Curated Song Collections to Match the Rhythms of Your Day

in Music | July 13th, 2011

We love the design and over­all lay­out of The Illu­mi­nat­ed Playlists by Brook­lyn-based design­er Adam Parks, but the real delight of the web­site is its sound, not its look. Parks has grouped 21 music col­lec­tions into four cat­e­gories, from slow to very fast  (or rather, Ada­gio to Presto), so you can choose a playlist depend­ing on the pace of your cur­rent activ­i­ty or mood.

As a DJ, Parks has made con­sis­tent­ly sol­id choic­es, culling from both the clas­sics (Bob Dylan, Neal Young, Rolling Stones, Cur­tis May­field) and more recent artists (TV on the Radio, The Decem­berists, Arcade Fire, etc.). These aren’t the lists you would use to impress the cool kids with your eclec­ti­cism, iron­ic tastes, or love of the obscure, but if you’re just look­ing for great sound­tracks for the shift­ing rhythms of the day, they’re a per­fect fit. Dive in here.

We’d love to see sim­i­lar col­lec­tions for jazz and clas­si­cal — we might just need to make a few of our own.

via Metafil­ter

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evolution

in Music, Science, TED Talks | July 7th, 2011

Cana­di­an “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman first gar­nered pop­u­lar atten­tion with a well-received, well-reviewed rap adap­ta­tion of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales at the Edin­burgh Fringe Fes­ti­val. (To get a sense of the project, check out this brief scene from “The Par­don­er’s Tale.”) And we also pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his bril­liant work on Macmil­lan’s What’s Your Eng­lish? cam­paign.

Brinkman has brought his fol­low-up show, a fas­ci­nat­ing homage to Charles Dar­win called “The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion,” to New York City, where it’s get­ting rave reviews. In the video above, he explains how he went about putting the project togeth­er, and how evo­lu­tion­ary sci­ence enriched his under­stand­ing of the vio­lence and anger so preva­lent in the music he loves. The whole talk is great, but if you want to start off with a taste of the rap itself, skip for­ward to minute 9:03.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayak vs. Keynes Rap

The Cli­mate Sci­en­tist Rap (Warn­ing: Offen­sive Lan­guage)

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Blind Guitarist Lives Out Dream at U2 Show

in Life, Music | July 6th, 2011

What can I say? I’m a suck­er for these feel-good moments. This past week­end, Adam Bev­ell, who lost his sight more than two decades ago, attend­ed his 20th U2 con­cert in Nashville. Through­out the show, he held up a sign that read “Blind Gui­tar Play­er: Bring Me Up!” And even­tu­al­ly Bono took him up on the offer, invit­ing him on stage to strum along to “All I Want is You” and then let­ting him leave with a lit­tle par­ty favor — Bono’s green gui­tar. A class act.

You can catch Adam talk­ing about his expe­ri­ence and play­ing some more gui­tar here. And if you like moments like these, then don’t miss this feelin’-groovy moment from Paul Simon’s recent show in Toron­to.

via @Metafilter

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How Alice Herz-Sommer, the Oldest Holocaust Survivor, Survived the Horrific Ordeal with Music

in Film, History, Music | July 6th, 2011

What you’re watch­ing is the trail­er for the doc­u­men­tary Alice Danc­ing Under the Gal­lows by Nick Reed, to be released lat­er this year. At 110, Alice Herz-Som­mer is the old­est Holo­caust sur­vivor. Her sto­ry is both touch­ing and inspir­ing.

Alice was born in Prague — then part of the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire — in 1903. She start­ed play­ing the piano as a child and took lessons with Con­rad Ansorge, a stu­dent of Liszt. At 16, she attend­ed the mas­ter class at Prague’s pres­ti­gious Ger­man musi­cal acad­e­my. Lat­er, Alice became a respect­ed con­cert pianist in Prague. Through her fam­i­ly, she also knew Franz Kaf­ka. All of this changed when the Nazis occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia in March 1939. Along with oth­er Jews liv­ing in Prague, Alice was ini­tial­ly forced to live in Prague’s ghet­to before being deport­ed to the There­sien­stadt con­cen­tra­tion camp in 1943, along with her five-year-old son Raphael. Even­tu­al­ly her whole fam­i­ly, includ­ing her hus­band, cel­list Leopold Som­mer, and her moth­er, were sent to Auschwitz, Tre­blin­ka and Dachau, where they were killed.

Alice and her son sur­vived There­sien­stadt because the Nazis used this par­tic­u­lar con­cen­tra­tion camp to show the world how “well” the inmates were treat­ed. A pro­pa­gan­da film by the Nazis was shot and a del­e­ga­tion from the Dan­ish and Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross was shown around in 1943. To boost morale, Alice and many oth­er impris­oned musi­cians reg­u­lar­ly per­formed for the inmates. Despite the unimag­in­able liv­ing con­di­tions, Alice and her son sur­vived. They moved to Israel after the war, where she taught music. In 1986, she moved to Lon­don, where she still lives. Her son died in 2001 (obit­u­ary here).

The way Alice dealt with those hor­ri­ble times is par­tic­u­lar­ly inspir­ing. She says about the role of music: “I felt that this is the only thing which helps me to have hope … it’s a sort of reli­gion actu­al­ly. Music is … is God. In dif­fi­cult times you feel it, espe­cial­ly when you are suf­fer­ing.” When asked by Ger­man jour­nal­ists if she hat­ed Ger­mans, she replied: “I nev­er hate, and I will nev­er hate. Hatred brings only hatred.”

Extra mate­r­i­al: Art Ther­a­py Blog has a tran­script of the trail­er, mem­o­rable quotes by Alice and two BBC Radio inter­views with her. Alice’s life sto­ry is told in the book A Gar­den of Eden in Hell.

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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Springsteen’s Eulogy for Clarence Clemons‎

in Music | June 29th, 2011

Today, Bruce Spring­steen pub­lished on his web site a revised ver­sion of the eulo­gy he deliv­ered last week for Clarence Clemons, his friend and band mate. It’s equal parts hon­est and mov­ing. The talk builds momen­tum as it goes along, kind of like a Spring­steen song, with the rhythm real­ly pick­ing up here:

I think per­haps “C” pro­tect­ed me from a world where it was­n’t always so easy to be an inse­cure, weird and skin­ny white boy either. But, stand­ing togeth­er we were badass, on any giv­en night, on our turf, some of the bad­dest ass­es on the plan­et. We were unit­ed, we were strong, we were right­eous, we were unmov­able, we were fun­ny, we were corny as hell and as seri­ous as death itself. And we were com­ing to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Togeth­er, we told an old­er, rich­er sto­ry about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of friend­ship that tran­scend­ed those I’d writ­ten in my songs and in my music. Clarence car­ried it in his heart. It was a sto­ry where the Scoot­er and the Big Man not only bust­ed the city in half, but we kicked ass and remadethe city, shap­ing it into the kind of place where our friend­ship would not be such an anom­aly. And that… that’s what I’m gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and dou­ble down on that sto­ry on a night­ly basis, because that is some­thing, that is the thing that we did togeth­er… the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fuck­ing big to die. And that’s just the facts. You can put it on his grave stone, you can tat­too it over your heart. Accept it… it’s the New World.

And final­ly the crescen­do:

SO LADIES AND GENTLEMAN… ALWAYS LAST, BUT NEVER LEAST. LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE MASTER OF DISASTER, the BIG KAHUNA, the MAN WITH A PHD IN SAXUAL HEALING, the DUKE OF PADUCAH, the KING OF THE WORLD, LOOK OUT OBAMA! THE NEXT BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVEN THOUGH HE’S DEAD… YOU WISH YOU COULD BE LIKE HIM BUT YOU CAN’T! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BIGGEST MAN YOU’VE EVER SEEN!… GIVE ME A C‑L-A-R-E-N-C‑E. WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT’S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! … amen.

Get the full text here.

H/T to @opedr

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Beatles, Friends & Family: Photos by Linda McCartney

in Art, Music | June 29th, 2011

In 1967, a young Lin­da East­man went to Lon­don to pho­to­graph the “Swing­ing Six­ties” and snagged exclu­sive pho­tos of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton and Jimi Hen­drix. In the midst of it all, she met Paul McCart­ney, and when the two mar­ried in 1969, she had a fixed place with­in rock ‘n rol­l’s inner cir­cle.

Dur­ing the com­ing decades, she took over 200,000 images. Yes, that means many more pho­tographs of rock stars and artists. But the empha­sis also shift­ed inward, to a new domes­tic life with Paul and their chil­dren — Heather, Mary, Stel­la, and James. Years lat­er, as Paul pre­pares to mar­ry again, the pho­to­graph­ic work of Lin­da McCart­ney (1941–1998) has been pub­lished in a 288-page ret­ro­spec­tive vol­ume called Lin­da McCart­ney: Life in Pho­tographs. It fea­tures a for­ward by Paul and some com­men­tary by Annie Lei­bovitz. An impres­sive sam­pling of Lin­da McCart­ney’s work can be pre­viewed on this web site.

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Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for Eight Pianos

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | June 28th, 2011

This fan­tas­tic ren­di­tion of Wag­n­er’s “Ride of the Valkyries” was record­ed at the tenth anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the pres­ti­gious Ver­bier Fes­ti­val, and fea­tures eight of the world’s most respect­ed pianists — Evge­ny Kissin, Lang Lang, Emanuel Ax, Leif Ove And­snes, Claude Frank, Mikhail Plet­nev, Staffan Sche­ja, and James Levine. It’s just one of many stel­lar per­for­mances avail­able on this very well-regard­ed con­cert dvd.

Give the piece a lis­ten, espe­cial­ly if you’ve ever con­sid­ered “Valkyries” too over­bear­ing. The all-piano arrange­ment does full jus­tice to the music’s pow­er, while also reliev­ing some of its bom­bast. A def­i­nite win­ner. H/T @brainpicker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Clas­si­cal Music: A His­to­ry Accord­ing to YouTube

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant!

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Buddy Holly at Age 12: His First Recording

in Music | June 27th, 2011

If you’re look­ing for­ward to this week’s release of the Bud­dy Hol­ly cov­er album Rave On (and you should be, if only for John Doe’s awe­some take on Peg­gy Sue Got Mar­ried), then you’ll def­i­nite­ly get a kick out of the croon­er’s first ever known record­ing. The song is from 1949, and the sound qual­i­ty isn’t great, but no amount of sta­t­ic can block out the kid’s famil­iar war­ble. His voice may not have changed yet, but he’s already Bud­dy Hol­ly.

We have added this Bud­dy Hol­ly clip to our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons. There you’ll find great writ­ers, daz­zling film­mak­ers and musi­cians, bril­liant philoso­phers and sci­en­tists pre­sent­ed in video and audio.

via Fla­vor­wire

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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