Sonny Rollins Plays Jazz on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1977 Pioneer Electronics Ad

in Music | June 29th, 2012

In this 1977 tele­vi­sion ad for Pio­neer Elec­tron­ics, jazz sax­o­phone great Son­ny Rollins wails into the New York City night air while stand­ing on the Brook­lyn Bridge. A voice-over announc­er tells view­ers of Rollins’ 1959–61 hia­tus from the jazz scene, when he took his sound to the streets to redis­cov­er him­self musi­cal­ly. It’s most­ly a true sto­ry. Only trou­ble is, Rollins actu­al­ly retired to the Williams­burg Bridge—admit­ted­ly not quite as pic­turesque! Here’s the sto­ry as Rollins tells it:

In the 50s and 60s, Lucille and I had a small apart­ment on Grand Street on the Low­er East Side of New York. It was a nice time. I had a lot of friends there and I was wel­comed by the neigh­bor­hood peo­ple. Like most of New York, the Low­er East Side has under­gone gen­tri­fi­ca­tion but back then, it was a much more eth­nic place.

I start­ed prac­tic­ing in the house because I had to prac­tice, but I felt guilty because I’m a sen­si­tive per­son and I know that peo­ple need qui­et in their apart­ments.

I was walk­ing on Delancey Street one day, not far from where I lived on Grand Street and I just hap­pened to look up and see these steps that I decid­ed to check out. And there, of course, was the bridge, the Williams­burg Bridge. It was this nice big expanse going over the East Riv­er. There was nobody up there. So I start­ed walk­ing across the bridge and said, “Wow. This is what I have been look­ing for. This is a pri­vate place. I can blow my horn as loud as I want.” Because the boats are com­ing under, and the sub­way is com­ing across, and cars, and I knew it was per­fect, just serendip­i­ty. Then, I began get­ting my horn and going up there reg­u­lar­ly. I would be up there 15 or 16 hours at a time spring, sum­mer, fall and win­ter.

Rollins’ per­fec­tion­ism paid off. He returned to the music busi­ness with his bril­liant 1962 album The Bridge, a chron­i­cle of where he’d been those four years, some­times in freez­ing cold tem­per­a­tures, alone or with friends. British doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Dick Fontaine cap­tured Rollins dis­cussing his bridge sab­bat­i­cal and has released a 2012 film about Rollins called Beyond the Notes, which fea­tures live per­for­mances of the jazz great in his 80s, and has been show­ing in the UK since last spring. Rollins recent­ly took home three tro­phies from the annu­al Jazz Awards in New York, includ­ing a best-record award for his lat­est album of live record­ings, Road Shows, Vol. 2.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent 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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Discovered: Conversation with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Timothy Leary at Montreal Bed-In (1969)

in History, Music, Politics, Psychology | June 28th, 2012

On May 26, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko One began their sec­ond “Bed-In,” a form of anti-Viet­nam War protest that com­bined the media impact of a press con­fer­ence with the com­fort of hotel sheets. Their first Bed-In, which hap­pened in var­i­ous rooms of the Ams­ter­dam Hilton in late March of that year, saw them grant inter­view after inter­view about peace all day long with­out mov­ing from the bed in which they had ensconced them­selves. They’d sched­uled its fol­low up in New York City, but Lennon found he could­n’t enter the Unit­ed States due to a pre­vi­ous con­vic­tion for mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion. They relo­cat­ed it to the Bahamas, where the heat soon prompt­ed them to move again to the entire­ly cool­er Queen Eliz­a­beth Hotel in Mon­tre­al. There they record­ed the song “Give Peace a Chance,” aid­ed by such vis­i­tors as Tom­my Smoth­ers, Dick Gre­go­ry, Mur­ray the K, and psy­che­del­ic drug advo­cate Tim­o­thy Leary.

But Leary did­n’t just come to pro­vide a back­ing vocal. With his wife Rose­mary, he record­ed a con­ver­sa­tion with Lennon and Ono about… well, about a vari­ety of sub­jects, but they’d all fall under the broad head­ing of Leary’s one great pur­suit, “con­scious­ness.” Only recent­ly did Leary archivist Michael Horowitz dis­cov­er the tran­script of this ses­sion in “an unmarked enve­lope in a box of mis­cel­la­neous papers,” and this week the Tim­o­thy Leary Archives made it avail­able to the pub­lic for the first time ever. The con­ver­sa­tion begins with the fin­er points of teepee life, moves on to the effects of place on one’s state of mind, touch­es on both cou­ples’ hav­ing found them­selves on the wrong side of drug law enforce­ment, and ends with Lennon and Leary com­par­ing notes on how they use the media to con­vey their mes­sage:

TIMOTHY: John, about the use of the mass media … the kids must be taught how to use the media. Peo­ple used to say to me–I would give a rap and some­one would get up and say, “Well, what’s this about a reli­gion? Did the Bud­dha use drugs? Did the Bud­dha go on tele­vi­sion? I’d say, “Ahh—he would’ve. He would’ve….”

JOHN: I was on a TV show with David Frost and Yehu­di Menuhin, some cul­tur­al vio­lin­ist y’know, they were real­ly attack­ing me. They had a whole audi­ence and every­thing. It was after we got back from Amsterdam…and Yehu­di Menuhin came out, he’s always doing these Hin­du num­bers. All that pious bit, and his school for vio­lin­ists, and all that. And Yehu­di Menuhi said, “Well, don’t you think it’s nec­es­sary to kill some peo­ple some times?” That’s what he said on TV, that’s the first thing he’s ever said. And I said, “Did Christ say that? Are you a Chris­t­ian?” “Yeah,” I said, and did “Christ say any­thing about killing peo­ple?” And he said, “Did Christ say any­thing about tele­vi­sion? Or gui­tars?”

To learn more about Lennon and Ono’s Bed-Ins, you can vis­it the 70-minute doc­u­men­tary Bed Peace (below), pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture and still freely view­able on YouTube:

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tim­o­thy Leary’s Wild Ride and the Fol­som Prison Inter­view

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Bed Peace Star­ring John Lennon & Yoko Ono (Free for Lim­it­ed Time)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Bruce Springsteen Singin’ in the Rain in Italy, and How He Creates Powerful Imaginary Worlds

in Music, Psychology | June 27th, 2012

David Brooks, the sage New York Times op-ed writer, begins yes­ter­day’s thought piece, The Pow­er of the Par­tic­u­lar, with these lines:

They say you’ve nev­er real­ly seen a Bruce Spring­steen con­cert until you’ve seen one in Europe, so some friends and I threw finan­cial san­i­ty to the winds and went to fol­low him around Spain and France. In Madrid, for exam­ple, we were reward­ed with a show that last­ed 3 hours and 48 min­utes, pos­si­bly the longest Spring­steen con­cert on record and one of the best. But what real­ly fas­ci­nat­ed me were the crowds.…

Here were audi­ences in the mid­dle of the Iber­ian Penin­su­la singing word for word about High­way 9 or Greasy Lake or some oth­er exot­ic locale on the Jer­sey Shore. They held up signs request­ing songs from the deep­est and most dis­tinct­ly Amer­i­can recess­es of Springsteen’s reper­toire.

The odd­est moment came mid­con­cert when I looked across the foot­ball sta­di­um and saw 56,000 enrap­tured Spaniards, pump­ing their fists in the air in fer­vent uni­son and bel­low­ing at the top of their lungs, “I was born in the U.S.A.! I was born in the U.S.A.!” Did it occur to them at that moment that, in fact, they were not born in the U.S.A.?

Brooks goes on to explain this phe­nom­e­non by intro­duc­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal con­cept of “para­cosms,” which describes the cre­ation of pow­er­ful fan­ta­sy worlds. And he sug­gests that only the most dis­tinc­tive artists, the ones who come from a tru­ly par­tic­u­lar place, can cre­ate this spe­cial con­nec­tion with fans.  Spring­steen does just that. But part of his appeal is some­times his tran­scen­dence — his abil­i­ty to tran­scend his own music and embrace the uni­ver­sal spir­it of rock ‘n roll. Case in point: The Boss singing The Bea­t­les clas­sic “Twist and Shout” in Flo­rence ear­li­er this month. It’s rain­ing, rain­ing hard, but did any­one notice?

Thanks to Wired writer Steve Sil­ber­man for flag­ging that clip for us.…

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Dick Cavett’s Epic Woodstock Festival Show (August, 1969)

in Music, Television | June 27th, 2012


Even if you nev­er tuned in back then, you need only watch a few famous clips of Dick Cavett in action to under­stand why he earned the rep­u­ta­tion of run­ning the first major Amer­i­can talk show that qual­i­fied as “cool,” “smart,” or “hip.” His oper­a­tion show­cased some of the most impor­tant ele­ments of late-six­ties and sev­en­ties Amer­i­ca, those that the oth­er talk shows tend­ed to ignore, mis­rep­re­sent, or sim­ply mis­un­der­stand. Cavett him­self embod­ied a sen­si­bil­i­ty, nei­ther strict­ly friv­o­lous nor strict­ly high-toned, that allowed him the widest pos­si­ble cul­tur­al range. “The idea that one man could be both play­ful and seri­ous was nev­er deemed to be quite nat­ur­al on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, and Cavett was regard­ed as some­thing of a freak even at the time,” wrote crit­ic and Cavett guest Clive James. “Even­tu­al­ly he paid the penal­ty for being sui gener­is in a medi­um that likes its cat­e­gories to be clear­ly marked.” For an idea of what that posi­tion enabled, just watch Cavet­t’s musi­cal guests: he had Frank Zap­pa, he had John Lennon, he had Janis Joplin for her final inter­view.

And then we have the “Wood­stock episode.” Aired on August 16, 1969, the day after the fes­ti­val, but taped mere hours after the last notes rang out in Bethel, it brought Cavett togeth­er with Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, Stephen Stills, and Joni Mitchell. (Jimi Hen­drix, though sched­uled to show up, played long at the fes­ti­val and wound up too “zonked” to appear on tele­vi­sion.) Specif­i­cal­ly, it brought them togeth­er on a strik­ing­ly elab­o­rate, aggres­sive­ly col­or­ful one-off set that seat­ed host and guests on a cir­cle of what look like Nau­gahyde marsh­mal­lows. What­ev­er the aes­thet­ic trans­gres­sions of this broad­cast’s design, they lead to more than one mem­o­rable moment in talk-show his­to­ry, as when Cavett tears off in frus­tra­tion the tacky scarf his staff insist­ed he tie on for the occa­sion. Pull up the Wood­stock episode on YouTube for the per­for­mances — Mitchel­l’s “Chelsea Morn­ing” and Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s “Some­body to Love” fea­tur­ing Cros­by, to name two — but stay for the con­ver­sa­tion, espe­cial­ly the part when Cavett responds to Grace Slick call­ing him “Jim” one time too many: “You’ve got to learn my name, Miss Joplin!”

Relat­ed con­tent:

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Bob Dylan Classic, “Forever Young,” Animated for Children

in Books, Literature, Music | June 26th, 2012

Bob Dylan record­ed “For­ev­er Young” on his 1974 album Plan­et Waves. It’s a clas­sic “pater­nal love song,” a song inspired by his then four year-old son Jakob, who lat­er became the front­man of The Wall­flow­ers. Count­less musi­cians have since cov­ered this Dylan stan­dard — from Joan Baez and John­ny Cash to Rod Stew­art, The Pre­tenders, Eddie Ved­der and even Norah Jones, who sang a poignant ver­sion at Steve Jobs’ memo­r­i­al ser­vice last year.

The lyrics of “For­ev­er Young” lend them­selves per­fect­ly to a chil­dren’s book:

May you grow up to be right­eous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights sur­round­ing you
May you always be coura­geous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay for­ev­er young
For­ev­er young, for­ev­er young
May you stay for­ev­er young

And so, in 2008, Dylan teamed up with Paul Rogers to pub­lish the illus­trat­ed ver­sion of For­ev­er Young. The lyrics are the only text; and the illus­tra­tions (high­light­ed in the video above) pro­vide the real nar­ra­tive, show­ing a young­ster com­ing of age in the folk scene of 1960s Green­wich Vil­lage. The book (avail­able in paper and dig­i­tal for­mats) is a plea­sure to read to kids. But it’s even bet­ter when they read it to you…

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Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane & The Grateful Dead: Watch Classic Concerts from Wolfgang’s Vault

in Music | June 26th, 2012

In Wolf­gang’s Vault, you’ll find Van Mor­ri­son singing “Cyprus Avenue.” But it won’t be the orig­i­nal track from his 1968 album Astral Weeks; it’ll be a dif­fer­ent, near­ly eight-and-a-half-minute ren­di­tion, which you’ll watch Mor­ri­son per­form onstage at New York’s Fill­more East on Sep­tem­ber 23, 1970. Those who have seen Mor­ri­son per­form live in any era tend to describe it as an expe­ri­ence high­ly dis­tinct from hear­ing him sing on record, and ulti­mate­ly a nec­es­sary one for those seek­ing to ful­ly appre­ci­ate his work. Unlike so many musi­cians who rose to great pop­u­lar­i­ty in the late six­ties and ear­ly sev­en­ties, Mor­ri­son con­tin­ues to tour, and so these oppor­tu­ni­ties remain avail­able. But how many of Mor­rison’s fans could pos­si­bly have made it to his shows at the Fill­more East back then? How many, for that mat­ter, were alive back then? Those of us who weren’t have Wolf­gang to thank, I sup­pose, for mak­ing avail­able these his­toric con­cert clips that deep­en our under­stand­ing of artists like Mor­ri­son.

Yet Wolf­gang him­self, it turns out, is no longer among us. Known in full as Wolo­dia “Wolf­gang” Gra­jon­ca, he rose to promi­nence when, after a name change and a try­ing relo­ca­tion from Berlin to San Fran­cis­co, he became the west coast con­cert pro­mot­er and icon­ic coun­ter­cul­ture rock impre­sario Bill Gra­ham. Small won­der, then, that the inter­net archive which bears his name con­tains so much com­pelling vin­tage con­cert footage. Browse it by per­former, and you’ll spot many of the names you’d expect to: Jef­fer­son Air­plane, The Band, The Grate­ful Dead. But dig even deep­er and you’ll find real sur­pris­es, like Yoko Ono play­ing Giants Sta­di­um in 1986 and a vast cache of songs, cap­tured on thrilling­ly lo-fi video, per­formed by visu­al­ly pio­neer­ing and media-sat­i­riz­ing new wave band The Tubes. An after­noon spent in Wolf­gang’s Vault makes a fine primer on the most endur­ing rock played in Gra­ham’s hey­day, but also yields some delight­ful­ly odd per­for­mances you’d nev­er expect to see today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Archive

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Peefeeyatko: A Look Inside the Creative World of Frank Zappa

in Film, Music | June 19th, 2012

In the last years of his life, Frank Zap­pa spent much of his remain­ing time doing what he loved best: com­pos­ing.

The 1991 doc­u­men­tary Peefeey­atko, by Ger­man-born film­mak­er and com­pos­er Hen­ning Lohn­er, takes us inside Zap­pa’s seclud­ed world to watch and lis­ten as he cre­ates sym­phon­ic com­po­si­tions on an ear­ly dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­er called a Syn­clavier. The film was made not long after Zap­pa learned he had ter­mi­nal can­cer. Like its sub­ject, Lohn­er’s film is eccen­tric, with scenes from mon­ster movies spliced in with footage of Zap­pa work­ing and talk­ing. “Peefeey­atko,” we learn at the end, is Big­foot-lan­guage for “Give me some more Apples.”

Zap­pa talks about his wide range of musi­cal tastes–how from an ear­ly age he would lis­ten to rhythm and blues one minute and the French exper­i­men­tal com­pos­er Edgard Verèse the next. The film includes inter­views with his fel­low avant-garde com­posers John Cage, Pierre Boulez, Ian­nis Xenakis and Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. To describe his rad­i­cal eclec­ti­cism, Zap­pa says: “The eas­i­est way to sum up the aes­thet­ic would be: any­thing, any­time, any­place for no rea­son at all. And I think with an aes­thet­ic like that you can have pret­ty good lat­i­tude for being cre­ative.”

Peefeey­atko runs 59 min­utes, and will be added to our expand­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

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Paul McCartney Turns a Spry 70 Today, Thanks to Meditation, a Vegetarian Diet and Three Hour Gigs

in Life, Music | June 18th, 2012

Paul McCart­ney turns 70 today, and he’s look­ing a whole lot more spry than some of his con­tem­po­raries. (Hel­lo Kei­th Richards!) What’s the key to his longevi­ty? It starts with putting on three hour shows. He recent­ly told one news­pa­per, “I’ve been hav­ing car­dio-vas­cu­lar exer­cise for years but it’s on stage. I can’t believe I do a three-hour show with­out tak­ing a breath.”

You could also trace his dura­bil­i­ty back to lifestyle choic­es made in the 1960s. Above, McCart­ney explains to David Lynch how he took up tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion when the Bea­t­les met Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi through George Har­ri­son and his wife in 1967. Famous­ly, The Bea­t­les trav­eled to India in ’68 to study TM at the Mahar­ishi’s ashram. The trip did­n’t go well, but McCart­ney stuck with the med­i­ta­tion. Below, we also give you McCart­ney extolling the virtues of a veg­e­tar­i­an diet, some­thing he took up decades ago. The clip comes from a longer video he shot for PETA, a non-prof­it he has sup­port­ed for years..

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