Bono, Glen Hansard & Friends Busk For Charity on Grafton Street

in Music | December 27th, 2011

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.

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Christopher Hitchens Gets Contrarian on Christmas from the Grave (Plus Some Tom Lehrer)

in Music, Religion | December 25th, 2011

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.

You can read Hitchens’ unabridged piece in WSJ here. H/T goes to @opedr

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Impressionist Reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas in Celebrity Voices

in Music | December 25th, 2011

Ear­li­er this year, actor and impres­sion­ist Jim Meski­men pro­duced a viral video that fea­tured him read­ing a famous mono­logue from Shake­speare’s Richard III, all while using the voic­es of 25 famous fig­ures. (Watch here.) Now, he’s back and read­ing Clement C. Moore’s ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas, this time with imper­son­ations of Woody Allen, John F. Kennedy, John Wayne and Samuel L. Jack­son. Have fun with it.  h/t @MatthiasRascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nine Imper­son­ations by Kevin Spacey in Six Min­utes

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Chet Baker’s Soulful Version of ‘Time After Time’

in Music | December 23rd, 2011

The jazz trum­peter and singer Chet Bak­er was born on this day in 1929. Ear­li­er we fea­tured Let’s Get Lost, Bruce Weber’s doc­u­men­tary of the musi­cian’s trou­bled life. Today we take you back to 1964, when Bak­er was 34, as he per­forms a melan­choly inter­pre­ta­tion of the Sam­my Cahn and Jule Styne stan­dard, “Time After Time.”

The scene is from a Bel­gian tele­vi­sion pro­gram. Bak­er is joined by French pianist Rene Urtreger, Bel­gian flautist Jacques Pelz­er, and an Ital­ian rhythm sec­tion of Lui­gi Trussar­di on bass and Fran­co Manzec­chi on drums. Bak­er sings and plays the flugel­horn. The Bel­gian TV show, along with a per­for­mance 15 years lat­er in Nor­way, are pre­served in the Jazz Icons DVD Chet Bak­er Live in ’64 and ’79. In the lin­er notes, Rob Bow­man writes:

Beau­ty comes in many forms. In music, it can be the result of a per­fect­ly con­struct­ed melod­ic line, a har­mon­ic voic­ing that sends shiv­ers down your spine, a groove that some­how cap­tures the joy of being alive, or a tim­bre so sen­su­ous­ly rich that it makes your body quiver from head to toe. In the case of Chet Bak­er, a jazzman capa­ble of spin­ning out some of the most aching­ly beau­ti­ful music human beings have ever known, beau­ty was a result of find­ing the poignan­cy in sor­row, in deploy­ing pitch inflec­tion, melod­ic arc and a vibra­to­less tim­bre to con­jure up some­thing of rar­efied val­ue in a life of addic­tion and end­less dis­ap­point­ment. There are many vir­tu­osic tech­ni­cians in the his­to­ry of jazz. Few of them could cap­ture the pathos of the human con­di­tion in the way that Bak­er did.

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The Large Hadron Collider Rap, Yo

in Music, Physics, Random | December 22nd, 2011

Last week, the reports about Hig­gs Boson, oth­er­wise called the God par­ti­cle, put CERN and the Large Hadron Col­lid­er back into the news, lead­ing some to ask: What exact­ly are Hig­gs and the Col­lid­er all about? We’re glad you asked. And what bet­ter way to answer that ques­tion than with a fly, lit­tle rap by Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) and Will Bar­ras. You can find the full lyrics below the jump, and the parts about Hig­gs Boson right below…

The Hig­gs Boson – that’s the one that every­body talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Hig­gs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the sci­en­tists will final­ly say
“There is no Hig­gs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Some­thing in our Stan­dard Mod­el went awry.”

But the Hig­gs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They sup­pose that par­ti­cles have mass because
There is this Hig­gs field that extends through all space
And some par­ti­cles slow down while oth­er par­ti­cles race
Straight through like the pho­ton – it has no mass
But some­thing heavy like the top quark, it’s drag­gin’ its ***
And the Hig­gs is a boson that car­ries a force
And makes par­ti­cles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it…

(more…)

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Pickin’ & Trimmin’ in a Down-Home North Carolina Barbershop: Award-Winning Short Film

in Life, Music | December 19th, 2011

Pickin’ & Trim­min’ is a doc­u­men­tary short film from 2008 pro­fil­ing “The Bar­ber­shop” in Drex­el, North Car­oli­na, where Lawrence Antho­ny and David Shirley have bar­bered for decades, and where blue­grass musi­cians have jammed in the back room every week­end. Direct­ed by Matt Mor­ris, the award-win­ning film show­cas­es the peo­ple and atmos­phere of a small com­mu­ni­ty in rur­al Amer­i­ca, per­haps bet­ter than any­thing you’ve seen before. And the music played in the back room is sim­ply won­der­ful.

You can find pho­tos tak­en at The Bar­ber­shop on Flickr here. The film itself has been added to the Doc­u­men­tary sec­tion of our Free Movies col­lec­tion.

Update: Lawrence Antho­ny, the head bar­ber por­trayed in this film, passed away in 2009. His son con­tin­ues to run The Bar­ber­shop, but severe water dam­age has left the shop in need of repair. Here is a video show­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.

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.

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David Attenborough Reads “What a Wonderful World” in a Moving Video

in Film, Music | December 14th, 2011

Sir David Atten­bor­ough is Eng­land’s finest nat­ur­al his­to­ry film­mak­er, best known for his Life col­lec­tion, a series of nine nature doc­u­men­taries aired on the BBC between 1979 and 2008. It’s wide­ly con­sid­ered the stan­dard by which all oth­er wildlife pro­grams are mea­sured.

In recent weeks, British and Amer­i­can audi­ences have been treat­ed to Atten­bor­ough’s lat­est pro­duc­tion, Frozen Plan­et (see trail­er below). It’s thought to be his last major pro­gram with the BBC, and to com­mem­o­rate this mile­stone, the ad agency RKCR/Y&R has pro­duced a mov­ing video that fea­tures Atten­bor­ough read­ing lines from “What a Won­der­ful World” — you know, the Louis Arm­strong clas­sic — as scenes from Atten­bor­ough’s doc­u­men­taries fill the screen.

The ad agency intro­duced the video last week with a lit­tle blog post, which con­clud­ed by say­ing: “If you’ve had a shit­ty jour­ney into work today, I promise, this will put your smile back in place.” We could haven’t have said it any worse or bet­ter.

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Ice Cube & Charles Eames Revel in L.A. Architecture

in Architecture, Music | December 13th, 2011

Here’s a lit­tle known fact about the rap­per and actor Ice Cube. Dur­ing his younger days, before he became a star, Mr. Cube stud­ied archi­tec­tur­al draft­ing at the Phoenix Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Ari­zona, where he gained an appre­ci­a­tion for the way archi­tects, like rap­pers, can take exist­ing mate­ri­als and work them into entire­ly new cre­ations. Yes, archi­tects can do mashups, too. And per­haps no one did them bet­ter than the hus­band-and-wife design duo, Charles and Ray Eames, who built the Eames House, a land­mark of mod­ern archi­tec­ture, in 1949.

In a video pro­mot­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive exhib­it, “Pacif­ic Stan­dard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980,” Ice Cube dri­ves the streets of L.A. and explains his admi­ra­tion for the Eames House and oth­er Los Ange­les land­marks. Mean­while below, you’ll find some vin­tage footage that cap­tures Charles Eames (1907–1978), dri­ving around the city, giv­ing his own analy­sis of the hodge-podge archi­tec­tur­al styles that define Los Ange­les.

via The New York Times and Curios­i­ty Counts

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