The End­less Riv­er, Pink Floyd’s unex­pect­ed new album, dropped Fri­day, and unless we cred­it sly hints dropped by drum­mer Nick Mason, it’s like­ly the last we’ll ever hear from them. But one should always clar­i­fy, when speak­ing of the band, exact­ly which Pink Floyd is under dis­cus­sion. Is it Pink Floyd 1.0, with mad­cap singer/guitarist Syd Bar­rett at the helm? Pink Floyd 2.0—the most endur­ing combo—featuring Mason, Bar­rett replace­ment David Gilmour, bassist Roger Waters, and key­boardist Richard Wright? At anoth­er time, Wright was out of the pic­ture, then back in. After 1985, Waters, the band’s pri­ma­ry lyri­cist, and arguably most vision­ary mem­ber, was gone for good. They would nev­er again make music as soar­ing and ambitious—if also bombastic—as they did with his over­bear­ing pres­ence.

The title of the last album Waters record­ed with the band, 1983’s The Final Cut, pre­scient­ly announces itself as a coda for Floyd 2.0 (or 2.5? What­ev­er…). It also alludes to the band’s cin­e­mat­ic reach: whether scor­ing films, writ­ing them, or mak­ing records with the scope and breadth of epic movies. Floyd and film have always formed an organ­ic part­ner­ship. Before the quick fix of Youtube, they made fea­ture-length music videos that seemed to emerge ful­ly formed from nar­ra­tive and con­cept-rich records. The Final Cut, the album, ini­tial­ly intend­ed to be part of 1982’s rock opera The Wall, took on a life of its own when Waters re-con­ceived it as a protest against the Falk­lands War and Mar­garet Thatch­er, as well as a eulo­gy and vin­di­ca­tion for his ser­vice­man father who died in World War II. The Final Cut, the film (above—not to be con­fused with a 2004 sci-fi flick of the same name), is a nine­teen-minute piece that dra­ma­tizes four songs from the album: “The Gunner’s Dream,” “The Final Cut,” “Not Now John,” and “The Fletch­er Memo­r­i­al Home.”

The album itself brought the band to an impasse—pushing Waters’ increas­ing­ly per­son­al focus to such an extent that, writes All­mu­sic, it “pur­pose­ful­ly alien­ates all but the most ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er.” That may be so, but if one is will­ing to indulge it, it’s a very reward­ing lis­ten, “more like a nov­el than a record.” And it makes a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast to The End­less Riv­er, “a suite of most­ly instru­men­tal moods and frag­ments” rem­i­nis­cent of the band’s film scores. Tak­en togeth­er, these two doc­u­ments show­case the endur­ing strengths of Pink Floyd proper—they were a band who excelled both at telling com­plex sto­ries and cre­at­ing deeply felt moods that are, like the title of The End­less Riv­er’s clos­ing track, “Loud­er than Words.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Con­certs from 2005, 2010 & 2011

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

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

Dur­ing the gold­en age of vinyl, Ron­co sold vac­u­ums to keep your records clean. But there was always a cheap­er DIY hack — a hack demon­strat­ed in a video cre­at­ed by a Youtu­ber who sim­ply goes by “ghettofunk13.” Just pour some wood glue on your record, spread it around care­ful­ly as the turntable spins (don’t get it on the cen­ter label), and you can appar­ent­ly get rid of those snaps, crack­les, and pops. The video is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But it’s worth not­ing the adden­dum “ghettofunk13” lat­er added in text: “You can use con­sid­er­ably less glue and still get the same effect — it cuts the dry time way down. Just be sure that you get the whole record cov­ered!”

Over on Metafil­ter, one com­menter took “ghettofunk13” to task, say­ing “The bass is mud­dy and there’s no clar­i­ty and sparkle at the high end.… He should have used de-ion­ized wood glue from a poly­car­bon­ate (NOT polypropy­lene) bot­tle, and spread it in the direc­tion of rota­tion with a hand-pol­ished cedar shake. Ama­teur.” Just some­thing to con­sid­er if you plan to do some DIY record clean­ing this week­end. You can get a few more details on the process here. Try at your own risk.

FYI, over at Kottke.org, you can see an excel­lent micro­scop­ic pho­to of vinyl record grooves. Jason writes, “When you look real­ly close­ly at record grooves, like at 1000x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, you can see the wave­forms of the music itself. Sooo cool.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

Chili Klaus, a Dan­ish entertainer/chili enthu­si­ast, asked some mem­bers of the Dan­ish Nation­al Cham­ber Orches­tra to per­form Tan­go Jalousie … but with a twist. Mid­way through their per­for­mance, they ate “the world’s hottest chili pep­pers” and then con­tin­ued on with the show. Over two mil­lion peo­ple have enjoyed what hap­pens next.

The orches­tra, cre­at­ed in Copen­hagen in 1937, is unfor­tu­nate­ly going to be shut down at the end of the year by its cash-strapped par­ent com­pa­ny, the Dan­ish Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (DBC). The video above seems to be just a fun­ny final act. Too bad it was­n’t used as part of a cam­paign to get the DBC to recon­sid­er its deci­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

Har­ry Partch’s Kooky Orches­tra of DIY Musi­cal Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Every cre­ative work begins with a draft—or two, or three, or four. Great Amer­i­can nov­el, icon­ic paint­ing, gen­er­a­tion-defin­ing poem, album of the decade… each rep­re­sents a palimpsest of sketch­es, blind alleys, dead ends, demos, and out­takes. So it’s no great sur­prise to learn that Lon­don Call­ing, the Clash’s dou­ble-album mas­ter­piece, exists as an ear­li­er ver­sion, record­ed by the band them­selves on four-track tape machines at their rehearsal space in cen­tral Lon­don. What is maybe sur­pris­ing is how good these ear­ly record­ings are, and that they exist at all. Called The Vanil­la Tapes, after the name of their stu­dio, the tapes—though cer­tain­ly rough—represent what The Guardian calls “a col­lec­tion of demos and rehearsals that still man­age to sound more focused, intel­li­gent and rel­e­vant than most of today’s young pre­tenders.” No need to name names; it’s not much of a stretch to say that no rock and roll band today sounds as inter­est­ing as the Clash did in their prac­tices 35 years ago.

Record­ed in 1979, then lost, it seemed, for­ev­er, the tapes lived only in rumors and sly hints dropped by Joe Strum­mer of a self-record­ed LP. That is until March of 2004, when Mick Jones dis­cov­ered them in a box and “rec­og­nized them instant­ly for what they were.” The tapes, he said, “hadn’t been heard since before the record was made. It was pret­ty amaz­ing.” These ver­sions, writes Pat Gilbert at Mojo, are “clean, bright record­ings that reveal a group who are evi­dent­ly enjoy­ing cre­at­ing some­thing organ­ic and musi­cal.”

Paul’s bass walks, hops and lopes as he feels him­self into jazz, funk and dis­co. Mick plays eco­nom­i­cal­ly, expert­ly and flu­id­ly – intel­li­gent licks and chops. Joe’s rhythm gui­tar cuts through like a man who learned his craft from old Bo Did­dley, Buk­ka White and Chuck Berry records. Top­per is mag­nif­i­cent – light, pre­cise and clever. It’s Lon­don Call­ing stripped bare for com­bo play­ing: no horns, Ham­mond, piano, whistling.

At the top of the post, hear a rough take of “Lon­don Call­ing.” Aside from some hes­i­tan­cy in Strummer’s deliv­ery and a some­what plod­ding open­ing, the record­ing captures—perhaps even more than the stu­dio take—the apoc­a­lyp­tic dread of the song’s lyri­cal imagery. Some of the lines are different—London calls to the “the fools and the clowns” and “the mods on the run.” But this ear­ly ver­sion does have Strummer’s were­wolf howl and can­ny sum­ma­tion of the turn-of-the decade zeit­geist. Above, we have the Vanil­la Tapes ver­sion of “Rudie Can’t Fail” in all its funky ska imme­di­a­cy. (Notice the descend­ing melody in the chorus—which I almost like bet­ter than the album ver­sion’s ascend­ing chorus—and the toast­ing inter­jec­tions.) Just below, hear “Heart and Mind,” one of “five com­plete­ly unknown Clash songs” that appears on the tapes, “a rock­er,” writes Gilbert, “pitched some­where between ‘The Pris­on­er’ and ‘Death or Glo­ry.’”

Why this didn’t make the album, we’ll maybe nev­er know, but the cho­rus is great—“You’ve got a heart / You’ve got a mind / But you can’t / Keep them in time.” The oth­er four unearthed out­takes are “Where You Gonna Go (Sowe­to),” a rock­a­bil­ly tune called “Lone­some Me,” “bluesy instru­men­tal “Walk­ing the Side­walk,” and a reg­gae ver­sion of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me.” The tapes “includ­ed 37 tracks in total… pared down” for release “to the 21 best ver­sions.” Miss­ing from The Vanil­la Tapes are Lon­don Call­ing tracks “Span­ish Bombs,” “The Card Cheat,” “Wrong ‘Em Boyo,” and “Train in Vain,” con­firm­ing “the received wis­dom that (except “Wrong ‘Em Boyo”), these were writ­ten when The Clash were in Wes­sex record­ing the album prop­er.”

“Mud­dy, raw, and insis­tent­ly vague,” writes Pitch­fork, the tapes see the band “work­ing hard, but also grasp­ing for a muse.” They found a guid­ing cre­ative force in pro­duc­er Guy Stevens, who craft­ed their demos into the more pol­ished, but still rough enough for punk, stu­dio ver­sions we know well. But even with­out the ben­e­fit of com­par­i­son with the bril­liant real­iza­tions on the record, these ear­ly ver­sions stand up on their own as the sound of a band with more rangy cre­ative ener­gy than most groups can muster over their entire careers. The tapes were includ­ed in the 25th anniver­sary lega­cy edi­tion of Lon­don Call­ing, but you can hear them all on Youtube (lis­ten to “Lost in the Super­mar­ket” above). Like some com­menters, you might be sur­prised to find you like some of these raw demos even bet­ter than their cel­e­brat­ed stu­dio ver­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sur­viv­ing Mem­bers of The Clash Recount the Mak­ing of “Lon­don Call­ing” & Dis­cuss New Box Set

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: Google’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

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