The Legend of Bluesman Robert Johnson Animated

in Animation, Film, Music | May 12th, 2011

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!

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Classical Music: A History According to YouTube

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 9th, 2011


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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

The Com­plete Organ Works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach

The Great­est Com­posers: Accord­ing to The New York Times

via Metafil­ter

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Celebrate Carnegie Hall Anniversary with Jascha Heifetz Playing Tchaikovsky

in Music | May 5th, 2011

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…

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The Clash Star in Hell W10, a Gangster Parody Film Directed by Joe Strummer (1983)

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | May 4th, 2011

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 W10 is 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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

“Stay Free: The Sto­ry of the Clash” Nar­rat­ed by Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D: A New 8‑Episode Pod­cast

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: A Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

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David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve

in Architecture, Music, TED Talks | May 3rd, 2011

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.

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Warhol’s Screen Tests of Lou Reed, Dennis Hopper, Nico & More

in Film, Music | April 29th, 2011

Between 1964 and 1966, Andy Warhol shot close to 500 short movies of friends, celebri­ties, mod­els, and any of the oth­er love­ly young things who passed through his stu­dio known as The Fac­to­ry. The indie-rock duet Dean and Brit­ta recent­ly com­posed songs for 13 of the videos, which they’ve been per­form­ing live as part of a mul­ti­me­dia con­cert for sev­er­al years. “13 Most Beau­ti­ful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests” is avail­able on DVD, CD, and of course, YouTube.

We espe­cial­ly loved “I’m Not A Young Man Any­more,” fea­tur­ing an icy cool Lou Reed, so hip and desir­able that even his Coke bot­tle looks as if it’s wear­ing sun­glass­es. There are oth­er gems as well, start­ing with the doomed Edie Sedgewick, one of The Fac­to­ry’s ear­li­est stars, who died of an over­dose in 1971.

The 5′10″ Ger­man mod­el Nico, before she began record­ing with the Vel­vet Under­ground.

The preter­nat­u­ral­ly beau­ti­ful Paul Amer­i­ca, star of Warhol’s film “My Hus­tler,” who even­tu­al­ly hired lawyers to seek pay­ment for his role in the movie that made him a reluc­tant gay icon. He died after being hit by a car in 1981.


And final­ly, the late Den­nis Hop­per, extra­or­di­nary on screen even by Fac­to­ry stan­dards. Accord­ing to Dean and Brit­ta, he was the first to buy one of Warhol’s soup can paint­ings.

On a some­what unre­lat­ed note, the Dean is of course Dean Ware­ham of Galax­ie 500 and Luna. If you’re a fan of his music, or even just nos­tal­gic for 90’s era pre-Nap­ster indie rock, you might want to check out his dry, thought­ful mem­oir, Black Post­cards: A Rock & Roll Romance.

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.

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The Soundtrack of the Universe

in Astronomy, Music, Science, Video - Science | April 25th, 2011

We think of space as a silent movie, some­thing we see but nev­er hear. Yet space cre­ates a sound­track of sorts (even if sound waves can’t real­ly trav­el through the cos­mos), and now sci­en­tists and musi­cians want to play that sound­track for you.

Ear­li­er this year, Jan­na Levin, Pro­fes­sor of Physics and Astron­o­my at Barnard College/Columbia Uni­ver­si­ty, described how we can math­e­mat­i­cal­ly mod­el the sounds made by black holes. Fast for­ward to the 10:27 mark of her TED Talk above, and you will hear what it sounds like when a lighter black hole falls into a heav­ier black hole. The lit­tle guy bangs against space, kind of like a drumb play­ing faster and faster … which brings us to Mick­ey Hart, a for­mer drum­mer for The Grate­ful Dead.

In 2010, Hart teamed up with George Smoot, a Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist at the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry, to repro­duce the sound of The Big Bang and super­novas. (Berke­ley Labs post­ed this super­no­va clip above.) You can read more about the unlike­ly pair­ing and the “Rhythms of the Uni­verse” project here, then expe­ri­ence more celes­tial sounds recre­at­ed by Hart here.

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The Beatles: Live at Shea Stadium, 1965

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | April 22nd, 2011

Here’s a Fri­day treat: The Bea­t­les’ 1965 con­cert at Shea Sta­di­um. At the time, this was the biggest rock con­cert in his­to­ry, with 12 cam­eras, a heli­copter fly­over, and 55,000 scream­ing fans. Best of all were the boys them­selves, still gid­dy enough about their own fame that they were crack­ing up on stage.

You can find a full set list for the show, and don’t miss John Lennon’s ter­rif­ic work on “Tick­et to Ride,” start­ing at minute 10:45. Just the day before, the band appeared on The Ed Sul­li­van Show for the fourth and final time, and we have the per­for­mance here in HD. Watched togeth­er, the two videos give a nice sense of how exhil­a­rat­ing Beat­le­ma­nia must have been.

The full Bea­t­les at Shea doc­u­men­tary (68 min­utes) can be watched over at Veoh.com.

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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