Heart’s Nancy Wilson Teaches You How to Play the Notoriously Difficult Opening to “Crazy On You”

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 11th, 2022

You can slide up, pull off and ham­mer like a beast, but be fore­warned. It’s unlike­ly you’ll be able to keep pace with Heart’s Nan­cy Wil­son, as she demon­strates how to play the intro­duc­tion to 1975’s “Crazy On You,” one of the great­est — and trick­i­est — open­ing gui­tar solos in rock his­to­ry.

“I real­ly want­ed peo­ple to know right up front what I could do,” Wil­son revealed in a 1999 inter­view with Acoustic Gui­tar:

It was the same thing as sit­ting in the Band­wag­on music store and play­ing (Paul Simon’s) Anji. It was like, “Check me out, I know some stuff.”

As hard rock­ing female musi­cians in the 70s and 80s, Wil­son and her bandmate/sister, lead vocal­ist- and song­writer, Ann found them­selves hav­ing to prove them­selves con­stant­ly.

As Ann recent­ly explained to The Guardian: 

Back then, espe­cial­ly in the 70s, there was no fil­ter on how women were sex­u­al­ized – hyper-sex­u­al­ized – in order to sell their images. Now at least it looks like women have con­trol over their own fil­ters. Back then, they didn’t. It was just like: “Hey, here’s a sexy chick. We know how we can sell her.”

Let’s all observe Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month by insist­ing that every bone­head who ever dis­missed these pio­neer­ing women as a ‘chick band’ pay close atten­tion to Nancy’s intri­cate “hybrid pick­ing”.

“Crazy On You” finds her pick­ing a rhythm on the A‑string while using her bare fin­gers to pull off notes on the B and G strings.

And by her own admis­sion, she tends nev­er to play it the same way twice (“which makes it real easy, right?”)

While we’re at it, how about we cel­e­brate Heart’s 50th anniver­sary by intro­duc­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to “Crazy On You”?

The times have changed in sig­nif­i­cant ways, but the emo­tions that inspired the song will strike close to home for many young peo­ple, as per Ann’s descrip­tion on the Pro­fes­sor of Rock’s YouTube chan­nel:

I wrote the words about the state of the world, and the stress effect it was hav­ing on me. Back then, we thought the world was real­ly messed up, right? Because the Viet­nam War was going on and we were choos­ing to, but stay­ing out of our own country…we were home­sick. Crime was ris­ing, gas was expen­sive, gas short­age, all this hor­ri­ble stuff. We had no idea what was going to hap­pen in lat­er years so it seemed to be, at that time, y’know, this is the end of the world. This close to the apoc­a­lypse. It’s very very stress­ful when you’re in your 20’s and you don’t see a good future.

If you’re com­mit­ted to learn­ing Nan­cy Wilson’s gui­tar intro to “Crazy On You,” we rec­om­mend Shut­up & Play’s video tuto­r­i­al and tabs.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

John May­er Teach­es Gui­tarists How to Play the Blues in a 45-Minute Mas­ter­class

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer Demon­strates the Cor­rect & Offi­cial Way to Play “Kick Out the Jams” on the Gui­tar

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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See the Well-Preserved Wreckage of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarctica

in History | March 10th, 2022

110 years after its first and last voy­age, we remem­ber the RMS Titan­ic and its tout­ed “unsink­a­bil­i­ty” as one of the resound­ing ironies of mar­itime his­to­ry. But 1912 also saw the launch of anoth­er new­ly built yet ill-fat­ed ship whose name proved all too apt: Endurance, as it was rechris­tened by Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton when he pur­chased it to use on his Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion of 1914. In Jan­u­ary of the fol­low­ing year, Endurance got stuck in the ice of the Wed­dell Sea off Antarc­ti­ca, and over the fol­low­ing ten months that ice slow­ly crushed and ulti­mate­ly sank the ship. But her whole crew sur­vived, thanks to Shack­le­ton’s lead­ing them more than 800 miles over the open ocean to safe­ty.

Shack­le­ton and his men have been cel­e­brat­ed for their endurance; as for Endurance her­self, it has spent more than a cen­tu­ry unseen at the bot­tom of the ocean — unseen, that is, until now. “A team of adven­tur­ers, marine archae­ol­o­gists and tech­ni­cians locat­ed the wreck at the bot­tom of the Wed­dell Sea, east of the Antarc­tic Penin­su­la, using under­sea drones,” writes the New York Times’ Hen­ry Foun­tain. “Bat­tling sea ice and freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, the team had been search­ing for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915.”

Time turns out to have been kind to Shack­le­ton’s ship: “Endurance’s rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine appear­ance was not unex­pect­ed, giv­en the cold water and the lack of wood-eat­ing marine organ­isms in the Wed­dell Sea that have rav­aged ship­wrecks else­where.” You can glimpse Endurance in her watery grave in the Marine Tech­nol­o­gy TV video at the top of the post. But you’ll also see a lot more of anoth­er impres­sive ship: Agul­has II, the South African ice­break­er used by Endurance22, as the $10 mil­lion research expe­di­tion was called. What­ev­er the chal­lenges posed by final­ly track­ing down Endurance, their brunt was­n’t borne by that mighty ves­sel.

“Aside from a few tech­ni­cal glitch­es involv­ing the two sub­mersibles, and part of a day spent ice­bound when oper­a­tions were sus­pend­ed, the search pro­ceed­ed rel­a­tive­ly smooth­ly,” reports Foun­tain. The nature of this expe­di­tion, espe­cial­ly in its use of sub­mersibles to observe the wreck­age with­out dis­turb­ing it, may bring back to mind (for those of us of a cer­tain age) the 1992 doc­u­men­tary Titan­i­ca, which aston­ished us with the first up-close, IMAX-sized views of the sunken Titan­ic. Con­sid­er­ing the advance­ments in explorato­ry and pho­to­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy in the three decades since — and the con­di­tion of Endurance itself — the film that even­tu­al­ly results from Endurance22 should aston­ish us all over again.

For any­one inter­est­ed in Shack­le­ton’s remark­able adven­ture, we rec­om­mend the book The Endurance: Shack­le­ton’s Leg­endary Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

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 or on Face­book.

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The First Work of Science Fiction: Read Lucian’s 2nd-Century Space Travelogue A True Story

in History, Literature, Sci Fi | March 9th, 2022

Late in life, Kings­ley Amis declared that he would hence­forth read only nov­els open­ing with the sen­tence “A shot rang out.” On one lev­el, this would have sound­ed bizarre com­ing from one of Britain’s most promi­nent men of let­ters. But on anoth­er it aligned with his long-demon­strat­ed appre­ci­a­tion of genre fic­tion, includ­ing not just sto­ries of crime but also of high tech­nol­o­gy and space explo­ration. His life­long inter­est in the lat­ter inspired the Chris­t­ian Gauss Lec­tures he deliv­ered at Prince­ton in 1958, pub­lished soon there­after as New Maps of Hell: A Sur­vey of Sci­ence Fic­tion, a book that sees him trace the his­to­ry of the genre well back beyond his own boy­hood — about eigh­teen cen­turies beyond it.

“His­to­ries of sci­ence fic­tion, as opposed to ‘imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture,’ usu­al­ly begin, not with Pla­to or The Birds of Aristo­phanes or the Odyssey, but with a work of the late Greek prose romancer Lucian of Samosa­ta,” Amis writes. He refers to what schol­ars now know as A True Sto­ry (Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα), a novel­la-length fic­tion of the sec­ond cen­tu­ry that has every­thing from space trav­el to inter­plan­e­tary war to tech­nol­o­gy so advanced — as no less a sci-fi lumi­nary than Arthur C. Clarke would put it much lat­er — as to be indis­tin­guish­able from mag­ic. At its core a work of fan­tas­ti­cal satire, A True Sto­ry “delib­er­ate­ly piles extrav­a­gance upon extrav­a­gance for com­ic effect” in a rather un-sci­ence-fic­tion-like man­ner.

“Leav­ing aside the ques­tion whether there was enough sci­ence around in the sec­ond cen­tu­ry to make sci­ence fic­tion fea­si­ble,” Amis writes, “I will mere­ly remark that the spright­li­ness and sophis­ti­ca­tion of the True His­to­ry” — as he knew the work — “make it read like a joke at the expense of near­ly all ear­ly-mod­ern sci­ence fic­tion, that writ­ten between, say, 1910 and 1940,” which he him­self would have grown up read­ing.

In the video by at the top of the post, film­mak­er Gre­go­ry Austin McConnell sum­ma­rizes Lucian’s entire trav­el­ogue, not neglect­ing to men­tion the riv­er of wine, the tree-shaped women, the cities on the moon, the army of the sun, the bat­tle­field-spin­ning space spi­ders, the dogs who ride on winged acorns, the float­ing sen­tient lamps, and the 187 and ½ mile-long whale.

This clear­ly isn’t what we’d now call “hard” sci­ence fic­tion. So how, exact­ly, to label it? Such argu­ments erupt over every major work of genre fic­tion, even from antiq­ui­ty. A True Sto­ry con­tains ele­ments of what would become com­e­dy sci-fi, mil­i­tary sci-fi, and even the fan­ta­sy-and-sci-fi-hybridiz­ing “space opera” most pop­u­lar­ly exem­pli­fied by Star Wars and its many sequels. Cat­e­go­riza­tion quib­bles aside, what mat­ters about any work in the broad­er tra­di­tion of “spec­u­la­tive fic­tion” is whether it fires up the read­er’s imag­i­na­tion, and Lucian’s work has done it for not just ancients but mod­erns like the 19th-cen­tu­ry artists William Strang and Aubrey Beard­s­ley, whose illus­tra­tions from 1894 edi­tions of A True Sto­ry appear above. Now that “sci­ence fic­tion rules the cin­e­mat­ic land­scape,” as McConnell puts it, who will adapt it for us post­mod­erns?

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Astronomer Johannes Kepler Wrote the First Work of Sci­ence Fic­tion, The Dream (1609)

Mythos: An Ani­ma­tion Retells Time­less Greek Myths with Abstract Mod­ern Designs

The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Sci­ence Fic­tion: 17,500 Entries on All Things Sci-Fi Are Now Free Online

Every Pos­si­ble Kind of Sci­ence Fic­tion Sto­ry: An Exhaus­tive List Cre­at­ed by Pio­neer­ing 1920s Sci­Fi Writer Clare Winger Har­ris (1931)

Isaac Asi­mov Recalls the Gold­en Age of Sci­ence Fic­tion (1937–1950)

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics Avail­able on the Web

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 or on Face­book.

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When Movies Came on Vinyl: The Early-80s Engineering Marvel and Marketing Disaster That Was RCA’s SelectaVision

in History, Technology | March 9th, 2022

Any­one over 30 remem­bers a time when it was impos­si­ble to imag­ine home video with­out phys­i­cal media. But any­one over 50 remem­bers a time when it was dif­fi­cult to choose which kind of media to bet on. Just as the “com­put­er zoo” of the ear­ly 1980s forced home-com­put­ing enthu­si­asts to choose between Apple, IBM, Com­modore, Texas Instru­ments, and a host of oth­er brands, each with its own tech­no­log­i­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, the mar­ket for home-video hard­ware pre­sent­ed sev­er­al dif­fer­ent alter­na­tives. You’ve heard of Sony’s Beta­max, for exam­ple, which has been a punch­line ever since it lost out to JVC’s VHS. But that was just the realm of video tape; have you ever watched a movie on a vinyl record?

Four decades ago, it was dif­fi­cult for most con­sumers to imag­ine home video at all. “Get records that let you have John Tra­vol­ta danc­ing on your floor, Gene Hack­man dri­ving though your liv­ing room, the God­fa­ther stay­ing at your house,” booms the nar­ra­tor of the tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial above.

How, you ask? By pur­chas­ing a Selec­taVi­sion play­er and com­pat­i­ble video discs, which allow you to “see the enter­tain­ment you real­ly want, when you want, unin­ter­rupt­ed.” In our age of stream­ing-on-demand this sounds like a laugh­ably pedes­tri­an claim, but at the time it rep­re­sent­ed the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­en­teen years and $600 mil­lion of inten­sive research and devel­op­ment at the Radio Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca, bet­ter known as RCA.

Radio, and even more so its suc­ces­sor tele­vi­sion, made RCA an enor­mous (and enor­mous­ly prof­itable) con­glom­er­ate in the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. By the 1960s, it com­mand­ed the resources to work seri­ous­ly on such projects as a vinyl record that could con­tain not just music, but full motion pic­tures in col­or and stereo. This turned out to be even hard­er than it sound­ed: after numer­ous delays, RCA could only bring Selec­taVi­sion to mar­ket in the spring of 1981, four years after the inter­nal tar­get. By that time, after the com­pa­ny had been com­mis­sion­ing con­tent for the bet­ter part of a decade (D. A. Pen­nebak­er shot David Bowie’s final Zig­gy Star­dust con­cert in 1973 on com­mis­sion from RCA, who’d intend­ed to make a Selec­taVi­sion disc out of it), the for­mat faced com­pe­ti­tion from not just VHS and Beta­max but the cut­ting-edge LaserDisc as well.

Nev­er­the­less, the Selec­taVi­sion’s ultra-dense­ly encod­ed vinyl video discs — offi­cial­ly known as capac­i­tance elec­tron­ic discs, or CEDs — were, in their way, mar­vels of engi­neer­ing. You can take a deep dive into exact­ly what makes the sys­tem so impres­sive, which involves not just a break­down of its com­po­nents but a com­plete retelling of the his­to­ry of RCA, though the five-part Tech­nol­o­gy Con­nec­tions minis­eries at the top of the post. True com­pletists can also watch RCA’s video tour of its Selec­taVi­sion pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, as well as its live deal­er-intro­duc­tion broad­cast host­ed by Tom Brokaw and fea­tur­ing a Broad­way-style musi­cal num­ber. Selec­taVi­sion was also rolled out in the Unit­ed King­dom in 1983, thus qual­i­fy­ing for a hands-on exam­i­na­tion by British retro-tech Youtu­ber Tech­moan.

Selec­taVi­sion last­ed just three years. Its fail­ure was per­haps overde­ter­mined, and not just by the bad tim­ing result­ing from its trou­bled devel­op­ment. In the ear­ly 1980s, the idea of buy­ing pre-record­ed video media lacked the imme­di­ate appeal of “time-shift­ing” tele­vi­sion, which had become pos­si­ble only with video tape. Nor did RCA, whose mar­ket­ing cen­tered on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing a per­ma­nent home-video library in the man­ner of one’s music library, fore­see the pos­si­bil­i­ty of rental. And though CEDs were ulti­mate­ly made func­tion­al, they remained cum­ber­some, able to hold just one hour of video per side and noto­ri­ous­ly sub­ject to jit­ters even on the first play. Yet as RCA’s ad cam­paigns empha­sized, there real­ly was a “mag­ic” in being able to watch the movies you want­ed at home, when­ev­er you want­ed to. In that sense, at least, we now live in a mag­i­cal world indeed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Mini­Disc, Sony’s 1990s Audio For­mat That’s Gone But Not For­got­ten

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

The Beau­ty of Degrad­ed Art: Why We Like Scratchy Vinyl, Grainy Film, Wob­bly VHS & Oth­er Ana­log-Media Imper­fec­tion

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

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 or on Face­book.

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Odessa Opera House, in 1942 and Today

in Current Affairs, History | March 7th, 2022

via @KyivPost

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Watch a Very Nervous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talking Heads Performing Live in NYC (1976)

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 7th, 2022

“This is a per­son who is pro­found­ly uncom­fort­able address­ing an audi­ence and yet puts him­self in that posi­tion,” David Byrne told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­son in 2019, as they watched some of the above footage of his 23-year-old self fronting a live Talk­ing Heads’ per­for­mance back in 1976.

Every­thing was pret­ty new back in that Bicen­ten­ni­al year.

Talk­ing Heads had formed the year before, when Byrne and drum­mer Chris Frantz, who’d been band­mates at the Rhode Island Col­lege of Design, moved to New York City with Frantz’s girl­friend, bassist Tina Wey­mouth.

The venue host­ing this live per­for­mance, New York City’s leg­endary exper­i­men­tal art space, The Kitchen, was slight­ly less wet behind the ears, hav­ing opened its doors in 1971. (Some 30 years lat­er, elder states­man Byrne was the guest of hon­or at its annu­al spring gala.)

How­ev­er you define it — New Wave, no wave, post-punk art pop — the band’s sound was also fresh, though Byrne sug­gests, in the inter­view with Ander­son, there was noth­ing new about his youth­ful cock­i­ness:

…like a lot of bands, artists, every­thing else, any peri­od real­ly, you tend to think that, um, the per­va­sive stuff around you is crap and you and your friends are…we’re doing the real stuff. 

And opti­misti­cal­ly, one might think, since we’re doing the real stuff and it has real soul and pas­sion, and it’s of its moment, it rep­re­sents its moment, and so immod­est­ly, you think, “Of course! Things are just going to fall into your lap because you’re doing some­thing that has some truth to it. Uh…that cer­tain­ly doesn’t always hap­pen.

It hap­pened com­par­a­tive­ly quick­ly for Talk­ing Heads.

Sev­er­al of the songs they per­formed as a trio that March night at the Kitchen made it onto Talk­ing Heads: 77, the debut stu­dio album record­ed bare­ly a year lat­er, by which time a fourth mem­ber, Jer­ry Har­ri­son, had joined on key­boards and gui­tar.

Of par­tic­u­lar note above is Psy­cho Killer, which earned the band both noto­ri­ety, owing to the coin­ci­den­tal tim­ing of 1976 and 1977’s Son of Sam mur­ders, and their first Bill­board Hot 100 spot.

“This song was writ­ten a long time ago,” the young Byrne stut­ters into the micro­phone at the Kitchen, then apol­o­gizes for fid­dling with his clothes and equip­ment.

(“It’s all good!” Frantz calls out encour­ag­ing­ly from behind his drum kit.)

Accord­ing to the lin­er notes of Once in a Life­time: The Best of Talk­ing Heads, Byrne began work on the song in col­lege:

When I start­ed writ­ing this (I got help lat­er), I imag­ined Alice Coop­er doing a Randy New­man-type bal­lad. Both the Jok­er and Han­ni­bal Lecter were much more fas­ci­nat­ing than the good guys. Every­body sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.

Fans may note a dis­par­i­ty in the lyrics between this per­for­mance and record­ed ver­sions of the song. Here, the sec­ond verse goes:

Lis­ten to me, now I’ve passed the test

I think I’m cute, I think I’m the best

Skirt tight, don’t like that style

Don’t crit­i­cize what I know is worth­while

Psy­cho Killer stayed on the shelf for David Byrne’s Amer­i­can Utopia, the Broad­way show recent­ly filmed by Spike Lee. But it gave a far more pol­ished Byrne an excel­lent open­er for Talk­ing Heads’ 1984 con­cert film, Stop Mak­ing Sense.

The uncom­fort­able young front­man dressed like a “pro­le­tari­at every­man,” who the Kitchen’s press release described as “a cross between Ralph Nad­er, Lou Reed, and Tony Perkins.” And he has since man­aged to acquire some impres­sive per­for­mance chops over the course of a still flour­ish­ing career.

This is your chance to catch him at that awk­ward age when, as Byrne told Kirk Ander­son, he per­formed “because he had to”:

There was this means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that was being a per­former and writ­ing songs and singing them (that) was a way of, kind of being present to oth­er peo­ple — not just girls, but oth­er peo­ple in gen­er­al.

Setlist for The Kitchen, March 13, 1976:

00:00 — Introduction/soundcheck

02:13 — The Girls Want To Be With the Girls (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food in 1978)

06:05 — Psy­cho Killer (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77 in 1977, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

The lyrics of the 2nd verse of Psy­cho Killer is dif­fer­ent from the record­ed ver­sion!

10:55 — I Feel It In My Heart (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77, with dif­fer­ent lyrics)

15:28 — I Wish You Would­n’t Say That (Fea­tured on the deluxe ver­sion of Talk­ing Heads: 77)

18:15 — Infor­ma­tion about the record­ing

19:00 — Stay Hun­gry (Fea­tured on More Songs About Build­ings and Food)

24:35 — I Want To Live (Fea­tured on com­pi­la­tions such as Sand in the Vase­line, 1992 and Bonus Rar­i­ties & Out­takes, 2006)

29:48 — Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions (Fea­tured on Talk­ing Heads: 77)

32:55 — No Com­pas­sion (assumed, video ends before song starts)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Russian Invasion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the University of Michigan

in Current Affairs, History, Online Courses | March 6th, 2022

From the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan comes a free short course on the Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine. Here’s how they set the con­text for the course, which you can find on the Cours­era plat­form:

“The armed con­flict in Ukraine first start­ed in the begin­ning of 2014, when Rus­sia invad­ed and annexed the Ukrain­ian region of Crimea. Over the past eight years, there has been ongo­ing con­flict between Ukraine and Rus­sia, with reg­u­lar shelling and skir­mish­es occur­ring along Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian bor­ders in the east­ern part of the coun­try. On Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, Rus­sia launched a full-scale mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, plung­ing the entire coun­try into war and send­ing shock­waves across the world. With casu­al­ties mount­ing and over one mil­lion Ukraini­ans flee­ing the coun­try, the need for dia­logue and de-esca­la­tion have nev­er been high­er. In this Teach-Out, you will learn from a diverse group of guest experts about the his­to­ry and ori­gins of war in Ukraine, its imme­di­ate and long-term impacts, and what you can do to sup­port peo­ple in this grow­ing human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis. Specif­i­cal­ly this Teach-Out will address the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

- How did we get here? Why did Rus­sia invade Ukraine?
— What his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al con­texts do we need to know about in order to under­stand this con­flict?
— How is cyber and infor­ma­tion war­fare impact­ing the con­flict in Ukraine?
— What can be done to stop this war?
— How can we sup­port Ukrain­ian refugees and dis­placed peo­ples?”

Sign up for the course here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

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Free Coloring Books from The Public Domain Review: Download & Color Works by Hokusai, Albrecht Dürer, Harry Clarke, Aubrey Beardsley & More

in Art, Books, Creativity, History | March 4th, 2022

Did you some­how miss that the Pub­lic Domain Review has got­ten in on the adult col­or­ing book craze?

If so, don’t feel bad. There were prob­a­bly a lot of oth­er news items vying for your atten­tion back in March of 2020, when the first vol­ume was released “for diver­sion, enter­tain­ment and relax­ation in times of self-iso­la­tion.”

By the time the sec­ond vol­ume made its debut less than two months lat­er, the first had been down­loaded some 30,000 times.

Tell your scarci­ty men­tal­i­ty to stand down. You may be late to the par­ty, but all 40 images can still be down­loaded for free, “to ease and aid plea­sur­able focus in these odd­est of times.”

It’s our belief that odd times call for odd images so we’re repro­duc­ing some of our favorites below, though be advised there are also plen­ty of calm­ing botan­i­cal prints and grace­ful maid­ens for those crav­ing a less chal­leng­ing col­or­ing expe­ri­ence.

Behold Saint Antho­ny Tor­ment­ed by Demons by Mar­tin Schon­gauer (c. 1470–75), above!

And below, the 13-year-old Michelangelo’s repro­duc­tion in tem­pera on a wood pan­el. Biog­ra­phers Gior­gio Vasari and Ascanio Con­divi both told how the young artist vis­it­ed the fish mar­ket, seek­ing inspi­ra­tion for the demons’ scales. Per­haps you will be inspired by the bare­ly teenaged High Renais­sance master’s palette, though it’s YOUR col­or­ing page, so you do you.

In “Fill­ing in the Blanks: A Pre­his­to­ry of the Adult Col­or­ing Craze”, his­to­ri­ans Melis­sa N. Mor­ris and Zach Carmichael recount how pub­lish­er Robert Say­er’s illus­trat­ed book, The Florist, “for the use & amuse­ment of Gen­tle­men and Ladies” was pub­lished with the explic­it under­stand­ing that read­ers were meant to col­or in its botan­i­cal­ly semi-inac­cu­rate images:


Com­prised of pic­tures of var­i­ous flow­ers, the author gives his (pre­sum­ably) adult read­ers detailed instruc­tions for paint mix­ing and col­or choice (includ­ing the delight­ful sound­ing “gall-stone brown”).

Per­haps you will bring some of Sayer’s sug­gest­ed col­ors to bear on the above image from Parisian book­seller Richard Breton’s Les songes dro­la­tiques de Pan­ta­gru­el (1565), a col­lec­tion of 120 grotesque wood­cut fig­ures intend­ed as a trib­ute to the bawdy writer (and priest!) François Rabelais, or a pos­si­bly just a can­ny mar­ket­ing ploy.

Next, let’s col­or this perky fel­low from Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Nazari’s famous alchem­i­cal trea­tise on metal­lic trans­mu­ta­tion, Del­la tra­mu­ta­tione metal­li­ca sog­ni tre from 1599. 

The “winged pig in the world” by Dutch engraver and map­mak­er Cor­nelis Anthon­isz doesn’t look very cheer­ful, does he? He’s on top of the impe­r­i­al orb, but he’s also an alle­go­ry of the cor­rupt world. Hope­ful­ly, this will get sort­ed by the time pigs fly.

As to Ambroise Paré’s 1598 ren­der­ing of a “cam­phur” … well, let’s just say THIS is what a prop­er uni­corn should look like.

Accord­ing to an anno­tat­ed check­list that accom­pa­nied the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum’s Clois­ters’ 75th Anniver­sary exhi­bi­tion Search for the Uni­corn, Paré, a pio­neer­ing French bar­ber sur­geon, claimed that it live(d) in the Ara­bi­an Desert, and that its horn can cure var­i­ous mal­adies, espe­cial­ly poi­son­ing.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. Think about it as you col­or.

Hoku­sai, Albrecht Dür­er, and Aubrey Beard­s­ley, are among the artists whose work you’ll encounter, “arranged in vague order of dif­fi­cul­ty — from a sim­ple 17th-cen­tu­ry kimono pat­tern to an intri­cate thou­sand-flow­ered illus­tra­tion.”

Down­load Vol­ume 1 of the Pub­lic Domain Review Col­or­ing book in US Let­ter or A4 for­mat.

And here is Vol­ume 2 in US Let­ter or A4 for­mat.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Free Col­or­ing Books from 101 World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: Down­load and Col­or Hun­dreds of Free Images

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Down­load 150 Free Col­or­ing Books from Great Libraries, Muse­ums & Cul­tur­al Insti­tu­tions: The British Library, Smith­son­ian, Carnegie Hall & More

The Dro­lat­ic Dreams of Pan­ta­gru­el: 120 Wood­cuts Envi­sion the Grotesque Inhab­i­tants of Rabelais’ World (1565)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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