It has become some­thing of a new Irish tra­di­tion. For the fourth year run­ning, Bono, Glen Hansard  and friends took to the streets of Dublin — to  Grafton Street, to be pre­cise — to spread hol­i­day cheer and raise mon­ey for char­i­ty. Last year, the group per­formed a rous­ing ver­sion of the Mic Christo­pher song “Hey­day” and “Christ­mas (Baby Please Come Home).” This year, they added “Silent Night” and a ren­di­tion of U2’s “Desire” to the mix.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

The Won­drous Night When Glen Hansard Met Van Mor­ri­son

Bono Tells UPenn Grad­u­ates “Pick a Fight, Get in It” (2004)

It’s over 20 years ago now that Nirvana’s video for “Smells like Teen Spir­it” debuted on MTV’s 120 Min­utes and, for bet­ter or worse, inau­gu­rat­ed the grunge era. The video arrived as a shock and a thrill to a gen­er­a­tion too young to remem­ber punk and sick of the steady stream of cheesy cor­po­rate dance music and hair met­al that char­ac­ter­ized the late-80s. For every­one out­side the small Seat­tle scene that nur­tured them and the tape-trad­ing kids in the know, the band seemed to arrive out of nowhere as a total angst-rid­den pack­age, and the MTV video, by first-time direc­tor Samuel Bay­er, seemed brac­ing­ly anar­chic and raw at the time.

But a look at the first live per­for­mance of “Teen Spir­it” (above) makes it seem pret­ty tame by com­par­i­son. The video’s a lit­tle grainy and low-res, which suits the song just fine. Live, “Teen Spir­it’s” dis­turb­ing under­tones are more pro­nounced, its qui­et-loud dynam­ics more force­ful, and the ener­gy of the crowd is real, not the thrash­ing around of a bunch of teenage extras. Not a cheer­leader in sight, but I think this would have grabbed me more than the pep ral­ly-riot-themed MTV video did when it debuted a few months lat­er. Despite their anti-cor­po­rate stance, Nir­vana was a casu­al­ty of their own suc­cess, eat­en up by the machin­ery they despised. Their best moments are still the unscript­ed and unpre­dictable. For con­trast, zip back to 1991 and watch the MTV video below. Also don’t miss Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988).

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor. This video makes him feel old.

In 1977, just a short month before Bing Cros­by died, the 40s croon­er host­ed David Bowie, the glam rock­er, on his Christ­mas show. The awk­ward­ness of the meet­ing is pal­pa­ble. An old­er, crusty Cros­by had no real famil­iar­i­ty with the younger, androg­y­nous Bowie, and Bowie was­n’t crazy about singing The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. So, short­ly before the show’s tap­ing, a team of writ­ers had to fran­ti­cal­ly retool the song, blend­ing the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas song with a new­ly-writ­ten tune called Peace on Earth. After one hour of rehearsal, the two singers record­ed The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth and made an instant lit­tle chest­nut. The Wash­ing­ton Post has the back­sto­ry on the strange Bing-Bowie meet­ing. We hope you enjoy revis­it­ing this clas­sic clip with us. Hap­py hol­i­days to you all.

As a life­long John­ny Cash fan, raised on coun­try, gospel, blues and folk and all their out­law cousins, I spent my ado­les­cence lis­ten­ing to 1969’s Live from San Quentin and imag­in­ing the scene: Cash, who nev­er served hard time, singing about prison life to hard­ened men who greet­ed him as kin­dred. Lit­tle did I know, won­ders of the Inter­net to behold, that there is actu­al footage of the con­cert online. And so there it is above, and it’s great. John­ny mocks the guards, gets the­atri­cal­ly bel­liger­ent, and rocks out out­law coun­try style with “San Quentin,” voic­ing every prisoner’s griev­ances with his grav­el­ly deliv­ery. His glare is hyp­not­ic, and the song plays over footage of armed guards on the fences and inmates marched in herds.

Of course, there’s no San Quentin with­out Cash’s first prison con­cert, 1968’s At Fol­som Prison. The doc­u­men­tary below (with Swedish sub­ti­tles) opens with inter­views from coun­try stal­warts Mar­ty Stu­art and Cash’s daugh­ter Roseanne; it’s an hour-long explo­ration of the Fol­som prison con­cert and its import.

Cash loved giv­ing these con­certs, and he loved the men inside, not because he was one of them but because he knew he could have been if music hadn’t saved him. He gave anoth­er con­cert in 1977 at the Ten­nessee State Prison, but this record­ing nev­er had the impact that those first two did. Cash’s appear­ances at Fol­som and San Quentin in some ways defined his career as a writer and singer of out­law songs who cared about the men who paid the price for law and order.

Josh Jones is a writer and schol­ar cur­rent­ly com­plet­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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!

In late Jan­u­ary and ear­ly Feb­ru­ary of 1982 the Clash played eight shows in Japan. The band was embark­ing on a month-long tour of the Far East that, as fate would have it, would be the last tour with their clas­sic line­up. When it was over, drum­mer Top­per Head­on was kicked out because of his dis­rup­tive drug habit, and the band would nev­er be the same. In this video we roll back the clock to see and hear the Clash in the twi­light of their hey­day.

The con­cert was appar­ent­ly filmed on the fourth night of the tour, at the Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo on Jan­u­ary 28, 1982. Accord­ing to music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz’s book Redemp­tion Song: The Bal­lad of Joe Stum­mer, the Clash had refused to play in Japan pri­or to this tour because of the Japan­ese cus­tom for­bid­ding audi­ence mem­bers to stand up. They agreed to play after a com­pro­mise was struck: The fans could stand, but only at their seats.

The band had just fin­ished record­ing Com­bat Rock, but none of the songs from the unre­leased record are in the film. At one point, bassist Paul Simonon’s wife Pearl Har­bor (a.k.a. Pearl E. Gates) of the new wave band Pearl Har­bor and the Explo­sions joins the Clash onstage to sing “Fujiya­ma Mama.” Here’s the set list:

1. Lon­don Call­ing
2. Safe Euro­pean Home
3. (White Man) in Ham­mer­smith Palais
4. Brand New Cadil­lac
5. Char­lie Don’t Surf
6. Clam­p­down
7. This is Radio Clash
8. Armagideon Time
9. Jim­my Jazz
10. Tom­my Gun
11. Fujiya­ma Mama
12. Police On My Back
13. White Riot

The Clash’s charis­mat­ic front­man, Joe Strum­mer, died ten years ago this Sat­ur­day, on Decem­ber 22, 2002. You can read a lit­tle about him in our Aug. 21 post, “Remem­ber­ing the Clash’s Front­man Joe Strum­mer on His 60th Birth­day.” But per­haps a good way to remem­ber him would be to watch this film, a rare visu­al record of a con­cert by the group many called “the only band that mat­ters.”

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 Clash: West­way to the World

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Clash Songs at the Library

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

“It’s a rare moment when an artist takes his estab­lished, even icon­ic work and makes it still stronger,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Susan Richard­son in 1994, “but Peter Gabriel’s Secret World Live is just such a moment. Record­ed in Mod­e­na, Italy, dur­ing a Jan­u­ary 1994 per­for­mance on his Secret World tour, the album and the con­cur­rent video release bring songs thread­ed togeth­er by the images of earth and water into a cycle that explores rela­tion­ships between men and women. The result is tan­ta­mount to a reli­gious rite, merg­ing grandeur with the inti­ma­cy of feel­ing, the pub­lic with the secret.” Bold words, but then music crit­ics have always enjoyed using them, and Gabriel him­self has spent a career grow­ing known for using bold sounds. If you rec­og­nize him only as the man who sung the song waft­ing from John Cusack­’s held-aloft boom box, watch his entire Secret World Live Mod­e­na con­cert and get a sense of his true cre­ative range.

A hybrid of pop star and musi­cal mag­pie, Gabriel has gone from Gen­e­sis front­man to eight­ies hit­mak­er to world music impre­sario. Today he brings all the influ­ences col­lect­ed along the way to a peri­od of aggres­sive­ly enthu­si­as­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion with a host of play­ers from the leg­endary to the obscure. This 1994 per­for­mance finds him in mid-career, or at least what now looks like the mid­dle-ish por­tion of a very long and very pro­duc­tive run indeed. The set, as Richard­son went on to assess it, “main­tains a pow­er­ful con­ti­nu­ity that los­es nei­ther pace nor momen­tum; more than the stu­dio orig­i­nals, these ver­sions elab­o­rate on the dra­mat­ic poten­tial inher­ent in them — the heat and mag­ni­tude of rhythm, the human/animal ambi­gu­i­ty of an oth­er­world­ly cry. Secret World enters an inner realm that is know­able only through the range of emo­tion it gives rise to, join­ing ecsta­sy and agony into music that avoids being larg­er than life and instead is as large as life itself.” Does the show still mer­it that lofty descrip­tion today? Watch and per­form some music crit­i­cism of your own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and His Big Orches­tra Play Live at the Ed Sul­li­van The­ater

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.