Bertolt Brecht Sings “Mack the Knife” in a 1929 Recording

in Music, Theatre | July 28th, 2014

brecht sings

Since 2008, a record­ing has been mak­ing the rounds on YouTube of Bertolt Brecht singing ‘Die Mori­tat von Mack­ie Mess­er,’ or what’s more com­mon­ly known as “Mack the Knife” in Eng­lish, a song Kurt Weill and Brecht com­posed for The Three­pen­ny Opera, which pre­miered in Berlin in 1928. The Brecht record­ing dates back to 1929, and, accord­ing to Discogs, it was released in 1960 on a 7‑inch Ger­man album called Bertolt Brecht Singt. Below, you can hear Brecht make his way through the tune. The clip comes accom­pa­nied by a quirky, new ani­mat­ed video cre­at­ed by the stu­dio Qual­i­ty Schnal­li­ty, Inc.

“Mack the Knife” has, of course, been cov­ered by count­less artists over the years. Bob­by Darin sang per­haps the most famous, swing­ing ver­sion in 1958. There are also clas­sic ver­sions by Louis Arm­strong, Frank Sina­tra, and Ella Fitzger­ald, not to men­tion more con­tem­po­rary ones by Lyle Lovett, The Psy­che­del­ic Furs, The Young Gods, Nick Cave, and Mar­i­anne Faith­full. Did we miss one of your favorites?

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via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

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Why R.E.M.‘s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Politically Important Album” Ever

in Music, Politics | July 25th, 2014

Raise your hand if you bought your first music on cas­sette tapes. No, not those detourned objects of nos­tal­gia cir­ca 2013, but the “this is the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and that’s that” kin­da thing. Okay, you in the back there, remem­ber when the CD came to town? Yeah, and remem­ber those box­es—all that ridicu­lous pack­ag­ing, with the long card­board box twice as long as the prod­uct? What was that all about? The rest of you, keep up: It was a dif­fer­ent time. Okay, since we all still know what vinyl looks like when hand­some­ly placed on store shelves (maybe you’ve seen this at your local Urban Out­fit­ters), we know that record sleeves are big and square and CD cas­es are small and square. And the prob­lem for those record stores when the CDs came to replace tapes—but not the pre­cious vinyl—was that the main dis­plays were for the big squares, and the stores didn’t wan­na change ‘em. Thus the long CD box: two of them side by side equaled the area of one record.

Prob­lem solved? Not for spoil­sports like R.E.M. who (you in the back, remem­ber?) released that album Green in ’88 and went on end­less­ly about “think glob­al, act local” enviro—blah blah. Why they cared so much about the lives of shade-giv­ing, wish-grant­i­ng trees I’ll nev­er know, but they did, and it both­ered them, these waste­ful box­es. So, enter Tip­per Gore. Wait, what? Who? How? A short his­to­ry: Some time ago, Al Gore’s wife Tip­per and many oth­ers were upset by raunchy lyrics—espe­cial­ly by the 2 Live Crew fellows—and lob­bied for those “Parental Advi­so­ry” stick­ers to get stuck on explic­it CDs, and some music was cen­sored, and Gore and her coali­tion of most­ly right-wing friends found a con­ve­nient boogey­man in pop­u­lar music. (Are you googling? It’s spelled “PMRC”). A lot of this agi­ta­tion over explic­it lyrics came from gen­uine­ly con­cerned par­ents. A lot of it came from polit­i­cal oppor­tunists and peo­ple who like using leg­is­la­tion to enforce their reli­gious moral­i­ty.

REM_LONGBOX_PHOTO-back-e1405991556428-1024x479

Where in Stipe’s name is this going? It ties togeth­er through one man, Jeff Gold, Warn­er Brother’s exec dur­ing the release of the band’s 1991 album Out of Time. Gold need­ed the long box for this CD, and he want­ed the then-new Rock the Vote project to reg­is­ter mil­lions of young music buy­ers, who would then, he rea­soned, vote out the pols who did the cen­sor­ship. Gold and Rock the Vote founder and Vir­gin records co-founder Jeff Ayeroff con­vinced the band to do the long box thing by mak­ing half the box a Rock the Vote peti­tion for the Motor Vot­er Bill, which would allow vot­ers to reg­is­ter through their local DMV. And that, accord­ing to radio show 99% Invis­i­ble, is how REM became the face of Rock the Vote and the Motor Vot­er Bill in 1993. Mar­ket­ing! And envi­ron­men­tal­ism. See that sen­si­tive activist at the top of the post? That’s Michael Stipe mak­ing a Rock the Vote pitch. See that pic­ture above? (Click to embiggen.) That’s the dor­sal side of Out of Time’s CD long box pack­age. The card at the bot­tom address­es itself to the young record buyer’s Sen­a­tor. It says,

Dear Sen­a­tor:

I sup­port the Motor Vot­er Bill. Accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­sus, in the last pres­i­den­tial elec­tion 78% of 18–29 year olds who were reg­is­tered to vote vot­ed. We aren’t as apa­thet­ic as some peo­ple think. It’s just that the laws make it hard for many of us to reg­is­ter.

I hope I can say my Sen­a­tor sup­ports the Motor Vot­er Bill.

Your Con­stituent

In no small part because of R.E.M.’s lob­by­ing, the Motor Vot­er Bill was passed. Many did not like it then and do not like it now. They say it encour­ages vot­er fraud, which you might think would be ram­pant and com­plete­ly out of con­trol by now, but is not in the least. In any case, the law remains unrea­son­ably con­tro­ver­sial, as do many, many laws that make it eas­i­er for all kinds of cit­i­zens to vote. But you prob­a­bly know that sto­ry already.

For more on why Out of Time is pos­si­bly “the most polit­i­cal­ly impor­tant album of all time,” lis­ten to the first episode of new pod­cast Pitch below, and vis­it their site for a tran­script of their detailed inter­view with Jeffs Gold and Ayeroff. And for Stipe’s sake, get your­self reg­is­tered and get to the polls this Novem­ber.

via 99% Invis­i­ble

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris Gives Us “11 Excel­lent Rea­sons Not to Vote?”

Take The Near Impos­si­ble Lit­er­a­cy Test Louisiana Used to Sup­press the Black Vote (1964)

Three Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments by Frank Zap­pa: Vote, Brush Your Teeth, and Don’t Do Speed

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

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Sun Ra’s Full Lecture & Reading List From His 1971 UC Berkeley Course, “The Black Man in the Cosmos”

in Music, Philosophy, UC Berkeley | July 21st, 2014

A pio­neer of “Afro­fu­tur­ism,” band­leader Sun Ra emerged from a tra­di­tion­al swing scene in Alaba­ma, tour­ing the coun­try in his teens as a mem­ber of his high school biol­o­gy teacher’s big band. While attend­ing Alaba­ma Agri­cul­tur­al and Mechan­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, he had an out-of-body expe­ri­ence dur­ing which he was trans­port­ed into out­er space. As biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed records him say­ing, “my whole body changed into some­thing else. I land­ed on a plan­et that I iden­ti­fied as Sat­urn.” While there, aliens with “lit­tle anten­na on each ear. A lit­tle anten­na on each eye” instruct­ed him to drop out of col­lege and speak through his music. And that’s just what he did, chang­ing his name from Her­man Blount and nev­er look­ing back.

Whether you believe that sto­ry, whether Sun Ra believes it, or whether his entire per­sona is a the­atri­cal put-on should make no dif­fer­ence. Because Sun Ra would be a vision­ary either way. Com­bin­ing Afro­cen­tric sci­ence fic­tion, eso­teric and occult phi­los­o­phy, Egyp­tol­ogy, and, with his “Arkestra,” his own brand of free jazz-futur­ism that has no equal on earth, the man is tru­ly sui gener­is. In 1971, he served as artist-in-res­i­dence at UC Berke­ley and offered a spring semes­ter lec­ture, African-Amer­i­can Stud­ies 198, also known as “Sun Ra 171,” “The Black Man in the Uni­verse,” or “The Black man in the Cos­mos.” The course fea­tured read­ings from—to name just a few—theosophist Madame Blavatsky, French philoso­pher Con­stan­tin Fran­cois de Chas­se­boeuf, black Amer­i­can writer and poet Hen­ry Dumas, and “God,” whom the cos­mic jazz the­o­rist report­ed­ly list­ed as the author of The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (oth­er­wise known as the King James Bible).

Now we have the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear a full lec­ture from that class, thanks to Ubu.com. Lis­ten to Sun Ra spin his intri­cate, bizarrely oth­er­world­ly the­o­ries, drawn from his per­son­al phi­los­o­phy, pecu­liar ety­molo­gies, and idio­syn­crat­ic read­ings of reli­gious texts. Hear­ing him speak is a lit­tle like hear­ing him play, so be pre­pared for a lot of free asso­ci­a­tion and jar­ring, unex­pect­ed jux­ta­po­si­tions. Szwed describes a “typ­i­cal lec­ture” below:

Sun Ra wrote bib­li­cal quotes on the board and then ‘per­mu­tat­ed’ them—rewrote and trans­formed their let­ters and syn­tax into new equa­tions of mean­ing, while mem­bers of the Arkestra passed through the room, pre­vent­ing any­one from tap­ing the class. His lec­ture sub­jects includ­ed Neo­pla­ton­ic doc­trines; the appli­ca­tion of ancient his­to­ry and reli­gious texts to racial prob­lems; pol­lu­tion and war; and a rad­i­cal rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Bible in light of Egyp­tol­ogy.

Luck­i­ly for us, some sly stu­dent cap­tured one of those lec­tures on tape.

For more of Pro­fes­sor Ra’s spaced out pre­sen­ta­tion, see the Helsin­ki inter­view above, also from 1971. And if you decide you need your own edu­ca­tion in “Sun Ra 171,” see the full read­ing list from his Berke­ley course below, cour­tesy of the blog New Day.

The Egypt­ian Book of the Dead

Radix

Alexan­der His­lop: Two Baby­lons

The Theo­soph­i­cal works of Madame Blavatsky

The Book of Oah­spe

Hen­ry Dumas: Ark of Bones

Hen­ry Dumas: Poet­ry for My Peo­ple eds. Hale Charfield & Eugene Red­mond, Car­bon­dale: South­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty Press 1971

Black Fire: An Anthol­o­gy of Afro-Amer­i­can Writ­ing, eds. Leroi Jones & Lar­ry Neal, New York: William Mor­row 1968

David Liv­ingston: Mis­sion­ary Trav­els

Theodore P. Ford: God Wills the Negro

Rut­ledge: God’s Chil­dren

Sty­lus, vol. 13, no. 1 (Spring 1971), Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty

John S. Wil­son: Jazz. Where It Came From, Where It’s At, Unit­ed States Infor­ma­tion Agency

Yosef A. A. Ben-Jochan­nan: Black Man of the Nile and His Fam­i­ly, Alk­ibu Ian Books 1972

Con­stan­tin Fran­cois de Chas­se­boeuf, Comte de Vol­ney: The Ruins, or, Med­i­ta­tion on the Rev­o­lu­tions of Empires, and the Law of Nature, Lon­don: Pio­neer Press 1921

The Source Book of Man’s Life and Death (Ra’s descrip­tion; = The King James Bible)

Pjotr Demi­anovitch Ous­pen­sky: A New Mod­el of the Uni­verse. Prin­ci­ples of the Psy­cho­log­i­cal Method in Its Appli­ca­tion to Prob­lems of Sci­ence, Reli­gion and Art, New York: Knopf 1956

Fred­er­ick Bod­mer: The Loom of Lan­guage. An Approach to the Mas­tery of Many Lan­guages, ed. Lancelot Hog­ben, New York: Nor­ton & Co. 1944

Black­ie’s Ety­mol­o­gy

Count­less oth­er free cours­es from UC Berke­ley can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds and audio cour­tesy of Sen­si­tive Skin Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Presents the Pres­ti­gious Nor­ton Lec­tures at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty: Watch Online

Son­ic Youth Gui­tarist Thurston Moore Teach­es a Poet­ry Work­shop at Naropa Uni­ver­si­ty: See His Class Notes (2011)

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

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

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George Harrison Wrote His Last Letter to Austin Powers Creator Mike Myers, Asking for a Mini Me Doll (2001)

in Comedy, Letters, Music | July 19th, 2014

harrison myers

In a band full of extro­vert­ed goof­balls and pranksters, George Har­ri­son was the qui­et one, the seri­ous Bea­t­le, the straight man and intro­spec­tive mys­tic, right? Not so, accord­ing to Trav­el­ling Wilburys band­mate Tom Pet­ty, who once coun­tered the “qui­et Bea­t­le” sobri­quet with “he nev­er shut up. He was the best hang you could imag­ine.” Not so, accord­ing to Har­ri­son him­self, who once said “I think I’ve had an image, peo­ple have had a con­cept of me being real­ly straight cause I was the seri­ous one or some­thing. I mean, I’m the biggest lunatic around. I’m com­plete­ly com­i­cal, you know? I like crazi­ness. I had to in order to be in the Bea­t­les.”

It’s true that Har­ri­son dis­liked fame and its trap­pings and dove deeply into life’s mys­ter­ies. In his final tele­vised inter­view, he is con­tem­pla­tive and, yes, deeply seri­ous. And while some of the sto­ries of the end of his life are heartbreaking—like that of the oncol­o­gist who alleged­ly showed up unan­nounced at the dying Bea­t­les’ door and cajoled him into sign­ing an auto­graph when he could bare­ly write his name—the sto­ry of the last let­ter he ever wrote made me smile.

Accord­ing to Mike Myers, cre­ator of Wayne’s World and the six­ties spoof Austin Pow­ers fran­chise, that let­ter arrived in his hands on the very day of Harrison’s death, deliv­ered via pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor as Myers and crew shot the third of the Pow­ers films.

Har­ri­son wrote but nev­er mailed the short note a month before his death in Novem­ber, 2001. In it, he reveals his love for Austin Pow­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly the “Mini Me” char­ac­ter from The Spy Who Shagged Me (played by Verne Troyer)—a minia­ture clone of Pow­ers’ neme­sis Dr. Evil. In a GQ inter­view, Myers quotes from the let­ter: “…sit­ting here with my Dr. Evil doll…I just want­ed to let you know I’ve been all over Europe for a mini-you doll.” Har­ri­son also jok­ing­ly cor­rect­ed Myers’ Liv­er­pudlian: “Dr. Evil says frickin’ but any good Scouser dad will tell you it’s actu­al­ly ‘frig­gin’ as in a ‘four of fish and fin­ger pie,’ if you get my drift.”

The “Scouser dad” ref­er­ence was par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant for Myers, whose par­ents come from Liv­er­pool. “You don’t know what The Bea­t­les were in my house,” Myers told WENN news, “They were every­thing. Liv­er­pool was poor­ish and it was rough and all of a sud­den it was cool to come from this town, so my par­ents were eter­nal­ly grate­ful.” Har­ri­son returned the grat­i­tude, writ­ing “thanks for the movies, so much fun,” a sen­ti­ment Myers reacts to with “Dude, I can’t even.” And real­ly, what could else could you say? “To get this let­ter,” and on the very day of Harrison’s pass­ing no less, “was unbe­liev­able,” said Myers, “It hits you and it can knock you off your feet.”

As for that rep­u­ta­tion for seri­ous­ness? I don’t know about you, but from now on, when I think of the last days of George Har­ri­son, I won’t think of his oppor­tunis­tic doc­tor, or his turn­ing down the OBE, or even that fate­ful final per­for­mance on VH1. I’ll imag­ine him sit­ting on the couch with a Dr. Evil doll, writ­ing Mike Myers to request a Mini Me.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

Phil Spector’s Gen­tle Pro­duc­tion Notes to George Har­ri­son Dur­ing the Record­ing of All Things Must Pass

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

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

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Blues Guitar Legend Johnny Winter Shines Live on Danish TV (1970)

in Music | July 18th, 2014

“Out of all the hopped-up Cau­casians who tur­bocharged the blues in the late Six­ties,” writes Rolling Stone, “Texas albi­no John­ny Win­ter was both the whitest and the fastest.” While broth­er Edgar hung a syn­the­siz­er around his neck and explored South­ern rock’s out­er weird­ness, John­ny stuck clos­er to roots music, play­ing with blues greats like Mike Bloom­field, Junior Wells, and Mud­dy Waters (he pro­duced three Gram­my-win­ning Waters albums). Despite, or because of, his blues bona fides, Win­ter was always a stal­wart in the rock scene. He played Wood­stock, often cov­ered Chuck Berry, Dylan, and The Rolling Stones, and released sev­er­al albums with his own band.

Win­ter passed away Wednes­day in his hotel room in Zurich at age 70. In trib­ute, we bring you the full per­for­mance above of Win­ter with his band on Dan­ish TV in 1970. See Winter’s bril­liant thumb-pick­ing style on full dis­play as he and the band rip through “Mama Talk to Your Daugh­ter,” “John­ny B. Goode,” “Be Care­ful With a Fool,” and “Mean Town Blues.” Want to learn some John­ny Win­ter mag­ic? Check out this video gui­tar les­son with the man him­self. And just below, see a trail­er for a new Win­ter doc­u­men­tary, John­ny Win­ter: Down and Dirty, that pre­miered at SXSW this past March.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

‘Boom Boom’ and ‘Hobo Blues’: Great Per­for­mances by John Lee Hook­er

Ani­mat­ed: Robert Johnson’s Clas­sic Blues Tune Me and the Dev­il Blues

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

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The Sex Pistols Play in Dallas’ Longhorn Ballroom; Next Show Is Merle Haggard (1978)

in Music | July 17th, 2014

“John­ny Rot­ten and Sid Vicious were both punched in the face by girl fans as the Sex Pis­tols per­formed today deep in the heart of Texas.” That was the lede for the Eng­lish news­pa­per The Evening News cov­er­ing the Pistol’s con­cert at The Long­horn Ball­room in Dal­las, TX on Jan­u­ary 10, 1978. It proved to be one of the strangest, most con­tentions shows in one of the strangest, most con­tentious tours in rock his­to­ry. You can watch it above. All 37 min­utes.

By the time of the con­cert, the Sex Pis­tols were already noto­ri­ous in the U.K.  They had released a sin­gle – “God Save the Queen” – that called Britain’s head of state a fas­cist on the date of her Sil­ver Jubilee. The sin­gle became a huge hit in spite of – or per­haps because of – it get­ting banned by the BBC. They famous­ly hurled obscen­i­ties at a chat show host on live TV.  But to be fair, host Bill Grundy lit­er­al­ly asked for it. “You’ve got anoth­er five sec­onds,” he told John­ny Rot­ten and com­pa­ny. “Say some­thing out­ra­geous.” They did.

Though the band start­ed out as an elab­o­rate Sit­u­a­tion­ist-inspired per­for­mance art piece dreamed up by mega­lo­ma­ni­ac man­ag­er Mal­colm McLaren, they evolved beyond just being a stunt.  Their music was loud, aggres­sive and glee­ful­ly nihilist with lines like “And I wan­na be anar­chist, I get pissed, destroy!” That music and that atti­tude touched some deep sim­mer­ing well of cul­tur­al dis­con­tent — be it low­er class frus­tra­tions, dis­sat­is­fac­tion with con­sumer cul­ture or some dark­er pri­mal urge to burn every­thing down. Their music res­onat­ed.

sex-pistols-merle-haggard

For their 1978 tour of the Unit­ed States, McLaren wasn’t inter­est­ed in build­ing a fan base. He was inter­est­ed in piss­ing peo­ple off. So the tour com­plete­ly bypassed seem­ing­ly obvi­ous tour stops, like New York, Chica­go and Los Ange­les, in favor of places like Mem­phis, Tul­sa and San Anto­nio – none of which were exact­ly hot beds for punk. A famous pic­ture of the mar­quee of the Long­horn Bal­loon shows the Pis­tols list­ed along­side Mer­le Hag­gard, giv­ing you a feel for just how weird this tour was. Pri­or to the con­cert, Sid Vicious con­fessed his fears to a reporter about play­ing in Dal­las. “They killed Kennedy here and every­body has warned us that the peo­ple are crazy. I think there’s a real dan­ger that this is the town where I am going to be blown away.” (Weird his­tor­i­cal side note: The Long­horn Ball­room was owned for a spell by Jack Ruby, the guy who shot Lee Har­vey Oswald.)

The police were also report­ed­ly wor­ried. The Dal­las police depart­ment had a SWAT team ready just in case the show turned into a riot. It didn’t, but just bare­ly. The audi­ence was equal­ly split between hard­core fans – for exam­ple, Lamar St. John, the woman who decked Sid Vicious in the nose, drove from Los Ange­les to see the show – and skep­ti­cal locals who want­ed to see what the fuss was all about. As one Dal­las paper wrote, “most of the peo­ple last night came to see the peo­ple who came to see the Sex Pis­tols.”

As you can see from the video, John­ny Rot­ten, who spent much of the show look­ing like a tweak­er in the throes of a demon­ic pos­ses­sion, wast­ed few oppor­tu­ni­ties to ridicule the audi­ence. “I see that we have a whole sec­tion of the silent major­i­ty around there,” he sneered. As the band worked its way through the set list, cul­mi­nat­ing in a blis­ter­ing ren­di­tion of “Anar­chy in the U.K.,” the audi­ence hurled beer cans, toma­toes, garbage and the occa­sion­al punch at the stage. It’s not clear if the peo­ple who were doing the throw­ing were fans or irate cow­boys. Such is the world of punk. Sid Vicious, the band’s out­ra­geous if utter­ly untal­ent­ed bassist, jumped around on stage and occa­sion­al­ly con­tributed some aton­al back­ing vocals. After the punch, he let his nose bleed and soon he was cov­ered in blood. “The bass play­er rubbed blood over his face and chest,” wrote the Evening News, “so that he looked like a dement­ed can­ni­bal.”

“Sid was real­ly fucked up. Real­ly drunk,” recalled writer Nick Bar­baro. “He played for a while with­out his gui­tar plugged in. He played for a while with a fish. I think some­body threw it up there, a bass or some­thing. Peo­ple seemed pissed at him. He’d spit on the audi­ence; they’d spit on him. That’s what you did. There was this ele­ment of, ‘You paid to see us play?’”

Four days lat­er, the band broke up. “This is no fun. No fun at all. Ever feel like you’ve been cheat­ed?” Rot­ten weari­ly said on stage in San Fran­cis­co, the Sex Pistol’s final con­cert, before walk­ing off stage and quit­ting the band. Vicious was dead a year lat­er from a hero­in over­dose.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

Mal­colm McLaren: The Quest for Authen­tic Cre­ativ­i­ty

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

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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The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

in Music | July 16th, 2014

“Ramones Reunion Near­ly Com­plete,” announced The Onion just about ten years ago, after the death of the band’s gui­tarist John­ny Ramone. His band­mates Joey and Dee Dee Ramone had each tak­en their leave of this mor­tal coil a few years before, and now, with the pass­ing of drum­mer Tom­my Ramone, all the group’s orig­i­nal mem­bers have gone to that big CBGB in the sky. In the video above, you can see the Ramones play­ing at the small CBGB down here on Earth — way down here on Earth, giv­en the set­ting of down­town Man­hat­tan in 1974. That year alone, after the rev­e­la­tion they brought about after first tak­ing the stage in their bangs, ripped jeans, and black leather jack­ets on August 16, they played the now-his­toric rock club no few­er than 74 times. Show length aver­aged about sev­en­teen min­utes, which means this video, at just sev­en min­utes, includes quite a few songs. The setlist includes “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue,” “I Don’t Wan­na Go Down to the Base­ment,” and “Judy Is a Punk.”

This per­for­mance hap­pened on Sep­tem­ber 15, 1974, six months after their debut at Per­for­mance Stu­dios in March of that year. They would­n’t sign a record­ing con­tract until late the next year, but they would do it because the wife of Sire Records co-founder Sey­mour Stein saw them at CBGB. Though the Ramones always prid­ed them­selves on the raw­ness of their sound, this show catch­es them at a moment when, though they’d already armed them­selves with looks and the atti­tude that made them instant icons, they still had to feel their way through exact­ly what this “punk rock” thing would turn into. You can see their music tak­ing an even clear­er, more dis­tilled form in the 1977 CBGB set we fea­tured last year. They may have lived fast, the Ramones, but they played even faster. Could they have done it with­out the bor­der­line-unpun­k­like skill of their drum­mer?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

The Ramones Play a New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

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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Watch The Hire: 8 Short Films Shot for BMW by John Woo, Ang Lee & Other Popular Filmmakers (2002)

in Comedy, Film, Music | July 16th, 2014

If there’s ever a Mad Men: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, count on a 40-ish Sal­ly Drap­er to psych a con­fer­ence room full of BMW execs out of the tried-and-true for­mu­la for lux­u­ry auto­mo­bile ads in favor of a ground­break­ing, night­mar­ish, pre-YouTube web series.

As fic­tion­al sce­nar­ios go, it’s about as like­ly as hav­ing the Hard­est Work­ing Man in Show Busi­ness James Brown place a win­ner-take-all bet with the dev­il (Gary Old­man) that his dri­ver Clive Owen can out-drag peren­ni­al movie bad guy Dan­ny Tre­jo. (In oth­er words, very like­ly.)

The prize?

Anoth­er 50 years of hip-shak­ing, leg-split­ting soul for the God­fa­ther of.

Can’t wait for the soon-to-be released James Brown biopic to find out who wins?

Check out “Beat the Dev­il,” above, the final install­ment of BMW Films’ 8‑episode series, The Hire. One of the new mil­len­ni­um’s ear­li­est exam­ples of brand­ed con­tent, each fre­net­ic seg­ment found Owen’s name­less dri­ver going up against a ros­ter of big name guest stars, includ­ing Don Chea­dle, Mick­ey Rourke, Mar­i­lyn Man­son, and an uncred­it­ed, pee-soaked Madon­na. (You heard me.)

Brown’s episode, direct­ed by the late Tony Scott, quick­ly ven­tures into David Lynch ter­ri­to­ry. Old­man’s Prince of Dark­ness gets laughs with a prop flu­o­res­cent tube and striped sus­pender tights, but the scene’s not with­out men­ace. (Recall Dean Stock­well lip-synch­ing Can­dy Col­ored Clown in Blue Vel­vet…)

The dia­logue calls to mind Jim Jar­musch’s blunt snap.

Dev­il: Stick your face in the hole!

James Brown: My face?

Dev­il: Stick it in the hole!

James Brown: My face?

Dev­il: Face in the hole!

James Brown: My face?

Dev­il: Face in the- oh, shit!”

Else­where, Brown’s line deliv­ery gets a boost from same-lan­guage sub­ti­tles, with­out which one could eas­i­ly mis­hear his con­cerns about aging as an unex­pect­ed, late-in-life racial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion switch. (Say it loud, I’m Asian and proud?)

If the clip above leaves you hun­gry for more, the com­plete BMW series, fea­tur­ing the testos­terone-rich work of such high octane direc­tors as John Franken­heimer, Guy Ritchie, and John Woo is avail­able on the playlist below. 

You can find The Hire added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rid­ley Scott Talks About Mak­ing Apple’s Land­mark “1984″ Com­mer­cial, Aired 30 Years Ago on Super Bowl Sun­day

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

The Coen Broth­ers Make a TV Com­mer­cial — Ridi­cul­ing “Clean Coal”

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

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