Listen to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambient Music in Real Time

Wikipedia turned 20 years old this past Jan­u­ary. Do you remem­ber how you first heard of it? Or more to the point, do you remem­ber when you actu­al­ly start­ed click­ing on it when it came up in your search results? For me, Wikipedia first proved an essen­tial resource for learn­ing about music: on it I looked up my favorite bands, then found my way to entries about all the peo­ple, events, places, and things asso­ci­at­ed with them. (I then tru­ly felt what it meant to go down an inter­net “rab­bit hole.”) Hav­ing been intrigued by, for instance, the music of Bri­an Eno, I dis­cov­ered through Wikipedia the world of ambi­ent music, of which Eno’s work con­sti­tutes only one part.

Two decades on, Wikipedia itself has become ambi­ent music. Lis­ten to Wikipedia, writes co-cre­ator Mah­moud Hashe­mi, “is a real-time aural­iza­tion of Wikipedia grow­ing, one edit at a time. The site is lit­er­al­ly self-explana­to­ry.” Even so, at that linked blog post Hashe­mi and his fel­low devel­op­er Stephen LaPorte explain that “Bells are addi­tions, strings are sub­trac­tions.”

Small­er edits sound high­er ones, and larg­er edits low­er ones. “There’s some­thing reas­sur­ing about know­ing that every user makes a noise, every edit has a voice in the roar. (Green cir­cles are anony­mous edits and pur­ple cir­cles are bots. White cir­cles are brought to you by Reg­is­tered Users Like You.)”

It all sounds a bit like — and looks even more like — Eno’s “gen­er­a­tive music” apps. But Lis­ten to Wikipedia adds a con­sid­er­able ver­bal and intel­lec­tu­al dimen­sion, label­ing each edit that bub­bles up with the name of the rel­e­vant page. Kawaii met­al. Year of the Fifth Coali­tion. Tom Brady. Lee Coun­ty, Texas. Do You Like Hitch­cock? Justin Bieber discog­ra­phy. Geog­ra­phy of Gael­ic games. Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Bas­ket­ball at the 1988 Sum­mer Olympics – Men’s tour­na­ment. All these names arose and van­ished with­in about a min­ute’s view­ing, as did many oth­ers of more deeply tan­ta­liz­ing obscu­ri­ty. If you feel tempt­ed to look them all up on Wikipedia itself, count your­self among those of us who’ve known, for twen­ty years now, where the inter­net’s real poten­tial for addi­tion lies. Explore Lis­ten to Wikipedia here.

h/t @pbkauf

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Ori­gins of Ambi­ent Music

Behold the MusicMap: The Ulti­mate Inter­ac­tive Geneal­o­gy of Music Cre­at­ed Between 1870 and 2016

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

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

The Story Behind the Iconic Bass-Smashing Photo on the Clash’s London Calling

Pen­nie Smith was not a fan. Maybe that’s what made her the per­fect pho­tog­ra­ph­er for The Clash. “She was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly into rock music,” writes Rob Walk­er at The Guardian; she wasn’t starstruck or over­awed by her sub­jects; and she also was­n’t even par­tic­u­lar­ly in love with the most famous shot of her career — the icon­ic pho­to of bassist Paul Simonon rais­ing his Fend­er Pre­ci­sion at New York’s Pal­la­di­um, sec­onds before smash­ing it to bits. “I said, ‘it’s com­plete­ly out of focus,’” Smith remem­bers of the image when Joe Strum­mer insist­ed on using it for the cov­er of leg­endary dou­ble-LP Lon­don Call­ing. “But Joe wouldn’t have it. He said, ‘That one is the pho­to.’”

He was obvi­ous­ly cor­rect, though Smith still doesn’t sound con­vinced. “I’m pleased I took it,” she says, “but it’s a bit of a weight around my neck. It keeps com­ing back to whack me on the back of the head — nice­ly in some instances, but aggra­vat­ing­ly in oth­ers.” Hit­ting one in the head — front or back — is the aim of the best album cov­ers in punk, and “punk rock’s rage and dis­sent have always been easy to rep­re­sent visu­al­ly,” says Noah Lefevre in the Poly­phon­ic video above. Tak­ing the per­fect punk pho­to­graph, how­ev­er, depend­ed on a num­ber of vari­ables all com­ing togeth­er per­fect­ly for a once-in-a-life­time shot.

For one thing, Smith had to have made the gig. She near­ly accept­ed an offer to go out with friends instead. She also decid­ed to change it up that night and stand on Simonon’s side of the stage instead of next to gui­tarist Mick Jones. And then, as Lefevre explains, there was the show itself. “In Lon­don, the Clash would play rau­cous punk bars and dance­halls full of stand­ing room crowds. In the U.S.,” dur­ing their first tour in 1979, “they often found them­selves play­ing in the­aters with fixed seat­ing.” The Pal­la­di­um was such a venue. “Bounc­ers would hold crowds back, make sure they stayed sta­pled to their seats.”

The seden­tary crowd killed the vibe. By the end of the show, “Paul’s frus­tra­tion turned to anger,” notes Snap Gal­leries, “and then he lost it com­plete­ly. His watch stopped at 9:50pm.” Smith remem­bers see­ing him sud­den­ly spin toward her. “He was in a real­ly bad mood, and that wasn’t like him.” She was so star­tled, she got the pho­to­graph. “It wasn’t a choice to take the shot. My fin­ger just went off.” That chance moment gave the band an ide­al image for the Lon­don Call­ing cov­er.

It was illus­tra­tor Ray Lowry’s idea to crib the typog­ra­phy of Elvis’ first record, and the font “called back to the roots of punk rock,” born out of the ‘50s rock­a­bil­ly tra­di­tion of sim­ple songs and bare-bones instru­men­ta­tion and arrange­ments. “Punk and rock and roll held the same cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance,” Lefevre says, but The Clash announced them­selves on the album cov­er as puri­fiers of the tra­di­tion, strip­ping out the “pho­ny Beat­le­ma­nia” Strum­mer decried in the title track and replac­ing it with right­eous, if bare­ly-in-focus, rage. Hear the full gig just above, includ­ing the bass-smash­ing at the end at 1:08:10.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing (1977–1980)

“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash” Nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Pod­cast

The Clash Play Their Final Show (San Bernardi­no, 1983)

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

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

Brian Eno Explains the Origins of Ambient Music

When William Basin­s­ki released The Dis­in­te­gra­tion Loops in the years after the Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 attacks, it was the sound of decay pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty — record­ings of decades-old tape loops lit­er­al­ly falling apart on their reels, as the World Trade Cen­ter ruins smol­dered across the riv­er from the composer’s Brook­lyn stu­dio. The piece was per­formed ten years lat­er by an orches­tra at the Tem­ple of Den­dur, at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, for the tenth anniver­sary of the attacks. Anohni (then known as Antony of Antony and the John­sons) called it “the most help­ful and use­ful music I have ever known.”

This might mark the first time a piece of ambi­ent music has been award­ed such grav­i­tas and made the cen­ter­piece of a sig­nif­i­cant memo­r­i­al. It seems a long way from the ori­gins of the form in Bri­an Eno’s Dis­creet Music (1975) and Music for Air­ports (1978), in which Eno pushed music to the periph­ery of expe­ri­ence, turn­ing it into unob­tru­sive back­ground stim­u­lus that “cre­at­ed a sort of land­scape you could belong to,” he says above, like the end­less­ly repeat­ing worlds of a video game. In music, how­ev­er, “rep­e­ti­tion is a form of change,” Eno remind­ed us, or as Basinski’s loops sug­gest­ed, writes Sasha Frere-Jones at The New York­er, “rep­e­ti­tion is change.”

Anoth­er curi­ous trait links Basinski’s 21st cen­tu­ry lamen­ta­tions and Eno’s 70s air­port lounge music, one that seems to change the terms of the con­tract that ambi­ent music, as we usu­al­ly under­stand it, makes with the lis­ten­er. We might think of it as music that makes no par­tic­u­lar demands on us and take Eno’s state­ments about it as encour­ag­ing a kind of pas­sive con­sump­tion: ambi­ent music as no more than pleas­ant accom­pa­ni­ment for bet­ter queu­ing-up and calmer shop­ping. (Not that there’s any­thing wrong with stress relief….)

But what Basin­s­ki and Eno both describe in intense acts of ambi­ent cre­ation is more extreme. It begins with a kind of help­less­ness in the face of dis­tress — in the first case an of help­less­ly watch­ing low­er Man­hat­tan burn from the roof of a Williams­burg loft. Eno’s predica­ment was more per­son­al and inti­mate, he tells Riz Khan above, but no less help­less. Con­va­lesc­ing in his bed after a car acci­dent, he found him­self unable to move when a friend put on a record and left him alone. The expe­ri­ence of immo­bil­i­ty became a cat­a­lyst.

The album of “18th cen­tu­ry harp music” was too qui­et. He couldn’t turn it up over the sound of rain out­side his win­dow. At first, Eno says, he was frus­trat­ed by his lack of con­trol over the envi­ron­ment. But as he “start­ed lis­ten­ing to the rain and lis­ten­ing to these odd notes of the harp that were just loud enough to be heard above the rain,” it became for him “a great musi­cal expe­ri­ence…. I sud­den­ly thought of this idea of mak­ing music that didn’t impose itself on your space in the same way.”

In pay­ing atten­tion to a loss of con­trol, Eno dis­cov­ered music that relin­quish­es con­trol over the lis­ten­er. In lis­ten­ing to his own shock and grief, Basin­s­ki dis­cov­ered music that lets itself fall apart, slow­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly over time. What he “pompous­ly called” ambi­ent music, Eno jokes above, “became some­thing I no longer rec­og­nize.” And, yes, it may have come to take up more space than he intend­ed. But it still func­tions as a cre­ative response to cir­cum­stances in which, it seems, there may be lit­tle else to do but lis­ten care­ful­ly and wait.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Bri­an Eno Rein­vent Pachelbel’s Canon (1975)

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 Letters of Mozart’s Sister Maria Anna Get Transformed into Music

The tal­ent of an indi­vid­ual may not always run in the fam­i­ly, but we can nev­er dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty of its doing so. This is true even in the case of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart, not just one of the best-known com­posers ever to live, but a byword for deep, innate, and unre­peat­able genius. Mozart was com­pos­ing orig­i­nal music at the age of of four or five, an aston­ish­ing fact we know today in part because his old­er sis­ter wit­nessed and lat­er attest­ed to it. Known as Nan­nerl, Maria Anna Mozart pre­ced­ed her both­er into key­board lessons from their father Leopold, a com­pos­er and teacher. Togeth­er Wolf­gang and Maria Anna toured Europe as a per­form­ing duo of child prodi­gies, until Maria Anna’s attain­ment of mar­riage­able age took her off the cir­cuit.

If Maria Anna ever com­posed music of her own, none of it has sur­vived. But she did leave behind a fair few diaries and let­ters, many of the lat­ter exchanged with her broth­er. These writ­ings pro­vid­ed the mate­r­i­al for pianist Heloísa Fer­nan­des to cre­ate a piece in trib­ute to the less­er-known Mozart sib­ling.

“The writ­ing, all in Ger­man, under­went painstak­ing analy­sis so that its tone and pro­nun­ci­a­tion could be trans­lat­ed into musi­cal notes,” says Lit­tle Black Book. “A Ger­man inter­preter was invit­ed to read the let­ters and diary of Maria Anna Mozart out loud,” and a piece of soft­ware “trans­lat­ed the record­ing into musi­cal notes by tun­ing the syl­la­bles. If a spo­ken syl­la­ble hit 387 Hz, for exam­ple, the pro­gram inter­pret­ed it as G.” Thus were Nan­ner­l’s words trans­formed into music.

The result­ing piece, “Das Kön­i­gre­ich Rück­en,” is named after “an imag­i­nary king­dom that Maria and Wolf­gang made ref­er­ence to in their let­ters to each oth­er,” as Sara Spary notes in Adweek — a pub­li­ca­tion that would nat­u­ral­ly cov­er it, com­mis­sioned as it was by an ad cam­paign for LG Elec­tron­ics. Devel­oped by Brazil­ian firm AlmapBB­DO in coop­er­a­tion with the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Super­sôni­ca, “Pro­jec­to Ms. Mozart” is meant to pro­mote LG’s XBOOM Go Blue­tooth speak­er. But whichev­er device you use to hear “Das Kön­i­gre­ich Rück­en,” you’ll sure­ly find that it sounds quite unlike any piece you’ve heard before. Fans of Maria Anna Mozart as a his­tor­i­cal fig­ure will lis­ten and won­der what could have been, and even those igno­rant of her can’t but wel­come these three addi­tion­al min­utes of Mozart into the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Maria Anna Mozart Was a Musi­cal Prodi­gy Like Her Broth­er Wolf­gang, So Why Did She Get Erased from His­to­ry?

Mozart’s Diary Where He Com­posed His Final Mas­ter­pieces Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only Five Years Old

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

12-Year-Old Piano Prodi­gy Takes Four Notes Ran­dom­ly Picked from a Hat and Instant­ly Uses Them to Impro­vise a Sonata

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

Yo-Yo Ma Plays an Impromptu Performance in Vaccine Clinic After Receiving 2nd Dose

After get­ting his sec­ond dose of the COVID-19 vac­cine, Yo-Yo Ma “took a seat along the wall of the obser­va­tion area, masked and social­ly dis­tanced away from the oth­ers. He went on to pass 15 min­utes in obser­va­tion play­ing cel­lo for an applaud­ing audi­ence,” writes the Berk­shire Eagle. You can watch the scene above, which played out at Berk­shire Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege this week­end. And read more about it here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Yo-Yo Ma Per­forms the First Clas­si­cal Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Men­tal Health Break and Watch His Mov­ing “Tiny Desk” Con­cert

Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces 7‑Year-Old Yo-Yo Ma: Watch the Young­ster Per­form for John F. Kennedy (1962)

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

 

 

All Praise Lou Ottens: The Inventor of the Cassette Tape Dies at Age 94

The cas­sette tape is so ubiq­ui­tous, so much a part of my life since I can even remem­ber music as a thing, that it was a shock to find out that the man who invent­ed it, Lou Ottens, passed away at the age of 94. Of course, some­body did have to invent the cas­sette tape, but in all these years I nev­er thought to look the per­son up. Such an inven­tion first makes you think of the world before it: records (dear­ly beloved, still around), and reel-to-reel tape (not so dear­ly beloved). The for­mer was a fixed object, an art object, immutable (until turntab­lists came along). The lat­ter was a way to record our­selves, but so much more was involved in the act. Peo­ple had to wind the spin­dle, to thread the tape through the cap­stan and heads, and record usu­al­ly in mono. You can see an overview of a mod­el from the 1950s here.

Ottens was a Dutch engi­neer work­ing at Philips who became head of new prod­uct devel­op­ment in Has­selt, Bel­gium. His assign­ment was to shrink the reel-to-reel and, like the radio, make it more portable. And here is the most impor­tant deci­sion: Ottens want­ed the for­mat to be licensed to oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers for free, so every­body could par­take. Con­sid­er­ing the end­less for­mat bat­tles that we fight every day, this deci­sion was as mon­u­men­tal as it was human­ist.

He designed his pro­to­type out of wood and sized it to fit into a pock­et for true porta­bil­i­ty. (This pro­to­type, by the way, dis­ap­peared from his­to­ry after he used it to prop up a jack when fix­ing a flat tire.) The actu­al com­pact cas­sette, pro­mot­ed as a cheap­er and small­er for­mat for major label releas­es, imme­di­ate­ly gained a sec­ond life as an artis­tic tool: a way for reg­u­lar folk to record what­ev­er they want­ed. Kei­th Richards report­ed­ly record­ed the riff for “Sat­is­fac­tion” on the portable cas­sette play­er near his bed. Peo­ple record­ed lec­tures, the tele­vi­sion, the radio, their rel­a­tives, their friends, the ran­dom sound of life. Peo­ple start­ed to curate: their favorite music, their favorite peo­ple, their favorite sounds. Peo­ple pre­tend­ed to be DJs, pre­tend­ed to be artists, pre­tend­ed to be tele­vi­sion hosts, pre­tend­ed to be authors, pre­tend­ed to be crit­ics. And some through pre­tend­ing became the things they want­ed to be.

Peo­ple made mix­tapes for friends and for lovers. They looked at the remain­ing tape on the spin­dle and won­dered if the song they had to end side two would fit. Peo­ple real­ized that cas­sette tape could be a col­lage of sounds, cut up by the pause but­ton.

Ottens may not have real­ized it, but he had cre­at­ed a com­plete­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic for­mat. In the 1980s, the back pages of music mag­a­zines flour­ished with the cat­a­logs of cas­sette-only album releas­es. If you had a Walk­man and a friend with a halfway decent tape recorder, you could car­ry around your favorite music and lis­ten to it when­ev­er you want­ed.

The record indus­try rebelled (for a while). They want­ed you to know that “home tap­ing is killing music” but did so with a skull and bones graph­ic that made it that much cool­er. In the end it didn’t real­ly mat­ter. The music fans repur­chased every­thing on CD any­way. (Apart from the peo­ple who taped CDs and even then after that *those* peo­ple down­loaded the mp3s.)

And here’s the thing. Ottens wasn’t pre­cious about any of it. He was part of the devel­op­ment of the Com­pact Disc. The cas­sette was just anoth­er step­ping stone.

But despite the numer­ous arti­cles that cas­settes were a dead medi­um, they kept com­ing back. Mix­tapes, the lifeblood of hip hop cul­ture con­tin­ued to thrive, even if by the end of the cen­tu­ry the idea was more of a con­cept. And then in the mid­dle of the 2010s cas­settes came roar­ing back after the vinyl resur­gence. For bands it was a cheap way to pro­vide a phys­i­cal prod­uct, what with vinyl still being very expen­sive to pro­duce. Band­camp, the place to go for cas­sette-only releas­es, offers artis­tic tapes for the same price as a dig­i­tal down­load. So why not get both and start your library again?

Ottens nev­er fore­saw any of this hap­pen­ing, but it speaks to some­thing very human: we want con­trol of our music, and dig­i­tal music, espe­cial­ly in the cloud, ain’t cut­ting it. We want to hold some­thing in our hands and claim it as our own.

So pour one out for Lou Ottens, who start­ed a rev­o­lu­tion that hasn’t fin­ished. Do *not* press pause.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Home Tap­ing Is Killing Music: When the Music Indus­try Waged War on the Cas­sette Tape in the 1980s, and Punk Bands Fought Back

2,000+ Cas­settes from the Allen Gins­berg Audio Col­lec­tion Now Stream­ing Online

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

Stream a Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of Indie, Noise Indus­tri­al Mix­tapes from the 80s and 90s

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.

Intimate Live Performances of Radiohead, Sonic Youth, the White Stripes, PJ Harvey & More: No Host, No Audience, Just Pure Live Music

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 Gary Clark, Jr. Plays Searing Acoustic Blues in a Spontaneous Jam Session

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

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