Keith Moon, Drummer of The Who, Passes Out at 1973 Concert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

in Music | August 12th, 2024

In Novem­ber 1973, Scot Halpin, a 19-year-old kid, scalped tick­ets to The Who con­cert in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia. Lit­tle did he know that he’d wind up play­ing drums for the band that night — that his name would end up etched in the annals of rock ’n’ roll.

The Who came to Cal­i­for­nia with its album Quadrophe­nia top­ping the charts. But despite that, Kei­th Moon, the band’s drum­mer, had a case of the nerves. It was, after all, their first show on Amer­i­can soil in two years. When Moon vom­it­ed before the con­cert, he end­ed up tak­ing some tran­quil­iz­ers to calm down. The drugs worked all too well. Dur­ing the show, Moon’s drum­ming became slop­py and slow, writes his biog­ra­ph­er Tony Fletch­er. Then, halfway through “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” he slumped onto his drums. Moon was out cold. As the road­ies tried to bring him back to form, The Who played as a trio. The drum­mer returned, but only briefly and col­lapsed again, this time head­ing off to the hos­pi­tal to get his stom­ach pumped.

Scot Halpin watched the action from near the stage. Years lat­er, he told an NPR inter­view­er, “my friend got real excit­ed when he saw that [Moon was going to pass out again]. And he start­ed telling the secu­ri­ty guy, you know, this guy can help out. And all of a sud­den, out of nowhere comes Bill Gra­ham,” the great con­cert pro­mot­er. Gra­ham asked Halpin straight up, “Can you do it?,” and Halpin shot back “yes.”

When Pete Town­shend asked the crowd, “Can any­body play the drums?” Halpin mount­ed the stage, set­tled into Moon’s drum kit, and began play­ing the blues jam “Smoke­stack Light­ing” that soon segued into “Spoon­ful.”  It was a way of test­ing the kid out.  Then came a nine minute ver­sion of “Naked Eye.” By the time it was over, Halpin was phys­i­cal­ly spent.

The show end­ed with Roger Dal­trey, Pete Town­shend, John Entwistle and Scot Halpin tak­ing a bow cen­ter stage. And, to thank him for his efforts, The Who gave him a con­cert jack­et that was prompt­ly stolen.

As a sad foot­note to the sto­ry, Halpin died in 2008. The cause, a brain tumor. He was only 54 years old.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Kei­th Moon’s Final Per­for­mance with The Who (1978)

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Kei­th Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zep­pelin in What Would Be His Last Live Per­for­mance (1977)

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The World’s First Medieval Electronic Instrument: The EP-1320 Lets You Play the Sounds of Hurdy-Gurdies, Lutes, Gregorian Chants & More

in History, Music, Technology | August 8th, 2024

At this time of the year, the Swedish island of Got­land puts on Medeltidsveck­an, or “Medieval Week,” the coun­try’s largest his­tor­i­cal fes­ti­val. Accord­ing to its offi­cial About page, it offers its vis­i­tors the chance to “watch knights on horse­back, drink some­thing cold, take a craft­ing course, prac­tice archery, lis­ten to a con­cert or pic­nic along the beach, while wait­ing for some ruin show or per­for­mance in some moat!” If next year’s Medeltidsveck­an incor­po­rates elec­tron­ic-music ses­sions as well, it will sure­ly be thanks to inspi­ra­tion from the EP-1320 sam­pler, or instru­men­tal­is elec­tron­icum, just released by Swedish elec­tron­ics com­pa­ny Teenage Engi­neer­ing.

Billed as “the world’s first medieval elec­tron­ic instru­ment,” the EP-1320 is mod­eled on Teenage Engi­neer­ing’s suc­cess­ful EP-133 drum sampler/composer, but pre-loaded with a selec­tion of playable musi­cal instru­ments from the Mid­dle Ages, from frame drums, bat­tle toms, and coconut horse hooves to bag­pipes, bowed harps, and, yes, hur­dy-gur­dies.

Users can also evoke a com­plete medieval world — or at least a cer­tain idea of one, not untaint­ed by fan­ta­sy — with swords, live­stock, witch­es, “row­dy peas­ants,” and “actu­al drag­ons.” To get a sense of how it works, have a look at the video at the top of the post from B&H Pho­to Video Pro Audio, which offers a run­down of its many tech­ni­cal and aes­thet­ic fea­tures.

“Even the design of the sam­pler and music com­pos­er looks medieval, from the font style all over the board” — often used to label but­tons and oth­er con­trols in Latin, or Latin of a kind — “to the col­or, pre­sen­ta­tion, pack­ag­ing, and imagery,” writes Design­boom’s Matthew Bur­gos. “The elec­tron­ic instru­ment is portable too, and the design team includes a quilt­ed hard­cov­er case, t‑shirt, key­chain, and a vinyl record fea­tur­ing songs and sam­ples.” Clear­ly, the EP-1320 isn’t just a piece of nov­el­ty stu­dio gear, but a sym­bol of its own­er’s appre­ci­a­tion for the trans­po­si­tion of all things medieval into our mod­ern dig­i­tal world. It’s worth con­sid­er­ing as a Christ­mas gift for the elec­tron­ic-music cre­ator in your life; just imag­ine how they could use it to rein­ter­pret the clas­sic songs of the hol­i­day sea­son with not just lutes, trum­pets, and citoles at their com­mand, but “tor­ture-cham­ber reverb” as well.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Meet the Hur­dy Gur­dy, the Hand-Cranked Medieval Instru­ment with 80 Mov­ing Parts

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Per­formed in Clas­si­cal Latin

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

The Medieval Ban Against the “Devil’s Tri­tone”: Debunk­ing a Great Myth in Music The­o­ry

The Flute of Shame: Dis­cov­er the Instrument/Device Used to Pub­licly Humil­i­ate Bad Musi­cians Dur­ing the Medieval Peri­od

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Bowie Predicts the Good & Bad of the Internet in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Something Exhilarating and Terrifying”

in Music, Technology | July 31st, 2024

“We’re on the cusp of some­thing exhil­a­rat­ing and ter­ri­fy­ing.”

The year is 1999 and David Bowie, in shag­gy hair and groovy glass­es, has seen the future and it is the Inter­net.

In this short but fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with BBC’s stal­wart and with­er­ing inter­roga­tor cum inter­view­er Jere­my Pax­man, Bowie offers a fore­cast of the decades to come, and gets most of it right, if not all. Pax­man dole­ful­ly plays devil’s advo­cate, although I sus­pect he did real­ly see the Net as a “tool”– sim­ply a repack­ag­ing of an exist­ing medi­um.

“It’s an alien life form that just land­ed,” Bowie coun­ters.

Bowie, who had set up his own bowie.net as a pri­vate ISP the pre­vi­ous year, begins by say­ing that if he had start­ed his career in 1999, he would not have been a musi­cian, but a “fan col­lect­ing records.”

It sound­ed provoca­tive at the time, but Bowie makes a point here that has tak­en on more cre­dence in recent years–that the rev­o­lu­tion­ary sta­tus of rock in the ‘60s and ‘70s was tied to its rar­i­ty, that the inabil­i­ty to read­i­ly hear music gave it pow­er and cur­ren­cy. Rock is now “a career oppor­tu­ni­ty,” he says, and the Inter­net now has the allure that rock once did.

What Bowie might not have seen is how quick­ly that allure would wear off. The Inter­net no longer has a mys­tery to it. It’s clos­er to a pub­lic util­i­ty, odd­ly a point that Bowie makes lat­er when talk­ing about the inven­tion of the tele­phone.

Bowie also approved of the demys­ti­fi­ca­tion between the artist and audi­ence that the Inter­net was pro­vid­ing. In his final decade, how­ev­er, he would seek out anonymi­ty and pri­va­cy, drop­ping his final two albums sud­den­ly with­out fan­fare and refus­ing all inter­views. He also didn’t fore­see the kind of trolling that sends celebri­ties and artists off of social media.

Pax­man sees the frag­men­ta­tion of the Inter­net as a prob­lem; Bowie sees it as a plus.

“The poten­tial of what the Inter­net is going to do to soci­ety, both good and bad, is unimag­in­able.”

There’s a lot more to unpack in this seg­ment, and let your dif­fer­ing view­points be known in the com­ments. It’s what Bowie would have want­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

David Bowie on Why It’s Crazy to Make Art–and We Do It Any­way (1998)

Watch David Bowie Per­form “Star­man” on Top of the Pops: Vot­ed the Great­est Music Per­for­mance Ever on the BBC (1972)

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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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The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)

in History, Music, Television | July 29th, 2024

Howl­in’ Wolf may well have been the great­est blues singer of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Cer­tain­ly many peo­ple have said so, but there are oth­er mea­sure­ments than mere opin­ion, though it’s one I hap­pen to share. The man born Chester Arthur Bur­nett also had a pro­found his­tor­i­cal effect on pop­u­lar cul­ture, and on the way the Chica­go blues car­ried “the sound of Jim Crow,” as Eric Lott writes, into Amer­i­can cities in the north, and into Europe and the UK. Record­ing for both Chess and Sun Records in the 50s (Sam Phillips said of his voice, “It’s where the soul of man nev­er dies”), Burnett’s raw sound “was at once urgent­ly urban and coun­try plain… south­ern and rur­al in instru­men­ta­tion and howl­ing­ly elec­tric in form.”

He was also phe­nom­e­nal on stage. His hulk­ing six-foot-six frame and intense glow­er­ing stare belied some very smooth moves, but his finesse only enhanced his edgi­ness. He seemed at any moment like he might actu­al­ly turn into a wolf, let­ting the impulse give out in plain­tive, ragged howls and prowls around the stage. “I couldn’t do no yodelin’,” he said, “so I turned to howl­in’. And it’s done me just fine.” He played a very mean har­mon­i­ca and did acro­bat­ic gui­tar tricks before Hen­drix, picked up from his men­tor Char­lie Pat­ton. And he played with the best musi­cians, in large part because he was known to pay well and on time. If you want­ed to play elec­tric blues, Howl­in’ Wolf was a man to watch.

This rep­u­ta­tion was Wolf’s entrée to the stage of ABC vari­ety show Shindig! in 1965, open­ing for the Rolling Stones. He had just returned from his 1964 tour of Europe and the UK with the Amer­i­can Folk Blues Fes­ti­val, play­ing to large, appre­cia­tive crossover crowds. He’d also just released “Killing Floor,” a record Ted Gioia notes “reached out to young lis­ten­ers with­out los­ing the deep blues feel­ing that stood as the cor­ner­stone of Wolf’s sound.” The fol­low­ing year, the Rolling Stones insist­ed that Shindig!’s pro­duc­ers “also fea­ture either Mud­dy Waters or Howl­in’ Wolf” before they would go on the show. Wolf won out over his rival Waters, toned down the the­atrics of his act for a more prud­ish white audi­ence, and “for the first time in his sto­ried career, the cel­e­brat­ed blues­man per­formed on a nation­al tele­vi­sion broad­cast.”

Why is this sig­nif­i­cant? Over the decades, the Stones reg­u­lar­ly per­formed with their blues heroes. But this was new media ground. Bri­an Jones’ shy, starstruck intro­duc­tion to Wolf before his per­for­mance above con­veys what he saw as the impor­tance of the moment. Jones’ biog­ra­ph­er Paul Tryn­ka may over­state the case, but in some degree at least, Wolf’s appear­ance on Shindig! “built a bridge over a cul­tur­al abyss and con­nect­ed Amer­i­ca with its own black cul­ture.” The show con­sti­tut­ed “a life-chang­ing moment, both for the Amer­i­can teenagers clus­tered round the TV in their liv­ing rooms, and for a gen­er­a­tion of blues per­form­ers who had been stuck in a cul­tur­al ghet­to.” One of these teenagers described the event as “like Christ­mas morn­ing.”

Eric Lott points to the show’s for­ma­tive impor­tance to the Stones, who “sit scat­tered around the Shindig! set watch­ing Wolf in full-met­al idol­a­try” as he sings “How Many More Years,” a song Led Zep­pelin would lat­er turn into “How Many More Times.” (See the Stones do their Shindig! per­for­mance of jan­g­ly, sub­dued “The Last Time,” here.)  The per­for­mance rep­re­sents more, how­ev­er, than the “British Inva­sion embrace” of the blues. It shows Wolf’s main­stream break­out, and the Stones pay­ing trib­ute to a found­ing father of rock and roll, an act of humil­i­ty in a band not espe­cial­ly known or appre­ci­at­ed for that qual­i­ty.

“It was alto­geth­er appro­pri­ate,” says music writer Peter Gural­nick, “that they would be sit­ting at Wolf’s feet… that’s what it rep­re­sent­ed. His music was not sim­ply the foun­da­tion or the cor­ner­stone; it was the most vital thing you could ever imag­ine.” Gural­nick, notes John Bur­nett at NPR, calls it “one of the great­est cul­tur­al moments of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” At min­i­mum, Bur­nett writes, it’s “one of the most incon­gru­ous moments in Amer­i­can pop music”—up until the mid-six­ties, at least.

Whether or not the moment could live up to its leg­end, the peo­ple involved saw it as ground­break­ing. The ven­er­a­ble Son House sat in attendance—“the man who knew Robert John­son and Charley Pat­ton,” remarked Bri­an Jones in awe. And the Rolling Stone posi­tion­ing him­self in def­er­ence to “Chica­go blues,” Tryn­ka writes, “uncom­pro­mis­ing music aimed at a black audi­ence, was a rad­i­cal, epoch-chang­ing step, both for baby boomer Amer­i­cans and the musi­cians them­selves. Four­teen and fif­teen-year-old kids… hard­ly under­stood the growth of civ­il rights; but they could under­stand the impor­tance of a hand­some Eng­lish­man who described the moun­tain­ous, grav­el-voiced blues­man as a ‘hero’ and sat smil­ing at his feet.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

The Sto­ry of the Rolling Stones: A Selec­tion of Doc­u­men­taries on the Quin­tes­sen­tial Rock-and-Roll Band

Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe & Oth­er Amer­i­can Blues Leg­ends Per­form in the UK (1963–66)

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

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Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

in Music | July 28th, 2024

It’s easy to dis­miss The Mon­kees. Crit­ics and lis­ten­ers have been doing it since the six­ties, although the band has also come in for its share of reap­praisals, par­tic­u­lar­ly for their psych-rock album Head. (That’s the sound­track from the 1968 Jack Nichol­son-direct­ed art film of the same name: “One of the weird­est and best rock movies ever made.”) But what­ev­er you think of The Mon­kees’ music, you have to admit: they had one of the most extra­or­di­nary careers of any band in rock and roll.

They began in 1965 as a troupe of actors in a sit­com that Mon­kee Micky Dolenz described as being about “an imag­i­nary band… that want­ed to be The Bea­t­les,” but “was nev­er suc­cess­ful.” In a very short time, the four members—Dolenz, Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and Michael Nesmith—had mas­tered their instru­ments and learned to write their own orig­i­nal songs.

It seemed that almost overnight, they’d gone from lip-sync­ing boy band come­di­ans to gen­uine pop stars. (Dolenz describes it as “the equiv­a­lent of Leonard Nimoy real­ly becom­ing a Vul­can.”)

In the sum­mer of 1967, “at the height of Mon­kee­ma­nia,” The Mon­kees Almanac informs us, the band embarked on a 28-city tour through the Unit­ed States and Eng­land, open­ing at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl just five days after their TV show col­lect­ed two Prime­time Emmy Awards. The odd­est thing about the tour: for eight dates, Jimi Hen­drix opened for the band with his new­ly formed Expe­ri­ence, “one of the strangest pair­ings in rock and roll his­to­ry.” But at the time, writes Men­tal Floss, “the pair­ing actu­al­ly made a lit­tle bit of sense for both acts.” The Mon­kees want­ed cred­i­bil­i­ty, and Hen­drix need­ed a U.S. audi­ence.

He was already a huge star in Eng­land, but, despite blow­ing the crowd away at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val that spring, Hen­drix was most­ly an unknown quan­ti­ty to U.S. music buy­ers. But Dolenz had seen him play in New York and was suit­ably impressed. When he sug­gest­ed Hen­drix for the tour, the Expe­ri­ence’s man­ag­er Mike Jef­fery jumped at the chance, think­ing he could lever­age The Mon­kees’ huge crowds to break Hen­drix in the States. Hen­drix him­self expressed much less enthu­si­asm, hav­ing called The Mon­kees’ music “dish­wa­ter” in a Melody Mak­er inter­view.

So how did it go? Not well, as you might imagine—certainly not the “West Coast Suc­cess” the head­line at the top of the post trum­pets. Mon­kees fans—mostly young kids drag­ging along parental chaperons—had no idea what to make of Hen­drix. “Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break into ‘Pur­ple Haze,’ ” wrote Dolenz in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “and the kids in the audi­ence would instant­ly drown him out with, ‘We Want Davy!!’ God, it was embar­rass­ing.” Although Peter Tork espe­cial­ly among The Mon­kees’ mem­bers was over­joyed to have Hen­drix on the tour, he lat­er recalled the pair­ing as a sin­gu­lar­ly bad idea: “This is scream­ing, scar­ing-your-dad­dy music com­pared with The Mon­kees. It did­n’t cross any­body’s mind that it was­n’t gonna fly. And there’s poor Jimi, and the kids go, ‘We want The Mon­kees, we want The Mon­kees.’ ”

You can see Tork describe the ill-fat­ed match-up in a hilar­i­ous­ly dat­ed MTV clip above. Despite his reser­va­tions, Hen­drix got on very well with The Mon­kees. Not so much with their obnox­ious fans. “The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence played just eight of the 29 sched­uled tour dates,” writes Men­tal Floss, “and then on July 16, 1967, Jimi flipped the For­est Hills, Queens, New York, audi­ence off, threw down his gui­tar and walked away from Mon­kee­ma­nia.” (History.com gives the date as July 17.) No great loss for either band. A cou­ple of months lat­er, Melody Mak­er pre­sent­ed Hen­drix with a “World’s Top Musi­cian” award, and his music hit the U.S. main­stream as well. And The Mon­kees fin­ished the tour and went on to make Head, the film and album, which, depend­ing on whom you ask, either ruined their rock cred or defined it for­ev­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

How the 1968 Psy­che­del­ic Film Head Destroyed the Mon­kees & Became a Cult Clas­sic

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

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

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When the Grateful Dead Played at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)

in History, Music | July 23rd, 2024

In Sep­tem­ber of 1978, the Grate­ful Dead trav­eled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great Pyra­mid of Giza, with the Great Sphinx look­ing over their shoul­ders. It was­n’t the first time a rock band played in an ancient set­ting. Pink Floyd per­formed songs in the mid­dle of the Amphithe­atre of Pom­peii in Octo­ber 1971. But Floyd per­formed to an “emp­ty” house, play­ing to no live fans, only ghosts. (Watch footage here.) The Dead­’s shows, on the oth­er hand, were real gigs, attend­ed by Dead­heads who made the jour­ney over, and they could thank Phil Lesh for putting it all in motion. Lesh lat­er said, “it sort of became my project because I was one of the first peo­ple in the band who was on the trip of play­ing at places of pow­er. You know, pow­er that’s been pre­served from the ancient world. The pyra­mids are like the obvi­ous num­ber one choice because no mat­ter what any­one thinks they might be, there is def­i­nite­ly some kind of mojo about the pyra­mids.”

Logis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, the con­certs weren’t the eas­i­est to stage. Rolling Stone report­ed that an “equip­ment truck got stuck in sand and had to be towed by camels.” Because the elec­tric­i­ty in Egypt was an “a winkin’, blinkin’ affair,” Bob Weir lat­er recalled, the jet­lagged band had dif­fi­cul­ties record­ing the first of the three shows. But, as with most adven­tures, the incon­ve­niences were off­set by the won­drous nature of the expe­ri­ence.

Weir cap­tured it well when he said: “I got to a point where the head of the Sphinx was lined up with the top of the Great Pyra­mid, all lit up. All of a sud­den, I went to this time­less place. The sounds from the stage — they could have been from any time. It was as if I went into eter­ni­ty.” The Sphinx and Great Pyra­mid date back to rough­ly 2560 BC.

The Dead were joined on this trip by the coun­ter­cul­ture author Ken Kesey (not to men­tion Bill Gra­ham and Bill Wal­ton) who appar­ent­ly cap­tured footage on Super‑8 reels. (Watch it above.) Kesey him­self lat­er tried to explain the sym­bol­ism of the vis­it, say­ing: “The peo­ple who were there rec­og­nized this as a respect­ful and holy event that went back to some­thing we can all just bare­ly glimpse, them and us both. Our rela­tion­ship to ancient humans. To this place on the plan­et. To the plan­et’s place in the uni­verse. All that cos­mic stuff is what the Dead are based on. The Egyp­tians could under­stand that.”

At the very top of the post, you can see the Dead per­form­ing “Ollin Arageed,” with Egypt­ian oud­ist Hamza el-Din and oth­er local musi­cians, before segu­ing into “Fire on the Moun­tain.” The clip gives you a good feel for the awe-inspir­ing scene. Just above, we have a longer playlist of per­for­mances that took place on Sep­tem­ber 16, 1978 — the same night there was a lunar eclipse. The com­plete 9/16/78 show can be streamed on Archive.org, as can the shows from 9/14 and 9/15. A 2CD/1 DVD pack­age (Rock­ing the Cra­dle: Egypt 1978) cap­tures the Dead­’s vis­it and can be pur­chased online.

To get more on the Pyra­mid con­certs, read Chap­ter 43 of Den­nis McNal­ly’s book, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside His­to­ry of the Grate­ful Dead. And here you can see Dead & Co’s homage to the Egypt adven­ture at the Sphere in Vegas. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

Isaac New­ton The­o­rized That the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Revealed the Tim­ing of the Apoc­a­lypse: See His Burnt Man­u­script from the 1680s

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The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts

in Music, Psychology | July 19th, 2024

“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you peo­ple.” So begins one of the odd­est but also the punk­est of punk rock con­certs in his­to­ry, as The Cramps play for a crowd at a state men­tal hos­pi­tal in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia. The date was June 13, 1978, a time when Napa was more known for the hos­pi­tal than for its bur­geon­ing wine indus­try.

Lead vocal­ist Lux Inte­ri­or made this intro­duc­tion after the first num­ber, “Mys­tery Plane.” The band played on a patio, sev­er­al steps above the court­yard at the insti­tu­tion, while the band’s friends hung out with the 100 or so patients in atten­dance.

“And some­body told me you peo­ple are crazy, but I’m not so sure about that,” Lux con­tin­ues in the video. “You seem to be all right to me.” Indeed, most every­body seems to be hav­ing a hell of a time, some danc­ing as if they’re at a sock hop, oth­ers just com­plete­ly thrash­ing about.

This wasn’t the first band to have played at the insti­tu­tion, as the hospital’s Bart Swain, who invit­ed The Cramps to Napa, often brought in musi­cians to expand the patients’ hori­zons. But on that night a video cam­era was also brought along to record the set. (Swain wor­ried about pre­serv­ing the anonymi­ty of the res­i­dents.)

Anoth­er band on the bill, The Mutants, did­n’t get video­taped, pos­si­bly because the sun had gone down around this time. Either way, it is a very rare slice of punk his­to­ry, with few com­par­isons apart from the Sex Pis­tols play­ing Chelms­ford prison and when a lit­tle known thrash met­al band called Gob­stop­per played a Christ­mas par­ty at a home for devel­op­men­tal­ly dis­abled kids and adults.

Accord­ing to this arti­cle on the event, Napa State still stands but the chances of such a con­cert hap­pen­ing again are slim. The major­i­ty of its ten­ants are now both vio­lent offend­ers and men­tal­ly unsta­ble, too dan­ger­ous a venue for any­body to play, no mat­ter how punk.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

When the Sex Pis­tols Played at the Chelms­ford Top Secu­ri­ty Prison: Hear Vin­tage Tracks from the 1976 Gig

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

The Sex Pis­tols Do Dal­las: A Strange Con­cert from the Strangest Tour in His­to­ry (Jan­u­ary 10, 1978)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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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Eno: The New “Generative Documentary” on Brian Eno That’s Never the Same Movie Twice

in Art, Film, Music, Technology | July 15th, 2024

Bri­an Eno once wrote that “it’s pos­si­ble that our grand­chil­dren will look at us in won­der and say, ‘You mean you used to lis­ten to to exact­ly the same thing over and over again?’ ” That spec­u­la­tion comes from an essay on what he calls “gen­er­a­tive music,” which is auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro­duced by dig­i­tal sys­tems in accor­dance with human-set rules and pref­er­ences: “like live music, it is always dif­fer­ent. Like record­ed music, it is free of time-and-place lim­i­ta­tions.” These words were first pub­lished near­ly 30 years ago, in his book A Year with Swollen Appen­dices. Today, he has at least one grand­child, whose hand­writ­ing fig­ures in one of the music videos from his lat­est solo album. That par­tic­u­lar work may be non-gen­er­a­tive, but his inter­est in the con­cept of the gen­er­a­tive in art endures.

This year, Eno even stars in a gen­er­a­tive doc­u­men­tary about his life as an artist, music pro­duc­er, and “son­ic land­scap­er” direct­ed by Gary Hus­twit, best known for Hel­veti­ca and oth­er non-fic­tion films on design. The New York Times’ Rob Tan­nen­baum writes that Eno “is unlike any oth­er por­trait of a musi­cian. It’s not even a por­trait, because it isn’t fixed or sta­t­ic. Instead, Hus­twit used a pro­pri­etary soft­ware pro­gram that recon­fig­ures the length, struc­ture and con­tents of the movie.” This suit­ed both Eno’s pro­fes­sion­al phi­los­o­phy and his antipa­thy to the con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tary form. “Our lives are sto­ries we write and rewrite,” Tan­nen­baum quotes him as writ­ing in an e‑mail. ‘There is no sin­gle reli­able nar­ra­tive of a life.”

In fact, there are about 52 quin­til­lion dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tives, to go by the esti­mate of pos­si­ble per­mu­ta­tions of Eno Hus­twit has giv­en in inter­views. “We could make a 10-hour series about Bri­an, and we still wouldn’t be scratch­ing the sur­face of every­thing he’s done,” he told The Verge. “I just added a bunch of footage this past week that’s going into the Film Forum week two runs, which has nev­er been in the sys­tem before.” Not only do “we get to keep dig­ging into the footage and bring­ing new things into it, but we also get to keep chang­ing the soft­ware. And I don’t know, in a year from now, what the film will look like or what the stream­ing ver­sions of it will be.”

What Eno did­n’t have to clar­i­fy in 1996, but Hus­twit has to clar­i­fy in 2024, is that this kind of gen­er­a­tive film isn’t gen­er­at­ed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Empha­siz­ing that “the data set is all our mate­r­i­al,” includ­ing 30 hours of inter­views and 500 hours of con­ven­tion­al­ly shot film, Hus­twit frames his enter­prise’s cus­tom soft­ware, acronymi­cal­ly called Brain One, “as more like gar­den­ing.” That metaphor could have come straight from Eno him­self, who’s spo­ken about “chang­ing the idea of the com­pos­er from some­body who stood at the top of a process and dic­tat­ed pre­cise­ly how it was car­ried out, to some­body who stood at the bot­tom of a process who care­ful­ly plant­ed some rather well-select­ed seeds.” Even­tu­al­ly, “you stop think­ing of your­self as me, the con­troller, you the audi­ence, and you start think­ing of all of us as the audi­ence, all of us as peo­ple enjoy­ing the gar­den togeth­er.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Eno: A 1973 Mini-Doc Shows Bri­an Eno at the Begin­ning of His Solo Career

Watch Bri­an Eno’s “Video Paint­ings,” Where 1980s TV Tech­nol­o­gy Meets Visu­al Art

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Watch Anoth­er Green World, a Hyp­not­ic Por­trait of Bri­an Eno (2010)

Watch Bri­an Eno’s Exper­i­men­tal Film “The Ship,” Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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