Behold the Blistering Bass Solos of Cream Bassist and Singer, Jack Bruce (1943–2014)

I’ve writ­ten before that every band Eric Clapton’s been involved with could right­ful­ly be called a super­group. But for my mon­ey, there’s only one wor­thy of the name, and that’s Cream. Since form­ing a deep attach­ment to the psy­che­del­ic pow­er trio from a young age, I’ve found it espe­cial­ly irk­some to see them some­times billed as “Eric Clap­ton and Cream.” Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er and bassist/singer Jack Bruce are at least as—if not more—talented and inter­est­ing as musi­cians. But though Bak­er has long been cel­e­brat­ed, though most­ly from a safe dis­tance, Bruce, in my opin­ion, is almost crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed. That may change as trib­utes and reap­praisals pour in after his pass­ing of liv­er dis­ease this past Sat­ur­day at age 71.

We’re like­ly to hear more Cream than usu­al, at least, which is nev­er a bad thing. What you may not hear casu­al­ly is Bruce’s play­ing in his lat­er years. Like many rock stars of his era, includ­ing his Cream band­mates, he nev­er real­ly stopped. But unlike some musi­cians from the 60s, he only got bet­ter with age, adapt­ing his jazz and blues chops to mod­ern takes on the psych rock he helped invent. Not a flashy play­er, Bruce’s style is char­ac­ter­ized by emo­tive pow­er and a near per­fect syn­the­sis of the rhyth­mic and the melod­ic. Key to his style is the walk­ing bassline like that on “White Room,” from Cream’s third record, 1968’s dou­ble album Wheels of Fire. He plays ‘em lit­er­al­ly walk­ing around, or rather strut­ting. In the video above, see Bruce pull out an amaz­ing solo dur­ing a per­for­mance of “White Room” at an event called Hip­pie Fest in 2008.

The fes­ti­val also fea­tured leg­ends Eric Bur­don and the Ani­mals and the Tur­tles but I can only imag­ine Bruce left the strongest impres­sion on audi­ence mem­bers who’d seen him in his prime and those who hadn’t. Watch him rip through anoth­er intense solo above in “Sun­shine of Your Love,” fol­lowed by a blues num­ber record­ed ear­li­er in the day at the same con­cert. Although most of Cream’s lyrics were writ­ten by poet and “unof­fi­cial fourth mem­ber” Pete Brown, the music was most­ly Bruce. His range of influ­ences was wide, and his will­ing­ness to fol­low them wher­ev­er they led, adven­tur­ous. David Fricke at Rolling Stone has a playlist of Bruce’s top ten “Deep Tracks,” includ­ing one from ear­ly 60s out­fit The Gra­ham Bond Organization—which also fea­tured Gin­ger Bak­er and vir­tu­oso jazz gui­tarist John McLaughlin—and sev­er­al of Bruce’s solo tunes. “If you only know Cream,” writes Fricke in appre­ci­a­tion of Bruce’s ver­sa­til­i­ty,” then stray far, every way you can—as he did.” It’s good advice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

100 Great Bass Riffs Played in One Epic Take: Cov­ers 60 Years of Rock, Jazz and R&B

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

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

David Bowie and Lou Reed Perform Live Together for the First and Last Time: 1972 and 1997

I dis­cov­ered one of my favorite pieces of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia—a full page ad for the 1983 album from David Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust con­cert film—at a flea mar­ket. It’s a nice lit­tle piece of his­to­ry, but a lit­tle bit mis­lead­ing to con­sumers at the time, since it says, “fea­tur­ing the sin­gle ‘White Light/White Heat.’” As every­one knows, “White Light/White Heat” is not a Bowie sin­gle, but a Lou Reed song, one of his many odes to hero­in as lead singer of the Vel­vet Under­ground.

But what­ev­er the admen had in mind in pro­mot­ing this track over Bowie’s many orig­i­nal hits, the star him­self has nev­er been shy about acknowl­edg­ing his debts. When it comes to Zig­gy, “the song­writer who most influ­enced” the glam rock alien is cer­tain­ly Reed, as Bowie him­self says in this 1977 inter­view.

Today, on the one-year anniver­sary of Reed’s death, we revis­it their cre­ative and per­son­al rela­tion­ship, a mutu­al admi­ra­tion that spanned more than four decades. Not only did Bowie cov­er Reed’s songs and pro­duce his 1972 solo album Trans­former, but he wrote 1971’s “Queen Bitch” as a trib­ute to Reed and the Vel­vets. In 1997, Bowie and Reed took the stage togeth­er to per­form the song. The occa­sion was Bowie’s 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at Madi­son Square Gar­den, and the all-star line­up that night includ­ed Frank Black, Dave Grohl, Son­ic Youth, Robert Smith, and Bil­ly Cor­gan (see the full setlist here). But Reed’s appear­ance was the most excit­ing, and in hind­sight, most poignant. At the top of the post, see the two old friends play “Queen Bitch,” just above, they do “White Light/White Heat,” and below, Reed’s clas­sic “Wait­ing for the Man” (they also played Reed’s 1989 “Dirty Boule­vard” togeth­er).

At the time, Bowie was at “some­what of a low point” in his career, writes Rolling Stone, though poised for a come­back with the upcom­ing sin­gle (and Trent Reznor-star­ring video) “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” which he played with Son­ic Youth that night. But the first time he and Reed shared the stage, in 1972, Bowie was rid­ing high in all his Zig­gy Star­dust glo­ry and reg­u­lar­ly cov­er­ing Vel­vet Under­ground songs on tour. That year, he brought Reed on stage in Lon­don for his “very, very first appear­ance on any stage in Eng­land.” Hear them do “White Light/White Heat” in some­what muf­fled live audio below. They also played “Wait­ing for the Man” and “Sweet Jane” togeth­er, which you can hear at the bot­tom of the post.

While Bowie seems to have tak­en every oppor­tu­ni­ty to lav­ish praise on his idol, Reed was a bit more under­stat­ed, though no less sin­cere, in his appre­ci­a­tion. In 2004, he told Rolling Stone, “We’re still friends after all these years. We go to the occa­sion­al art show and muse­um togeth­er, and I always like work­ing with him […] I saw him play here in New York on his last tour, and it was one of the great­est rock shows I’ve ever seen. At least as far as white peo­ple go. Seri­ous­ly.” Seri­ous­ly, Lou Reed, you are sore­ly missed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rock and Roll Heart, 1998 Doc­u­men­tary Retraces the Remark­able Career of Lou Reed

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

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

Edward Snowden Explains Why He Blew the Whistle on the NSA in Video Interview with Lawrence Lessig

Most like­ly every­thing you know about Edward Snow­den’s unmask­ing of gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­grams has come through an indi­rect source — mean­ing, you haven’t had the chance to learn about Snow­den’s moti­va­tions, thought process­es, goals, etc. from Snow­den him­self. Here’s a chance to change that.

In the video inter­view record­ed on Octo­ber 20th at Har­vard Law School, Lawrence Lessig spent an hour talk­ing with Snow­den on a Google Hang­out. Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor with dual inter­ests in keep­ing infor­ma­tion open and lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, was a nat­ur­al choice to con­duct the inter­view. How­ev­er, I would­n’t say that he gives Snow­den a soft inter­view. He asks some good ques­tions, which gives Snow­den the chance to spell out his think­ing — to explain the prob­lem he observed while work­ing in the NSA and how he went about address­ing it.

One thing that comes across is that Snow­den has thought things through. Snow­den might not have the cre­den­tials of the Har­vard Law stu­dents in the audi­ence — he got a GED and took a few com­mu­ni­ty col­lege cours­es, after all — but you get the sense that he could teach a pret­ty good Intro­duc­tion to Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment course, if not a thought-pro­vok­ing sem­i­nar on con­sti­tu­tion­al law. Regard­less of what posi­tion you take on Snow­den, it’s worth watch­ing this inter­view before you declare final judge­ment.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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On the Importance of the Creative Brief: Frank Gehry, Maira Kalman & Others Explain its Essential Role

Every project starts with a brief. 

From the layman’s per­spec­tive, the project above starts with a bit of self-mythol­o­giz­ing.

Bas­sett & Part­ners, the “award-win­ning, dis­rup­tive brand and design strat­e­gy firm” and mak­er of the video above, seems not to sub­scribe to TED-Ed’s prac­tice of edu­cat­ing view­ers from the get-go.

A cou­ple of min­utes in, I hit pause in order to do a lit­tle research on the word “brief.”

I’m famil­iar with male under­pants (though tech­ni­cal­ly those are plur­al, even if the gar­ment is sin­gu­lar).

I have the aver­age movie­go­ers han­dle on the mean­ing of legal briefs.

And now I know what the not­ed archi­tects, illus­tra­tor, design­er, and ad execs are talk­ing about above! If only they’d referred to it as an ele­va­tor pitch, I’d have been on board from the start. Of course, why would they? Only those of us who want to sound all Hol­ly­wood call it that.

What­ev­er you call it, it’s a con­cise state­ment that gets right to the heart of what you—or your project—are about. No his­to­ry. No cam­paign plans or cita­tions. Just a whole lot of pas­sion and truth tight­ly packed into a small ves­sel.

Archi­tect David Rock­well defines a brief as a short-form com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool from a client.

Art Direc­tor John Jay says its pur­pose is to inspire the cre­atives…

…with­out (as per ad exec John Boil­er) dic­tat­ing cre­ative terms. Of all the inter­vie­wees, the truck­er hat­ted Boil­er exudes the schmoozi­est, most off-putting Hol­ly­wood vibe. I’d rather do lunch with Frank Gehry. Does this make me guilty of com­par­ing apples to oranges, when direc­tor (and “dis­rup­tive brand and design” strate­gist) Tom Bas­sett lev­eled the play­ing field by giv­ing them equal time?

Per­haps if Boil­er had hum­bled him­self by shar­ing an expe­ri­ence as heart­break­ing as Gehry’s ill-fat­ed Eisen­how­er Memo­r­i­al. (Skip ahead to the 16:16 mark if you want to hear how out­side opin­ion can pound con­text, research, poet­ry, and many months of thought­ful work to a heap of rub­ble.)

I love Maira Kalman, but remain unclear as to whether she’s field­ing or sub­mit­ting briefs. If the lat­ter, how do those dif­fer from book pro­pos­als?

What if the emo­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, and enthu­si­as­tic research that went into Nike’s 1996 Olympics ads result­ed in an equal­ly fierce cam­paign to end hunger in a coun­try with no Olympic teams?

What if the clien­t’s prob­lem was can­cer? Could the brief demand a cure? That sounds sim­ple.

Let us acknowl­edge that most grand scale visions require a fleet of under­lings to come to fruition. I won­der what plumbers and elec­tri­cians would make of see­ing their con­tri­bu­tions described in such poet­ic terms.  Nev­er under­es­ti­mate the pow­er of a sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Bauhaus, Mod­ernism & Oth­er Design Move­ments Explained by New Ani­mat­ed Video Series

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

 

Yoga in an X‑Ray Machine

Cour­tesy of Hybrid Med­ical Ani­ma­tions comes a high-tech “visu­al study/exploration of the body in motion.” The goal of the ani­ma­tion was to cre­ate a real­is­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of x‑rays, while also cap­tur­ing the beau­ty of var­i­ous yoga pos­es. Looks like they hit the mark on both accounts.

In cre­at­ing this 3D ani­ma­tion, no x‑rays were actu­al­ly used. No one was exposed to radi­a­tion in any way, shape or form. It’s all just ani­ma­tion — sophis­ti­cat­ed ani­ma­tion that some­how man­ages to show “prop­er bone den­si­ties and rep­re­sent actu­al bone mar­row inside each indi­vid­ual bone.” If you prac­tice yoga, you’ll cer­tain­ly rec­og­nize some of the pos­es in the clip.

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:

Son­ny Rollins Describes How 50 Years of Prac­tic­ing Yoga Made Him a Bet­ter Musi­cian

Watch a New Music Video Shot Entire­ly With­in an MRI Machine

What Hap­pens When Your Brain is on Alfred Hitch­cock: The Neu­ro­science of Film

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

Free Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tions From UCLA: Boost Your Aware­ness & Ease Your Stress

Stephen Colbert Reads Ray Bradbury Classic Sci-Fi Story “The Veldt”

I rarely think back to mem­o­ries from that busy­work-inten­sive con­tain­ment unit known as Amer­i­can ele­men­tary school, but when I do, I usu­al­ly arrive at lis­ten­ing to a Ray Brad­bury sto­ry — some­thing about a far­away plan­et, some­thing about mon­soons, I can nev­er remem­ber which one — dur­ing read-aloud time. Even then, on some lev­el, I under­stood that the author of Fahren­heit 451 and The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles (not that I yet had any idea at the time about books like Fahren­heit 451 and The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles) wrote with the human voice in mind. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly the momen­tar­i­ly defa­mil­iar­ized voice of a teacher read­ing to a post-lunch class­room of ten-year-olds, and not nec­es­sar­i­ly the flaw­less­ly pro­nounc­ing and paus­ing, many-takes-record­ed-per-sen­tence voice of the pro­fes­sion­al audio­book nar­ra­tor (though Brad­bury’s work did pro­vide mate­r­i­al for a few pro­to-audio­books), but, per­haps, the voice of the mind. Of all Brad­bury’s tales we love to read aloud, few seem quite so effec­tive in this way as “The Veldt.

The sto­ry first appeared, accord­ing to the web site of pub­lic radio sta­tion WNYC, in a 1950 Sat­ur­day Evening Post “with the title ‘The World the Chil­dren Made,’ which is a good descrip­tion of what goes on in this eerie tale.  It imag­ines the ‘mod­el home’ of the future, includ­ing a pro­gram­ma­ble nurs­ery that becomes the site of a pow­er strug­gle. [Fel­low spec­u­la­tive writer Neil] Gaiman says that Bradbury’s tale rais­es com­plex ques­tions: ‘Are our chil­dren our own?,’ and ‘What does tech­nol­o­gy do to them?’ ” Pub­lic Radio Inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sioned no less a speak­er than Col­bert Report and future Late Show host Stephen Col­bert — a satirist high­ly attuned to the ironies inher­ent in mankind’s visions of its own future — to read it for their “Select­ed Shorts” series, and you can hear the whole thing above.

Giv­en how much progress our pur­suit of total automa­tion and vir­tu­al stim­u­la­tion (and our par­al­lel desire to escape those con­di­tions) has made in the past 64 years, “The Veldt” has grown only more rel­e­vant. Pair it with “There Will Come Soft Rains,” Brad­bury’s oth­er famous­ly read-aloud­able sto­ry of the home of the 1950 future, for a rich­ly fun­ny and trou­bling dou­ble-fea­ture of the mind.

For anoth­er son­ic angle on the mate­r­i­al, see also our pre­vi­ous­ly-fea­tured radio adap­ta­tions of “There Will Come Soft Rains” on Dimen­son X and “The Veldt” on X Minus One — or you can hear Leonard Nimoy read both of them in the 1970s.)

Some of the read­ings list­ed above appear in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

X Minus One: More Clas­sic 1950s Sci-Fi Radio from Asi­mov, Hein­lein, Brad­bury & Dick

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture 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.

Stephen Hawking Starts Posting on Facebook: Join His Quest to Explain What Makes the Universe Exist

hawking on fb

I have no idea whether there’s intel­li­gent life out there in the uni­verse. But we can at least con­firm that there’s a lit­tle intel­li­gent life on Face­book, see­ing that Stephen Hawk­ing, the world’s best known the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, began post­ing there yes­ter­day. His first sta­tus update reads:

I have always won­dered what makes the uni­verse exist. Time and space may for­ev­er be a mys­tery, but that has not stopped my pur­suit. Our con­nec­tions to one anoth­er have grown infi­nite­ly and now that I have the chance, I’m eager to share this jour­ney with you. Be curi­ous, I know I will for­ev­er be.

Wel­come, and thank you for vis­it­ing my Face­book Page. ‑SH

Join his offi­cial Face­book page here. And find/like the offi­cial Open Cul­ture page here, where we make it easy to share our dai­ly cul­tur­al posts with your fam­i­ly and friends.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A Brief His­to­ry of Time: Errol Morris’s Film of Stephen Hawk­ing

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion in Stars and Sound

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

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Get the New 7‑Minute Workout on Your Mobile Device: A Free App from The New York Times

wellworkout_promoapp-videoSixteenByNine600

The New York Times writes: “Ever since [we] pub­lished the Sci­en­tif­ic 7‑Minute Work­out in May last year, read­ers have been writ­ing and tweet­ing their requests for an updat­ed, more advanced ver­sion. For them, the work­out became too easy or hum­drum, as tends to hap­pen when exer­cis­es are repeat­ed with­out vari­a­tion. So here it is: a new, more tech­ni­cal­ly demand­ing reg­i­men, one that requires a cou­ple of dumb­bells but still takes only sev­en min­utes.”

Accord­ing to the Times, these short, intense, effi­cient work­outs strength­en mus­cle groups through­out the upper body, low­er body and tor­so. And they may well “pro­duce greater gains than an hour or more of gen­tler exer­cise.” So if you don’t have a lot of free time.…

The Times has notably made the work­out avail­able as a free web app that you can access on your phone, tablet or oth­er mobile devices. The app “offers a step-by-step guide to both 7‑minute work­outs [the old and new ones], offer­ing ani­mat­ed illus­tra­tions of the exer­cis­es, as well as a timer and audio cues to help you get the most out of your sev­en min­utes.” Click here to access it.

Fol­low us on Face­bookTwit­ter 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.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.