A Playlist of 172 Songs from Wes Anderson Soundtracks: From Bottle Rocket to The Grand Budapest Hotel

life aquatic

So much of the writ­ing done about the films of Wes Ander­son focus­es on their visu­als — and with good cause. We’ve fea­tured pieces on every­thing from the design of their set­tings to the sym­me­try of their shots to their quo­ta­tion of oth­er movies. You can’t talk about the aes­thet­ic dis­tinc­tive­ness of Ander­son­’s work unless you talk about its visu­al dis­tinc­tive­ness, but you also miss out on a lot if you focus sole­ly on that. We must­n’t for­get the impor­tance of sound in all of this, and specif­i­cal­ly the impor­tance of music.

Casu­al Ander­son fans might here think of one kind of music before all oth­ers: the British Inva­sion. The Cre­ation’s “Mak­ing Time” in Rush­more, the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tues­day” in The Roy­al Tenen­baums, and, to take the con­cept in as Ander­son­ian a direc­tion as pos­si­ble, Por­tuguese-lan­guage cov­ers of David Bowie songs in The Life Aquat­ic with Steve Zis­sou.

Yet Ander­son­’s projects have made use of quite a few oth­er musi­cal tra­di­tions besides, as you’ll already know if you remem­ber the jazz-scored short ver­sion of Bot­tle Rock­et we fea­tured a cou­ple years ago.

But get­ting the clear­est sense of the music might require tem­porar­i­ly sep­a­rat­ing it from the movies. To that end, we offer you “From Bot­tle Rock­et to The Grand Budapest Hotel,” a Spo­ti­fy playlist by Michael Park bring­ing togeth­er 172 of the songs includ­ed in Ander­son­’s eight fea­tures so far, com­ing to over nine and a half hours of immac­u­late­ly curat­ed, 20th cen­tu­ry coun­ter­cul­ture-root­ed music, from not just the Stones and Bowie-via-Seu Jorge but Horace Sil­ver, the Kinks, the Vince Guaral­di Trio, Elliott Smith, Yves Mon­tand, Nick Drake, and the Vel­vet Under­ground. (To lis­ten, you need only down­load and reg­is­ter for Spo­ti­fy.)

While you lis­ten, why not read through Oscar Rick­et­t’s Vice inter­view with Ander­son­’s music super­vi­sor Ran­dall Poster? “Wes always talks about how those guys would wear coats and ties on the cov­er of their records but that the music was so aggres­sive and rebel­lious,” says Poster of the direc­tor’s last­ing pen­chant for the British Inva­sion. “I think that cor­re­spond­ed to [Rush­more pro­tag­o­nist] Max Fis­ch­er because he was this kid who, under­neath it all, was look­ing to break through. The music speaks to his char­ac­ter, who is out of time with the world, and I think that’s a run­ning theme in our movies and you can see it with M. Gus­tave in Grand Budapest Hotel, who is hold­ing on to a more man­nered, gen­teel era.” And what cur­rent works of art have expressed gen­teel rebel­lion, or rebel­lious gen­til­i­ty, so well as Ander­son­’s?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

A Glimpse Into How Wes Ander­son Cre­ative­ly Remixes/Recycles Scenes in His Dif­fer­ent Films

Watch Wes Anderson’s Charm­ing New Short Film, Castel­lo Cav­al­can­ti, Star­ring Jason Schwartz­man

Wes Anderson’s First Short Film: The Black-and-White, Jazz-Scored Bot­tle Rock­et (1992)

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­moreThe Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Download Pink Floyd’s 1975 Comic Book Program for The Dark Side of the Moon Tour

Pink Floyd Comic 1
For all their seri­ous brood­ing and bit­ing digs at the estab­lish­ment, the mem­bers of Pink Floyd were not above hav­ing a lit­tle fun with their image. Take this 1975 com­ic book, cre­at­ed by their record cov­er design­er Storm Thorgerson’s com­pa­ny Hipg­no­sis for the Dark Side of the Moon tour. A “Super, All-Action Offi­cial Music Pro­gramme for Boys and Girls,” the 15-page oddity—pitched, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “some­where halfway between ‘pro­fes­sion­al pro­mo­tion­al item’ and ‘schoolboy’s note­book scribbling’”—includes sev­er­al short com­ic sto­ries: Roger (“Rog”) Waters is an “ace goal-scor­er” for the “Grantch­ester Rovers” foot­ball club. Floyd drum­mer Nick Mason becomes “Cap­tain Mason, R.N.,” a “coura­geous and smart” WWII naval hero, and David Gilmour gets cast as stunt cyclist “Dave Der­ring.” The juici­est part goes to key­boardist Richard Wright, whose sala­cious exploits as high roller “Rich Right” com­plete the pro­to-Heavy Met­al vibe of the whole thing.

Floyd Comic 2

Per­haps most fun is a sil­ly ques­tion­naire called “Life Lines” that asks each band mem­ber about such triv­ia as age, weight, height, “philo­soph­i­cal beliefs,” “sex­u­al pro­cliv­i­ties,” “polit­i­cal lean­ings,” and “musi­cal hates.” Most of the answers are of the flip­pant, smar­tass vari­ety, but I think they’re all sin­cere when they name their favorite movies: Beyond the Val­ley of the Dolls, The Sev­enth Seal, Cool Hand Luke, and El Topo. I’ll let you fig­ure out who chose which one. (Click the image above, then click again, to enlarge.) The penul­ti­mate page includes the lyrics to three new songs the band was work­ing on at the time and play­ing live dur­ing the Dark Side of the Moon Tour: “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” and two unre­leased tracks, “Rav­ing and Drool­ing” and “Got­ta Be Crazy”—which lat­er turned into “Sheep” and “Dogs,” respec­tive­ly, on the Ani­mals album.

Pink Floyd Comic 3

The com­ic takes the goofi­ness of Beat­le­ma­nia-like merch to a much far­ther out place—somewhere “beyond the 3rd Bar­do.” One mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Roger Waters Fan­club, who kept his pro­gram com­ic book for decades after see­ing the Dark Side show in San Fran­cis­co, writes “I was so wast­ed on acid at the show, I don’t know how I held on to any­thing.” Hipg­no­sis, and Floyd, sure­ly knew their audi­ence. You can down­load the whole thing here, in high res­o­lu­tion images. See much more Pink Floyd tour mem­o­ra­bil­ia at the fan­site Pinfloydz.com.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Two Short Films on Coffee and Cigarettes from Jim Jarmusch & Paul Thomas Anderson

When Amer­i­can soci­ety relin­quished cig­a­rettes, Amer­i­can cin­e­ma lost one of its most dra­mat­ic visu­al devices. You still see smok­ing in the movies, but its mean­ing has changed. “A cig­a­rette wasn’t always a state­ment,” wrote David Sedaris when he him­self kicked the habit. “Back when I start­ed, you could still smoke at work, even if you worked in a hos­pi­tal where kids with no legs were hooked up to machines. If a char­ac­ter smoked on a TV show, it did not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that he was weak or evil. It was like see­ing some­one who wore a striped tie or part­ed his hair on the left — a detail, but not a telling one.”

These two short films show Amer­i­can auteurs keep­ing the cin­e­mat­ic cen­tral­i­ty of the cig­a­rette alive well after its hey­day had end­ed. At the top of the post, you can watch Jim Jar­musch’s 1986 short Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes, which stars Steven Wright and Rober­to Benig­ni sit­ting down for and talk­ing about those very same con­sum­ables. It began a long-term project that cul­mi­nat­ed in Jar­musch’s 2003 fea­ture of the same name, which com­pris­es eleven such cof­fee- and cig­a­rette-cen­tric short films (one of them fea­tur­ing Iggy Pop and Tom Waits, anoth­er fea­tur­ing Bill Mur) shot over those eigh­teen years.

While one might nat­u­ral­ly have met a friend specif­i­cal­ly to enjoy caf­feine and nico­tine in the mid-1980s, a decade lat­er the sit­u­a­tion had changed: only in Amer­i­ca’s seed­i­er cor­ners could you even find a cof­fee-serv­ing estab­lish­ment to smoke in. Paul Thomas Ander­son used this very set­ting to begin his career with Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee below. Eschew­ing film school, he gath­ered up his col­lege fund, some gam­bling win­nings, his girl­friend’s cred­it card, and var­i­ous oth­er bits and pieces of fund­ing in order to com­mit this short sto­ry to film.

It worked: Cig­a­rettes and Cof­fee scored Ander­son an invi­ta­tion to the Sun­dance Film­mak­ers Lab, a set­ting that allowed him to adapt the short into his fea­ture debut Hard Eight. Like Cig­a­rettes and Cof­feeHard Eight stars Philip Bak­er Hall, a favorite actor of Ander­son­’s that he went on to use in both Boo­gie Nights and Mag­no­lia. The­mat­i­cal­ly, this tale of a group of low-liv­ing but in their own ways hard-striv­ing char­ac­ters all con­nect­ed by a $20 bill presages the themes that, in his pic­tures of high­er and high­er pro­file, he con­tin­ues to work with today.

And can it be an acci­dent that Ander­son has, in the main, set his films in past eras that not only accept­ed smok­ing, but expect­ed it? Jar­musch, for his part, seems to pre­fer milieus at increas­ing dis­tance from our every­day expe­ri­ence, amid urban samu­rai, assas­sins in for­eign lands, immor­tal vam­pires in Detroit, that sort of thing. So if these film­mak­ers want to keep using smok­ing, they have ways. I just hope cof­fee does­n’t fall out of style. That would bring about a world that, as a film­go­er and a human being, I doubt I’d be pre­pared to live in.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Paul Thomas Ander­son Dropped Out of NYU Film School in 2 Days; Stud­ied Lit­er­a­ture with David Fos­ter Wal­lace

John Cleese Stars in a Mor­bid­ly Fun­ny Anti-Smok­ing Cam­paign (1992–1994)

An Anti, Anti-Smok­ing Announce­ment from John Waters

Bertrand Rus­sell: “I Owe My Life to Smok­ing”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” With a Re-Discovered George Harrison Solo

George Har­ri­son “nev­er thought he was any good” as a gui­tarist, says his son Dhani, and so “he focused on touch and con­trol… not hit­ting any off notes, not mak­ing strings buzz, not play­ing any­thing that would jar you.” Har­ri­son him­self put it this way, in typ­i­cal­ly self-effac­ing, mys­ti­cal fash­ion: “I play the notes you nev­er hear.” Of course, as most every thought­ful gui­tar play­er will tell you, these are exact­ly the mak­ings of a good—and in Harrison’s case, great—guitarist. A dime a dozen are play­ers who can play speed runs and flashy solos, who have learned every lick from their favorite songs and can re-pro­duce them exact­ly. But it’s the sensitivity—the per­son­al “touch and con­trol” over the instrument—that mat­ters most, and that can make a player’s tone impos­si­ble to dupli­cate. Harrison’s play­ing, Dhani says, “is the rea­son no one can real­ly cov­er the Bea­t­les faith­ful­ly…. At some point there’s going to be a George Har­ri­son solo, and that solo is usu­al­ly per­fect.”

I would cer­tain­ly say that is the case with the gui­tar solo in “Here Comes the Sun.” Oh, you’ve nev­er heard it? That’s because the song, as it was orig­i­nal­ly released on 1969’s Abbey Road didn’t have one. For what­ev­er rea­son, George Mar­tin decid­ed to leave it out, and the song, we might agree, is per­fect with­out it. But the solo—rediscovered by Mar­tin and Dhani Harrison—is also per­fect. You can hear a ver­sion of the song with the solo restored at the top of the post, cour­tesy of Youtube user Kanaal van Dutch­Doun­pour. And above, see Dhani, Mar­tin, and Martin’s son Giles redis­cov­er­ing the solo, which Mar­tin had for­got­ten about, while play­ing around with the mas­ter tracks of the song in 2012. (The sec­ond video first appeared on our site that same year.) At 1:01, the solo sud­den­ly appears. Mar­tin leans in and lis­tens atten­tive­ly and Dhani says, “It’s total­ly dif­fer­ent to any­thing I’ve ever heard.” It’s unmis­tak­able Har­ri­son, the “liq­uid qual­i­ty” Jayson Greene iden­ti­fied in a Pitch­fork appre­ci­a­tion, more evoca­tive of “a zither, a clarinet—something more del­i­cate, nuanced and lyri­cal than an elec­tric gui­tar.”

Impos­si­ble, I’d say, to dupli­cate. Even the younger Harrison—perhaps the most faith­ful inter­preter of George’s music—finds him­self fudg­ing his father’s solos when cov­er­ing his songs, play­ing his own instead. Har­ri­son, says Tom Pet­ty, always had a way of “find­ing the right thing to play. That was part of the Bea­t­les mag­ic.” He may not be remem­bered as the most vir­tu­oso of gui­tarists, he may not have thought much of his own play­ing, but no one has ever played like him, before or since. See Har­ri­son play an acoustic ren­di­tion of “Here Comes the Sun”—sans solo—above at the con­cert for Bangladesh.

(Note: some read­ers have point­ed out that the solo at the top of the post sounds out of tune. We do not doubt that it is George Har­rison’s play­ing, but it has been edit­ed and pos­si­bly even sped up to match the final mas­tered record­ing. This is not a pro­fes­sion­al remix, but only a rough recre­ation of what the song might have sound­ed like had the lost solo been includ­ed.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

George Harrison’s Mys­ti­cal, Fish­eye Self-Por­traits Tak­en in India (1966)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch Veterans of The US Civil War Demonstrate the Dreaded Rebel Yell (1930)

“It was the ugli­est sound that any mor­tal ever heard—even a mor­tal exhaust­ed and unnerved by two days of hard fight­ing, with­out sleep, with­out rest, with­out food and with­out hope.”

- Ambrose Bierce,  “A Lit­tle of Chicka­mau­ga” (1898)

 

“…a shrill ring­ing scream with a touch of the Indi­an war-whoop in it .”

- Lon­don Times reporter William Howard Rus­sell (1861)

 

“…a fox­hunt yip mixed up with sort of a ban­shee squall.”

- His­to­ri­an Shel­by Foote (1990)

 The seces­sion­ist bat­tle cry has long cap­ti­vat­ed Civ­il War schol­ars. A fix­ture of lit­er­a­ture as well as eye­wit­ness accounts, its actu­al sound was a mat­ter of con­jec­ture. It lent itself to col­or­ful descrip­tion. Pho­net­ic ren­der­ings could not hope to repro­duce the chill­ing effect:

“Yee-aay-ee!”  ‑Mar­garet Mitchell

“Wah-Who-Eeee!”  ‑Chester Gool­rick

“Rrrrrr-yah­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­h­hh-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!” -H. Allen Smith

Of course, the Rebel Yell is far from the only sound to have struck a note of dread dur­ing The Civ­il War. Hoof­beats, the crack­le of flames, a white voice com­mand­ing you to leave your hid­ing place…

By the time the harm­less-look­ing grand­pas in the archival footage above donned their old uni­forms to demon­strate the yell, the war had been over for six­ty-five years.

There’s a clear sense of occa­sion. The old fel­lows’ pipes are impres­sive, though one begins to under­stand why there was nev­er con­sen­sus regard­ing the actu­al sound of the thing.

Lin­guist Allen Walk­er Read con­clud­ed that the yell—aka the “Pibroch of the Con­fed­er­a­cy,” a vocal lega­cy of blue paint­ed Celtic war­riors fac­ing down the Roman army—was a stress-relat­ed, full body response. Ergo, any hol­ler­ing done after 1865 was a fac­sim­i­le.

At least one vet­er­an agreed. In Ken Burn’s Civ­il War doc­u­men­tary, Shel­by Foote recalled how one of them refused to oblige eager lis­ten­ers at a soci­ety din­ner, claim­ing he could only exe­cute it at a run, and cer­tain­ly not with “a mouth full of false teeth and a bel­ly full of food.”

(An asser­tion sev­er­al legions of grey coat­ed reen­ac­tors clear­ly do not sup­port.)

My 14-year-old son was great­ly amused by the coy­ote-like ulu­la­tions of the old gents. The vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions only height­ened his enjoy­ment. Their proud demon­stra­tion is unde­ni­ably rem­i­nis­cent of  Patrick Stewart’s take on the region­al vari­a­tions of moo­ing British cows.

I had to remind my boy that this was once a seri­ous thing. To quote Hen­ry “Dr. Liv­ingston, I Pre­sume” Stan­ley, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Bat­tle of Shiloh as a 21-year-old enlis­tee on the South­ern side:

It drove all san­i­ty and order from among us. It served the dou­ble pur­pose of reliev­ing pent-up feel­ings, and trans­mit­ting encour­age­ment along the attack­ing line. I rejoiced in the shout­ing like the rest. It remind­ed me that there were about four hun­dred com­pa­nies like the Dix­ie Greys, who shared our feel­ings. Most of us, engrossed with the mus­ket-work, had for­got­ten the fact; but the wave after wave of human voic­es, loud­er than all oth­er bat­tle-sounds togeth­er, pen­e­trat­ed to every sense, and stim­u­lat­ed our ener­gies to the utmost.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion,” a New MOOC by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning His­to­ri­an Eric Fon­er

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Down­load 78 Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es: From Ancient Greece to The Mod­ern World

Find cours­es on The Civ­il War in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The New Yorker Presents: Watch the 30 Minute Pilot of the New Docu-Series from The New Yorker

Note: Any­one with an Ama­zon account (at least in the US) can watch this pilot in HD for free here.

This week, The New York­er offi­cial­ly cel­e­brates its 90th anniver­sary with an expand­ed edi­tion that revis­its its many accom­plish­ments since it first print­ed copies on Feb­ru­ary 21, 1925. Led by David Rem­nick, only the mag­a­zine’s fifth edi­tor, The New York­er has a rich past. But it has a future to con­sid­er too. Recent­ly, the mag­a­zine launched the pilot of The New York­er Presents — a “docu-series” that brings The New York­er aes­thet­ic to film. The 30-minute pilot (above, and also free on Ama­zon here) “fea­tures a doc from Oscar win­ner Jonathan Demme based on Rachel Aviv’s arti­cle ‘A Very Valu­able Rep­u­ta­tion,’ writer Ariel Levy inter­view­ing artist Mari­na Abramovic, a sketch from Simon Rich and Alan Cum­ming, poet­ry read by Andrew Garfield, and car­toons by Emi­ly Flake.”

If you like what you see, you’re in luck. The show, pro­duced by Ama­zon Stu­dios, has been green­lit for a full sea­son. Accord­ing to Real Screen, the new episodes will debut exclu­sive­ly on Ama­zon Prime’s video-on-demand ser­vice in the U.S., UK and Ger­many lat­er this year. When the episodes are out, we’ll let you know.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Read the Lost Sherlock Holmes Story That Was Just Discovered in an Attic in Scotland

sherlock_holmes_in_public-domain

In Novem­ber, we pre­sent­ed for you a quick way to down­load The Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes — not know­ing that, a few months lat­er, a lost Sher­lock Holmes sto­ry, seem­ing­ly attrib­uted to Arthur Conan Doyle, would be dis­cov­ered in an attic in Scot­land.

The sto­ry, The Guardian writes, was “part of a pam­phlet print­ed in 1903 to raise mon­ey to restore a bridge in the Scot­tish bor­der town of Selkirk.” Dis­cov­ered by the his­to­ri­an Wal­ter Elliot, the tale enti­tled “Sher­lock Holmes: Dis­cov­er­ing the Bor­der Burghs and, By Deduc­tion, the Brig Bazaar” can be read below, thanks to Vul­ture.

In 2013, a US judge ruled that Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries now belonged in the pub­lic domain. The same would appear to hold true for this hap­pi­ly dis­cov­ered, 1300-word sto­ry. You can find more Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

“Sher­lock Holmes: Dis­cov­er­ing the Bor­der Burghs and, By Deduc­tion, the Brig Bazaar”

We’ve had enough of old roman­cists and the men of trav­el” said the Edi­tor, as he blue-pen­cilled his copy, and made arrange­ments for the great Sat­ur­day edi­tion of the Bazaar Book. “We want some­thing up-to-date. Why not have a word from ‘Sher­lock Holmes?’ ”

Edi­tors have only to speak and it is done, at least, they think so. “Sher­lock Holmes!” As well talk of inter­view­ing the Man in the Moon. But it does not do to tell Edi­tors all that you think. I had no objec­tions what­ev­er, I assured the Edi­tor, to but­ton­hole “Sher­lock Holmes,” but to do so I should have to go to Lon­don.

“Lon­don!” scorn­ful­ly sniffed the Great Man. “And you pro­fess to be a jour­nal­ist? Have you nev­er heard of the tele­graph, the tele­phone, or the phono­grah? Go to Lon­don! And are you not aware that all jour­nal­ists are sup­posed to be qual­i­fied mem­bers of the Insti­tute of Fic­tion, and to be qual­i­fied to make use of the Fac­ul­ty of Imag­i­na­tion? By the use of the lat­ter men have been inter­viewed, who were hun­dreds of miles away; some have been ‘inter­viewed’ with­out either knowl­edge or con­sent. See that you have a top­i­cal arti­cle ready for the press for Sat­ur­day. Good day.”

I was dis­missed and had to find copy by hook or by crook. Well, the Fac­ul­ty of Imag­i­na­tion might be worth a tri­al.

The famil­iar house in Sloan Street met my bewil­dered gaze. The door was shut, the blinds drawn. I entered; doors are no bar­ri­er to one who uses the Fac­ul­ty of Imag­i­na­tion. The soft light from an elec­tric bulb flood­ed the room. “Sher­lock Holmes” sits by the side of the table; Dr Wat­son is on his feet about to leave for the night. Sher­lock Holmes, as has late­ly been shown by a promi­nent jour­nal, is a pro­nounced Free Trad­er. Dr. Wat­son is a mild Pro­tec­tion­ist, who would take his gru­elling behind a Martel­lo tow­er, as Lord Goschen wit­ti­ly put it, but not “lying down!” The twain had just fin­ished a stiff argu­ment on Fis­cal pol­i­cy. Holmes loq—

“And when shall I see you again, Wat­son? The inquiry into the ‘Mys­ter­ies of the Secret Cab­i­net’ will be con­tin­ued in Edin­burgh on Sat­ur­day. Do you mind a run down to Scot­land? You would get some cap­i­tal data which you might turn to good account lat­er.”

“I am very sor­ry,” replied Dr Wat­son, “I should have liked to have gone with you, but a pri­or engage­ment pre­vents me. I will, how­ev­er, have the plea­sure of being in kind­ly Scot­tish com­pa­ny that day. I, also, am going to Scot­land.”

“Ah! Then you are going to the Bor­der coun­try at that time?”

“How do you know that?”

“My dear Wat­son, it’s all a mat­ter of deduc­tion.”

“Will you explain?”

“Well, when a man becomes absorbed in a cer­tain theme, the mur­der will out some day. In many dis­cus­sions you and I have on the fis­cal ques­tion from time to time I have not failed to notice that you have tak­en up an atti­tude antag­o­nis­tic to a cer­tain school of thought, and on sev­er­al occa­sions you have com­ment­ed on the pass­ing of “so-called’ reforms, as you describe them, which you say were not the result of a spon­ta­neous move­ment from or by the peo­ple, but sole­ly due to the pres­sure of the Man­ches­ter School of politi­cians appeal­ing to the mob. One of these allu­sions you made a pecu­liar ref­er­ence to ‘Huz an’ Main­ches­ter’ who had ‘turned the world upside down.’ The word ‘Huz’ stuck to me, but after con­sult­ing many authors with­out learn­ing any­thing as to the source of the word, I one day in read­ing a provin­cial paper noticed the same expres­sion, which the writer said was descrip­tive of the way Haw­ick peo­ple looked at the progress of Reform. ‘Huz an’ Main­ches­ter’ led the way. So, thought I, Wat­son has a knowl­edge of Haw­ick. I was still fur­ther con­firmed in this idea by hear­ing you in sev­er­al absent moments croon­ing a weird song of the Nor­we­gian God Thor. Again I made enquires, and writ­ing to a friend in the South coun­try I pro­cured a copy of ‘Teribus.’ So, I rea­soned, so — there’s some­thing in the air! What attrac­tion has Haw­ick for Wat­son?”

“Won­der­ful,” Wat­son said, “and —”

“Yes, and when you char­ac­terised the action of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment in seek­ing to ham­per Cana­di­an trade by rais­ing her tar­iff wall against her, as a case of ‘Sour Plums,’ and again in a draw­ing room asked a mutu­al lady friend to sing you that fine old song, ‘Braw, braw lads,’ I was curi­ous enough to look up the old bal­lad, and find­ing it had ref­er­ence to a small town near to Haw­ick, I began to see a ray of day­light. Haw­ick had a place in your mind; like­wise so had Galashiels — so much was appar­ent. The ques­tion to be decid­ed was why?”

“So far so good. And—”

“Lat­er still the plot deep­ened. Why, when I was retail­ing to you the steps that led up to the arrest of the Nor­wood builder by the impres­sion of his thumb, I found a very great sur­prise that you were not lis­ten­ing at all to my rea­son­ing, but were lilt­ing a very sweet — a very sweet tune, Wat­son — ‘The Flow­ers of the For­est;’ then I in turn con­sult­ed an author­i­ty on the sub­ject, and found that that love­ly if trag­ic song had a spe­cial ref­er­ence to Selkirk. And you remem­ber, Wat­son, how very enthu­si­as­tic you grew all of a sud­den on the sub­ject of Com­mon-Rid­ings, and how much you stud­ied the his­to­ry of James IV., with spe­cial ref­er­ence to Flod­den Field. All these things speak, Wat­son, to the order­ly brain of a thinker. Haw­ick, Galashiels, and Selkirk. What did the com­bi­na­tion mean? I felt I must solve the prob­lem, Wat­son; so that night when you left me, after we had dis­cussed the “Tragedy of a Divid­ed House,” I ordered in a ton of tobac­co, wrapped my cloak about me, and spent the night in thought. When you came round in the morn­ing the prob­lem was solved. I could not on the accu­mu­la­tive evi­dence but come to the con­clu­sion that you con­tem­plat­ed anoth­er Par­lia­men­tary con­test. Wat­son, you have the Bor­der Burghs in your eye!”

“In my heart, Holmes,” said Wat­son.

“And where do you trav­el to on Sat­ur­day, Wat­son?”

“I am going to Selkirk; I have an engage­ment there to open a Bazaar.”

“Is it in aide of a Bridge, Wat­son?”

“Yes,’ replied Wat­son in sur­prise; “but how do you know? I have nev­er men­tioned the mat­ter to you.”

“By word, no; but by your action you have revealed the bent of your mind.”

“Impos­si­ble!”

“Let me explain. A week ago you came round to my rooms and asked for a look at ‘Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome.’ (You know I admire Macaulay’s works, and have a full set.) That vol­ume, after a casu­al look at, you took with you. When you returned it a day or two lat­er I noticed it was marked with a slip of paper at the ‘Lay of Hor­atius,’ and I detect­ed a faint pen­cil mark on the slip not­ing that the clos­ing stan­za was very appro­pri­ate. As you know, Wat­son, the lay is all descrip­tive of the keep­ing of a bridge. Let me remind you how nice­ly you would per­orate —

When the good­man mends his armour
And trims his hel­met’s plume,
When the good­wife’s shut­tle mer­ri­ly
Goes flash­ing through the loom,
With weep­ing and with laugh­ter.
Still the sto­ry told —
How well Hor­atius kept the bridge,
In the brave days of old.

Could I, being mor­tal, help think­ing you were bent on some such exploit your­self?”

“Very true!”

“Well, good­bye, Wat­son; shall be glad of your com­pa­ny after Sat­ur­day. Remem­ber Hor­atius’ words when you go to Bor­der Burghs: ‘How can man die bet­ter than fac­ing fear­ful odds.’ But there, these words are only illus­tra­tions. Safe jour­ney, and suc­cess to the Brig!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mas­ter­piece

Arthur Conan Doyle Dis­cuss­es Sher­lock Holmes and Psy­chics in a Rare Filmed Inter­view (1927)

Hear the Voice of Arthur Conan Doyle After His Death

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

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77 Exercises: A Workout Video For Fans of the Talking Heads

Turns out you can burn some good calo­ries when you’re Burn­ing Down the House. Enjoy a fun clip from Fun­ny or Die, and some oth­er great Talk­ing Heads mate­r­i­al from our archive below.

via @stevesilberman

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

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