Nostalgia
Prince and the Revolution 1985 Live Album Finally Released: Stream
The companion album to the 1985 concert film Prince and the Revolution: Live has finally been unlocked from the vault. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify. The recording was made on March 30th, 1985 at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, New York, as Prince and his famed backup band The Revolution toured in support of 1984’s Purple Rain. The set included all nine tracks off of Purple Rain, as well as a smattering of hits and B-sides from 1999, the Controversy cut “Do Me, Baby”, and even a “Yankee Doodle Dandy” interlude. Sheila E., who opened for Prince, joined him on “Baby I’m a Star”, and the concert ended with an 18-minute rendition of “Purple Rain”. To capture the performance in all its luscious glory, the tapes have been remastered by The Purple On...
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Uploads Hundreds of Video Clips From Past Induction Ceremonies to YouTube
Over the course of this period of self-isolation, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has opened its vault and uploaded hundreds of video clips from past induction ceremonies to YouTube. The initial batch of uploads consists of video from last year’s ceremony enshrining Radiohead, The Cure, Stevie Nicks, Roxy Music, and others. There’s both performance footage — including Stevie Nicks teaming with Harry Styles for “Stop Draggin’ My Heart” — as well as each act’s respective induction speech. Since then, the Rock Hall has posted video from Neil Young’s 1995 induction, including Eddie Vedder’s introduction and their on-stage collaboration of “Fuckin’ Up”; Talking Heads’ 2002 induction and the band’s subsequent live reunion; and Prince’s 2004 induction, which saw him take the stage and rip ...
Hundreds of Hard-to-Find Peel Sessions Cataloged on YouTube
John Peel’s BBC 1 radio show was iconic at the time it aired. In hindsight, it’s only grown all the more legendary. The legendary broadcaster recorded over 4,000 sessions with over 2,000 artists, which is, objectively speaking, a lot. To help make sorting through the Peel Sessions archive easier, angel-in-disguise and blogger Dave Strickson has uploaded and alphabetized hundreds of available recordings from the show to stream online (via BrooklynVegan). Most of the original studio sessions from Peel’s radio show were released as Peel Session EPs by his label, Strange Fruit Records, but many of those are unavailable to stream online. Thankfully, listeners occasionally upload those almost-lost-to-time recordings to YouTube. That’s where Strickson comes in. To help make the process of di...
Ranking: The Beatles’ Albums from Worst to Best
Almost everybody has a Beatles moment. Mine came when I was 10 years old, riding in the middle row of a 1994 Dodge Caravan on a family road trip from Indiana down to the Great Smoky Mountains. My step-brother had just gotten cassette copies of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, better remembered as “The Red Album” and “The Blue Album” by anyone who grew up with parents who’d spent the ’60s as teenagers. We played those tapes non-stop from Kokomo to Gatlinburg and back again, the sounds of “Love Me Do” and “Ticket to Ride” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” on a continuous week-long loop. I remember tears welling in my eyes during “In My Life”, the hairs raising on the back of my neck at the start of “Eleanor Rigby”, the strange kaleidoscopic friendliness that radiated off of “Penny Lane” and “All Y...
Peter Hook on 40 Years Without Ian Curtis, Working with Gorillaz, and Keeping the Party Going
“The best thing you can do in life is stick on that smile and get out there and enjoy as much as you possibly can,” Peter Hook says over our lunch on Skype. “Because as we’ve seen from the way that you’ve suffered in America — the way that we’ve suffered here in the UK — time can be very short. You don’t know what’s around the corner do you?” With the utmost tragic timing, an alert flashes on my iPhone screen, informing me of the death of Kraftwerk legend Florian Schneider, who I learn has passed away from his battle with cancer. Absolutely destroyed, I tell Hook, who reflects, “There you go Phillip. A prime example isn’t it? Life can be very short. Too short … and not filled with harmony…” Hook knows a thing or two about harmony, both off stage and on it. The veteran musician, who laid do...
10 Famous Beatles Locations You Can Visit
On Location is a new series that brings to life the places you know from songs, album covers, and music history. Consider it a blur between travel guide and liner notes to your favorite albums. The Beatles: you’ve heard the songs, seen the footage, and heard about the places. What you may not have done yet, though, is step into their world. The Midas touch of the Fab Four has turned everyday locations from London to Liverpool — such as a crosswalk, an office building, a local street, and a pub — into some of the most iconic locations in music history. To see these locations in person for the first time is like finally being in the same place as a partner with whom you’re in a long-distance relationship: they’re always there, but to be able to actually see them adds an almost indescri...
How Kraftwerk and David Bowie Paved the Way for Music As We Know It Today
In 1976, David Bowie introduced his bravest new world yet. Zig-zagging across Europe and North America to promote his 10th studio album, Station to Station, he set the scene, night after night, with spliced footage from Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s surrealist masterpiece Un Chien Andalou. It was a strange yet enthralling scene for fans, but had the artist, then known as The Thin White Duke, had his way, four motionless Germans would have graced the stage instead. The request, of course, was made, but a firm yet friendly “nein danke” from Kraftwerk later led musical history to opt for another course. Midway through the Station to Station live run, also known as the “Isolar Tour”, Kraftwerk co-founders Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider met with Bowie at their Kling Klang Studio in their h...
Jerry Seinfeld’s Five Best Bits in Netflix’s 23 Hours to Kill
Jerry Seinfeld has left the car, put down the coffee, and returned to the stage. Yes, the blockbuster comic is back in his natural setting for Netflix’s 23 Hours to Kill, his first original special since — believe it or not — 1998’s I’m Telling You for the Last Time. This time around, he’s traded Broadway for the legendary Beacon Theatre, where he delivered a set chock full of all the kind of observational humor that has us revisiting his landmark series on repeat. It’s a pretty good run. Pretty, pretty, pretty good. Because part of the joy of Seinfeld is taking his observations to heart and fraudulently sharing them as your own, we’ve culled together the five best bits from the special below, all for your thieving leisure. Just be sure to say ’em with Jerry’s inflection. Some white sneaks...
Hundreds of Hours Worth of 1980s-Era MTV Programming Uploaded Online
We want our MTV now… and, in a way, it looks like we got it. After years of missing the channel’s glory days, one Internet Archive user has been steadily uploading VHS recordings of MTV’s early years in the ’80s and ’90s, reports BrooklynVegan. There’s hundreds of hours’ worth of footage online there and it’s all free to watch. The MTV collection is being uploaded chronologically under the apt title “’80s MTV VHS Recordings 1981 to 1989 Collection”. So far, most of the footage features everything you would have seen live on TV as it aired, including the network’s promos and now-outdated commercials. It begins with the dawn of MTV: the channel’s August 1st, 1981 debut where they introduced themselves by way of The Buggles’ legendary and topical hit “Video Killed the Radio Star” before movin...
Mobb Deep’s The Infamous Samples Sounds from a Rich Cultural Heritage
The Opus: The Infamous is currently ongoing, and you can subscribe now. To celebrate the new season, stream Mobb Deep’s iconic album via all major streaming services. You can also enter to win a copy of The Infamous on vinyl — signed by rapper Havoc himself. Spotify | Google Play | Stitcher | Radio Public | RSS Follow on Facebook | Podchaser If they’d never released another album after 1995’s The Infamous, Albert “Prodigy” Johnson and Kejuan “Havoc” Muchita of Mobb Deep would still reign as hip-hop visionaries 25 years later. Heavy on realism and scant on hope, the record stands as one of the most unflinching documents of hip-hop’s East Coast Renaissance. As our own Okla Jones put it in a recent retrospective, “The indelible legacy of [The Infamous] will be that it helped shift the co...
