Hunter S. Thompson Interviews Keith Richards, and Very Little Makes Sense (1993)

in Music | November 1st, 2012

Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1993. Gonzo jour­nal­ist Hunter S. Thomp­son final­ly gets to inter­view Rolling Stones gui­tarist Kei­th Richards. The con­ver­sa­tion is utter­ly and pre­dictably incom­pre­hen­si­ble. But it’s amus­ing nonethe­less.

Deci­pher­able con­ver­sa­tion top­ics include: if J. Edgar Hoover returned to this world, what form might he take? (A worm? a fart? a weasel?) What was Kei­th doing on Christ­mas Eve in 1962, 1966, and 1969? And what exact­ly went down at the infa­mous Alta­mont con­cert in Decem­ber 1969?

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:

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Calls Tech Sup­port, Unleash­es a Tirade Full of Fear and Loathing (NSFW)

Kei­th Richards Inter­viewed at The New York Pub­lic Library

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

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The Known Universe: The Hayden Planetarium’s Tour of the Cosmos Gets a Hans Zimmer Soundtrack

in Astronomy, Music, Video - Science | October 30th, 2012

The Ger­man com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer has made a name for him­self (and earned a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame) by cre­at­ing orig­i­nal scores for films. You’ve heard his music, even if you haven’t heard of him. The Lion King, The Dark Knight and Incep­tion are a few of the films he scored.

If you’ve seen Incep­tion then the music behind this video will sound famil­iar. Zim­mer’s music plays behind a small video with vast sub­ject mat­ter: The Known Uni­verse, a six minute tour of, that’s right, the entire known uni­verse. Put togeth­er in 2009 by the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in NYC, the video orig­i­nal­ly had a more New Agey, orches­tral score. Zimmer’s track is beau­ti­ful and thank­ful­ly some­body decid­ed to lay it down behind the Plan­e­tar­i­um’s video. The results are amaz­ing, a slick­er ver­sion of Charles and Ray Eames’ famous film Pow­ers of Ten, but with a more dis­tant start­ing and end­ing point.

Where Pow­ers of Ten start­ed its tour out at a bird’s eye lev­el above Earth, The Known Uni­verse begins above the planet’s high­est point, above the Himalayan Moun­tains, and quick­ly pans out to show the Moon’s orbit, the orbits of the oth­er plan­ets in our solar sys­tem, and beyond.

Real­ly beyond—all the way into the after­glow of the Big Bang. And even though it’s a sim­u­la­tion, it’s an accu­rate one.

The Known Uni­verse was made using the Dig­i­tal Uni­verse Atlas, a four-dimen­sion­al map of the uni­verse main­tained and updat­ed by astro­physi­cists at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry.

Slip into your head­phones and enjoy Zimmer’s music. The piece is called “Time (We Plants are Hap­py Plants Remix)” and it’s a tune­ful, upbeat sound­track that’s out of our galaxy.

Are you watch­ing, Carl Sagan?

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at .

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Kermit the Frog Learns to Love Jazz Through “Visual Thinking” (1959)

in Music, Television | October 30th, 2012

Jim Hen­son launched his first tele­vised pup­pet pro­gram, Sam and Friends, when he was a fresh­man at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land. The show ran for six years on NBC affil­i­ate WRC-TV in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Sam and Friends, Hen­son devel­oped the design of his flex­i­ble, foam-rub­ber pup­pets, which moved much more nat­u­ral­ly than wood­en mar­i­onettes. And they became the pro­to­types of the beloved Mup­pets that would make him famous. In the short film above from Sam and Friends, “Visu­al Think­ing,” an ear­ly ver­sion of Ker­mit the Frog has an exchange with a ston­er char­ac­ter called Har­ry the Hip­ster, who intro­duces him to an advanced form of visu­al think­ing that moves from sin­gle notes, to chords, to clas­si­cal pas­sages to jazz.

The sketch rep­re­sents a unique com­bi­na­tion of pup­petry and ani­ma­tion that would come to char­ac­ter­ize some of Henson’s most rec­og­niz­able work, such as Sesame Street. Although it’s in black and white and obvi­ous­ly not pro­duced for chil­dren, it’s very much in the style of the lat­er Hen­son, who main­tained a kind of beat sen­si­bil­i­ty through­out his career, whether work­ing in fan­ta­sy with The Dark Crys­tal or mad­cap pup­pet ensem­bles like The Mup­pet Movie. In the above sketch, Ker­mit and Har­ry work out the intri­ca­cies of jazz phras­ing by visu­al­iz­ing the notes in white squig­gles on the screen, which Har­ry eras­es by scat­ting them back­wards. Even­tu­al­ly, they’re over­whelmed and erased by jazz, in a kind of trib­ute to the form’s com­plex inde­ter­mi­na­cy. The sketch is one of the few ear­ly films to fea­ture Ker­mit, since the character’s rights are owned by Dis­ney. Pro­duced in 1959, the sketch was remade for The Ed Sul­li­van Show in 1966 and again for The Dick Cavett Show in 1971.

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:

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Pup­pet Mak­ing with Jim Hen­son: A Primer

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Rolling Stones Sing the Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week” in a Hotel Room (1965)

in Film, Music | October 29th, 2012

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.

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Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gadget That Will Save Music

in Music, Technology | October 26th, 2012

In the open­ing min­utes of his new mem­oir Wag­ing Heavy Peace (I lis­tened to the audio book, and you can too for free), Neil Young talks about his mod­el trains, his exten­sive col­lec­tion of vin­tage cars, and not much about music per se — although he does high­light his entre­pre­neur­ial effort to save the music indus­try with a new-fan­gled audio sys­tem called Pure­Tone. 

For quite some time now, Young has lament­ed the decline of music dur­ing the dig­i­tal age. It’s not pirat­ing that’s the cul­prit. It’s the MP3, a for­mat that degrades the qual­i­ty of the music we hear. Speak­ing at a Wall Street Jour­nal con­fer­ence ear­li­er this year (watch here), Young com­plained that the MP3 can’t “trans­fer the depth of the art.” “My goal,” he con­tin­ued, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

Enter Pure­Tone, which has actu­al­ly been renamed Pono more recent­ly. The device/music ser­vice will hit the mar­ket next year, and it essen­tial­ly promis­es to let fans hear record­ings in super high fideli­ty, as if they owned the orig­i­nal mas­ter tapes cre­at­ed by var­i­ous artists. Not long ago, Flea, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, raved about the sound of Pono, telling Rolling Stone: “It’s not like some vague thing that you need dogs’ ears to hear. It’s a dras­tic dif­fer­ence.”

If that’s right, Young may do a great ser­vice for musi­cians every­where, and make a lot of mon­ey for him­self and oth­ers along the way. I mean imag­ine the num­ber of remas­ters that could hit the mar­ket in the com­ings years, start­ing with two by Bob Dylan — The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan and High­way 61 Revis­it­ed. A per­fect place to begin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

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Remembering Janis Joplin: Some Classic Live Performances and Previews of a New Joplin Musical

in Music | October 24th, 2012

Janis Joplin died forty-two years ago this month at age 27 of the same excess­es that killed many of her peers and at the absolute height of her career. But in the mid-nine­teen fifties, Joplin was a mis­fit kid with ter­ri­ble acne liv­ing a lone­ly exis­tence in Port Arthur, Texas. Then she dis­cov­ered the blues, and it trans­formed her. Bessie Smith and Lead­bel­ly, Odet­ta and Aretha Franklin. By 1964, she was liv­ing in San Fran­cis­co and record­ing blues stan­dards with future Jef­fer­son Air­plane gui­tarist Jor­ma Kauko­nen. She rose to promi­nence and found her­self a place to fit in with psy­che­del­ic pio­neers Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny. Big Broth­er didn’t ini­tial­ly take to Joplin’s soul­ful rasp, but she even­tu­al­ly won them over, and won mil­lions of fans over to the band, par­tic­u­lar­ly with their sec­ond album Cheap Thrills, which spawned the sin­gle “Piece of My Heart,” and my favorite, her ren­di­tion of blues clas­sic “Ball and Chain.” Her per­for­mance of the lat­ter at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in 1967 is leg­endary, and the record­ing of it above is pris­tine, with excel­lent live sound qual­i­ty and close-up cam­era angles of Joplin and the rest of the band.

Joplin broke away from Big Broth­er short­ly after Cheap Thrills and formed a solo act, tour­ing and record­ing with The Kozmic Blues Band, with whom she record­ed just one album, I Got Dem ‘Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama!. Crit­ics didn’t love it, but this tran­si­tion­al phase was impor­tant for Janis since it enabled her to work in a more blue-based sound bet­ter suit­ed to her dra­mat­ic per­sona. Kozmic draws on the clas­sic Stax/Volt records tem­plate, with horns and back­ing vocals as promi­nent accom­pa­ni­ment.  The record’s strongest moments are prob­a­bly the Bee Gees-penned “To Love Some­body” and the funk-soul “Try (Just a Lit­tle Bit Hard­er)” (above in Frank­furt, Ger­many).

In the last year of her life, Joplin head­lined the all-star Fes­ti­val Express train tour through Cana­da, with Bud­dy Guy, The Band, The Grate­ful Dead, and oth­ers. The tour was doc­u­ment­ed by Acad­e­my Award win­ning cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Peter Biziou and the footage has been acquired by His­toric Films Archive, who are dig­i­tiz­ing almost 96 hours of film from the tour, includ­ing, they claim, the only known live footage of Joplin singing “Me and My Bob­by McGee.” Below is a full, ener­getic, per­for­mance of “Tell Mama” from the Fes­ti­val Express tour:

Joplin con­tin­ued, through most of that year, to ele­vate her art, record­ing the best-sell­ing, posthu­mous­ly-released Pearl with new back­ing band Full Tilt Boo­gie. This is the Joplin most casu­al fans know—of “Me and My Bob­by McGee” and “Mer­cedes Benz,” and for good rea­son. One of her final pub­lic appear­ances was on The Dick Cavett Show in June of 1970 (below), where she per­forms sev­er­al live num­bers with Full Tilt Boo­gie. In Cavett’s inter­view with her, Joplin returns to her painful teenage years, say­ing that her high school class­mates “laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state.”


While the final peri­od of Joplin’s life saw her pro­duce some incred­i­ble work, her name occa­sion­al­ly becomes a short­hand for rock and roll excess­es that obscure her amaz­ing, if all-too-brief, career. In an effort to cel­e­brate her life, rather than dwell on her death, the pro­duc­ers of the new show One Night With Janis Joplin (cur­rent­ly at the Are­na Stage in Wash­ing­ton, DC) elide the drug abuse that killed her and focus on the music. Joplin’s broth­er Michael talks about their musi­cal upbring­ing in the video below, which also includes clips from the loose­ly-plot­ted musi­cal, with Mary Brid­get Davies as the star.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appearances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

in Music, Television | October 23rd, 2012

I imag­ine there are some pret­ty bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries out there about the fact that John Lennon pre­miered his film for the song “Imag­ine” on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 1971. You won’t find any of them here, but it is an odd coin­ci­dence. Lennon and his oft-maligned wife Yoko Ono made their first appear­ance on The Dick Cavett show on that day (above) to debut their new work. They ban­ter about their hair­cuts (they donat­ed their long hair to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s—it wasn’t). They dis­cuss Lennon’s chang­ing music career. There’s some strange fun with peo­ple in head-to-toe burqua-like bags. Most­ly they plug: screen­ing some of their films and debut­ing a song from Yoko’s weird (I’d argue weird­ly-bril­liant) dou­ble album Fly.

Cavett looks ner­vous, but most­ly holds his own against Lennon’s quick-wit­ted music hall chat­ter, always unpre­dictably dis­arm­ing. Lennon is the star here, of course; he had just turned thir­ty and only days ear­li­er released the Imag­ine album in the U.S., which would go to num­ber one world­wide. Nev­er­the­less, he does his lev­el best to make this a joint inter­view and to pro­mote his wife’s work as much, if not more, than his own. I imag­ine there’s no short­age of peo­ple who hat­ed this, and still do, but I think it’s gal­lant and sin­cere. But maybe I’m easy on them. Because I can fast for­ward. View­ers of the orig­i­nal broad­cast had to wait till near­ly the end to see the “Imag­ine” film. With the mag­ic of dig­i­tal, all you have to do is skip ahead to 58:05. It’s worth the effort.

John and Yoko returned to Cavett’s show in 1972.  Lennon seems a bit jumpy here—nervous per­haps since both he and Yoko per­form live in this appear­ance; John does his less-than-stel­lar anthem “Woman is the Nig­ger of the World” and elo­quent­ly defends the inflam­ma­to­ry title line; Yoko sings her, well, weird “We are Water,” both with the back­ing band Elephant’s Mem­o­ry.

There’s a humor­ous ref­er­ence to George Harrison’s appear­ance on the show the pre­vi­ous year, but things take a slight­ly more seri­ous turn here than their pre­vi­ous inter­view. The show aired in May, just a few months before the his­toric 1972 elec­tion in which incum­bent Nixon round­ly trounced the recent­ly depart­ed George McGov­ern. Lennon and Ono dis­cuss their pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion that year due to Nixon’s dis­plea­sure at their anti-war activ­i­ties. This nev­er came to pass, but it was a tense time for Lennon since he had made New York his base of oper­a­tions for the past year. I imag­ine someone’s writ­ten an alter­nate his­to­ry in which Lennon was deport­ed, said the hell with it, and nev­er returned to New York. No telling what he’d be up to now, but as these inter­views make clear, he wouldn’t be sell­ing nos­tal­gia or mount­ing Bea­t­les reunion tours.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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Watch Herbie Hancock Demo a Fairlight CMI Synthesizer on Sesame Street (1983)

in Music | October 22nd, 2012

Rea­son num­ber 1,834,334 to love the inter­net: a clip from a 1983 episode of Sesame Street star­ring Her­bie Han­cock demon­strat­ing the Fairlight CMI syn­the­siz­er to a group of kids, includ­ing a very young Tatyana Ali (who grew up to play Ash­ley Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). The Fairlight CMI (Com­put­er Music Instru­ment) was a syn­the­siz­er and sam­pler with 28 megabytes or more of mem­o­ry, used by a ros­ter of clas­sic elec­tron­ic artists like Jean-Michel Jarre, Jan Ham­mer, Art of Noise, and Depeche Mode, to name only a few.

And, of course, by Her­bie Han­cock, one of the first jazz pianists to embrace elec­tron­ic key­boards (and who’s also been known to rock a key­tar). The Fairlight, pro­duced in sev­er­al ver­sions between 1979 and 1985 by an Aus­tralian (!) com­pa­ny, was state-of-the-art for its time. In this clip, its oper­a­tion appears to be a two man job, since Han­cock is backed by an engi­neer, Clive.

In anoth­er demon­stra­tion of the Fairlight’s capa­bil­i­ties (below), however–from hard-to-find doc­u­men­tary I Love Quin­cy–Her­bie works alone. Well, almost. He’s joined by Quin­cy Jones, just kind of hang­ing out while Han­cock does his thing. Jones says the sounds Han­cock makes on the syn­the­siz­er are like “sculpt­ing… tak­ing a pure elec­tric sig­nal and sculpt­ing it into some­thing of beau­ty.” Worth not­ing in the video: this ver­sion of the Fairlight incor­po­rat­ed a touch­screen mon­i­tor, with a sty­lus to allow the engi­neer to high­light and select oper­a­tions. Watch Her­bie demon­strate the Fairlight’s capa­bil­i­ties as a syn­the­siz­er, sam­pler, and sequencer. As fas­ci­nat­ing as music nerds will find this, those fans out there who aren’t gear­heads should still appre­ci­ate these ear­ly clips of Han­cock, whether hors­ing around with the Sesame Street kids or geek­ing out in the stu­dio with Quin­cy Jones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Is Now Teach­ing His First Online Course on Jazz

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Her­bie Han­cock: All That’s Jazz. A Doc­u­men­tary

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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