Dutchman Masters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” Backwards

in Music, Random | November 22nd, 2013

This has “viral video” writ­ten all over it. The only prob­lem is that it was filmed and released back in 2003, just two years before YouTube changed our world. But who knows, maybe with your help, the video could enjoy some posthu­mous viral­ness. Or is it viral­i­ty or viralos­i­ty?

The clip above fea­tures Jeroen Offer­man, a Dutch visu­al artist who, a decade ago, spent three months learn­ing to sing Led Zep­pelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” entire­ly back­wards. He filmed him­self singing the song in reverse, while stand­ing in front of Saint Paul’s Cathe­dral in Lon­don, then flipped the direc­tion of the video (hence the pedes­tri­ans walk back­wards), all in order to show how well he mas­tered the art of singing Zep­pelin in reverse.

On his web­site he explains ******@******ls.html”>the project in greater detail, writ­ing:

“The Stair­way at St.Paul’s” is based on the hys­te­ria that sur­round­ed cer­tain music-record­ings of the 60’s and the 70’s. Some rock bands, like the Bea­t­les, Judas Priest and Led Zep­pelin were sup­posed to have put hid­den mes­sages in their records that could only be heard when played back­wards. These mes­sages though, would sub­con­scious­ly be picked up by the lis­ten­er who would then react in response to them.

In this way the band Judas Priest end­ed up in a court case because their records had ‘induced’ chil­dren to com­mit sui­cide. Also, the Bea­t­les were sup­posed to sug­gest through their records that Paul McCart­ney, one of their main band mem­bers, had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-a-like.

The most famous exam­ple though, is Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stair­way to Heav­en’, a song about a woman buy­ing her­self a way in to heav­en. The mys­tic lyrics seem to urge us to fol­low the right path in life. But, as one line in the song already says, “some­times words have two mean­ings”, and so, when played back­wards, this song is sup­posed to urge us to wor­ship evil.

It’s time to dive in to your record-col­lec­tion and find out if it was all true. But first let us watch this video. So turn up the vol­ume and remem­ber the first time you smoked a cig­a­rette…

Things get pret­ty great around the 6:07 mark.

I’m pray­ing that this isn’t all a goof.

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:

Pak­istani Immi­grant Goes to a Led Zep­pelin Con­cert, Gets Inspired to Become a Musi­cian & Then Sells 30 Mil­lion Albums

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

 

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A Young Björk Deconstructs (Physically & Theoretically) a Television in a Delightful Retro Video

in Media, Music, Television | November 21st, 2013

Björk’s first inter­na­tion­al hit, “Human Behav­iour” (1993) received scant radio play in North Amer­i­ca. Rather, the Ice­landic singer’s fame only grew as a result of MTV’s heavy rota­tion of the sur­re­al­ist music video that accom­pa­nied the song, direct­ed by Acad­e­my Award win­ner Michel Gondry. Despite the debt of celebri­ty she owed to tele­vi­sion, Björk was not always a fan.

In the undat­ed video above, Björk expounds on her Christ­mas­time TV-watch­ing habits.  Imme­di­ate­ly, the video takes an odd—or, I sup­pose, char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Björk-esque—turn when the young singer decides to take her TV apart:

But now I’m curi­ous. I’ve switched the TV off and now I want to see how it oper­ates. How it can make, put me into all those weird sit­u­a­tions. So… It’s about time.

The var­i­ous com­po­nents prove fas­ci­nat­ing, and Björk pro­ceeds to describe the television’s hard­ware in her whim­si­cal, oth­er­world­ly man­ner:

This is what it looks like. Look at this. This looks like a city. Like a lit­tle mod­el of a city. The hous­es, which are here, and streets. This is maybe an ele­va­tor to go up there. And here are all the wires. These wires, they real­ly take care of all the elec­trons when they come through there. They take care that they are pow­er­ful enough to get all the way through to here. I read that in a Dan­ish book. This morn­ing.

The most puz­zling part of the video comes when Björk men­tions that her cav­a­lier approach to tele­vi­sion is rel­a­tive­ly new. Until recent­ly, she had been guard­ed about her view­ing habits:

I remem­ber being very scared because an Ice­landic poet told me that not like in cin­e­mas, where the thing that throws the pic­ture from it just sends light on the screen, but this is dif­fer­ent. This is mil­lions and mil­lions of lit­tle screens that send light, some sort of elec­tric light, I’m not real­ly sure… Your head is very busy all the time to cal­cu­late and put it all togeth­er into one pic­ture. And then because you’re so busy doing that, you don’t watch very care­ful­ly what the pro­gram you are watch­ing is real­ly about. So you become hyp­no­tized.

Thanks to the wis­dom con­tained with­in an unnamed Dan­ish book, how­ev­er, Björk has grown more at ease with the poten­tial of television’s being used for mind con­trol and hyp­no­sis. At the end of the clip, she offers a final pearl of wis­dom:

You should­n’t let poets lie to you.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

Ice­land in the Mid­night Sun

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

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Watch Leonardo da Vinci’s Musical Invention, the Viola Organista, Being Played for the Very First Time

in History, Music | November 20th, 2013

Just yes­ter­day, we made ref­er­ence to Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s con­tri­bu­tion to ear­ly con­cepts of mechan­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion. But if that sub­set of his achieve­ments does­n’t inter­est you, may we sug­gest you look into his oth­er work in paint­ing, sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture, math­e­mat­ics, engi­neer­ing, anato­my, geol­o­gy, car­tog­ra­phy, botany, and let­ters? Then again, you might find this a par­tic­u­lar­ly oppor­tune time to learn more about Leonar­do da Vin­ci the musi­cian. As the arche­typ­al exam­ple of the poly­math­ic, intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous “Renais­sance man,” he not only attained mas­tery of a wide range of dis­ci­plines, but did his most impres­sive work in the spaces between them. Giv­en the volu­mi­nous­ness of his out­put (not to men­tion the tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions of fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe), many of his mul­ti­ple domain-span­ning ideas and inven­tions nev­er became a real­i­ty dur­ing his life­time. How­ev­er, just this year, 494 years after Leonar­do’s death, we now have the chance to see, and more impor­tant­ly hear, one of them: the vio­la organ­ista, an elab­o­rate musi­cal instru­ment that had pre­vi­ous­ly only exist­ed in his note­books.

We owe this thrill not just to Leonar­do him­self, who left behind detailed plans for the (to him, pure­ly the­o­ret­i­cal) con­struc­tion of such devices as this behind, but to a report­ed 5000 hours of phys­i­cal effort by Pol­ish con­cert pianist Sla­womir Zubrzy­c­ki, who actu­al­ly put the thing togeth­er. You can read more at the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald, whose arti­cle (on “Leonar­do Da Vin­ci’s wacky piano”) quotes Zubrzy­c­ki: “This instru­ment has the char­ac­ter­is­tics of three we know: the harp­si­chord, the organ and the vio­la da gam­ba,” and play­ing it, which involves hit­ting keys con­nect­ed to “spin­ning wheels wrapped in horse-tail hair,” and turn­ing those wheels by pump­ing a ped­al below the key­board, pro­duces excit­ing unusu­al waves of cel­lo-like sounds. You can watch ten min­utes of Zubrzy­c­ki debut­ing the instru­ment at Krakow’s Acad­e­my of Music above. Depend­ing upon your incli­na­tion toward music, very old tech­nol­o­gy, or very old music tech­nol­o­gy, you may also want to glance at the relat­ed Metafil­ter debate about what place the vio­la organ­ista could have in music today.

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:

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry Of Avi­a­tion: From da Vinci’s Sketch­es to Apol­lo 11

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

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

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Thelonious Monk Bombs in Paris in 1954, Then Makes a Triumphant Return in 1969

in Music | November 20th, 2013

Thelo­nious Monk’s pop­u­lar image as the hippest of the hip in mid-cen­tu­ry bebop is well-deserved, but his career tra­jec­to­ry was not with­out its lame notes, includ­ing the loss of his cabaret license for sev­er­al years after a 1951 drug bust in New York with Bud Pow­ell. The inci­dent forced him to leave the haven of the Minton’s Play­house after-hours jam ses­sion scene and strike out for new venues and new out­lets, such as record­ing the sem­i­nal two-vol­ume Genius of Mod­ern Music in 1952, which fea­tured some of the ear­li­est, most bois­ter­ous ver­sions of Monk com­po­si­tions like soon-to-be stan­dard “Well, You Needn’t.” In 1954, Monk arrived in Paris where he per­formed at the Salle Pleyel to an audi­ence that most­ly didn’t know him. Patrick Jaren­wat­tananon at NPR describes the night:

[H]e had almost no pub­lic pro­file in France apart from the most hard­core of mod­ern jazz fans; he was ner­vous and prob­a­bly drunk; and he fol­lowed an enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar Dix­ieland band on stage. Crit­ics in atten­dance panned him, con­fused by his unique dis­so­nances and agi­tat­ed stage behav­ior. The gig was, as biog­ra­ph­er Robin Kel­ley described it, a dis­as­ter.

To make mat­ters worse, Jaren­wat­tananon writes, Monk—used to rhythm play­ers like Art Blakey and Al McKibbon—was appar­ent­ly “assigned a local rhythm sec­tion which was prob­a­bly unfa­mil­iar with his music.” You can hear Monk above from a record­ing he made dur­ing that trip, with­out said rhythm sec­tion, play­ing “Round About Mid­night” in his expres­sive­ly per­cus­sive piano style. Monk’s style, famous­ly described by Philip Larkin as a “faux-naif ele­phant dance,” was rapid­ly devel­op­ing as he came into his own as a band­leader and com­pos­er.  But although per­haps a per­son­al mile­stone (Monk met life­long friend, patron, and devo­tee Pan­non­i­ca de Koenigswarter that night), the Paris gig of 1954 was a bust that haunt­ed the inno­v­a­tive pianist.

And so it was that fif­teen years lat­er, Monk returned to the Salle Pleyel with his own quar­tet. This time, Jaren­wat­tananon tells us, he arrived as an “inter­na­tion­al star.” The con­cert was tele­vised, and, on Novem­ber 26th, it will be released as an audio record­ing and DVD sim­ply called Paris 1969 (see Monk’s quar­tet play “I Mean You” in an excerpt above). For a short time, you can pre­view and pre-order indi­vid­ual tracks from the record­ing or lis­ten to the whole con­cert straight through at NPR’s site. It’s a mel­low­er Monk than his mid-fifties incar­na­tion, with­out a doubt, not the “tap-danc­ing, elbows-on-the-piano Monk of yore,” writes Jaren­wat­tananon: “But it’s Monk doing Monk, swing­ing intense­ly through severe rhyth­mic crevass­es” and gen­er­al­ly exud­ing the con­fi­dence and panache of his hero Duke Elling­ton.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

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

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Bob Dylan Finally Makes a Video for His 1965 Hit, “Like a Rolling Stone”

in Music | November 20th, 2013

Ear­li­er today, we told you all about Bob Dylan’s con­tro­ver­sial Vic­to­ri­a’s Secret com­mer­cial shot in 2004 — the first com­mer­cial in which the musi­cian ever appeared on screen. Tonight, we leave you with this — Dylan’s new­ly-released video for his 1965 hit “Like a Rolling Stone.” As you’ll see, it’s not just a video. It’s an inter­ac­tive video that lets “view­ers flip through 16 tele­vi­sion chan­nels as a vari­ety of tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties lip-sync the lyrics.” You can check it out above, or watch it in a larg­er for­mat here. The new video coin­cides with the release of Bob Dylan: The Com­plete Album Col­lec­tion Vol. 1, a CD box set that con­tains “35 stu­dio titles, 6 live albums, 2‑CD ‘Side Tracks,’ and a hard­cov­er book fea­tur­ing new album-by-album lin­er notes.” The log­i­cal ques­tion is what’s left for Vol. 2?

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

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Bob Dylan’s Controversial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appearance in a Commercial

in Music, Television | November 19th, 2013

Bob Dylan’s been piss­ing off his fans since he went elec­tric at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1965, leav­ing scores of bit­ter folkies with feel­ings of betray­al. But he’s also tak­en many a prin­ci­pled stand, walk­ing off The Ed Sul­li­van Show ear­ly in his career in 1963, for exam­ple, when he learned that CBS want­ed to cen­sor his “Talkin’ John Birch Para­noid Blues” for being poten­tial­ly libelous to the far-right group. Then there are those episodes that have sim­ply baf­fled his admir­ers, like his release of the almost uni­ver­sal­ly panned Self Por­trait and his con­ver­sion to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty. What­ev­er pos­sessed him to appear in the 2004 Victoria’s Secret ad above, how­ev­er, is anyone’s guess. While it may not have the same geopo­lit­i­cal juice as his con­tro­ver­sial appear­ance in Chi­na in 2011, aside from the gen­er­al weird­ness of once coun­ter­cul­tur­al fig­ures sell­ing prod­ucts, it’s a move that espe­cial­ly trou­bled fans of Dylan, to say the least.

There were, of course, cries of “sell out.” Then there’s the trou­bling sta­tus of Victoria’s Secret, a com­pa­ny that has accu­mu­lat­ed no small share of con­tro­ver­sy since the ad aired, and which at the time was not espe­cial­ly known as a social­ly respon­si­ble enti­ty.

Though Dylan had already licensed the song “Love Sick” from 1997’s Time Out of Mind to the com­pa­ny (and in 2000 licensed “For­ev­er Young” to Apple), this is the first and only time he’s appeared on screen in a com­mer­cial, with the excep­tion of a 2010 Google ad that recy­cled clips from the ’65 “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues” film.

While ad agen­cies may have replaced A&R for hun­gry young indie bands, the phe­nom­e­non of wealthy, aging rock stars shilling for major cor­po­ra­tions seems to defy rea­son. Most peo­ple assume it’s always a cash grab. Dylan him­self joked in 1965 that the only thing he’d sell out for would be “ladies under­gar­ments.” In a per­haps unfor­tu­nate­ly titled arti­cle for Slate, Seth Steven­son sug­gest­ed that Dylan and those of his gen­er­a­tion took the cor­po­rate bait in attempts to remain rel­e­vant and “remind the world that they still exist.” In the case of the Victoria’s Secret ad (see a “behind the scenes” video here), this is a lit­tle hard to swal­low. Not even the bale­ful­ly timed release of his Love and Theft in Sep­tem­ber of 2001 could over­shad­ow the enor­mous suc­cess of that album, which, All­mu­sic writes, “stands proud­ly among his very best.” 2006’s plat­inum-sell­ing Mod­ern Times was not far behind. Unlike his online response to the Chi­na con­tro­ver­sy, Dylan him­self revealed noth­ing of his inten­tions, leav­ing fans with the unset­tling image of one of the 20th century’s most icon­o­clas­tic artists (and one nev­er espe­cial­ly known for his sex appeal) hawk­ing lin­gerie on nation­al tele­vi­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Appears in the “Director’s Cut” of a New Louis Vuit­ton Ad, Nods to Labyrinth

Ker­ouac Wore Khakis: Ghost of the Beat Writer Stars in 1993 Gap Adver­tis­ing Cam­paign

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

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

 

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Slavoj Žižek & Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova Exchange An Extraordinary Series of Letters

in Current Affairs, Music, Philosophy, Politics | November 19th, 2013

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot writing to Slavoj Žižek

Miss­ing for almost a month, impris­oned Pussy Riot mem­ber Nadezh­da Tolokon­niko­va has been report­ed by her hus­band as recov­er­ing in a Siber­ian hos­pi­tal from issues relat­ed to her hunger strike. As The Guardian reports, Tolokon­niko­va didn’t only resist by refus­ing to eat, she also kept up a live­ly cor­re­spon­dence with Sloven­ian the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek while endur­ing report­ed abuse at the penal colony in Mor­dovia where she had been sen­tenced. It seems from the edit­ed cor­re­spon­dence pub­lished by The Guardian that Žižek began the con­ver­sa­tion in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. “All hearts were beat­ing for you” he writes, until “it became clear that you reject­ed glob­al cap­i­tal­ism.” In a lat­er, April 16 reply, Tolokon­niko­va explains exact­ly what Pussy Riot rejects:

As a child I want­ed to go into adver­tis­ing. I had a love affair with the adver­tis­ing indus­try. And this is why I am in a posi­tion to judge its mer­its. The anti-hier­ar­chi­cal struc­tures and rhi­zomes of late cap­i­tal­ism are its suc­cess­ful ad cam­paign. Mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism has to man­i­fest itself as flex­i­ble and even eccen­tric. Every­thing is geared towards grip­ping the emo­tion of the con­sumer. Mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism seeks to assure us that it oper­ates accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of free cre­ativ­i­ty, end­less devel­op­ment and diver­si­ty. It gloss­es over its oth­er side in order to hide the real­i­ty that mil­lions of peo­ple are enslaved by an all-pow­er­ful and fan­tas­ti­cal­ly sta­ble norm of pro­duc­tion. We want to reveal this lie.

Read the full pub­lished exchange at The Guardian’s site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Russ­ian Punk Band, Sen­tenced to Two Years in Prison for Derid­ing Putin, Releas­es New Sin­gle

Slavoj Žižek Demys­ti­fies the Gang­nam Style Phe­nom­e­non

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

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Listen to a New Album Featuring Tom Waits Songs in Hebrew (2013)

in Music | November 15th, 2013

גירסת-בני-1Tom Waits is a rare breed of per­former, hav­ing attained vast com­mer­cial suc­cess with­out hav­ing had to pan­der to a mass audi­ence. His gruff voice—the vocal equiv­a­lent of too many late nights, strong scotch, and a pack-an-hour habit—has become the hall­mark of a sort of grimy, out­sider cool favored by Jim Jar­musch and John Lurie. His career, which has spanned four decades and includes the­atre, film, and the icon­ic inter­view that inspired the char­ac­ter of The Jok­er in The Dark Knight, is the envy of most musi­cians. It was only fit­ting, con­sid­er­ing his prodi­gious out­put, that Waits would become the sub­ject of a cov­er album. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it comes with a twist—it’s in Hebrew.

Heeb Mag­a­zine recent­ly post­ed a link to “Shir­im Meshu­mashim” (“Used Songs”), pro­duc­er Guy Hajjaj’s four-year project where Israeli musi­cians recre­ate Tom Waits’ back cat­a­log. The 22-song album draws wide­ly from Waits’ career, includ­ing songs from clas­sic albums such as Rain­dogs (1985) as well as the more recent Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bas­tards (2006) and Glit­ter and Doom Live (2009). While more zeal­ous fans will undoubt­ed­ly claim that Waits’ orig­i­nal deliv­ery can nev­er be matched, those with an open mind will like­ly find a num­ber of gems. Some of our favorites include “Clap Hands,” ide­al­ly suit­ed to Hebrew’s harsh, grav­el­ly sounds, and the lighter, yet unmis­tak­ably Waits-writ­ten, “Dirt in The Ground.”

You can stream the album above, or buy the album (down­load­able on a pay-what-you-wish basis) here.

Via Heeb Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

The Black Rid­er: A The­atri­cal Pro­duc­tion by Tom Waits, William S. Bur­roughs & Robert Wil­son (1990)

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

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