The Story of The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the Boozy Ballad That Has Become One of the Most Beloved Christmas Songs of All Time

Drug­store Cow­boy, Barfly, Leav­ing Las Vegas, even Bon­nie and Clyde… we love a good sto­ry about doomed, down-and-out lovers. What­ev­er emo­tion­al reser­voir they tap into, when writ­ten well and hon­est­ly, such sto­ries have broad cul­tur­al appeal. Which in part explains the over­whelm­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Pogues’ 1987 clas­sic “Fairy­tale of New York,” the kind of “anti-Christ­mas song,” writes Dori­an Lyn­sky at The Guardian, “that end­ed up being, for a gen­er­a­tion, the Christ­mas song.”

Many hol­i­day sto­ries cyn­i­cal­ly trade on the fact that, for a great many peo­ple, the hol­i­days are filled with pain and loss. But “Fairy­tale of New York” doesn’t play this for laughs, nor does it pull the old trick of cheap last-minute redemp­tion.

Sung as a duet by Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty Mac­Coll to the boozy tune of an Irish folk bal­lad, the song “is loved because it feels more emo­tion­al­ly ‘real’ than the home­sick sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of ‘White Christ­mas.’ ” Even if we can’t iden­ti­fy with the plight of a burned-out Irish dream­er spend­ing Christ­mas in a New York drunk tank, we can feel the ache of bro­ken dreams set in high relief against hol­i­day lights.

The song’s his­to­ry itself makes for a com­pelling tale, whether we believe the ori­gin sto­ry in accor­dion play­er James Fearnley’s mem­oir Here Comes Every­body: The Sto­ry of the Pogues or that told by Mac­Gowan, who main­tains that Elvis Costel­lo, the band’s pro­duc­er, bet the singer that he couldn’t write a Christ­mas duet. (Fearn­ley writes that they were try­ing to top The Band’s 1977 “Christ­mas Must Be Tonight.”)

Either way, a Christ­mas song was a good idea. “For a band like the Pogues, very strong­ly root­ed in all kinds of tra­di­tions rather than the present, it was a no-brain­er,” says ban­jo-play­er and co-writer Jem Fin­er. Not to men­tion the fact that Mac­Gowan was born on Christ­mas Day 1957.

Fin­er began the song as a tale about a sailor miss­ing his wife on Christ­mas, but after the ban­jo play­er’s wife called it “corny” he took her sug­ges­tion to adapt the “true sto­ry of some mutu­al friends liv­ing in New York.” Mac­Gowan took the title from J.P. Donleavy’s 1973 nov­el A Fairy Tale of New York, which hap­pened to be lying around the record­ing stu­dio. After a promis­ing start, the song then went through two years of revi­sions and re-record­ings before the band final­ly set­tled on the ver­sion mil­lions know and love, pro­duced by Steve Lil­ly­white and released on the 1988 album If I Should Fall From Grace with God.

Orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed as a duet between Mac­Gowan and bass play­er Cait O’Riordan, a ver­sion record­ed with her was “not quite there,” gui­tarist Philip Chevron has said. Soon after, O’Riordan left the band, and Mac­Gowan record­ed the song again at Abbey Road in 1987, singing both the male and female vocal parts him­self. Even­tu­al­ly Lil­ly­white took the track home to have his wife, Eng­lish singer Kirsty Mac­Coll, record a tem­po­rary guide vocal for the female parts. When Mac­Gowan heard it, he knew he had found the right foil for the char­ac­ter he plays in the song.

“Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it and she had a very strong char­ac­ter and it came across in a big way,” Mac­Gowan lat­er remarked in an inter­view. “In operas, if you have a dou­ble aria, it’s what the woman does that real­ly mat­ters. the man lies, the woman tells the truth.” As part of her character’s “vicious­ness”, she hurls the slur “f*ggot” at Mac­Gowan, who calls her a “slut.” The offen­sive words have been cen­sored on radio sta­tions, then uncen­sored, and good cas­es have been made for bleep­ing them out (most recent­ly by Irish DJ Eoghan McDer­mott on Twit­ter).

Mac­Gowan him­self has issued a state­ment defend­ing the lyrics as in keep­ing with the char­ac­ters. “Some­times char­ac­ters in songs and sto­ries have to be evil or nasty in order to tell the sto­ry effec­tive­ly,” he writes, adding, “If peo­ple don’t under­stand that I was try­ing to accu­rate­ly por­tray the char­ac­ter as authen­ti­cal­ly as pos­si­ble then I am absolute­ly fine with them bleep­ing the word but I don’t want to get into an argu­ment.” What­ev­er posi­tion one takes on this, it’s hard to deny that Mac­Gowan, co-writer Fin­er, and Mac­Coll total­ly hit the mark when it comes to authen­tic­i­ty.

The gen­uine emo­tions “Fairy­tale of New York” taps into has made it the most beloved Christ­mas song of all time in TV, radio, and mag­a­zine polls in the UK and Ire­land. It has become “far big­ger than the peo­ple who made it,” writes Lynskey. Or, as Fearn­ley puts it, “It’s like ‘Fairy­tale of New York’ went off and inhab­it­ed its own plan­et.” An artist can’t ask for more. See mak­ing-of videos by the BBC and Poly­phon­ic at the top. Watch the band slop­pi­ly mime the song with Mac­Coll on Top of the Pops fur­ther up (Mac­Gowan can­not actu­al­ly play the piano). And just above, see the offi­cial video, star­ring Drug­store Cow­boy’s Matt Dillon—filmed inside a real police sta­tion on the Low­er East Side dur­ing a freez­ing Thanks­giv­ing week in 1987, for max­i­mum hol­i­day vérité.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy”: A Won­der­ful Christ­mas Chest­nut from 1977

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Stream a Playlist of 68 Punk Rock Christ­mas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Reli­gion & More

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

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

In Bill Gates Office, There’s a Wall with the Entire Periodic Table with Samples of Each Element

Just a fun fact…

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via Ed Yong/Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Shows How the Ele­ments Actu­al­ly Get Used in Mak­ing Every­day Things

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Scaled to Show The Ele­ments’ Actu­al Abun­dance on Earth

Peri­od­ic Table Bat­tle­ship!: A Fun Way To Learn the Ele­ments

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

World’s Small­est Peri­od­ic Table on a Human Hair

“The Peri­od­ic Table of Sto­ry­telling” Reveals the Ele­ments of Telling a Good Sto­ry

Chem­istry on YouTube: “Peri­od­ic Table of Videos” Wins SPORE Prize

Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

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Wes Anderson’s Breakthrough Film, Rushmore, Revisited in Five Video Essays: It Came Out 20 Years Ago Today

“I gen­uine­ly don’t know what to make of this movie.” So said emi­nent New York­er film crit­ic Pauline Kael about Rush­more, Wes Ander­son­’s sec­ond film. But hav­ing spent the bet­ter part of a decade in retire­ment by that point, she did­n’t pub­lish that judg­ment; rather, she spoke it straight to Ander­son him­self, who had rent­ed out a the­ater to give her a per­son­al screen­ing. “I was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed by Ms. Kael’s reac­tion to the movie,” Ander­son writes in his rec­ol­lec­tion of the event. Upon its release on Decem­ber 11, 1998 — twen­ty years ago today — a fair few of its view­ers would echo Kael’s bewil­der­ment. But just as many would feel they’d seen the ear­ly work of a mas­ter, and time would soon vin­di­cate that feel­ing: whether you love his movies or can’t stand them, Wes Ander­son became Wes Ander­son because of Rush­more.

“There are few per­fect movies,” says crit­ic and Wes Ander­son spe­cial­ist Matt Zoller-Seitz. “This is one of them.” His video essay on Rush­more, part of a series adapt­ed from his book The Wes Ander­son Col­lec­tion, breaks down just a few of the ele­ments that have made the film so beloved. “At once arch and earnest, know­ing and inno­cent,” Ander­son­’s sto­ry of a flak­i­ly ambi­tious teenage prep-school boy Max Fis­cher’s friend­ship with a mid­dle-aged steel mag­nate Her­man Blume — and the affec­tions for a wid­owed first-grade teacher that turn that friend­ship into a rival­ry — “feels unique and furi­ous­ly alive.”

Draw­ing deeply from the per­son­al­i­ty and expe­ri­ence of Ander­son him­self (and those of his co-writer and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Owen Wil­son) as well as The 400 BlowsThe Grad­u­ate, and oth­er clas­sic pic­tures, it nev­er does so in an obvi­ous or pre­dictable man­ner.

Of all the strokes of luck required for the then-twen­tysome­thing Ander­son even to get the chance to make a movie like Rush­more (espe­cial­ly after his debut fea­ture Bot­tle Rock­et seemed to have van­ished with­out a trace), no coup was greater than the cast­ing of Bill Mur­ray as Blume. It “res­onates back­ward through film his­to­ry,” says Zoller-Seitz, “because Max is a geeky teenage ver­sion of a cer­tain kind of 80s and 90s hero. Rush­more’s mas­ter­stroke is how it takes the piss out of those char­ac­ters: it implies that maybe the brava­do that those 80s and 90s char­ac­ters had was just a cov­er for fear and depres­sion.” Quite a depth of insight for a young film­mak­er to pos­sess — but then, many once under­es­ti­mat­ed the young Ander­son, whose sen­si­bil­i­ties get fur­ther exam­ined in the Screen­Prism video essay Rush­more: Por­trait of Wes Ander­son as a Young Man,” and they did so at their per­il.

“The charms of this movie are abun­dant,” says the New York Times’ A.O. Scott in his Crit­ic’s Pick video on Rush­more. “It has whim­si­cal pro­duc­tion design; clever and sharp writ­ing; ten­der, com­i­cal per­for­mances; a bril­liant use of pop music to under­score and slight­ly ironize the emo­tions being expressed on the screen.” Scott sin­gles out the strength of its visu­al com­po­si­tions, which Ander­son uses to, for exam­ple, “arrange peo­ple in the frame in such a way as to show every­thing about their rela­tion­ship — a kind of psy­cho­log­i­cal dimen­sion to the space that almost makes the dia­logue sec­ondary.” It all comes in ser­vice of telling two sto­ries in coun­ter­point, one “about an ado­les­cent com­ing to terms with his lim­i­ta­tions” and anoth­er about “an artist com­ing into pos­ses­sion of his pow­ers.”

Over the past twen­ty years, the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus on Rush­more has shift­ed almost uni­ver­sal­ly away from assess­ments like Kael’s and toward those like Scot­t’s. In the video above, a more mature Ander­son reflects on mak­ing the movie — and mak­ing it, in fact, at the very same high school he went to him­self. “The strongest asso­ci­a­tion for me is being back in class,” he says. “In the end, the thing that strikes me most force­ful­ly when I think back on it is just that I went home.” He also adds that “I don’t even know how we man­aged to get Rush­more made, or why,” giv­en the appar­ent fail­ure of Bot­tle Rock­et, a pic­ture on which he and Wil­son had labored for years. “Rush­more was more expen­sive, maybe even a bit stranger, and yet it seemed just to hap­pen. I think it was just lucky.” Espe­cial­ly lucky for us view­ers over the past two decades, as well as the gen­er­a­tions of Rush­more fans still to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Wes Ander­son Video Essays

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

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

Wes Anderson’s Cin­e­mat­ic Debt to Stan­ley Kubrick Revealed in a Side-By-Side Com­par­i­son

Wes Ander­son Names 12 of His Favorite Art Films

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 or on Face­book.

Take Animated Virtual Reality Tours of Ancient Rome at Its Architectural Peak (Circa 320 AD)

Maybe you, too, were a Latin geek who loved sword and san­dal flicks from the gold­en age of the Hol­ly­wood epic? Quo Vadis, The Fall of the Roman Empire, The Robe, Demetrius and the Glad­i­a­tors, and, of course, Spar­ta­cus…. Nev­er mind all the heavy reli­gious pre­text, con­text, sub­text, or ham­mer over the head that suf­fused these films, or any pre­tense toward his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy. What thrilled me was see­ing ancient Rome come alive, bustling with togas and tunics, cen­tu­ri­ons and char­i­ots. The cen­ter of the ancient world for hun­dreds of years, the city, nat­u­ral­ly, retains only traces of what it once was—enormous mon­u­ments that might as well be tombs.

The incred­i­bly detailed 3D ani­ma­tions here don’t quite have the same rous­ing effect, grant­ed, as the “I am Spar­ta­cus!” scene. They don’t star Charl­ton Hes­ton, Sophia Loren, or Kirk Dou­glas. They appeal to dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ties, it’s true. But if you love the idea of vis­it­ing Rome dur­ing one of its peak peri­ods, you might find them as sat­is­fy­ing, in their way, as Peter Ustinov’s Nero speech­es.

Dat­ing not from the time of Mark Antony or even Jesus, the painstak­ing­ly-ren­dered tours of ancient Rome depict the city as it would have looked—sans humans and their activity—during its “archi­tec­tur­al peak,” as Realm of His­to­ry notes, under Con­stan­tine, “cir­ca 320 AD.”

The VR trail­er at the top from His­to­ry in 3D, devel­oped by Dani­la Logi­nov and Lasha Tskhon­dia, depicts, in Loginov’s words, “the Forums area, and also Pala­tine and Capi­toli­um hills.” The two addi­tion­al trail­ers for the project show the “baths of Tra­jan and Titus, the stat­ue of Colos­sus Solis, arch­es of Titus and Con­stan­tine, Ludus Mag­nus, the tem­ple of Divine Claudius. Our team spent some time and recre­at­ed this area along with all minor build­ings as a com­plex and added it to the mod­el which has been already done.” This means, he says, “we have now almost the entire cen­ter of ancient impe­r­i­al Rome already recre­at­ed!”

We glide gen­tly over the city with a low-flying-bird’s eye view, tak­ing in its real­is­tic sky­line, tree-lined streets, and gur­gling foun­tains. The lack of any human pres­ence makes the expe­ri­ence a lit­tle chilly, but if you’re moved by clas­si­cal archi­tec­ture, it also presents a refresh­ing lack of distraction—an impos­si­ble request in a vis­it to mod­ern Rome. Anoth­er project, Rome Reborn, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here, takes a dif­fer­ent approach to the same impe­r­i­al city of 320 AD. The trail­ers for their VR app don’t pro­vide the seam­less flight expe­ri­ence, but they do con­tain equal­ly epic music. (They also have a few peo­ple in them, block­i­ly-ren­dered gawk­ing tourists rather than ancient Romans.)

Instead, these clips give us fas­ci­nat­ing glimpses of the inte­ri­ors of such splen­did struc­tures as the Basil­i­ca of Maxentius—tiled floors, domed ceil­ings, columned walls—from a num­ber of dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. We also get to fly above the city, drone-style, or hot air bal­loon-style, as it were. In the clip below, we cruise over Rome in that vehi­cle, with Bernard Frisch­er, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia, serv­ing as the app’s “vir­tu­al archae­ol­o­gist” in an audio tour.

“The ambi­tious under­tak­ing,” of the Rome Reborn app, writes Meilan Sol­ly at Smith­son­ian, “painstak­ing­ly built by a team of 50 aca­d­e­mics and com­put­er experts over a 22-year peri­od, recre­ates 7,000 build­ings and mon­u­ments scat­tered across a 5.5 square mile stretch of the famed Ital­ian city.” The three mod­ules of the Rome Reborn app demoed here are all avail­able at their web­site. Geeks—and his­to­ri­ans of ancient Roman archi­tec­ture and city planning—rejoice.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Huge Scale Mod­el Show­ing Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937)

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It–Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

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

Historic Console Used to Record “Stairway to Heaven” and Other Rock Classics Goes Up for Auction Today

The amount of mon­ey one is will­ing to spend—should one have amounts of money—for a vin­tage record­ing con­sole will vary great­ly depend­ing on who one is. The aver­age per­son will see an enor­mous, heavy, wonky, wood and met­al space hog with no appar­ent pur­pose. The musi­cian, engi­neer, pro­duc­er, or stu­dio own­er, on the oth­er hand, will see a fine­ly-tuned instru­ment, whose pre­amps, EQs, com­pres­sors, meters, and cir­cuit­ry promise worlds of son­ic warmth and depth.

In the case of one par­tic­u­lar record­ing con­sole, the so-called “Helio­cen­tric Helios Con­sole,” every­one will see a piece of music his­to­ry, one that right­ly belongs in a muse­um on pub­lic view. Such a fate is unlike­ly for this arti­fact, which goes on sale today at auc­tion house Bon­hams in Lon­don. It will end up in some well-heeled pri­vate hands, fetch­ing a hefty sum for rea­sons far beyond its clas­sic engi­neer­ing.

“Songs and albums record­ed on this bespoke con­sole and its orig­i­nal parts rank among some of the most rec­og­niz­able and best-loved pieces of music in exis­tence, and have result­ed in Gram­mys, Brit Awards and mul­ti­ple num­ber one spots,” says Bonham’s Claire Tole-Mole. “This con­sole is a piece of Britain’s mod­ern cul­tur­al his­to­ry.” Actu­al­ly an amal­gam of two dif­fer­ent his­toric con­soles, com­bined in 1996, the Island Record sec­tion of the mix­ing desk was used by Led Zep­pelin to record IV, the album fea­tur­ing their most famous song, “Stair­way to Heav­en.”

This tan­ta­liz­ing bit is only a taste of the HeliosCen­tric console’s exten­sive prove­nance. Bob Mar­ley record­ed Catch a Fire and Burnin’ on the machine, Jim­my Cliff record­ed “Many Rivers to Cross”; Eric Clapton’s “After Mid­night” emerged from the con­sole, as did songs and albums made by George Har­ri­son, Steve Win­wood, Mick Fleet­wood, Steven Stills, Jimi Hen­drix, Ron­nie Wood, David Bowie, Free, The Rolling Stones, Sly Stone, Har­ry Nils­son, Cat Stevens, Jeff Beck, Mott the Hoople, Hum­ble Pie, Paul Weller, Super­grass, Sia, KT Tun­stall, Squeeze, the Pet Shop Boys, Keane, and Dido… among many more.

The num­ber of top-notch artists who have used one or both parts of the con­sole is aston­ish­ing, and its com­bin­ing also pro­vides devo­tees of rock his­to­ry with a great sto­ry: the founder of Helios Elec­tron­ics him­self, Dick Swet­ten­ham, who for­mer­ly worked at Abbey Road, per­son­al­ly con­sult­ed on the con­struc­tion of the new con­sole, which was put togeth­er by Elvis Costel­lo and Squeeze’s Chris Dif­ford. You can read the machine’s full his­to­ry at Bon­hams, as great a sto­ry as you’re ever like­ly to hear about a piece of spe­cial­ized stu­dio equip­ment the size of a small car. The Helio­Cen­tric Con­sole is expect­ed to fetch six fig­ures, but as Rolling Stone points out, the auc­tion house recent­ly sold the con­sole used to record Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon for $1.8 mil­lion. What’s anoth­er few dozen clas­sic albums and sin­gles worth?

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Stair­way to Heav­en”: How the Most Played Rock Song Came To Be

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

Bri­an Eno Presents a Crash Course on How the Record­ing Stu­dio Rad­i­cal­ly Changed Music: Hear His Influ­en­tial Lec­ture “The Record­ing Stu­dio as a Com­po­si­tion­al Tool” (1979)

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

How Music Can Awaken Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

In the late 1950’s, pio­neer­ing free jazz band­leader Sun Ra played a gig at a Chica­go men­tal hos­pi­tal, booked there by his man­ag­er Alton Abra­ham, who had an inter­est in alter­na­tive med­i­cine. The exper­i­ment in musi­cal ther­a­py worked won­ders. One patient who had not moved or spo­ken in years report­ed­ly got up, walked over to the piano, and yelled out, “you call that music!”

The anec­dote illus­trates just one expe­ri­ence among untold mil­lions in which a per­son suf­fer­ing from a debil­i­tat­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion responds pos­i­tive­ly, even mirac­u­lous­ly, it seems, to music.

As famed neu­rol­o­gist and writer Oliv­er Sacks puts it in his book Musi­cophil­ia, “musi­cal per­cep­tion, musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty, musi­cal emo­tion and musi­cal mem­o­ry can sur­vive long after oth­er forms of mem­o­ry have dis­ap­peared.”

This med­ical fact makes musi­cal ther­a­py an ide­al inter­ven­tion for patients suf­fer­ing from Alzheimer’s dis­ease and demen­tia. In the short video above, Sacks describes his vis­its to patients in var­i­ous old age homes. “Some of them are con­fused, some are agi­tat­ed, some are lethar­gic, some have almost lost lan­guage,” he says, “but all of them, with­out excep­tion, respond to music.”

We can see just such a response in the clip at the top, in which the bare­ly respon­sive Hen­ry Dry­er, a 92-year-old nurs­ing home res­i­dent with demen­tia, trans­forms when he hears music. “The philoso­pher Kant called music ‘the quick­en­ing art,’ and Henry’s being quick­ened,” says Sacks says of the dra­mat­ic change, “he’s being brought to life.” Sud­den­ly lucid and hap­py, Hen­ry looks up and says, “I’m crazy about music. Beau­ti­ful sounds.”

The clip comes from a doc­u­men­tary called Alive Inside, win­ner of a 2014 Sun­dance Audi­ence Award (see the trail­er above), a film that shows us sev­er­al musi­cal “quick­en­ings” like Henry’s. “Before Dry­er start­ed using his iPod,” notes The Week, “he could only answer yes-or-no questions—and some­times he sat silent­ly and still for hours at a time.” Now, he sings, car­ries on con­ver­sa­tions and can “even recall things from years ago.”

Sacks com­ments that “music imprints itself on the brain deep­er than any oth­er human expe­ri­ence,” evok­ing emo­tions in ways that noth­ing else can. A 2010 Boston Uni­ver­si­ty study showed that Alzheimer’s patients “learned more lyrics when they were set to music rather than just spo­ken.” Like­wise, researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah found music to be “an alter­na­tive route for com­mu­ni­cat­ing with patients.”

As senior author of the Utah study, Dr. Nor­man Fos­ter, says, “lan­guage and visu­al mem­o­ry path­ways are dam­aged ear­ly as the dis­ease pro­gress­es, but per­son­al­ized music pro­grams can acti­vate the brain, espe­cial­ly for patients who are los­ing con­tact with their envi­ron­ment.” See the effects for your­self in this extra­or­di­nary film, and learn more about Sacks’ adven­tures with music and the brain in the 2007 dis­cus­sion of Musi­cophil­ia, just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

Dis­cov­er the Retire­ment Home for Elder­ly Musi­cians Cre­at­ed by Giuseppe Ver­di: Cre­at­ed in 1899, It Still Lives On Today

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

In Touch­ing Video, Peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Tell Us Which Mem­o­ries They Nev­er Want to For­get

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

John Lennon’s Report Card at Age 15: “He Has Too Many Wrong Ambitions and His Energy Is Too Often Misplaced”

In Sep­tem­ber 1956, a young John Lennon took home a dis­mal report card–the kind that many smart, way­ward kids can prob­a­bly relate to.

French teacher: “An intel­li­gent boy who could be very much bet­ter with a lit­tle con­cen­tra­tion in class.”

Math teacher: “He is cer­tain­ly on the road to fail­ure if this goes on.”

Physics teacher: “His work always lacks effort. He is con­tent to ‘drift’ instead of using his abil­i­ties.”

Reli­gion teacher: “Atti­tude in class most unsat­is­fac­to­ry.”

Head mas­ter: “He has too many wrong ambi­tions and his ener­gy is too often mis­placed.”

Guess they had him all fig­ured out…

via @Michael Beschloss

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

9‑Year-Old Edward Hop­per Draws a Pic­ture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card

Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Trans­lat­ed Bea­t­les Songs into Latin for His Stu­dents: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

Famous Writ­ers’ Report Cards: Ernest Hem­ing­way, William Faulkn­er, Nor­man Mail­er, E.E. Cum­mings & Anne Sex­ton

The John Lennon Sketch­book, a Short Ani­ma­tion Made of Lennon’s Draw­ings, Pre­mieres on YouTube

John Lennon Sums Up Elvis, Yoko & Howard Cosell in One Word

 

Celebrate Emily Dickinson’s 188th Birthday with Her Own Cake Recipes: Coconut Cake, Gingerbread, Doughnuts & More

Hap­py Emi­ly Dick­in­son Day!

What are you doing to cel­e­brate the poet’s 188th birth­day?

The Emi­ly Dick­in­son Muse­um took advan­tage of the week­end to cel­e­brate the occa­sion a cou­ple of days ear­ly with Vic­to­ri­an crafts, read­ings, fes­tive piano music, a dis­play explor­ing the Dick­in­son fam­i­ly’s gift-giv­ing tra­di­tion, and slices of coconut cake, baked from the birth­day girl’s own recipe.

Giv­en the Belle’s pen­chant for home-baked good­ies, we’re dis­pens­ing with the more high-mind­ed endeav­ors to con­cen­trate on the sweet side of this lit­er­ary hol­i­day.

LitHub reports that

…when­ev­er Dick­in­son saw chil­dren play­ing in her fam­i­ly gar­dens, “she head­ed for the pantry, filled a bas­ket with cook­ies or slices of cake—often gingerbread—carried it upstairs to a win­dow in the rear of the house (so their moth­ers wouldn’t see), and attached the bas­ket to a rope to slow­ly low­er it to the “storm-tossed, starv­ing pirates” or the “lost, roam­ing cir­cus per­form­ers” eager­ly wait­ing below.

Tru­ly, we owe it to her to return the favor.

Shall we start with some Emi­ly Dick­in­son dough­nuts?

Like many expe­ri­enced home cooks of the peri­od, Dickinson’s instruc­tions are a bit vague. She seems to have got­ten the recipe from an acquain­tance named Kate, jot­ting down mea­sure­ments and ingre­di­ents, after which, she knew what to do.

If you’ve nev­er worked with yeast before, you might want to pro­ceed straight to her Black Cake recipe…

Or not. You may have 5 pounds of raisins on hand, but this is no spur-of-the-moment recipe.

As librar­i­ans Heather Cole, Emi­lie Hard­man, and Emi­ly Wal­hout demon­strate below, this whop­per needs to spend 3 weeks wrapped in a brandy-soaked cheese­cloth after it comes out of the oven.

Onward then to Miss Dickinson’s gin­ger­bread.

As if those with Decem­ber birth­days aren’t over­shad­owed enough by the tyran­ny of Christ­mas! Must their spe­cial day’s cake fla­vor be dic­tat­ed by that big goril­la too? (For those who say yes, Rosa Lil­lo of Pem­ber­ley Cup and Cakes breaks the recipe down 21st-cen­tu­ry style, adding a sim­ple icing sug­ar glaze and an embossed flo­ral pat­tern.)

Per­haps that famous coconut cake real­ly is the best choice for observ­ing Emi­ly Dick­in­son Day.

See if you can detect a note of inspi­ra­tion in that but­tery fla­vor. As was her habit, Dick­in­son flipped the scrap of paper on which she’d list­ed the ingre­di­ents, and pen­cilled in the begin­nings of a poem:

The Things that nev­er can come back, are sev­er­al —

Child­hood — some forms of Hope — the Dead —

Though Joys — like Men — may some­times make a Jour­ney —

And still abide —

We do not mourn for Trav­el­er, or Sailor,

Their Routes are fair —

But think enlarged of all that they will tell us

Return­ing here —

“Here!” There are typ­ic “Heres” —

Fore­told Loca­tions —

The Spir­it does not stand —

Him­self — at what­so­ev­er Fath­om

His Native Land —

Those whose Emi­ly Dick­in­son Day gift giv­ing list includes a poet­ry lover / ama­teur cook may wish to stuff their stock­ings with a copy of the 1976 book Emi­ly Dick­in­son: Pro­file of the Poet as Cook with Select­ed Recipes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Emi­ly Dickinson’s Hand­writ­ten Coconut Cake Recipe Hints at How Bak­ing Fig­ured Into Her Cre­ative Process

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

An 8‑Hour Marathon Read­ing of 500 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Poems

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City through Decem­ber 20th in the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and tonight, as the host of the book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.