Quincy Jones sat in the Tenafly, New Jersey den of 16-year-old vocal student Lesley Gore,
playing demo after demo, looking for the right song to cut for her first record. Out of over 200 tapes, Jones and Gore had moved only one to the "maybe" pile, and so that song,
It's My Party, was recorded on March 30, 1963 in a Manhattan studio. After the session Mercury president Irving Green warned Gore not to get her hopes up, but Gore gratefully told him that it had been a great experience anyway, and it was okay if he didn't want to release it. However, later that evening Jones learned that
Phil Spector had just recorded "It's My Party" for
The Crystals, so Jones rushed back to the studio to press 100 test copies of the single and immediately mailed them to key radio stations across the country.
[more inside]
posted by swift
on Sep 13, 2011 -
69 comments
It was music to be heard, not listened to. It was the soundtrack to the relaxed, sophisticated, mature vision of the good life. It was music for lovers. It was upbeat, elaborately arranged, chart-toppingly popular, and yet has been almost written out of the popular music history books, dismissed as “elevator music”; soulless, toned-down, pre-chewed, limp cover-versions of popular songs for old people. So sit back, put aside the politics and angst, slip into something comfortable (preferably with someone of similar description), and allow yourself to experience
The Joy of Easy Listening [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey
on Jun 16, 2011 -
42 comments
The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins A 1967 Les Blank film of Lightnin Hopkins visiting his hometown of Centerville, TX
"…a gorgeous 31-minute poem of a movie, a series of snapshots from his life as well as a look at an era fast disappearing…Watching the film is something of a revelation, at least if you ever had a doubt where the blues came from." [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Feb 19, 2011 -
16 comments
If you like meaty filthy 60s-70s rock by sometimes severely ripped blokes &b.b.b.babes — like I know I do — then bite on these two crispy mix streams and the extensive opinionated textual japery and idolatry from Brit musician, musicologist,
Julian Cope that accompanies them. This man writes
books on music. Why is he giving it away?
[more inside]
posted by Twang
on Jan 6, 2011 -
21 comments
Music! - A 1968 documentary by the National Music Council of Great Britain, featuring folk singing, The Beatles, and even early electronic music produced by tape splicing.
Part 1,
part 2,
part 3,
part 4,
part 5.
posted by Artw
on Mar 7, 2010 -
8 comments
The Jazz Loft Project - From 1957 to 1965, celebrated photojournalist W. Eugene Smith made 4,000 hours of surreptitious recordings and took 40,000 photographs in a loft in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where Roland Kirk, Thelonius Monk, Hall Overton, Charles Mingus and other jazz greats jammed until dawn. Archived in the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the project is now accessible via a book, a traveling exhibit, a
10-part Jazz Loft series on WNYC,
NPR's Jazz Loft Project Sights & Sounds, and an interview with
JLP author Sam Stephenson, which includes some images from the book. Via a
Grain Edit post, which also has some great images.
[more inside]
posted by madamjujujive
on Jan 3, 2010 -
21 comments
The Greatest Week in Rock History (Salon link) - 34 years ago today, Billboard Charts had a outstanding album lineup - perhaps not the best albums ever, but for a single point in time, arguably unmatched for quality, originality, and longevity. Take a look back at the roster:
the Beatles,
Led Zeppelin,
Tom Jones,
Creedence Clearwater Revival,
the Stones,
Santana,
the Temptations,
Blood Sweat & Tears,
Crosby Stills & Nash, and
Easy Rider.
posted by madamjujujive
on Dec 20, 2003 -
53 comments
Plenty of pop music explosions have been international in scope-metal, punk, hip-hop. But none as much as the initial blast garage rock and roll that erupted after the Beatles and Stones broke big.
Cutie Morning Moon does an astounding job of documenting the far flung outposts of garageland like
Chile,
Hong Kong,
Sweden,
Holland Japan Uruguay,
Poland and the rest of
Eastern Europe. It also includes the story of Japanese Brazillian expatriates
Os Incriveis , plenty of
wild photos,
movie footage of swede legends
the Tages and an
article on the secret history of Joan Jett's #1 hit " I Love Rock And Roll". This site is seemingly bottomless, but if that ain't enough there's great
links too. If the whole world gan get together and dig three chord boogie, I say there's still hope.
*
some pages are translated from Japanese. The prose can be awkward. But the feelings there.
posted by jonmc
on Sep 23, 2003 -
13 comments
Mel Lyman 1938-1978. Mel Lyman was controversial. He was the brilliant folk musician who soothed the Dylan-ruffled crowd at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the Fort Hill guru whose prose in the undergound newspaper Avatar shocked conservative Bostonians of the late 60s... Many years of collecting, and help from numerous people has resulted in the large collection of articles reproduced here. Some say Lyman was God... others that he was a devil... but most of these articles show him as a charismatic individual somewhere between those two extremes.
An exhaustively authoritative page about a very interesting harmonica player who became God. And, man, does this bring back the 60s...(Details within)
posted by y2karl
on Mar 24, 2002 -
21 comments
