Soundcheck

It was 50 years ago today, that the Sergeant taught the band to -- sorry, wrong anniversary.  On February 7, 1964, The Beatles landed at the newly-renamed JFK Airport to cries of "Elvis Is Dead, Stay With Us Forever" and other well-wishes. The band's performance, two days later, on the Ed Sullivan Show is now part of rock 'n' roll legend.  In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Allan Kozinn -- New York Times cultural critic and author of a biography of The Beatles -- puts the Fab Four's visit in context. Hindsight being 20/20, watch archival footage of the band's arrival and ask yourself, with NBC's Chet Huntley, "what the fuss was about":   Interview Highlights New York Times critic Allan Kozinn, on a coincidental also-ran from The Beatles' first Ed Sullivan Show performance: In the first show, there was a scene from Oliver!, which starred Georgia Brown, but also the Artful Dodger was a young David Jones, who later became Davy Jones of The Monkees. So it's kind of interesting that on that one show you had The Beatles and their eventual TV imitators.  On why classical music authorities like Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein, et al, were excited by The Beatles: I think they saw that there was something going on there: interesting harmonic progressions... The Beatles tended, except in few cases, to avoid the basic I-IV-V progression that is the blues progression, the heart of a lot of rock. They tended to like unusual chords, unusual harmonies, they were great melodists. Leonard Bernstein called them "the Schuberts of our time."

Over a five-decade career and 15 albums now, Steve Earle's songs have carried the weight of his past struggles with addiction, incarceration and heartbreak. You can hear it in his world-weary voice and his bleak but honest lyrics. But you can also hear a songwriter ruminating over the pain, the demons and frustrations over socio-political issues as a means of telling listeners they are not alone. It's emotional and aching music, yet uplifting simultaneously. With his latest album, last year's The Low Highway, Earle returns with many new original songs, this time, with his live band The Dukes (& Duchesses). The record also showcases two songs -- "Love's Gonna Blow My Way" and "After Mardi Gras" -- which Earle co-wrote with Lucia Micarelli, his co-star on the HBO series Treme. That song, and a third "That All You Got," were written specifically for the show. All together, it's yet another terrific collection of songs that demonstrates why Earle's become one of the elder-statesmen of alt-country and folk. Hear Steve Earle -- currently playing a series of all-request shows at New York's City Winery -- perform the title track from The Low Highway, plus a couple older favorites, in the Soundcheck studio.   For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page. Set List: "Steve's Hammer (For Pete)" "The Low Highway" "Valentine's Day"  

Michael Bloomfield grew up in relatively wealthy, suburban Chicago in the 1950's, but he was always drawn more to the gritty clubs on the city's South Side than to the trappings of a middle-class lifestyle. Those clubs were home to blues greats like Muddy Waters and Sleepy John Estes. Bloomfield apprenticed himself to these bluesmen, and soon, this young, Jewish, white kid was one of the finest guitarists of his generation. Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke calls him "rock's greatest forgotten guitar hero" -- a hero even to greats like Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana.  While most people are familiar with Bob Dylan's iconoclastic "Dylan goes electric" performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, fewer know that that's Bloomfield making all that glorious noise. He was Dylan's man on rock milestones "Like A Rolling Stone" and a blazing "Maggie's Farm."  Bloomfield went on to pioneer some of the most far-out and daring electric guitar work of the 1960's, but his star faded in the '70s, due in equal parts to changing trends and his own self-sabotaging tendencies. He was dead by 1981, at just 36. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Fricke reflects on the lasting legacy of Mike Bloomfield, as documented in a new box set From His Head To His Heart To His Hands.   Click here to listen to David Fricke's personal playlist of Mike Bloomfield gems.  View the trailer for the new documentary about Mike Bloomfield, Sweet Blues:

Jason Isbell got his start with the alt-country and Southern-rock band Drive-By Truckers, and he says that during those years, he was regularly drunk on stage. But now, after years of alcoholism, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter has gotten sober, is newly married to songwriter Amanda Shires, and leads his new band The 400 Unit. On his latest solo album, the superb Southeastern, Isbell details his longtime struggles with a new emotional openness. That record turned many heads and found itself on many a best of 2013 list, thanks to threadbare songs and honest -- sometimes even humorous -- recountings of his former destructive lifestyle, maintaining relationships and confronting darkness and weakness. The result is among Isbell’s best work yet. Hear Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires perform songs from Southeastern in the Soundcheck studio. Set List: "Live Oak" "Different Days" "Elephant"

Pussy Riot is not a punk band. It's an anonymous collective of Russian political dissidents, open to all women, who don neon balaclavas and stage a variety of provocative public stunts that highlight hypocrisy, sexism, and cronyism in Russian government and society.  But, as Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen explains, Pussy Riot gained notoriety as something very much resembling a punk band, and they enjoyed imagining what a modern "riot grrrl" act might sound like in Moscow, in the vein of Bikini Kill or Sleater-Kinney. The result was a series of crescendoing public performances in Moscow in late 2011 and early 2012, culminating in a highly controversial performance of a song called "Punk Prayer" in the central cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church. The song includes the refrain, "Mother of God, chase Putin away!" Nadezhda 'Nadya' Tolokonnikova and Maria "Masha" Alyokhina -- the co-organizers and creators of Pussy Riot -- were tried in what Gessen calls a "witch trial in the 21st century," and they were eventually sentenced to two years in hard labor camps.  Nadya's final line in her closing testimony affirmed her belief, quoting the author of The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, that "in the end, words will break cement." Words Will Break Cement: The Passion Of Pussy Riot is Masha Gessen's account of Pussy Riot's creation, agitation, and incarceration, based on extensive and exclusive correspondence with Nadya and Maria. In a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Gessen explains the origins of Pussy Riot, puts them in their cultural (and musical) context, and highlights Nadya's and Maria's calls for a full boycott of the Sochi Olympic Games.  Watch the trailer for the documentary film Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer:  

Before the Berlin Wall came down, before the Iron Curtain crumbled, there were already cracks in the foundation of the Soviet Union. An entire culture of unofficial and often illegal writing, music, and lectures existed underground, via handmade books and pamphlets and home-made recordings on Dictaphones and cassettes. The term Samizdat was coined in the late 1940's to describe this material -- the term is shorthand for the Russian words for “self-published.” The musical material was occasionally termed Magnitizdat, though it too was part of the DIY, uncensored, countercultural Samizdat aesthetic. The Samizdat exhibit at George Washington University’s Gelman Library was put together by Mark Yoffe, Curator of the International Counterculture Archive and the Soviet Samizdat Archive of the Global Resources Center, George Washington University Libraries. The exhibit focuses on printed Samizdat, but the archive also houses the largest American collection of audio Samizdat/Magnitizdat material. As part of our From Russia With Soundcheck week, Yoffe talks about Samizdat movement and provided us with this list of key songs and bands.   Akvarium, "This Train Is On Fire"  Leningrad/St.Petersburg, 1979-present, late 80's recording   Kino, "Changes! [We Demand Changes!]"  Leningrad/St.Petersburg, 1983-1991, 1988 recording       Zvuki Mu, "Gray Dove"  Moscow, 1980-91, late '80s recording     Nol' (Zero), "Boogie-Woogie" Moscow, 1983-93, 1988 recording   Grazhdanskaya oborona (Civil Defense), "Everything Goes According to the Plan" Frontman: Yegor Letov, Siberian, late '80s recording       Rada and Ternovnik (Blackthorn), "Our Souls Were Sitting" Moscow, 1996-present, 2008 recording         Auktsyon, "Roads" Leningrad/St. Petersburg, 1980-present, 1996 recording     Pelageia, "It Is Not The Evening"  Moscow, present, 2012 recording     Leningrad, "WWW" St. Ptersburg, 2002-present      Strannye Igry (Strange Games), "Watch Out!" Leningrad, 1980-1987, 1986 recording

Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor spent her early childhood in the Soviet Union -- but even after she immigrated to the U.S. in 1989, her family continued to listen to the music of their native Russia. She tells Soundcheck host John Schaefer about one particularly important musical figure to her family -- Vladimir Vysotsky, who some have described as the "Bob Dylan of Russia." Although he started out as a well known film actor, he quickly became renowned as a singer whose satirical and often politically pointed songs became beloved throughout the USSR -- despite their politically dangerous messages.    Regina Spektor, on the importance of Vladimir Vysotsky to her and her family:  He's still to this day one of my greatest musical heroes. I think he's one of the most talented and brilliant singers of the last century. It's interesting because even though he died in 1980, and I was born in 1980, I feel like I overlapped with him because he was such a part of my daily life in Russia and when we immigrated. We couldn't bring a lot of things, we were very limited in our luggage, everybody had like one outfit, but we had a ton of Vysotsky cassettes, because everybody prioritizes what they need and my parents really prioritized culture.  On the nature of his protest songs and their impact on his place in Soviet society:  He was extremely subversive. He occupied a fascinating place in the culture because he wrote extremely anti-establishment songs, but they were so witty and so entertaining that I think that the establishment itself was just so entertained by him that they -- he was in this uncomfortable position -- he was also a pet. He was just too good to be eliminated and stifled.      On the lasting importance of Vysotsky and his music in Russia today:  I would say he's still to this day the most iconic hero of the Russian people. I don't think anyone has come [close] since in popular culture in any way. I think he's sort of up there with -- there's Pushkin and there's Tchaikovsky and there's Tolstoy, and then there's Vysotsky. I think that's where he sits. Every single person you'll ever ask about him in Russia will know his name. 

Hospitality just dropped it's second record, Trouble, but you're only in trouble if you don't like warm harmonies, atmospheric synths, and driving rhythms.  While the Brooklyn band's 2012 debut garnered comparisons with Vampire Weekend, Trouble finds Hospitality's songs a touch edgier, more expansive, and perhaps less evocative of green fields than of dark and inviting highways. The trio, made up of Amber Papini, Nathan Michel and Brian Betancourt, make as much use of silence as noise, drawing the listener in to explore the recessive corners of their new work, while the rhythm section propels the tunes with equally deft references to 1980's dance music and 70's rock clubs.  Hear Hospitality perform in the Soundcheck studio to play from its adventurous new album.   Set List: "Sullivan" "Nightingale" "Going Out"   Hospitality is performing as part of a collaboration with Face The Music on Friday in WNYC's Greene Space.

In his new comic memoir, Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart recounts his family’s life in the Soviet Union and their eventual move to New York in 1979. Shteyngart joins us with a Pick Three playlist of songs with connections to Leningrad, Queens and, of all things, ABBA.     ABBA, "Money, Money, Money" The Iron Curtain was a serious iron curtain: You couldn’t get anything through from the West. But for some reason, ABBA, which was based in nearby Sweden, did make it through. Actually, it was Russian cover bands doing ABBA. So you’d hear things like … [does impression of Russian lounge singer singing “Money, Money, Money”]. What a great song for somebody who’s preparing to leave Soviet Russia for the United States, with its turbo capitalism: "So I must leave / I’ll have to go / To Las Vegas or Monaco / And win a fortune in a game / My life will never be the same." Our English wasn’t quite good enough to crack open the nut of what Las Vegas or Monaco represented, but this song was perfect. I think every immigrant to America should get an MP3 recording of “Money, Money, Money.”     "Pust Vsegda Budet Solntse" (May There Always Be Sunshine) This is a song that all Russian schoolchildren learned to sing. The lyrics are very simple: “May there always be sunshine / May there always be blue skies / May there always be mama / May there always be me.” So, four-point program of good stuff that kids love: sunshine, which we never had in Leningrad because it was frozen 24/7. Blue skies, which we never had for similar reasons. But we did have mama, and we loved our mamas. “May there always be me” is a really interesting, kind of existential kind of lyric. This was sung by Young Pioneers, a proto-communist group that I was dying to get into when I was a kid because you got to wear this red scarf around your neck and sing songs like “May There Always Be Sunshine.” Later, [the song] was taken up by the American Left.     "Afn Pripetchek" (written by M. Warshavsky) After they emigrated to the United States, the Shteyngart family received support from an orthodox synagogue in Kew Gardens, Queens. In return, young Gary and his parents were asked to perform a program in the synagogue’s basement: They decided, here’s this musical family and the little boykid is supposed to be a genius at naming the capitals of the world. So we had this whole thing where my mother played piano in the synagogue basement, my father sang some Russian classics like Dark Eyes and this very sentimental Yiddish song "Afn Pripetchek." I love some of these lyrics, like “Learn children / Don’t be afraid / Every beginning is hard.” Which was perfect for a family that had moved to Kew Gardens from Leningrad. Afterwards, I was quizzed and I got I think four world capitals right, but then I had to name the capital of Chad – and I failed to do it. More: Gary Shteyngart took a stroll around his old neighborhood in Queens with WNYC reporter Mythili Rao. 

Real Estate's summery brand of indie pop draws its warmth from the veins of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell; the melodies are crisp, the guitars shimmering and Martin Courtney's lyrics are evocative. Since its last record, 2011’s Days, the original trio -- Courtney, Matt Mondanile, and Alex Bleeker -- has now expanded to a quintet, adding new full-time members Jackson Pollis on drums and Matt Kallman on keyboard. And after touring extensively on Days, Real Estate stopped off at Wilco’s Chicago studio The Loft last summer and fall to tease out a new batch of tunes with producer Tom Schick. Recorded in just two weeks, the result is Atlas, which is set to drop in March. Whether the title is a meditation on life on the road, or a display of dislocation between their origins in Ridgewood N.J. and their current home in New York, the album is an extension and outgrowth of Real Estate’s remarkably cohesive and easy-sound. And if the first single, the swooning "Talking Backwards," is any indication, the hallmarks of Days are there, but brighter: The mantra-like repetitive guitar licks, the damp drumming, the round bass -- and what can only be described as the ever-present sound of sunshine.      For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr page.   Set List: "Talking Backwards" "The Bend" "April's Song"

As we embark upon our From Russia, With Soundcheck lead-up week to the Sochi Olympics, we talk with Michael Idov, editor-in-chief of GQ magazine's Russian edition. The former New Yorker joins us from Moscow to give us a snapshot of the pop scene in Russia today, from aging ladykillers and budding young TV idols to Williamsburg-inspired foodie culture and underground hip hop.  On how Russia's pop music scene differs from its American counterpart:  The scene is really fractured here. It's fractured by age -- and it's fractured by class. The biggest stars in Russia... are Stas Mihailov, Vaenga, and Grigory Leps -- who, by the way, was recently called a "persona non grata" by the U.S. government for some shady dealings, so he's denied a visa for life. All of these three people really appeal to the 40-something, 50-something women demographic. And that demographic is huge enough and spendy enough to actually make them incredibly wealthy and very busy, concert-wise.    A recent video from Russian pop star Stas Mihailov.   On where young people in Russia get their music today: The main thing you need to know about the young people in Russia is that they get all their music through a social network called VKontakte, which is a clone of Facebook -- with one huge distinction -- it has a built in music player where you can pretty much listen to and stream just about everything that everybody else is listening to on that social network. It's completely illegal in a certain aspect, but it's basically a peer-to-peer network built into a social network, which is brilliant.    On popular music television shows in Russia today:  There's MTV -- there's a homegrown channel called Music TV which is an MTV by any other name; there's a homegrown licensed version of "The Voice," called "Golos," which is the Russian for, you guessed it, "The Voice," and it's a huge hit; there's a homegrown "American Idol"... all of these things are there, and they create stars just like their American and generally western counterparts do. For example, Nyusha is a huge pop star appealing to maybe a slightly younger demographic.    Singer Nyusha gained fame through Russian TV.   On pop stars' career longevity in Russia:  You have to remember that in Russia, no star is ever washed up.... Every time I would come to Russia, I would see these ads for various members of ABBA, and A-ha, and Boney M -- they're all here! -- Scorpions, Deep Purple... Russia is an alternative universe for all these guys who are still huge stars. And the homegrown stars are like that too. There's a woman named Natalie who was a big star about 20 years ago. And this year, she's had an enormous hit that basically you could hear coming out of every radio, every car, in the country, called "Oh My God, What A Man." 

Lawrence Brownlee is a major force in the opera world, playing leading roles rarely given to African-American singers and performing on the stages of the world's great opera houses. Playing and singing in roles of Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore and Idreno in Rossini’s Semiramide, Brownlee demonstrates a musical and technical prowess, thanks to his elegant and soaring voice and graceful command.   But Brownlee also has a love for African-American spirituals; he grew up in Youngstown, Ohio singing gospel music in church. On his latest recording, Spiritual Sketches, Brownlee returns to his first musical love with a collection of traditionals reinvented with his operatic vocals and some jazz-inflected arrangements by Damien Sneed. Hear Brownlee and Sneed perform selections from that record in an intimate session in the Soundcheck studio.

It was almost 30 years ago that the Chicago Bears had a legendary season – winning 15 games, crushing the Patriots at the Super Bowl – and, of course, releasing their huge rap hit, "The Super Bowl Shuffle." In perhaps the weirdest turn of events ever, the Bears that year became the first-ever American professional sports team to ever have a hit single… or a rap video… or a Grammy nomination.     Well, if that’s not weird enough for you, how about this: now, 29 years later, radio host Sean Cannon of WFPK in Louisville, Kentucky, has produced an all-star cover of the "Shuffle' -- featuring artists as diverse as My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and the internet-famous cat Lil Bub. We talk with Sean about this rather unusual collaborative effort -- and about the history of the original song. (Take a listen to Sean's new Super Bowl Shuffle cover below.)     Plus: We revisit a conversation that we had with NPR sports correspondent Mike Pesca about other examples of athletes taking a shot at a musical career -- from Serena Williams' "leaked" rap, to Manny Pacquiao's soft rock balladry.  

Like its cute namesake implies, Quilt's music is a deeply layered patchwork: There's hints of Eastern rhythms, gauzy pop, and traditional folk music. But mostly, Quilt's songs lean on the strains of 1960's psychedelic rock and folk with touches of The Byrds, Skip Spence, The Zombies, or the Mamas and the Papas. But despite these references to West Coast pop and the Summer of Love, Quilt was born in Boston, where the band --Anna Fox Rochinski, Shane Butler, and John Andrews -- met studying at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.  After its very fine 2011 debut, Quilt now returns with its follow-up, Held In Splendor, an album recorded last spring at Mexican Summer's studio in Brooklyn. Listening to colorful multi-part songs like "Arctic Shark" or "Tie Up The Tides," it's easy to hear that transition to warmer weather -- this is lovely music that blossoms with wind-swept orchestral flourishes and seamless vocal harmonies. With Held In Splendor (out Jan. 28), Quilt creates a dreamy but familiar musical world that envelops your headphones; one you'll find yourself turning to for comfort time and again. Hear the band play songs from its latest album in the Soundcheck studio.   For more photos, visit Soundcheck's Tumblr. Set List: "Arctic Shark" "Tired & Buttered" "Tie Up The Tides"

Sunday night during the commercial breaks in the 2014 Grammy Awards telecast, Beats Music featured prominently, especially since it was co-founded by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. The new streaming music service launched last week, and for $10 a month, it promises a blend of algorithmic and human curation that will mean you'll never need another music source. But in a market crowded by Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, iTunes Radio, and many other options, how does Beats compare? Eliot Van Buskirk, editor at Evolver.fm, gives his first impressions after using the service for the last week.