Did the CIA Write the Scorpions’ “Wind of Change,” One of the Bestselling Songs of All Time?

By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it seemed the fate of the Sovi­et Union was all but sealed. It would be two more years before the USSR offi­cial­ly dis­solved, and flew the Sovi­et flag over the Krem­lin for the last time, but the age of Cold War bel­liger­ence offi­cial­ly end­ed with the 1980s, so it seemed. Soft pow­er and sua­sion would fin­ish the job. And what bet­ter way to announce this tran­si­tion than with the soft-rock stylings of a pow­er bal­lad like the Scor­pi­ons’ “Wind of Change”? The sen­ti­men­tal song from Ger­man met­al and hard rock favorites was sud­den­ly inescapable in 1990, and it was not at all sub­tle about its mes­sage.

The song became a mas­sive hit and remains one of the best-sell­ing sin­gles of all time. It served as “a sound­track of sorts to a polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion,” writes Richard Bien­stock at Rolling Stone. Odd­ly, “espe­cial­ly in light of the Scor­pi­ons’ back­ground… ‘Wind of Change’ was about nei­ther the Berlin Wall nor their Ger­man home­land.” Instead, the song was osten­si­bly inspired by a his­toric two-day fes­ti­val the band played in Moscow in 1989, a so-called “hard-rock Wood­stock” fea­tur­ing met­al roy­al­ty like Ozzy Osbourne, Möt­ley Crüe, Cin­derel­la, and Skid Row along­side hard rock Sovi­et bands like Gorky Park.

Three months after the con­cert, the Berlin Wall fell, and Scor­pi­ons’ lead singer Klaus Meine wrote the words:

The world is clos­ing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like broth­ers
The future’s in the air
I can feel it every­where
Blow­ing with the wind of change

The icon­ic whis­tled intro and lighters-in-the-air video cement­ed “Wind of Change” as a defin­i­tive state­ment on how the “chil­dren of tomor­row” will “share their dreams” in a glob­al­ized world. Tan­ta­liz­ing­ly vague, the lyrics read like Sur­re­al­ist ad copy, slid­ing back and forth between dog­ger­el and weird Sym­bol­ist incan­ta­tion:

The wind of change
Blows straight into the face of time
Like a stormwind that will ring the free­dom bell
For peace of mind
Let your bal­alai­ka sing
What my gui­tar wants to say

These lines, it may not shock you to learn, may have been writ­ten by the CIA. At least, “that’s the mys­tery dri­ving the new eight-part pod­cast series Wind of Change,” writes Nicholas Quah at Vul­ture. (Lis­ten on Apple, Spo­ti­fy, Google, and on the pod­cast web­site.) “Led by New York­er staff writer Patrick Rad­den Keefe and pro­duced by Pineap­ple Street’s Hen­ry Molof­sky… the jour­ney takes us to a shape-shift­ing Won­der­land, a world where an Amer­i­can agency like the CIA may very well have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­duc­tion of pop cul­ture as part of con­cert­ed efforts to build sen­ti­ment against its ene­mies abroad. It might even be some­thing that’s hap­pen­ing right now.”

Those who’ve read about how the Agency has influ­enced every­thing from Abstract Expres­sion­ism, to lit­er­ary mag­a­zines, cre­ative writ­ing, and Hol­ly­wood films might not find these alle­ga­tions par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing, but as with all the best exam­ples of the ser­i­al pod­cast form, it’s the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion that makes this sto­ry worth pur­su­ing. Keefe approach­es the sub­ject with a naiveté that might be delib­er­ate, play­ing up the idea of mass enter­tain­ment as “care­ful­ly devised and cal­i­brat­ed mes­sag­ing.”

The pod­cast is great fun (“it’s been described as This is Spinal Tap meets All the President’s Men,” writes Dead­line); its sto­ry, Keefe says in a state­ment, “stretch­es across musi­cal gen­res, and across bor­ders and peri­ods of his­to­ry.” Do we ever find out for sure whether the agency best known for over­throw­ing gov­ern­ments it doesn’t like wrote the Scor­pi­ons’ 1990 pow­er bal­lad “Wind of Change”? “Hear the music, and the accents and the voic­es,” says Keefe, “and judge for your­self who might be lying and who is telling the truth.”

If you ask Klaus Meine, it’s all a fan­ta­sy. (But, then, he would say that, would­n’t he?) “It’s weird,” the Scor­pi­ons singer com­ment­ed after learn­ing about Keefe’s pod­cast. “In my wildest dreams I can’t think about how that song would con­nect with the CIA.”  The idea, how­ev­er, would make “a good idea for a movie,” he says, “That would be cool.” A movie, maybe, fund­ed by the CIA.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

The CIA Assess­es the Pow­er of French Post-Mod­ern Philoso­phers: Read a New­ly Declas­si­fied CIA Report from 1985

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

How the CIA Helped Shape the Cre­ative Writ­ing Scene in Amer­i­ca

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

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

After four years of phe­nom­e­nal chart suc­cess, the band Blondie went on hia­tus in 1981. While Deb­bie Har­ry pur­sued the act­ing she had start­ed in punk rock film­mak­er Amos Poe’s works, she also went the solo album route. On paper, this album, KooKoo, must have looked like a sure­fire hit: Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards from the band Chic were brought in to write and pro­duce, hot on the heels of their suc­cess­ful resus­ci­ta­tion of Diana Ross’s career the year before. Har­ry and boyfriend/band member/guitarist Chris Stein wrote tracks as well, and ful­ly indulged in the Black music gen­res they had already been toy­ing with on Blondie’s Autoamer­i­can, like “Rap­ture” and “The Tide Is High.”

But here’s where it gets a bit weird, and every­thing goes off kil­ter. The choice for the album art and pro­mo­tion­al videos was H.R. Giger, the artist who had rat­tled movie­go­ers’ brains the pre­vi­ous year with his designs for Rid­ley Scott’s Alien.

The cou­ple had met Giger in 1980 at a recep­tion for his paint­ings at New York’s Hansen Gallery.
“There I was intro­duced to a very beau­ti­ful woman, Deb­bie Har­ry, the singer of the group Blondie, and her boyfriend, Chris Stein,” Giger said in an inter­view. “They were appar­ent­ly excit­ed about my work and asked me whether I would be pre­pared to design the cov­er of the new Deb­bie Har­ry album.”

Though he didn’t know the group–Giger pre­ferred to lis­ten to jazz–he agreed to the cov­er and to the pro­mo videos, even direct­ing when the orig­i­nal direc­tor didn’t show.

The album cov­er is prob­a­bly bet­ter known than the music inside, and no won­der: it fea­tures Harry’s face pierced hor­i­zon­tal­ly by four spikes. Her expres­sion is ambigu­ous, pos­si­bly ecsta­t­ic. It was in one way a throw­back to Giger’s oth­er famous record cov­er, the one for Emer­son, Lake, and Palmer’s Brain Sal­ad Surgery. But the cov­er also 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. It was a feel­ing that would flour­ish in the deca­dent ‘80s.

Har­ry wrote about this in Heavy Met­al mag­a­zine, which often fea­tured the artist, say­ing “Giger’s work has a sub­con­scious effect: it engen­ders the fear of being turned into met­al.”

The cov­er was a taster for more men­ac­ing things, how­ev­er. It’s the videos where Har­ry goes full Giger. First of all, the blonde hair is gone, replaced by black. And Giger puts Har­ry in a body­suit, half flayed-human, half machine. The music videos are sim­ple, per­for­mance based, though the sun­ny, allur­ing Har­ry has dis­ap­peared and a pro­to-Goth being has tak­en her place.

But that leaves us with the music, which one has to admit, is com­plete­ly unsuit­ed for this design. If Har­ry had made an album clos­er to Danielle Dax, for exam­ple, then we might have seen one of the odd­est mid-career shifts in ‘80s music. Instead the com­mer­cial flatlin­ing of the album threw Har­ry off-track, while Giger went on to be the go-to album artist for met­al and punk bands, from the Dead Kennedys to Blood­bath.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Learned to Deal With Super­fi­cial, Demean­ing Inter­view­ers

Watch Iggy Pop & Deb­bie Har­ry Sing a Swelli­gant Ver­sion of Cole Porter’s “Did You Evah,” All to Raise Mon­ey for AIDS Research (1990)

Hear Deb­bie Harry’s Stun­ning Ethe­re­al Vocal Tracks from “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rap­ture,” and “One Way or Anoth­er”

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.

John Prine’s Last Song Was Also His First to Go No. 1: Watch Him Perform “I Remember Everything”

It feels cos­mi­cal­ly iron­ic that Great Amer­i­can Song­writer John Prine died of COVID-19 in ear­ly April, just before the U.S. response to the virus was devel­op­ing into what may well be the Great­est Polit­i­cal Fol­ly most Amer­i­cans have ever wit­nessed in their life­times. Mass death for prof­it and pow­er, colos­sal stu­pid­i­ty and bul­ly­ing ignorance—these were just the kinds of things that got Prine’s wheels turn­ing. His thoughts became folk poet­ry with teeth.

Prine’s tar­gets includ­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive demo­niza­tion of sin­gle moth­ers in “Unwed Fathers,” who “can’t be both­ered,” he sang, “They run like water, through a moun­tain stream.” In 1971, he told bel­liger­ent Amer­i­can nation­al­ists “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heav­en Any­more,” in a song he’d actu­al­ly writ­ten in the late 60s, call­ing out America’s “dirty lit­tle war.” He revis­it­ed this ever­green anti-war theme in 2005’s “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” a song that angered many fans. While Prine’s explic­it­ly polit­i­cal songs are only a small part of his cat­a­logue, his lyri­cism always clear­ly reflect­ed his beliefs.

“Bestow­ing dig­ni­ty on the over­looked and mar­gin­al­ized was a com­mon theme through­out Prine’s career,” writes Annie Zales­ki in an NPR Music trib­ute. “He became known for detailed vignettes about ordi­nary peo­ple that illus­trat­ed truths about soci­ety.” His mas­tery of this form made him the ulti­mate songwriter’s song­writer. But while he won two Gram­mys and sev­er­al oth­er dis­tin­guished awards, “induc­tions into mul­ti­ple song­writer halls of fame,” notes Eli Enis at Con­se­quence of Sound, “and gush­ing praise from peers like Bob Dylan, Bruce Spring­steen, and Tom Pet­ty,” Prine nev­er had a No. 1 hit, until now—in a final irony he would have appreciated—with his posthu­mous release, “I Remem­ber Every­thing.”

The song came out on June 11 and this week “debuted at the top of the Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, mak­ing it the high­est-chart­ing sin­gle of the late legend’s entire career.” It show­cas­es Prine’s abil­i­ty to make the per­son­al reflect larg­er social real­i­ties he may nev­er have seen com­ing but some­how tuned into nonethe­less. In this case, the sub­ject is a man who knows he’s out of time and wants to savor every mem­o­ry before he goes. Writ­ten with long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Pat McLaugh­lin, the lyrics are gor­geous­ly bit­ter­sweet, touch­ing the depths of loss and reck­on­ing with mor­tal­i­ty.

Prine’s per­for­mance at the top was record­ed last year by Gram­my-win­ning pro­duc­er Dave Cobb. “Giv­en that Prine passed away back in April fol­low­ing a bat­tle with coro­n­avirus, the song’s life-span­ning, self-reflec­tive lyrics are aching­ly pre­scient,” writes Enis. And it’s “almost too on-the-nose that the track was pre­sent­ed in a home per­for­mance con­text, months before that set­up would become nor­mal­ized for a world in quar­an­tine.” Prine always had an “uncan­ny abil­i­ty to address (if not pre­dict) the soci­etal and polit­i­cal zeit­geist,” Zales­ki wrote in April. No mat­ter how ugly the zeit­geist was, he nev­er let it dull his wit or cloud his eye for beau­ty.

 

I Remem­ber Every­thing

I’ve been down this road before
I remem­ber every tree
Every sin­gle blade of grass
Holds a spe­cial place for me
And I remem­ber every town
And every hotel room
And every song I ever sang
On a gui­tar out of tune

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

I’ve been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Care­ful not to let my past
Go sneak­ing up on me
Got no future in my hap­pi­ness
Though regrets are very few
Some­times a lit­tle ten­der­ness
Was the best that I could do

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
Swim­ming pools of but­ter­flies
That slipped right through the net
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

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

How Ornette Coleman Shaped the Jazz World: An Introduction to His Irreverent Sound

Ornette Cole­man “arrived in New York in 1959,” writes Philip Clark, “with a white plas­tic sax­o­phone and a set of ideas about impro­vi­sa­tion that would shake jazz to its big apple core.” Every big name in jazz was doing some­thing sim­i­lar at the time, invent­ing new styles and lan­guages. Cole­man went fur­ther out there than any­one, infu­ri­at­ing and frus­trat­ing oth­er jazz pio­neers like Miles Davis.

He called his the­o­ry “Har­molod­ics,” a Buck­min­ster Fuller-like meld­ing of “har­mo­ny,” “move­ment,” and “melody” that he coined in the 1970s. The man­i­festo explain­ing his ideas reads like psy­che­del­ic Dada:

—I play pure emo­tion

—In music, the only thing that mat­ters is whether you feel it or not

—Blow what you feel – any­thing. Play the thought, the idea in your mind – Break away from the con­ven­tion and stag­na­tion – escape!

—My music doesn’t have any real time, no met­ric time. It has time, but not in the sense that you can time it. It’s more like breath­ing – a nat­ur­al, freer time. Peo­ple have for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful it is to be nat­ur­al. Even in love.

—Music has no face. What­ev­er gives oxy­gen its pow­er, music is cut from the same cloth.

—It was when I real­ized I could make mis­takes that I decid­ed I was real­ly on to some­thing.

—I have found that by elim­i­nat­ing chords or keys or melodies as being the present idea of what you’re try­ing to feel i think you can play more emo­tion into the music. in oth­er words, you can have the har­mo­ny, melody, into­na­tion all blend­ing into one to the point of your emo­tion­al thought.

—There is a music that has the qual­i­ty to pre­serve life.

Coleman’s 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come pre­saged not only what jazz would, and could, become but also out­sider rock, from Cap­tain Beef­heart to The Roy­al Trux, and exper­i­men­tal music of all kinds. Cole­man resent­ed the idea the music should be sub­ject to cat­e­go­riza­tion or for­mal con­straints, or even that musi­cians need­ed have for­mal train­ing at all. All music is sound, he says, and sound is “as free,” he joked with Clark in a 2015 inter­view, “as the gas that pass­es through your butt.”

This irrev­er­ent atti­tude is typ­i­cal of Coleman’s approach to his art. Some of the high­lights of his ear­ly career, as laid out in the Poly­phon­ic video above—recording an entire album with his 10-year-old son on drums; get­ting punched by the drum­mer after his first New York gig—make him sound like jazz’s first punk, before there was any such thing as punk. He would go on to sit for a famous inter­view with Jacques Der­rida and become one of a hand­ful of musi­cians to win a Pulitzer Prize. The enig­mat­ic genius’s “audac­i­ty, vision, and tal­ent” has made him one of the most myth­i­cal fig­ures in music, a rep­u­ta­tion that is more than well-deserved. Get a clos­er look at his lega­cy at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

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

 

When the Beatles Refused to Play Before Segregated Audiences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

When Amer­i­can rock and roll made its way to the UK in the 1950s and 60s, along with a bur­geon­ing folk and blues revival, many young British fans hadn’t been con­di­tioned to think of music in the same way as their U.S. coun­ter­parts. “Unlike racial­ly seg­re­gat­ed Amer­i­cans,” for exam­ple, “the Bea­t­les didn’t see—or hear—the dif­fer­ence between Elvis and Chuck Berry,” writes Joseph Tirella, “between the Ever­ly Broth­ers and the Mar­velettes.” They also couldn’t see play­ing to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences as just one of those social cus­toms one polite­ly observes when tour­ing abroad.

In 1964, at the height of Beat­le­ma­nia, the band was booked to play Florida’s Gator Bowl in Jack­sonville just after a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane and months after the intro­duc­tion of the Civ­il Rights Act into Con­gres­sion­al delib­er­a­tions. Major polit­i­cal shifts were hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and would have hap­pened with or with­out the Bea­t­les tak­ing a stand for inte­gra­tion.

But they took a stand nonethe­less and used their celebri­ty pow­er to show how mean­ing­less the sys­tem of Apartheid in the South actu­al­ly was. It could, in fact, be annulled by fiat should a group with as much lever­age as the Fab Four refuse to play along.

The rid­er for the Sep­tem­ber 11 con­cert “explic­it­ly cit­ed the band’s refusal to per­form in a seg­re­gat­ed facil­i­ty,” writes Ken­neth Wom­ack at Salon. When con­cert pro­mot­ers pushed back, John Lennon flat­ly stat­ed in a press con­fer­ence, “We nev­er play to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences, and we aren’t going to start now. I’d soon­er lose our appear­ance mon­ey.” Despite storm dam­age and evac­u­a­tions, the 32,000-seat sta­di­um had sold out. The Gator Bowl had to relent and deseg­re­gate for the evening’s show.

One of the concert’s atten­dees, his­to­ri­an Dr. Kit­ty Oliv­er, who appears in the clip at the top from Ron Howard’s Bea­t­les doc­u­men­tary Eight Days a Week, was a young Bea­t­les fan who hadn’t heard the news about the show deseg­re­gat­ing. Deter­mined to go, and sav­ing up enough mon­ey to score a seat near the front row, she remem­bers fear­ing the atmos­phere she would encounter:

At the time, I didn’t know any­thing about the group’s press con­fer­ence announce­ment refus­ing to per­form for an audi­ence where Black patrons would be forcibly seg­re­gat­ed from Whites, prob­a­bly rel­e­gat­ed to the worse seats far­thest away from the stage and maybe sub­ject­ed to a threat­en­ing atmos­phere if they showed up.

Instead, she writes, “the crowd rose, thun­der­ous, in uni­son, when the Bea­t­les took the stage. Then tun­nel vision set in: Eyes glued to the front, I sang along to ‘She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah…’ full voiced, just as loud­ly as every­one, all of us lost in the sound.” The band “left behind a lega­cy that night,” writes Wom­ack, hav­ing “stood up to insti­tu­tion­al racism and won.” It was not a cause-of-the-moment for them but a deep con­vic­tion all four mem­bers shared, as Paul McCart­ney explains above in an inter­view with reporter Lar­ry Kane, who fol­lowed the band on their first Amer­i­can tour.

McCart­ney had been so moved by the events in Lit­tle Rock in 1957 that almost a decade lat­er, he remem­bered them in his song “Black­bird,” as he explains above. This year, he recalled the band’s stand against seg­re­ga­tion in Jack­sonville and com­ment­ed, “I feel sick and angry that here we are, almost 60 years lat­er, and the world is in shock at the hor­rif­ic scenes of the sense­less mur­der of George Floyd at the hands of police racism, along with the count­less oth­ers that came before. I want jus­tice for George Floyd’s fam­i­ly, I want jus­tice for all those who have died and suf­fered. Say­ing noth­ing is not an option.” When it came to issues of injus­tice, even at the height of their fame, the Bea­t­les were will­ing to say—and, more impor­tant­ly, do—something about it even if it cost them.

via Salon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

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

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

The Beastie Boys & Rick Rubin Reunite and Revisit Their Formative Time Together in 1980s NYC

The Beast­ie Boys’ record-shat­ter­ing Licensed to Ill is thir­ty-four years old. This fact might mean noth­ing to you, or it might mean that you are thir­ty-four years old­er than the moment the album came out in Novem­ber of 1986, and sub­ur­ban par­ents around the coun­try, maybe even your par­ents, freaked out in uni­son. The album was a stroke of genius from pro­duc­er Rick Rubin, deliv­er­ing hip-hop safe for white kids while also giv­ing them per­mis­sion to be as obnox­ious as pos­si­ble.

Osten­si­bly a rap record, the first ever to hit num­ber one, Licensed to Ill also rode in on the crest of the mid-80s Satan­ic Pan­ic. Rubin’s deci­sion to set its exag­ger­at­ed­ly juve­nile rhymes to sam­ples of Black Sab­bath and Led Zep­pelin made a defi­ant statement—and bring­ing in Slayer’s Ker­ry King to play gui­tar on “No Sleep till Brook­lyn” real­ly rubbed it in. He was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­duc­ing Slayer’s Reign in Blood, and both albums man­aged to ter­ri­fy, and appeal to, many of the same peo­ple.

Lyri­cal­ly, Licensed to Ill kept things light and goofy but also ampli­fied some cor­ro­sive misog­y­ny and homo­pho­bia, for which the band has made amends and apolo­gies over the years. Adam Horowitz called their per­sonas on the album “idiot car­i­ca­tures of our­selves.” Of its first, dis­card­ed, title, he says, “it was meant to be a joke about jock frat dudes.” They moved on and moved to L.A., show­ing very dif­fer­ent sides of them­selves on fol­low-up Paul’s Bou­tique. You’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with Rick Rubin’s post-Licensed to Ill career and all-around sta­tus as a hip-hop, met­al, rock, pop, coun­try, etc. pro­duc­er.

They hadn’t been in touch in around twen­ty years when Rubin and sur­viv­ing Beast­ie Boys Adam Horowitz and Michael Dia­mond sat down—over Zoom—recently for the Rubin-host­ed Bro­ken Record Pod­cast. There’s a lot of catch­ing up to do. They start at the very begin­ning, when the trio was still in high school and Rubin lived in the NYU dorms and occa­sion­al­ly went to class­es. From the per­spec­tive of their cur­rent selves, they real­ize how strange it was that they hard­ly knew any­thing about each oth­er at the time. There are also a few lin­ger­ing mis­un­der­stand­ings to clear up.

Join­ing them is Spike Jonze, direc­tor of the clas­sic video for “Sab­o­tage” and of the upcom­ing Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry (trail­er above). The film is a “love let­ter to hip hop’s gold­en age,” writes Kevin Eg Per­ry at NME, an “inti­mate, per­son­al sto­ry of their band and 40 years of friend­ship.” Every Beast­ie Boys ret­ro­spec­tive, and there have been a few late­ly, is tinged with sad­ness for the con­spic­u­ous absence of Adam Yauch (MCA).

He appears here in spir­it and on video, pro­ject­ed on a giant screen behind Horowitz and Dia­mond onstage in the live sto­ry­telling event filmed by Jonze. “They’re frank about the shit­ti­ness of some of their past behav­ior,” Per­ry notes, like fir­ing found­ing mem­ber Kate Schel­len­bach because she did­n’t fit their new tough-guy act. It’s a grown-up per­spec­tive that will sur­prise no one who has fol­lowed the course of their cre­ative and per­son­al evo­lu­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 36 Beast­ie Boys Videos Now Remas­tered in HD

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Boutique–and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

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

Saxophonist Plays into Large Gas Pipes & Then Uses the Echo to Accompany Himself

The best sax­o­phon­ists play just as well unac­com­pa­nied as they do accom­pa­nied — but they also know that, in the act of musi­cal cre­ation, it cer­tain­ly helps to have even a lit­tle bit of sound to play off com­ing your way. Ger­man musi­cian Armin Küp­per dis­cov­ered more than a lit­tle bit of sound com­ing his way when he tried play­ing his sax­o­phone into a gas pipe he hap­pened across near his home. Kept at a con­struc­tion site and not cur­rent­ly in a state to pipe any gas, it served him as a kind of echo device, one dis­tinc­tive in both sound and appear­ance. On his Youtube chan­nel he’s post­ed a dozen videos so far of the “con­certs” he’s giv­en at the pipe: play­ing into it, stand­ing beside it, sit­ting in it.

“This sound on the tube, in this lone­li­ness always gives me the feel­ing: Hey, you’re not alone there!” writes Küp­per. “Some­times I just can’t stop play­ing. The nice thing is, when it gets cool in the evening, I sit down in the tube heat­ed up dur­ing the day and enjoy the sun­set play­ing the sax­o­phone.”

These sen­ti­ments appear in the descrip­tion of the video at the top of the post, in which Küp­per demon­strates the style of music he calls “Pipeline­funk,” or in his native Ger­man Röhren­sound. He’s also tried his hand at “Pipelineblues,” pipeline gui­tar, and a com­po­si­tion called “Walk­ing on the Pipeline” — dur­ing his per­for­mance of which he does just that, the sound of his sax­o­phone changes with every step he takes toward the open­ing.

When played direct­ly into the pipe, Küp­per’s sax­o­phone comes back sound­ing uncan­ni­ly like a clas­sic call-and-response. But what’s tru­ly impres­sive is the range of effects he dis­cov­ers while approach­ing the pipe dif­fer­ent­ly each time, pro­duc­ing whole new sound­scapes by chang­ing lit­tle more than the angle of his play­ing. Alas, his time with the pipe seems to have last­ed only so long.  The build­ing project that brought the pipe in the first place would soon­er or lat­er have to make use of it, and in one video descrip­tion Küp­per men­tions that “ ‘my pipe’ was laid in the ground.” There could be no bet­ter send­off for this unusu­al musi­cal part­ner — and a col­lab­o­ra­tor in the cre­ation of this sur­pris­ing vari­ety of, lit­er­al­ly, Ger­man indus­tri­al music — than Küp­per’s dusk per­for­mance of “Some­where Over the Rain­bow”?

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Sax­o­phones Are Made: Two Short Films (Includ­ing One by Sesame Street) Take You Inside Sax­o­phone Fac­to­ries

The Sax Solo on Ger­ry Rafferty’s “Bak­er Street” on a 10 Hour, End­less Loop

Park­ing Garage Door Does Impres­sion of Miles Davis’ Jazz Album, Bitch­es Brew

Behold Mys­ti­cal Pho­tographs Tak­en Inside a Cel­lo, Dou­ble Bass & Oth­er Instru­ments

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

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.

Nile Rodgers Tells the Story of How He Turned David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” from Folk to New Wave Funk

When David Bowie invit­ed Chic gui­tarist and all-around funk/disco gui­tar genius Nile Rodgers to make an album of “hits” in Switzer­land, Rogers remem­bers think­ing, “okay, ‘hits’ with David Bowie, that’s an awe­some project.” The way he dead­pans might make us think he wasn’t super stoked about it, but the fact is, it’s hard to impress Nile Rodgers. He has pro­duced, writ­ten, and played guitar—the very Stra­to­cast­er he’s hold­ing in the video above—on “hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands” of records, he says. What’s one more, with one more super­star?

The album, it turned out, would become Let’s Dance, run­ner-up to Thriller for album of the year in 1984, con­tain­ing such dance­able hits as the title track, “Mod­ern Love,” and “Chi­na Girl.” It was to be Bowie’s best-sell­ing album—as he described it, “a redis­cov­ery of white-Eng­lish-ex-art-school-stu­dent-meets-black-Amer­i­can-funk.” He cer­tain­ly brought the first part of that equa­tion, a tune he strummed for Rogers on his 12-string acoustic that “sound­ed like folk music to me,” the gui­tarist says.

“Since I knew David loved jazz and he under­stood the ver­nac­u­lar, I said to him, ‘David, can I do an arrange­ment of this song?’” (What he has remem­bered say­ing else­where is much fun­nier: “I come from dance music. You can’t call that thing you just played ‘Let’s Dance.’”) Rodgers shows how he sub­sti­tut­ed and moved Bowie’s chords, giv­ing the song its dis­tinc­tive voic­ing. “Run­ning away from funk because of the whole dis­co sucks thing,” Rodgers says, he sim­pli­fied his strum­ming, let­ting a delay effect “make the groove.”

While he may not have gone into the expe­ri­ence expect­ing much more than the usu­al hit-mak­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion, the expe­ri­ence, “changed my life,” he says, “it changed David’s life, and we wound up work­ing togeth­er on anoth­er five projects over the next five years.” In an NPR inter­view last year, Rogers debuted the first demo of “Let’s Dance” with Bowie singing over his new arrange­ment. You can hear just above.

The video at the top is part of Fend­er Gui­tars’ edu­ca­tion­al series, so Rodgers wraps up with an essen­tial take­away for gui­tarists about the impor­tance of “good the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge,” the basis of his “Let’s Dance” trans­for­ma­tion from folk to jazz to New Wave post-funk. Sad­ly, we can­not hear from Bowie him­self or from his oth­er famous gui­tarist-col­lab­o­ra­tor on “Let’s Dance,” Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an. But Bowie also cred­it­ed the Texas leg­end for help­ing him access his inner Amer­i­can to cre­ate music, as he once observed, with a “Euro­pean sen­si­bil­i­ty, but owed its impact to the blues.”

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

David Bowie Picks His 12 Favorite David Bowie Songs: Lis­ten to Them Online

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

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