A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

in Books, Literature, Music | August 29th, 2014

murakami-playlist

Last month we fea­tured the par­tic­u­lars of nov­el­ist Haru­ki Murakami’s pas­sion for jazz, includ­ing a big Youtube playlist of songs select­ed from Por­trait in Jazz, his book of essays on the music. But we also allud­ed to Murakami’s admis­sion of run­ning to a sound­track pro­vid­ed by The Lovin’ Spoon­ful, which sug­gests lis­ten­ing habits not enslaved to purism. His books — one of the very best known of which takes its name straight from a Bea­t­les song (“Nor­we­gian Wood”) — tend to come pre-loaded with ref­er­ences to sev­er­al vari­eties of music, almost always West­ern and usu­al­ly Amer­i­can.  “The Fierce Imag­i­na­tion of Haru­ki Muraka­mi,” Sam Ander­son­’s pro­file of the writer on the occa­sion of the release of his pre­vi­ous nov­el 1Q84, name-checks not just Stan Getz but Janáček’s Sin­foni­et­ta, The Rolling Stones’ Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il, Eric Clap­ton’s Rep­tile, Bruce Spring­steen’s ver­sion of “Old Dan Tuck­er,” and The Many Sides of Gene Pit­ney. The title of Murakami’s new Col­or­less Tsuku­ru Taza­ki and His Years of Pil­grim­age, writes The Week’s Scott Mes­low, ref­er­ences Franz Liszt’s ‘Years of Pil­grim­age’ suite, “which plays a cen­tral role in the nov­el­’s nar­ra­tive. The point­ed ref­er­ence isn’t exact­ly a major detour from Muraka­mi.”

Giv­en the writer’s increas­ing reliance on music and the notion of “songs that lit­er­al­ly have the pow­er to change the world,” to say noth­ing of his “abil­i­ty to sin­gle-hand­ed­ly dri­ve musi­cal trends,” it can prove an illu­mi­nat­ing exer­cise to assem­ble Muraka­mi playlists. Select­ing 96 tracks, Mes­low has cre­at­ed his own playlist (above) that empha­sizes the breadth of genre in the music incor­po­rat­ed into Murakami’s fic­tion: from Ray Charles to Bren­da Lee, Duke Elling­ton to Bob­by Darin, Glenn Gould to the Beach Boys. Each song appears in one of Murakami’s nov­els, and Mes­low even includes cita­tions for each track: “I had some cof­fee while lis­ten­ing to May­nard Fer­guson’s ‘Star Wars.’ ” “Her milk was on the house if she would play the Bea­t­les’ ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ said the girl.” “Imag­ine The Great­est Hits of Bob­by Darin minus ‘Mack the Knife.’ That’s what my life would be like with­out you.” “The room begins to dark­en. In the deep­en­ing dark­ness, ‘I Can’t Go For That’ con­tin­ues to play.” It all coheres in some­thing to lis­ten to while explor­ing Murakami’s world: in your imag­i­na­tion, in real life, or in his trade­mark realms between. 

To lis­ten to the playlist above, you will first need to down­load Spo­ti­fy. Please note that once you mouse over the playlist, you can scroll through all 96 songs. Look for the ver­ti­cal scroll­bar along the right side of the playlist.

Pho­to above is attrib­uted to “wakari­m­a­sita of Flickr”

via The Week

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 5 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Trans­lates The Great Gats­by, the Nov­el That Influ­enced Him Most

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Traffic & Other Bands Play Huge London Festival “Christmas on Earth Continued” (1967)

in Music | August 29th, 2014

A tru­ly spec­tac­u­lar event, 1967’s “Christ­mas on Earth Continued”—a super-con­cert described in one pro­mo poster as an “All Night Christ­mas Dream Party”—gets sad­ly remem­bered as the last major show Syd Bar­ret played with Pink Floyd—ending the set dazed and motion­less onstage, his arms hang­ing limp at his sides. Barrett’s break­down wasn’t the only thing that kept this mas­sive hap­pen­ing, “the last gasp of the British under­ground scene,” from tak­ing off as it should have.

As the blog Mar­malade Skies recalls, the con­cert, held in the “vast Lon­don Olympia,” had “hope­less­ly inad­e­quate” pub­lic­i­ty.” This, and a “par­tic­u­lar­ly severe win­ter freeze” meant sparse atten­dance and “finan­cial dis­as­ter for the orga­niz­ers.” In addi­tion, a planned film of the event failed to mate­ri­al­ize, “owing to poor pic­ture qual­i­ty of the footage.”

Christmas-On-Earth-2.fullpage-1

Despite all this, it seems, you real­ly had to have been there. The line­up alone will make lovers of 60s psych-rock sali­vate: Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence, Eric Bur­don, Pink Floyd, The Move, Soft Machine, Tomor­row… The Who didn’t make it, but the unbilled Traf­fic did. We’re lucky to have some of the footage from that win­ter night. Check out Traf­fic below (with a very young Steve Win­wood), play­ing “Dear Mr. Fan­ta­sy.”

Lib­er­al Eng­land blog­ger Jonathan Calder calls the Traf­fic clip “price­less” and quotes Mar­malade Skies’ vivid descrip­tion of the nights fes­tiv­i­ties:

Soft Machine, with Kevin Ayers resplen­dent in pre-punk black string vest, cli­maxed with the ulti­mate Dada ver­sion of ‘We did it again’ as Robert Wyatt leapt into a full bath of water, that just hap­pened to be on-stage with them! At least, we assumed it was water. 

Tomor­row pow­ered through their unique mix of heav­i­ly Bea­t­les influ­enced psy­che­delia. Dur­ing ‘Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er’ Twink (drums) and Junior (bass) per­formed a mimed fight whilst being sub­ject­ed to the most pow­er­ful strobe light effects I’ve ever wit­nessed. Steve Howe was a rev­e­la­tion, mov­ing from raga to clas­si­cal to Bar­rett — style anar­chy with an almost arro­gant ease. 

Traf­fic, still with Dave Mason, even per­formed ‘Hole in my shoe’. Steve Win­wood was into his white cheese­cloth peri­od, and their music was so unlike any­thing else around that they occu­pied a total­ly orig­i­nal space. The song, ‘Here we go round the Mul­ber­ry Bush’ was very typ­i­cal of their trip­py, watery sound at that time. 

Hen­drix — voom! All light shows were killed for his per­for­mance. Noel Red­ding was con­stant­ly nig­gling Jimi, play­ing bass behind his head as Jimi per­formed his tricks with his gui­tar. It was the first time I saw Hen­drix with his Gib­son Fly­ing Arrow, and the ten­sion on-stage pro­duced some elec­tri­fy­ing music.

At the top of the post see Hen­drix in back­stage footage, effort­less­ly coax­ing some beau­ti­ful 12-bar blues from that Gib­son fly­ing V. The film clips of him onstage—blowing an obvi­ous­ly very turned-on audience’s col­lec­tive mind—will con­vince you this was the only place on earth to be on Decem­ber 22, 1967.

And that fate­ful Floyd per­for­mance? We don’t seem to have any film, but we do have the audio, and you can hear it below, slight­ly sped up, it seems. The band were debut­ing their new 3D light­show, which—as much as Barrett’s sad loss of his faculties—left quite an impres­sion on the crowd. One anony­mous com­menter on Calder’s blog, who claims to have seen been in atten­dance at the ten­der age of 18, writes, “I was so impressed with the Soft Machine and Pink Floyd light­shows that I bought an old movie pro­jec­tor from a thrift shop and me and my flat­mate spent hours putting col­or slides into the pro­jec­tor grate and watched them melt psy­che­del­i­cal­ly on the wall.” No doubt impres­sion­able young­sters all over the UK indulged in sim­i­lar kinds of good clean fun, with Piper at the Gates of Dawn on the hi-fi. If like me, you were born too late to expe­ri­ence the zenith of the psy­che­del­ic 60s, then flip off the lights, let your trip­pi­est screen saver take over, and lis­ten to Pink Floyd decon­struct them­selves below.

via Lib­er­al Eng­land

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Bea­t­les: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Trip­per,” and “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows”

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

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

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Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Gets Adapted Into an Avant-Garde Comic Opera

in Music, Opera, Philosophy | August 28th, 2014

Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, enfant ter­ri­ble or idiot savant? A stu­dent of the great Bertrand Rus­sell and pro­tégé of renowned math­e­mati­cian and logi­cian Got­t­lob Frege, the angry young upstart’s Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus put both elder thinkers on notice: The days of their com­fort­able assump­tions were num­bered, in a series of aus­tere, cryp­tic apho­risms and sym­bol­ic propo­si­tions that make very lit­tle sense to those of us who lack the prodi­gious intel­lects of Rus­sell and Frege. While Wittgen­stein is often dis­missed, writes Paul Hor­wich at New York Times’ phi­los­o­phy blog “The Stone,” as “self indul­gent­ly obscure,” per­haps the real rea­son many aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­phers reject his work is that it ren­ders them super­flu­ous. Phi­los­o­phy, Wittgen­stein oblique­ly claimed in his half-mys­ti­cal, hyper-log­i­cal trea­tise, “can’t give us the kind of knowl­edge gen­er­al­ly regard­ed as its rai­son d’être.”

Giv­en the Trac­ta­tus’s fire­bomb­ing of an entire area of human endeav­or, it’s no sur­prise it hasn’t fared well in many tra­di­tion­al depart­ments, but that hasn’t stopped Wittgenstein’s work from find­ing pur­chase else­where, influ­enc­ing mod­ern artists like Jasper Johns, the Coen Broth­ers, and, not least sure­ly, Finnish avant garde com­pos­er and musi­cian M.A. Num­mi­nen.

This odd char­ac­ter, who caused a stir in the 60s by set­ting sex guides to music, took it upon him­self to do the same for many of the Trac­ta­tus’s propo­si­tions, and the results are, well…. Lis­ten for your­self. At the top of the post, we have video of Num­mi­nen per­form­ing the fifth and final move­ment of his Trac­ta­tus suite—the famous final propo­si­tion of that strange lit­tle book: “Where­of one can­not speak, there­of one must be silent” (“Woven man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen”). Num­mi­nen sings this in Ger­man, in his high-pitched, creak­ing voice. The rest of the suite he sings in Eng­lish. Just above, hear the first move­ment, “The World Is…,” and below, hear move­ments 2–4, “In Order To Tell…,” “A Thought Is…,” and “The Gen­er­al Form Of A Truth Func­tion.” He even sings the sym­bols, in breath­less tran­scrip­tion. You can stream and down­load the full suite at Ubuweb and fol­low along at the Trac­ta­tus hyper­text here.

 

 

Should Numminen’s tin­pan alley-like com­po­si­tions strike you as a par­tic­u­lar­ly ridicu­lous set­ting for Wittgenstein’s genius, fear not; the Motet below (“Excero­ta Trac­tati Logi­co-Philo­sophi­ci”), by com­pos­er Elis­a­beth Lutyens, treats the eccen­tric German’s work with a great deal more rev­er­ence.

via Leit­er Reports

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

Bertrand Rus­sell on His Stu­dent Lud­wig Wittgen­stein: Man of Genius or Mere­ly an Eccen­tric?

Philoso­pher Por­traits: Famous Philoso­phers Paint­ed in the Style of Influ­en­tial Artists

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Dis­played by Archives at Cam­bridge

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

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John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” Played With Bagpipes: The Artistry of Rufus Harley

in Jazz, Music | August 28th, 2014

I sub­mit to you the propo­si­tion that a suf­fi­cient­ly mas­ter­ful com­po­si­tion can sur­vive in not just any key, but any con­text, any time, any sen­si­bil­i­ty, or any instru­men­ta­tion. To allow you to eval­u­ate this propo­si­tion, I sub­mit to you John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” The sax­o­phon­ist’s half-hour suite, an artis­tic free­dom-embrac­ing hymn to the high­er pow­er Coltrane saw as hav­ing imbued him with not just life but a for­mi­da­ble skill on his instru­ment, came as an epony­mous album from Impulse! Records in 1965. (Lis­ten here.) Hav­ing won innu­mer­able acco­lades in the near-half-cen­tu­ry since, it now seems to have a per­ma­nent place on every­one’s list of the great­est jazz record­ings of all time. About such a pil­lar of a work, only one ques­tion can remain: how would it sound on the bag­pipes?

Here to sati­ate your curios­i­ty comes Rufus Harley, the first jazz musi­cian ever to take up the Scot­tish great High­land bag­pipe as his main, er, horn. At the top of the post, you can hear him play a bit of “A Love Supreme” live on that sig­na­ture instru­ment. He would also work oth­er well-known pieces into his act, such as “Amaz­ing Grace,” a song most com­mon­ly played in funer­als. And indeed, it took a funer­al to turn Harley on to the bag­pipe’s untapped poten­tial.

“Moved by the pipes of the Black Watch Scot­tish March­ing Band who were play­ing for the funer­al of slain Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy in Novem­ber, 1963,” says his bio at Hip Wax, he lined up “a $120 set of pipes from a pawn shop and help from musi­cian-teacher Den­nis San­dole,” and “the world’s only jazz bag­pip­ist was on his way” — to places like the CBS game show I’ve Got a Secret, three years lat­er, an appear­ance you can watch just above. You can learn more about Harley’s remark­able life and sur­pris­ing­ly funky career on Jazz City TV’s The Orig­i­nal Rufus Harley Sto­ry below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

Watch John Coltrane and His Great Quin­tet Play ‘My Favorite Things’ (1961)

The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane: His Life & Music Revealed in Heart­felt 1990 Doc­u­men­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Brian May’s Homemade Guitar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motorcycle Parts & More

in Music | August 27th, 2014

It’s called “The Red Spe­cial.” Or some­times “The Fire­place.” That’s the gui­tar that Bri­an May (gui­tarist of Queen and physics researcher) began build­ing with his father cir­ca 1963, when Bri­an was about 16 years old. Lack­ing mon­ey but not inge­nu­ity, the father-son team built the gui­tar using mate­ri­als found around the home. The neck of the gui­tar was fash­ioned from an 18th-cen­tu­ry fire­place man­tel, the inlays on the neck from a moth­er-of-pearl but­ton. For the body, they used wood from an old oak table. Then the bricoleurs com­bined a bike sad­dle­bag hold­er, a plas­tic knit­ting nee­dle tip, and motor­bike valve springs to cre­ate a tremo­lo arm. It’s a kind of mag­ic! But here’s per­haps the most amaz­ing part of the sto­ry. The result­ing gui­tar was­n’t a rick­ety nov­el­ty. May used The Red Spe­cial dur­ing Queen’s record­ing ses­sions and live per­for­mances, and he still appar­ent­ly plays a restored ver­sion today. If you find your­self inspired by this DIY sto­ry, you can head over to Bri­an­May­Gui­tars and buy your own Red Spe­cial repli­ca.

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:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

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Miles Davis’ Chili Recipe Revealed

in Food & Drink, Music | August 23rd, 2014

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

No one cooked on the trum­pet like Miles Davis. And, as it turns out, he was also quite good in the kitchen (see? I spared you a pun). Tired of going out to restau­rants, the food­ie Davis decid­ed to learn to make his favorite dish­es. “I taught myself how to cook by read­ing books and prac­tic­ing, just like you do on an instru­ment,” he wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “I could cook most of the French dishes—because I real­ly liked French cooking—and all the black Amer­i­can dish­es.”

Davis, writes the Chica­go Sun-Times, “knew how to sim­mer with soul […] He made chili, Ital­ian veal chops and he fried fish in a secret bat­ter.” Davis’ cook­book has dis­ap­peared, and he’s appar­ent­ly tak­en his recipe secrets to the grave with him. All but one—his favorite, “a chili dish,” he writes, “I called Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack. I served it with spaghet­ti, grat­ed cheese, and oys­ter crack­ers.”

While Davis didn’t exact­ly spell out the ingre­di­ents or instruc­tions for his beloved chili in his mem­oir, his first wife Frances, whom Davis trust­ed implic­it­ly with the chili mak­ing, sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing to Best Life mag­a­zine in 2007. While you’re prep­ping, I rec­om­mend you put on 1956’s Cookin’ With the Miles Davis Quin­tet.

Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack (Serves 6)

1/4 lb. suet (beef fat)
1 large onion
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb. ground veal
1/2 lb. ground pork
salt and pep­per
2 tsp. gar­lic pow­der
1 tsp. chili pow­der
1 tsp. cumin seed
2 cans kid­ney beans, drained
1 can beef con­som­mé
1 drop red wine vine­gar
3 lb. spaghet­ti
parme­san cheese
oys­ter crack­ers
Heineken beer

1. Melt suet in large heavy pot until liq­uid fat is about an inch high. Remove sol­id pieces of suet from pot and dis­card.
2. In same pot, sauté onion.
3. Com­bine meats in bowl; sea­son with salt, pep­per, gar­lic pow­der, chili pow­der, and cumin.
4. In anoth­er bowl, sea­son kid­ney beans with salt and pep­per.
5. Add meat to onions; sauté until brown.
6. Add kid­ney beans, con­som­mé, and vine­gar; sim­mer for about an hour, stir­ring occa­sion­al­ly.
7. Add more sea­son­ings to taste, if desired.
8. Cook spaghet­ti accord­ing to pack­age direc­tions, and then divide among six plates.
9. Spoon meat mix­ture over each plate of spaghet­ti.
10. Top with Parme­san and serve oys­ter crack­ers on the side.
11. Open a Heineken.

Men­tal Floss, who bring us the above, also cites anoth­er recipe Davis learned from his father, quot­ed by John Szwed in So What: The Life of Miles Davis. This one comes with no instruc­tions, so “like a jazz musi­cian, you’ll have impro­vise.”

bacon grease
3 large cloves of gar­lic
1 green, 1 red pep­per
2 pounds ground lean chuck
2 tea­spoons cumin
1/2 jar of mus­tard
1/2 shot glass of vine­gar
2 tea­spoons of chili pow­der
dash­es of salt and pep­per
pin­to or kid­ney beans
1 can of toma­toes
1 can of beef broth

serve over lin­guine

Dig it, man.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leo Tolstoy’s Fam­i­ly Recipe for Mac­a­roni and Cheese

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

Alice B. Tok­las Reads Her Famous Recipe for Hashish Fudge (1963)

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

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Did Joe Strummer, Frontman of The Clash, Run the Paris and London Marathons?

in Music, Sports | August 21st, 2014

As a kid who wore Doc Mar­tins to high school gym class and refused par­tic­i­pa­tion on prin­ci­ple, it was my firm belief that “sports aren’t punk.” But had I known then what I know now about the ath­let­ic prowess of one of my heroes, Joe Strum­mer, I might have been a lit­tle more moti­vat­ed to try and com­pete with the great man’s abil­i­ty. A cham­pi­on run­ner dur­ing his lone­ly years at board­ing school, Strum­mer nev­er lost the runner’s bug, sup­pos­ed­ly fin­ish­ing two marathons, and pos­si­bly a third, while with The Clash. Let’s begin with that “pos­si­bly,” shall we? First, watch the clip above from the doc­u­men­tary Joe Strum­mer: The Future is Unwrit­ten.

For con­text, know that before the release of 1982’s Com­bat Rock, the band’s man­ag­er Bernie Rhodes sug­gest­ed that Strum­mer dis­ap­pear to Austin for a while to stir up some con­tro­ver­sy and increase tick­et sales. Strum­mer instead went to Paris with­out telling anyone—turning a hoax A.W.O.L. sto­ry into a real one. He tells it above, casu­al­ly toss­ing out, “and I ran the Paris Marathon, too,” a bury­ing of the lede Grantland’s Michael Bertin com­pares to Buzz Aldrin men­tion­ing his moon­walk between a bass fish­ing sto­ry and his wife’s casse­role. Peo­ple train for months, years, for marathons; Strum­mer, it seems strolled onto the course with his girl­friend of the time, Gaby Salter, and “allegedly”—alleges this Wikipedia entry—fin­ished in an aston­ish­ing 3 hours, 20 min­utes. Lat­er, asked by a reporter to describe his reg­i­men before the race, he said, “Drink 10 pints of beer the night before the race. Ya got that? And don’t run a sin­gle step at least four weeks before the race.”

StrummerParisMarathon

Every­thing about this sto­ry seems sus­pect, includ­ing the fact that in the sup­posed pho­to­graph of Strum­mer and Salter post-race (above)—both in run­ning gear but look­ing as fresh as if they’d just strolled out of the hotel patis­serie—nei­ther one wears a bib num­ber … “some­thing,” Bertin points out, “that a race par­tic­i­pant should have.” What’s more, Strum­mer was “capa­ble of rewrit­ing his­to­ry to make him­self look bet­ter,” which may explain his cagey reluc­tance to elab­o­rate. Bertin offers many more rea­sons to think the sto­ry a fab­ri­ca­tion, yet there is at least one high­ly cred­i­ble fact to sup­port it: The Lon­don Marathon, which Strum­mer most decid­ed­ly did run (see him below, race bib and all), fin­ish­ing with a most respectable time of 4:13 with­out any pri­or train­ing at all. Chris Salewicz’s Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Strum­mer quotes Gaby Salter say­ing “He hadn’t trained. He just bought some shorts and said, ‘Let’s run a marathon.’” Salter petered out halfway through. Lat­er in the book, Antony Genn, Strummer’s col­lab­o­ra­tor in the Mescaleros, recounts the hard-drink­ing Strum­mer say­ing of his marathon expe­ri­ence, “I didn’t fuckin’ train. Not once. Just turned up and did it.’”

StrummerLondonMarathon

While this seems patent­ly impos­si­ble, per­haps it’s true after all that the front­man of the The Clash, who weath­ered the rise and fall of punk bet­ter than any of his con­tem­po­raries, had such nat­ur­al phys­i­cal endurance he could casu­al­ly toss off a marathon in-between drunks and packs of smokes. Real run­ners will sure­ly scoff, but if Joe Strum­mer ever did train, no one ever saw him do it. If he were alive now, he’d be 62 years old and prob­a­bly still mak­ing records and knock­ing ’em back. Maybe he’d even breeze through the New York Marathon on his way to the stu­dio. And if we asked him for his secret, he’d prob­a­bly tell us some­thing like he told that reporter who asked about Paris: “’Do not try this at home.’ I mean, it works for me and Hunter Thomp­son, but it might not work for oth­ers.” Yeah, ya think?

via Dan­ger­ous­Minds and Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

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

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Dave Grohl Raises the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to an Art Form

in Film, Life, Music | August 19th, 2014

Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl raised an inter­net meme to an art form when he took the ALS Ice Buck­et Chal­lenge while par­o­dy­ing the epic prom scene from Car­rie. John Tra­vol­ta appeared in the 1976 hor­ror film, and Stephen King wrote the book behind it. So Grohl name checks them both. Where Jack Black fits into the pic­ture, I’m not exact­ly sure.

Dona­tions to help find a cure for the hor­rif­ic dis­ease can be made over at the ALS Asso­ci­a­tion. For a tru­ly sober­ing account of what it’s like to live with ALS, read Tony Judt’s essay, “Night,”  in The New York Review of Books. It was pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2010, short­ly before the dis­ease took his life.

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