Lou Reed was a vora­cious lis­ten­er. Rather than con­sume music, he imbibed it, drank it down in draughts, then sweat­ed it out through his pores. His inex­haustible thirst for songs result­ed in a body of work that has always sound­ed inti­mate­ly famil­iar, even when it takes us to places no song­writ­ers had before: the bit­ter, ten­der, vio­lent under­side of glam­our, art, and romance.

But where, exact­ly, did Reed’s wry, bleak, yet ten­der sen­si­bil­i­ty come from? How did he man­age so much com­plex emo­tion­al res­o­nance in such seem­ing­ly sim­ple songs as “Sun­day Morn­ing” and “Per­fect Day”? Part of the answer comes from his ven­er­a­tion of Beat poets and writ­ers like Allen Gins­berg and William Bur­roughs, as well as his one-time men­tor Del­more Schwartz. “I thought if you could do what those writ­ers did,” he said, “and put it to drums and gui­tar, you’d have the great­est thing on earth.”

This was no easy accom­plish­ment. It took some­one like Reed, steeped in pop, folk, rock, and jazz songcraft, to pull it off in such a way that Rolling Stone could call the Vel­vet Under­ground “the most influ­en­tial Amer­i­can rock band of all time”—largely, writes the Dai­ly Dot, “because of Reed’s son­ic and lyri­cal con­tri­bu­tions.” For most of Reed’s career, how­ev­er, dis­cov­er­ing the sources of his mag­ic could be dif­fi­cult.

Reed’s inter­view moods ranged from iras­ci­bly con­fronta­tion­al to dis­dain­ful­ly tac­i­turn to face­tious­ly gar­ru­lous. “Every­thing is jokes to this bibu­lous bozo,” remarked Lester Bangs in a 1973 inter­view. “He real­ly makes a point of havin’ some fun!” But age, it seems, and the inter­net, mel­lowed him out and made him more like­ly to share. He opened up about his love for Kanye West’s Yeezus and oth­er things. He appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live to dis­pute inter­net rumors that he had died in 2001.

And when he did die, in 2013, he left behind the Spo­ti­fy account “he was curat­ing… him­self,” keep­ing “playlists of songs he liked from the radio,” and show­ing both seri­ous and casu­al stu­dents of Lou Reed that “the best online source on Lou Reed is… Lou Reed.” In the two vol­ume playlist above called “What I’m Lis­ten­ing To,” Reed shows us just how seri­ous he was about soak­ing up all of the sounds around him.

Nic­ki Minaj, Prince, Way­lon Jen­nings, indie funk/soul Cana­di­ans King Khan & BBQ, psy­che­del­ic indie cham­ber pop band Of Mon­tre­al, Tom Waits, Miles Davis, Deer­hoof, post-hard­core band Fucked Up, bril­liant neo-soul singer/rapper/songwriter Geor­gia Anne Muldrow, Cap­tain Beef­heart… and that’s just vol­ume one. Name a genre—Reed has found what he clear­ly con­sid­ers its per­fect exem­plar. You can almost see him tak­ing notes, scowl­ing with envy, smirk­ing with appre­ci­a­tion for how his own influ­ence has per­me­at­ed the past few the decades.

Famous musi­cians aren’t always the most inter­est­ing peo­ple, though Reed’s pri­vate life was sen­sa­tion­al enough to war­rant retelling. But many fans will find it much more inter­est­ing to get into the mind of Reed the artist. And for that, you’ll need to try and hear what he heard. Or, at least, lis­ten to what he lis­tened to.

If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here. Here are the direct links to the two Spo­ti­fy playlists: Playlist 1 — Playlist 2.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

An Ani­ma­tion of The Vel­vet Underground’s “Sun­day Morn­ing” … for Your Sun­day Morn­ing

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

You know Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecsta­sy Of Gold,” a musi­cal com­po­si­tion first made famous in Ser­gio Leone’s 1966 spaghet­ti west­ern The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It has since been cov­ered by every­one from Metal­li­ca, to Yo-Yo Ma. And now you can add Ger­man elec­tron­ic musi­cian Car­oli­na Eyck to the list.

Above, watch Eyck take “The Ecsta­sy Of Gold” in new, intrigu­ing direc­tions, using a theremin and a voice loop­er. It’s pret­ty mes­mer­iz­ing.

Below, watch Car­oli­na’s intro­duc­tion to the theremin. And down in the Relat­eds, find much more on the theremin, includ­ing vin­tage footage of Russ­ian inven­tor Leon Theremin giv­ing a demo of the new­fan­gled elec­tron­ic instru­ment.

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 and BlueSky.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

“Some­where Over the Rain­bow” Played on a 1929 Theremin

Most of us remem­ber Antho­ny Burgess not as the author of dozens of nov­els, as well as short sto­ries, essays, and poems, but as the author of A Clock­work Orange. This owes, for bet­ter or for worse, to Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 1971 film adap­ta­tion of the “bad­ly flawed” Amer­i­can edi­tion of Burgess’ 1962 dystopi­an satire, although even if A Clock­work Orange did­n’t over­shad­ow the rest of his lit­er­ary career, his lit­er­ary career would prob­a­bly still over­shad­ow what he con­sid­ered his life’s tru­ly seri­ous endeav­or: music.

“I wish peo­ple would think of me as a musi­cian who writes nov­els,” Burgess once went so far as to say, “instead of a nov­el­ist who writes music on the side.” Since even those of us who’ve read wide­ly in his bib­li­og­ra­phy may nev­er have heard any of the over 250 pieces of music he wrote in his life­time, today we offer you a lis­ten as well as a look at his orches­tral com­po­si­tions.

In the Spo­ti­fy playlists embed­ded here (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, you can down­load it here), you can hear the albums Burgess: Orches­tral Music, The Piano Music of Antho­ny Burgess, and the anthol­o­gy Antho­ny Burgess: The Man and His Music (the title of that last a ref­er­ence to This Man and His Music, the book that brought togeth­er his two great pur­suits most direct­ly).

“Music was at the heart of Antho­ny Burgess’s cre­ative life,” says the site of The Burgess Foun­da­tion, who there have made “scores of his music avail­able free of charge to any­body who wish­es to study or play it.” Pro­lif­ic in his writ­ing as well as his com­pos­ing, Burgess’ music includes a piece only dis­cov­ered in 2012, near­ly twen­ty years after death; the news clip at the top of the post briefly tells the sto­ry of Burgess’ “lost sonata,” his ear­li­est sur­viv­ing com­plete musi­cal work.

Many of Burgess nov­els, includ­ing but hard­ly lim­it­ed to A Clock­work Orange, sug­gest a deep inter­est and under­stand­ing of music, but they also (recall the Droogs’ wide lex­i­con of invent­ed slang) reveal a sim­i­lar capac­i­ty for lin­guis­tics. Call no Burgess fan a com­pletist, then, unless they’ve read his books, heard his music, and also read his trans­la­tions. “Trans­la­tion is not a mat­ter of words only,” the man once said. “It is a mat­ter of mak­ing intel­li­gi­ble a whole cul­ture.” Prac­ticed in fields as “untrans­lat­able” as poet­ry and as trans­la­tion-inde­pen­dent as orches­tral music, he should know. But one won­ders: what oth­er lit­tle-known cul­tur­al side career remains hid­den in the depths of the Burgess archives?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Antho­ny Burgess Names the 99 Best Nov­els in Eng­lish Between 1939 & 1983: Orwell, Nabokov, Hux­ley & More

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

Antho­ny Burgess’ Lost Intro­duc­tion to Joyce’s Dublin­ers Now Online

Hunter S. Thomp­son Writes a Blis­ter­ing, Over-the-Top Let­ter to Antho­ny Burgess (1973)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

It may be that famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­tempt, and if that’s so, we should all be very glad of the wealth of excel­lent doc­u­men­taries cor­rect­ing the mono­lith­ic com­mer­cial sto­ry of punk, which goes some­thing like this: The Sex Pis­tols and The Clash explode into the world in 1977 pur­vey­ing anar­chy and rev­o­lu­tion and design­er BDSM gear, and the sta­tus quo freaks out, then dis­cov­ers many savvy mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and here we are at our local punk bou­tique before the punk are­na show at Cor­po­ra­tion Sta­di­um.

That’s a bor­ing sto­ry, most­ly because all the most inter­est­ing parts, and weird­est, most vio­lent, gross-out, angry, exper­i­men­tal, queer, black, rad­i­cal, fem­i­nist, etc. parts get left out, along with near­ly all the best bands. Even if we date punk from the ear­ly sev­en­ties in New York with Pat­ti Smith and the Ramones, we’re miss­ing key prog­en­i­tors from the 60s, from Detroit, Ger­many, Taco­ma, Wash­ing­ton… The brack­ets we snap around decades as though each one popped into exis­tence inde­pen­dent­ly may blind us to how much his­to­ry folds back in on itself, as do musi­cal eras and gen­res.

Even before Crass arrived in ‘77 as “the miss­ing link between coun­ter­cul­ture hip­pies and punk’s angry rhetoric,” the MC5 ruled Detroit stages and bloody polit­i­cal con­ven­tions in 1968 Chica­go. Though they’re credited—along with fel­low motor city natives Iggy and The Stooges—with the inven­tion of punk, they played hip­py music: loose, bluesy, soul­ful, filled with long jams and solos. But they played it hard­er and with more speed, raw met­al edge, and inten­si­ty than any­one, while adopt­ing the pol­i­tics of the Black Pan­thers. It’s refresh­ing to see both the MC5 and The Stooges rep­re­sent­ed in the Spo­ti­fy playlist below, “The Evo­lu­tion of Punk in Chrono­log­i­cal Order.” (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.)

What may sound didac­tic is in fact pleas­ant­ly sur­pris­ing, and maybe essen­tial as far as these things go. No, of course, “not EVERY punk band will be list­ed here,” the playlist’s cre­ator con­cedes on Red­dit. Not only is this impos­si­ble, but, as he or she goes on, “I am con­struct­ing this list by my own per­son­al beliefs of what makes a band punk.” (Sor­ry, Blink 182 fans.) I’d be intrigued to know what those beliefs are. They are dis­crim­i­nat­ing, yet ecu­meni­cal. Not only does the MC5 get much-deserved inclu­sion, but so do sem­i­nal 60s garage rock bands like The Monks, an Amer­i­can band from Ger­many, and The Son­ics from Taco­ma.

We begin with a lit­tle-known, quaint­ly-named act called Ron­nie Cook & The Gay­lads, who in 1965 record­ed “Goo Goo Muck,” a nov­el­ty track that deliv­ered for The Cramps six­teen years lat­er. Ear­ly 60s rock­a­bil­ly, surf-rock, and bub­blegum (all prod­ucts of the pre­vi­ous decade), are of course essen­tial to so much punk, but the nov­el­ty act is also a punk sta­ple. I’m pleased to see here seri­ous exper­i­men­tal­ists like Sui­cide and NEU!, two bands with­out whom so much of the 2000s could not have hap­pened. I’m also pleased to see eight­ies pranksters The Dead Milk­man, who wrote deeply offen­sive nov­el­ty songs like “Takin’ Retards to the Zoo” and sound­ed like a com­ic book.

Do we not hear of the Dead Milk­men, and bands like Chok­ing Vic­tim, Cock Spar­rer, or the Cru­ci­fucks, because of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness run amok? That seems like an anachro­nis­tic way to look at things. I can assure you they pissed peo­ple off just as much at the time, and every­one argued end­less­ly about free speech. It’s true, the most offen­sive punk fig­ure on the list, G.G Allin, became a minor celebri­ty on the day­time cir­cuit after his extreme indul­gences in masochism and coprophil­ia onstage. But most punk bands played for lim­it­ed audi­ences, released on tiny labels, and attached them­selves to par­tic­u­lar regions. Play­ing punk rock was not always a very pop­u­lar thing to do.

There are too many frag­ments, too many off­shoots, tribes, divi­sions and affil­i­a­tions for a mono­cul­ture sum­ma­ry. But if you were to write an account of punk using only the tracks on this playlist, it would be a com­pre­hen­sive overview most peo­ple do not know, and a fas­ci­nat­ing one at that. Maybe punk died–in ’77 when it signed to CBS, or in 1979 at the dawn of the eight­ies, or last year, who knows. But this list insists on cov­er­ing over fifty years–from “Goo Goo Muck” to SKAAL’s 2016 “Not a Fan,” an almost clas­si­cal slab of hard­core, with a cho­rus that pro­vides the ide­al coda: “Your rules / I’m not a fan.” Is punk dead? You tell me.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing (1977–1980)

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

The MC5 Per­forms at the 1968 Chica­go Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, Right Before All Hell Breaks Loose

Watch the Pro­to-Punk Band The Monks Sow Chaos on Ger­man TV, 1966: A Great Con­cert Moment on YouTube

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