Last night, while the home team lost the big game on TVs at a local dive bar, my noisy rock band opened for a cham­ber pop ensem­ble. Elec­tric gui­tars and feed­back gave way to clas­si­cal acoustics, vio­lin, piano, accor­dion, and even a saw. It was an inter­est­ing cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tion in an evening of cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tions. The sports and music did­n’t gel, but an odd sym­me­try emerged from the two bands’ con­trast­ing styles, to a degree. The instru­ment above, on the oth­er hand, would have fit right in with the sec­ond act, whose old world charm would sure­ly find a place for a 1679 guitar—one craft­ed by the leg­endary mas­ter luthi­er Anto­nio Stradi­vari, no less.

If you know noth­ing at all about music or musi­cal instru­ments, you know the name Stradi­vari and the vio­lins that bear his name. They are such cov­et­ed, valu­able objects they some­times appear as the tar­get of crime capers in the movies and on tele­vi­sion. This Stradi­var­ius gui­tar, called the “Sabionari,” is even rar­er than the vio­lins. The Stradi­vari fam­i­ly, writes For­got­ten Gui­tar, “pro­duced over 1000 instru­ments, of which 960 were vio­lins.” Yet, “a small num­ber of gui­tars were also craft­ed, and as of today only one remains playable.” High­ly playable, you’ll observe in these videos, thanks to the restora­tion by luthiers Daniel Sinier, Fran­coise de Rid­der, and Loren­zo Frig­nani.

In the clip just above, Baroque con­cert gui­tarist Rolf Lisl­e­vand plays San­ti­a­go de Mur­ci­a’s “Taran­tela” on the restored gui­tar, whose sonorous ring­ing tim­bre recalls anoth­er Baroque instru­ment, the harp­si­chord.

So unique and unusu­al is the ten-string Stradi­var­ius Sabionari that it has its own web­site, where you’ll find many detailed, close-up pho­tos of the ele­gant design as well as more music, like the piece above, Ange­lo Michele Bar­tolot­ti’s Suite in G Minor as per­formed by clas­si­cal gui­tarist Krish­na­sol Jiménez, who, along with Lisl­e­vand, has been entrust­ed with the instru­ment for many live per­for­mances. Owned by a pri­vate col­lec­tor, the Sabionari went on dis­play last year in Basel and very often appears at lec­tures on restora­tion and con­ser­va­tion of clas­si­cal instru­ments, as well as in per­for­mances around Europe. The Sabionari.com web­mas­ter has not kept the “Events” page up to date, unfor­tu­nate­ly, but you should scroll through it regard­less. You’ll find there many more videos of the gui­tar in action (like that below of gui­tarist Ugo Nas­truc­ci impro­vis­ing), links to exhibits, descrip­tions of the chal­leng­ing­ly long neck and Baroque tun­ing, and a sense of just how much the Sabionari gets around for such a rare, antique instru­ment.

via For­got­ten Gui­tar

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Musi­cians Play Bach on the Octo­bass, the Gar­gan­tu­an String Instru­ment Invent­ed in 1850

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

What Does a $45 Mil­lion Vio­la Sound Like? Vio­list David Aaron Car­pen­ter Gives You a Pre­view

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

Punk rock and heavy met­al were two gen­res that evolved over the ‘70s, but seemed to run par­al­lel to each oth­er, despite shar­ing com­mon fash­ion, sounds, and atti­tudes. But then there are moments in his­to­ry, where every­body plays togeth­er in the same sand­box. For exam­ple, the above audio, which cap­tures the Aus­tralian band AC/DC on their first Amer­i­can tour, play­ing New York’s CBGB, syn­ony­mous now with punk and new wave music.

The date is August 24, 1977, and AC/DC were on a cross-coun­try trip that had tak­en in both club dates and are­nas, where they supported—yes, hard to believe, I know—REO Speed­wag­on. Their album Let There Be Rock had just dropped in June. The band would be in the States until the win­ter.

This CBGB gig finds them on the same bill as Talk­ing Heads and the Dead Boys, accord­ing to a poster from the time. And while there’s no video for this show, there are plen­ty of tasty pho­tos over at Dan­ger­ous Minds, show­ing lead singer Bon Scott work­ing the crowd and Angus Young—at the sprite­ly age of 22—being car­ried through the crowd on the shoul­ders of Scott him­self. You can feel the mug­gy New York sum­mer in these pho­tos, but also the excite­ment of an unfor­get­table gig.

At 15 min­utes, the set is short, but still three min­utes longer than the Ramones’ first set at the same club three years ear­li­er. That’s pret­ty met­al, man.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Heavy Met­al: BBC Film Explores the Music, Per­son­al­i­ties & Great Cloth­ing That Hit the Stage in the 1980s

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.

For decades now, debate has raged on whether Neil Young is a “gui­tar god or gui­tar slob.” His play­ing is slop­py and untu­tored, but so com­plete­ly heart­felt, so total­ly engross­ing, that it’s nev­er mat­tered to his fans, myself includ­ed. I come firm­ly down on the “gui­tar god” side of the ques­tion, and not only because he’s inspired me when I’ve felt less than accom­plished as a musi­cian, but because I gen­er­al­ly pre­fer musi­cian­ship that’s kin­da messy, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, and idio­syn­crat­ic ver­sus clas­si­cal­ly-trained virtuosity—at least in rock and roll, where mak­ing a mess is kind of the point. Young him­self couldn’t care less what peo­ple think about his rudi­men­ta­ry lead gui­tar play­ing. “When you’re able to express your­self and feel good,” he said in a 1992 inter­view, “then you know why you’re play­ing. The tech­ni­cal aspect is absolute hog­wash as far as I’m con­cerned.”

The dif­fer­ence between Neil Young and many an unschooled ama­teur musi­cian is often pret­ty clear: He’s a great song­writer with such a feel for rhythm, tone, and dynam­ics that intu­itive musi­cal­i­ty, one might say, is at the heart of his musi­cian­ship. I would say sim­i­lar things about a play­er like Dave Grohl, who—as a drum­mer and a guitarist—has always pos­sessed a con­fi­dent, intu­itive sense of what music is and does. And he’s done it, as he says in the inter­view above, with bare­ly a les­son to speak of. He’s pret­ty much entire­ly self taught on both instru­ments, and—like Neil Young, Jimi Hen­drix, and a whole pas­sel of oth­er famous players—hasn’t mem­o­rized much the­o­ry or learned hun­dreds of chords. When he moved from pri­mar­i­ly play­ing drums to gui­tar, as he demon­strates above, Grohl learned to think of the gui­tar strings as cor­re­spond­ing to the parts of a drum kit.

He shows how the riff for “Ever­long,” for exam­ple, came to him by think­ing about strum pat­terns as drum pat­terns, and it makes per­fect sense. He also talks about how his gui­tar tech­nique cor­re­sponds not only to drum tech­nique, but also to what­ev­er means of expres­sion he needs at a par­tic­u­lar moment in a song—whatever sounds good, as he puts it. Part of his ethos comes from a punk rock, DIY atti­tude of want­i­ng to “just fig­ure it out,” and not read the instruc­tions. It’s a musi­cal stance that can work per­fect­ly well in punk, hard­core, or the Foo Fight­ers’ melod­ic alt-rock. Or in the sham­bling folk-rock of Neil Young. Not so much in, say, jazz or most gen­res of heavy met­al or prog rock, forms of music that seem to have arisen express­ly around vir­tu­oso play­ing. If that’s what you’re into, you may need a few lessons. But what­ev­er kind of music you play, as Grohl dis­cuss­es above, the per­fect is still the ene­my of the good.

Grohl says he tries “to appre­ci­ate an imper­fect per­for­mance, or an off-the-cuff idea, or a lyric that might seem unfin­ished or in such a sim­ple form it doesn’t seem sophis­ti­cat­ed enough….” To let one’s inner edi­tor step in and try to guide the process is to give up the unforced spon­tane­ity that makes music excit­ing. “When,” he asks, “did per­fec­tion become so impor­tant in music?” He doesn’t spec­u­late, but I would say it might cor­re­late to the rise of the dig­i­tal machines in music pro­duc­tion, which allow pro­duc­ers to edit every sin­gle note, fix every off-key vocal, move every drum hit into a per­fect grid, smooth out every rough, messy performance—or do away with the “imper­fect” human ele­ment alto­geth­er. Such pro­duc­tion kills the spir­it of record­ed rock and roll—and even, I’d argue, makes for dull, unin­spired elec­tron­ic music. And such per­fec­tion in play­ing live music is, Grohl says, “unat­tain­able.”

I’d per­son­al­ly say that the ascen­den­cy of slick pro­duc­tion over inter­est­ing per­for­mance has been in large part respon­si­ble for the declin­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of main­stream rock and roll, as its edges are too often planed away and it’s ren­dered safe and bor­ing. Grohl has his own the­o­ry, which he dis­cuss­es above, relat­ing to a back­lash against the post-Nir­vana com­mer­cial­ism of the 90s and a nascent elit­ism among rock bands. His idea is as much a defense of the Foo Fight­ers’ “pop­ulism” as an expla­na­tion for why rock songs are rarely hit songs any­more. If you pre­fer his ear­ly work, you can hear him dis­cuss his role in Nir­vana, below, and talk about his rela­tion­ship with Kurt Cobain in this excerpt from the longer inter­view with Sam Jones of Off­Cam­era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly” in Uni­son in Italy; Dave Grohl Responds in Ital­ian

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

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