The surprisingly rich tradition of the one-note solo.

An alternate recording of The Five Satins' "The Jones Girl" went viral when its abysmal sax solo—just a middle D squawked over and over and over—went viral. But it takes a surprising amount of history and music theory to understand how someone ended up recording this.

Ornette Coleman, Neil Young, Gyorgy Ligeti, and the surprisingly rich tradition of the one-note solo.

More Headlines

Song of the week: "Exit" by Auscultation, from their fantastic new album, III.

A helpful overview on how coronavirus vaccines work, and the status of those currently in the pipeline.

↩︎ American Society for Microbiology 3d

It’s like all this conversation lately around people sharing their salaries. I think it’s very empowering to share your age, and have other people share their age, so they can see that 55 looks like a lot of different things, that 46 looks like a lot of different things. It’s a good thing.

An interview with the hosts of Everything Is Fine, a podcast about aging.

↩︎ Vulture

"When national news diverges from local reality, 'suspicions about whether the epidemic was a hoax will find fertile ground.'"

↩︎ The Atlantic 3d

Blixa Bargeld cooks cacio e pepe.

In a very entertaining (and honestly mouth-watering) quarantine activity, Blixa Bargeld (Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) shows you how to cook the traditional Roman dish, cacio e pepe.

View this post on Instagram

Blixa’s regular update from the quarantine. #einstürzendeneubauten

A post shared by Einstürzende Neubauten (@neubautenorg) on May 5, 2020 at 8:15am PDT

via things magazine

Related: Blixa Bargeld cooks risotto with calamari on German TV.

From those outings, I have pictures of friends and blurry shots of food, but the restaurant (or bar) selfie is particularly evocative. It's like a catalog of your best individual moments—you don't take a selfie in a restaurant mirror when you feel bad about yourself.

On missing the particular quality of a restaurant bathroom selfie.

↩︎ VICE

If the US had started social distancing one week earlier in March, an estimated 36,000 fewer people would have died.

↩︎ The New York Times 3d

As a way to gauge the safety of reopening, detailed tracking of each US state's COVID-19 testing trends.

↩︎ ProPublica 3d

Who loves email? Get more of it when you sign up for our Headlines newsletter.

↩︎ TMN Newsletters 3d

This is what graduation looked like in 2020.

↩︎ BuzzFeed News 3d

"King Peter's subjects are adherents of the Reichsbürger movement, whose members believe Germany doesn't exist."

↩︎ Bloomberg 3d

Here's 1987 in the Hood Internet's project of mixing 50 tracks from a single year into a three-minute song.

The pandemic is bringing geo-blocked streaming shows. Laura Marling sold out her first one within days, and has announced another.

↩︎ Variety 3d

A century of working out at home, or at least watching people work out, at home.

↩︎ Jezebel 3d

From temperature checkers to crowd minders, a roundup on the new jobs of the reopening economy.

↩︎ The Hustle 3d

Images of vintage buildings with unexpected signage, by Jeffrey Czum.

↩︎ This Isn't Happiness 3d

Citing demand for streaming content and live events, analysts expect the music industry to double in value by the end of the '20s.

↩︎ CNBC 3d

Winners from the AIGA's annual survey of book design from the previous year.

↩︎ 50 Books 50 Covers 4d

In less than a week, graduate student Lisa Piccirillo solves "the Conway knot," a problem that thwarted experts for decades.

↩︎ Quanta 4d

“It doesn’t make sense, given the particular characteristics of this virus, to treat each individual’s privacy choices as a matter for individual control.”

The argument against a right to opt out of coronavirus surveillance.

↩︎ Lawfare

See More From TMN