Blackie Pagano Shows Off Vintage Guitar Amps, Including One That Belonged to Django Reinhardt

in Music | May 24th, 2013

A long time ago, in a New York that seems a galaxy away, I found myself stum­bling out into Times Square in the rain-drenched, pre-dawn hours from a friend’s record­ing stu­dio, and stum­bling into a dis­card­ed Ampeg Jet J12, a vin­tage gui­tar amp pow­ered by tubes (or as the Brits say, valves). Some­one had aban­doned this beau­ti­ful rel­ic on the curb. I dragged the filthy thing into a cab home to Brook­lyn, cleaned it up as best I could, and went to sleep. The next day, I pow­ered it up (it worked!), plugged in my gui­tar, and entered the world of vin­tage tube amps. I would nev­er be the same again.

The gui­tar amplifier—perfected, some would say in the 1950s by Leo Fend­er—ini­tial­ly pro­vid­ed jazz gui­tarists a way to project over horn sec­tions in the big-band era. They even­tu­al­ly became instru­ments in their own right with the rise of Dick Dale’s surf rock sound and the advent of elec­tric blues and rock and roll. But, in the ’80s, vac­u­um tubes gave way to sol­id-state tran­sis­tors, then dig­i­tal, and tubes fell by the way­side. How­ev­er, since grunge and the garage rock revival, tube amp tones have once again become the stan­dard for most rock gui­tarists, even if they’re now often dig­i­tal copies.

But some die-hards nev­er gave up on tubes, and one of those, fea­tured above, is Black­ie Pagano, who has spent his days repair­ing and main­tain­ing vin­tage vac­u­um tube gui­tar amps and “all man­ner of audio mad­ness.” In the short doc above—part of a series of pro­files of New York­ers—Black­ie shows us Djan­go Reinhardt’s orig­i­nal amp and quotes Lux Inte­ri­or, singer of psy­chobil­ly punk band The Cramps, who once said that tube amps “turn music into fire and then back into music.” In just under three min­utes, the soli­tary, tat­tooed Pagano may con­vince you that vin­tage tube gui­tar amps are tru­ly mag­i­cal things, whether you find one on eBay, at Gui­tar Cen­ter, or on an NYC street­corner at four in the morn­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound

Adri­an Belew Presents the Fine Art of Mak­ing Gui­tar Noise — Past, Present, and Future

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

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Amanda Palmer’s Tips for Being an Artist in the Rough-and-Tumble Digital Age

in Current Affairs, Life, Music | May 24th, 2013

Aman­da Palmer is an artist who total­ly gets the pow­er of the Inter­net. Encour­ag­ing fans to freely share pay-what-you-wish down­loads of her music has endeared her to a cer­tain per­cent­age of the 99%, while anoth­er per­cent­age (there may be some over­lap here, folks) drubs her for lever­ag­ing her fame to crowd­source back­ing musi­cians will­ing to work for hugs, merch, and beer.

Her appetite for dig­i­tal dia­logue with admir­ers and accusers alike calls to mind fel­low shrink­ing vio­let Court­ney Love. Her refusal to let any­one but Aman­da Palmer speak for Aman­da Fuck­ing Palmer has giv­en rise to an army of trolls, who glee­ful­ly find proof of mon­strous ego in her most innocu­ous of moves. It’s the price of allow­ing the pub­lic com­plete access to “Do It With a Rock­star,” if you will.

As not­ed in her keynote speech (above) at the recent Muse and the Mar­ket­place lit­er­ary con­fer­ence, “with the inter­net you do not get to choose.” This applies whether one is gen­er­at­ing con­tent or leav­ing nasty com­ments. Her remarks touch upon her most recent firestorm, a direct trail lead­ing back to “A Poem for Dzhokar,” a hasti­ly com­posed and post­ed attempt to put her­self in the shoes of the sus­pect­ed Boston Marathon bomber as he lay in a boat, await­ing cap­ture.

Clear­ly, some­one with her expe­ri­ence does not slap such a hot pota­to online inno­cent of the con­se­quences. She got plen­ty of lumps, and whether or not the major­i­ty of them were deserved is a mat­ter of per­son­al opin­ion. More than 2300 peo­ple quick­ly logged on to voice these afore­men­tioned opin­ions, some sup­port­ive, some tak­ing the form of mock­ing haikus, which Palmer appre­ci­at­ed, espe­cial­ly since it was, at the time, Nation­al Poet­ry Month.

It seems to me that any time her ass is hang­ing out her giant heart’s not far behind. Lis­ten to her speech, and see if you don’t find her atti­tude ulti­mate­ly inspir­ing, espe­cial­ly for those artists inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing with a larg­er audi­ence. (The pre­sen­ta­tion’s so restrained, you can turn your back on the screen, turn your atten­tion to some pedes­tri­an task, and enjoy her thoughts pod­cast-style. )

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Gaiman Launch­es New Crowd­sourced Sto­ry­telling Project (Spon­sored by the New Black­Ber­ry)

The Black Cab Ses­sions: One Song, One Take, One Cab

Ayun Hal­l­i­day will glad­ly wrap her­self in Aman­da Palmer’s “Ukelele Anthem”

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Watch Another Green World, a Hypnotic Portrait of Brian Eno (2010)

in Art, Music, Television | May 24th, 2013

In Sep­tem­ber 1975, Bri­an Eno released his album Anoth­er Green World. The fol­low­ing month, the BBC’s acclaimed doc­u­men­tary series Are­na first aired, using Anoth­er Green World’s title track as its theme music. 35 years lat­er, the show final­ly got around to doc­u­ment­ing Eno him­self. This 2010 episode, also called Anoth­er Green World, cap­tures the “intel­lec­tu­al guru of the rock world” (as a Desert Island Discs DJ calls him) at work in his stu­dio, in con­ver­sa­tion with a vari­ety of interlocutors—including jour­nal­ist Mal­colm Glad­well, record pro­duc­er Steve Lil­ly­white, and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins—and cycling around the green hills that roll around his neigh­bor­hood. Bono from U2, sev­er­al of whose records Eno pro­duced, calls the man “a mind-expand­ing drug,” and lis­ten­ing to Eno expound here upon his var­i­ous ideas about and expe­ri­ences with art, music, tech­nol­o­gy, jour­nal­ing, and his native Eng­land, I’d have to agree.

The faint­ly hyp­not­ic tone and pace of the episode — a sen­si­bil­i­ty not far removed from Eno’s famous “ambi­ent” records like Dis­creet Music and Music for Air­ports — might also have some­thing to do with that. We learn about Eno’s school days, his love of singing, his descent from a long line of “post­men with pas­sion,” his get­ting more girls than Bryan Fer­ry in their days with Roxy Music, his pref­er­ence for incon­sis­tent instru­ments, his his­to­ry with Catholi­cism, his enthu­si­asm for Stafford Beer’s man­age­ment book Brain of the Firm, his work with audio­vi­su­al instal­la­tions, and his ever-present inter­est in how com­plex­i­ty aris­es from sim­plic­i­ty. But we also feel like we’ve seen some­thing not just about Eno, but Eno-like, where form meets func­tion as close­ly as in all of Are­na’s most mem­o­rable episodes and all of Eno’s most mem­o­rable projects. Or maybe I just like the sound of the rain out­side dur­ing the stu­dio seg­ments — a sound which had a lot to do with Eno’s devel­op­ment of ambi­ent music in the first place.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Helen Keller Speaks About Her Greatest Regret — Never Mastering Speech

in History | May 23rd, 2013

Every Amer­i­can school­child — so it went in my gen­er­a­tion, any­way, and in sev­er­al before it — learns about Helen Keller, though gen­er­al­ly we only learn that, despite hav­ing lost both her sight and her hear­ing to scar­let fever, she man­aged to become a respect­ed pub­lic fig­ure. This sort of nota­bil­i­ty-in-the-face-of-adver­si­ty sto­ry so cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion, and I dare­say the Amer­i­can imag­i­na­tion espe­cial­ly, that Keller wound up the sub­ject of quite a few movies: not just doc­u­men­taries, but fea­ture films too, from 1919’s silent Deliv­er­ance to 1962’s The Mir­a­cle Work­er to 1984’s The Mir­a­cle Con­tin­ues. Yet it still takes see­ing the actu­al Keller, whose name has over the past 45 years become a byword for deaf­blind­ness, to believe her.

For­tu­nate­ly, clips like the one above allow us to do just that. Here, we see Keller com­mu­ni­cat­ing with Pol­ly Thomp­son, her assis­tant and com­pan­ion. Thomp­son could trans­late the touch-based lan­guage sys­tem she used with Keller, but in this film, we hear not just Thomp­son’s voice but Keller’s own. Her incom­plete mas­tery of speech, alas, remained Keller’s life­long regret. “It is not blind­ness or deaf­ness that bring me my dark­est hours,” she says, and Thomp­son repeats in her own the­atri­cal­ly clear, Scots-tinged elo­cu­tion. “It is the acute dis­ap­point­ment in not being able to speak nor­mal­ly. Long­ing­ly I feel how much more good I could have done if I had acquired nor­mal speech. But out of this sor­row­ful expe­ri­ence, I under­stand more ful­ly all human tragedies, thwart­ed ambi­tions, and the infi­nite capac­i­ty of hope.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Helen Keller Cap­tured on Video

Helen Keller Pays a Vis­it to Martha Graham’s Dance Stu­dio Cir­ca 1954

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Marijuana (1969)

in Astronomy | May 23rd, 2013

Carl Sagan — he was an astronomer, astro­physi­cist, cos­mol­o­gist and great pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence. He was also, it turns out, a life­long smok­er of cannabis. In 1999, and just three years after Sagan’s death, Keay David­son pub­lished Carl Sagan: A Life, a biog­ra­phy that made head­lines for reveal­ing how Sagan wrote an essay in 1969, using the pseu­do­nym “Mr.  X,” where he out­lined the per­son­al ben­e­fits of smok­ing mar­i­jua­na. The essay even­tu­al­ly appeared in the 1971 book Recon­sid­er­ing Mar­i­jua­na. 35 years old at the time, Sagan explained how the drug height­ened his sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence, gave him an appre­ci­a­tion for the spir­i­tu­al realm (“a feel­ing of com­mu­nion with my sur­round­ings, both ani­mate and inan­i­mate”), enhanced his enjoy­ment of sex, and allowed him to achieve some “dev­as­tat­ing” insights into sci­en­tif­ic, cre­ative and par­tic­u­lar­ly social ques­tions. The drug also gave him a new­found respect for art and music. He wrote:

The cannabis expe­ri­ence has great­ly improved my appre­ci­a­tion for art, a sub­ject which I had nev­er much appre­ci­at­ed before. The under­stand­ing of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high some­times car­ries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human fron­tiers which cannabis has helped me tra­verse.…  A very sim­i­lar improve­ment in my appre­ci­a­tion of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the sep­a­rate parts of a three-part har­mo­ny and the rich­ness of the coun­ter­point. I have since dis­cov­ered that pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians can quite eas­i­ly keep many sep­a­rate parts going simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in their heads, but this was the first time for me.

You can read the com­plete essay here.

A quick foot­note: lat­er in life, Sagan advo­cat­ed legal­iz­ing med­ical mar­i­jua­na, as you can hear below. And his wife, Ann Druyan, who made sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tions to the PBS doc­u­men­tary series Cos­mos, has since pushed for the out­right legal­iza­tion of cannabis. She served on the Board of Direc­tors of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for the Reform of Mar­i­jua­na Laws for a decade.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Hunter S. Thomp­son Runs for Aspen, Col­orado Sher­iff on the “Freak Pow­er” Plat­form (1970)

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Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)

in History, Philosophy | May 23rd, 2013

In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 nov­el The Blood of Oth­ers, the nar­ra­tor, Jean Blo­mart, reports on his child­hood friend Marcel’s reac­tion to the word “rev­o­lu­tion”:

It was sense­less to try to change any­thing in the world or in life; things were bad enough even if one did not med­dle with them. Every­thing that her heart and her mind con­demned she rabid­ly defended—my father, mar­riage, cap­i­tal­ism. Because the wrong lay not in the insti­tu­tions, but in the depths of our being. We must hud­dle in a cor­ner and make our­selves as small as pos­si­ble. Bet­ter to accept every­thing than to make an abortive effort, doomed in advance to fail­ure.

Marcel’s fear­ful fatal­ism rep­re­sents every­thing De Beau­voir con­demned in her writ­ing, most notably her ground­break­ing 1949 study, The Sec­ond Sex, often cred­it­ed as the foun­da­tion­al text of sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism. De Beau­voir reject­ed the idea that women’s his­tor­i­cal sub­jec­tion was in any way natural—“in the depths of our being.” Instead, her analy­sis fault­ed the very insti­tu­tions Mar­cel defends: patri­archy, mar­riage, cap­i­tal­ist exploita­tion.

In the 1975 inter­view above with French jour­nal­ist Jean-Louis Ser­van-Schreiber—“Why I’m a Feminist”—De Beau­voir picks up the ideas of The Sec­ond Sex, which Ser­van-Schreiber calls as impor­tant an “ide­o­log­i­cal ref­er­ence” for fem­i­nists as Marx’s Cap­i­tal is for com­mu­nists. He asks De Beau­v­ior about one of her most quot­ed lines: “One is not born a woman, one becomes one.” Her reply shows how far in advance she was of post-mod­ern anti-essen­tial­ism, and how much of a debt lat­er fem­i­nist thinkers owe to her ideas:

Yes, that for­mu­la is the basis of all my the­o­ries…. Its mean­ing is very sim­ple, that being a woman is not a nat­ur­al fact. It’s the result of a cer­tain his­to­ry. There is no bio­log­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal des­tiny that defines a woman as such…. Baby girls are man­u­fac­tured to become women.”

With­out deny­ing the fact of bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ence, De Beau­voir debunks the notion that sex dif­fer­ences are suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy gen­der-based hier­ar­chies of sta­tus and social pow­er. Wom­en’s sec­ond-class sta­tus, she argues, results from a long his­tor­i­cal process; even if insti­tu­tions no longer inten­tion­al­ly deprive women of pow­er, they still intend to hold on to the pow­er men have his­tor­i­cal­ly accrued.

Almost forty years after this interview—over six­ty since The Sec­ond Sex—the debates De Beau­voir helped ini­ti­ate rage on, with no sign of abat­ing any­time soon. Although Ser­van-Schreiber calls fem­i­nism a “ris­ing force” that promis­es “pro­found changes,” one won­ders whether De Beau­voir, who died in 1986, would be dis­mayed by the plight of women in much of the world today. But then again, unlike her char­ac­ter Mar­cel, De Beau­voir was a fight­er, not like­ly to “hud­dle in a cor­ner” and give in. Ser­van-Schreiber states above that De Beau­voir “has always refused, until this year, to appear on TV,” but he is mis­tak­en. In 1967, she appeared with her part­ner Jean-Paul Sartre on a French-Cana­di­an pro­gram called Dossiers.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Lovers and Philoso­phers — Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beau­voir Togeth­er in 1967

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

The Paris Review Inter­views Now Online

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

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Dave Grohl, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt & Other Friends Make Surprise Appearances on Rolling Stones Tour

in Music | May 22nd, 2013

It’s good to be Dave Grohl these days. One day you get to ser­e­nade Paul McCart­ney; the next, Sir Paul jams with you and the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Nir­vana; and then it’s off to play with the Rolling Stones. The 50 & Count­ing Tour passed through Ana­heim last week, and Grohl shared the stage with Mick, Kei­th, Ron­nie and Char­lie, throw­ing him­self into a rous­ing ver­sion of “Bitch,” the clas­sic song record­ed back in 1971. By the 2:48 mark, as one YouTu­ber noticed, Kei­th Richards prac­ti­cal­ly stops play­ing and just stares in won­der.

Oth­er guest per­for­mances on the tour have includ­ed Tom Waits singing “Lit­tle Red Roost­er” in Oak­land (below); Bon­nie Raitt join­ing in on “Let it Bleed” in San Jose (I got to catch that live); John Foger­ty singing parts of “It’s All Over Now” also in San Jose; and then, in a nod to the younger crowd, we have per­for­mances by Katy Per­ry (“Beast of Bur­den”) and Gwen Ste­fani (“Wild Hors­es”). Old timers will enjoy watch­ing Mick Tay­lor join his for­mer band­mates for ver­sions of “Mid­night Ram­bler” and “Sat­is­fac­tion”.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Live in Hyde Park, 1969: The Com­plete Film

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Record­ing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” (1968)

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

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Modern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vases & Artisanal Glass

in Art, History | May 22nd, 2013

Some­times the old ways work best. That assump­tion, or at least the assump­tion that the most cen­turies-test­ed tech­niques can still pro­duce inter­est­ing results, under­pins many of the Art Insti­tute of Chicago’s Launch­pad videos. The series, designed to give vis­i­tors con­text for the arti­facts they see there, reveals the process behind the prod­uct, and some new prod­ucts may come out of some very old process­es indeed. In the case of the video at the top, we see the cre­ation of an ancient Greek vase — or, rather, a new vase, cre­at­ed as the ancient Greeks did — from the clay purifi­ca­tion to the knead­ing to the shap­ing to the illus­tra­tion to the fir­ing.

Just above, you can watch the ancient “free-blown tech­nique” of glass­mak­ing in action. Invent­ed around 40 B.C., glass-blow­ing gave the glass­mak­ers of the day a faster, cheap­er, more con­trol­lable way to work, which enabled them to pro­duce for a larg­er mar­ket than ever before. If you’d like to learn more about the method it dis­placed, the Art Insti­tute also has a video demon­strat­ing the old­er “core-formed” glass­mak­ing tech­nique. Pot­tery and glass­ware have an appeal­ing prac­ti­cal­i­ty, and first-rate arti­sans of those forms could no doubt make a good deal of mon­ey, but how did the mon­ey itself come into being? The Launch­pad video on coin pro­duc­tion in Ancient Greece, below, sheds light on mint­ing in antiq­ui­ty. Seri­ous artis­ti­cal­ly inclined numis­ma­tists will, of course, want to fol­low it up with its com­pan­ion piece on coin pro­duc­tion in the Roman world.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bal­ti­more Hair­dress­er Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archae­ol­o­gist” of Ancient Rome

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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