Nick Cave’s Online Store: Pencils Adorned with Lyrics, Mugs, Polaroids & More

in Creativity, Design, Music, Writing | October 19th, 2021

I’m sit­ting on the bal­cony
Read­ing Flan­nery O’Connor
With a pen­cil and a plan

- Nick Cave, Car­nage

Access to tech­nol­o­gy has trans­formed the cre­ative process, and many artists who’ve come to depend on it have long ceased to mar­vel at the labor and time saved, seething with resent­ment when devices and dig­i­tal access fails.

Musi­cian Nick Cave, founder and front­man of The Bad Seeds, is one who hasn’t aban­doned his ana­log ways, whether he’s in the act of gen­er­at­ing new songs, or seek­ing respite from the same.

“There has always been a strong, even obses­sive, visu­al com­po­nent to the (song­writ­ing) process,” he writes, “a com­pul­sive ren­der­ing of the lyric as a thing to be seen, to be touched, to be exam­ined:”

I have always done this—basically drawn my songs—for as long as I’ve been writ­ing them…when the pres­sure of song writ­ing gets too much, well, I draw a cute ani­mal or a naked woman or a reli­gious icon or a mytho­log­i­cal crea­ture or some­thing. Or I take a Polaroid or make some­thing out of clay. I do a col­lage, or write a child’s poem and date stamp and stick­er it, or do some granny-art with a set of water­colour paints. 

Last year, these extra cre­ative labors became fruits in their own right, with the open­ing of Cave Things, an online shop well stocked with quirky objects “con­ceived, sourced, shaped, and designed” by the musi­cian.

These include such long­time fas­ci­na­tions as prayer cards, pic­ture discs, and Polaroids, and a series of enam­eled charms and ceram­ic fig­ures that evoke Vic­to­ri­an Stafford­shire “flat­backs.”

T‑shirts, gui­tar picks and egg cups may come graced with doo­dles of fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor War­ren Ellis’ beard­ed mug, or the afore­men­tioned naked women, which Cage describes to Inter­view’s Ben Bar­na as “a com­pul­sive habit I have had since my school days”:

They have no artis­tic mer­it. Rather, they are evi­dence of a kind of rit­u­al­is­tic and habit­u­al think­ing, not dis­sim­i­lar to the act of writ­ing itself, actu­al­ly.

Of all of Cave’s Cave Things, the ones with the broad­est appeal may be the pen­cil sets per­son­al­ized with the­mat­ic snip­pets of his lyrics.

White god pen­cils quote from “Into My Arms,” “Idiot Prayer,” “Mer­maids,”  and “Hand of God.”

A red dev­il pen­cil bear­ing lines from “Bromp­ton Ora­to­ry” slips a bit of god into the mix, as well as a ref­er­ence to the sea, a fre­quent Cave motif.

Mad­ness and war pen­cils are coun­ter­bal­anced by pen­cils cel­e­brat­ing love and flow­ers.

The pen­cils are Vikings, a clas­sic Dan­ish brand well known to pen­cil nerds, hard and black on the graphite scale.

Put them all in a cup and draw one out at ran­dom, or let your mood or feel­ings about what said pen­cil will be writ­ing or draw­ing deter­mine your pick.

Mean­while Cave’s imple­ments of choice may sur­prise you. As he told NME’s Will Richards last Decem­ber:

My process of lyric writ­ing is as fol­lows: For months, I write down ideas in a note­book with a Bic medi­um ball­point pen in black. At some point, the songs begin to reveal them­selves, to take some kind of form, which is when I type the new lyrics into my lap­top. Here, I begin the long process of work­ing on the words, adding vers­es, tak­ing them away, and refin­ing the lan­guage, until the song arrives at its des­ti­na­tion. At this stage, I take one of the yel­low­ing back pages I have cut from old sec­ond-hand books, and, on my Olympia type­writer, type out the lyrics. I then glue it into my bespoke note­book, num­ber it, date-stamp it, and stick­er it. The song is then ‘offi­cial­ly’ com­plet­ed.

Hmm. No pen­cils, though there’s a ref­er­ence to a blind pen­cil sell­er in Cave’s con­tri­bu­tion to the sound­track of Wim Wen­ders’ sci­ence fic­tion epic Until the End of the World.

Two more lyrics about pen­cils and he’ll have enough to put a Pen­cil Pen­cils set up on Cave Things!

Fol­low Cave Things on Insta­gram to keep tabs on new pen­cil drops.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Ani­mat­ed Sto­ries Writ­ten by Tom Waits, Nick Cave & Oth­er Artists, Read by Dan­ny Devi­to, Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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John Lennon Finally Meets & Jams with His Hero, Chuck Berry (1972)

in Music | October 18th, 2021

“If you had tried to give rock and roll anoth­er name, you would call it Chuck Berry,” says John Lennon by way of intro­duc­tion to his hero in the clip above from The Mike Dou­glas Show. The two per­form Berry’s “Mem­phis, Ten­nessee” and “John­ny B. Goode” (with Lennon’s back­ing band, Elephant’s Mem­o­ry, and unwel­come dis­cor­dant back­ing vocals from Yoko). The moment was a major high­light of Lennon’s post-Bea­t­les’ career. The year was 1972, and Lennon and Yoko Ono had tak­en over Dou­glas’ show for the week, book­ing such guests as Ralph Nad­er, Jer­ry Rubin, and then Sur­geon Gen­er­al Dr. Jesse Ste­in­feld. Dou­glas called it “prob­a­bly the most mem­o­rable week I did in all my 20-some­thing years on air,” Gui­tar World notes. Lennon used it as the oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly meet, and jam out, with his idol.

Berry wasn’t just a major inspi­ra­tion for the young Lennon; “From his song­writ­ing and lyrics, to his gui­tar play­ing and stage antics, per­haps nobody else short of Elvis Pres­ley was as influ­en­tial on [all] the young Bea­t­les as Chuck Berry,” writes Bea­t­les schol­ar Aaron Krerow­icz, list­ing “at least 15” of Berry’s songs the band cov­ered (as either the Quar­ry­men or the Bea­t­les). Paul McCart­ney cred­its Berry for the Bea­t­les’ very exis­tence. They were fans, he wrote in trib­ute after Berry’s death, “from the first minute we heard the great gui­tar intro to ‘Sweet Lit­tle Six­teen.’” But it wasn’t only Berry’s play­ing that hooked them: “His sto­ries were more like poems than lyrics…. To us he was a magi­cian.”

McCart­ney first point­ed out the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Lennon’s “Come Togeth­er” (orig­i­nal­ly penned as a cam­paign song for Tim­o­thy Leary’s run against Ronald Rea­gan for the gov­er­nor­ship of Cal­i­for­nia) and Berry’s 1956 “You Can’t Catch Me,” he tells Bar­ry Miles in Many Years From Now. “John acknowl­edged it was rather close to it,” says Paul, “so I said, ‘Well, any­thing you can do to get away from that.’” Despite the result­ing “swampy” tem­po, Berry’s legal team still sued over the lyric “here comes old flat-top,” a direct lift from Berry’s song. In an out-of-court set­tle­ment, Lennon agreed to record even more of Berry’s tunes. “You Can’t Catch Me” appears on Lennon’s 1975 album of clas­sic cov­ers, Rock ‘n’ Roll.

This legal tus­sle aside, there was no beef between the two. The appear­ance on Dou­glas’ show proved to be a huge boost for Berry, who revi­tal­ized his career that year with the sug­ges­tive, con­tro­ver­sial “My Ding-a-Ling,” his biggest-sell­ing hit, and — in an iron­ic twist — orig­i­nal­ly a goofy nov­el­ty song com­posed and record­ed by Dave Bartholomew 20 years ear­li­er. When asked by Dou­glas, how­ev­er, what drew him to Berry’s music, Lennon echoes McCart­ney: “[Berry] was writ­ing good lyrics and intel­li­gent lyrics in the 1950s when peo­ple were singing ‘Oh baby, I love you so.’ It was peo­ple like him that influ­enced our gen­er­a­tion to try and make sense out of the songs rather than just sing ‘do wah did­dy.’”

Lennon was­n’t above cov­er­ing Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-a-Lula” a few years lat­er, and the Bea­t­les them­selves mixed intel­li­gent nar­ra­tive song­writ­ing with healthy dos­es of pop non­sense — pat­tern­ing them­selves after the man Lennon called “my hero, the cre­ator of Rock and Roll.” A few years after Lennon’s 1980 death, Berry returned the com­pli­ment, call­ing Lennon “the great­est influ­ence in rock music” before bring­ing Julian Lennon onstage and exclaim­ing, “ain’t he like his pa!”

The year was 1986 and the occa­sion was Berry’s 60th birth­day con­cert. After their per­for­mance of “John­ny B. Goode,” Berry leaned over to Julian and said, “Tell papa hel­lo. I’ll tell you what he says. I’ll see him.” It’s a bit­ter­sweet moment. Lit­tle, I guess, did Berry sus­pect that he would rock on for anoth­er 30 years, releas­ing his final, posthu­mous album in 2017 after his death at age 90.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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)

Hear the Orig­i­nal, Nev­er-Heard Demo of John Lennon’s “Imag­ine”

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

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A Sneak Peek of Peter Jackson’s New Beatles Documentary Get Back: Watch the New Trailer

in Music | October 15th, 2021

In much the same way David Lynch gave us way more Twin Peaks than we’d ever hoped for in 2017, Peter Jack­son and the Bea­t­les are giv­ing us noth­ing like the lit­tle seen and quick­ly shelved Let It Be doc­u­men­tary from 1970, but a full six hours of the final musi­cal works of the Bea­t­les. Pre­mier­ing on Dis­ney Plus (yes, I know, you got­ta pay mon­ey to the Mouse) over three days after Thanks­giv­ing, this six-hour series is the big one fans of the var­i­ous remas­ters, repack­ages, and remix­es have been wait­ing for.

The Get Back ses­sions have long been a sour note in a career that was most­ly joy­ous. Appear­ing over and over again in boot­leg form, the var­i­ous jam ses­sions, cov­er ver­sions, and rehearsals through the songs that would turn up on Abbey Road and Let It Be can be grim lis­ten­ing. (I know, I’ve lis­tened to a lot of it. The Bea­t­les prac­tic­ing is just as tedious as any oth­er band work­ing through songs.) The gen­er­al nar­ra­tive is that the acri­mo­ny among the band mem­bers, the wraith-like pres­ence of Yoko Ono, and Paul’s relent­less­ly upbeat bad­ger­ing of every­body else caused the world’s most famous band to break up. Aban­don­ing the project, they per­formed some of the songs on a Sav­ille Row rooftop, and the rest was left up to the lawyers (and Phil Spec­tor) to sort out.

Jackson’s Get Back, made with the bless­ings of the sur­viv­ing Bea­t­les, intends to upend that nar­ra­tive.

“The thing is, when the film was released, The Bea­t­les were break­ing up, but they weren’t break­ing up when they were mak­ing Let It Be, which was record­ed a year ear­li­er,” Jack­son told GQ Mag­a­zine. “So I sup­pose it would have been odd to release a film where they are all enjoy­ing each other’s com­pa­ny.”

The acri­mo­ny only set in lat­er, when Allen Klein became their man­ag­er, he added.

This is Bea­t­les as a fam­i­ly, and fam­i­lies argue, joke about, and get down to fam­i­ly busi­ness.

Hon­ing the tech­niques Jack­son used to bring to life old World War I footage in They Shall Not Grow Old, the film takes the 57 hours of footage shot by Michael Lind­say-Hogg and makes it look like it was shot yes­ter­day. The col­ors you see in the trail­er, how­ev­er, have not been altered. “I mean, it does make you jeal­ous of the 1960s, because the cloth­ing is so fan­tas­tic,” Jack­son said.

The album Let It Be always had the shad­ow of a bad breakup over it, but for new­er gen­er­a­tions, that may no longer be the case after this doc­u­men­tary drops next month.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

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.

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What Makes a “Cult” Band? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #107

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | October 14th, 2021

What makes for a “cult band”? Not just a small audi­ence, because Grate­ful Dead fans are an arche­typ­i­cal cult. Not just a devot­ed, emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed audi­ence; no vol­ume of Swifties make Tay­lor Swift qual­i­fy as a cult act. Does the music have to be some­how inac­ces­si­ble, or the fans snob­by?

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er and three oth­er musi­cians try to fig­ure it out:

A few of the names that come up for con­sid­er­a­tion are Tom Waits, The Cure, XTC, Big Star, Bri­an Wil­son, Lou Reed, Guid­ed by Voic­es, David Bowie, R.E.M., The Res­i­dents, Os Mutantes, Tony Owens, Phil Judd, Mike “Sport” Mur­phy, and many more.

We talk about how the Inter­net has affect­ed fan­dom and the music busi­ness, the pow­er of musi­cians laud­ing each oth­er, and how music fan­dom relates to oth­er fan­dom.

Lis­ten to Tim on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music and The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Read his blog 5‑s­tar-songs. Read his arti­cle “Hope­less­ly Devote: Cult Bands.” Fol­low him @tbquirk.

Lis­ten to Aaron talk­ing about his songs on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music, on Pret­ty Much Pop last year (talk­ing about Borat), and as part of a Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life audio­play (also fea­tur­ing PMP favorite Eri­ca Spyres and cult actress Lucy Law­less). Lis­ten to the song he men­tions that result­ed from a Tik-Tok col­lab­o­ra­tion with cult artist Emma Free­man. Fol­low him on Face­book.

Read Chris’ post-mortem on cult artist Foun­tains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger.

A cou­ple of arti­cles that fed into this includ­ed:

Just to explain one of Mark’s com­ments, there real­ly was a play­set for “the hatch” for the TV show Lost.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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Dave Grohl Falls Offstage & Breaks His Leg, Then Continues the Show as The Foo Fighters Play Queen’s “Under Pressure” (2015)

in Music | October 13th, 2021

How do you make the show go on after a bro­ken leg?

The bless­ing we give per­form­ers before they go onstage isn’t some­thing we actu­al­ly want to see hap­pen. Nonethe­less, stage injuries occur fre­quent­ly, and in some cas­es, severe­ly, as when Pat­ti Smith fell 15 feet into a con­crete orches­tra pit in 1977 and broke sev­er­al ver­te­brae in her back. “I felt like an ass­hole,” she told Cir­cus mag­a­zine, “but my doc­tor told me not to wor­ry, it hap­pens to every­body.”

Maybe not every­body, but when the Foo Fight­ers played Gothen­burg, Swe­den in 2015, Dave Grohl took a major spill from the front of the stage, break­ing his leg, while a crowd of 52,000 peo­ple watched. They also watched as, sev­er­al min­utes lat­er, his crew car­ried him back onstage while the rest of the band fit­ting­ly played Queen’s “Under Pres­sure.”

The fall hap­pened dur­ing the sec­ond song of the show, and Grohl returned to play the entire 26-song set, his doc­tor kneel­ing next to him, hold­ing his leg togeth­er.

It didn’t hurt until I wound up on my couch in my hotel room, with a beer in my hand. They gave me some real­ly strong painkillers—I nev­er take pills, but with­in half an hour I was like, “Get me the f—ing Oxys right now, man!” It was pret­ty painful. And then I thought I could just get up and do a show a week lat­er after surgery, but I lit­er­al­ly could not get out of bed for about six or sev­en days. It was so f—ing painful. I had nev­er expe­ri­enced any­thing like that in my life. 

With his leg in a cast, he deter­mined that the band would make their Fourth of July show in Wash­ing­ton, DC, a return to Grohl’s home­town. “I start­ed think­ing… ‘I might not be able to get onstage next week,’” he told Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, “‘but I’m not miss­ing that Fourth of July show, and if that goes OK then we’re just going to keep going.’” The gig went so well the band kept tour­ing, Grohl perched in a spe­cial­ly-designed stage throne.

“I love my job,” Grohl said, “I mean, f–, I’m out there with a bro­ken leg and a plate and pins in a bone and I can’t even stand up, but I still want to get on stage and play, with my fam­i­ly. We’re not break­ing up any­time soon, that would be like your grand­par­ents get­ting a divorce.” There’s no shame in tak­ing it easy after an injury, but if you’re a ded­i­cat­ed per­former who lives onstage, you might heal even faster if you don’t. At the time, Grohl epit­o­mized anoth­er old cliche — if you love what you do, you won’t have to work a day in your life, even when you have to work with a bro­ken leg. Watch the fall just above and the tri­umphant return min­utes lat­er at the top of the post. Below you can see the reunion with the doc­tor who held his leg togeth­er.

Grohl’s fall, and oth­er moments, get revis­it­ed in his new mem­oir, The Sto­ry­teller: Tales of Life and Music.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 1,000 Musi­cians Play the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Foo Fight­ers Per­form “Back in Black” with AC/DC’s Bri­an John­son: When Live Music Returns

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

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

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Watch Jaco Pastorius: The Lost Tapes Documentary, the Fan-Made Film on the Most Innovative Bass Player of All Time

in Jazz, Music | October 12th, 2021

Peo­ple do not under­stand how hard a jazz musi­cian works for a liv­ing. I’m not putting nobody down, but I’m telling you nobody under­stands how hard jazz musi­cians work. Jazz is not big in the US, because the States are too wor­ried about Pac-Man and The Police. — Jaco

When Jaco Pas­to­rius uttered the quote above in a typ­i­cal­ly enter­tain­ing and insight­ful inter­view with Gui­tar World from 1983, he meant no dis­re­spect to the mem­bers of The Police. It’s safe to say, in fact, that Pas­to­rius sig­nif­i­cant­ly influ­enced crossover sub­gen­res in punk, New Wave, and No Wave, through com­po­si­tions like “Punk Jazz” — “a real jazz play­ers stab at a brave new music,” writes Gui­tar World’s Peter Mengazi­ol. In gen­er­al, Pas­to­rius’ music was “a fusion with ener­gy but with­out overkill.” He absorbed influ­ences from every­where, and noth­ing seemed out of bounds in his play­ing. “I am not an orig­i­nal musi­cian,” he says in the same inter­view:

I am a thief…. You see, I rip off every­thing. I have no orig­i­nals. Only ani­mals and chil­dren can under­stand my music; I love women, chil­dren, music, I love every­thing that’s going in the right direc­tion, every­thing that flows… I just love music. I don’t know what I’m doing! 

It’s not that Pas­to­rius nec­es­sar­i­ly thought of jazz as a more ele­vat­ed form than rock or funk or soul or pop — hard­ly. He regard­ed Hen­drix with the same wor­ship­ful awe as he did Motown bassist Jer­ry Jem­mott, and both equal­ly informed his play­ing and show­man­ship. Yet he seemed to feel under-appre­ci­at­ed in his time, and that is prob­a­bly because he was, even though he was acclaimed as one of the world’s great­est bass play­ers dur­ing his brief 35 years, and he rad­i­cal­ly altered the sound of pop­u­lar music on albums by Joni Mitchell and oth­er non-jazz-world stars.

But Pas­to­rius knew that few under­stood what he was try­ing to do with jazz-rock groups like Weath­er Report and Blood, Sweat & Tears and in his solo work. He knew he could sell records and sell out per­for­mances, but he did­n’t care about com­merce. (He spent the last few years of his life sleep­ing on park bench­es.)

Warn­er Bros. refused to release his third solo album, Hol­i­day for Pans — a selec­tion of orig­i­nal com­po­si­tions and tunes by the Bea­t­les, Coltrane, and Alan Hov­haness, cen­tered around the steel drum play­ing of Oth­el­lo Molin­eaux — on the basis that it was “extreme­ly eso­teric.” Described by The Pen­guin Guide to Jazz as “by far the most imag­i­na­tive project Pas­to­rius ever under­took,” Hol­i­day for Pans received a release in Japan in 1993, but remains unre­leased in the US, per­haps val­i­dat­ing the bassist’s opin­ion of his coun­try’s cul­tur­al lim­i­ta­tions.

The fan-made doc­u­men­tary at the top, Jaco Pas­to­rius — The Lost Tapes Doc­u­men­tary, first appeared “on a some­what obscure French chan­nel called ‘Real­cut’,” notes the site Jazz in Europe. The title refers the inter­view footage with choice sub­jects like Mar­cus Miller, Joe Zaw­in­ul, Peter Ersk­ine, Dave Car­pen­ter, and Paco Seri, all shot while the musi­cians “were on tour in France back in the mid noughties.” In 2008, “the images were defin­i­tive­ly lost,” the film­mak­ers write in their descrip­tion, only to sur­face again on a hard dri­ve in a dusty attic last year.

Tying these inter­views togeth­er with archival Inter­net footage of Pas­to­rius, the mak­ers of The Lost Tapes Doc­u­men­tary have done an excel­lent job of intro­duc­ing the man and his work to a broad audi­ence through the words of those who knew and played with him, and they’ve done so with “no bud­get, no finan­cial aid or no image pur­chase.… The peo­ple who worked on this project did it vol­un­tar­i­ly, out of pas­sion and love of music, and the film will in no way be mon­e­tized on the plat­forms.” Pas­to­rius would have approved. “I don’t want to sell shit,” he told Gui­tar World back in 1983. “I want to do what has to be done.” For him, that meant con­stant inno­va­tion and change. “I’m not a magi­cian, I’m not a politi­cian, I’m a musi­cian,” he said. “I have no goal. You don’t get bet­ter, you grow. I am a musi­cian, and I final­ly real­ized it!”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

How Jaco Pas­to­rius Invent­ed the Elec­tric Bass Solo & Changed Musi­cal His­to­ry (1976)

Bass Sounds: One Song High­lights the Many Dif­fer­ent Sounds Made by Dif­fer­ent Bass Gui­tars

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

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Ohio State Marching Band Plays Tribute to Rush: “2112,” “YYZ,” “Tom Sawyer” & “Limelight”

in Music | October 10th, 2021

It all took place at this week­end’s Ohio State-Mary­land game. 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

The Anti-Con­formist, Lib­er­tar­i­an Phi­los­o­phy That Shaped Rush’s Clas­sic Albums

Wit­ness Rush Drum­mer Neil Peart’s (RIP) Finest Moments On Stage and Screen

Notre Dame March­ing Band Per­forms “This Too Shall Pass”

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A Guitarist Rocks Out on Guitars Made from Shovels, Cigar Boxes, Oil Cans & Whisky Barrels

in Creativity, Design, Music | October 6th, 2021

When Kei­th Richards felt he’d gone as far as he could go with the six-string gui­tar, he took one string off and played five, a trick he learned from Ry Cood­er. These days, the trend is to go in the oppo­site direc­tion, up to sev­en or eight strings for high­ly tech­ni­cal pro­gres­sive met­al com­po­si­tions and down­tuned “djent.” Tra­di­tion­al­ists may balk at this. A five-string, after all, is a mod­i­fi­ca­tion eas­i­ly accom­plished with a pair of wire-cut­ters. But odd­ly shaped eight-string gui­tars seem like weird­ly roco­co extrav­a­gances next to your aver­age Stra­to­cast­er, Tele, or Les Paul.

Ideas we have about what a gui­tar should be, how­ev­er, come most­ly from the mar­ket­ing and pub­lic rela­tions machin­ery around big brand gui­tars and big name gui­tarists. The truth is, there is no Pla­ton­ic ide­al of the gui­tar, since no one is quite sure where the gui­tar came from.

It’s most eas­i­ly rec­og­nized ances­tors are the oud and the lute, which them­selves have ancient her­itages that stretch into pre­his­to­ry. The six-string arrived rather late on the scene. In the renais­sance, gui­tars had eight strings, tuned in four “cours­es,” or pairs, like the mod­ern 12-string, and baroque gui­tars had 10 strings in five cours­es.

Clos­er in time to us, “the jazz gui­tarist George Van Eps had a sev­en-string gui­tar built for him by Epi­phone Gui­tars in the late 1930s,” notes one brief his­to­ry, “and a sig­na­ture Gretsch sev­en-string in the late 60s and ear­ly 70s…. Sev­er­al oth­ers began using sev­en-string gui­tars after Van Eps.” Russ­ian folk gui­tars had sev­en strings before the arrival of six-string Span­ish clas­si­cal instru­ments (two hun­dred years before the arrival of Korn).

Mean­while, in the hills, hol­lars, and deltas of the U.S. south, folk and blues musi­cians built gui­tars out of what­ev­er was at hand, and fit as many, or as few, strings as need­ed. From these instru­ments came the pow­er­ful­ly sim­ple, time­less licks Keef spent his career emu­lat­ing. Gui­tarist Justin John­son has cul­ti­vat­ed an online pres­ence not only with his slick elec­tric slide play­ing, but also with his trib­utes to odd, old-time, home­made gui­tars. At the top, he plays a three-string shov­el gui­tar, doing Kei­th two bet­ter.

Fur­ther up, some “Porch Swing Slidin’” with a six-string cig­ar box-style gui­tar engraved with a por­trait of Robert John­son. Above, hear a stir­ring ren­di­tion of George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” on an oil can and a slide solo on a whiskey bar­rel gui­tar. Final­ly, John­son rocks out Ray Charles on a three string cig­ar box gui­tar, made most­ly out of ordi­nary items you might find around the shed.

You might not be able to pluck out Renais­sance airs or com­pli­cat­ed, sweep-picked arpeg­gios on some of these instru­ments, but where would even the most com­plex pro­gres­sive rock and met­al be with­out the raw pow­er of the blues dri­ving the evo­lu­tion of the gui­tar? Final­ly, below, see John­son play a hand­made one-string Did­dley Bow (and see the mak­ing of the instru­ment as well). Orig­i­nal­ly a West African instru­ment, it may have been the very first gui­tar.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Richards Demon­strates His Famous 5‑String Tech­nique (Used on Clas­sic Stones Songs Like “Start Me Up,” “Honky Tonk Women” & More)

Meet Brushy One String, the One String Gui­tar Play­er Who Will Blow Your Mind

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

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

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