Watch Link Wray Play a Downright Dirty Version of “Rumble,” the Only Instrumental to Be Banned on Radio (1974)

in Music | November 9th, 2020

It takes a lot of swag­ger and con­fi­dence to play a cou­ple of barre chords on a gui­tar, look like the coolest cat doing so, and rev­o­lu­tion­ize rock music while doing so. That’s Link Wray we’re talk­ing about, and the song is the 1958 instru­men­tal hit “Rum­ble.” It still sounds fresh today for the same rea­sons it was con­tro­ver­sial at the time. It sounds sleazy, grungy, dirty. This is a song for a pool hall, or a bik­er bar, and just reeks of cig­a­rettes and liquor. And from Pulp Fic­tion onwards, the song has popped up in many movies and TV shows, giv­ing a scene a bit of cool dan­ger.

The above video is from a one-hour gig that Wray and his band per­formed at the Win­ter­land Ball­room in San Fran­cis­co, 1974, the for­mer ice skat­ing rink that pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham turned into one of the pri­mo music venues of its day. And Link Wray play­ing was like one of the gods of rock descend­ing to anoint the crowd. Presley–though Wray defend­ed him dur­ing his act–had dropped out of main­stream cul­ture. The orig­i­nal rock and rollers, Wray’s peers, were either dead or nos­tal­gia acts. So this appear­ance is mag­i­cal, rock spir­it made flesh, look­ing dan­ger­ous and sex­u­al in all his swag­ger.

That swag­ger was well earned. Fred Lin­coln Wray was born in North Car­oli­na to a Shawnee moth­er, as a Chero­kee and White father had returned from WWI with PTSD. In the most­ly Black neigh­bor­hood where he grew up, he would hide under­neath the bed when the Ku Klux Klan would come through on a ter­ror cam­paign. “Elvis, he grew up — I don’t want to sound racist when I say this — he grew up white man poor,” Wray said in an inter­view. “I was grow­ing up Shawnee poor.”

He suf­fered weak eye­sight and bad hear­ing from child­hood measles, and lat­er when he served time in the army, he’d con­tract tuber­cu­lo­sis, lose one lung, and was told he wouldn’t have a singing career.

But he did have his gui­tar skills, which he’d learned as a child from a trav­el­ing Black gui­tarist called Ham­bone. Back from the army he formed a group with his broth­ers Ver­non and Doug, and was going by the name Lucky. They gigged around Vir­ginia and Wash­ing­ton, DC, and were asked by a local pro­mot­er to come up with a song sim­i­lar to The Dia­monds’ “The Stroll.” What they came up with was an instru­men­tal called “Odd­ball.” It was a hit played live but when they went into a stu­dio to record a demo, it just didn’t have “that sound”. Wray start­ed punch­ing holes in his speak­ers with a pen­cil and in one stroke cre­at­ed the fuz­ztone gui­tar sound.

The big labels wouldn’t bite, but Cadence Records’ Milt Grant said yes. Or rather, his teenage step­daugh­ter and her friends said yes, and Milt put aside his own dis­taste. Juve­nile delin­quents were at once both a “prob­lem” and a way to sell prod­uct, espe­cial­ly with the hit musi­cal and movie West Side Sto­ry. “Rum­ble” was a much bet­ter name than “Odd­ball,” and, on March 31, 1958, it was released.

Some DJs refused to play the sin­gle in cities where teenage gang vio­lence was a prob­lem. When Wray and his band played Amer­i­can Band­stand, Dick Clark didn’t men­tion the title. It didn’t stop the sin­gle from being a hit.

And it was influ­en­tial. Wray pret­ty much invent­ed pow­er-chord riff­ing, and influ­enced Jimi Hen­drix, Jeff Beck, Neil Young, Jim­my Page, Pete Town­shend, and count­less oth­ers. Cur­mud­geon-genius Mark E. Smith of the Fall named him as one of the only two musi­cians he respect­ed (the oth­er was Iggy Pop).

Link Wray’s Chero­kee and Shawnee her­itage was not well known among the gen­er­al pub­lic, but the recent doc­u­men­tary Rum­ble: The Indi­ans Who Rocked the World brought the influ­ence of Native Amer­i­can musi­cians out into the open for cel­e­bra­tion, con­nect­ing Link Wray with Rob­bie Robert­son, Char­lie Pat­ton, Mil­dred Bai­ley, and Ste­vie Salas.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Only Instru­men­tal Ever Banned from the Radio: Link Wray’s Seduc­tive, Raunchy Song, “Rum­ble” (1958)

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

The Sto­ry of “Wipe Out,” the Clas­sic Surf Rock Instru­men­tal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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The Plastic Bag Store: A Pop Art Installation with a Whimsical But Deadly Serious Environmental Message

in Art, Food & Drink | November 9th, 2020

When COVID-19 explod­ed in New York City last March, it erased every­thing on the cal­en­dar, includ­ing:

All live the­ater…

The city’s fresh­ly imple­ment­ed ban on sin­gle use plas­tic bags…

And The Plas­tic Bag Store, a pop-up instal­la­tion that was prepar­ing to open in Times Square.

The the­aters remain dark, but the ban is back on, as of Octo­ber 19th. The 7‑month pause was has­tened by the pan­dem­ic, but also by an unsuc­cess­ful law­suit brought by flex­i­ble pack­ing man­u­fac­tur­er Poly-Pak Indus­tries.

The Plas­tic Bag Store was allowed to open, too, albeit in an altered for­mat from the hybrid art instal­la­tion-adult pup­pet show cre­ator Robin Fro­hardt has been work­ing on for sev­er­al years.

She has long intend­ed for the project’s New York pre­miere to coin­cide with the ban.

Not because she hoped to get rich sell­ing bags to cit­i­zens accus­tomed to get­ting them free with pur­chase.

There’s noth­ing to buy in this “store.”

It’s a per­for­mance of sorts, but there’s no admis­sion charge.

It’s def­i­nite­ly an edu­ca­tion, and a med­i­ta­tion on how his­to­ry can be doomed to repeat itself, in one way or anoth­er.

The Plas­tic Bag Store just end­ed its sold out 3‑week run, play­ing to crowds of tick­et hold­ers now capped at 12 audi­ence mem­bers per per­for­mance. The live ele­ments have mor­phed into a trio of short films that are pro­ject­ed after tick­et holders—customers if you will—have had a chance to look around.

There’s plen­ty to see.

The Times Square instal­la­tion space has been kit­ted out to resem­ble a roomy bode­ga stocked with pro­duce, baked goods, sushi rolls on plas­tic trays, shrink wrapped meat, and oth­er famil­iar, if slight­ly skewed items.

Rows of 2 liter soda bot­tles with icon­ic red labels are shelved across from the mag­a­zine rack. Tubs of Bag & Jerry’s Mint Plas­tic Chip are in the freez­er case.

The orig­i­nal plan allowed for cus­tomers to han­dle the goods as they want­ed.  Now such inter­ac­tions are pro­hib­it­ed.

Pri­or to March, New York­ers were pret­ty handsy with pro­duce, unabashed­ly press­ing thumbs into avo­ca­dos and hold­ing toma­toes and mel­ons to nos­trils to deter­mine ripeness.

The pan­dem­ic curbed that habit.

No mat­ter. Noth­ing is ripe in the Plas­tic Bag Store, where any item not con­tained in a can or card­board box has been con­struct­ed from the thou­sands of plas­tic bags Fro­hardt has col­lect­ed over the years.

The fac­sim­i­les are shock­ing­ly adroit.

“I hunt plas­tic bags on the streets of New York,” she said in an inter­view with cul­tur­al fun­der Cre­ative Cap­i­tal:

I’m a real con­nois­seur now. There are cer­tain col­ors I’m real­ly attract­ed to. Cer­tain bags are hard­er to find. I def­i­nite­ly look at trash dif­fer­ent­ly than most peo­ple. I’m always look­ing for reds and oranges and greens. Some­times I find a real­ly inter­est­ing col­or that I haven’t seen before, like salmon or laven­der. That’s always excit­ing.

This diver­si­ty of mate­ri­als helps with visu­al verisimil­i­tude, most impres­sive in the pro­duce sec­tion.

The prod­uct labels been rich­ly for­ti­fied with satir­i­cal com­men­tary.

A fam­i­ly sized pack­age of Yucky Shards appeals to chil­dren with sparkles, a rain­bow, and a bright eyed car­toon mas­cot who does­n’t seem to mind the 6‑pack yoke that’s attached itself to its per­son.

Every­thing about the “non-organ­ic, triple-washed Spring Green Mix” from “Earth­bag Farm” looks famil­iar, includ­ing the plas­tic con­tain­er.

Pack­ages of Some­times fem­i­nine pads promise “super pro­tec­tion” that will “lit­er­al­ly last for­ev­er.”

The cup­cakes on dis­play in the bak­ery sec­tion are topped with such fes­tive embell­ish­ments as a “dis­pos­able” lighter and floss­ing pick.

The tone is not scold­ing but rather com­ic, as Fro­hardt uses her spoofs to delight atten­dees into seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of the “forever­ness” of plas­tic and its envi­ron­men­tal impact:

There is great humor to be found in the pit­falls of cap­i­tal­ism, and I find that humor and satire can be pow­er­ful tools for social crit­i­cism espe­cial­ly with issues that feel too sad and over­whelm­ing to con­front direct­ly.

It’s real­ly easy to turn away from images of tur­tles chok­ing on straws. That stuff comes up in my Insta­gram feed all the time, and I’m like “Whoa! Swipe on past” because it’s too hard to look at. So what I’m try­ing to do is to make some­thing that’s fun to look at, and fun to engage with, so you can think about it. Instead of just say­ing, “That’s fucked up! Ok on to the next thing.”

The Plas­tic Bag Store’s film seg­ments also wield com­e­dy to get their mes­sage across.

From the stiff shad­ow pup­pet Ancient Greeks who are seduced by the self-flat­ter­ing slo­gan of a new prod­uct, Knowl­edge Water, which comes in sin­gle use ves­sels, to the recip­i­ent of a mes­sage in a plas­tic bot­tle, dis­cov­ered so far into the future that he can only admire its crafts­man­ship, hav­ing no clue as to its pur­pose. (Let­ter car­ri­er is his best guess. Even­tu­al­ly, oth­er let­ter car­ri­ers are dis­cov­ered in the freez­ing equa­to­r­i­al ocean, and housed in a muse­um along­side oth­er hilar­i­ous­ly mis­la­beled relics of a long dead civ­i­liza­tion.)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of the Müt­ter Muse­um and Its Many Anatom­i­cal­ly Pecu­liar Exhibits

The Dis­gust­ing Food Muse­um Curates 80 of the World’s Most Repul­sive Dish­es: Mag­got-Infest­ed Cheese, Putrid Shark & More

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

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

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Was Winston Churchill “The Greatest Briton”? A Short Claymation Looks at the Darker Side of the Prime Minister’s Life

in Film, History | November 9th, 2020

“In 1962, when British film­mak­er Richard Atten­bor­ough began research­ing what would become his 1982 Gand­hi film,” writes Lau­ren Fray­er at NPR, “he asked Jawa­har­lal Nehru, India’s first prime min­is­ter, how he should por­tray his late col­league.” Gand­hi was revered, treat­ed as a saint in his own life­time, long before Atten­bor­ough arrived in India. But Nehru begged the film­mak­er to treat the man like a mere mor­tal, with all his “weak­ness­es, his moods and his fail­ings.” Gand­hi was “much too human” to be holy.

Do Gandhi’s failings—for exam­ple his ear­ly racism (which he out­grew “quite deci­sive­ly,” his biog­ra­ph­er asserts)—mean he must be can­celed? Nehru didn’t think so. But nor did he think telling the truth about a beloved pub­lic fig­ure was any­thing less than intel­lec­tu­al­ly hon­est. Gandhi’s fail­ings, how­ev­er, are maybe eas­i­er to stom­ach than those of his polit­i­cal neme­sis Win­ston Churchill, who hat­ed the Indi­an leader pas­sion­ate­ly and also, more or less, hat­ed every­one else who did­n’t belong to his idea of a mas­ter race, a hatred that even extend­ed to the Ger­man peo­ple writ large. (He once described Indi­ans as “the beast­li­est peo­ple in the world next to the Ger­mans.”)

Churchill was thor­ough­ly unapolo­getic about what Vice Pres­i­dent Hen­ry Wal­lace called his the­o­ry of “Anglo-Sax­on supe­ri­or­i­ty.” He has, per­haps, been “the sub­ject of false or exag­ger­at­ed alle­ga­tions,” Richard Toye writes at CNN, but “he said enough hor­ri­fy­ing things”—and backed them with colo­nial policy—”that there is no need to invent more.” Even his “fel­low Con­ser­v­a­tive impe­ri­al­ists” felt his ideas were rather out-of-date “or even down­right shock­ing.” The vic­tims of Churchill’s racism num­bered in the mil­lions, but those colo­nial sub­jects have been erased in polit­i­cal and pop­u­lar cul­ture.

“There’s no West­ern statesman–at least in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world–more rou­tine­ly lion­ized than Win­ston Churchill,” Ishaan Tha­roor writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post, in rit­u­al hagiogra­phies like 2017’s The Dark­est Hour. The film por­trays what is “of course, an impor­tant part of the cel­e­brat­ed British prime minister’s lega­cy,” notes Aeon, but it also “paints an extreme­ly incom­plete pic­ture of his life.” The short clay­ma­tion film above aims, with bit­ing wit, to cor­rect the record and how Churchill epit­o­mized the fail­son tra­di­tion of the aris­toc­ra­cy.

Dur­ing his mil­i­tary career, Churchill “had great fun lay­ing waste to entire vil­lages in the Swat Val­ley in what is now known in Pak­istan.” Clay­ma­tion Churchill informs us that he “also killed sev­er­al sav­ages in the Sudan.” Churchill, the great hero of World War II and staunch ene­my of the Nazis, opposed wom­en’s suf­frage and embraced eugen­ics and “the ster­il­iza­tion of the fee­ble-mind­ed.” (He once wrote an arti­cle claim­ing “it may be that, unwit­ting­ly, [Jews] are invit­ing persecution–that they have been part­ly respon­si­ble for the antag­o­nism from which they suf­fer.”) The cat­a­logue of abus­es con­tin­ues.

The short, by UK film­mak­er Steve Roberts, tells truths about Churchill that “are often glossed over in sur­face-lev­el treat­ments of Churchill’s biog­ra­phy.” They are not, by any stretch, insignif­i­cant truths. If some­one were to find them very upset­ting, I might sug­gest they take it up with Churchill….

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Win­ston Churchill Gets a Doctor’s Note to Drink “Unlim­it­ed” Alco­hol in Pro­hi­bi­tion Amer­i­ca (1932)

Win­ston Churchill’s Paint­ings: Great States­man, Sur­pris­ing­ly Good Artist

Win­ston Churchill Prais­es the Virtue of “Brevi­ty” in Mem­os to His Staff: Con­cise Writ­ing Leads to Clear­er Think­ing

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

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The Spinal Tap Stonehenge Debacle

in Comedy | November 8th, 2020

This has to share some comedic DNA with a pres­i­den­tial press con­fer­ence held at the Four Sea­sons–Four Sea­sons Total Land­scap­ing, that is. Clas­sic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ori­gins of Spinal Tap: Watch the 20 Minute Short Film Cre­at­ed to Pitch the Clas­sic Mock­u­men­tary

Ian Rub­bish (aka Fred Armisen) Inter­views the Clash in Spinal Tap-Inspired Mock­u­men­tary

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Patti Smith & Fred “Sonic” Smith Perform a Stripped-Down, Beautiful Version of “People Have the Power”

in Music | November 7th, 2020

It’s fit­ting for the day, even though it was record­ed long ago (1990). The footage above fea­tures Pat­ti Smith and her depart­ed hus­band Fred “Son­ic” Smith per­form­ing a stripped-down, acoustic ver­sion of her clas­sic “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er.” A rare record­ing of Smith and Son­ic per­form­ing togeth­er, this is a lit­tle trea­sure. Savor the moment.

Peo­ple have the pow­er
The pow­er to dream, to rule
To wres­tle the world from fools
It’s decreed: the peo­ple rule
It’s decreed: the peo­ple rule
Lis­ten. I believe every­thing we dream
Can come to pass through our union
We can turn the world around
We can turn the earth­’s rev­o­lu­tion
We have the pow­er!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Hear Pat­ti Smith’s First Poet­ry Read­ing, Accom­pa­nied by Her Long­time Gui­tarist Lenny Kaye (St. Mark’s Church, 1971)

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The Cinematography That Changed Cinema: Exploring Akira Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Greenaway & Other Auteurs

in Film | November 6th, 2020

One type of argu­ment made against “auteur the­o­ry,” which posits a film’s direc­tor as its “author,” holds that cer­tain non-direc­to­r­i­al col­lab­o­ra­tors con­tribute just as many — or, as Pauline Kael argued about Cit­i­zen Kane, more — of a work of cin­e­ma’s defin­ing qual­i­ties. Sure­ly a video essay­ist like Lewis Bond, co-cre­ator with Luiza Liz Bond of Youtube chan­nel The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy, sub­scribes to auteur the­o­ry: just look at the increas­ing­ly in-depth analy­ses he’s cre­at­ed on Stan­ley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky, and David Lynch — all, of course, direc­tors. But the recent Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy essay “The Cin­e­matog­ra­phy That Changed Cin­e­ma” sees him turn­ing away from the fig­ure of the direc­tor, explor­ing instead the auteur-like con­tri­bu­tions of those mas­ters of the cam­era.

Any com­pe­tent cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er can make shots pret­ty; few can make them tru­ly cin­e­mat­ic. Here we use “cin­e­mat­ic” in the sense that Peter Green­away would, refer­ring to the vast capa­bil­i­ties of the medi­um to go beyond pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly illus­trat­ing essen­tial­ly ver­bal sto­ries — capa­bil­i­ties that, alas, have so far gone most­ly unused. It should come as no sur­prise this essay uses Green­away’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover to estab­lish its per­spec­tive on the pow­er of cin­e­matog­ra­phy.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the movie’s inven­tive­ness in that respect and all oth­ers pro­duces “a film so removed from cin­e­ma that it rarely feels as though it was even intend­ed to be a film.” Shot by Sacha Vierny (best known for Alain Resnais’ Hiroshi­ma mon amour), its ultra-arti­fi­cial images resem­ble those of no oth­er movies, much less any­thing in real life, and for that rea­son they sweep us along.

Draw­ing exam­ples from dozens of films over half an hour, the Bonds show how cin­e­matog­ra­phers have not just rep­re­sent­ed or enhanced real­i­ty, but cre­at­ed it anew. This hap­pens in such pic­tures famous for their visu­al lush­ness as Michael Pow­ell’s The Red Shoes (cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er: Jack Cardiff), Kubrick­’s Bar­ry Lyn­don (John Alcott), Ter­rence Mal­ick­’s Days of Heav­en (Nés­tor Almen­dros), and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Ran (Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saitô, and Shôji Ueda). But it also hap­pens in less like­ly cin­e­mat­ic realms: 1970s Ital­ian hor­ror, doc­u­men­tary, and even pro­duc­tions stripped near­ly bare of mon­ey and equip­ment, whether by choice (as under the rig­ors of the Dogme 95 man­i­festo) or by neces­si­ty (as in Mikhail Kala­to­zov’s still aes­thet­i­cal­ly exhil­a­rat­ing I Am Cuba). You could call each of these films beau­ti­ful, but as every cinephile has felt, film does­n’t exist to achieve beau­ty: it exists to go beyond it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 100 Most Mem­o­rable Shots in Cin­e­ma Over the Past 100 Years

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Every Acad­e­my Award Win­ner for Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy in One Super­cut: From 1927’s Sun­rise to 2016’s La La Land

How Famous Paint­ings Inspired Cin­e­mat­ic Shots in the Films of Taran­ti­no, Gilliam, Hitch­cock & More: A Big Super­cut

The Great­est Cut in Film His­to­ry: Watch the “Match Cut” Immor­tal­ized by Lawrence of Ara­bia

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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Terry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Monty Python Animations: A 1974 How-To Guide

in Animation | November 6th, 2020

Before he direct­ed such mind-bend­ing mas­ter­pieces as Time Ban­dits, Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, before he became short-hand for a film­mak­er cursed with cos­mi­cal­ly bad luck, before he became the sole Amer­i­can mem­ber of sem­i­nal British com­e­dy group Mon­ty Python, Ter­ry Gilliam made a name for him­self cre­at­ing odd ani­mat­ed bits for the UK series Do Not Adjust Your Set. Gilliam pre­ferred cut-out ani­ma­tion, which involved push­ing bits of paper in front of a cam­era instead of pho­tograph­ing pre-drawn cels. The process allows for more spon­tane­ity than tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion along with being com­par­a­tive­ly cheap­er and eas­i­er to do.

Gilliam also pre­ferred to use old pho­tographs and illus­tra­tions to cre­ate sketch­es that were sur­re­al and hilar­i­ous. Think Max Ernst meets Mad Mag­a­zine. For Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, he cre­at­ed some of the most mem­o­rable moments of a show chock full of mem­o­rable moments: A pram that devours old ladies, a mas­sive cat that men­aces Lon­don, and a mus­tached police offi­cer who pulls open his shirt to reveal the chest of a shape­ly woman. He also cre­at­ed the show’s most icon­ic image, that giant foot dur­ing the title sequence.

On Bob God­frey’s series Do It Your­self Film Ani­ma­tion Show, Gilliam delved into the nuts and bolts of his tech­nique. You can watch it above. Along the way, he sums up his thoughts on the medi­um:

The whole point of ani­ma­tion to me is to tell a sto­ry, make a joke, express an idea. The tech­nique itself doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. What­ev­er works is the thing to use. That’s why I use cut-out. It’s the eas­i­est form of ani­ma­tion I know.

He also notes that the key to cut-out ani­ma­tion is to know its lim­i­ta­tions. Grace­ful, ele­gant move­ment à la Walt Dis­ney is damned near impos­si­ble. Swift, sud­den move­ments, on the oth­er hand, are much sim­pler. That’s why there are far more behead­ings in his seg­ments than ball­room danc­ing. Watch the whole clip. If you are a hard­core Python enthu­si­ast, as I am, it is plea­sure to watch him work. Below find one of his first ani­mat­ed movies, Sto­ry­time, which includes, among oth­er things, the tale of Don the Cock­roach.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Mir­a­cle of Flight, the Clas­sic Ear­ly Ani­ma­tion by Ter­ry Gilliam

A Young Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets with Socks, Ten­nis Balls & Oth­er House­hold Goods (1969)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Neil Young Releases a Never-Before-Heard Version of His 1979 Classic, “Powderfinger”: Stream It Online

in Music | November 6th, 2020

If Neil Young proved any­thing in his feud with Lynyrd Skynyrd (actu­al­ly “more like a spir­it­ed debate between respect­ful friends,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock), it’s that Cana­di­ans could play south­ern rock just as well as the South­ern Man, an argu­ment more or less also won at the same time by The Band’s Music from Big Pink. Young’s song­writ­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the tra­di­tion are just as well rec­og­nized as “The Weight.” Fore­most among them, we must place “Pow­derfin­ger,” cov­ered by every­one from Band of Hors­es to Cow­boy Junkies (below) to Rust­ed Root to Phish, and which Young sent to Ron­nie Van Zant, who might have record­ed it for the next Skynyrd album had he not died in 1977.

South­ern rock stal­warts Dri­ve-By Truck­ers, who’ve cov­ered “Pow­derfin­ger” fre­quent­ly, often sound like the son­ic equiv­a­lent of the Young-Skynyrd debate (they even wrote a song about it), chan­nel­ing their Alaba­ma roots and Skynyrd obses­sions through the sen­si­tive, sharply observed, char­ac­ter-dri­ven nar­ra­tives Young wrote so well. “Pow­derfin­ger” was penned dur­ing the Zuma era, when Young and Crazy Horse rede­fined psy­che­del­ic Amer­i­cana with bar­room weep­ers like “Don’t Cry No Tears” and “Barstool Blues,” and wan­der­ing gui­tar epics like “Cortez the Killer” and “Dan­ger Bird.”

The com­bi­na­tion of beau­ti­ful­ly loose, sham­bling gui­tars, lop­ing rhythms, and “bizarre and bril­liant” twists on Amer­i­cana themes defined what many con­sid­er to be Young’s great­est peri­od. “Between 1969’s Every­body Knows This is Nowhere and 1978’s Rust Nev­er Sleeps Young reached a lev­el of genius that few song­writ­ers have ever topped,” Rolling Stone writes.

“Pow­derfin­ger” rou­tine­ly tops best-of-Neil-Young lists. Though intend­ed for Zuma, the song did not actu­al­ly appear until four years lat­er, open­ing the elec­tric side of the live clas­sic Rust Nev­er Sleeps. Now we can cel­e­brate the unre­leased ver­sion at the top, record­ed dur­ing the Zuma ses­sions and just post­ed to the Neil Young Archives Insta­gram page.

Not only does “Pow­derfin­ger” show Neil Young and Crazy Horse at their duel­ing gui­tar best; it is a lyri­cal mas­ter­piece of lit­er­ary com­pres­sion, with a nar­ra­tive fans have often strug­gled to piece togeth­er, and have seen as rep­re­sent­ing every­thing from the Civ­il War to Viet­nam. But the gen­er­al inter­pre­ta­tion of the folk-poet­ic vers­es goes some­thing like this, notes Rolling Stone:

It’s about a fam­i­ly of boot­leg­gers (or some oth­er kind of back­woods crim­i­nals) some­where up in the moun­tains. They’ve been through many tragedies, and now the author­i­ties are mov­ing in on them – explain­ing why the approach­ing boat has “num­bers on the side.” The 22-year-old son has been forced to deal with the sit­u­a­tion because “Dad­dy’s gone,” “broth­er’s out hunt­ing in the moun­tains” and “Big John’s been drink­ing since the riv­er took Emmy-Lou.” The young man is stand­ing on the dock with a rifle in his hand when the boat begins fir­ing, so he rais­es the gun to return fire – but it back­fires and blows his head off. 

It’s a cin­e­mat­ic, dark­ly com­ic scene con­veyed with haunt­ing pathos and con­fused urgency. The track will appear on Disc 8, Dume, of the upcom­ing box set Neil Young Archives Vol­ume II, which cov­ers the pro­lif­ic peri­od between 1972 and 1976. “This 1975 ver­sion of the song was pro­duced by Young and David Brig­gs,” Brock Theis­sen writes at Exclaim!, and fea­tures all the orig­i­nal mem­bers of Crazy Horse. You can also stream the unre­leased ear­ly “Pow­derfin­ger” at the Neil Young Archives site. Fur­ther up, see an ani­mat­ed video for an acoustic ver­sion of the clas­sic Neil Young track and hear the orig­i­nal live record­ing from Rust Nev­er Sleeps below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Is Neil Young?: A Video Essay Explores the Two Sides of the Ver­sa­tile Musician–Folk Icon and Father of Grunge

Neil Young Per­forms Clas­sic Songs in 1971 Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

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

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