The first music played on the moon. I freaked. | | | | The Moonglows, backstage at the Apollo Theater in 1957, when the moon seemed so far away.
(Gilles Petard/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | | | “The first music played on the moon. I freaked.”
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| | rantnrave:// Convenience has always ruled, even in outer space. The first song played on the moon, 50 years ago Saturday, was FRANK SINATRA and COUNT BASIE's 1964 version of BART HOWARD's "FLY ME TO THE MOON." The second man on the moon, BUZZ ALDRIN, played that first song on a SONY TC-50 portable cassette recorder, from a mixtape made for the APOLLO 11 crew by record executive and producer MICKEY KAPP. The cassette was a new technology, introduced in the US only five years earlier, and in those early days it had a reputation for sketchy audio quality. But cassettes were smaller than 8-track tapes and therefore better suited for travel in a tiny lunar module. The astronauts certainly weren't going to take a record player or a reel-to-reel to the moon. And they could use the same cassettes to make voice notes of the mission, which is what the TC-50 was doing in space in the first place. Middling audio quality, incredible convenience. It would be another decade before most of the earthbound world caught up to that formula with the SONY WALKMAN. And another two decades until they perfected it with the IPOD. Kapp, who had been making tapes for GEMINI and Apollo astronauts for several years before the moon landing, and who died a month ago, was ahead of his time in another, less noble way. He sourced master tapes for his mixes and compiled the cassettes in secret. The artists weren't paid. NEIL ARMSTRONG, who stepped on the moon 19 minutes before Aldrin, without a soundtrack, was either ahead of or behind his time with his appreciation for exotica music. He requested Kapp make him a tape of LES BAXTER and HARRY REVEL's 1947 theremin album MUSIC OUT OF THE MOON, which he played on the way there. Exotica had been popular in the '50s and early '60s and would be rediscovered by record collectors many years later. But in 1969, Mission Control thanked Armstrong "for turning it off"... The best moon playlist I've seen this week, courtesy NPR MUSIC... LINDA RONSTADT, EARTH WIND & FIRE and MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS are among the recipients of this year's KENNEDY CENTER HONORS... IHEARTMEDIA stock slightly up in its NASDAQ debut... It's FRIDAY and that means BEYONCÉ has curated a LION KING companion album for you... And, nicely timed, there's a remastered and greatly expanded version of BRIAN ENO's APOLLO: ATMOSPHERES & SOUNDTRACKS... And new music from THOM YORKE, MAXO KREAM, SAUL WILLIAMS, NAS, ADA LEA, the FLAMING LIPS, MURS & 9TH WONDER, TENDERLONIOUS, WILLOW, BLASTERJAXX, IGGY AZALEA, MIKE LOVE, GENERATIONALS, HUNNY, BABY KEEM, TUXEDO, SABATON, JENNY TOLMAN, SUM 41 and SCOTT STAPP... And the documentary DAVID CROSBY: REMEMBER MY NAME is in theaters. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| The Korean supergroup’s massive, devoted following has earned them comparisons to the Beatles. Why was I surprised to get swept up in their magic? | | |
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| Keep your eyes on the pop charts this week: A battle for No. 1 is coming, and there will be a story to tell no matter who wins. | | |
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| Long before Playlists were a thing, the astronauts aboard Apollo 11 chose their favorite tunes to listen to on the space flight and for their historic moon walk. They listened via a relatively new audio format—a cassette tape. | | |
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| While it’s common for tech companies to test out new ideas in public, the streaming giant has done so more than most. | | |
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| As the founder of KondZilla -- one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world -- Konrad Dantas turned the music of São Paulo’s slums into a Brazilian sensation. Now he wants to build a media empire -- and prove that “the favela has won." | | |
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| How 22-year-old Popcaan protégé Quada's versatility is helping him climb dancehall ranks. | | |
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| Sonos founder John MacFarlane's vision of a connected speaker that could wirelessly stream music was too seductive to resist for a broadband and connectivity junkie like me. Even before the product evolved from a concept to design, I was sold on the idea of Sonos and what it represented. | | |
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| Composer Hans Zimmer is seated at the mixing board at the Sony scoring stage, head bobbing to the music being performed by 107 musicians just a few yards away. He's wearing a vintage "Lion King World Tour" T-shirt, frayed at the collar. On the giant screen behind the orchestra, two lions are bounding across the African veldt. | | |
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| Last week, the exuberant rapper, singer, and flutist Lizzo hit a new peak in her breakout year when one of her singles finally reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Strangely though, the song that went the distance wasn't "Juice," the funky first single off her third studio album "Cuz I Love You." | | |
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| When white supremacists bombed Louis Armstrong. | | |
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| South Africa’s best-known musician has dedicated his life to crossing the lines separating white and black. | | |
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| In what should be his laid-back legacy years, Billy Joel has become a touring titan, filling stadiums and making history with his perpetually sold-out Madison Square Garden residency. No one’s more surprised than he is: “It’s a miracle.” | | |
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| Today's stars partner with global companies to maximize distribution, but it places hip-hop's entrepreneurial efforts in a dependent cycle. | | |
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| Tyler, The Creator reveals to Zane Lowe, the thoughts, feelings, and sounds making up his fifth album, 'IGOR.' | | |
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| Four years on from the last album, and with fans growing restless, Kevin Parker is still grappling with an all-consuming creative process -- one that means pushing himself to new extremes. | | |
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| In the modern age of audio, you can't move for mention of 'Hi-Res' and 24 bit-depth 'Studio Quality' music, but does anyone understand what that actually means? | | |
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| Seratones dedicate the video for new single “Power” to slain Baton Rouge curator Sadie Roberts-Joseph. | | |
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| Spoon frontman talks Beto, streaming, and 26 years of steadfast indie rock. | | |
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| The Nigerian star's unexpected appearance on the duo's surprise album united afrobeats and urbano. It came together, of course, because of the internet. | | |
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| Exploring radical turntablism in experimental music with Shiva Feshareki, Haroon Mirza, Philip Jeck and more. | | |
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| | | | | Julian with Tasso and His Big Orchestra |
| | Released in 1962, shortly after President John F. Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon" speech. |
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