The Rolling Stones Release a Long Lost Track Featuring Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page

in Music | July 23rd, 2020

The Rolling Stones are ready­ing a re-release of their 1973 album Goats Head Soup in Sep­tem­ber, fea­tur­ing demos and rar­i­ties and all sorts of good­ies. Yes­ter­day, they dropped the above song: “Scar­let.” Nev­er boot­legged before, this fire­crack­er of a track fea­tures Led Zeppelin’s Jim­my Page on gui­tar.

The record­ing hap­pened in Octo­ber 1974, long, long after the record­ing of the Goats Head Soup tracks in Jamaica at Dynam­ic Sound Stu­dios. In fact, they’d also fin­ished record­ing It’s Only Rock and Roll, Goats Head Soup’s fol­low-up. Mick Tay­lor was about to leave the band. But in this case, Led Zep and the Stones were two groups pass­ing in the night, or in this case the cor­ri­dors of London’s Island Stu­dios.

Jim­my Page was there record­ing solo with Richards, along with a group that includ­ed Ian Stew­art (a long­time unof­fi­cial mem­ber of the Stones) on piano, Traffic’s Ric Grech on bass, and Bruce Row­land on drums.

“My rec­ol­lec­tion is we walked in at the end of a Zep­pelin ses­sion,” says Richards. “They were just leav­ing, and we were booked in next and I believe that Jim­my decid­ed to stay. We weren’t actu­al­ly cut­ting it as a track, it was basi­cal­ly for a demo, a demon­stra­tion, you know, just to get the feel of it, but it came out well, with a line­up like that, you know, we bet­ter use it.”

The ini­tial sketch of the song came out of an ear­li­er jam ses­sion, accord­ing to Jag­ger:

“I remem­ber first jam­ming this with Jim­my and Kei­th in Ron­nie (Wood)’s base­ment stu­dio,” he said. “It was a great ses­sion.” The chop­py riff is very much Kei­th Richards all over. Jagger’s lyrics are rough too, and you can hear a shared melody with “Ang­ie,” their hit from that year.

Named after Page’s young daugh­ter, “Scar­let” coul­da woul­da shoul­da been a sin­gle or even an album track, but was shelved for what­ev­er rea­son.

In the Stones’ minds, Goats Head Soup was one of their best. But when it came out in August the music press con­sid­ered it as a pale fol­low-up to the sprawl­ing Exile on Main Street. The band were rid­ing high, but their fame sort of turned on this album, as the band start­ed to ref­er­ence them­selves and plunge into true 1970s rock star excess. Lester Bangs hat­ed the album, writ­ing in Creem, “just because the Stones have abdi­cat­ed their respon­si­bil­i­ties is no rea­son we have to sit still for this shit! Because there is just lit­er­al­ly noth­ing new hap­pen­ing.”

Allen Crow­ley, also in Creem, not­ed the gen­er­a­tional shift hap­pen­ing: “The Stones are still con­sum­mate enter­tain­ers, but some­where along the line we began to expect some­thing more than enter­tain­ment from them. In Beg­gars Ban­quet and Let It Bleed, the Stones began to tell us what was going on… And that’s what miss­ing in this very durable record. And beneath that knowl­edge is the won­der­ment at how that durable exper­tise car­ries on in the face of dis­in­te­gra­tion.”

Rolling Stone’s Bud Cop­pa was more enthu­si­as­tic, know­ing that a lot of Stones’ albums are sleep­ers: “Soup stands right next to Mott, the the­mat­i­cal­ly sim­i­lar LP of the Stones’ bright­est stu­dents, as the best album of 1973. For me, its deep­en­ing and unfold­ing over the com­ing months will no doubt rate as one of the year’s rich­est musi­cal expe­ri­ences.”

Over the years, the crit­i­cal recep­tion has come around on Goats Head Soup. Not a clas­sic, but not a disaster—it was a con­scious break with the muf­fled sounds of Exile, yet still filled with lyrics about crime, despair, and alien­ation. It’s not the hap­pi­est of albums.

And by the way, this would not be the last time Jim­my Page played with the Stones. He played the solo on their 1986 sin­gle “One Hit (to the Body).”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

The Rolling Stones Release a Time­ly Track, “Liv­ing in a Ghost Town”: Their First New Music in Eight Years

A Big 44-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Rolling Stones Albums: Stream 613 Tracks

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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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #53 Explores the Hamilton Phenomenon

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Theatre | July 23rd, 2020

Your hosts Eri­ca Spyres, Mark Lin­sen­may­er, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Broad­way actor Sam Simahk (Carousel, The King and I, My Fair Lady) to dis­cuss this unique con­ver­gence of musi­cal the­ater, rap, and his­tor­i­cal dra­ma. Does Hamil­ton deserve its acco­lades? We cov­er the re-emer­gence of stage music as pop music, live vs. filmed vs. film-adapt­ed musi­cals, cre­ators star­ring in their shows, race-inclu­sive cast­ing, and the pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the show.

Some arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion includ­ing Sam that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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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H.R. Giger’s Dark, Surrealist Album Covers: Debbie Harry, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Celtic Frost, Danzig & More

in Art, Music | July 22nd, 2020

The work of H.R. Giger is immense­ly pow­er­ful. Giger’s amaz­ing cov­er for Emer­son, Lake and Palmer’s album Brain Sal­ad Surgery por­trays a Goth­ic touch that could fit any heavy met­al band at any time.

—Jim­my Page

Swiss artist Hans Rue­di Giger is a genre unto his own, sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ing the bio­me­chan­i­cal hor­ror of the 1980s with his designs for Rid­ley Scott’s 1979 Alien, the film that launched him into inter­na­tion­al promi­nence and turned Deb­bie Har­ry on to his work. Meet­ing him the fol­low­ing year, the Blondie singer asked Giger to design the cov­er and music videos for her solo album, KooKoo.

The album was panned, but the cov­er end­ed up being as pre­scient as the film that pre­ced­ed it. It would “see its influ­ence in films like Hell­rais­er, the rise of what was called the ‘mod­ern prim­i­tive’ move­ment, and help cul­ti­vate the dark masochis­tic char­ac­ter Har­ry would play in David Cronenberg’s Video­drome,” writes Ted Mills in an ear­li­er Open Cul­ture post. “It was a feel­ing that would flour­ish in the deca­dent ‘80s.”

The record was also, in a way, “a throw­back to Giger’s oth­er famous record cov­er, the one for Emer­son, Lake, and Palmer’s Brain Sal­ad Surgery” from 1973 (above). Ten years before Alien, Giger designed his first album cov­er, for a “pro­to-met­al” band called The Shiv­ers.

Their 1969 Walpur­gis, fea­tures what look very much like Alien’s face­hug­gers. Giger had been hav­ing this night­mare for a long time. Years after these begin­nings, due in large part to Alien and its sequels and the Deb­bie Har­ry cov­er, Giger became high­ly sought after by met­al bands, from Celtic Frost to Danzig to Car­cass.

His work appears, how­ev­er, on far more album cov­ers than he would like. There have been “many small bands over the years,” he writes on his site, “pre­sum­ably fans of mine, who had appro­pri­at­ed my art­work for their album and CD cov­ers,” with­out get­ting per­mis­sion. Giger him­self has only cre­at­ed a few pieces specif­i­cal­ly as album cov­er art, the last in 1989 for Steve Stevens’ Atom­ic Play­boys. “Of the approx­i­mate­ly 20 records on which my art­work has been seen over the last 30 years,” he writes, only a small num­ber have been com­mis­sions. These include The Shiv­ers, ELP, Har­ry, and Stevens.

All the oth­er covers—those offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned, in any case—come from work Giger “made for myself, many years before, which the bands, lat­er, licensed for their own use after see­ing them in my books.” Though Giger him­self is more of a jazz fan, his appeal to heavy met­al is obvi­ous. “Giger’s style of adding a sur­re­al­ist twist to mechan­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal scenes,” writes All­mu­sic, “often with twist­ed sex­u­al undertones—was imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fi­able,” and imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied a band as some­thing seduc­tive­ly taboo and pos­si­bly dead­ly.

At least one use of his work got a band pros­e­cut­ed. “Bay Area punks the Dead Kennedys includ­ed a poster of Giger’s Land­scape #XX, also known as Penis Land­scape (the image depict­ed rows of erect phal­lus­es in coitus), in the pack­ag­ing of their 1985 album Frankenchrist,” writes Rolling Stone, “and were sub­se­quent­ly put on tri­al for obscen­i­ty.”

Those who would mis­use his work and vio­late his copy­right may also find them­selves in court. “It will,” he warns, “cost a lot more than if they had first con­tact­ed me, through my agent, to ask for per­mis­sion.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Deb­bie Har­ry Com­bined Artis­tic Forces with H.R. Giger

The Giger Bar: Dis­cov­er the 1980s Tokyo Bar Designed by H. R. Giger, the Same Artist Who Cre­at­ed the Night­mar­ish Mon­ster in Rid­ley Scott’s Alien

H.R. Giger’s Tarot Cards: The Swiss Artist, Famous for His Design Work on Alien, Takes a Jour­ney into the Occult

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

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The Moment When Bob Dylan Went Electric: Watch Him Play “Maggie’s Farm” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965

in History, Music | July 22nd, 2020

The phrase “when Dylan went elec­tric” once car­ried as much weight in pop cul­ture his­to­ry as “the fall of the Berlin Wall” car­ries in, well, his­to­ry. Both events have reced­ed into what feels like the dis­tant past, but in the ear­ly 1960s, they like­ly seemed equal­ly unlike­ly to many a seri­ous Bob Dylan fan in the folk scene. They also seemed equal­ly con­se­quen­tial. To under­stand the cul­ture of the decade, we must under­stand the import of Dylan’s appear­ance at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1965, backed by Mike Bloom­field and oth­er mem­bers of the Paul But­ter­field Blues Band.

The death of rock and roll in the 50s is often told through the lens of tragedy, but there was also anger, dis­gust, and mass dis­af­fec­tion. The Pay­ola scan­dal had an impact, as did Elvis join­ing the army and Lit­tle Richard’s return to reli­gion. Rock and roll was bro­ken, tamed, and turned into com­mer­cial fod­der. Sim­ply put, it wasn’t cool at all, man, and even the Bea­t­les couldn’t save it sin­gle­hand­ed­ly. Their arrival on U.S. shores is mythol­o­gized as music his­to­ry Normandy—and has been cred­it­ed with inspir­ing count­less num­bers of musicians—but with­out Dylan and the blues artists he imi­tat­ed, things would very much have gone oth­er­wise.

In the ear­ly 60s, Dylan and the Bea­t­les’ “respec­tive musi­cal con­stituen­cies were indeed per­ceived as inhab­it­ing two sep­a­rate sub­cul­tur­al worlds,” writes Jonathan Gould in Can’t Buy Me Love: The Bea­t­les, Britain, and Amer­i­ca. “Dylan’s core audi­ence was com­prised of young peo­ple emerg­ing from adolescence—college kids with artis­tic or intel­lec­tu­al lean­ings, a dawn­ing polit­i­cal and social ide­al­ism, and a mild­ly bohemi­an style…. The Bea­t­les’ core audi­ence, by con­trast, was com­prised of ver­i­ta­ble ‘teenyboppers’—kids in high school or grade school whose lives were total­ly wrapped up in the com­mer­cial­ized pop­u­lar cul­ture of tele­vi­sion, radio, pop records, fan mag­a­zines, and teen fash­ion. They were seen as idol­aters, not ide­al­ists.”

To evoke any­thing resem­bling the com­mer­cial pablum of Beat­le­ma­nia, and at New­port, no less, spoke of trea­son to folk authen­tic­i­ty. Some called out “Where’s Ringo?” Oth­ers called him “Judas.” Dylan’s set “would go down as one of the most divi­sive con­certs ever”—(and that’s say­ing a lot)—“putting the worlds of both folk and rock in tem­po­rary iden­ti­ty cri­sis,” Michael Mad­den writes at Con­se­quence of Sound. The for­mer folk hero accom­plished this in all of three songs, “Maggie’s Farm,” “Like a Rolling Stone,” and “Phan­tom Engi­neer,” an ear­ly take on “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” Pete Seeger famous­ly “threw a furi­ous tantrum” upon hear­ing the first few bars of “Maggie’s Farm,” above, though he’s since said he was upset at the sound qual­i­ty.

The moment was defining—and Dylan appar­ent­ly decid­ed to do it on a whim after hear­ing Alan Lomax insult the Paul But­ter­field Band, who were giv­ing a work­shop at the fes­ti­val. He came back onstage after­ward to play two acoustic songs for the appre­cia­tive audi­ence who remained, unfazed by the vehe­mence of half the crowd’s reac­tion to his ear­li­er set. Yet the rev­o­lu­tion to return rock to its folk and blues roots was already under­way. With­in six months of meet­ing Dylan in 1964, Gould writes, “John Lennon would be mak­ing records on which he open­ly imi­tat­ed Dylan’s nasal drone, brit­tle strum, and intro­spec­tive vocal per­sona.” (Dylan also intro­duced him to cannabis.)

In 1965, “the dis­tinc­tions between the folk and rock audi­ences would have near­ly evap­o­rat­ed.” The two met in the mid­dle. “The Bea­t­les’ audi­ence, in keep­ing with the way of the world, would be show­ing signs of grow­ing up,” while Dylan’s fans showed signs of “grow­ing down, as hun­dreds of thou­sands of folkies in their late teens and ear­ly twen­ties” redis­cov­ered “the ethos of their ado­les­cent years.” They also dis­cov­ered elec­tric blues. New­port shows Dylan accel­er­at­ing the tran­si­tion, and also sig­ni­fied the arrival of the great elec­tric blues-rock gui­tarists, in the form of the inim­itable Mike Bloom­field, an invad­ing force all his own, who inspired a gen­er­a­tion with his licks on “Like a Rolling Stone” and on the absolute clas­sic Paul But­ter­field Blues Band debut album, released in The Year Dylan Went Elec­tric.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tan­gled Up in Blue: Deci­pher­ing a Bob Dylan Mas­ter­piece

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

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

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Lin-Manuel Miranda Breaks Down How He Wrote Hamilton’s Big Hit, “My Shot”

in Current Affairs, Music, Theatre | July 22nd, 2020

The cur­rent moment has forced the orig­i­nal cast and crew of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s mas­sive hit musi­cal Hamil­ton to revis­it and reeval­u­ate the sto­ry it tells about America’s found­ing. As Miran­da him­self told The Root’s Ton­ja Renée Stid­hum, “All of these guys are com­plic­it in the bru­tal prac­tice of slav­ery, slav­ery is the third line of our show… that is just a pre­req­ui­site for the sto­ry we’re telling.” But he didn’t first set out to write his­to­ry. “Orig­i­nal­ly, this was a con­cept album. I want­ed to write a hip hop album, so I was nev­er pic­tur­ing the guys on the stat­ues that are being torn down right now. I was pic­tur­ing, ‘What are the voic­es that are best suit­ed to tell the sto­ry.’”

Debut­ing in more opti­mistic times, when the coun­try had its first Black pres­i­dent, Hamil­ton declared, says Leslie Odom, Jr. (who played Aaron Burr) that “if this his­to­ry belongs to all of us… then we’re going to take it and we’re going to say it and use our own words to tell it!” Con­tro­ver­sy and cri­tique aside, there’s no deny­ing Miranda’s tremen­dous gifts as a drama­tist and song­writer, on dis­play not only in Hamil­ton but in the Moana sound­track.

How does he do it? Rid­ing the wave of renewed Hamil­ton fan­dom after the Dis­ney release of the orig­i­nal cast film, Miran­da recent­ly sat down with Rot­ten Toma­toes to dis­cuss his process. When he gets to Hamil­ton, he gives us a detailed break­down of “My Shot,” which, he says, took him a year to write.

“It was not only writ­ing Hamil­ton’s ‘I want’ song,” says Miran­da, “although it cer­tain­ly is that. It was also prov­ing my the­sis that Hamilton’s intel­lect is what allows him to pro­pel through the nar­ra­tive of the sto­ry.” The play’s pro­tag­o­nist proves his intel­lec­tu­al wor­thi­ness by mas­ter­ing and mak­ing his own the styles of Miranda’s favorite rap­pers, from Big Pun to Jay Z to Big­gie to Mobb Deep. “I’m grab­bing from the influ­ences and pay­ing homage to those influ­ences. …I’m lit­er­al­ly call­ing on the ances­tors of this flow. …The ‘Whoah’ sec­tion, I’ll just say, is based on the AOL start­up sound because I want­ed it to feel like …his words are con­nect­ing with the world.”

Whether or not any of Hamil­ton’s younger view­ers have ever heard the AOL start­up sound, the detail reveals how Miranda’s mind works. His cre­ations emerge from a matrix of ref­er­ences and allu­sions, each one cho­sen for its spe­cif­ic rela­tion to the sto­ry. Many of these call­backs go over the audience’s heads, but they still have their intend­ed effect, cre­at­ing ten­sion in “the dens­est cou­plets that I could write,” Miran­da says. The mes­sage in “My Shot,” with­in the con­text of the musi­cal itself, is that “Hamil­ton is the future with­in this group of friends.” But the mes­sage of Hamil­ton has noth­ing to do with the 18th cen­tu­ry and every­thing to do with the 21st. Per­haps its most sub­ver­sive idea is that the high­est lead­er­ship in the U.S. might just as well look like Hamil­ton as Hamil­ton. See Miran­da and the Hamil­ton cast per­form “My Shot” at the White House just below.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lin-Manuel Miran­da Per­form the Ear­li­est Ver­sion of Hamil­ton at the White House, Six Years Before the Play Hit the Broad­way Stage (2009)

A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miran­da Reimag­ines Hamil­ton as a Girl on Drunk His­to­ry

The Mup­pets Sing the First Act of Hamil­ton

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

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A Beatboxing Buddhist Monk Creates Music for Meditation

in Music, Religion | July 21st, 2020

Most of us assume Japan­ese Bud­dhist monks to be silent types. In their per­son­al lives they may well be, but if they want to go viral, they’ve got to log onto the inter­net and make some noise. This is the les­son one draws from some of the Bud­dhist fig­ures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: Kos­san, he of the Bea­t­les and Ramones cov­ers, or Gyōsen Asaku­ra, the priest who per­forms psy­che­del­ic ser­vices sound­tracked with elec­tron­ic dance music. Depend­ing on your taste in music, their per­for­mances may or may not induce the men­tal qui­et one asso­ciates with Bud­dhist prac­tice, and the music of Yoget­su Akasa­ka, the lat­est Japan­ese Bud­dhist monk to attain inter­net fame, may at first sound equal­ly untra­di­tion­al. But lis­ten and you may well find your­self in a med­i­ta­tive state with­out even try­ing.

“The 37-year-old went viral in May, after post­ing his ‘Heart Sutra Live Loop­ing Remix,’ a video that’s relax­ing like ASMR, and engross­ing like a DJ set,” writes Vice’s Miran Miyano. “With the loop machine, he lay­ers sounds and chants all com­ing from one instru­ment — his voice.” A musi­cian since his teens and a beat­box­er since his ear­ly twen­ties, the Tokyo-based Akasa­ka became a monk five years ago, fol­low­ing the path tak­en by his father, an abbott at a tem­ple in rur­al Iwate Pre­fec­ture.

“Before he was ordained in 2015, he belonged to a the­atre com­pa­ny formed in Fukushi­ma pre­fec­ture, north­east Japan, after the region was dev­as­tat­ed by the 2011 Tohoku earth­quake and tsuna­mi,” writes Richard Lord in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post. “He has also been a full-time busker in coun­tries includ­ing the Unit­ed States and Aus­tralia.”

A busker Akasa­ka remains, in a sense, albeit one who, from the cor­ner of YouTube he’s made his own, can be heard across the globe. In addi­tion to record­ings like his hit ver­sion of the Heart Sutra, he’s also been live stream­ing per­for­mances for the past two months. Last­ing up to near­ly two hours, these streams pro­vide Akasa­ka an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vary his musi­cal as well as spir­i­tu­al themes, bring dif­fer­ent instru­ments into the mix, and respond to fans who send him mes­sages from all over the world, most­ly out­side his home­land. “I think in Japan, peo­ple often asso­ciate Bud­dhism with funer­als, and the sutra has a lit­tle bit of a neg­a­tive and sad image,” he says to Vice. Indeed, as the say­ing goes, the mod­ern Japan­ese is born Shin­to, mar­ries Chris­t­ian, and dies Bud­dhist. But as Akasa­ka shows us, his tra­di­tion has some­thing to offer all of us, no mat­ter our nation­al­i­ty, in life as well.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Ramones’ “Teenage Lobot­o­my,” “Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bea­t­les’ “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” & More

Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Judas Priest’s “Break­ing the Law,” Then Breaks Into Med­i­ta­tion

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Beat­box­ing Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions

What Beat­box­ing and Opera Singing Look Like Inside an MRI Machine

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Modern English Performs Their 1982 Hit, “I Melt With You,” in Quarantine

in Music | July 18th, 2020

Near­ly 40 years after they released their New Wave clas­sic, Mod­ern Eng­lish is back, per­form­ing togeth­er in iso­la­tion, to get us through the pan­dem­ic. Find more social­ly-dis­tanced per­for­mances by Roger Waters, the Rolling Stones and the Doo­bie Broth­ers below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Doo­bie Broth­ers Sing Their 1974 Clas­sic, “Black Water,” Live, in Iso­la­tion

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

Roger Waters Per­forms a Social­ly-Dis­tanced Ver­sion of Pink Floyd’s “Moth­er”

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Hear an Enchanted Medieval Cover of Dolly Parton’s Classic Ode to Jealousy, “Jolene”

in Music | July 16th, 2020

Dol­ly Parton’s “Jolene” is an end­less­ly renew­able resource of beau­ti­ful sad­ness, and many a mod­ern-day bard has a “Jolene” in their quiver. The White Stripes turned it into garage rock, Olivia New­ton John did it as dis­co, and Norah Jones as cabaret jazz. There is the oblig­a­tory house remix. Slow it down to 33rpm and Dolly’s gen­der begins to blur, while her voice los­es none of its plain­tive mys­tique. “Jolene” set a stan­dard for melan­choly few, if any, tunes can meet. So, you know, there’s a bard­core cov­er of “Jolene.”

Bard­core (also called “tav­ern­wave”), has “tak­en over pop music,” kind of, as you might have learned from Ayun Halliday’s post on bard­core artist Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’ here a few weeks back. The short version—bardcore artists make cov­ers of pop songs with medieval instru­men­ta­tion and vocal stylings. Lyrics are rewrit­ten with archaisms like “I want thine ugly, I want thy disease/Take aught from thee shall I if it can be free,” which are not lyrics to “Jolene,” let’s move on.

What does “Jolene” sound like as bard­core? In a word, spell­bind­ing. And I don’t mean to be cheeky—this is enchant­i­ng, not least because, medieval­ized, the song sounds at times like it could be com­ing from a tor­tured nun on the edge of leav­ing the clois­ter in the dead of night to run off with a woman named Jolene, whose attrib­ut­es she lov­ing­ly, poet­i­cal­ly lays out.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I beg of thee, pray take not my lord
Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene
I fear, from thee, ‘twould take naught but a word

Thy beau­ty is beyond com­pare
With flam­ing locks of auburn hair
With ivory skin and eyes of emer­ald green
Thy smile is like a breath of Spring
Thy voice is soft like Sum­mer rain
And I can­not com­pete with thee
Jolene

An ode to jeal­ousy hints at a poten­tial­ly spicy tale of for­bid­den romance and bro­ken vows, fur­ther trib­ute to Parton’s skill as a song­writer (and the sex­u­al ambi­gu­i­ty inher­ent in the song). Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’ is not jok­ing, nov­el­ty names aside. She has a love­ly voice and has invest­ed her medieval cov­ers with high pro­duc­tion val­ues and peri­od-cor­rect illu­mi­nat­ed music videos.

Every­one lis­tens to house music in Hol­ly­wood sci-fi futures, but maybe it’s bard­core they’ll play on the inter­stel­lar cruise ships. “’Tis a ver­i­ta­ble phe­nom­e­non on t’internet,” says bard­core cre­ator Cor­nelius Link (which means it could go the way of vapor­wave). For years, medieval memes have been hot online cur­ren­cy, for rea­sons we need not get too pop-soci­o­log­i­cal about. They’re fun and weird and alien and WTF and remind us that it could be worse, I guess. They appeal to Gen Z’s “exis­ten­tial humour.” They were Games of Thrones-y. They’re cool­er than Har­ry Pot­ter.

For most of medieval times, plague was on everyone’s mind. “The pan­dem­ic is thought to be sig­nif­i­cant,” says Link, “with a new Black Death hov­er­ing over us all.” But if we’re talk­ing about “Jolene,” we’re talk­ing about a song that “reg­is­ters with the basest of bit­ter­ness we’ve all felt,” hith­er and thith­er, shut up in con­vents or locked down in our hous­es. Explore more not-“Jolene” bard­core jams here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Medieval Cov­ers of “Creep,” “Pumped Up Kicks,” “Bad Romance” & More by Hilde­gard von Blin­gin’

Dol­ly Parton’s “Jolene” Slowed Down to 33RPM Sounds Great and Takes on New, Unex­pect­ed Mean­ings

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

Pink Floyd’s “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” Played with Medieval Instru­ments, and Kick­start More Medieval Cov­ers

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

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