Brian Eno’s Take on the Gaza Conflict Appears on David Byrne’s Web Site

in Current Affairs, Music | August 1st, 2014

Brian_Eno_2008

On his web site, for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne writes:

I received this email last Fri­day morn­ing from my friend, Bri­an Eno. I shared it with my office and we all felt a great respon­si­bil­i­ty to pub­lish Bri­an’s heavy, wor­thy note. In response, Bri­an’s friend, Peter Schwartz, replied with an eye-open­ing his­tor­i­cal expla­na­tion of how we got here. What’s clear is that no one has the moral high ground.

First comes Eno’s clear­ly heart­felt con­dem­na­tion of civil­ian deaths in Gaza (par­tic­u­lar­ly the death of chil­dren) and Amer­i­ca’s appar­ent indif­fer­ence to what’s hap­pen­ing there:

Today I saw a pic­ture of a weep­ing Pales­tin­ian man hold­ing a plas­tic car­ri­er bag of meat. It was his son. He’d been shred­ded (the hos­pi­tal’s word) by an Israeli mis­sile attack — appar­ent­ly using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You prob­a­bly know what those are — hun­dreds of small steel darts packed around explo­sive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Kha­laf al-Nawas­ra. He was 4 years old.

I sud­den­ly found myself think­ing that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than any­thing has for a long time.

Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they want­ed to launch a com­mis­sion into that. Amer­i­ca won’t sign up to it.

What is going on in Amer­i­ca? I know from my own expe­ri­ence how slant­ed your news is, and how lit­tle you get to hear about the oth­er side of this sto­ry. But — for Christ’s sake! — it’s not that hard to find out. Why does Amer­i­ca con­tin­ue its blind sup­port of this one-sided exer­cise in eth­nic cleans­ing? WHY?

What fol­lows is part of futur­ist Peter Schwartz’s response, which, rich in his­tor­i­cal detail, splits the blame some­where down the mid­dle. Echo­ing Byrne’s sense that the two sides have lost their moral posi­tions, Schwartz notes:

Even though I have no sup­port for the Israeli posi­tion I find the oppo­si­tion to Israel ques­tion­able in its fail­ure to be sim­i­lar­ly out­raged by a vast num­ber of oth­er moral hor­rors in the recent past and cur­rent­ly active. Just to name a few; Cam­bo­dia, Tibet, Sudan, Soma­lia, Nicaragua, Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Liberia, Cen­tral African Repub­lic, Ugan­da, North Korea, Bosnia, Koso­vo, Venezuela, Syr­ia, Egypt, Libya, Zim­bab­we and espe­cial­ly right now Nige­ria. The Arab Spring, which has become a dark win­ter for most Arabs and the large scale slaugh­ter now under­way along the bor­ders of Iraq and Syr­ia are good exam­ples of what they do to them­selves. And our nations, the US, the Brits, the Dutch, the Rus­sians and the French have all played their parts in these oth­er moral out­rages. The grue­some body count and social destruc­tion left behind dwarfs any­thing that the Israelis have done. The only dif­fer­ence with the Israeli’s is their claim to a moral high ground, which they long ago left behind in the refugee camps of Lebanon. They are now just a nation, like any oth­er, try­ing to sur­vive in a hos­tile sea of hate.

We should be clear, that giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty, the Arabs would dri­ve the Jews into the sea and that was true from day one. There was no way back from war once a reli­gious state was declared. So Israel, once com­mit­ted to a nation state in that loca­tion and grant­ed that right by oth­er nations have had no choice but to fight. In my view there­fore, nei­ther side has any shred of moral stand­ing left, nor have the nations that sup­port­ed both sides…

I don’t think there is any hon­or to go around here. Israel has lost its way and com­mits hor­rors in the inter­est of their own sur­vival. And the Arabs and Per­sians per­pet­u­ate a con­flict rid­den neigh­bor­hood with almost no excep­tions, fight­ing against each oth­er and with hate of Israel the only thing that they share.

To read the com­plete exchange, head over to Byrne’s site and read Gaza and the Loss of Civ­i­liza­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Lis­ten to “Bri­an Eno Day,” a 12-Hour Radio Show Spent With Eno & His Music (Record­ed in 1988)

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

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

in Jazz, Literature, Music, Writing | July 31st, 2014

Any seri­ous read­er of Haru­ki Muraka­mi — and even most of the casu­al ones — will have picked up on the fact that, apart from the work that has made him quite pos­si­bly the world’s most beloved liv­ing nov­el­ist, the man has two pas­sions: run­ning and jazz. In his mem­oir What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning, he tells the sto­ry of how he became a run­ner, which he sees as inex­tri­ca­bly bound up with how he became a writer. Both per­son­al trans­for­ma­tions occurred in his ear­ly thir­ties, after he sold Peter Cat, the Tokyo jazz bar he spent most of the 1970s oper­at­ing. Yet he hard­ly put the music behind him, con­tin­u­ing to main­tain a siz­able per­son­al record library, weave jazz ref­er­ences into his fic­tion, and even to write the essay col­lec­tions Por­trait in Jazz and Por­trait in Jazz 2.

Murakami Short

Image comes from Ilana Simons’ ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Muraka­mi

“I had my first encounter with jazz in 1964 when I was 15,” Muraka­mi writes in the New York Times. “Art Blakey and the Jazz Mes­sen­gers per­formed in Kobe in Jan­u­ary that year, and I got a tick­et for a birth­day present. This was the first time I real­ly lis­tened to jazz, and it bowled me over. I was thun­der­struck.” Though unskilled in music him­self, he often felt that, in his head, “some­thing like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I won­dered if it might be pos­si­ble for me to trans­fer that music into writ­ing. That was how my style got start­ed.”


He found writ­ing and jazz sim­i­lar endeav­ors, in that both need “a good, nat­ur­al, steady rhythm,” a melody, “which, in lit­er­a­ture, means the appro­pri­ate arrange­ment of the words to match the rhythm,” har­mo­ny, “the inter­nal men­tal sounds that sup­port the words,” and free impro­vi­sa­tion, where­in, “through some spe­cial chan­nel, the sto­ry comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow.”

With Peter Cat long gone, fans have nowhere to go to get into the flow of Murakami’s per­son­al  jazz selec­tions. Still, at the top of the post, you can lis­ten to a playlist of songs men­tioned in Por­trait in Jazz, fea­tur­ing Chet Bak­er, Char­lie Park­er, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, and Miles Davis. (You can find anoth­er extend­ed playlist of 56 songs here.) Should you make the trip out to Tokyo, you can also pay a vis­it to Cafe Roku­ji­gen, pro­filed in the short video just above, where Muraka­mi read­ers con­gre­gate to read their favorite author’s books while lis­ten­ing to the music that, in his words, taught him every­thing he need­ed to know to write them. And else­where on the very same sub­way line, you can also vis­it the old site of Peter Cat: just fol­low in the foot­steps tak­en by A Geek in Japan author Héc­tor Gar­cía, who set out to find it after read­ing Murakami’s rem­i­nis­cences in What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning. And what plays in the great emi­nence-out­sider of Japan­ese let­ters’ ear­buds while he runs? “I love lis­ten­ing to the Lovin’ Spoon­ful,” he writes. Hey, you can’t spin to Thelo­nious Monk all the time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Muraka­mi, Japan’s Jazz and Base­ball-Lov­ing Post­mod­ern Nov­el­ist

A 56-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Ray Charles, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

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

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

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

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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Allen Ginsberg & The Clash Perform the Punk Poem “Capitol Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

in Music, Poetry | July 31st, 2014

The Clash had been called sell­outs ever since they signed with CBS and made their 1977 debut, so the charge was pret­ty stale when cer­tain crit­ics lobbed it at their turn to dis­co-fla­vored new wave and “are­na rock” in 1982’s pop­u­lar Com­bat Rock. As All­mu­sic writes of the record, “if this album is, as it has often been claimed, the Clash’s sell­out effort, it’s a very strange way to sell out.” Com­bat Rock’s hits—“Rock the Cas­bah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go”—are catchy and anthemic, respec­tive­ly, but this hard­ly breaks new styl­is­tic ground, though the sounds are clean­er and the influ­ences more dif­fuse. But the true stand­outs for my mon­ey—“Straight to Hell” and “Ghet­to Defen­dant”—per­fect the strain of reg­gae-punk The Clash had made their career-long exper­i­ment.

The lat­ter track, a midtem­po dub take on the pathos of hero­in addic­tion and under­class angst, fea­tures a cameo spo­ken-word vocal from Allen Gins­berg, who co-wrote the song with Joe Strum­mer. Far from sim­ply lend­ing the song Beat cred—as Bur­roughs would for a string of artists, to vary­ing degrees of artis­tic success—the Gins­berg appear­ance feels pos­i­tive­ly essen­tial, such that the poet joined the band on stage dur­ing the New York leg of their tour in sup­port of the album.

But before “Ghet­to Defen­dant,” there was “Capi­tol Air,” a com­po­si­tion of Ginsberg’s own that he per­formed impromp­tu with the band in New York in 1981. As Gins­berg tells it, he joined the band back­stage dur­ing one of their 17 shows at Bonds Club in Times Square dur­ing the San­din­ista tour. Strum­mer invit­ed the poet onstage to riff on Cen­tral Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and Gins­berg instead taught the band his very own punk song, which after 5 min­utes of rehearsal, they took to the stage and played.

Just above, hear that one­time live per­for­mance of “Capi­tol Air,” one of those anti-author­i­tar­i­an rants Gins­berg turned into an art form all its own—ripping cap­i­tal­ists, com­mu­nists, bureau­crats, and the police state—as the band backs him up with a chug­ging three-chord jam. Gins­berg wrote the song, accord­ing to the Allen Gins­berg Project, in 1980, after return­ing from Yugoslavia and “real­iz­ing that police bureau­cra­cies in Amer­i­ca and in East­ern Europe were the same, mir­ror images of each oth­er final­ly,” a feel­ing cap­tured in the lines “No Hope Com­mu­nism, No Hope Cap­i­tal­ism, Yeah. Every­body is lying on both sides.” Many of these same themes worked their way into “Ghet­to Defen­dant,” writ­ten and record­ed six months lat­er.

Here you can hear the Com­bat Rock album ver­sion of “Ghet­to Defen­dant.” (The track appeared in longer form on the record’s first, unre­leased, incar­na­tion, Rat Patrol From Fort Bragg). Ginsberg’s con­tri­bu­tions to the track, which he intones as “the voice of God,” match his free-asso­cia­tive dark humor against Strummer’s nar­ra­tive con­crete­ness. Off the wall hip­ster lines like “Hooked on necrop­o­lis,” “Do the worm on the acrop­o­lis” and “Slam­dance the cos­mopo­lis” become ellip­ti­cal ref­er­ences to Arthur Rim­baud, Sal­vado­ri­an death squads, and Afghanistan before Gins­berg launch­es into the Bud­dhist heart sutra over Strummer’s final cho­rus. The effect is com­ic, hyp­not­ic, and dis­ori­ent­ing, rem­i­nis­cent of the sam­ple-based elec­tron­ic col­lages groups like Cabaret Voltaire and Throb­bing Gris­tle con­struct­ed around the same time. It’s such a per­fect sym­bio­sis that the song los­es much of its impact with­out Ginsberg’s nut­ty offer­ings, I think, though you can judge for your­self in the live, Gins­berg-less ver­sion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

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

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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?

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!

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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