The Library: A World History Presents a Stunning Visual Survey of The World’s Great Libraries

in Architecture, Art, Books, History | December 3rd, 2013

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Volu­mi­nous­ly well-read author and ama­teur librar­i­an Alber­to Manguel opens The Library at Night, a com­pen­dious trea­tise on the role of the library in human cul­ture, with a star­tling­ly bleak ques­tion. “Why then do we do it?” He asks, why do we “con­tin­ue to assem­ble what­ev­er scraps of infor­ma­tion we can gath­er in scrolls and books and com­put­er chips, on shelf after library shelf” when “out­side the­ol­o­gy and fan­tas­tic lit­er­a­ture, few can doubt that the main fea­tures of our uni­verse are its dearth of mean­ing and lack of dis­cernible pur­pose.” Manguel goes on—in beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed chap­ter after themed chapter—to list in fine detail the host of virtues each of his favorite libraries pos­sess­es, answer­ing his own ques­tion by ref­er­ence to the beau­ti­ful micro­cos­mic orders great libraries man­i­fest.

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A new book, The Library: A World His­to­ry by author James Camp­bell and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Will Pryce, takes a more work­man­like approach to the sub­ject, steer­ing clear of Manguel’s meta­physics. Even so, the book will deeply move lovers of libraries and his­to­ri­ans alike, per­haps even to ecsta­sy. One Ama­zon review­er put it sim­ply: “Book Porn at its best.”

Boing Boing calls Pryce’s pho­tographs “the cen­ter­piece of the book,” and you can see why in a cou­ple of selec­tions here. Even with­out his eye­sight, this is a project that would have delight­ed that rhap­sodist of the library, Jorge Luis Borges. At the top, see the Stra­hov Abbey library in Prague. Halfway across the world, we have the Trip­i­ta­ka Kore­ana library in South Korea (above). CNN has a gallery of Pryce’s pho­to­graph­ic trib­utes to the world’s great­est libraries, and find here a crit­i­cal review of the book by The Guardian’s Tom Lam­ont, who laments that the book sole­ly “focus­es on insti­tu­tions cre­at­ed for the priv­i­leged.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Inside Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Per­son­al Library

The Odd Col­lec­tion of Books in the Guan­tanamo Prison Library

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Love of Lan­guage Revealed by the Books in His Per­son­al Library

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

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What Cultural Icons of the 19th & 20th Centuries Would Have Liked About Life in the 21st Century

in History, Literature | November 28th, 2013

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At the web site, The Fer­tile Fact, you can read lists and lists of things you nev­er knew about your favorite cul­tur­al fig­ures. Or rather, you can read lists and lists of guess­es about what your favorite cul­tur­al fig­ures of the 19th and 20th cen­turies would have enjoyed about life in our 21st cen­tu­ry. From Paul Hen­drick­son, author of Hemingway’s Boat: Every­thing He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934 – 1961, we learn that Papa would have liked e‑mail (“for a man who wrote let­ters to tune him­self up and cool him­self down against the day’s ‘real writ­ing’, email would have been a great out­let for his emo­tion”). But he would have loved Twit­ter:

Email squared. Hem­ing­way was the mas­ter of ‘cable-ese’, a form of slang devel­oped by jour­nal­ists in the 1920s to save space (and, as impor­tant­ly, mon­ey) when send­ing telegraphs, which he learned in his youth as a news­pa­per­man. He would have loved the 140-char­ac­ter lim­it to write small lit­tle nov­els of rage or love or some­thing in between. If he could write an arc of a sto­ry in six words, which went: “For Sale: baby shoes, nev­er worn,” there­by arguably invent­ing flash fic­tion, then just imag­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the kind of War and Peace epics he might have tried via Twit­ter. And the pos­si­ble spats he might have got into, of course.

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From Tom Williams, author of A Mys­te­ri­ous Some­thing In The Light: A Life of Ray­mond Chan­dler, we learn that the cre­ator of Philip Mar­lowe, anoth­er poten­tial Twit­ter enthu­si­ast, would take to the works of Quentin Taran­ti­no, since

The thing that frus­trat­ed Chan­dler most about Hol­ly­wood was that his vision as a writer rarely made it onto screen unmedi­at­ed. For Ray, the stu­dio always got in the way of what he was try­ing to do. It was a prob­lem that par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed The Blue Dahlia. Though a movie beset by prob­lems (a tight sched­ule meant Chan­dler had to write the end­ing in a state of extreme intox­i­ca­tion) one of the most con­stant laments in his let­ters is the studio’s per­sis­tent med­dling with the pic­ture. He wrote to a friend, short­ly after fin­ish­ing the film, “So here was I a mere writer and a tired one at that scream­ing at the front office to pro­tect the pro­duc­er and actu­al­ly going on the set to direct scenes – I know noth­ing about direct­ing – in order that the whole project be saved from going down the drain.”

Stu­dios were more inter­est­ed in get­ting pun­ters into the the­atre than pro­duc­ing good films as far as Chan­dler was con­cerned (see the bit­ter por­trait of a stu­dio boss in The Lit­tle Sis­ter who talks of car­ing only for the num­ber of the­atres he owns, not the films shown in them, while let­ting his dog uri­nate on his trouser cuff). Though Quentin Taran­ti­no is hard­ly the first direc­tor to work inde­pen­dent­ly of a stu­dio, his deter­mi­na­tion to make the films he wants (prov­ing the val­ue of let­ting a film-mak­er stick to his vision in the process) is some­thing Chan­dler would have admired deeply. Taran­ti­no is also will­ing to embrace all lev­els of cul­ture, and this too is some­thing Ray would have respect­ed; he was nev­er one for lit­er­ary snob­bery.

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From Robert Zaret­sky, author of A Life Worth Liv­ing: Albert Camus and the Quest for Mean­ing, we learn that cre­ator of Meur­sault, the affect­less Arab-shoot­ing pro­tag­o­nist of The Stranger, would have approved of The Arab Spring:

The author of The Rebel would find lit­tle rea­son for hope, but none for despair. The instances of non-vio­lent protest in Tunisia and Egypt would serve as illus­tra­tions of Camus’ insis­tence that true rebels nev­er lose sight of the human­i­ty of those who oppress them. Syr­ia? The trag­ic illus­tra­tion of what hap­pens when rebels do lose sight of this imper­a­tive.

The Fer­tile Fact offers not only more things these three men would enjoy about our era, but sim­i­lar lists for such cre­ators as Alfred Hitch­cock, Nan­cy Mit­ford, Ten­nessee Williams, and Agatha Christie. How long before they pro­duce one for Vir­ginia Woolf, the writer who, describ­ing “the cre­ative fact,” “the fact that engen­ders and sug­gests,” coined the phrase that gave the site its name?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Ray­mond Chan­dler Denounces Strangers on a Train in Sharply-Word­ed Let­ter to Alfred Hitch­cock

Quentin Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

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

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Discover the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Torture Machine That Doubled as a Musical Instrument

in History | November 27th, 2013

His­to­ry is replete with bru­tal­ly imag­i­na­tive tor­ture and exe­cu­tion tech­niques. The list of cru­el­ties includes cru­ci­fix­ion, where vic­tims were left to die on the cross; the rack, where tor­tur­ers would place the vic­tim on a wood­en frame to be slow­ly pulled apart; and hang­ing, draw­ing, and quartering—the offi­cial Eng­lish pun­ish­ment for high trea­son from 1351 to 1870—where men would be drawn by horse to their place of exe­cu­tion, hung until near-death, and then emas­cu­lat­ed and dis­em­bow­eled before being decap­i­tat­ed and cut into quar­ters. The most intri­cate­ly sadis­tic form of tor­ture, how­ev­er, orig­i­nat­ed with the Greek tyrant Phalaris.

Phalaris, the despot of Acra­gas (now Agri­gen­to, in Sici­ly), was infa­mous for his cal­lous­ness and reput­ed­ly “devoured” suck­ling infants. The video above describes how Phalaris, keep­ing to his char­ac­ter, asked the crafts­man Per­i­laus to con­struct a bronze bull for the exe­cu­tion of crim­i­nals. The bull housed a hol­low cham­ber where vic­tims were deposit­ed through a trap­door. A fire was kin­dled beneath the bull, turn­ing the stat­ue into an oven.

As Phalaris sup­pos­ed­ly admit­ted him­self, the most sav­age aspect of this brazen mon­stros­i­ty was its musi­cal nature:

A coun­try­man of my own, one Per­i­laus, an admirable artist, but a man of evil dis­po­si­tion, had so far mis­tak­en my char­ac­ter as to think that he could win my regard by the inven­tion of a new form of tor­ture; the love of tor­ture, he thought, was my rul­ing pas­sion… He opened the back of the ani­mal, and con­tin­ued: “When you are mind­ed to pun­ish any one, shut him up in this recep­ta­cle, apply these pipes to the nos­trils of the bull, and order a fire to be kin­dled beneath. The occu­pant will shriek and roar in unremit­ting agony; and his cries will come to you through the pipes as the ten­der­est, most pathet­ic, most melo­di­ous of bel­low­ings. Your vic­tim will be pun­ished, and you will enjoy the music.”

It is doubt­ful that the tyrant so known for his bar­barism would cringe at this nov­el­ty; nev­er­the­less, Phalaris claims to have been sick­ened by Per­i­laus’ clev­er­ness:

‘His words revolt­ed me. I loathed the thought of such inge­nious cru­el­ty, and resolved to pun­ish the arti­fi­cer in kind. “If this is any­thing more than an emp­ty boast, Per­i­laus,” I said to him, “if your art can real­ly pro­duce this effect, get inside your­self, and pre­tend to roar; and we will see whether the pipes will make such music as you describe.” He con­sent­ed; and when he was inside I closed the aper­ture, and ordered a fire to be kin­dled. “Receive,” I cried, “the due reward of your won­drous art: let the music-mas­ter be the first to play.”

Upon hear­ing Per­i­laus’ shrieks, the con­tent tyrant removed the crafts­man from bull, and then threw him off of a cliff. “Mis­tak­en my char­ac­ter,” indeed.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

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Marilyn Monroe’s Handwritten Turkey-and-Stuffing Recipe

in Food & Drink, History | November 27th, 2013

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Entire indus­tries seem to have sprung up around the mis­sion of demon­strat­ing that Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe did more in her short life than become an icon — the icon — of mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can star­let­hood. We here at Open Cul­ture have pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured not just her famous­ly pho­tographed read­ing of James Joyce’s Ulysses, but the con­tents of her per­son­al library as well. The new book Frag­ments pro­vides a great deal of rich ephemera to those schol­ars of Mon­roe’s pur­suits off the screen, includ­ing, as Matt Lee and Ted Lee in the New York Times describe it, “assort­ed let­ters, poems and back-of-the-enve­lope scrib­blings that span the time from Monroe’s first mar­riage in 1943 to her death in 1962.” The arti­cle appears in the paper’s Din­ing & Wine sec­tion thanks to one Mon­rov­ian frag­ment of par­tic­u­lar inter­est this time of year: her per­son­al recipe for turkey and stuff­ing.

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“Scrawled on sta­tionery with a let­ter­head from a title insur­ance com­pa­ny,” write Lee and Lee, “the recipe describes in some detail how to pre­pare a stuff­ing for chick­en or turkey. The for­mu­la is exten­sive in the num­ber of ingre­di­ents (11, not includ­ing the 5 herbs and spices, or salt and pep­per), and in their diver­si­ty (3 kinds of nuts and 3 ani­mal pro­teins). It is unortho­dox for an Amer­i­can stuff­ing in its use of a bread loaf soaked in water, wrung dry and shred­ded, and in its lack of added fat, broth, raw egg or any oth­er binder.” You can find a tran­script of the steps right below. And if you give a whirl on Thanks­giv­ing, let us know how it turns out.

For the Stuff­ing

  • No gar­lic
  • Sour­dough
  • French bread — soak in cold water, wring out, then shred
  • For chick­en giblets — boil in water 5–10 mins
  • Liv­er — heart then chop
  • 1 whole or ½ onion,  chop & pars­ley / four stalk cel­ery,  chop togeth­er fol­low­ing spices — put in rose­mary
  • Thyme, bay leaf, oregano, poul­try sea­son­ing, salt, pep­per,
  • Grat­ed Parme­san cheese, 1 hand­ful
  • 1/2lb – 1/4lb ground round — put in fry­ing pan — brown (no oil) then mix raisin 1 ½ cuops or more
  • 1 cup chop nuts (wal­nuts, chest­nuts, peanuts)
  • 1 or 2 hard boiled eggs — chopped mix togeth­er

To Prep the Bird

  • Salt & pep­per inside chick­en or turkey — out­side same and but­ter
  • Sew up clamp birds put chick­en or turkey in 350 oven
  • Roast­ing chick­en — 3or 4lbs or larg­er
  • Cooks 30 min to 1lbs
  • Brown chick­en or pheas­ant (vine­gar, oil, onion, spices) — let cook in own juice
  • Add lit­tle water as you go
  • ½ glass vine­gar — put in when half done
  • Cooks 2 hours
  • Put pota­toes
  • Mush­room — but­ton canned
  • Peas — fresh

via NYTimes,  Brain Pick­ings and The Dai­ly Mail

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Play­ground (1955)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

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

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Lyndon Johnson Orders New Pants on the Phone and Requests More Room for His … Johnson (1964)

in Animation, History, Random | November 26th, 2013

“Lyn­don John­son was indeed .… a being of Shake­speare­an dimensions—a hulk­ing, bush-coun­try colos­sus, gar­gan­tu­an of ego and ener­gy, of self-delu­sions and glooms and para­noias, crass cru­el­ties and ram­pant vul­gar­i­ties, but gar­gan­tu­an also in his benev­o­lent ambi­tions.” So begins Mar­shall Frady’s review of Robert Caro’s 2002 polit­i­cal biog­ra­phy, Mas­ter Of The Sen­ate: The Years of Lyn­don John­son. The review then pro­ceeds to describe John­son’s uncouth behav­ior, which some­how always seemed to involve his John­son:

He ear­ly became fabled for a Rabelaisian earth­i­ness, uri­nat­ing in the park­ing lot of the House Office Build­ing as the urge took him; if a col­league came into a Capi­tol bath­room as he was fin­ish­ing at the uri­nal there, he would some­times swing around still hold­ing his mem­ber, which he liked to call “Jum­bo,” hoot­ing once, “Have you ever seen any­thing as big as this?,” and shak­ing it in almost a bran­dish­ing man­ner as he began dis­cours­ing about some pend­ing leg­is­la­tion. At the same time, he would oblige aides to take dic­ta­tion stand­ing in the door of his office bath­room while he went about emp­ty­ing his bow­els, as if in some alpha-male rit­u­al asser­tion of his pri­ma­cy. Even on the floors of the House and Sen­ate, he would extrav­a­gant­ly rum­mage away at his groin, some­times reach­ing his hand through a pock­et and lean­ing with half-lift­ed leg for more thor­ough access.

Above, we have a record­ing of anoth­er col­or­ful episode from the John­son era. On August 9, 1964, the pres­i­dent called the Hag­gar cloth­ing com­pa­ny to order some cus­tom-made pants. It was seem­ing­ly an innocu­ous call, a call you could­n’t imag­ine a pres­i­dent mak­ing today. But it sud­den­ly took a bizarre turn when LBJ asked for more room in the crotch, in the area “where the nuts hang.” That, before let­ting out a short, unapolo­getic belch. It’s clas­sic John­son.

Lis­ten to the famous call play out above, and find a tran­script of the exchange here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dizzy Gille­spie Runs for US Pres­i­dent, 1964. Promis­es to Make Miles Davis Head of the CIA

The Exis­ten­tial­ism Files: How the FBI Tar­get­ed Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assas­si­na­tion

Actress Grace Kel­ly Reflects on the Life & Lega­cy of JFK in an Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Video

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Legendary Japanese Author Yukio Mishima Muses About the Samurai Code (Which Inspired His Hapless 1970 Coup Attempt)

in History, Literature, Politics | November 25th, 2013

One day in Novem­ber of 1970, Nobel prize-nom­i­nat­ed author Yukio Mishi­ma bar­ri­cad­ed him­self in the East­ern Com­mand office of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and tied the com­man­dant to a chair. Accom­pa­nied by a hand­ful of young men from the Tatenokai, a stu­dent soci­ety-cum-mili­tia, Mishi­ma had launched a coup against the gov­ern­ment. He fol­lowed in the tra­di­tion of lit­er­ary rad­i­cals, whose ranks held writ­ers as diverse as Alexan­der Pushkin and Pablo Neru­da, with one key dis­tinc­tion: while Russ­ian and Chilean authors sought left­ward polit­i­cal shifts, Mishi­ma espoused a jack­boot brand of ascetic nation­al­ism. If Mishima’s cap­ti­va­tion with author­i­tar­i­an pol­i­tics seems out of char­ac­ter for a writer of such emo­tion­al depth, it is worth not­ing that his val­ues were root­ed in the hon­our code of the samu­rai, known as bushi­do. A rare clip of Mishima’s Eng­lish inter­views, above, makes the author’s beliefs about both art and hon­or pal­pa­bly clear:

I think that bru­tal­i­ty might come from our fem­i­nine aspect, and ele­gance comes from our ner­vous side. Some­times we are too sen­si­tive about defile­ment, or ele­gance, or a sense of beau­ty, or the aes­thet­ic side. Some­times we get tired of it. Some­times we need a sud­den explo­sion to make us free from it. For instance, after the war, our bru­tal side was com­plete­ly hid­den… I don’t like that the Japan­ese cul­ture is rep­re­sent­ed only by flower arrangement—a peace-lov­ing cul­ture. We still have a very strong war­rior mind.

The samu­rai ethos was a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of Mishi­ma’s most mov­ing works, includ­ing The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea and Patri­o­tism. In the film adap­ta­tion of Patri­o­tism, below, Mishi­ma shows that to him, even love is sub­or­di­nate to—or per­haps great­est when it works alongside—honour. While the film’s the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion and graph­ic nature may not be for everyone’s tastes (we also note that the clip below has been re-scored, with the orig­i­nal film avail­able here), the rit­u­al sui­cide it depicts offers some insight into the author’s psyche—after his failed coup, Mishi­ma plunged a blade into his stom­ach, and had one of the Tatenokai mem­bers behead him. He was 45 years old.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Search of Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Great Post­mod­ernist Nov­el­ist

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in Japan­ese Ads: Quentin Taran­ti­no Sells Cell Phones, Orson Welles Hawks Whisky

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

in History, Music | November 25th, 2013

Out­side of mod­ern jazz, bass play­ers have a hard time. Peo­ple either for­get they exist—“John Bon­ham, Jim­my Page, Robert Plant, and … oh yeah, that oth­er guy…”—or they get car­i­ca­tured as the goofi­est mem­bers of the band, due per­haps to the instrument’s unwield­i­ness and the rock­ing-at-the waist motions its awk­ward dimen­sions inspire. The phys­i­cal pos­tures of bassists have lent far too many per­fect pho­to­graph­ic moments to the viral Bass Dogs tum­blr, which imag­ines bass play­ers tick­ling giant, often embar­rassed-look­ing dogs.

But meme-ing aside, the bass occu­pies a cru­cial space, cov­er­ing a fre­quen­cy range and rhyth­mic dimen­sion with­out which we could not be tru­ly moved by mod­ern pop or clas­si­cal music, either in spir­it or body. And while the low end doesn’t clam­or for our attention—like the upper ranges of a chanteuse’s voice, a wail­ing lead gui­tar, or crash­ing cymbals—and can get lost in the tin­ny sounds of ear­buds and cheap radios, we sim­ply can­not do with­out the sound of the bass. To demon­strate what a propul­sive force the bass has been in the evo­lu­tion of music over the cen­turies, col­lec­tive CDZA—who have pre­vi­ous­ly enter­tained and enlight­ened us about the gui­tar solo—fea­ture bassist Michael Thurber in a greatest-hits-who’s‑who his­to­ry les­son, “The Sto­ry of the Bass.”

We begin with that baroque pre­cur­sor to the con­tra bass (or dou­ble bass), the vio­la da gam­ba, which Bach wrote for in his cel­lo suites and in da gam­ba and harp­si­chord pieces. When we come to the 18th cen­tu­ry, we are in the dou­ble bass world of bril­liant vir­tu­oso play­er and com­pos­er Domeni­co Drag­onet­ti, beloved of Haydn and Beethoven (hear a mes­mer­iz­ing Drag­onet­ti con­cer­to above). We then move through the 19th cen­tu­ry with names like Serge Kous­se­vitzky, pop­u­lar­iz­er of the 4‑string dou­ble bass we know today.

With jazz in the ‘20s , the fin­ger pluck­ing style comes to stand in for the tuba of pro­to-jazz Sousa bands. Then the 4‑note walk­ing bassline comes to the fore, brought most famous­ly by Duke Elling­ton bass­man Well­man Braud. In the 40s and 50s, bass took a spot­light with, among many oth­ers, three more some­time Elling­ton bassists: Jim­my Blan­ton, Oscar Pet­ti­ford, and, espe­cial­ly, Charles Min­gus.

The video zooms through country/bluegrass/rockabilly dou­ble bass inno­va­tions with a too-brief men­tion of slap bass tech­nique before Thurber straps on a clas­sic elec­tric to intro­duce but one of Leo Fender’s con­tri­bu­tions to mod­ern music. The first elec­tric bass debuted in 1951, and at the time, only one per­son played it, Monk (erro­neous­ly called “Mark” by CDZA) Mont­gomery, one of a trio of musi­cal broth­ers, who played for Lionel Hampton’s band.

As we get into the post-war peri­od, the bass evolves as rapid­ly as the tech­nolo­gies of ampli­fi­ca­tion, broad­cast, and record­ing. With the dom­i­nance of Motown in the six­ties, the bass takes a lead role in R&B, with the immor­tal James Jamer­son lead­ing the way (above with Jack­son 5). And with British rock and roll, the bass is again pushed to the fore­front by, of course, Paul McCart­ney. New tech­niques abound—John Entwistle of The Who’s fin­ger pluck­ing style, Lar­ry Graham’s slap­ping, the funk/rock/soul sig­na­tures of Nathan Watts, John Paul Jones, and Chris Squire. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters stands alone as a sin­gu­lar voice on the bass.

Once Thurber reach­es off-the-wall instru­men­tal­ists like Jaco Pas­to­ri­ous (above) and Flea (one is sad­dened Les Clay­pool doesn’t get a name check), we’re off to the races, any­thing goes, and oth­er clichés. Or how about a pun? It’s a bass race to rede­fine the instru­ment until the oughties, when it set­tles back in for folk and six­ties rock revival­ism and explodes in the synth lines of the hard dance revival­ism of dub­step. It’s a rol­lick­ing ride, and as any 8‑and-a-half minute his­to­ry les­son is bound to be, a sur­vey in broad strokes that sure­ly leaves out a cou­ple or dozen of your favorites (Boot­sie Collins? Ged­dy Lee? Peter Hook? Kim Deal? Rob­bie Shake­speare?). But on the whole, it’s an instruc­tive tour of a neglect­ed or maligned instru­ment that deserves much more respect than it gets.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

The Fun­da­men­tals of Jazz & Rock Drum­ming Explained in Five Cre­ative Min­utes

An Abridged His­to­ry of West­ern Music: “What a Won­der­ful World” Sung in 16 Dif­fer­ent Styles

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

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Noam Chomsky on Commemorating the JFK Assassination: It “Would Impress Kim Il-Sung”

in Current Affairs, History | November 24th, 2013

jfk chomskyIn recent decades, his­to­ri­ans have tried to offer a bal­anced assess­ment of JFK’s life and lega­cy, offer­ing clear-eyed accounts of his han­dling of for­eign and domes­tic pol­i­cy, and rais­ing ques­tions about his infi­deli­ties and health prob­lems, all the while chip­ping away at the Camelot myth. On Fri­day, the 50th anniver­sary of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, the hagiog­ra­phy returned, and even peren­ni­al cads like Rush Lim­baugh had lit­tle bad to say about Amer­i­ca’s 35th pres­i­dent. He sim­ply insist­ed that JFK would be a con­ser­v­a­tive, if still alive today.

Per­haps the only notable excep­tion was Noam Chom­sky. Nev­er a fan of Kennedy (or prob­a­bly any oth­er Amer­i­can pres­i­dent for that mat­ter), Chom­sky was asked by Truthout, “Do you find it odd that the coun­try is focus­ing on a 50th anniver­sary remem­brance of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion?” A lead­ing ques­tion, no doubt, to which Chomksy replied, “Wor­ship of lead­ers is a tech­nique of indoc­tri­na­tion that goes back to the crazed George Wash­ing­ton cult of the 18th cen­tu­ry and on to the tru­ly lunatic Rea­gan cult of today, both of which would impress Kim Il-sung. The JFK cult is sim­i­lar.” It’s what you get when you live in “a deeply indoc­tri­nat­ed soci­ety.” If you’re ready to have Chom­sky throw more cold water (or is it com­bustible gaso­line?) on the JFK lega­cy, head over to Truthout for more.

P.S. Don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger on this…

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky and Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature and Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Noam Chom­sky vs. William F. Buck­ley, 1969

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