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    After ‘Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,’ Stream These 8 Great Concert Movies

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    For that live show experience, these films capture exhilarating music by Beyoncé, Shakira, A Tribe Called Quest, Talking Heads and more.If you saw “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” in a theater and enjoyed the vicarious thrill of watching a concert onscreen, here are eight more films of live shows — picked by the Culture desk writers — that will give you a taste of the same experience.Beyoncé, ‘Homecoming’Available to stream on NetflixBeyoncé just announced a new concert film, due in December. Until then there’s her 2018 performance at Coachella. It was the stuff of legends. Marching bands! A Destiny’s Child reunion! So when “Homecoming” dropped on Netflix the next year, it truly felt like a gift. The film is one of intriguing contradictions, feeling both intimate and outsize at once. You see the painstaking hard work in every stunning piece of choreography and hear it in every breathtaking vocal, yet Queen Bey makes it look effortless. Mekado MurphyTalking Heads, ‘Stop Making Sense’In theatersWhat elevates “Stop Making Sense” — and what has made its recent 40th anniversary rerelease now in theaters such a sensation — is its formal elegance. David Byrne begins alone onstage with a tape player and, as fellow musicians gradually accrue with each song, ends as the large-suited ringleader of a rock ’n’ roll circus. The director Jonathan Demme knows he doesn’t need spectacle or special effects to transfix: He just allows each frame to fill with the charisma of a great band. Lindsay Zoladz‘Summer of Soul’Available to stream on Disney+ and HuluIf 1970’s “Woodstock” is one of the defining concert documentaries, “Summer of Soul,” released in 2021, acts as a sort of complement and rejoinder to it. Questlove’s Oscar-winning film exuberantly unearths footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival — which took place the same summer as Woodstock — and cuts together some of the most extraordinary performances from artists like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone and so many more. Questlove includes interviews with participants and attendees that contextualize the sets musically and historically, but the film’s power is the ability to make you feel as if you are in the crowd even if you are just sitting on your couch. Esther ZuckermanThe Rolling Stones, ‘Gimme Shelter’Available to stream on MaxThis 1970 documentary directed by the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin is known as something of a Zapruder film for the death of the ’60s, with its footage of a killing at the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway a year earlier. Still, the movie’s great music gets across the promise that was lost: Mick Jagger in an Uncle Sam top hat and a long lavender scarf, hip-thrusting his way through “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” The Flying Burrito Brothers raving up “Six Days on the Road” when it still seemed like Altamont could be “the greatest party of 1969.” And most explosively, Tina Turner, singing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and giving a microphone the time of its life. David Renard‘Depeche Mode: 101’Available to stream or rent on major platformsThe Music for the Masses tour brought the British synth band’s yearning songs — reverberating like confessional hymns in a cathedral — to the Rose Bowl and beyond in 1987-88. “Depeche Mode: 101” takes in the smokily lighted shows (with lead singer Dave Gahan in a billowing white shirt) and the bright-eyed “bus kids,” fans who went along for the ride. D.A. Pennebaker tunes into the heartbeat of Depeche Mode’s electronic sound, co-directing with Chris Hegedus and David Dawkins. Nicolas Rapold‘Rage Against the Machine: The Battle of Mexico City’Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.I would wager this is the only concert film, directed by Joe DeMaio, that periodically cuts away from the performance to show documentary segments about the Zapatistas, the rebel political group of southern Mexico. Tonally, it’s a turn-of-the-century time capsule: The frenetic live footage (recorded in 1999 and released in 2001) seems to have been edited by a can of Red Bull. But the band’s knockout blend of overt leftist ideology and inventive, funky rap-over-metal holds up. Look for the guitarist Tom Morello’s rhythmic tapping of the unplugged tip of his guitar cable to make music, like somebody using the board game Operation as an instrument. Gabe Cohn‘Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest’Available to stream on the Criterion ChannelMichael Rapaport’s documentary about the groundbreaking rap group A Tribe Called Quest isn’t exactly a concert film per se, but it is bookended by a pair of critical tours: a 2008 run that rapper Q-Tip bitterly declares backstage is its last performance ever, and another in 2010 that sees the trio cautiously reuniting. In between is a vibrant tribute, particularly enhanced after Phife Dawg’s death in 2016, and a no-frills look at the story of a singular group that changed hip-hop, even as success distanced them from one another. Brandon Yu‘Shakira: Live From Paris’Available to rent or buy on most major platformsIf Shakira’s recent performance at the MTV Video Music Awards impressed you, this 2011 release will floor you. Singing in three languages (often while dancing vigorously) and playing multiple instruments, the Colombian megastar commands the stage with a magnetic intensity. There isn’t much artifice on display here, only Shakira surrendering her entire body to the vitality of her genre-defying, globally inspired music. Take as proof her sensational belly dancing during “Ojos Así” or her transition from tenderness to fury in the rock ballad “Inevitable.” Carlos Aguilar More

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      Talking Heads Reunite for Restored ‘Stop Making Sense’

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      Appearing together for the first time since 2002, the band celebrated the film in a Q. and A. with Spike Lee at the Toronto International Film Festival.The hottest ticket at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival was not for the new auteur film from Hayao Miyazaki or Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the latest vehicle for Kate Winslet or Sean Penn, or grand prizewinners at Cannes and Venice. No, the most feverishly in-demand screening was for a 39-year-old movie that everyone in its sold-out audience could have watched at home, at the push of a button.But this isn’t just any 39-year-old movie. “Stop Making Sense,” directed by Jonathan Demme, is widely considered to be one of the finest examples of the form, a joyful documentation (and celebration) of Talking Heads’ 1983 tour supporting their album “Speaking in Tongues.” The Toronto festival screening marked the debut of A24’s new restoration of the film ahead of its theatrical and IMAX rerelease later this month.But the real draw in Toronto was the band’s reunion for a Q. and A. conducted by Spike Lee after the screening (and simulcast to IMAX theaters across the globe). “This is the greatest concert film ever!” he enthused with the musicians sitting next to him. “I can say that! You might not want to, but for me, I’m going on record, around the world: this is the greatest concert film ever.”The 25-minute chat was the first time the band members had appeared together since they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. That reunion was an event in itself, following what the frontman David Byrne recently described, with characteristic understatement, as an “ugly” breakup in 1991. His former bandmates haven’t been quite so delicate. In 2020, the drummer Chris Frantz published a memoir in which he accused Byrne of frequently diminishing the contributions of his fellow musicians, while the bassist Tina Weymouth referred to him as, among many other slurs, “a vampire.” (Byrne has since granted that he was “more of a little tyrant” in those early years.)But in Toronto, it was all good vibes for Byrne, Frantz and Weymouth (who are married) and the keyboardist and guitarist Jerry Harrison. “I’m very grateful to be here tonight, and to be able to watch this and to enjoy it so much,” Frantz said warmly at the beginning of the conversation. Byrne concurred: “When I was watching this just now, I was thinking, this is why we come to the movie theaters. This is different than watching it on my laptop!”And indeed it was. From the opening image — of Byrne’s scuffed-up white sneakers striding onto the stage, as he sets down a boombox and announces, “Hi, I got a tape I wanna play” — seeing “Stop Making Sense” in IMAX was like seeing it anew. The image, blown up from the original 35-millimeter negatives, was crisp and rich; the sound, an early digital audio recording, felt like it had been laid down last night. The restless, roving, participatory nature of Demme’s cameras make it much more than a standard concert documentary. It’s an exhilarating record of a group of talented people, at the peak of their considerable powers, having a great time making groundbreaking music that you can still dance to.A scene from “Stop Making Sense,” which was restored from the original negatives and shown in IMAX on Monday in Toronto.via A24Demme, who died at 73 in 2017, was attracted to the material, Byrne recalled, because the show they’d assembled told a story, with a beginning, middle and end. The picture starts, quite literally, with the forming of the band, as Byrne is joined by each additional member, one by one, and their show is built out from the bare stage on which it begins. By the midpoint, this odd little man and his friends have become a family, and when Byrne sings the kind and welcoming lyrics of “This Must Be the Place” (“Home/is where I want to be/but I guess I’m already there”), it’s as heartfelt and moving an emotional beat as you’ll find in any narrative film.Byrne recalled realizing that Demme, working with the editor Lisa Day, was actually making an ensemble film. “Like, you would have a bunch of actors in a location and you get to know each character, one by one,” Byrne explained, adding, “You get familiar with them, and then you watch how they all interact with one another. And I thought, I’m in my own world. But he saw that, he saw what was going on there.”The sheer visceral impact of the filmmaking, when shown at IMAX proportions, was staggering as well. Demme’s striking, out-of-the-box lighting choices and close-up compositions are jaw-dropping on the big screen, and Byrne comes across as even more like a (seemingly impossible) movie star, from his first reveal in the iconic Big Suit (“It was really big tonight,” Frantz quipped) to his serpentine slithering during “Life During Wartime.” He’s aware of the camera and plays to it savvily — not just singing the band’s songs, but performing them (and understanding the difference).But he’s far from the only attraction, and the detail of the IMAX restoration (coupled with Demme’s preference for long takes and wide shots) provides the viewer with plenty of opportunities to observe the dynamics, throughout the frame, between the group, additional musicians like the keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and the crew. The cameras capture their nonverbal communication, the little cues and asides and flashes of encouragement they’re throwing at one another through the entire show.“There’s all these moments that he caught, where one of us looks at the other, looks over at Bernie or Bernie looks at us, all those little quick interactions,” Byrne marveled. “And I thought, that stuff is amazing.”From left, Frantz, Weymouth, Harrison and Byrne reunited on the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival.Shawn Goldberg/Getty ImagesHarrison said that “one of the reasons for the lasting power of the film is you see that we are having so much fun onstage,” adding that “the audience is brought right into it. We say, you’re part of this too. And I think that every time anybody watches it, it brings back that wonderful emotion.”That was certainly the case in Toronto. The rowdy crowd applauded every number, cheered for the band’s introductions and clapped along with the breakdown in “Take Me to the River.” One guy hollered, “Encore!” when the movie ended.Both “Once in a Lifetime” and “Burning Down the House” brought audience members to their feet, just like their onscreen counterparts, to dance in the aisles. To be fair, they’re very hard songs to not dance to. In the seventh row, at his aisle seat, David Byrne was on his feet with them, bobbing his head and rocking back and forth, once more, for old times’ sake. More

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      Talking Heads on the Return of ‘Stop Making Sense’

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      The 40th-anniversary restoration of a great concert film is a funk spectacle. It has also united the band, which split in 1991, to discuss a landmark achievement.Four decades after it was filmed, “Stop Making Sense,” the Talking Heads concert documentary, is still ecstatic and strange. “It stays kind of relevant, even though it doesn’t make literal sense,” David Byrne, the band’s leader and singer, said in a recent interview.The film, which was directed by Jonathan Demme, has been restored from its long-lost original negatives and this new version will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, then play in regular and IMAX theaters later this month. An expanded audio album, out Sept. 15, now includes the entire concert set, with two tracks omitted from the movie: “Cities” and a medley of “Big Business” and “I Zimbra.” Refreshing its peak performance, the band hopes to draw one more generation of fans to its irresistible funk grooves and youthful ambitions.“Stop Making Sense” is both a definitive 1980s period piece and a prophecy. Its staging helped reshape pop concerts in its wake. The music hot-wired rock, funk and African rhythms, while the fractured, non sequitur lyrics glanced at, among many other things, disinformation (“Crosseyed and Painless”), evangelicalism (“Once in a Lifetime”), authoritarianism (“Making Flippy Floppy”) and environmental disaster (“Burning Down the House”).“Sometimes we write things and we don’t know what they’re about until afterwards,” Byrne said. “There’s a sense of a premonition. I’ve looked at things I’ve written and I go, ‘Oh. That’s about something that happened in my life after I wrote the song.’”There had been choreographed soul revues and big-stage concert spectacles long before Talking Heads mounted their 1983 tour supporting the album “Speaking in Tongues.” But Byrne envisioned something different: a performance influenced by the stylized gestures of Asian theater and the anti-naturalistic, avant-garde stage tableaus of Robert Wilson. (Talking Heads hired Wilson’s lighting designer, Beverly Emmons.)Talking Heads and the “Stop Making Sense” live band. From left: Steve Scales, Bernie Worrell, Jerry Harrison, Ednah Holt, David Byrne, Lynn Mabry, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Alex Weir.Sire Records/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesByrne storyboarded each song. The first part of the show demystified the production, with backstage equipment visible and a stage crew wheeling in instruments and risers as the band expanded with each song. Then, with everyone in place, the concert turned into a surreal dance party, capped by Byrne’s appearance in an oversized, squared-off, very floppy suit — an everyday American variation on the geometric costumes of Japanese Noh theater.Demme’s cameras were poised to catch every goofy move and appreciative glance between musicians. Now that most big concerts are video-ready extravaganzas, that might seem normal. In 1983, it was startling.Only a few years earlier, Talking Heads were unlikely candidates to mount a tautly plotted rock spectacle. When the band made its reputation playing the Bowery club CBGB, its members dressed like preppies and looked self-conscious and nervous.Formed in the art-school atmosphere of the Rhode Island School of Design, Talking Heads always had conceptual intentions. In a video interview from his studio, the keyboardist and guitarist Jerry Harrison said, “When I joined the band, I knew that we were going to be an important band, and that we would be artistically successful. I had no idea what kind of commercial success we’d have. All of us were pretty familiar with the art world, where there are painters who never in their lifetime were financially secure. And that was our goal at that point.”Byrne was purposely stiff and twitchy onstage. “When the band started, I was not going to try and use the movement vocabulary from rock stars or R&B stars,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can’t do that. They’re better at it. They’ve established it. I have to come up with my own thing that expresses who I am: a slightly angsty white guy.’”“Looking at my younger self is a really strange experience,” Byrne said. “He’s doing things that are profoundly odd, but kind of inventive.”via RhinoBut in the fast-forward downtown New York culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s — punk! disco! minimalism! hip-hop! art! theater! world music! — Talking Heads rapidly evolved from a thumping, yelping, skeletal pop-rock band into something more rhythmic, funky and far-reaching.Byrne and the band equally appreciated the Southern roots and deep eccentricity of the Memphis soul singer Al Green — who wrote the band’s first radio hit, “Take Me to the River” — and the calibrated repetitions of James Brown, Philip Glass and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The band enlisted the equally open-eared Brian Eno as a producer and collaborator to extend its sonic palette and songwriting strategies — which, in turn, led Talking Heads to add musicians onstage.If there’s a narrative to “Stop Making Sense,” it’s of a freaked-out loner who eventually finds joy in community. The concert starts with Byrne singing “Psycho Killer” alone, to a drum-machine track, with a sociopathic stare. By the end of the show, he’s surrounded by singing, dancing, smiling musicians and singers, carried by one groove after another.“In a culture that’s so much about the individual, and the self, and my rights,” Byrne said, “to find a parallel thing that is really about giving, losing yourself and surrendering to something bigger than yourself is kind of extraordinary. And you realize, ‘Oh, this is what a lot of the world is about — surrendering to something spiritual, or community or music or dance, and letting go of yourself as an individual. You get a real reward when that happens. It’s a real ecstatic, transcendent feeling.”The band filmed a rehearsal and three live concerts at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Then they chose the best audio and video takes.via Rhino“Stop Making Sense” has been released on multiple iterations of home video technology — VHS, DVD, Blu-ray — but their sound and video were often lacking. For the new restoration, the production and distribution company A24 employed a forensic film expert to track down the film’s original negatives. They were stored, inexplicably, at an Oklahoma warehouse owned by MGM, a company that never had business dealings with Talking Heads. The images have gained clarity, contrast and depth.“I noticed you can see things that you couldn’t see even in the original version,” said Chris Frantz, the band’s drummer, in a video interview from his home studio. “Now you can see every little detail of the back of the stage.”When “Stop Making Sense” was first released, in 1984, audiences treated it like a concert, applauding between songs and getting up to dance. The band and Demme chose to dispense with the concert-film convention of cutting to interviews or backstage interactions or, especially, to happy, well-lighted audience members; they only show up in the last few minutes. Demme avoided that, Byrne said, because “it’s telling the film viewer what they’re supposed to be feeling.”The band and Demme filmed a rehearsal and three live concerts at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Then they chose the best audio and video takes. They weren’t always the same ones, but the timing each night was almost exact. “Chris was very consistent, even though he never played to a click track,” said Tina Weymouth, the band’s bassist, in an interview from the home she shares with Frantz, her husband.“The sync is not perfect,” Harrison said. “We could go digitally now and make this perfect. But would we want to disturb the historical quality to update it with what technology can do now? And we, of course, decided not to.”via RhinoThe tour’s technology was primitive by modern standards. The rear-screen visuals came from slide projectors; the lights were unfiltered. The show didn’t have a choreographer; Byrne and the backup singers, Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt, had worked out some moves while dancing around his loft before the tour, while others emerged as it progressed. The show didn’t have a costume designer, either; the musicians were instructed to find clothes in neutral tones, mostly grays. But according to Weymouth, Frantz’s laundry hadn’t come back in time for the first show at the Pantages, and he ended up wearing a blue shirt all three nights for continuity.Yet the band had the foresight to record the music on digital equipment, then in its early stages. Digital recording meant the sound quality could stay intact through the multiple generations involved in mixing for film, and it’s one reason the movie has aged so well.But the main reason “Stop Making Sense” has maintained its reputation as one of the greatest concert movies is the nutty jubilation of the performances. The musicians in the expanded band — Alex Weir on guitar, Steve Scales on percussion and Bernie Worrell on keyboards — are anything but self-effacing sidemen; they’re gleeful co-conspirators. And the sheer physicality of the concert, the performers’ sweat and stamina, comes through onscreen; in “Life During Wartime,” Byrne runs laps around the 40-by-60-foot stage at full speed.“Looking at my younger self is a really strange experience,” Byrne said. “He’s doing things that are profoundly odd, but kind of inventive. But also, he’s very serious and intent on what he’s doing.” He pointed out that until the last third of the movie, he doesn’t smile much. “The joy is not visibly apparent, but it’s there,” he said. “I mean, I have enough memory to remember that.”Jerry Harrison said that Talking Heads “had the ability to become one of the biggest bands in the world at that point, touring bands.”via RhinoFor all its artistic importance, the tour was not profitable. “We made zero,” Weymouth said. There was a large crew and three semi trucks full of equipment; some tour proceeds cofinanced the movie. It also turned out to be the final Talking Heads tour. “I also think that we had the ability to become one of the biggest bands in the world at that point, touring bands,” Harrison said. “I think there was a lost opportunity that would have been fun for all of us.”He added, “There also might be the element that once ‘Stop Making Sense’ came out so great, it was like, ‘How do we top this? Is the next thing going to seem like a disappointment?’ I don’t know if that was what was going through anybody’s minds, but I know that we ended up not touring ever again.”Talking Heads made three more albums, the Americana-flavored “Little Creatures” and “True Stories” and the Afro-Parisian-tinged “Naked.” After Byrne dissolved the band in 1991 — “an ugly breakup,” he told People magazine — the other three members made an album, “No Talking Just Head,” billed as the Heads. Byrne sued over the name, though the suit was eventually dropped.The band did regroup to perform in 2002 when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and the 40th anniversary of “Stop Making Sense” has helped further mend fences; the band members will appear together to discuss the movie in Toronto on Monday.“Divorces are never easy,” Byrne said. “We get along OK. It’s all very cordial and whatever. It’s not like we’re all best friends. But everybody’s very happy to see this film coming back out. We’re all united in the fact that we really love what we did here. So that kind of helps us talk to one another and get along.” More

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      13 (Great) Songs With Parenthetical Titles

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      How Radiohead, Whitney Houston, Meat Loaf and others made a point with punctuation.Radiohead’s Thom Yorke: (Nice pic.)Mario Ruiz/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,Today’s playlist is devoted to one of my absolute favorite musical conventions: the parenthetical song title.Why use parenthesis when naming a song? There are so many reasons. Sometimes it’s a rather brazen way to remind a listener of the song’s hook, in case the title itself was too obscure: “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”But sometimes (and these are my favorite times) the motives are a bit more inscrutable. Does “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” really need that parenthesis? Would we not know what the Quad City DJs are singing about without the clarification “C’Mon ’N Ride It (The Train)”? Are the Kinks making fun of this whole convention with “(A) Face in the Crowd”?Plus, when we’re saying these song titles aloud, are we supposed to pause between title and subtitle, or just say the whole thing like a run-on sentence? Will you know which song I’m talking about when I say “Movin’ Out” or must I specify, “(Anthony’s Song)”? The mind boggles.This playlist is here to help you through all that confusion, and to celebrate some of the best and most inventive uses of the parenthetical song title. It features some of the obvious ones, from the likes of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Talking Heads, alongside a few of my lesser-known personal favorites from Charli XCX, Sonic Youth and more. I hope it provides at least one opportunity for you to (shake, shake, shake) shake your booty.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Whitney Houston: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”In the chorus of one of the most jubilant pop songs ever, Whitney Houston qualifies her initial demand — hey, I didn’t mean just anybody — and lays her heart on the line. Good on her for having high standards on the dance floor. (Listen on YouTube)2. R.E.M.: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”Michael Stipe learns to stop worrying and love (or at least feel fine about) the bomb in this cheerily apocalyptic hit from R.E.M.’s 1987 album “Document.” There are already so many words in this song, the parentheses seem to shrug, what’s a few more in the title? (Listen on YouTube)3. My Chemical Romance: “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”Gerard Way is (really, really, really) not OK in this 2004 emo-pop anthem, which asks listeners to imagine a sonic alternate universe in which Freddie Mercury fronted the Misfits. Though the parenthetical promise doesn’t appear in the song’s lyrics, it appropriately kicks up the overall feeling of excess and garrulous melodrama. (Listen on YouTube)4. Charli XCX: “You (Ha Ha Ha)”This title is poetry to me. From “True Romance,” the 2013 album by one of my favorite “middle class” pop stars, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” is a beautifully scathing kiss-off — as if the very mention of this person’s existence were an inside joke not even worth explaining. Savage. (Listen on YouTube)5. Bob Dylan: “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)”When it comes to parenthetical titles — as with just about every other element of songwriting — Bob Dylan is an expert. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is an all-timer; “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” is a classic; “Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others)” is a clever co-mingling of the sacred and profane. But this one, from his 1964 album “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” is probably my favorite. I love the way the title switches from second to third person inside the parenthesis, as if he’s turning to the audience in the middle of a conversation and mouthing, “Can you believe her?!” It mimics a similar perspective shift in the song itself, when, in the penultimate verse, Dylan goes from singing about this woman to suddenly singing to her: “If you want me to, I can be just like you,” he sings, “and pretend that we never have touched.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”Recorded days before his untimely death, the parenthetical prefix of Otis Redding’s enduring swan song not only specifies what he’s doing on the dock of the bay, but it gives that titular setting a human character — eyes through which this languid bayside scene is witnessed. (Listen on YouTube)7. Talking Heads: “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”When the members of the recently (sort of?) reconciled Talking Heads recorded the instrumental tracks for their 1983 album “Speaking in Tongues,” they gave the demos unofficial titles. But even after David Byrne wrote lyrics to what would become the luminous “This Must Be the Place,” they wanted to honor the track’s original nickname, which expressed both its compositional simplicity and its childlike innocence. (Listen on YouTube)8. Janet Jackson: “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”I’m a big fan of parenthetical song titles that complete an internal rhyme — see also: Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” — and an even bigger fan of this ecstatic tune from Ms. Jackson’s 1989 opus “Rhythm Nation 1814.” That key change gets me every time! (Listen on YouTube)9. Radiohead: “(Nice Dream)”The members of Radiohead are such fans of parentheses that every single track on their 2003 album “Hail to the Thief” has a subtitle — which is honestly a bit much to keep track of. I prefer this early song from “The Bends,” which has its title entirely encased in parentheses, adding to the song’s liminal, somnambulant feel. (Listen on YouTube)10. Sonic Youth: “Brave Men Run (in My Family)”Off “Bad Moon Rising,” a strange and eerie early Sonic Youth album of which I am quite partial, this ferocious squall of a song finds Kim Gordon meditating on masculinity, turning it inside out with her sly wordplay, and bellowing each lyric with a warrior’s intensity. (Listen on YouTube)11. The Rolling Stones: “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)”Perhaps the spiritual inverse of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ later “Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It)”, this 1974 hit contains a truly shocking admission: The Rolling Stones … like rock ’n’ roll? I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming! (Listen on YouTube)12. Aretha Franklin: “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman”Oh, I could have written an entire women’s studies paper on this one in college. The proper title “A Natural Woman” proposes that there’s such a thing as authentic and essential femininity, but the parenthetical totally upends that notion — the singer doesn’t need to be a natural woman to feel like one. No wonder it’s a drag classic! (Listen on YouTube)13. Meat Loaf: “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”It’s the Alpha (and Omega) of parenthetical song titles. Thesis and antithesis. It prompts certainly the most profound mystery in all of rock opera, and perhaps in pop music writ large: What. Is. That? Meat Loaf claimed that the answer was hidden in the song itself, and in a 1998 episode of “VH1 Storytellers,” he pulled out a chalkboard and gave a grammar lesson proposing as much. (But I choose to believe the mystery … or maybe the explanation his character gave in “Spice World.”) (Listen on YouTube)Feelin’ pretty psyched,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“13 (Great) Songs With Parenthetical Titles” track listTrack 1: Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”Track 2: R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”Track 3: My Chemical Romance, “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”Track 4: Charli XCX, “You (Ha Ha Ha)”Track 5: Bob Dylan, “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)”Track 6: Otis Redding, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”Track 7: Talking Heads, “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”Track 8: Janet Jackson, “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”Track 9: Radiohead, “(Nice Dream)”Track 10: Sonic Youth, “Brave Men Run (in My Family)”Track 11: The Rolling Stones, “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)”Track 12: Aretha Franklin, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”Track 13: Meat Loaf, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”Bonus tracksOn Saturday night — one of the loveliest and most temperate New York evenings all summer — I witnessed something utterly enchanting in Prospect Park, as a part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! summer concert series: a free show headlined by the one and only John Cale. (Earlier this year, you may recall, I devoted an entire newsletter to Cale’s vast discography.) I’ve been trying ever since to recapture the magic of that night by listening to some of the songs he played: The serene “Hanky Panky Nohow,” the rollicking “Barracuda,” and, most haunting of all, his slow, mournful deconstruction of “Heartbreak Hotel.” More

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      A (Sad) Playlist for the 2023 New York Mets

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      Fifteen songs that tell the tale of a rough season.It’s impossible for Mr. Met to look sad, but trust us, he would at this point in the season if he could.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressDear listeners,This week, there has been joy neither in Mudville nor in Queens — home of the New York Mets, a team enjoying a catastrophically disappointing 2023 season.The Mets began the year with high hopes for a deep postseason run and with an even higher payroll (somewhere near $350 million before luxury tax payments, making them the most expensive baseball team in history). But after Tuesday’s trade deadline, at which point the Mets had a 50-55 win-loss record, the organization all but gave up on 2023, trading away most of their best pitchers and a few sluggers to boot, in exchange for a bunch of admittedly exciting young prospects who will nonetheless probably not blossom until at least (gulp) 2025. The remaining Mets responded by losing three games in a row to the Kansas City Royals, currently one of the worst teams in M.L.B., but also — a little more salt in the wound, please — the very team to which they lost the World Series in 2015.Suffice to say, I’ve not been listening to a lot of happy music the past few days.In his highly entertaining 2021 book “So Many Ways to Lose: The Amazin’ True Story of the New York Mets — The Best Worst Team in Sports,” the journalist Devin Gordon writes, “There is a difference between being bad and being gifted at losing, and this distinction holds the key to understanding the true magic of the New York Mets.” Yet again, the Mets have fulfilled that reputation and somehow found a novel way to fail, in the process inventing an entirely new flavor of pain to inflict upon its fan base. It’s honestly kind of impressive.As any librettist or opera composer knows, some tragedies are so grand that they must be expressed in music. And though I am but a humble newsletter writer, I know this, too. So here it is: a playlist for the 2023 Mets.You will not hear Timmy Trumpet (the man behind the triumphant entrance music for our closer, who was injured in freakish fashion in March) on this playlist. You will hear the Smiths, as the 2023 mood is closer to sumptuous anguish. You’ll also hear classics from the Who, David Bowie and Talking Heads, alongside newer songs from Palehound and the long-suffering Mets fans Yo La Tengo.You don’t need to root for the Mets, or even like baseball, to listen to this playlist. Actually, if you don’t, it will work as a primer to help you understand the complicated tale of woe that is the Mets’ 2023 season. But if it somehow compels you to devote yourself to the orange and blue, I offer you a hearty welcome. Misery loves company.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Smiths: “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”Though it is possible to describe the psyche of a Mets fan in a playlist comprised entirely of Smiths songs — “Panic,” “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby” — the title of this jangly ditty from 1984 sums things up pretty succinctly. (Listen on YouTube)2. Peggy Lee: “Big Spender”When the billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen bought the Mets in 2020, he became the wealthiest owner in the M.L.B. Going into the 2023 season, he clearly wasn’t afraid to spend, or pay the luxury tax. As a result, he assembled the most expensive roster in baseball history. What could possibly go wrong? I’m sure Peggy Lee, in this snappy 1966 rendition of a showstopper from “Sweet Charity,” couldn’t possibly guess! (Listen on YouTube)3. The Magnetic Fields: “Come Back From San Francisco”“Come back from San Francisco, it can’t be all that pretty when all of New York City misses you,” Shirley Simms sings on this 1999 song by the Magnetic Fields — a sentiment shared by some New Yorkers earlier this season when former Mets and current Giants like Michael Conforto, J.D. Davis and Wilmer Flores all got off to hot starts just as the Mets’ bats started going cold. (It’s also a sentiment plenty of older New Yorkers still feel about the Giants organization itself.) (Listen on YouTube)4. The Big Bopper: “Chantilly Lace”At least Pete Alonso was hitting some very big bops at an astounding pace — 20 home runs by the end of May. As the Big Bopper would say, “Hello, baaaaby!” (Listen on YouTube)5. David Bowie: “Boys Keep Swinging”Indeed they did — whether or not they were making contact with the ball. If only they were having as much fun as Bowie on this 1979 glam-pop gem. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Who: “The Kids Are Alright”An undeniable bright spot for the 2023 team has been the offensive prowess of a group of very young rookies who earned the nickname “The Baby Mets”: the 23-year-old infielders Mark Vientos and Brett Baty; and the 21-year-old catcher Francisco Álvarez, who at press time had hit more home runs this year than any other catcher in baseball. The kids are all right! (Listen on YouTube)7. Palehound: “Eye on the Bat”“Suckers will all tell you to keep watching for the ball, but we know better than that,” Palehound’s El Kempner sings. “Keep your eye on the bat.” Good song from a recently released album I’ve been enjoying; bad advice for the New York Mets. (Listen on YouTube)8. SZA featuring Ty Dolla Sign: “Hit Different”I began to wish they would. (Listen on YouTube)9. The Everly Brothers: “June Is as Cold as December”Brrr. The Mets won just seven games and lost 19 in June — a month so disastrous that The Athletic’s Tim Britton wrote an article asking, “Did the Mets just complete their worst month in franchise history?” This being the Mets, though, he found plenty of others, writing, “Note that this is a non-exhaustive list. There are other very bad months that did not make the cut.” (Listen on YouTube)10. Smokey Robinson & the Miracles: “A Fork in the Road”Another silver lining, though, was the 30-year-old Japanese pitcher Kodai Senga — making his M.L.B. debut this season with the Mets — and his elusive signature pitch, the “ghost fork,” named for the way it suddenly disappears from the strike zone. (Listen on YouTube)11. Yo La Tengo: “Fallout”It wouldn’t be a Mets playlist without some Yo La Tengo. The long-running New Jersey indie-rock band is named after a great, if possibly apocryphal, story involving the former Mets Richie Ashburn and Elio Chacón, and this year the band’s Ira Kaplan threw out the first pitch at a Mets game. The title of its latest album, which features the fuzzy single “Fallout,” also expresses a sentiment that is relatable to many Mets fans: “This Stupid World.” (Listen on YouTube)12. Ace Frehley: “New York Groove”The Mets play this stomping, irresistibly catchy glam-rock tune — written by the British producer Russ Ballard, but popularized by the native New Yorker Ace Frehley — after every home game that they win. So for a hopeful moment in July, when the team kicked off the month with a six-game winning streak, it was a song that actually got some play. (Listen on YouTube)13. Talking Heads: “Burning Down the House”But it wasn’t enough. As the trade deadline neared, the team began selling off some of its most valuable assets: First, the closer David Robertson and the starting pitcher Max Scherzer. Then, at the trade deadline on Tuesday, they just started burning down the house. Baseball’s most expensive roster ever had officially gone bust. Here’s your ticket; pack your bags. (Listen on YouTube)14. George Strait: “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”And now ours do, too: Scherzer has joined Jacob deGrom on the Texas Rangers, while Justin Verlander has returned to his former team, the Houston Astros. George Strait, I now know how you felt when you recorded this 1987 hit. (Listen on YouTube)15. Hot Chocolate: “You Sexy Thing”And yet … at least technically, the season is not over. Rooting for the Mets means ya gotta believe in miracles. (Listen on YouTube)All the fans are true to the orange and blue,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A (Sad) Playlist for the 2023 New York Mets” track listTrack 1: The Smiths, “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”Track 2: Peggy Lee, “Big Spender”Track 3: The Magnetic Fields, “Come Back From San Francisco”Track 4: The Big Bopper, “Chantilly Lace”Track 5: David Bowie, “Boys Keep Swinging”Track 6: The Who, “The Kids Are Alright”Track 7: Palehound, “Eye on the Bat”Track 8: SZA featuring Ty Dolla Sign, “Hit Different”Track 9: The Everly Brothers, “June Is as Cold as December”Track 10: Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, “A Fork in the Road”Track 11: Yo La Tengo, “Fallout”Track 12: Ace Frehley, “New York Groove”Track 13: Talking Heads, “Burning Down the House”Track 14: George Strait, “All My Ex’s Live in Texas”Track 15: Hot Chocolate, “You Sexy Thing”Bonus tracksIf you are curious how I came to devote my life to the perpetual misery that is Mets fandom, you’re in luck — I wrote an essay on that very topic last year, for the briefly shuttered and soon-to-be-revived magazine Bookforum. Viva la Mets! Viva la Bookforum!Also, I mentioned Devin Gordon’s delightful Mets book, so I would be remiss if I did not also recommend Gordon’s equally delightful 2018 New York Times Magazine profile of the Mets announcers Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling, “the Magi of Mets Nation.”And if you’re looking for new music, this week’s Friday Playlist features tracks from Mitski, Wilco, Jorja Smith and many more. More

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      Bicycle Diaries: Cruising With the ‘American Utopia’ Family

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      Our intrepid reporter and photographer biked through Queens with David Byrne and some of his castmates ahead of their return to Broadway. Then the skies opened up.On a dock in Queens, David Byrne’s musical bike gang was gearing up to go.“Are we ready?” Byrne called.It was a Saturday in late August, and the gang — three percussionists, a guitarist, a bassist and me, along with a daredevil photographer and lighting assistant — were sitting astride bicycles as Byrne, our fearless two-wheeled leader, outlined the plan.He wore a brimmed, pith-style helmet and a tour guide’s relaxed confidence: He’d done this route before, from Astoria to Flushing. The destination was the Queens Night Market, a paradise of global food stalls at the site of the 1964 World’s Fair. He’d already been talking up a ceviche stand and the all-women samba drumline he’d seen the last time he’d pedaled through.The market, in its diversity, “is really extraordinary,” he said — the kind of endeavor that seems like an antidote to our current social divisiveness. “In that context, you really go, ‘OK, this is not impossible, we can do this.’” It’s a message of community-as-uplift that Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman, has been big on recently, with his hit theatrical concert “American Utopia,” a mostly joyous pilgrimage through his music. Even the act of extreme weather that ultimately derailed our ride didn’t curb his ability to find revelation locally.From left, the percussionists Tim Keiper, Jacquelene Acevedo and Daniel Freedman. “We would go on these adventures,” Acevedo said of the rides with Byrne. “It’s great. You come back six hours later, exhausted, like, ‘Where did I go?’”Byrne is, of course, a devoted cyclist: He’s written a book about it, and even designed bike racks; last week, he took an e-bike to the Met Gala (so he wouldn’t get sweaty!) and checked his helmet at the door. In the Before Times, I could sometimes clock the velocity and verve of my nightlife by how frequently I intersected with him speeding to some event along the Williamsburg waterfront bike path. He was easy to spot, often dressed in somehow still-pristine white — as he was on this evening, stepping off the East River ferry in white pants, a blue guayabera shirt and brown fisherman sandals. His whole crew, castmates from “American Utopia,” had been onboard, too.On the dock, he gave a few general instructions — hang a left at the big brick building, “go down for, like, a couple miles; should I say when our next turn is? Sixty-first, we make a right” — and then we peeled off. In interchanging pairs or spread out, our expedition took up half a city block. “Riding in New York is — hoo-hoo!” trilled Angie Swan, the guitarist, who had moved here from Milwaukee to work with Byrne and was now dodging through a crowded bike lane.From left, the guitarist Angie Swan, Byrne, Freedman, Keiper and the bassist Bobby Wooten III. The band members got matching folding bikes during their tour.It was the weekend before rehearsals began for the Broadway return of “American Utopia.” But the cast had already been convening throughout the pandemic for these miles-long, leisurely (or not) bike rides around town, led by Byrne, who is 69 and has the stamina of an athlete and the curiosity of a cultural omnivore. Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island: He traversed the city a couple of times a week at least, trailing bandmates alongside him.“That kind of pioneering spirit that he has in music is the same as he has in his bike rides,” Jacquelene Acevedo, a percussionist and Toronto transplant who lives in Manhattan, said as we pedaled along, passing beneath the rumbling train and only-in-Queens intersections like the corner of 31st Avenue and 31st Street. She said she got to know the city on these socially distanced rides. “We would go on these adventures,” she said. “It’s great. You come back six hours later, exhausted, like, ‘Where did I go?’”From left, Freedman, Byrne and Swan. They landed in Flushing Meadows Corona Park with the rest of the group as the sun was setting.That Saturday, we pulsed through Jackson Heights toward Corona — two neighborhoods, Byrne observed later, that had been hit hard, early on, by the coronavirus — and saw the city’s rhythms change. We spun through families barbecuing on pedestrian blocks and dinged our bells along to the streetside cumbia and reggaeton. It was, in a word, glorious.We might’ve blown a few stoplights, too, and caused some double-takes as Cole Wilson, the photographer, and his assistant, Bryan Banducci, cycled ahead of the group but peered backward to get their shot. Byrne was always in the lead; as soon as traffic disappeared, he removed his helmet, revealing his signature silver coif.By the time we landed in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the sun was setting. Byrne led us to his ceviche spot. Moments later, the skies opened up: Tropical Storm Henri, arriving far earlier than the forecast predicted. We were quickly drenched. So, so drenched.A night that was meant to be a dreamy celebration of this multicultural city and its serendipitous connections, experienced from atop a bike seat, wound up in a (very) soggy group subway ride home. But even that became a moment for Byrnian wonder, thanks to a subway preacher and her acolytes, and an unexpected bit of ecstatic dance — the civic and the divine aboard the 7 train. Byrne clocked it all, surrounded by his bikemates.This group of musicians had toured with “American Utopia” when it was a more traditional rock concert a few years ago, and their matching bikes — a folding model made by Tern — came along then, too. The bikes had their own compartment on the tour bus: “Even when we went overseas, the bikes would come,” said Tim Keiper, a drummer. They would sometimes ride 25 miles before soundcheck, added Daniel Freedman, another drummer. (There are more than four dozen percussion instruments in the show.) “David would find the cool thing,” Freedman said, “and be like, there’s a restaurant or a museum or something bizarre, funny — ‘Cumming, Iowa! We’ve got to go!’”For Byrne, the rides kept him “sane on the road,” he told me later, “and inspired and stimulated.”It also gave his cast and crew a connection that was rare among performers. The original run of “American Utopia” ended in February 2020, just before the coronavirus shut down the city’s live performance spaces. During lockdown, Annie-B Parson, the show’s choreographer, saw the “American Utopia” crew a lot more than anybody else, she said. The cast’s emotional closeness onstage? “It’s not acted.”“Bike riding is a nice metaphor,” she added, “because there’s a kinship. There’s a group moving together, but everybody’s in their own space. But there is a unison. It’s a dance, for sure.”Tropical Storm Henri arrived earlier than forecasted. But the group did manage to finally try the ceviche and some of the other fare at the market.Days after drying out from the Queens ride, the group gathered for rehearsals. “American Utopia” is now playing at the St. James Theater, a bigger Broadway venue than its previous home, the Hudson. Parson, a downtown choreographer known for her attention to form and multimedia detail, was thrilled to learn that the stage is a rectangle, as she’d originally envisioned for the piece. “To me, a square shape is a warm shape that faces in, because there’s symmetry on the sides,” she explained. “A rectangular shape implies infinity, because it reaches out on the sides. They’re both beautiful. This show, and David, to me, I associate with a rectangle.”So Parson polished the choreography, much of which is done by the musicians while they’re playing. (Chris Giarmo and Tendayi Kuumba, standouts onstage and in Spike Lee’s filmed version of the show, are the main dancers.) In one rehearsal, Parson directed Byrne to amplify a moment by turning to face his castmates, giving an extra beat of connection there — the pandemic had underscored a theme of the show, “that we’re not atomized entities,” Byrne said. “Being together with other people is such a big part of what we are as individuals.”As a collaborator, Byrne leads with praise. Watching his percussion circle, he danced along with his very core. “I love the first half where you change up the groove, but it still keeps all the momentum,” he told them.In Byrne’s recent eclectic career, “American Utopia,” which will receive a special Tony Award at this Sunday’s ceremony, has taken up a bigger chunk than other projects. It may be because it makes him happier. “It’s a very moving show to do,” he said, “and a lot of fun” — not least because audiences shimmy with abandon a few songs in.And it pulls from the panoply of Byrne’s interests. There’s neuroscience, civic history, and Brazilian, African and Latin instrumentation. The visual and movement references span the world: the Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer; ’70s Japanese movies; a Thai king’s coronation; and, after our Queens odyssey, a scene from the 7 train, when a woman pulled out a mic and an amp, plugged in and began proselytizing.Byrne, unrecognized beneath his mask, stood near her, holding his bike. Across the way, her companion suddenly began doing impassioned hand motions that were reminiscent of some “American Utopia” moves, waving and snapping her wrists around her face. “Annie-B should see this!” Byrne said, almost to himself. Someone taped a snippet, and he sent it off to her to check out.“There are no words to describe how adventurous David is,” Parson said. “He always finds the most profound way to interact with a place with his bicycle, and he always invites others, graciously, to join in.” More

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      Jon Hassell, Trumpeter and ‘Fourth World’ Composer, Dies at 84

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      Blending modern technology with traditional instruments, Mr. Hassell created a genre he described as “coffee-colored classical music of the future.”Jon Hassell, a composer and trumpeter who blended modern technology with ancient instruments and traditions to create what he called Fourth World music, died on Saturday. He was 84.His death was announced in a statement from his family released by his record label, Ndeya. It did not specify where he died or the immediate cause.Mr. Hassell’s music floated outside the genre boundaries of classical music, electronica, ambient music or jazz. He described Fourth World as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques” and, elsewhere, as “coffee-colored classical music of the future.”His music could be contemplative and atmospheric, darkly suspenseful or abstractly funky. On the 20 albums Mr. Hassell made as a leader, his trumpet usually had an eerily disembodied sound, one that was processed through electronics and enfolded in shadowy reverberations, sometimes using harmonizers to multiply each note in parallel lines.He played vocalistic phrases that invoked the bluesy intimacy of Miles Davis along with the Indian classical music that Mr. Hassell studied with the raga singer Pandit Pran Nath. Around his trumpet, as foreground and background coalesced, there might be drone tones, global percussion, wind or string ensembles, washes of synthesizer, samples, distorted guitar, voices and more.He delved into calm and aggression, reflection and propulsion, serenity and suspense. His polymorphous, layered, ambiguous yet sensual music helped shape decades of electronic experimentation from acts like Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca and Matmos.In a tribute in The Guardian in 2007, the musician and producer Brian Eno wrote, “He looks at the world in all its momentary and evanescent moods with respect, and this shows in his music. He sees dignity and beauty in all forms of the dance of life.”Through the years, Mr. Hassell collaborated repeatedly with Mr. Eno and the American musician Ry Cooder. He also recorded with musicians from Africa, Brazil, India and Europe; composed a piece (“Pano da Costa”) for the Kronos Quartet; and played recording sessions with Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, k.d. lang, Baaba Maal, David Sylvian, Tears for Fears, Bono and others.In a 1997 interview with the online magazine Perfect Sound Forever, Mr. Hassell said he wanted to create “music for above and below the waist simultaneously.” He added that Fourth World music was “about heart and head as the same thing. It’s about being transported to some place which is made up of both real and virtual geography.”Mr. Hassell was born on March 22, 1937, in Memphis. He picked up the instrument his father had played in college, a cornet, and studied music and played in big bands as a teenager. He attended the Eastman School of Music, exploring modern classical composition and earning a master’s degree. To avoid being drafted, he joined the Army band in Washington, D.C.Fascinated by the emerging field of electronic music, he made tape collages and won a grant to study with the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen for two years in Cologne, Germany. His classmates included musicians who would go on to start the German band Can; he took LSD with them.He received a fellowship at the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo. There, he composed music on one of the early Moog synthesizers. He also met the composer Terry Riley, who first recorded his Minimalist landmark “In C” in 1968 with musicians at SUNY Buffalo, including Mr. Hassell.Mr. Hassell performed in concerts with Mr. Riley and in the drone group Theatre of Eternal Music, which was led by another pioneering Minimalist, La Monte Young. Like them, Mr. Hassell became a student of Mr. Nath, the Indian singer whose subtleties of pitch and inflection would profoundly influence Mr. Hassell’s music; he applied raga singing to his trumpet playing.“It’s about making a beautiful shape in air. I call it calligraphy in sound,” he said in a 2009 interview with All About Jazz.Mr. Hassell’s musical direction was already clear on his 1977 debut album, “Vernal Equinox.” His electronically altered trumpet is joined by African mbira (thumb piano), Indian tabla drums, maracas, tropical bird calls, electronic drones, ocean waves and crickets.“This record fascinated me,” Mr. Eno wrote in 2007. “It was a dreamy, strange, meditative music that was inflected by Indian, African and South American music, but also seemed located in the lineage of tonal Minimalism. It was a music I felt I’d been waiting for.”In New York City, where in the late 1970s art-rock, punk, pop and jazz shared a creative flux, Mr. Eno sought out Mr. Hassell, and they collaborated on “Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics” (1980). As the marketing category “world music” arose, its sounds and ideas strongly influenced musicians like Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel. Mr. Eno was also producing Talking Heads, and Mr. Hassell’s ghostly trumpet is prominent in “Houses in Motion” on Talking Heads’ 1980 album, “Remain in Light.”Mr. Hassell helped conceptualize the 1981 Byrne-Eno album “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” which merged found recordings with studio rhythm tracks and introduced a broad audience to ideas of sonic and cultural collage. But Mr. Hassell later said that he could not afford the airfare to join the recording sessions, and he told Billboard magazine that he considered the results “too poppy.”Writing in 1982 for the science-fiction magazine Heavy Metal, Mr. Hassell championed both preserving and extending local traditions, in order “to understand which music made sorrows bearable and expressed the mystery of creation before the entry date of the first transistor radio into the village.”Through the decades, Mr. Hassell continued to record, experiment and recombine far-flung musical elements.He collaborated with the African percussionists and singers of Farafina, from Burkina Faso, for “Flash of the Spirit” in 1988. He wrote theater music for “Sulla Strada,” an Italian stage adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” He recorded with Mr. Cooder and Indian musicians — Ronu Majumdar on bansuri, a wooden flute, and Abhijit Banerjee on tabla drums — on the 2000 album “Hollow Bamboo.” In 2005 he began touring internationally with a group called Maarifa Street, which he named after a street in Iran; “maarifa” means knowledge or wisdom.Mr. Hassell learned evolving technology and made it speak for him, incorporating samples and complex signal processing. He also held on to the physicality of breath and lips on the trumpet.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Hassell conceived his two final albums, “Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)” (2018) and “Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two)” (2020), as “pentimento,” a visual-arts term for the reappearance of images an artist had painted over.He described his approach to the music as “seeing it in terms of a painting with layers and touch-ups and start-overs with new layers that get erased in places that let the underlying pattern come to the top and be seen (or heard).”He had also been working on a book titled “The North and South of You,” he said in a 2018 interview with Billboard.“It’s the analysis of our current situation in terms of our overemphasis on the north of us, the rational and technological, instead of the south of us,” he said. “North is logic, south is the samba — and how much more of each would you rather have when the time comes to depart the planet?” More