It should be clear by now that rock and roll pos­es no dan­ger to the sta­tus quo. Fair enough: It’s going on 70 years since Elvis and Chuck Berry freaked out par­ents of scream­ing teens, and 50 years since Iggy and the Stooges ripped up stages in Detroit and the denizens of CBGB made rock sub­ver­sive again. That’s a long time for an edge to dull, and dull it has. Per­haps nowhere is this more in evi­dence than rock films like CBGB, which “some­how man­ages to make punk rock bor­ing,” and Netflix’s The Dirt, a movie about Möt­ley Crüe that gives us as much insight into the band as a cou­ple spins of “Dr. Feel­go­od,” argues crit­ic Bri­an Tal­leri­co.

Yes, we can chalk up bad rock films to lazy film­mak­ing and stu­dio greed, but there’s also a gen­er­al sense that the cul­ture now under­stands rock only as a mat­ter of ges­tures and anec­dotes: the mak­ing of the music reduced to styl­is­tic quirks and kitschy arti­fice.

This is in con­trast, Radio­head pro­duc­er Nigel Godrich felt, to ear­li­er media like the live per­for­mances on The Old Grey Whis­tle Test. (It’s cer­tain­ly in con­trast to John Peel’s raw ses­sions and films like Urgh! A Music War.) In mak­ing his From the Base­ment series, Godrich said, “I’m a sad fan try­ing to bring the mag­ic back to music TV.”

Just as rock pho­tog­ra­phy was reduced from “total access all the time” to well-kept mar­ket­ing and PR (or so claimed the late, leg­endary Baron Wol­man), rock per­for­mance has become over­pro­duced spec­ta­cle in which it can be dif­fi­cult to tell pre-record­ed tracks from real play­ing. Add to this the loss of inti­ma­cy in live venues in the time of COVID, and we get even far­ther away from the music’s cre­ation. Godrich and pro­duc­er Dil­ly Gent con­ceived of From the Base­ment years before the pan­dem­ic, but it’s almost as if they antic­i­pat­ed a cul­tur­al cri­sis of our moment, the enforced sep­a­ra­tion from the mak­ing of live music.

Like the best Zoom con­certs, From the Base­ment, pro­duced between 2006 and 2009, eschews the trap­pings of host, audi­ence, and stu­dio light­ing for an imme­di­ate expe­ri­ence of live cre­ation. It’s a safe, ster­ile envi­ron­ment — miss­ing are mosh pits, fans swarm­ing the stage, and the sex, drugs, and vio­lence of old. But to pre­tend that rock is dan­ger­ous in the 21st cen­tu­ry is noth­ing more than pre­tense. There’s no need to turn the music into the edgy spec­ta­cle it isn’t any­more (and has­n’t been since “Creep” ruled the radio), Godrich and Gent’s con­cept sug­gests. In doing so, we miss what it is now.

Or as Thom Yorke — whose band got first dibs, play­ing “Video­tape” and “Down is the New Up” in the debut episode — remarked, the show “was excit­ing because it came from the desire to cut out the crap that lies between the music and the view­er. To get plugged straight into the mains. No pro­duc­er or direc­tor egos mess­ing it up.” See From the Base­ment per­for­mances from Radio­head, Son­ic Youth, the White Stripes, and PJ Har­vey above and many more archived at the From the Base­ment YouTube chan­nel here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Archive of 1,000 “Peel Ses­sions” Avail­able Online: Hear David Bowie, Bob Mar­ley, Elvis Costel­lo & Oth­ers Play in the Stu­dio of Leg­endary BBC DJ John Peel

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Per­forms Songs from His New Sound­track for the Hor­ror Film, Sus­piria

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

Gui­tarist, singer, and song­writer Gary Clark, Jr. was “sup­posed to save the blues,” writes Geoff Edgers at The Wash­ing­ton Post. That’s a lot of weight to hang on the shoul­ders of a musi­cian born in 1984. Clark grew up in Austin, Texas lis­ten­ing to Jimi Hen­drix, Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an, Green Day, and Nir­vana. He’s been onscreen in John Sayles’ Hon­ey­drip­per, played Eric Clapton’s Cross­roads Gui­tar Fes­ti­val, and played along­side his hero B.B. King.

His ring­ing tone recalls King, his sear­ing leads sound like Hen­drix, but he’s just as hap­py evok­ing Cur­tis May­field, Stax Records, and Quin­cy Jones. He’s described his ide­al sound as “Snoop Dogg meets John Lee Hook­er.” The blues, what­ev­er Clark’s crit­ics might think they are, have come a long way since white 60s revival­ists trav­eled south and dis­cov­ered coun­try blues­men like Clark’s fel­low Tex­an Mance Lip­scomb, a share­crop­per all his life, even after his first album made him famous in 1961 and he record­ed with a “who’s who of musi­cians.”

Lip­scomb, “despite his fame,” writes Texas Month­ly, “remained poor.” Clark has done quite well for him­self. His suc­cess pro­vid­ed the occa­sion for his furi­ous, reg­gae-tinged track “This Land,” which recounts a con­fronta­tion with a neigh­bor who refused to believe a Black man could own the 50-acre ranch Clark owns in rur­al Texas, out­side Austin. Clark’s got blues, but it’s a dif­fer­ent era, and the music is more mul­ti-faceted than it was six­ty, nine­ty, or 100 years ago, even if some oth­er cul­tur­al atti­tudes haven’t changed at all.

He clear­ly wants to evade tra­di­tion­al labels and avoid repeat­ing him­self. “If it were up to every­body else,” Clark once sneered, “I would do Hen­drix cov­ers all the time.” (See his “Voodoo Child” live.) He may not want to wear the man­tle of the “sav­ior of the blues.” But he “can bang out a coun­try blues on an 80-year-old res­onator gui­tar,” Edgers writes, as com­fort­ably as he drops sam­ples into the demos he arranges at his home stu­dio.

See Clark at the top in a spon­ta­neous 12-bar acoustic jam in Berlin, and just above, he breaks out the res­onator for “Nextdoor Neigh­bor Blues.” This song is not, in fact, about a racist neigh­bor but about a much more uni­ver­sal sub­ject, one Mance Lip­scomb — and all the blues­men whose songs he remem­bered and record­ed in his own sur­pris­ing­ly ver­sa­tile, vir­tu­oso style — sang about all the time: a love affair gone wrong. It’s a sto­ry as old as music and maybe one rea­son we don’t have to wor­ry that the blues are going any­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

The Future of Blues Is in Good Hands: Watch 12-Year-Old Toby Lee Trade Riffs with Chica­go Blues Gui­tarist Ron­nie Bak­er Brooks

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

How many gen­er­a­tions of gui­tarists have come and gone since B.B. King emerged on the Beale Street blues scene in the late 1940s?

60s blues-rock giants, 70s hard rock­ers, 80s met­al shred­ders… at least two gen­er­a­tions between B.B. and Slash, who is prob­a­bly him­self a gui­tar grand­fa­ther by now. Whether they know it or not, every rock and blues play­er descends from the Kings of the blues (B.B., Albert, Fred­die, and gui­tarists who bore the title but not the sur­name). Slash knows it well.

We have three gen­er­a­tions of gui­tar greats, and Sim­ply Red’s Mick Huck­nall, join­ing an 86-year-old King in the live per­for­mance above from 2011 at Roy­al Albert Hall with Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, the Rolling Stones’ Ron Wood, and Slash, who sits next to the great man and lends him his top hat for a few bars.

The Guns n Ros­es lead gui­tarist named B.B. his favorite blues­man when King died in 2015 and put “The Thrill is Gone” in an ulti­mate gui­tar mix he com­piled for Q mag­a­zine in 2004. At the live jam ses­sion above, he gets to play it with his hero, “the only hit I ever had,” says King by way of self-dep­re­cat­ing intro­duc­tion.

Slash keeps a low pro­file, fit­ting him­self into the mix of six gui­tars onstage (see the longer jam ses­sion fur­ther up). Anoth­er gui­tarist, John May­er, maybe three gen­er­a­tions of play­ers removed from King, got to spread out a bit more in his jam with B.B. at the Gui­tar Cen­ter King of the Blues event in 2006. “It’s like steal­ing some­thing from some­one right in front of them,” he says. It’s a good joke, and it’s the truth.

Musi­cians have been fol­low­ing in B.B. King’s wake for over 60 years now. The best learn the same hum­bling les­son U2’s Bono did after his 1988 duet with King on “When Love Comes to Town” — “We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less con­vinc­ing we were.” See more of King and May­er just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

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

How B.B. King & Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Dealt With Break­ing Strings Onstage Mid-Song: A Mas­ter­class in Han­dling Onstage Mishaps

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

Unless they’ve got fans among pen­guins, there’s no prac­ti­cal rea­son for a band to make the jour­ney to Antarc­ti­ca to play. So why did Metal­li­ca do exact­ly that in 2013? Because they could, and because it made them the first musi­cal act to play all sev­en con­ti­nents — a Guin­ness World Record — doing it all in the same cal­en­dar year, no less. They’re also the only rock band to trav­el to Antarc­ti­ca. (With the excep­tion of Nunatak, an indie rock band made up of British cli­mate sci­en­tists, who played a “sold-out” show to 17 peo­ple at the Rothera Research Sta­tion where they worked in 2007.)

If those aren’t rea­sons enough, the con­cert was a dream real­ized for the 120 fans in atten­dance, includ­ing research sta­tion sci­en­tists and Coca Cola con­test win­ners from all over Latin Amer­i­ca who were able to see Metal­li­ca in a trans­par­ent dome near the heli­port of Argentina’s Car­li­ni Base after a week-long cruise. “Due to the continent’s frag­ile envi­ron­ment,” notes Guin­ness, the band’s amps were placed in “iso­la­tion cab­i­nets” and the audi­ence heard every­thing through head­phones, sort of like a silent rave. Called “Freeze ‘Em All,” the show was live-streamed and is now ful­ly avail­able online (see it above).

“The ener­gy in the lit­tle dome was amaz­ing!” the band writes on their Face­book page. “Words can not describe how hap­py every­one was.” But how cold were they? More spon­sor­ship, in the form of out­er­wear from snow­board and ski giant Bur­ton, kept the band bun­dled up through­out. Metal­li­ca has uploaded the audio of “Freeze ‘Em All” in MP3 and var­i­ous high-end loss­less for­mats at LiveMetallica.com. It’s a very cool idea, but is the con­cert video an hour-long Coke Zero ad? I don’t know.… I am a lit­tle curi­ous about what might have hap­pened if their amps had been at full blast in the Antarc­tic wild….

Here’s the full setlist, with time­stamps, of the record-set­ting gig:

Creep­ing Death (1:25​)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (7:47​)
Sad But True (12:28​)
Wel­come Home (San­i­tar­i­um) (18:58​)
Mas­ter of Pup­pets (25:58​)
One (34:12​)
Black­ened (41:58​)
Noth­ing Else Mat­ters (50:01​)
Enter Sand­man (55:06​)
Seek & Destroy (1:02:20​)

You too, like many a com­ment­ing fan, may feel betrayed by the lack of “Trapped Under Ice” in the setlist. Maybe too on-the-nose, they thought, too cute. But sure­ly a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty that won’t come again. Fill in the gap your­self with the live take below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Metal­li­ca Is Putting Free Con­certs Online: 6 Now Stream­ing, with More to Come

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Metallica’s ”Enter Sand­man,” Then Med­i­tates

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

Do met­al singers take vocal lessons? Sure­ly not the greats of old! Did Bruce Dick­in­son, Rob Hal­ford, and Ozzy Osbourne take lessons? Or did they dive into the debauch­ery head­first, scream­ing?

Iron Maiden’s Dick­in­son has been rumored to have received opera train­ing. This is not true. Instead, he stole his vocal tech­nique from his “den­tist ex-girl­friend,” he says. “As an ex-pupil of the very pres­ti­gious Chel­tenham Ladies’ Col­lege, she’d had quite exten­sive singing lessons, and she kept a note­book.” It changed his life.

Ozzy’s gui­tarist Zakk Wylde tells a fun­ny sto­ry of the Black Sab­bath legend’s wife Sharon order­ing him up a coach… just once… a “man with a brief­case,” says the burly shred­der, sent to take care of “our Joe Mon­tana.” But Osbourne did end up work­ing with a vocal coach, Kath­leen Rig­gs, more reg­u­lar­ly in lat­er years.

Judas Priest’s Hal­ford? He doesn’t men­tion a coach, but he does talk a lot about care and train­ing. “My form of extreme singing,” he says, “it’s like a work­out, you know…. Your vocal cords are mus­cles — they get burned out, they get tired.” As for his pio­neer­ing screams of over 40 years ago, he mus­es, “I some­times think that’s a bit of a curse that I sang and record­ed those cer­tain songs so long ago, when I was a younger guy with a younger set of vocal cords.” He near­ly wrecked his voice, he says, with cocaine and Jack Daniels.

It’s not opera, but met­al singing is a seri­ous­ly ath­let­ic activ­i­ty and has only become more so as its vocals have grown more extreme, even if its fash­ion sense has not. As clas­si­cal­ly trained singer and actress Melis­sa Cross — the “Queen of Scream” — relates in the video at the top, she first became a met­al vocal coach when a pro­duc­er friend called her in dis­may: the singers he was record­ing couldn’t get through a ses­sion with­out cough­ing blood.

Where did the met­al scream come from, and why is it so preva­lent if it’s such an unhealthy way to move one’s vocal folds day after day with­out train­ing and tech­nique? Vikings, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You,”; Led Zep­pelin, Black Sab­bath, AC/DC, and Judas Priest, of course… babies…. These are all points of ori­gin for today’s extreme met­al singing, say hosts LA Buck­n­er and Nahre Sol in the PBS video fur­ther up.

The two talk to Cross about scream­ing with­out bleed­ing, and met­al vocal­ist Natal­ie Kreuger talks about how warmups and opera-like breath­ing tech­niques are essen­tial to main­tain­ing vocal fit­ness. And if you need more con­vinc­ing that met­al singing requires seri­ous pow­er and sta­mi­na, take a look at the 10 longest live screams in met­al, above. Let’s hope they all heed the exam­ple of the elder met­al gods.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Ori­gins of the Death Growl in Met­al Music

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

96-Year-Old Holo­caust Sur­vivor Fronts a Death Met­al Band

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