The Horns on “Lady Madonna”

by The CS Team, Culture Sonar:
http://www.culturesonar.com/the-horns-on-lady-madonna/

There are plenty of interesting tidbits associated with “Lady Madonna.” It was the final single on the Parlophone label (future releases were on Apple Records). It was inspired in part by Fats Domino, who did a version of it later that year in 1968 (it’s also been covered by a slew of other artists such as Elvis Presley, Richie Havens, and Barry Gibb). But what might be most interesting about this tune is its brass section. 

While the Fab Four were known to try on different instruments on occasion - Lennon on bass, Harrison on sitar, McCartney on drums - “Lady Madonna” probably marks the only time all four were responsible for the horns … in a manner of speaking. Watch this clip from 
Deconstructing The White Album for further details.

VIDEO: 23-Year-Old Eric Clapton Demonstrates the Elements of His Guitar Sound (1968)

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: 
http://www.openculture.com/2017/11/23-year-old-eric-clapton-demonstrates-the-elements-of-his-guitar-sound-1968.html



In the fall of 1968, Eric Clapton was 23 years old and at the height of his creative powers. His band, Cream, was on its farewell tour of America when a film crew from the BBC caught up with the group and asked the young guitar virtuoso to show how he created his distinctive sound.

The result is a fascinating four-minute tour of Clapton’s technique. He begins by demonstrating the wide range of tones he could achieve by varying the settings on his psychedelically painted 1964 Gibson SG Standard guitar. His wah-wah pedal (an early Vox model) was critical to the sound of so many Cream classics, like “Tales of Brave Ulysses.” In the film, Clapton really has to stomp on it to get it working.

One of the most difficult skills to master, Clapton says, is the vibrato. In a 1970 interview with Guitar Player magazine he goes into more detail: “When I stretch strings,” he says, “I hook my thumb around the neck of the guitar. A lot of guitarists stretch strings with just their hand free. The only way I can do it is if I have my whole hand around the neck—actually gripping onto it with my thumb. That somehow gives me more of a rocking action with my hand and wrist.” If you watch the BBC clip closely you will see this in action.
The interview was conducted with Clapton seated in front of his famous stack of Marshall amplifiers. In the Guitar Player
interview, however, he admits he rarely used both at the same time. “I always had two Marshalls set up to play through,” he says, “but I think it was just so I could have one as a spare. I usually used only one 100-watt amp.”

Clapton’s demonstration (along with interviews of bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker) was incorporated into Tony Palmer’s film of Cream's Farewell Concert, which took place on November 21, 1968 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The original six-song version of Cream's Farewell Concert is available on YouTube. An extended 14-song version is available for purchase here.

VIDEOS: When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with Household Objects: Hear Two Surviving Tracks Made with Wine Glasses and Rubber Bands

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2017/09/when-pink-floyd-tried-to-make-an-album-with-household-objects.html

There are bands one casually encounters through greatest hits or breakthrough albums, on which they sound exactly like themselves and no one else. It’s impossible to imagine anyone but Fleetwood Mac making Rumors or Tusk. Or anyone but Pink Floyd recording Wish You Were Here or Dark Side of the Moon. But just like Fleetwood Mac, when we look back before Floyd’s best-known work, we find, as Mark Blake writes at Team Rock, that “they were a very different proposition.”

And yet it wasn't that Pink Floyd radically shuffled the lineup—though they had, since their first album, lost founding singer and guitarist Syd Barrett to mental illness and taken on David Gilmour to replace him. It’s that the same four musicians who re-invented psych-rock in the early 70s with “Money,” “Time,” and “Great Gig in the Sky,” sounded nothing like that blues/funk/disco/prog hybrid in the late 60s. Some of the same elements were there—the sardonic sense of humor, love for sound effects and extended jam sessions—but they cohered in much more alien and experimental shapes.

The title track of 1968’s Saucerful of Secrets, for example, opens with four minutes of dissonant horror-movie organ drones, which give way to primal drumming around which piano chords and sci-fi noises fall haphazardly, then resolve in a closing wordless choral passage. Not a single, cynical lyric about the pains of modern life to be found. The following year’s Ummagumma continued to build the band’s experimental foundations, and in-between these projects, they recorded film soundtracks that, again, do not make one think of laser-lit arena rock shows.

But there is plenty of connective tissue between the various phases of Floyd, much of it, like the bulk of their 1970 soundtrack for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, officially unreleased. We can add to that list an attempted album called Household Objects, which they began in 1970 and abandoned in ’74. The project, drummer Nick Mason admitted, represents the then-largely-instrumental band “still looking for a coherent direction,” and in so doing, abandoning instruments altogether. On Household Objects, they made serendipitous discoveries using—as the title clearly stated—found sounds, in the vein of John Cage or the avant-garde composers of musique concrete.

In 1971, Abbey Road studios tape operator John Leckie, who went on to produce the heavily Floyd-influenced Muse, remembers the band “making chords up from the tapping of beer bottles, tearing newspapers for rhythm, and letting off aerosol cans to get a hi-hat sound.” Keyboardist Richard Wright recalls spending “days getting a pencil and a rubber band till it sounded like a bass.” The idea began two years earlier when the band performed a composition called Work that “involved,” writes Blake, “sawing wood and boiling kettles on stage.”

Household Objects recording sessions, writes Rolling Stone, “consisted of Pink Floyd playing songs on hand mixers, light bulbs, wood saws, hammers, brooms and other home appliances. Recording in this manner was excruciating.” Wright and Gilmour grew exasperated and the band moved on to other things, namely Wish You Were Here. All that seemingly remains of Household Objects are the two tracks here, “The Hard Way” (an instance where rubber bands sound like a bass) and “Wine Glasses,” the latter employing, you guessed it, wine glasses. But like so much of Floyd’s lesser-known or forgotten experimental work, these sessions created the backdrop for their more accessible hits. “Wine Glasses” survived in “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” In the video just above, you can see David Gilmour work out the glass arrangements for his performance of the song in the 2006 Royal Albert Hall concert film Remember That Night.

VIDEO: Inside the 1969 Bob Dylan-Johnny Cash Sessions

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2012/06/the_1969_bob_dylan-johnny_cash_sessions_twelve_rare_recordings.html

Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash had formed a mutual admiration society even before they met in the early 1960s.

"Of course, I knew of him before he ever heard of me," Dylan wrote shortly after Cash's death in 2003. "In '55 or '56, 'I Walk the Line' played all summer on the radio, and it was different than anything else you had ever heard. The record sounded like a voice from the middle of the Earth. It was so powerful and moving."

When the young Dylan arrived on the scene in 1962, Cash was impressed.

"I was deeply into folk music in the early 1960s," he wrote in Cash: The Autobiography, "both the authentic songs from various periods and areas of American life and the new 'folk revival' songs of the time, so I took note of Bob Dylan as soon as the Bob Dylan album came out in early '62 and listened almost constantly to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in '63. I had a portable record player I'd take along on the road, and I'd put on Freewheelin' backstage, then go out and do my show, then listen again as soon as I came off."

Cash wrote the young Dylan a fan letter, and they began corresponding. When they met at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, Cash gave Dylan his guitar as a gesture of respect and admiration. Five years later, when Dylan was in Nashville recording his ninth studio album, Cash was recording in the studio next door. He decided to drop in. On February 17 and 18, 1969, Cash and Dylan recorded more than a dozen duets. Only one of them, a version of Dylan's "Girl From the North Country," made it onto the album, Nashville Skyline. The others were never officially released, but have long been circulating as bootlegs. In the video above, Dylan and Cash work on one of two versions they made of "One Too Many Mornings," a song originally recorded by Dylan in 1964 for The Times They Are a-Changin'.  The outtakes Dylan and Cash recorded together are all scattered around Youtube. One Youtuber posted a compilation back in 2013.

A few weeks after the release of Nashville Skyline, Dylan and Cash performed "Girl From the North Country" on The Johnny Cash Show. It was taped on May 1, 1969 at the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. A rough video clip (around the 30 minute mark) captures the moment. Despite Dylan's reported nervousness, the performance was well-received. "I didn't feel anything about it," Cash said later. "But everybody said it was the most magnetic, powerful thing they ever heard in their life. They were just raving about electricity and magnetism. And all I did was just sit there hitting G chords."

Where George Martin Found His Post-Beatle Groove

Montserrat

by Patrick Foley, Culture Sonar: http://www.culturesonar.com/george-martin-montserrat/

Montserrat is a tiny mountainous island in the Eastern Caribbean. It was “discovered” by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World but the famous explorer didn’t land on the island because of its lack of a safe harbor. Instead, he simply christened it “Montserrat” because its tall, sharp mountain peaks reminded him of the terrain near a Spanish monastery of the same name. Over time, the island was claimed by the French, the Spanish and the British. It remains a British colony today.

I’ve been involved in music and music-related business most of my life. Way back in 1963, well before The Beatles’ Ed Sullivan Show
appearance, my family in London had been sending me newspaper clippings and photos of John, Paul, George and Ringo. (They didn’t realize the band wasn’t known stateside yet.) By the time Beatlemania took over the US in 1964, I was intimately familiar with the Fab Four. In fact, I instantly became the expert of all things Beatles at my elementary school.

In 1977 when I was much older, I left Detroit for Los Angeles — following not only Motown Records but many Motor City musicians who’d made the trek before me. After 15 years in LA and five in Montserrat, I moved to Nashville where I eventually worked for the Gibson Guitar Company. In my role as Global Artist Relations Director based in both Nashville and London, I worked with an extensive list of iconic artists like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney on limited run artist-signature guitars. In 1999, Sir George Martin kindly invited my assistant, Juliette Avery and I to use AIR Studios London and co-hosted an event, both honoring Elvis guitarist Scotty Moore, and launching our new Gibson artist office on Denmark Street. In attendance was a who’s who of iconic UK-based guitarists. Among the many artist guitars that I was privileged to help develop in subsequent years was the 1963 Paul McCartney Epiphone Texan.

While living in the UK, my wife and I attended the final night of the Paul McCartney tour at the Kings Docks Liverpool in June 2003 and got an opportunity to speak with Paul afterwards. I suggested the idea of creating a signature model to generate funds and awareness for Paul’s then-favorite charity “Adopt a Minefield.” As a result, we worked closely together on a limited run of exact copies of the famous acoustic guitar on which he had written “Yesterday” and that he had played on that first Ed Sullivan show. But let’s get back to Montserrat.

In the early 1600s, Montserrat was a refuge for Irish indentured servants earning their freedom from servitude. Unlike most British territories at the time, Montserrat permitted them to practice their Catholic faith freely. Even today most family and place names in Montserrat are distinctly Irish. It is commonly referred to as “The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean” because of its Irish history and a physical resemblance to Ireland. Most local citizens share both Irish and African heritage and are proud of both. Indeed, St. Patrick’s Day is a national holiday celebrated for a full week every March.

During the 1960s and ‘70s, Montserrat was re-discovered by some more adventurous expatriate Americans, Brits, and Europeans, including a handful of writers and a few celebrities. They loved it for its unspoiled beauty and friendly people. But things really began to change in 1979 when Sir George Martin opened AIR Studios Montserrat. Which brings me to my own backstory.

I personally have been visiting Montserrat regularly since 1975. My father was a former Royal Air Force pilot who continued to fly all his life. Perhaps it was a mid-life crisis or just his adventurous streak but he began flying his single-engine airplane south to Florida, then Jamaica then down to the Leeward Island chain until he discovered this little gem called Montserrat and was immediately captivated. One day in 1977 while I was living and working in LA, I got a rare phone call from my dad telling me that he had brought the Beatles “manager” to the Island and that he would be staying for a week or so.

Me: “Wait, the Beatles manager was Brian Epstein and he’s dead. What are you talking about?”

Dad: “Well he’s a very nice fellow named George Martin.”

Me: “Are you kidding?”

Dad: “No, he’s very interested in aircraft and was in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. We met in Antigua. He’s thinking of building a studio in the Caribbean and I suggested Montserrat.”

What happened next? Well, to quote from the AIR Studios web site:

“In 1977, Sir George [Martin] fell in love with Montserrat and decided to build the ultimate get-away-from-it-all recording studio. Opened in 1979, AIR Studios Montserrat offered all of the technical facilities of its London predecessor, but with the advantages of an exotic location.”

Fast forward to the studio opening in 1979. The first band to record in the new space? The Climax Blues Band. Next up was James Taylor and Jimmy Buffet. Ultimately, the studio hosted a laundry list of top artists including Dire Straits (Brothers in Arms) and The Police (Synchronicity and Ghost in the Machine, the former ranking as the band’s final and most successful album which won three Grammy Awards). After that there was McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Duran Duran, Ultravox, Lou Reed, Michael Jackson, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, and The Rolling Stones (who came on the recommendation of Keith Richards who’d recorded Talk Is Cheap there with his band The Xpensive Winos). So many musicians recorded multiple albums there that the island and the studio alike eventually gained a reputation as a refuge from the stresses of life in the fast lane. Of course, it was also a world class facility with top engineers on staff who rotated down from AIR London.

Those were truly magical times in Montserrat. These icons could spend days on the beach, hiking, or even windsurfing (as Sting, and Guy Fletcher and Alan Clark of Dire Straits did) then in the evening, they’d go to work. Paul and Stevie used to jam at the local pub The Agouti while recording “Ebony and Ivory.” In 1981, Sir Paul recorded his Tug of War album there which Rolling Stone’s Stephen Holden hailed as “the masterpiece everyone has always known Paul McCartney could make.”

One evening, local singer Eloise Lynch, who had several popular songs on ZJB’s Radio Montserrat, was asked to perform at the seaside restaurant somewhat ironically named the Yacht Club. The idea was that the Stones (who had a BBC crew in tow) would arrive and then dance to local music. The filming was to take place between 9:30 and 10PM. Since word had got out among students at the American medical school, the place that night was packed. Ten o’clock came and went but no Stones. By midnight the crowd was getting rowdy and Eloise had waited long enough. She said either we play now or go home. Just as the band got started, the camera lights came on as Ron Woods, Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger and their small entourage walked in.

Afterwards one of the girls, who had been dancing with the Stones came over and said to Eloise, “Mick wants to meet you.” Her response was “then tell Mick that he shouldn’t have kept me and the band waiting for over two hours.” This was somewhat typical of the down-to-earth attitude of the Montserratian people. Eloise couldn’t have cared less about an inconsiderate English rock star. The Stones album Steel Wheelsturned out to be the last recording done at AIR before the damage from Hurricane Hugo followed by changing conditions in the recording industry had forced the closure of AIR for good.

Even so, Sir George made helping Montserrat recover from the devastation caused by Hugo and a later volcanic eruption a priority for the rest of his life. He organized the Music for Montserrat concert in 1997, and created a very limited-edition reproduction of the string score which he had written for the song “Yesterday.” Both he and Sir Paul hand-signed each framed copy which were titled “Yesterday for Montserrat.” Produced in the UK, these prints were made to museum-quality specification on Somerset Enhanced 100% cotton rag paper with hand-finished edges. The money raised from this and other various fundraising efforts were used to build a community center on the island which broke ground in 2001.

In my capacity as Artist Relations Director for Gibson Guitar Company and Slingerland Drums, I had the pleasure of working with Sir George on the Music for Montserrat charity event held at the Royal Albert Hall on Sep. 15, 1997. The concert featured Jimmy Buffett, Mark Knopfler, Sting, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Midge Ure, Phil Collins, Carl Perkins and many others who had recorded on and inevitably fallen in love with the island.

– Patrick Foley

PS. Find out why George Martin truly qualifies to be called the Fifth Beatle.

All photos courtesy of Patrick Foley.

VIDEOS: Pink Floyd Performs on US Television for the First Time: American Bandstand, 1967

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2016/04/pink-floyd-performs-on-us-television-for-the-first-time-american-bandstand-1967.html


Pink Floyd - Apples And Oranges - 1967 American... by pentathlonstart

You may have noticed we’ve been in the midst of a mini-sixties revival for the past decade or so—what with the retro soul of Alabama Shakes or the late Amy Winehouse, the garage rock of Ty Segall, and the California psych of Australia's Tame Impala. That’s to name but just a few students of sixties’ sounds; many hundreds more populate events like the Psych Fests of Austin and Liverpool. And before these bands, late eighties/early nineties brought us a British re-invasion of sixties garage rock and pop like the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Chameleons, the Stone Roses, Oasis, and many other jangly, fuzzy, dreamy bands.

All of that is to say it’s nearly impossible to hear anything sixties rock with fresh ears. Not only has the incessant nostalgia dimmed our senses, but we’ve seen the ideas of the sixties evolve into myriad subcultures variously indebted to the decade, but no longer even in need of direct reference. What would it mean, however, to hear the far-out sounds of a band like Pink Floyd for the first time, a band who may at times sound dated now, but much of whose more obscure catalog remains shocking. And it’s easy to forget that when Pink Floyd—or “The Pink Floyd” as they tended to be called—got their start with original singer and songwriter Syd Barrett, they made a much different sound than those we’re familiar with from The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon.

If you haven’t heard the sound of the band circa 1967, when they recorded their first album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, then you may nod along with Dick Clark’s ambivalent introduction of them to U.S. audiences in the ’67 American Bandstand appearance above---their first visit to the States and first time of TV. They do indeed make “very interesting sounds”: specifically, “Apples and Oranges,” the third single and the final song Barrett wrote for the band before he suffered a psychotic break onstage and was replaced by David Gilmour. There isn’t much in the way of performance. (But stick around for the interviews around 3:25.) As pretty much everyone did at the time, Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright mime to a prerecorded track. And Barrett looks particularly out of it. He was close by this point to the crippling mental health crisis that would eventually end his career.

But Syd Barrett did not disappear from music right away. The unreleased “Scream Thy Last Scream,” slated to be the next single released after Piper at the Gates of Dawn, gave much indication of the musical direction he took in two 1970 solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. Like later Barrett, early Pink Floyd is not music for everyone. Instead of the familiar stomping funk of “The Wall” or the soaring blues of “Comfortably Numb,” the songs meander, twist, turn, and wobble, often indicating the state of Barrett’s troubled soul, but just as often showcasing his brilliant compositional mind. Barrett is gone, as is keyboardist Richard Wright, and Pink Floyd is no more. But their legacy is secure. And we still have mad geniuses like Austin psych legend Roky Erickson to kick around, as well as all the many thousands of musicians he and Barrett inspired.

VIDEOS: Frank Zappa Explains the Decline of the Music Business (1987)

by Josh Jones, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2016/09/frank-zappa-explains-the-decline-of-the-music-business-1987.html

“Remember the 60s?” says Frank Zappa in the interview above, “that era that a lot of people have these glorious memories of?... they really weren’t that great, those years.” Ever the grumpy uncle. But Zappa does get nostalgic for one thing, and it’s an unexpected one: the music business. “One thing that did happen in the 60s,” he says, “was some music of an unusual and experimental nature did get recorded, did get released.” The executives of the day were “cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product and said, 'I don’t know. Who knows what it is? Record it, stick it out. If it sells, alright!'”

“We were better off with those guys,” says Zappa, “than we are with the hip, young executives,” making decisions about what people should hear. The hippies are more conservative than the conservative “old guys” ever were. This Zappa of 1987 recommends getting back to the “who knows?” approach, “that entrepreneurial spirit” of the grand old industry barons of the 60s. One can almost imagine Zappa—in the 60s—pining for the days of Edison, who refused to give up on the wax cylinder but would also record virtually anything. If both the time of Edison and the time of Zappa were bonanzas for makers of novelty records, so much the better. Zappa was novel. 

Still it seems like a funny sentiment coming from a guy who built most of his career in opposition to the record industry. But it was in the period of alleged decay that Zappa broke with Warner Bros. and founded his own label in 1977, making a deal with Phonogram to distribute his releases in the U.S. When Phonogram refused to release his 1981 single “I Don’t Wanna Get Drafted,” Zappa created another label, Barking Pumpkin Records, making sure he got to make and sell the music he wanted to.

In many ways people like Zappa---or later Kate Bush or Prince---anticipated our current music industry, in which we have artists starting labels left and right, controlling their own production and output. But those artists are mostly a tiny handful of hugely successful stars with mogul-sized ambitions. Does this help or harm the music economy as a whole? Independent musicians very rarely get the smallest window on how things work at the level of Beyonce, Jay-Z, or Taylor Swift (who "is the industry," Bloomberg once breathlessly proclaimed). But as Zappa notes, “the person in the executive chair may not be the final arbiter of taste for the entire population.” Even if those executives are themselves artists, we may greatly benefit from a wider range of "unusual and experimental" sounds in popular culture. Zappa suggests the way to do that is to get the "cigar-chomping old guys" (and they were all guys) back in charge. 

The rest of Zappa’s interview concerns the bogeyman of 80s and 90s music, the PMRC, and his very strong feelings about censorship, social control, and sex. It’s classic Zappa and won’t raise any eyebrows now, but it is interesting to hear his take on the decline of the music business since the 60s. We use different criteria to measure the apex of the industry---often depending on whether the labels or the artists made more money. Whichever period we lionize, for whatever reason, within a hundred-year window a tiny handful of musicians and record executives made enormous, dynasty-making fortunes. It just so happens that these days it's an even tinier handful of musicians and executives at the top, making even huger fortunes. And there's a lot more synergy between them. 

VIDEO: Animated Interview: The Great Ray Charles on Being Himself and Singing True

by Mike Springer, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2013/10/animated-interview-the-great-ray-charles-on-being-himself-and-singing-true.html

"You know," says Ray Charles in this new animated interview from Blank on Blank, "what I got to live up to is being myself. If I do that the rest will take care of itself."

Charles always sounded like no one else. When he played or sang just a few notes, you would immediately recognize his distinctive sound, that unique blending of gospel and blues. As he explains in the interview, his style was a direct reflection of who he was. "I can't help what I sound like," he says. "What I sound like is what I am, you know? I cannot be anything other than what I am."

Blank on Blank is a project that brings lost interviews with famous cultural figures back to life. The Charles video is the 12th episode in Blank on Blank's ongoing series with PBS Digital Studios. The audio of Charles is from the Joe Smith Collection at the Library of Congress. Smith is a former record company executive who recorded over 200 interviews with music industry icons for his book Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music. He talked with Charles on June 3, 1987, when the musician was 56 years old. You can hear the complete, unedited interview at the Library of Congress Web site.

In the interview, Charles says that being true to himself was a night-by-night thing. "I don't sing 'Georgia' like the record. I sing it true," he says. "I sing what I sing true. Each night I sing it the way I feel that night." For an example of Charles being true to himself, here he is performing "Georgia On My Mind" on the Dick Cavett Show on September 18, 1972:

Ken Kesey Talks About the Meaning of the Acid Tests

For me, there have always been at least three Ken Keseys. First, there was the antiauthoritarian author of the madcap 1962 classic One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Inspired by Kesey’s own work as an orderly at a Menlo Park mental hospital, the author’s voice disappears into that of the narrator, Chief Bromden, and the dialogue of the most memorable ensemble of troubled personalities in twentieth century literature. Then there’s the Kesey of the 1964 Sometimes a Great Notion, a Pacific Northwest epic and the work of a serious novelist pulling American archetypes from rough-hewn Oregon logging country. Finally, there’s Kesey the Merry Prankster, the mad scientist who almost single-handedly invented sixties drug culture with his ‘64 psychedelic bus tour and acid test parties. It’s a little hard to put them all together sometimes. Ken Kesey contained multitudes.

The acid test parties began after Kesey’s experience with mind-altering drugs as a volunteer test subject for Army experiments in 1960 (later revealed to be part of the CIA’s mind control experiment, Project MKUltra). Kesey stole LSD and invited friends to try it with him. In 1965, after Hunter S. Thompson introduced Kesey to the Hell’s Angels, he expanded his test parties to real happenings at larger venues, beginning at his home in La Honda, California. Always present was the music of The Grateful Dead, who debuted under that name at one of Kesey’s parties after losing their original name, The Warlocks. The cast of characters also included Jack Kerouac’s traveling buddy Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and Dr. Timothy Leary. Out of what Hunter Thompson called “the world capital of madness,” the psychedelic counter-culture of Haight-Ashbury was born.

In the interview above, Kesey talks about the acid tests as much more than an excuse to trip for hours and hear The Dead play for a buck. No, he says, “there were people who passed and people who didn’t pass” the test. What it all meant perhaps only Kesey knew for sure. (He is quoted as saying that he and his band of compatriots, the Merry Pranksters, were trying to “stop the coming end of the world”). In any case, it’s a strange story—stranger than any of Ken Kesey’s works of fiction: covert government mind control program turns on one of the generation’s most subversive novelists, who then masterminds the hippy movement. The video below, from the Kesey documentary Magic Trip, takes us back to where it started with animation of a tape recording of Kesey narrating his first government-sponsored acid trip.

Josh Jones is a writer and musician. He recently completed a dissertation on landscape, literature, and labor.

VIDEOS: The History of the Blues in 50 Riffs: From Blind Lemon Jefferson (1928) to Joe Bonamassa (2009)

If you’ve ever had any doubt, for some reason or other, that rock and roll descended directly from the blues, the video above, a history of the blues in 50 riffs, should convince you. And while you might think a blues history that ends in rock n roll would start with Robert Johnson, this guitarist reaches back to the country blues of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Black Snake Moan” from 1928 then moves through legendarily tuneful players like Skip James and Reverend Gary Davis before we get to the infamous Mr. Johnson.

Big Bill Broonzy is, as he should be, represented. Other country blues greats like soft-spoken farmer Mississippi John Hurt and hardened felon Lead Belly, “King of the 12 String Guitar,” are not. Say what you will about that. The recordings these artists made with Okeh Records and Alan Lomax, despite their commercial failure in the 30s, midwifed the blues revival of the fifties and sixties. Hear Lead Belly's version of folk ballad “Gallows Pole” above, a song Led Zeppelin made famous. Lead Belly’s acoustic blues inspired everyone from John Fogerty to Skiffle King Lonnie Donegan, Pete Seeger to Jimmy Page, as did the rootsy country blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins, who is included in the 50 riffs. As are John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and BB King’s electric styles---all of them picked up by blues rock revivalists, including, of course, Jimi Hendrix.

Hendrix’s “Red House” riff makes the cut here, as we move slowly into rock and roll. But before we get to Hendrix, we must first check in with two other Kings, Freddie and Albert—especially Albert. Hendrix “was star struck,” says Rolling Stone, “when his hero [Albert King] opened for him at the Fillmore in 1967.” For his part, King said, “I taught [Hendrix] a lesson about the blues. I could have easily played his songs, but he couldn’t play mine.” See King play “Born Under a Bad Sign” in 1981, above, and hear why Hendrix worshipped him.

Mississippi blues moved to Memphis, Chicago, New York and to Texas, where by the 70s and 80s, ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughan added their own southwest roadhouse swagger. (No Johnny Winter, alas.) Many people will be pleased to see Irish rocker Rory Gallagher in the mix, and amused that The Blues Brothers get a mention. Many more usual suspects appear, and a few unusual picks. I’m very glad to hear a brief R.L. Burnside riff. The White Stripes, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Joe Bonamassa round things out into the 2010’s. Everyone will miss their favorite blues player. (As usual, the powerhouse gospel blues guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe gets overlooked.) I would love to see included in any history of blues such obscure but brilliant guitarists as Evan Johns (above), whose rockabilly blues guitar freakouts sound like nothing else. Or John Dee Holeman, below, whose effortless, understated rhythm playing goes unmatched in my book.

Like so many of the bluesmen who came before them, these gentlemen seem to represent a dying breed. And yet the blues lives on and evolves in artists like Gary Clark Jr., The Black Keys, and Alabama Shakes. And of course there’s the prodigy Bonamassa, whom you absolutely have to see below at age 12, jamming with experimental country speed demon Danny Gatton’s band (he gets going around 1:05).

If you’re missing your favorites, give them a shout out below. Who do you think has to be included in any history of the blues—told in riffs or otherwise---and why?

VIDEO: The Grateful Dead Play at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)

by Dan Colman, Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/2015/07/the-grateful-dead-play-at-the-egyptian-pyramids.html

In September of 1978, the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great Pyramid of Giza, with the Great Sphinx looking over their shoulders. It wasn't the first time a rock band played in an ancient setting. 

Pink Floyd performed songs in the middle of the Amphitheatre of Pompeii in October 1971. But
Floyd performed to an "empty" house, playing to no live fans, only ghosts (watch footage here.) 

The Dead's shows, on the other hand, were real gigs, attended by Deadheads who made the journey over, and they could thank Phil Lesh for putting it all in motion. Lesh later said, "it sort of became my project because I was one of the first people in the band who was on the trip of playing at places of power. You know, power that's been preserved from the ancient world. The pyramids are like the obvious number one choice because no matter what anyone thinks they might be, there is definitely some kind of mojo about the pyramids."

Logistically speaking, the concerts weren't the easiest to stage. Rolling Stone reported that an "equipment truck got stuck in sand and had to be towed by camels." Because the electricity in Egypt was an "a winkin', blinkin' affair," Bob Weir later recalled, the jetlagged band had difficulties recording the first of the three shows. But, as with most adventures, the inconveniences were offset by the wondrous nature of the experience. Weir captured it well when he said: "I got to a point where the head of the Sphinx was lined up with the top of the Great Pyramid, all lit up. All of a sudden, I went to this timeless place. The sounds from the stage — they could have been from any time. It was as if I went into eternity." The Sphinx and Great Pyramid date back to roughly 2560 BC.

The Dead were joined on this trip by the counterculture author Ken Kesey (not to mention Bill Graham and Bill Walton) who apparently captured footage on Super-8 reels. (Watch it above.) Kesey himself later tried to explain the symbolism of the visit, saying: "The people who were there recognized this as a respectful and holy event that went back to something we can all just barely glimpse, them and us both. Our relationship to ancient humans. To this place on the planet. To the planet's place in the universe. All that cosmic stuff is what the Dead are based on. The Egyptians could understand that."

At the very top of the post, you can see the Dead performing "Ollin Arageed," with Egyptian oudist Hamza el-Din and other local musicians, before seguing into "Fire on the Mountain." The clip gives you a good feel for the awe-inspiring scene. Just above, we have a longer playlist of performances that took place on September 16, 1978 -- the same night there was a lunar eclipse. The complete 9/16/78 show can be streamed on Archive.org, as can the shows from 9/14 and 9/15. A 2CD/1 DVD package (Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978) captures the Dead's visit and can be purchased online.

To get more on the Pyramid concerts, read Chapter 43 of Dennis McNally's book, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead.

The Rolling Stones Introduce Bluesman Howlin’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Greatest Cultural Moments of the 20th Century” (1965)

by Josh Jones, Open Culture:

http://www.openculture.com/2016/08/the-rolling-stones-introduce-bluesman-howlin-wolf-on-us-tv.html

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

Howlin’ Wolf may well have been the greatest blues singer of the 20th century. Certainly many people have said so, but there are other measurements than mere opinion, though it’s one I happen to share. The man born Chester Arthur Burnett also had a profound historical effect on popular culture, and on the way the Chicago blues carried “the sound of Jim Crow,” as Eric Lott writes, into American cities in the north, and into Europe and the UK. Recording for both Chess and Sun Records in the 50s (Sam Phillips said of his voice, “It's where the soul of man never dies”), Burnett’s raw sound “was at once urgently urban and country plain… southern and rural in instrumentation and howlingly electric in form.”

He was also phenomenal on stage. His hulking six-foot-six frame and intense glowering stare belied some very smooth moves, but his finesse only enhanced his edginess. He seemed at any moment like he might actually turn into a wolf, letting the impulse give out in plaintive, ragged howls and prowls around the stage. “I couldn’t do no yodelin’,” he said, “so I turned to howlin’. And it’s done me just fine.” He played a very mean harmonica and did acrobatic guitar tricks before Hendrix, picked up from his mentor Charlie Patton. And he played with the best musicians, in large part because he was known to pay well and on time. If you wanted to play electric blues, Howlin’ Wolf was a man to watch.

This reputation was Wolf’s entrée to the stage of ABC variety show Shindig! in 1965, opening for the Rolling Stones. He had just returned from his 1964 tour of Europe and the UK with the American Folk Blues Festival, playing to large, appreciative crossover crowds. He’d also just released “Killing Floor,” a record Ted Gioia notes “reached out to young listeners without losing the deep blues feeling that stood as the cornerstone of Wolf’s sound.” The following year, the Rolling Stones insisted that Shindig!’s producers “also feature either Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf” before they would go on the show. Wolf won out over his rival Waters, toned down the theatrics of his act for a more prudish white audience, and “for the first time in his storied career, the celebrated bluesman performed on a national television broadcast.”

Why is this significant? Over the decades, the Stones regularly performed with their blues heroes. But this was new media ground. Brian Jones' shy, starstruck introduction to Wolf before his performance above conveys what he saw as the importance of the moment. Jones' biographer Paul Trynka may overstate the case, but in some degree at least, Wolf’s appearance on Shindig! “built a bridge over a cultural abyss and connected America with its own black culture.” The show constituted “a life-changing moment, both for the American teenagers clustered round the TV in their living rooms, and for a generation of blues performers who had been stuck in a cultural ghetto.” One of these teenagers described the event as “like Christmas morning.”

Eric Lott points to the show's formative importance to the Stones, who “sit scattered around the Shindig! set watching Wolf in full-metal idolatry” as he sings "How Many More Years," a song Led Zeppelin would later turn into "How Many More Times." (See the Stones do their Shindig! performance of jangly, subdued "The Last Time," above.)  The performance represents more, however, than the "British Invasion embrace" of the blues. It shows Wolf's mainstream breakout, and the Stones paying tribute to a founding father of rock and roll, an act of humility in a band not especially known or appreciated for that quality.

“It was altogether appropriate,” says music writer Peter Guralnick, “that they would be sitting at Wolf’s feet… that’s what it represented. His music was not simply the foundation or the cornerstone; it was the most vital thing you could ever imagine.” Guralnick, notes John Burnett at NPR, calls it "one of the the greatest cultural moments of the 20th century." At minimum, Burnett writes, it's "one of the most incongruous moments in American pop music"---up until the mid-sixties, at least.

Whether or not the moment could live up to its legend, the people involved saw it as groundbreaking. The venerable Son House sat in attendance---“the man who knew Robert Johnson and Charley Patton,” remarked Brian Jones in awe. And the Rolling Stone positioning himself in deference to “Chicago blues," Trynka writes, "uncompromising music aimed at a black audience, was a radical, epoch-changing step, both for baby boomer Americans and the musicians themselves. Fourteen and fifteen-year-old kids… hardly understood the growth of civil rights; but they could understand the importance of a handsome Englishman who described the mountainous, gravel-voiced bluesman as a ‘hero’ and sat smiling at his feet.”

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