John Prine’s Last Song Was Also His First to Go No. 1: Watch Him Perform “I Remember Everything”

in Music | July 2nd, 2020

It feels cos­mi­cal­ly iron­ic that Great Amer­i­can Song­writer John Prine died of COVID-19 in ear­ly April, just before the U.S. response to the virus was devel­op­ing into what may well be the Great­est Polit­i­cal Fol­ly most Amer­i­cans have ever wit­nessed in their life­times. Mass death for prof­it and pow­er, colos­sal stu­pid­i­ty and bul­ly­ing ignorance—these were just the kinds of things that got Prine’s wheels turn­ing. His thoughts became folk poet­ry with teeth.

Prine’s tar­gets includ­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive demo­niza­tion of sin­gle moth­ers in “Unwed Fathers,” who “can’t be both­ered,” he sang, “They run like water, through a moun­tain stream.” In 1971, he told bel­liger­ent Amer­i­can nation­al­ists “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heav­en Any­more,” in a song he’d actu­al­ly writ­ten in the late 60s, call­ing out America’s “dirty lit­tle war.” He revis­it­ed this ever­green anti-war theme in 2005’s “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” a song that angered many fans. While Prine’s explic­it­ly polit­i­cal songs are only a small part of his cat­a­logue, his lyri­cism always clear­ly reflect­ed his beliefs.

“Bestow­ing dig­ni­ty on the over­looked and mar­gin­al­ized was a com­mon theme through­out Prine’s career,” writes Annie Zales­ki in an NPR Music trib­ute. “He became known for detailed vignettes about ordi­nary peo­ple that illus­trat­ed truths about soci­ety.” His mas­tery of this form made him the ulti­mate songwriter’s song­writer. But while he won two Gram­mys and sev­er­al oth­er dis­tin­guished awards, “induc­tions into mul­ti­ple song­writer halls of fame,” notes Eli Enis at Con­se­quence of Sound, “and gush­ing praise from peers like Bob Dylan, Bruce Spring­steen, and Tom Pet­ty,” Prine nev­er had a No. 1 hit, until now—in a final irony he would have appreciated—with his posthu­mous release, “I Remem­ber Every­thing.”

The song came out on June 11 and this week “debuted at the top of the Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, mak­ing it the high­est-chart­ing sin­gle of the late legend’s entire career.” It show­cas­es Prine’s abil­i­ty to make the per­son­al reflect larg­er social real­i­ties he may nev­er have seen com­ing but some­how tuned into nonethe­less. In this case, the sub­ject is a man who knows he’s out of time and wants to savor every mem­o­ry before he goes. Writ­ten with long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Pat McLaugh­lin, the lyrics are gor­geous­ly bit­ter­sweet, touch­ing the depths of loss and reck­on­ing with mor­tal­i­ty.

Prine’s per­for­mance at the top was record­ed last year by Gram­my-win­ning pro­duc­er Dave Cobb. “Giv­en that Prine passed away back in April fol­low­ing a bat­tle with coro­n­avirus, the song’s life-span­ning, self-reflec­tive lyrics are aching­ly pre­scient,” writes Enis. And it’s “almost too on-the-nose that the track was pre­sent­ed in a home per­for­mance con­text, months before that set­up would become nor­mal­ized for a world in quar­an­tine.” Prine always had an “uncan­ny abil­i­ty to address (if not pre­dict) the soci­etal and polit­i­cal zeit­geist,” Zales­ki wrote in April. No mat­ter how ugly the zeit­geist was, he nev­er let it dull his wit or cloud his eye for beau­ty.

 

I Remem­ber Every­thing

I’ve been down this road before
I remem­ber every tree
Every sin­gle blade of grass
Holds a spe­cial place for me
And I remem­ber every town
And every hotel room
And every song I ever sang
On a gui­tar out of tune

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

I’ve been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Care­ful not to let my past
Go sneak­ing up on me
Got no future in my hap­pi­ness
Though regrets are very few
Some­times a lit­tle ten­der­ness
Was the best that I could do

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
Swim­ming pools of but­ter­flies
That slipped right through the net
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Michael Jordan’s “The Last Dance” and Hero Worship: A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast Discussion (#50)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports, Television | July 2nd, 2020

The 10-part ESPN doc­u­men­tary dis­sect­ing Michael Jor­dan and the Bulls’ six cham­pi­onships has pro­vid­ed some much need­ed sports dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, rop­ing in even sports haters with a mix of game high­lights and behind-the-scenes dra­ma.

Your hosts Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er are joined by Seth from The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life to inter­ro­gate the event: Was it actu­al­ly worth 10 hours of our time? Did its “time-jump­ing” struc­ture work? Its its treat­ment of Jor­dan real­ly “hagiog­ra­phy” sanc­ti­fy­ing the man, or is the pic­ture of grudge-hold­ing ultra-com­pet­i­tive­ness actu­al­ly pret­ty repul­sive? Why was he like that? Why are sports amenable to cre­at­ing cul­tur­al icons out of its heroes in a way that, say, physics isn’t? Are we going to see many more of these long-form treat­ments of sports heroes?

For more dis­cus­sion, here are some arti­cles we looked at:

If you enjoyed this, check out our episode #25 with sports­cast­er Dave Rev­sine.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How Ornette Coleman Shaped the Jazz World: An Introduction to His Irreverent Sound

in Music | July 1st, 2020

Ornette Cole­man “arrived in New York in 1959,” writes Philip Clark, “with a white plas­tic sax­o­phone and a set of ideas about impro­vi­sa­tion that would shake jazz to its big apple core.” Every big name in jazz was doing some­thing sim­i­lar at the time, invent­ing new styles and lan­guages. Cole­man went fur­ther out there than any­one, infu­ri­at­ing and frus­trat­ing oth­er jazz pio­neers like Miles Davis.

He called his the­o­ry “Har­molod­ics,” a Buck­min­ster Fuller-like meld­ing of “har­mo­ny,” “move­ment,” and “melody” that he coined in the 1970s. The man­i­festo explain­ing his ideas reads like psy­che­del­ic Dada:

—I play pure emo­tion

—In music, the only thing that mat­ters is whether you feel it or not

—Blow what you feel – any­thing. Play the thought, the idea in your mind – Break away from the con­ven­tion and stag­na­tion – escape!

—My music doesn’t have any real time, no met­ric time. It has time, but not in the sense that you can time it. It’s more like breath­ing – a nat­ur­al, freer time. Peo­ple have for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful it is to be nat­ur­al. Even in love.

—Music has no face. What­ev­er gives oxy­gen its pow­er, music is cut from the same cloth.

—It was when I real­ized I could make mis­takes that I decid­ed I was real­ly on to some­thing.

—I have found that by elim­i­nat­ing chords or keys or melodies as being the present idea of what you’re try­ing to feel i think you can play more emo­tion into the music. in oth­er words, you can have the har­mo­ny, melody, into­na­tion all blend­ing into one to the point of your emo­tion­al thought.

—There is a music that has the qual­i­ty to pre­serve life.

Coleman’s 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come pre­saged not only what jazz would, and could, become but also out­sider rock, from Cap­tain Beef­heart to The Roy­al Trux, and exper­i­men­tal music of all kinds. Cole­man resent­ed the idea the music should be sub­ject to cat­e­go­riza­tion or for­mal con­straints, or even that musi­cians need­ed have for­mal train­ing at all. All music is sound, he says, and sound is “as free,” he joked with Clark in a 2015 inter­view, “as the gas that pass­es through your butt.”

This irrev­er­ent atti­tude is typ­i­cal of Coleman’s approach to his art. Some of the high­lights of his ear­ly career, as laid out in the Poly­phon­ic video above—recording an entire album with his 10-year-old son on drums; get­ting punched by the drum­mer after his first New York gig—make him sound like jazz’s first punk, before there was any such thing as punk. He would go on to sit for a famous inter­view with Jacques Der­rida and become one of a hand­ful of musi­cians to win a Pulitzer Prize. The enig­mat­ic genius’s “audac­i­ty, vision, and tal­ent” has made him one of the most myth­i­cal fig­ures in music, a rep­u­ta­tion that is more than well-deserved. Get a clos­er look at his lega­cy at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

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

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

A 1947 French Film Accurately Predicted Our 21st-Century Addiction to Smartphones

in Film, Television | July 1st, 2020

When we watch a movie from, say, twen­ty years ago, it strikes us that both noth­ing and every­thing has changed. Apart from their slight­ly bag­gi­er clothes, the peo­ple look the same as us. But where are their phones? Com­pared to the recent past, the look of life today has­n’t changed much, but thanks to the inter­net and even more so to smart­phones, the feel has changed enor­mous­ly. Most lit­er­ary and cin­e­mat­ic pre­dic­tions of the future got this exact­ly wrong, envi­sion­ing flam­boy­ant aes­thet­ic trans­for­ma­tions atop com­plete­ly unchanged forms of human behav­ior and soci­ety.

But more than 70 years ago, J. K. Ray­mond-Mil­let’s film Télévi­sion: Oeil de Demain (“Tele­vi­sion: Eye of Tomor­row”) seems to have scored the bulls­eye few oth­er visions of the world ahead even aimed for.  “This is one extra­or­di­nar­i­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tion in a work of sci­ence fic­tion,” wrote William Gib­son as he tweet­ed out a four-minute clip of the film that has recent­ly gone viral.

Though long regard­ed as a sci-fi prophet, Gib­son is the first to admit how lit­tle about tech­nol­o­gy he’s accu­rate­ly fore­seen: his break­out nov­el Neu­ro­mancer, for instance, fea­tures 21st-cen­tu­ry hack­ers mak­ing calls from pub­lic tele­phone booths.

Hence the impres­sive­ness, here in the actu­al 21st cen­tu­ry, of this vision of a future in which peo­ple stare near-con­stant­ly down at the screens of their hand­held devices: on the train, at the café (vis­it­ed, at 0:13, by what appears to be a time-trav­el­ing Gib­son him­self), in the street, on col­li­sion cours­es with fel­low screen-watch­ers on foot and in cars alike. These hand­held tele­vi­sions remind us of our mobile phones in more ways than one, not least in their being scuffed from sheer use. As with every astute pre­dic­tion of the future, all this may at first strike us denizens of the actu­al future as mun­dane — until we remem­ber that the pre­dic­tion was made in 1947.

Pro­duced as an edu­ca­tion­al film, Télévi­sion (view­able in full here) first shows and tells how the epony­mous, still-nov­el tech­nol­o­gy works, then goes on to imag­ine the forms in which it could poten­tial­ly sat­u­rate mod­ern soci­ety. These include not just the afore­men­tioned “minia­ture-tele­vi­sion devices in pub­lic places,” as schol­ar of tele­vi­sion Anne-Katrin Weber puts it, but “pro­fes­sion­al meet­ings con­duct­ed via pic­ture-phones,” “cars equipped with tele­vi­sion screens,” and “shops pro­mot­ing their goods on tele­vi­sion.”

We also see that “the small hand­held portable devices replace news­pa­pers and air ‘the infor­ma­tion broad­cast, or the polit­i­cal com­ment, the fash­ion show, or the sports bul­letin’, while the tele­vi­sion set at the trav­el agency replaces the paper cat­a­logues and invites poten­tial clients to ‘tele­vi­su­al­ly’ vis­it vaca­tion des­ti­na­tions.” Such tech­nol­o­gy will also offer more “inti­mate sights,” as when “the young woman, step­ping out of the show­er, has for­got­ten to turn off her tele­phone-cam­era and reveals her­self naked to the caller.” Yes, of course, “for­got­ten” — but then, this approach­es aspects of the future in which we live that even the bold­est tech­no­log­i­cal prophets nev­er dared con­sid­er.

via Kot­tke/William Gib­son

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

In 1911, Thomas Edi­son Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Pover­ty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

In 1964, Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Dri­ving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Jules Verne Accu­rate­ly Pre­dicts What the 20th Cen­tu­ry Will Look Like in His Lost Nov­el, Paris in the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry (1863)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Two Teenage Dutch Sisters Ended Up Joining the Resistance and Assassinating Nazis During World War II

in History | July 1st, 2020

Ger­many invad­ed the Nether­lands in 1940 and quick­ly over­pow­ered the country’s small forces. Nazis arrest­ed and deport­ed Jews, cre­at­ed forced labor, strict­ly rationed food, and banned all non-Nazi orga­ni­za­tions. “Almost every Dutch per­son was affect­ed by the con­se­quences of the occu­pa­tion,” the Verzets Resis­tance Muse­um writes. “The choic­es and dilem­mas fac­ing the pop­u­la­tion became more far reach­ing.” Often those choic­es were stark: Col­lab­o­rate and live? Or resist and will­ing­ly put one­self at risk of prison or death?

Two sis­ters, Fred­die and Tru­us Over­stee­gen, 14 and 16 years old dur­ing the Ger­man inva­sion, chose the lat­ter course of action. Along with 19-year-old Han­nie Schaft, a Dutch nation­al hero the Nazis called “the girl with the red hair,” they did things they cer­tain­ly nev­er imag­ined they would, killing sol­diers and col­lab­o­ra­tors in order to save lives. The sis­ters learned their first resis­tance lessons at home. They were raised in the city of Haar­lem by their work­ing-class, com­mu­nist moth­er, Tri­jn, who “taught the girls com­pas­sion for those less for­tu­nate,” writes Jake Rossen at Men­tal Floss.

The fam­i­ly shel­tered Jews, dis­si­dents, and gays flee­ing Ger­many in the 1930s. “When the Nazis invad­ed the Nether­lands,” Rossen notes, “Fred­die and Tru­us hand­ed out pam­phlets oppos­ing the occu­pa­tion and plas­tered warn­ings over pro­pa­gan­da posters.” The Dutch resis­tance asked the girls to join them, and their moth­er agreed, know­ing lit­tle of what lay in store.

Fred­die and Tru­us were, for a time, the only two women in the sev­en-per­son rebel­lion dubbed the Haar­lem Coun­cil of Resis­tance. After being recruit­ed by com­man­der Frans van der Wiel in 1941, the two learned the basics of sab­o­tage, pick­ing up tricks like how to rig rail­ways and bridges with dyna­mite so trav­el paths would be cut off; how to fire a weapon; and how to roam unde­tect­ed through an area pep­pered with Nazi sol­diers. The lat­ter abil­i­ty was a result of their appear­ance. With her hair in braids, Fred­die was said to have looked as young as 12 years old. Few sol­diers took notice of the two girls as they rode bicy­cles through occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry, though they were secret­ly act­ing as couri­ers, trans­port­ing paper­work and weapons for the resis­tance. The duo burned down a Nazi ware­house unde­tect­ed. They escort­ed small chil­dren and refugees to hid­ing spots and secured false iden­ti­fi­ca­tion for them, which they con­sid­ered of para­mount impor­tance even as Allied bombs went off over­head.

The sis­ters lured SS offi­cers into death­traps, act­ing as look­outs while fight­ers killed the Ger­mans. They soon “grad­u­at­ed to elim­i­nat­ing their own tar­gets, which Fred­die would lat­er describe as ‘liq­ui­da­tions,’” gun­ning down Nazis from their bicy­cles. “Some­times, Fred­die said, she would shoot a man and then feel a strange com­pul­sion to try to help him up.” It’s a chill­ing image of a resis­tance fight­er who is also a child sol­dier in a war she can­not avoid.

“There were a lot of women involved in the resis­tance in the Nether­lands,” says Bas von Ben­da-Beck­mann, a for­mer researcher at the Nether­lands’ Insti­tute for War, Holo­caust and Geno­cide Stud­ies, “but not so much in the way these girls were. There are not that many exam­ples of women who actu­al­ly shot col­lab­o­ra­tors.” The women nev­er revealed how many peo­ple they “liq­ui­dat­ed.” When asked in inter­views, History.com notes, “Fred­die would tell people…she and her sis­ter were sol­diers, and sol­diers don’t say.”

Han­nie was even­tu­al­ly cap­tured and exe­cut­ed. The Over­stee­gen sis­ters sur­vived the war and lived into their 90s, pass­ing away with­in two years of each oth­er: Tru­us in 2016 and Fred­die in 2018. The trau­mat­ic toll these events took on Fred­die was evi­dent to the end of her life. “If you ask me,” her son Remi Dekker said after her death, “In her mind [the war] was still going on, and on. It didn’t stop, even until the last day.”

The Over­stee­gen sis­ters were part of a hand­ful of Dutch resis­tance fight­ers who lived into the 21st cen­tu­ry. Anoth­er resis­tance hero, Sel­ma van de Perre, is still alive at 97 and has pub­lished a book about her expe­ri­ence and the many oth­er Jew­ish resis­tance fight­ers in the Nether­lands dur­ing the war. The coun­try “spawned one of Europe’s most for­mi­da­ble anti-Nazi net­works,” the Pitts­burgh Jew­ish Chron­i­cle points out, thanks to the brav­ery of young fight­ers like Schaft, the Over­stee­gan sis­ters, and van de Perre. Learn more at the Verzets Resis­tance Muse­um.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Secret Stu­dent Group Who Took on the Nazis: An Intro­duc­tion to “The White Rose”

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

Albert Camus, Edi­tor of the French Resis­tance News­pa­per Com­bat, Writes Mov­ing­ly About Life, Pol­i­tics & War (1944–47)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

When the Beatles Refused to Play Before Segregated Audiences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

in Music | June 30th, 2020

When Amer­i­can rock and roll made its way to the UK in the 1950s and 60s, along with a bur­geon­ing folk and blues revival, many young British fans hadn’t been con­di­tioned to think of music in the same way as their U.S. coun­ter­parts. “Unlike racial­ly seg­re­gat­ed Amer­i­cans,” for exam­ple, “the Bea­t­les didn’t see—or hear—the dif­fer­ence between Elvis and Chuck Berry,” writes Joseph Tirella, “between the Ever­ly Broth­ers and the Mar­velettes.” They also couldn’t see play­ing to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences as just one of those social cus­toms one polite­ly observes when tour­ing abroad.

In 1964, at the height of Beat­le­ma­nia, the band was booked to play Florida’s Gator Bowl in Jack­sonville just after a dev­as­tat­ing hur­ri­cane and months after the intro­duc­tion of the Civ­il Rights Act into Con­gres­sion­al delib­er­a­tions. Major polit­i­cal shifts were hap­pen­ing in the coun­try and would have hap­pened with or with­out the Bea­t­les tak­ing a stand for inte­gra­tion.

But they took a stand nonethe­less and used their celebri­ty pow­er to show how mean­ing­less the sys­tem of Apartheid in the South actu­al­ly was. It could, in fact, be annulled by fiat should a group with as much lever­age as the Fab Four refuse to play along.

The rid­er for the Sep­tem­ber 11 con­cert “explic­it­ly cit­ed the band’s refusal to per­form in a seg­re­gat­ed facil­i­ty,” writes Ken­neth Wom­ack at Salon. When con­cert pro­mot­ers pushed back, John Lennon flat­ly stat­ed in a press con­fer­ence, “We nev­er play to seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences, and we aren’t going to start now. I’d soon­er lose our appear­ance mon­ey.” Despite storm dam­age and evac­u­a­tions, the 32,000-seat sta­di­um had sold out. The Gator Bowl had to relent and deseg­re­gate for the evening’s show.

One of the concert’s atten­dees, his­to­ri­an Dr. Kit­ty Oliv­er, who appears in the clip at the top from Ron Howard’s Bea­t­les doc­u­men­tary Eight Days a Week, was a young Bea­t­les fan who hadn’t heard the news about the show deseg­re­gat­ing. Deter­mined to go, and sav­ing up enough mon­ey to score a seat near the front row, she remem­bers fear­ing the atmos­phere she would encounter:

At the time, I didn’t know any­thing about the group’s press con­fer­ence announce­ment refus­ing to per­form for an audi­ence where Black patrons would be forcibly seg­re­gat­ed from Whites, prob­a­bly rel­e­gat­ed to the worse seats far­thest away from the stage and maybe sub­ject­ed to a threat­en­ing atmos­phere if they showed up.

Instead, she writes, “the crowd rose, thun­der­ous, in uni­son, when the Bea­t­les took the stage. Then tun­nel vision set in: Eyes glued to the front, I sang along to ‘She loves me, yeah, yeah, yeah…’ full voiced, just as loud­ly as every­one, all of us lost in the sound.” The band “left behind a lega­cy that night,” writes Wom­ack, hav­ing “stood up to insti­tu­tion­al racism and won.” It was not a cause-of-the-moment for them but a deep con­vic­tion all four mem­bers shared, as Paul McCart­ney explains above in an inter­view with reporter Lar­ry Kane, who fol­lowed the band on their first Amer­i­can tour.

McCart­ney had been so moved by the events in Lit­tle Rock in 1957 that almost a decade lat­er, he remem­bered them in his song “Black­bird,” as he explains above. This year, he recalled the band’s stand against seg­re­ga­tion in Jack­sonville and com­ment­ed, “I feel sick and angry that here we are, almost 60 years lat­er, and the world is in shock at the hor­rif­ic scenes of the sense­less mur­der of George Floyd at the hands of police racism, along with the count­less oth­ers that came before. I want jus­tice for George Floyd’s fam­i­ly, I want jus­tice for all those who have died and suf­fered. Say­ing noth­ing is not an option.” When it came to issues of injus­tice, even at the height of their fame, the Bea­t­les were will­ing to say—and, more impor­tant­ly, do—something about it even if it cost them.

via Salon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

An Immaculate Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Supper Digitized by Google: View It in High Resolution Online

in Art | June 30th, 2020


Roman­tic poets told us that great art is eter­nal and tran­scen­dent. They also told us every­thing made by human hands is bound to end in ruin and decay. Both themes were inspired by the redis­cov­ery and renewed fas­ci­na­tion for the arts of antiq­ui­ty in Europe and Egypt. It was a time of renewed appre­ci­a­tion for mon­u­men­tal works of art, which hap­pened to coin­cide with a peri­od when they came under con­sid­er­able threat from loot­ers, van­dals, and invad­ing armies.

One work of art that appeared on the itin­er­ary of every Grand Tour­ing aris­to­crat, Leonardo’s da Vinci’s fres­co The Last Sup­per in Milan, was made espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble when the refec­to­ry in which it was paint­ed became an armory and sta­ble for Napoleon’s troops in 1796. The sol­diers scratched out the apos­tles’ eyes and lobbed rocks at the paint­ing. Lat­er, in 1800, Goethe wrote of the room flood­ing with two feet of water, and the build­ing was also used as a prison.

As every cura­tor and con­ser­va­tion­ist knows well, grand ideas about art gloss over impor­tant details. Art is bound to par­tic­u­lar cul­tures, his­to­ries and mate­ri­als. One of Leonardo’s most influ­en­tial fres­coes dur­ing the Renais­sance, for exam­ple, almost com­plete­ly melt­ed right after he fin­ished it, due to his insis­tence on using oils, which he also mixed with tem­pera in The Last Sup­per. Just a few decades after that paint­ing’s com­ple­tion, one Ital­ian writer would describe it as “blurred and col­or­less com­pared with what I remem­ber of it when I saw it as a boy.”

His­tor­i­cal decay is one thing. Recent fires at Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um and Notre Dame served as stark reminders that acci­dents and poor plan­ning can rob the world of cher­ished cul­tur­al trea­sures all at once. Insti­tu­tions have been dig­i­tiz­ing their col­lec­tions with as much detail and pre­ci­sion as pos­si­ble. For their part, England’s Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts has part­nered with Google Arts & Cul­ture to ren­der sev­er­al of their most prized works online, includ­ing a copy of The Last Sup­per on can­vas, made by Leonardo’s stu­dents from his orig­i­nal work.

More than any oth­er con­tem­po­rary descrip­tion of the paint­ing, this faith­ful copy, prob­a­bly made by artists who worked on the fres­co itself, pro­vides art his­to­ri­ans “key insights into the long-fad­ed mas­ter­work in Milan,” and lets us see the vivid shades that awed its first view­ers. Pre­sent­ed in “Gigapix­el clar­i­ty,” notes Art­net, the huge dig­i­tal image with its “ultra high res­o­lu­tion” was “made pos­si­ble by a pro­pri­etary Google cam­era.” As you zoom in to the tini­est details, facts appear about the paint­ing and its larg­er, more bat­tered orig­i­nal in Milan.

It is either a “mir­a­cle” that The Last Sup­per has sur­vived, as Áine Cain writes at Busi­ness Insid­er, or the result of an “unend­ing fight” to pre­serve the work, as Kevin Wong details at Endgad­get. Or maybe some mys­te­ri­ous mix­ture of chance and near-hero­ic effort. But what has sur­vived is not what Leonar­do paint­ed, but rather the best recon­struc­tion to emerge from cen­turies of destruc­tion and restora­tion. Get clos­er than any­one ever could to a fac­sim­i­le of the orig­i­nal and see details from Leonardo’s work that have left no oth­er trace in his­to­ry. Explore it here.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Vision­ary Note­books Now Online: Browse 570 Dig­i­tized Pages

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

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

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Rewatch Every Episode of The Sopranos with the Talking Sopranos Podcast, Hosted by Michael Imperioli & Steve Schirripa

in Podcasts, Television | June 30th, 2020

The Sopra­nos pre­miered on Jan­u­ary 10, 1999, and tele­vi­sion did not change for­ev­er — or rather, not right away. Though its treat­ment of the life of mid-lev­el New Jer­sey mob boss Tony Sopra­no drew large num­bers of ded­i­cat­ed view­ers right away, few could have imag­ined dur­ing the show’s eight-year run how com­plete­ly its suc­cess would even­tu­al­ly rewrite the rules of dra­mat­ic TV. More than twen­ty years lat­er, near­ly all of us place the begin­ning of our ongo­ing tele­vi­su­al “gold­en age” at the broad­cast of The Sopra­nos’ first episode. You can hear that epoch-mak­ing 50 min­utes dis­cussed in depth on the first episode of the new pod­cast Talk­ing Sopra­nos (YouTube — Apple — Spo­ti­fy), whose hosts Michael Impe­ri­oli and Steve Schirri­pa know the series more inti­mate­ly than most — not least because they were on it.

Fans know Impe­ri­oli and Schirri­pa as Tony’s pro­tégé Christo­pher Molti­san­ti and Tony’s broth­er-in-law Bob­by Bac­calieri. On Talk­ing Sopra­nos they “fol­low the Sopra­nos series episode by episode giv­ing fans all the inside info, behind the scenes sto­ries and lit­tle-known facts that could only come from some­one on the inside,” announces the pod­cast’s descrip­tion, which also promis­es “inter­views with addi­tion­al cast mem­bers, pro­duc­ers, writ­ers, pro­duc­tion crew and spe­cial guests.”

Among these voic­es there is, of course, one siz­able absence: star James Gan­dolfi­ni, Tony Sopra­no him­self, who died in 2013. But it shows promise that, just four­teen episodes in, the pod­cast has already brought on Edie Fal­co, who played Tony’s wife Carmela; Robert Iler, their son A.J. Sopra­no; Jamie-Lynn Sigler, their daugh­ter Mead­ow Sopra­no; and Michael Rispoli, the first sea­son’s short-lived Jack­ie Aprile Sr.

None of these actors would have made their mark on the show with­out the work of cast­ing direc­tors Geor­gianne Walken and Sheila Jaffe, who also make an appear­ance on the pod­cast, as does co-exec­u­tive pro­duc­er and some­time direc­tor Hen­ry Bronchtein. You can down­load Talk­ing Sopra­nos on its web site, sub­scribe to it on Apple Pod­casts and else­where, or even watch it on Youtube. If you’d like to sup­ple­ment all this with an even greater wealth of detail, pick up a copy of Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepin­wal­l’s book The Sopra­nos Ses­sions, an episode-by-episode analy­sis fea­tur­ing inter­views with fig­ures includ­ing series cre­ator David Chase. Nev­er has there been a bet­ter time to do a Sopra­nos re-watch of your own — and if you nev­er watched it in the first place, well, bet­ter a cou­ple of decades late than nev­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopra­nos

David Chase Reveals the Philo­soph­i­cal Mean­ing of The Sopra­nos’ Final Scene

The Nine Minute Sopra­nos

Mau­rice Sendak Ani­mat­ed; James Gan­dolfi­ni Reads from Sendak’s Sto­ry “In The Night Kitchen”

James Gan­dolfi­ni Shows Kinder, Soft­er, Gen­tler Side on Sesame Street (2002)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Beastie Boys & Rick Rubin Reunite and Revisit Their Formative Time Together in 1980s NYC

in Music | June 29th, 2020

The Beast­ie Boys’ record-shat­ter­ing Licensed to Ill is thir­ty-four years old. This fact might mean noth­ing to you, or it might mean that you are thir­ty-four years old­er than the moment the album came out in Novem­ber of 1986, and sub­ur­ban par­ents around the coun­try, maybe even your par­ents, freaked out in uni­son. The album was a stroke of genius from pro­duc­er Rick Rubin, deliv­er­ing hip-hop safe for white kids while also giv­ing them per­mis­sion to be as obnox­ious as pos­si­ble.

Osten­si­bly a rap record, the first ever to hit num­ber one, Licensed to Ill also rode in on the crest of the mid-80s Satan­ic Pan­ic. Rubin’s deci­sion to set its exag­ger­at­ed­ly juve­nile rhymes to sam­ples of Black Sab­bath and Led Zep­pelin made a defi­ant statement—and bring­ing in Slayer’s Ker­ry King to play gui­tar on “No Sleep till Brook­lyn” real­ly rubbed it in. He was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­duc­ing Slayer’s Reign in Blood, and both albums man­aged to ter­ri­fy, and appeal to, many of the same peo­ple.

Lyri­cal­ly, Licensed to Ill kept things light and goofy but also ampli­fied some cor­ro­sive misog­y­ny and homo­pho­bia, for which the band has made amends and apolo­gies over the years. Adam Horowitz called their per­sonas on the album “idiot car­i­ca­tures of our­selves.” Of its first, dis­card­ed, title, he says, “it was meant to be a joke about jock frat dudes.” They moved on and moved to L.A., show­ing very dif­fer­ent sides of them­selves on fol­low-up Paul’s Bou­tique. You’re prob­a­bly famil­iar with Rick Rubin’s post-Licensed to Ill career and all-around sta­tus as a hip-hop, met­al, rock, pop, coun­try, etc. pro­duc­er.

They hadn’t been in touch in around twen­ty years when Rubin and sur­viv­ing Beast­ie Boys Adam Horowitz and Michael Dia­mond sat down—over Zoom—recently for the Rubin-host­ed Bro­ken Record Pod­cast. There’s a lot of catch­ing up to do. They start at the very begin­ning, when the trio was still in high school and Rubin lived in the NYU dorms and occa­sion­al­ly went to class­es. From the per­spec­tive of their cur­rent selves, they real­ize how strange it was that they hard­ly knew any­thing about each oth­er at the time. There are also a few lin­ger­ing mis­un­der­stand­ings to clear up.

Join­ing them is Spike Jonze, direc­tor of the clas­sic video for “Sab­o­tage” and of the upcom­ing Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry (trail­er above). The film is a “love let­ter to hip hop’s gold­en age,” writes Kevin Eg Per­ry at NME, an “inti­mate, per­son­al sto­ry of their band and 40 years of friend­ship.” Every Beast­ie Boys ret­ro­spec­tive, and there have been a few late­ly, is tinged with sad­ness for the con­spic­u­ous absence of Adam Yauch (MCA).

He appears here in spir­it and on video, pro­ject­ed on a giant screen behind Horowitz and Dia­mond onstage in the live sto­ry­telling event filmed by Jonze. “They’re frank about the shit­ti­ness of some of their past behav­ior,” Per­ry notes, like fir­ing found­ing mem­ber Kate Schel­len­bach because she did­n’t fit their new tough-guy act. It’s a grown-up per­spec­tive that will sur­prise no one who has fol­lowed the course of their cre­ative and per­son­al evo­lu­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 36 Beast­ie Boys Videos Now Remas­tered in HD

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Boutique–and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Milton Glaser (RIP) Explains Why We Must Overcome the Fear of Failure, Take Risks & Discover Our True Potential

in Design, Life | June 29th, 2020

Mil­ton Glaser died last week at the age of 91, a long life that includ­ed decade upon decade as the best-known name in graph­ic design. With­in the pro­fes­sion he became as well-known as sev­er­al of his designs did in the wider world: the Bob Dylan poster, logos for com­pa­nies like DC Comics, the Glaser Sten­cil font, and above all  I ❤ NY. Glaser may have become an icon, but he did­n’t become a brand — “one of my most despised words,” he says in the inter­view clip above. He also acknowl­edges that spe­cial­iza­tion, “hav­ing some­thing no one else has,” is the sine qua non of “finan­cial suc­cess and noto­ri­ety.” But “the con­se­quence of spe­cial­iza­tion and suc­cess is that it hurts you. It hurts you because it basi­cal­ly does­n’t aid in your devel­op­ment.” When we suc­ceed we usu­al­ly do so because peo­ple come to rely on us to do one par­tic­u­lar thing, and to do it well — in oth­er words, nev­er to fail at it.

But as Glaser reminds us, “devel­op­ment comes from fail­ure. Peo­ple begin to get bet­ter when they fail.” As an exam­ple of devel­op­ment through fail­ure he holds up Pablo Picas­so: “When­ev­er Picas­so learned how to do some­thing, he aban­doned it, and as a result of that, in terms of his devel­op­ment as an artist, the results were extra­or­di­nary.”

We may, of course, ques­tion the rel­e­vance of this com­par­i­son, since many would describe Picas­so as an artis­tic genius, and not a few would cast Glaser him­self in sim­i­lar terms. Sure­ly both of them, each in his own way, inhab­it­ed a world apart from the rest of us. And yet, don’t the “the rest of us” won­der from time to about our our own poten­tial for genius? Haven’t we, at times, felt near­ly con­vinced that we could achieve great things if only we weren’t so afraid to try.

Glaser breaks this fear down into con­stituent threats: the “con­dem­na­tion of oth­ers,” the “crit­i­cism of crit­ics and oth­er experts and even your friends and rel­a­tives,” the prospect that “you won’t get any more work.” But “the real embar­rass­ing issue about fail­ure is your own acknowl­edg­ment that you’re not a genius, that you’re not as good as you thought you were.” We can’t bear to acknowl­edge “that we real­ly don’t exact­ly know what we’re doing,” an inescapable real­i­ty in the process of self-devel­op­ment. But there is a solu­tion, and in Glaser’s view only one solu­tion: “You must embrace fail­ure, you must admit what is, you must find out what you’re capa­ble of doing and what you’re not capa­ble of doing.” You must “sub­ject your­self to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you are not as good as you want to be, hope to be, or as oth­ers think you are.” And as the famous­ly nev­er-retired Glaser sure­ly knew, you must keep on doing it, no mat­ter how long you’ve been cel­e­brat­ed as a pro­fes­sion­al, a mas­ter, an icon, a genius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mil­ton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work: The Cel­e­brat­ed Design­er Dis­pens­es Wis­dom Gained Over His Long Life & Career

Saul Bass’ Advice for Design­ers: Makes Some­thing Beau­ti­ful and Don’t Wor­ry About the Mon­ey

Paulo Coel­ho on How to Han­dle the Fear of Fail­ure

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Bet­ter”: How Samuel Beck­ett Cre­at­ed the Unlike­ly Mantra That Inspires Entre­pre­neurs Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Behold Octavia Butler’s Motivational Notes to Self

in Books, K-12, Literature, Writing | June 29th, 2020

Hand­writ­ten notes on the inside cov­er of one of Octavia E. Butler’s com­mon­place books, 1988

I was attract­ed to sci­ence fic­tion because it was so wide open. I was able to do any­thing and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human con­di­tion that you were stopped from exam­in­ing. —Octavia E. But­ler

Like many authors, the late Octavia E. But­ler took up writ­ing at a young age.

At 11, she was churn­ing out tales about hors­es and romance.

At 12, she saw Dev­il Girl from Mars, and fig­ured (cor­rect­ly) she could tell a bet­ter sto­ry than that, using 2 fin­gers to peck out sto­ries on the Rem­ing­ton type­writer her moth­er bought at her request.

At 13, she found a copy of The Writer mag­a­zine aban­doned on a bus seat, and learned that it was pos­si­ble to sub­mit her work for pub­li­ca­tion.

After a decade’s worth of rejec­tion slips, she sold her first two sto­ries, thanks in part to her asso­ci­a­tion with the Clar­i­on Sci­ence Fic­tion Writ­ing Work­shop, which she became involved with on the rec­om­men­da­tion of her men­tor, sci­ence fic­tion writer Har­lan Elli­son.

She went on to become the first sci­ence fic­tion writer to receive a pres­ti­gious MacArthur “genius” award, gar­ner­ing mul­ti­ple Hugo and Neb­u­la awards for her work.

An aster­oid is named after her, as is a moun­tain on Pluto’s moon.

Hailed as the Moth­er of Afro Futur­ism, she won the PEN Amer­i­can Cen­ter life­time achieve­ment award in writ­ing.

But pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess nev­er cloud­ed her view of her­self as the 10-year-old writer who was unsure if library-lov­ing black kids like her would be allowed inside a book­store.

Iden­ti­fy­ing as a writer helped her move beyond her crip­pling shy­ness and dyslex­ia. As she wrote in an auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal essay, “Pos­i­tive Obses­sion”:

I believed I was ugly and stu­pid, clum­sy, and social­ly hope­less. I also thought that every­one would notice these faults if I drew atten­tion to myself. I want­ed to dis­ap­pear. Instead, I grew to be six feet tall. Boys in par­tic­u­lar seemed to assume that I had done this grow­ing delib­er­ate­ly and that I should be ridiculed for it as often as pos­si­ble.

I hid out in a big pink notebook—one that would hold a whole ream of paper. I made myself a uni­verse in it. There I could be a mag­ic horse, a Mar­t­ian, a telepath….There I could be any­where but here, any time but now, with any peo­ple but these.

She devel­oped a life­long habit of cheer­ing her­self on with moti­va­tion­al notes, writ­ing them in her jour­nals, on lined note­book paper, in day plan­ners and on repur­posed pages of an old wall cal­en­dar.

She held her­self account­able by writ­ing out demand­ing sched­ules to accom­pa­ny her lofty, doc­u­ment­ed goals.

And though she wea­ried of the con­stant invi­ta­tions to serve on lit­er­ary pan­els devot­ed to sci­ence fic­tion writ­ers of col­or, at which she’d be asked the same ques­tions she’d answered dozens of times before, she was res­olute about pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for young black writ­ers … and read­ers, who found reflec­tions of them­selves in her char­ac­ters. As she remarked in an inter­view with The New York Times: 

When I began writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion, when I began read­ing, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read. The only black peo­ple you found were occa­sion­al char­ac­ters or char­ac­ters who were so fee­ble-wit­ted that they couldn’t man­age any­thing, any­way. I wrote myself in, since I’m me and I’m here and I’m writ­ing.

Her brand of sci­ence fic­tion—a label she often tried to duck, iden­ti­fy­ing her­self on her busi­ness card sim­ply as “writer”—serves as a lens for con­sid­er­ing con­tem­po­rary issues: sex­u­al vio­lence, gun vio­lence, cli­mate change, gen­der stereo­types, the prob­lems of late-stage cap­i­tal­ism, the plight of undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, and, not least, racism.

She side­stepped utopi­an sci­ence fic­tion, believ­ing that imper­fect humans are inca­pable of  form­ing a per­fect soci­ety. “Nobody is per­fect,” she told Vibe:

One of the things I’ve dis­cov­ered even with teach­ers using my books is that peo­ple tend to look for ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys,’ which always annoys the hell out of me. I’d be bored to death writ­ing that way. But because that’s the only pat­tern they have, they try to fit my work into it.

Learn more about the life and work of Octavia E. But­ler (1947–2006) here.

I shall be a best­selling writer. After Ima­go, each of my books will be on the best­seller lists of LAT, NYT, PW, WP, etc. My nov­els will go onto the above lists whether pub­lish­ers push them hard or not, whether I’m paid a high advance or not, whether I ever win anoth­er award or not.

This is my life. I write best­selling nov­els. My nov­els go onto the best­seller lists on or short­ly after pub­li­ca­tion. My nov­els each trav­el up to the top of the best­seller lists and they reach the top and they stay on top for months . Each of my nov­els does this.

So be it! I will find the way to do this. See to it! So be it! See to it!

My books will be read by mil­lions of peo­ple!

I will buy a beau­ti­ful home in an excel­lent neigh­bor­hood

I will send poor black young­sters to Clar­i­on or oth­er writer’s work­shops

I will help poor black young­sters broad­en their hori­zons

I will help poor black young­sters go to col­lege

I will get the best of health care for my moth­er and myself

I will hire a car when­ev­er I want or need to.

I will trav­el when­ev­er and wher­ev­er in the world that I choose

My books will be read by mil­lions of peo­ple!

So be it! See to it!

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Should We Read Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Writer Octavia But­ler? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Octavia Butler’s 1998 Dystopi­an Nov­el Fea­tures a Fascis­tic Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Who Promis­es to “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again”

Watch a 5‑Part Ani­mat­ed Primer on Afro­fu­tur­ism, the Black Sci-Fi Phe­nom­e­non Inspired by Sun Ra

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

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.