These days “demo tapes” are often radio-ready record­ings, and bands often record one before they’ve even played their first gig. It’s a recent devel­op­ment, a byprod­uct of the rev­o­lu­tion in afford­able home record­ing tech­nol­o­gy. For most of the his­to­ry of rock and pop music, demos were raw sketch­es, pre­serv­ing ideas, tem­pos, changes, moods, but not at all ready to air. Lis­ten­ing back to demo ver­sions of songs we already know well can be like exca­vat­ing stra­ta under­neath a site like Stone­henge. Some­times you find noth­ing but sed­i­ment. Some­times you find anoth­er Stone­henge. Take for exam­ple John Lennon’s hyp­not­ic demo record­ings of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” the Bea­t­les’ acoustic White Album demos, or Roger Waters’ ear­ly demos of The Wall. Intrigu­ing­ly rough gems all.

Today we bring you demo record­ings of anoth­er artist whose work typ­i­cal­ly bespeaks pol­ish and stu­dio panache. As in the past, song­writ­ers today still push play on cheap voice recorders—or expen­sive iphones—and cap­ture new songs on the fly. But nobody today writes like Bowie did in his “Zig­gy Star­dust” phase. At the top of the post, hear Bowie’s solo acoustic demo record­ing of that song. You’ll find it on the sec­ond CD of the 30th Anniver­sary edi­tion of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, which also includes a demo ver­sion of “Lady Star­dust” and two ver­sions of “Moon­age Day­dream” and “Hang on to Your­self” by “Arnold Corns,” the orig­i­nal name of Zig­gy. I’ve heard more solo acoustic ver­sions of “Zig­gy” than I’d care to remem­ber, played by earnest cof­fee-shop croon­ers and gui­tar-bear­ing par­ty guests. But Bowie’s orig­i­nal demo I could lis­ten to again and again.

While the “Arnold Corns” incar­na­tions of Zig­gy Star­dust songs def­i­nite­ly fall into the cat­e­go­ry of not-Stone­henge, the 1969 demo record­ing of “Space Odd­i­ty” has a very mon­u­men­tal feel indeed—if that mon­u­ment were 2001’s enig­mat­ic Mono­lith. Set here to clips from that film, it seems like the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to the glossy fore­bod­ing of Kubrick’s space vision. This drum­less arrange­ment sounds some­how more con­tem­po­rary than the record­ing we’ve heard count­less times. It also sounds much clos­er to the psy­che­del­ic folk on the rest of the Space Odd­i­ty album, a col­lec­tion of songs many Bowie fans, myself includ­ed, great­ly admire, but which his first audi­ence didn’t take to so read­i­ly. “Space Odd­i­ty” went through at least one more iter­a­tion before land­ing on the album. Hear the slight­ly more funked-up ver­sion, and see its awk­ward video, below.

Per­haps no song oth­er than “Ash­es to Ash­es” so well artic­u­lates the cre­ative destruc­tion of Bowie’s many rock star personae—and the toll those meta­mor­phoses take—than 1971’s “Changes.” But it’s a song writ­ten and record­ed ear­ly in his career, before Zig­gy Star­dust, the char­ac­ter that first broke him into super­star­dom. The song appears on Hunky Dory in a record­ing with the Star­dust band—Mick Ron­son, Trevor Bold­er, and Mick Woodmansey—but it’s such a Bowie-cen­tric lyric that it out­last­ed hun­dreds of cos­tume changes and served as the obvi­ous choice of title for the 1990 com­pi­la­tion Changes­bowie.

Does the piano demo above reveal an alter­nate pre-his­to­ry? Not real­ly. The hand­claps and odd vocal­iza­tions are half-formed ideas at best, and the poor audio qual­i­ty is not a fea­ture. But what it does demon­strate, as do all of the rough record­ings above, is that Bowie is Bowie—a stel­lar song­writer and vocal performer—whether cap­tured on a cheap home tape machine or the best stu­dio equip­ment mon­ey can buy. Stu­dio wiz­ardry of the present can do things pro­duc­ers forty years ago could only dream about, but no amount of tech­nol­o­gy can sub­sti­tute for raw musi­cal tal­ent, nor for the long years of prac­tice Bowie endured.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

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

It’s hard to imag­ine the young lady seen per­form­ing her own songs on the BBC in the video above twerk­ing or even tweet­ing, for that mat­ter. The utter­ly unadorned qual­i­ty of this per­for­mance suits the now-leg­endary puri­ty of her youth­ful voice.

Woe, the dele­te­ri­ous effects of her long­time cig­a­rette habit.

Now, back to 1970, when just shy of 27, Joni Mitchell played a hit-filled set to a British stu­dio audi­ence, despite a “lit­tle Lon­don flu” she alludes to more than once.

If it seemed unpre­ten­tious at the time, it’s even more so now, nary a laser beam or back up dancer in sight. No cos­tume changes. Bare­ly any make­up. Just Joni, her gui­tar, her piano, and a nifty cus­tom dul­cimer made by “a dyna­mite girl who lives in Cal­i­for­nia.”

Pass­ing the time as she tunes this last instru­ment, she men­tions that the upcom­ing song, “Cal­i­for­nia,”con­cerns an adven­ture to which she’d recent­ly treat­ed her­self. She’d writ­ten it before her return, as a sort of post­card home. Mean­ing that that park bench in Paris, France was bare­ly cold! This is way more excit­ing to me than a bevy of hair exten­sions, served with a prac­ticed snarl and a side of auto tune.

A girl­ish gig­gle and dig­ni­fied bow seal the deal. Classy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchel­l’s “Both Sides Now” & “The Cir­cle Game” (1968)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Ladies and gen­tle­men, we present Michael Winslow, the Man of 10,000 Sound Effects, singing Led Zep­pelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.” And by sing, we mean that he per­forms the lead vocals, and the dis­tor­tion-filled sounds of the elec­tric gui­tar, all with his voice. The per­for­mance took place one night, back in Novem­ber, 2011, on Nor­way’s TV show Senkveld med Thomas og Har­ald (aka Late Night with Thomas and Harold). Winslow is joined by folk pop-musi­cian Odd Nord­sto­ga on the acoustic gui­tar. When you’re done pick­ing up your jaw, you’ll want to watch Winslow per­form the Sounds of 32 Type­writ­ers (1898–1983). It’s quite mag­nif­i­cent. Or watch an old re-run of Police Acad­e­my. That’s nev­er hurts, either.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Sound Effects Genius Michael Winslow Per­forms the Sounds of 32 Type­writ­ers (1898–1983)

Back in June, our very own Josh Jones took us on an audio tour of five great rock bassists, break­ing down the styles of Paul McCart­ney, Sting, John Dea­con, John Paul Jones & Ged­dy Lee. If you got into the groove of that post, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly enjoy watch­ing bassist Marc Naj­jar, accom­pa­nied by Nate Bau­man on drums, tak­ing you through 100 great bass riffs. The rhythm duo cov­ers 60 years of music his­to­ry, in 17 min­utes, just above.

The riffs were notably per­formed in one con­tin­u­ous take, with a Sand­berg Umbo HCA Crème bass. (Find more gear used in the video here.) And the clip was put togeth­er by the Chica­go Music Exchange, the same folks who assem­bled the 2012 viral video, A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Gui­tar Riffs. They also sold me a sweet acoustic gui­tar that same year.

You can find a com­plete list of the riffs, and the songs from which they came, below. (Click the “more” link to see them, if they’re not already vis­i­ble.)  Please note that the bass sounds a lit­tle mut­ed at the out­set, but it quick­ly comes to the fore.

(more…)

The ice buck­et chal­lenge is pret­ty played out. So why post this pho­to? Quite sim­ply because I can find scant lit­tle infor­ma­tion about this curi­ous Bea­t­les pic. One Bea­t­les blog dates the pic­ture back to 1965. After that, bup­kis. No infor­ma­tion. So, for once, I’m throw­ing up my hands and ask­ing for a lit­tle help from our friends. Some­where out there, an ardent Bea­t­les fan knows the sto­ry, and we’re hop­ing that you can give us the low­down, either by email, or in the com­ments sec­tion below. We thank you in advance…

Update: We got an email from a for­mer radio exec who offers more details. Jon tells us:  “These shots were done in the Bahamas back in 1965 while the Bea­t­les trav­eled the world to film their sec­ond movie Help! This sequence most like­ly came as a result of set close up shots that direc­tor Richard Lester need­ed of each Bea­t­le dur­ing a pool sequence since John is wear­ing that same shirt dur­ing sev­er­al of those water sequences shot in the Bahamas. Ringo has always said it was cold dur­ing the shoot as they filmed it dur­ing a cool­er time (Jan.?) that year. That would explain John’s look after being doused.” And there you have it!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)