The Dawn of Sun Records

Photo: Bear Family Records

National Public Radio

In January 1950, Sam Phillips, a red-haired Alabama boy who’d learned about radio and electronics in the U.S. Army, opened the Memphis Recording Service at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis. Three years later, overwhelmed by the success of his efforts for other people, he started the Sun Records label there.

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The Clash | Audio Ammunition Documentary

Micke | The Magnetist

Micke’s life revolves around cassette tapes. Most of his time is spent on varius tape-related projects; he blogs about them, he makes music with them and he’s got a monthly tape club in his hometown Stockholm.

Video: Erik Sandberg

Huey P. Meaux | South Texas Rhythm ‘n’ Soul Revue

National Public Radio

Record producer Huey P. Meaux’s career had two chapters, each of which ended with him in prison. But both times, he discovered some amazing Texas and Louisiana artists who made great music.

Researchers are still piecing together the first half of the story, which saw hundreds of singles released on labels like Jet Stream, Tear Drop, Jet, Pacemaker and Eric. Now some of those songs have been collected on a compilation called South Texas Rhythm ‘n’ Soul Revue.

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The Wrecking Crew

The New York Times

In the 1960s many of the hits coming out of Los Angeles under the names of the Beach Boys, Sonny & Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, the Monkees and other top pop acts were actually recorded by an elite but largely anonymous corps of studio musicians nicknamed the Wrecking Crew. To gain them some belated public recognition Denny Tedesco, a son of one of the most prolific of those session players, spent more than 15 years making a documentary about the ensemble.

The Wrecking Crew consisted of 20 or so musicians, the guitarist Tommy Tedesco among them, and played in one configuration or another on thousands of records, including Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” and Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.” Their first major successes came in 1962, providing the “wall of sound” for Phil Spector singles like “He’s a Rebel.” As the ’60s progressed, they played on hits by the Byrds, the Fifth Dimension, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Rivers and the Carpenters.

“The Wrecking Crew were the best of the best, with the additional gift of being able to function as mini-arrangers within each song,” explained Kent Hartman, author of a recent book about the ensemble. “The producers depended on them to make the songs better, and that’s why they kept getting asked back time and time again: They knew how to turn a song into a hit.”

Some members of the ensemble, most notably the guitarist Glen Campbell and the pianist Leon Russell, later became stars in their own right. But as hired hands the musicians had no ownership stake in or legal claim to the songs they recorded, and record company executives who may have felt a debt of gratitude for their contributions at the time have long since departed. As a believer in copyright Mr. Tedesco is philosophical about his situation.

Mauro ffortissimo | Sunset Piano Opus Two for Twelve Pianos

kickstarter

In early July, Mauro ffortissimo is planning to deploy twelve pianos at select locations along the San Mateo coastline. Anyone can come and play a piano by the sea, anytime. He’s inviting bay area musicians to join him in bringing attention to the fragile state of the world’s oceans, as well as the near extinction of the “personal” piano. Piano manufacturing has dwindled, and the neglect of acoustic pianos has caused thousands of them to end up in landfills. The “Twelve Pianos” project will focus the spotlight on two species with uncertain futures.

J-Pop & The Economy

Forbes
Chem Chambers

Japan is famous for its J-pop bands, where music and Manga meet. The U.S. and the West for all its Justin Beiberisation and Kardashianification simply can’t match Japan for mixing pure fantasy with crystalline escapism and the unexpected.

The country is a complex culture—steeped in humour and irony. While the youths of Western rock want freedom, the punks anarchy, Japanese youth want growth and employment. This is the vibe this J-pop band is plugging into.

So it has not come as too much of a shock to me to discover the Japanese office of ADVFN—which has a stock market information site based in Tokyo—has discovered a J-pop band that considers the performance of the Nikkei as important as their producers performance at the mixing desk.

Called Machikado Keiki , meaning “the street corner economists of Japan,” and also potentially a play on words meaning, “give them cake.” The band is made up of four pretty women lead by 20-year old University student Sakura Yuki.

Part of their sales pitch is that as the economy gets better, their skirts get shorter.

“So when the Nikkei goes below 9,000 we wear long skirts; when it's between 10 and 11,000 we go medium-length, and miniskirts when it’s 11 to 13,000.”

The four young Abenomics devotees dress in giant glittery bow-ties and denim mini-skirts and hand out fliers in Tokyo’s central Akihabara district. When the Nikkei hit 15,000 the band gave out 1,000 cakes and wore French underwear to celebrate.

A Band Called Death

Drafthouse Films

Punk before punk existed—three teenage brothers in the early ’70s formed a band in their spare bedroom, began playing a few local gigs in Detroit and even pressed a single in the hopes of getting signed. But this was the era of Motown and emerging disco. Record companies found Death’s music— and band name—too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even completed one album.

A Band Called Death chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Playing music impossibly ahead of its time, Death is now being credited as the first black punk band (hell...the first punk band!), and are finally receiving their long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.

Like Sixto Rodriguez of Searching for Sugarman, The Hackneys brothers are from Detroit. They were preacher’s kids, devout Christians (Jehovah’s Witnesses) raised in a classic working-class black neighborhood. They didn’t have white friends or go to a white school or anything; they must have stuck out at concerts by Alice Cooper and the Who.

Unlocking the Truth

Unlocking the Truth is a young heavy metal/hard rock band from Brooklyn, New York, who write and create their own lyrics and music. The boys are in the 6th grade and they’re pretty good students too.

Kanye West | I Am A God

Oliver Age 24 | Acapella Cover of Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”

Colin Huggins | Street Pianist

Colin Huggins

Student Plays With Billy Joel

Inside Vandy

Lifelong Billy Joel fan Michael Pollack stood up to ask his childhood idol a question during the Piano Man's recent Q&A at Vanderbilt University. Pollack, a piano player himself, asked Joel if he could accompany him in a performance of “New York State of Mind” — Pollack’s favorite song.

My roommate and I decided that we would try and find a way to get a question to be asked, and see if we could get on stage. And the day came, I put together a question, and I was raising my hand, and my friends to the right of me kept pointing to me, and finally after a few questions he picked on me and I hesitantly said how “New York State of Mind” was my favorite song, and how I had performed it with his saxophonist Richie Cannata in the past and wondered if I could go up and play it with him. And then he thought for a little — he took a second — and then he just said “Okay.” Which wasn’t quite convincing, but it was good enough. I walked up, we spoke about the arrangement for about 15 seconds — he just went through what he wanted me to play — and then…