Ambi­ent Music must be able to accom­mo­date many lev­els of lis­ten­ing atten­tion with­out enforc­ing one in par­tic­u­lar; it must be as ignor­able as it is inter­est­ing.

In the orig­i­nal lin­er notes to Bri­an Eno’s found­ing doc­u­ment of Ambi­ent music — 1978’s Ambi­ent 1: Music for Air­ports — the artist explains that he named his genre after “an atmos­phere, or a sur­round­ing influ­ence: a tint. My inten­tion is to pro­duce orig­i­nal pieces osten­si­bly (but not exclu­sive­ly) for par­tic­u­lar times and sit­u­a­tions with a view to build­ing up a small but ver­sa­tile cat­a­logue of envi­ron­men­tal music suit­ed to a wide vari­ety of moods and atmos­pheres.”

In defin­ing “envi­ron­men­tal music,” Eno takes great pains to dis­tin­guish his new work from the mak­ers of Muzak. Rather than recre­at­ing the famil­iar with instru­men­tal schmaltz, and “strip­ping away all sense of doubt and uncer­tain­ty,” Ambi­ent should stim­u­late lis­ten­ers’ minds with­out dis­turb­ing or dis­tract­ing them, induc­ing “calm and a space to think.” Rolling Stone at the time coined the deri­sive, but not whol­ly inac­cu­rate, phrase “aes­thet­ic white noise.”

Reverb Machine painstak­ing­ly shows in a decon­struc­tion how Eno him­self intro­duced as much uncer­tain­ty into the com­po­si­tion­al process as pos­si­ble. Music for Air­ports is not, that is to say, a com­po­si­tion, but lay­ers of tape loops with snip­pets of record­ed music. These loops he set run­ning and “let them con­fig­ure in whichev­er way they want­ed to.” Act­ing as ini­tial selec­tor of sounds and engi­neer, Eno’s role as com­pos­er and play­er of the piece involved “hard­ly inter­fer­ing at all,” he’s said.

How could such a com­po­si­tion trans­late to a tra­di­tion­al per­for­mance set­ting, in which musi­cians, ele­vat­ed on a stage, play instru­ments for audi­ence mem­bers who face them, lis­ten­ing intent­ly? The sit­u­a­tion seems anti­thet­i­cal to Eno’s design. And yet, some­how, the musi­cians who make up the Bang on a Can All Stars ensem­ble have made it work beau­ti­ful­ly, per­form­ing Music for Air­ports’s first track, the non­de­script­ly named “1/1,” in an arrange­ment by the group’s Michael Gor­don, above, for an appre­cia­tive audi­ence at the San Diego Air­port Ter­mi­nal.

Bang on a Can is a group com­mit­ted, like Eno, to “mak­ing music new.” Since 1987, they have (unlike Eno) done so in a live per­for­mance-based way, hold­ing 12-hour marathon con­certs, for exam­ple. These per­for­mances have includ­ed their ren­di­tion of Music for Air­ports in full. The Vil­lage Voice described a 2007 per­for­mance in New York City for hun­dreds of atten­tive fans as “beau­ti­ful,” a word that often gets applied to Eno’s mas­ter­work of ran­dom­ness. Eno him­self described the results as “very, very nice,” and he’s maybe the last per­son to be sur­prised that a live per­for­mance of the first so-called Ambi­ent record works so well.

“The inter­est­ing thing is that it does­n’t sound at all mechan­i­cal as you would imag­ine,” he wrote of these ear­ly tape loop exper­i­ments. “It sounds like some guy is sit­ting there play­ing the piano with quite intense feel­ing. The spac­ing and dynam­ics of ‘his’ play­ing sound very well orga­nized.” See a quin­tet of “guys” just above — on cel­lo, bass, key­board, per­cus­sion, and gui­tar — recre­ate the mild­ly dis­joint­ed mood of stand­ing around in the lim­i­nal space of an air­port, for a crowd of peo­ple who, pre­sum­ably, came there for the express pur­pose of hear­ing back­ground music.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Ori­gins of Ambi­ent Music

A Six-Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Dis­cov­er the Ambi­ent Music of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, the Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese Com­pos­er

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

The last we checked in with teenage girl pow­er-punk band The Lin­da Lin­das, they were tear­ing up the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library (Cypress Park branch) with their lock­down-hit “Racist, Sex­ist Boy.” After eleven-year-old drum­mer Mila de Garza recount­ed the xeno­pho­bic encounter that led to the song, the band unleashed some true noisy angst befit­ting a group twice their age. It was the song of rage we need­ed at the time, the clip went viral, and they soon got a record deal. Along the way, they’ve appeared in Amy Poehler’s doc­u­men­tary, con­tributed to a track by Best Coast, opened for Biki­ni Kill, played Jim­my Kim­mel Live, and received acco­lades from Thurston Moore and Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine.

Just over a year lat­er, and The Lin­da Lin­das are back in the library as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk con­cert series. Usu­al­ly Tiny Desk gigs fea­tures an artist play­ing in the very cramped offices of the radio sta­tion, but as things are still not 100% safe, The Lin­da Lin­das opt­ed for the place they know well, this time play­ing at the Los Ange­les Cen­tral Library branch.

This band is no one-off. The de Garza sis­ters, along with their cousin Eloise Wong and friend Bela Salazar, formed in 2018 and have been play­ing ever since. Com­pare the step up in con­fi­dence and band inter­play on this new­er ver­sion of “Racist, Sex­ist Boy,” with which they close the set.

Before that The Lin­da Lin­das per­form songs from their new album Grow­ing Up, includ­ing the pop­py Span­ish bal­lad “Cuán­tas Veces”, the pop-punk “Talk­ing to Myself,” and the title track. The band’s lyrics are hon­est, absent pre­ten­sion, and while many of the con­cerns are uni­ver­sal, the album is def­i­nite­ly born out of COVID-era anx­i­ety. If you’re won­der­ing how these years are affect­ing those com­ing of age at this time, the album is essen­tial.

And, hey kids, there’s still avail­able (not on the live playlist but as a sin­gle on band­camp) “Nino,” a har­mo­ny-filled ode to their pet cat.

By the way, there aren’t many oth­er rock bands play­ing in libraries, but we did find one while search­ing the inter­tubes: it’s The Clash’s Mick Jones play­ing a solo elec­tric set of his hits. It’s just one more reminder to sup­port your local library—you nev­er know who might turn up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Riot Grrrl Move­ment Cre­at­ed a Rev­o­lu­tion in Rock & Punk

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

In 1965, Lou Reed was a 23-year-old grad­u­ate stalled in a music and art career he wasn’t sure would take off. A few years ear­li­er a doo-wop sin­gle record­ed with high school friends had been released to no avail. More recent­ly, a par­o­dy of dance-craze sin­gles “Do the Ostrich”, cre­at­ed by Reed and per­formed by a pick-up band of musi­cians, had also made its way onto wax and then right out of people’s mem­o­ries. How­ev­er, John Cale was in that pick-up band, and soon the two were fast friends. It was Cale who helped record Reed’s demo tape of songs that year. And it was Reed who took the tape and mailed it back to him­self as a “poor man’s copy­right.”

That demo tape has now been unsealed and these nev­er-before heard record­ings are head­ing to LP and CD and stream­ing. Above you can hear a very ear­ly ver­sion of “I’m Wait­ing for the Man,” that would get rad­i­cal­ly reworked for the Vel­vet Underground’s debut album.

Over rudi­men­ta­ry gui­tar pluck­ing, Reed’s demo is slow­er, has har­monies, and a more decid­ed folk bent. Reed acts out the var­i­ous parts, includ­ing the “Par­don me sir, it’s the fur­thest from my mind” line in a faux-Brit accent. There’s even a Dylan-esque har­mon­i­ca solo.

The demo tape con­tains oth­er future Vel­vet Under­ground clas­sics like “Hero­in” and “Pale Blue Eyes,” but also songs that would turn up on Berlin (“Men of Good For­tune”) and a favorite cov­er “Wrap Your Trou­bles in Dreams” that would pop up in Vel­vets sets. But there’s also songs that were nev­er released in any for­mat: “Stock­pile,” “Buzz Buzz Buzz,” and “But­ter­cup Song.”

Reed had been influ­enced by poet Del­more Schwartz, who he’d stud­ied under at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty. Schwartz had instilled in Reed the idea that the sim­plest words could have the max­i­mum effect in the right hands. Reed’s style of street doc­u­men­tary and rep­e­ti­tion came out of his rela­tion­ship with Schwartz, whom Reed paid trib­ute to on the first Vel­vets album with “Euro­pean Son.”

The album, all nice­ly remas­tered, will be avail­able in the usu­al for­mats on August 26, includ­ing a bonus ep of ear­li­er demos, includ­ing 1963 home record­ings and a 1958 rehearsal. For now enjoy this glimpse into the mind of an artist about to find his place in the world, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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

Watch The Vel­vet Under­ground Per­form in Rare Col­or Footage: Scenes from a Viet­nam War Protest Con­cert (1969)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

How Drum­mer Moe Tuck­er Defined the Sound of the Vel­vet Under­ground

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Nir­vana’s cul­tur­al stay­ing pow­er is a tes­ta­ment to the cross-gen­er­a­tional mag­ic that hap­pened when Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselić, and Dave Grohl played togeth­er for only a hand­ful of years in the 90s. Their influ­ence goes far deep­er than 90s nos­tal­gia for a grunge trend or the celebri­ty sta­tus of the late Cobain. Now almost 30 years after the front­man’s 1994 sui­cide, we see that influ­ence on a gen­er­a­tion born too late to see him live — one influ­enced more by hip hop than gui­tar rock and far less inter­est­ed in chal­leng­ing the cap­i­tal­ist sta­tus quo.

For artists like rap­per Post Mal­one, born July 4, 1995, Cobain is a major song­writ­ing influ­ence, even if Post Mal­one’s music sounds lit­tle like Nir­vana. “I loved Kurt so much,” says Mal­one, “and he’s been such an inspi­ra­tion to me, musi­cal­ly.” To prove his love, he’s tat­tooed Cobain on “two dif­fer­ent parts of his body,”  Shel­don Pearce writes at The New York­er, though Cobain might not have “rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed the love — the rapper’s stint shilling for Bud Light prob­a­bly wouldn’t fly, and Cobain once said white artists should leave rap to Black artists because ‘the white man ripped off the Black man long enough.’ ”

But that’s the thing about idols: once they’re gone, they no longer get a say in who wor­ships them and how. Last year, Post deliv­ered a Nir­vana trib­ute to ben­e­fit the UN’s COVID-19 Sol­i­dar­i­ty Response Fund for the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. He did so respect­ful­ly. Backed by Travis Bark­er on drums, Bri­an Lee on bass, and Nic Mack on gui­tar, he hon­ored Cobain by don­ning a flower print dress, and by ask­ing his daugh­ter, Fran­cis Bean Cobain, for per­mis­sion to do the 15-song set. “I could nev­er want to offend any­body,” he told Howard Stern, “by try­ing to show sup­port, so I just want­ed to make sure that every­thing was okay — and it was okay, and we raised mon­ey for a good cause, and we got to play some of the most f*cking epic songs ever.”

Court­ney Love expressed sup­port, writ­ing, “Goose­bumps… Go have a mar­gari­ta Post Mal­one. Noth­ing but love from here.” Grohl and Novoselić also gave Mal­one their full approval. The for­mer Nir­vana bassist wrote that he was “hold­ing emo­tions back the whole show.” In a lat­er inter­view, Grohl com­ment­ed, “Even the die-hard Nir­vana peo­ple that I know were like, ‘dude, he’s kind of killing it right now.’ ” And they were right. Above, see the one-off band play “Fran­cis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seat­tle,” “Come As You Are,” “About a Girl,” “Heart-Shaped Box,” and more clas­sic Nir­vana songs. The livestream raised $500,000 (includ­ing match­ing funds from Google) to help fight COVID-19 around the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Nir­vana Per­form as an Open­ing Band, Two Years Before Their Break­out Album Nev­er­mind (1989)

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Record­ing Secrets of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind Revealed by Pro­duc­er Butch Vig

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

Every­one knows the song, a warn­ing from a man or woman return­ing to the place that will destroy them. Yet they can­not turn back. The tragedy of “House of the Ris­ing Sun” lies in its inevitabil­i­ty. “The nar­ra­tor seems to have lost his free will,” writes Jim Beviglia, caught, per­haps, in the grip of an unbeat­able addic­tion. As soon as we hear those first few notes, we know the sto­ry will end in ruin. But what kind of ruin takes place there? Is the House of the Ris­ing Sun a broth­el or a gam­bling den, or both? Was it a real place in New Orleans? Maybe a pub in Eng­land? Or a place in the anony­mous songwriter’s imag­i­na­tion?

Eric Bur­don and the Ani­mals, who pop­u­lar­ized the song world­wide when they record­ed and released it in 1964, did­n’t know. Even Alan Lomax could­n’t suss out the song’s ori­gin, though he tried, and sus­pect­ed it may have orig­i­nat­ed with an Eng­lish farm work­er named Har­ry Cox who sang a song called “She Was a Rum One” with a sim­i­lar open­ing line.

Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan played “House of the Ris­ing Sun” in cof­fee­hous­es. Bur­don him­self picked the song up from the Eng­lish folk scene, and the Ani­mals first cov­ered the slow, sin­is­ter tune when they opened for Chuck Berry because they knew they “could­n’t out­rock” the gui­tar great.

“House of the Ris­ing Sun” has been record­ed by Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Dol­ly Par­ton, and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er artist con­cerned with Amer­i­can roots music. “It’s so deep in the heart of this cul­ture,” says New Orleans gui­tarist Reid Net­ter­ville, who finds that peo­ple from all over the world know the lyrics when he plays the song on street cor­ners. Since the Ani­mals’ record­ing, it has become “one of the sin­gle most per­formed songs in music his­to­ry,” notes Poly­phon­ic in the video at the top, “with ren­di­tions in every genre you can think of, from met­al to reg­gae to dis­co.”

Maybe audi­ences around the world con­nect with this tale of ruin and despair because its set­ting is so mys­te­ri­ous and yet so per­fect­ly placed. Bur­don him­self, who vis­its New Orleans often, gets invit­ed to all sorts of strange places in the city, he says, pur­port­ing to be the tit­u­lar “House”: “I’d go to wom­en’s pris­ons, coke deal­ers’ hous­es, insane asy­lums, mens’ pris­ons, pri­vate par­ties. They just want­ed to get me there.” The ambi­gu­i­ty between the real and the sym­bol­ic makes the song adapt­able to any num­ber of dif­fer­ent kinds of voic­es. “It’s been described as an abstract metaphor but also a ref­er­ence to real his­tor­i­cal places,” notes Poly­phon­ic, and it’s gone from the lament of a “ruined” female nar­ra­tor to a dis­solute male voice with only a change in pro­nouns.

While there may be a hand­ful of spu­ri­ous claimants to the title of real House of the Ris­ing Sun, the ori­gin of the song remains unknown. But its allure is not a mys­tery. The house is “a place of vice, a place of dark­ness and fore­bod­ing” — a place that we both can’t seem to resist and that we’d do best to stay clear of. We’ll always have curios­i­ty about the dark cor­ners of the world; the warn­ing of “House of the Ris­ing Sun” will always be per­ti­nent, and moth­ers, often trag­i­cal­ly to no avail, will always tell their chil­dren about it, wher­ev­er and what­ev­er that den of sin may be.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

Stream 35 Hours of Clas­sic Blues, Folk, & Blue­grass Record­ings from Smith­son­ian Folk­ways: 837 Tracks Fea­tur­ing Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie & More

Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Per­fect Per­for­mance in The Blues Broth­ers, the Film That Rein­vig­o­rat­ed Her Career (1980)

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