Folk­streams is not just a Wun­derkam­mer of Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tions cap­tured on film. It’s also an online repos­i­to­ry for folk films them­selves, whose weird lengths and non-main­stream obses­sions lim­it­ed their chances of wide­spread dis­tri­b­u­tion, while ensur­ing that the major­i­ty of their mak­ers would toil in obliv­ion.

The archive is exceed­ing­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic. Browse by region or gen­er­al sub­jects such as reli­gion, rur­al life, and custom/dress. House­hold names such as B.B. King and Grand­ma Moses exist along­side snake han­dlers (Gretchen Robin­son and Stan Wood­ward’s Peo­ple Who Take Up Ser­pents) and dis­abled tat­too artist Stoney St. Clair, the sub­ject of Alan Gove­nar’s irre­sistible 1981 Stoney Knows How. Admir­ers of the form will be glad to know that the archive is also search­able by film­mak­er and dis­trib­u­tor.

Any one of these short films could pro­vide a folk rem­e­dy anti­dote to a case of acute dig­i­tal over­load. I’d also sug­gest suc­cumb­ing to the archivist’s Net­flix-style, view­ing-his­to­ry-based rec­om­men­da­tions (“If you liked Paint­ed Bride you may also like Mos­qui­toes and High Water.” Think of it as it is a do-it-your­self doc fest on autopi­lot, the sort of once-in-a-blue-moon pro­gram­ming you’d be lucky to catch, per­pet­u­al­ly play­ing on demand.

The clip above comes from the film Give My Poor Heart Ease: Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta Blues­men. Enter the Folk­streams films archive here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is doing her bit to keep zines alive with­in the realm of Amer­i­can folk cul­ture.

Today we set the Way­back Machine to Ire­land, 1965, where we find a young Mick Jag­ger and a shock­ing­ly restored Kei­th Richards staving off the down­time bore­dom of a two-day tour with a not-entire­ly-rev­er­en­tial Bea­t­les sin­ga­long. Despite the drab­ness of the room in which doc­u­men­tar­i­an Peter White­head caught the lads clown­ing, it’s clear that Jag­ger was feel­ing his oats. Go ahead and read those famous lips when he wraps them around the cho­rus of Eight Days a Week.

This price­less pri­vate moment is culled from the just released, not-entire­ly-fin­ished doc­u­men­tary, The Rolling Stones: Char­lie Is My Dar­ling — Ire­land 1965. For­mer Stones’ pro­duc­er Andrew Loog Old­ham recent­ly chalked the near-50-year delay to the mas­sive explo­sion of the band’s pop­u­lar­i­ty. Padding things out to a prop­er fea­ture length would have required addi­tion­al film­ing. (I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion had shot to the top of the Amer­i­can charts just two months ear­li­er,  from which point on, the lads’ dance card was filled.

Lucky thing, that. What might in its day have amount­ed to a fun peek behind the scenes feels far more com­pelling as a just-cracked time cap­sule. The sad spec­ta­cle of Bri­an Jones mus­ing about his future options is off­set by the youth­ful lark­ing about of rock­’s most cel­e­brat­ed senior cit­i­zens.

See the trail­er for The Rolling Stones: Char­lie Is My Dar­ling — Ire­land 1965 right below.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day briefly men­tioned Mick Jag­ger’s lips vis-à-vis Lau­ren Bacall in her mem­oir, Dirty Sug­ar Cook­ies: Culi­nary Obser­va­tions, Ques­tion­able Taste.