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

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.

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

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.

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

“Ring of Fire” has been cov­ered many times and in many ways since John­ny Cash released it in 1963. But for all its recog­ni­tion as one of his sig­na­ture songs, Cash’s “Ring of Fire” is itself a cov­er — or anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion, in any case, of a tune orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Cash’s wife June Carter and song­writer Mer­le Kil­go­re for June’s sis­ter, Ani­ta Carter. Though it made noth­ing like the mark Cash’s record­ing did, the orig­i­nal “Ring of Fire” has its appre­ci­a­tors, a group that may well include Bri­an Eno. Or at least one feels an affin­i­ty between Ani­ta Carter’s take on the song and Eno’s own, the lat­ter of which you can lis­ten to above.

Unlike­ly enough to begin with, in an artis­tic sense, the record­ing’s avail­abil­i­ty on the inter­net has saved it from near-com­plete obscu­ri­ty. “In 1990, Bri­an Eno and John Cale made a won­der­ful exper­i­men­tal pop/art rock record called Wrong Way Up, released by Warn­er Bros. Records,” writes Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz.

“At the time, the label would send out 7” records to alt.rock/college radio sta­tions to pro­mote their new releas­es. The pro­mo series, called Soil Sam­ples, fea­tured dif­fer­ent artists on each side of the record per­form­ing songs that weren’t includ­ed on their new albums.” Cale’s con­tri­bu­tion to the sam­ple was an instru­men­tal called “Shuf­fle Down to Wood­bridge,” and the flip side of this translu­cent-vinyl rar­i­ty fea­tured “Mer­ry Christ­mas” by the two-man Amer­i­cana group House of Freaks.

As the leg­end goes — for every sto­ry con­nect­ed with John­ny Cash becomes a leg­end — the idea for how to do “Ring of Fire” came to the Man in Black in a dream. The “Mex­i­can horns” that had risen up from his sub­con­scious “sound like they’ve stum­bled in from some­where else on the radio dial and are try­ing des­per­ate­ly not to fall over Cash’s stan­dard shave-and-a-hair­cut clomp­ing beat,” writes The Atlantic’s Noah Berlatsky. “Cash, for his part, turns in one of the most awk­ward vocals of his career.” And yet “all those ele­ments knock­ing against each oth­er,” he con­tin­ues “fit the song’s lyrics per­fect­ly.” Eno’s flow­ing, lan­guid, Mex­i­can-horn-free record­ing may sound more like the orig­i­nal “Ring of Fire” than any oth­er cov­er, but it also befits its artist, the man who pop­u­lar­ized ambi­ent music. Nei­ther Cash nor Eno sing like men espe­cial­ly sub­ject to “wild desire,” but what song isn’t enriched by a bit of coun­ter­point?

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Inside the 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions

Watch John­ny Cash’s Poignant Final Inter­view & His Last Per­for­mance: “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” (2003)

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

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.