Music and comic book art are the two passions of Robert Crumb’s creative life. In this video from W.W. Norton, Crumb talks about his obsessive interest in the old-time blues, folk and country music of the 1920s and 1930s. “I think it’s neurological,” he says. “Some quirky types of nervous systems are just attracted to that old music.”
As one of the pioneers of the underground comix movement in the late 1960s, Crumb’s work often related in some way to his love of music. His famous “Keep on Truckin’ ” comic of 1968 was inspired by the lyrics of Blind Boy Fuller’s song, “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” That same year Janis Joplin, who was singing with Big Brother & the Holding Company, asked Crumb to design the cover of the band’s album Cheap Thrills.
Since then, Crumb has designed hundreds of album covers and music posters. His new book, R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection, brings together all the covers and many related works. The book contains portraits of famous artists like Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, along with works featuring obscure artists with names like “Ukelele Ike” and “Big John Wrencher and his Maxwell Street Blues Boys.” There are also covers and posters made for Crumb’s own band, the Cheap Suit Serenaders.
Crumb is a banjo and mandolin player. One group he has sat in with in recent years is Eden & John’s East River String Band. This video was directed by the group’s co-leader, John Heneghan, and includes appearances by himself and his partner Eden Brower. The video features the following songs:
“Sing Song Girl” by Leroy Sheild (1930)
“Some of these Days” by Cab Calloway (1930)
“Lindberg Hop” by the Memphis Jug Band (1928)
“Down On Me” by Eddie Head and His Family (1930)
“Chasin’ Rainbows” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders (1976)
“Singing in the Bathtub” by R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders (1978)
“So Sorry Dear” by Eden & John’s East River String Band, featuring R. Crumb
December 2, 1997. Exactly ten years after his first visit to Moscow, jazz legend Dave Brubeck returned to perform before the faculty and students of the Moscow Conservatory. During his concert, an audience member asked him to improvise on the old Russian sea shanty “Ej, Uhnem.” About two minutes into the improvisation, a young violinist rose from his seat and started to play along. You just have to love Dave’s surprised look at 2:09.
This young man turned out to be a student at the conservatory. His name is Denis Kolobov and he is now a violinist of international renown. Denis must have mustered up all of his courage to cut into the performance of one of the great jazz pianists. But the day before, French jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli had died in Paris and Denis decided to honor Grappelli’s memory in this way. What a great idea!
By profession, Matthias Rascher teaches English and History at a High School in northern Bavaria, Germany. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twitter.
The video above gives you mostly the prelude to the actual music. Then, in the first video below, Zappa gives a demo of the instruments. Next comes the Concerto for Two Bicycles, which features the show’s house orchestra joining the cacophonous fun. The clips run a good 15 minutes.
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Before we rush headlong into a new year, it’s worth pausing, ever so briefly, to consider the ground we covered in 2011. What topics resonated with you … and jazzed us? Today, we’re highlighting 10 thematic areas (and 46 posts) that captured the imagination. Chances are you missed a few gems here. So please join us on our brief journey back into time. Tomorrow, we start looking forward again.
1) Universities Offer More Free Courses, Then Start Pushing Toward Certificates: The year started well enough. Yale released another 10 stellar open courses. (Find them on our list of 400 Free Courses). Then other universities started pushing the envelope on the open course format. This fall, Stanford launched a series of free courses that combined video lectures with more dynamic resources — short quizzes; the ability to pose questions to Stanford instructors; feedback on your overall performance; a statement of accomplishment from the instructor, etc. A new round of free courses will start in January and February. (Get the full list and enroll here.) Finally, keep your eyes peeled for this: In 2012, MIT will offer similar courses, but with one big difference. Students will get an official certificate at the end of the course, all at a very minimal charge. More details here.
3) Books Intelligent People Should Read: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s list “8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read” ended up generating far more conversation and controversy than we would have expected. (Users have left 83 comments at last count.) No matter what you think of his rationale for choosing these texts, the books make for essential reading, and they’re freely available online.
4) Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry: Christopher Hitchens left us this past month. And, until his last day, Hitchens was the same old Hitch — prolific, incisive, surly and defiant, especially when asked about whether he’d change his position on religion, spirituality and the afterlife. All of this was on display when he spoke at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles last February. We covered his comments in a post called, No Deathbed Conversion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask. And even from the grave, Hitchens did more of the same, forcing us to question the whole modern meaning of Christmas.
In 1952, John Cage composed his most controversial piece, 4′33,″ a four-and-a-half minute reflection on the sound of silence. Now fast forward eight years. It’s February, 1960, and we find the composer teaching his famous Experimental Composition courses at The New School in NYC, and paying a visit to the CBS game show “I’ve Got a Secret.” The TV show offered Cage something of a teachable moment, a chance to introduce the broader public to his brand of avant-garde music. Cage’s piece is called Water Walk (1959), and it’s all performed with unconventional instruments, save a grand piano. A water pitcher, iron pipe, goose call, bathtub, rubber duckie, and five unplugged radios — they all make the music. And the audience doesn’t quite know how to react, except with nervous laughter. It wasn’t particularly courteous. But, as one scholar has noted, it’s equally remarkable that prime time TV gave ten minutes of uninterrupted airtime to avant-garde music. You take the good with the bad.
In 1976 a youthful fan named Stuart sent John Lennon a six-page list of questions. The former Beatle responded with answers, along with a child-like drawing of a lamb standing on a cloud, saying, “Hi Stuart.”
Stuart wanted to know a few things, like what sort of album Lennon was working on. “Until it’s been on tape,” Lennon replied, “I never know what it will be.” He also wondered if the famous musician was writing anything, like perhaps an autobiography. “Yes, I have been writing, but not an autobiography. I’ve noticed that people tend to DIE after writing their life story.”
The young fan included a list of words and names, along with the question: How would you characterize the following figures in one word?
John: “Great”
Paul: “Extraordinary”
George: “Lost”
Ringo: “Friend”
Elvis: “Fat”
Yoko: “Love”
Howard Cosell: “Hum”
Lennon signed off with, “It was a pleasure, hope ya dig it/John Lennon.”
Shoppers on Grafton Street in Dublin were treated to a rare street performance on Christmas Eve by some of Ireland’s most illustrious pop musicians. U2 frontman Bono, oscar-winning singer/songwriter Glen Hansard, Liam O’ Maonlai of Hothouse Flowers, Mundy, and Declan O’Rourke gathered on the famous shopping street to spread holiday cheer and raise money for the homeless.
It was the third straight year of Christmas Eve busking for Bono and Hansard. A large group of fans showed up in anticipation, having been tipped off the day before by Hansard. “Busking with some friends tomorrow on Grafton St.,” he wrote on Twitter. “Come and throw a coin in the box for Simon Community and the Peter McVerry trust.” The crowd grew so big that the police moved the performance to the gate of St. Stephen’s Green, at the end of the street.
The group performed a rousing, sing-along version of the Mic Christopher song “Heyday” (above), and some holiday favorites, including the 1960s hit “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” which can be seen on YouTube here and here.
Back in 1959, Tom Lehrer, the Harvard lecturer and satirist, recorded “A Christmas Carol” before a live audience at the Sanders Theater in Cambridge, Mass. The song, offering an early commentary on the commercialism of Christmas, provides the jumping off point for Christopher Hitchens’ article “Forced Merriment: The True Spirit of Christmas,” which has been published posthumously in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal. Even from the grave, Hitchens goes on being Hitch: blunt, bound to make the majority bristle, but also brimming with some contrarian insights…
But the thing about the annual culture war that would probably most surprise those who want to “keep the Christ in Christmas” is this: The original Puritan Protestants regarded the whole enterprise as blasphemous. Under the rule of Oliver Cromwell in England, Christmas festivities were banned outright. The same was true in some of the early Pilgrim settlements in North America.
Last year I read a recent interview with the priest of one of the oldest Roman Catholic churches in New York, located downtown and near Wall Street. Taking a stand in favor of Imam Rauf’s “Ground Zero” project, he pointed to some parish records showing hostile picketing of his church in the 18th century. The pious protestors had been voicing their suspicion that a profane and Popish ceremonial of “Christ Mass” was being conducted within.
and some humor.…
In their already discrepant accounts of the miraculous birth, the four gospels give us no clue as to what time of year—or even what year—it is supposed to have taken place. And thus the iconography of Christmas is ridiculously mixed in with reindeer, holly, snow scenes and other phenomena peculiar to northern European myth. (Three words for those who want to put the Christ back in Christmas: Jingle Bell Rock.) There used to be an urban legend about a Japanese department store that tried too hard to symbolize the Christmas spirit, and to show itself accessible to Western visitors, by mounting a display of a Santa Claus figure nailed to a cross. Unfounded as it turned out, this wouldn’t have been off by much.
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