became musi­cians. Wittgenstein’s par­ents and grand­par­ents knew Brahms, adopt­ed vio­lin­ist Joseph Joachim, a dis­tant cousin, into the fam­i­ly, and fre­quent­ly host­ed such lumi­nar­ies as Gus­tav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Lud­wig him­self learned to play the clar­inet and “was a fas­tid­i­ous lis­ten­er,” Cov­ell notes. “Acquain­tances mar­veled at his vir­tu­oso whistling. His reper­toire includ­ed Brahms’ Haydn Vari­a­tions and oth­er sym­phon­ic works. He would unhesi­tat­ing­ly cor­rect oth­ers’ inac­cu­rate hum­ming or singing.” He sup­pos­ed­ly had an “untir­ing obses­sion with per­fect recre­ations of the clas­sics.”

The philosopher’s per­fec­tion­ism lead to some harsh crit­i­cal judg­ments. “Brahms is Mendelssohn with­out the flaws,” he wrote. He declared Mahler “worth­less… quite obvi­ous­ly it took a set of very rare tal­ents to pro­duce this bad music.” What did Wittgen­stein val­ue in music besides an ide­al of per­fec­tion? Gram­mar, silence, and pro­fun­di­ty. “The music of the Baroque era… made use of the spe­cial effect of silence,” writes Yael Kaduri at Con­tem­po­rary Aes­thet­ics. “The gen­er­al pause of the Baroque was used to illus­trate con­cepts such as eter­ni­ty, death, infin­i­ty and silence in vocal music.” These con­cepts “did not dis­ap­pear in the tran­si­tion to the clas­sic era.” Haydn’s music in par­tic­u­lar “con­tains so many gen­er­al paus­es that it seems they form an intrin­sic com­po­nent of his musi­cal lan­guage.”

Wittgen­stein had oth­er cri­te­ria as well, much of it, sure­ly, as enig­mat­ic as the prin­ci­ples that gov­erned his thought. What does become clear, Cov­ell argues, is that “Wittgen­stein could only have been attract­ed to com­mon-prac­tice tonal­i­ty, with its cod­i­fied rules and delin­eation between orna­ment and form.” He need­ed “a sys­tem the details of which enhance an under­ly­ing struc­ture.” In the playlist above, you can hear a selec­tion of the philoso­pher’s favorites. Com­piled by Wittgen­stein biog­ra­ph­er Ray Monk, the playlist omits Haydn, for some rea­son, but includes Wag­n­er and Roman­tic com­pos­er Georges Bizet.

You’ll also find one rare excep­tion to Wittgenstein’s obses­sion with clas­si­cal musi­cal order: cabaret actress and singer Yvette Guil­bert, favorite sub­ject of artist Hen­ri Toulouse-Lautrec and one­time star of the Moulin Rouge. The famous­ly soli­tary, severe, and ill-tem­pered philoso­pher may have, it seems, nur­tured a soft­er side after all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus Sung as a One-Woman Opera

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Lud­wig Wittgen­stein & His Philo­soph­i­cal Insights on the Prob­lems of Human Com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s Short, Strange & Bru­tal Stint as an Ele­men­tary School Teacher

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

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The Brian Eno Discography: Stream 29 Hours of Recordings by the Master of Ambient Music

in Music | February 19th, 2018

45 years have passed since Bri­an Eno left Roxy Music to strike out on his own, launch­ing a more or less unprece­dent­ed career spread across music pop­u­lar and exper­i­men­tal as well as oth­er forms of art entire­ly. It seems to have worked out for him: young stars like James Blake, Owen Pal­lett, and Seun Kuti con­tin­ue to seek out the bound­ary-push­ing cre­ative over­sight he pre­vi­ous­ly brought as pro­duc­er to acts like David Bowie and U2, and his own work as a “non-musi­cian” (which began with him twist­ing knobs and push­ing but­tons almost at ran­dom with Roxy Music) con­tin­ues apace, his lat­est album Reflec­tion hav­ing come out just last year.

If you looked for Reflec­tion at the record store, phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal, you might well find it filed under “ambi­ent,” a genre Bri­an Eno often gets cred­it­ed with, though nev­er seems to claim cred­it for, invent­ing.

Whether or not he came up with that atmos­pher­ic, almost spa­tial form of music sin­gle-hand­ed­ly — or its com­put­er-com­posed cousin gen­er­a­tive music, which you can expe­ri­ence with Reflec­tion in app form — mat­ters less than the intel­lec­tu­al frame­work he’s built, and that he con­tin­u­al­ly dis­man­tles and rebuilds, around it.

Though Eno has always insist­ed on the impor­tance of deep feel­ing in music, per­ceiv­ing a kind of sacred­ness in acts like singing and danc­ing, the cre­ation of his own music has also involved no small amount of cog­i­ta­tion, the fruits of which you can hear in the 29-hour Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (If you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here.) If you got into Eno through his ambi­ent work, what you hear on much of this son­ic jour­ney through his discog­ra­phy might sur­prise you: the jagged­ness of a “Sky Saw” from Anoth­er Green World, the cyber­punk beats of Nerve Net, or the nervy grooves on his col­lab­o­ra­tions with for­mer Talk­ing Heads David Byrne. All of it evi­dences that Eno nev­er runs out of musi­cal ideas, nor the fas­ci­na­tion to exe­cute them; no won­der Roxy Music leader Bryan Fer­ry, near­ly half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, wants to col­lab­o­rate with him again.

The playlist starts with Eno’s first album, 1974’s Here Come the Warm Jets, and then moves through the rest of his discog­ra­phy chrono­log­i­cal­ly. It may not include every album Eno ever made. But it cer­tain­ly seems to include every Eno album cur­rent­ly avail­able on the stream­ing ser­vice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Bri­an Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Record­ing Stu­dio Rad­i­cal­ly Changed Music: Hear His Influ­en­tial Lec­ture “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool” (1979)

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

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.

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