Playing in Toronto last week, Paul Simon did something, well, awesome. A fan asks him to play “Duncan,” his 1972 classic, and lets him know that she learned to play guitar to that song. So Simon agrees. And, even better, he invites her on stage to take over guitar and vocals. Nervous, almost hyperventilating, she hesitantly gets going, as does the crowd. From there, a big feelin’ groovy moment unfolds, and it just gets better as it goes along. Kudos to NPR’s All Songs Considered for making this great find …
Just last month, Bob Dylan played his first concert in China at the Worker’s Gymnasium in Beijing. It wasn’t exactly a big show. Roughly 2,000 people attended, but it became a big affair at home when NYTimes columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a caustic op-ed, accusing Dylan of playing a censored set stripped of his revolutionary anthems. In short, she declared, Dylan went to China and sold out his 60s soul:
Iconic songs of revolution like “The Times They Are a‑Changin,’ ” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” wouldn’t have been an appropriate soundtrack for the 2,000 Chinese apparatchiks in the audience taking a relaxing break from repression.
Spooked by the surge of democracy sweeping the Middle East, China is conducting the harshest crackdown on artists, lawyers, writers and dissidents in a decade. It is censoring (or “harmonizing,” as it euphemizes) the Internet and dispatching the secret police to arrest willy-nilly, including Ai Weiwei, the famous artist and architect of the Bird’s Nest, Beijing’s Olympic stadium.
Dylan said nothing about Weiwei’s detention, didn’t offer a reprise of “Hurricane,” his song about “the man the authorities came to blame for something that he never done.” He sang his censored set, took his pile of Communist cash and left.
Now, in a note to fans, Dylan took the rare step of responding to these (and other) accusations in a short letter published yesterday. He writes:
As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There’s no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.
I’m guessing this response will only partly satisfy Dowd. Perhaps Dylan didn’t change his set to please the apparatchiks. But did he miss an opportunity to make the right statement? Just maybe. But no matter, we’re putting this behind us and getting ready for Dylan’s 70th birthday on May 24. We still love him, warts and all…
For a certain kind of person (that means you, Dan C.), a straight hour of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards expounding on the rock n’ roll life is about as close to heaven as one can get without magically transforming into Richards’ favorite guitar. Here is the 66-year old legend being interviewed at the New York Public Library, following the publication of his critically-acclaimed memoir Life, which no less severe a judge than Michiko Kakutani called “electrifying.”
In the interview (see the remaining parts here,here and here) Richards comes off as witty, articulate, and especially eloquent when speaking about his passion for American blues, but one of the most charming early moments comes thanks to his interlocutor, Anthony DeCurtis. DeCurtis is something of a rock star in his own field, but he fights a losing battle with his natural fandom for the first 15 minutes of the conversation, then finally starts to implode at about the 22:2o mark. His mini-meltdown is immediately followed by Richards’ hilarious riff on the Stones’ early Beatles-envy, and it all just gets better from there, culminating in the expected wild applause at the end of the hour.
A footnote: Richards’ collaborator on Life is the respected British journalist named James Fox. Fox spent five years working with the guitarist, or rather, chasing him from continent to continent, recording hundreds of hours of their conversations, and then shaping those hours into a book that is not merely coherent or interesting but genuinely literary. He deserves a round of applause as well.
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
Robert Johnson, the legendary bluesman, would have turned 100 this week. That’s well beyond the age he actually lived to – a very young 27. During his short life (1911–1938), Johnson recorded 29 individual songs. But they could not have been more influential. Songs like Cross Road Blues, Sweet Home Chicago, and Kind Hearted Woman Blues (all found in this newly-released Centennial Collection) had a remarkable influence on musicians growing up generations later. Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Robert Plant – they all acknowledge a deep debt to Johnson.
Speaking of debts, you can’t talk about Robert Johnson without talking about the famous devil legend. The legend holds that Johnson made a Faustian bargain with the devil, selling his soul in exchange for boundless musical talent. It’s a great tale, and it all gets brought back to life in “Devilish Detail,” a new animated film (above) featuring illustrations by Christopher Darling. You can view it in a larger format on Nowness.com…
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!
Three cheers for curation. Limelight, an Australian culture web site, has selected “40 of the most informative, representative and entertaining videos” available on YouTube. And they’ve strung them together in such a way that they offer a “chronological history of western classical music from the twelfth century to the modern age,” taking you from The Middle Ages and The Renaissance, through the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods, and ending with The Birth of Modernism and Post-WWII innovations. The clip above comes from Anton van Munster’s film on Vivaldi, I Musici, which is available on Netflix. (If you’re not a subscriber, a one month free trial is available here.) Other clips put a spotlight on Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Verdi, Wagner and others.
Today Carnegie Hall celebrates its 120th anniversary. Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and financed by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, the famed concert venue opened its doors in 1891, right between West 56th and 57th Streets in New York City. Since then, Carnegie Hall has gained a reputation for its unrivaled acoustics (some have called it the “Stradivarius of the Concert World”) and pretty much every important musical figure of the 20th century played there.
The hall will celebrate its anniversary with a gala featuring Yo-Yo Ma. But we’re taking another tack and highlighting a vintage clip from the 1947 film Carnegie Hall. Directed by Edgar Ulmer, this sequence gives you Jascha Heifetz, the famed violinist, playing the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. Heifetz played Carnegie Hall for the first time in 1917, when he was only 16 years old. This clip, filmed 30 years later at the same great concert hall, has been viewed 1.5 million times…
Clash frontman Joe Strummer wrote and directed this odd gangster parody in 1983, while the band was on a break from touring. He cast Mick Jones as a well-dressed crime boss, Paul Simonon as his Jimmy Cliff-channeling nemesis, and pretty much everyone the band had ever shared a pint with in supporting roles.
Hell W10is not exactly a masterpiece. The camera work is indifferent, each individual scene lasts longer than it needs to, and we’re not quite sure what the blonde was doing there. Still, it’s hard not to enjoy any movie with an all-Clash soundtrack, and we got a huge kick out of watching Jones scowl in his white tuxedo like a cartoon Scarface.
Other high points include the hybrid noir-punk stylings of the titles, and Strummer’s own cheeky turn as an aggressive cop.
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!
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
Since the break-up of Talking Heads in 1991, David Byrne has made a good career for himself as a solo artist, working in film and music, and also becoming an active supporter of cycling. Overtly intellectual, Byrne has given lectures on a great variety of topics – from Carl Jung to the ways in which venue and context shape artistic creation.
The TED talk above was given in February 2010 in Long Beach, California, and here David Byrne presents his ideas on the interrelationship between music and architecture. A transcript of this talk can be found on the TED Talks page.
Byrne was not the first to explain the link between music and architecture. In 2002, renowned architect Daniel Libeskind delivered a Proms Lecture on that very topic (find the audio stream here) and, in 2007, Jonathan Cole presented his own lecture, “Music and Architecture: Confronting the Boundaries between Space and Sound,” at Gresham College, London. But it is Byrne’s talk that approaches the subject from the practical point of view of a musician.
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.
We're hoping to rely on loyal readers, rather than erratic ads. Please click the Donate button and support Open Culture. You can use Paypal, Venmo, Patreon, even Crypto! We thank you!
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
