On June 5, 1965, Joan Baez played a special concert at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush, London. Although her fame at the time was newly eclipsed by that of her recently estranged lover Bob Dylan, Baez was very much in her prime.
The concert was recorded less than a month after Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, chronicled in D.A. Pennebaker’s film Don’t Look Back, in which Dylan failed to invite Baez onstage despite the fact that she had introduced him to national audiences in America.
Baez plays several Dylan songs in the BBC concert, along with other folk and pop songs from her repertoire. Included is Baez’s first hit single, her version of the Phil Ochs song “There but for Fortune,” which was released the same month in America but would not come out in the UK until the following month. The concert was originally broadcast by the BBC as two separate half-hour specials, both ending with the classic French love song “Plaisir d’amour.” Baez’s mother Joan Senior, or “Big Joan” as she was called (and who died this month at the age of 100), can be seen in the background at the 33:30 and 104:43 marks applauding and smiling proudly. The set list for the two back-to-back programs is:
Very early in his career as a bandleader, Miles Davis developed a reputation for a too-cool persona on stage. Whether turning his back on the crowd or walking offstage while his sidemen soloed, his refusal to cater to audience expectations only enhanced his mystique. Whatever fans and critics made of Miles’ seeming contempt—political statement, eccentricity, or dazzling egotism—his live playing transfixed those who had the privilege to see him and consistently drew the best players in history into his orbit.
The sixties saw him at the peak of his powers as a live performer. He hit the pop charts in the early part of the decade with the 1962 two-LP set In Person, recorded over two nights at the Blackhawk in San Francisco. The very next month he recorded the Grammy-nominated Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall with an orchestra led by Gil Evans. In 2007, a never‑before released live gem from the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival thrilled fans (listen to “So What” from that recording above). All of these recordings capture Davis during his “transition period,” between his first and second “great quintets” (which featured John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter on sax, respectively).
Directly above, hear a lesser-known, officially unreleased recording from that transitional period. Captured by French public broadcasting company ORFT, the sessions took place at the Juan-Les-Pins Festival in Antibes in July 26–28, 1963, just a few months before Monterey. Davis is backed here by the same ensemble: George Coleman on tenor sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and (then seventeen-year-old) Tony Williams on drums. These recordings represent alternates and outtakes from the record originally released in ’64 as In Europe, reissued in 1989 as Miles in Antibes. The full tracklist (below) is bookended by two versions of Kind of Blue opener “So What,” and it’s interesting to compare these wildly frenetic ’63 live iterations from Monterey and Antibes to the classic of laid-back cool from the late 50s.
1. So What (July 26, 1963)
2 Stella By Starlight (July 26)
3. Seven Steps To Heaven – Walkin’ (July 26)
4. If I were a Bell (July 28, 1963)
5. So What (July 28)
Davis’ first and second “great quintets” are perhaps his most-loved groups. However, the short-lived 1963 ensemble above certainly pushed him in a new direction. For another pivotal moment of transition, watch the 1969 return to the Juan-Les-Pins Jazz Fest in the video below, which shows Davis again moving in a very different direction, presaging his ’70s swerves into acid rock and funk. This performance features another all-star ensemble, with Wayne Shorter on tenor and soprano sax, Chick Corea on electric piano, Dave Holland on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums.
You probably know Mikhail Bulgakov through one of two works: Heart of a Dog, his short novel about the forced transformation of a dog into a human being (comparisons to the grand Soviet project have, indeed, been suggested), or The Master and Margarita, his longer, later novel about a visit paid to Soviet Russia by the devil himself. Heart of a Dog, written in 1925, didn’t see official Russian publication until 1987; The Master and Margarita, written between 1928 and 1940, didn’t come out until 1967. This suggests that Bulgakov’s literary perspective may have touched a nerve with the authorities, but the artfulness with which he expressed it has since lifted him to the top of the twentieth-century Russian canon.
Other creators have paid to tribute to the enormously influential The Master and Margarita with artfulness of their own. We now have at least five films, two television series, nineteen stage productions, two ballets, four operas (though the complicated material defeated Andrew Lloyd Webber’s attempt at adaptation) and a graphic novel based in whole or in part on Bulgakov’s book. At the top of the post, you can watch Svetlana Petrova and Natalia Berezovaya’s Margarita, an animated short that, ambitious in its own way, attempts to capture The Master and Margarita in two ever-shifting minutes of imagery. (Or, as this Russian animation database puts it, “Impudent young animators dare to touch Bulgakov.” ) Though made in 1997, it comes off today as quite a tantalizing “book trailer,” though I would submit that Bulgakov’s writing needs none of our internet-age marketing innovations.
Youssef Biaz, reciting here, was 16 years old when he was named Poetry Out Loud National Champion. Biaz won a $20,000 award and $500 worth of poetry books for his high school in Auburn, Alabama. He went on to recite poetry at the White House along with Rita Dove, Common, and Billy Collins. His favorite poet, Sharon Olds, just won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
This past weekend, kids across the country packed their bags and headed to Washington, DC, to recite poetry in the eighth consecutive year of the national competition, Poetry Out Loud. The recitation competition, presented by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, brings fifty-three American high school students to the nation’s capital to compete for the title of 2013 Poetry Out Loud National Champion. It will culminate tonight in an evening of recitation competition at 7pm EDT.
If you can’t make it to DC for the free event this year, which features host Anna Deavere Smith and singer-cellist Ben Sollee, view the live webcast of Poetry Out Loud, or host a viewing party and bid a celebratory adieu to National Poetry Month.
Kristin Gecan is the media associate at the Poetry Foundation, which is the publisher of Poetry magazine and an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. The site also features an archive of more than 10,000 poems. Follow the Poetry Foundation on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or Pinterest.
Willie Nelson, America’s iconic country music singer, has logged lots of miles. And, today, he turns 80, with more than 60 studio albums, 10 live albums, and 27 collaborations to his credit. Recently, Nelson showed that he has a little more tread on his tires when, while visiting Conan O’Brien’s show, he shot a short audition reel for Peter Jackson, hoping to land the role of Gandalf in The Hobbit sequel. It’s doubtful that, wherever he is, Ian McKellan is breaking a sweat.
Sarah Palin didn’t like the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. In a cranky tweet, she wrote: “That #WHCD was pathetic. The rest of America is out there working our asses off while these DC assclowns throw themselves a #nerdprom.” But I have to disagree with America’s most distinguished half-term governor. Somewhere in Washington, a hard-working writer imagined Barack Obama playing Daniel Day Lewis playing Barack Obama and had the gumption to follow the joke entirely through. Whoever’s responsible for realizing that comic moment, we salute you.
Spielberg’s Obama aired during the Correspondents’ Dinner. You can watch Conan O’Brien’s full comedy routine at the WHCD here.
The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.
But science and religion, as it is widely practiced, do overlap. They both make specific claims about the nature and history of the Universe. Some religionists do indeed make claims about the age of rocks.
Given the obvious overlap, it’s not surprising that scientists–particularly those who work in the most fundamental and general of fields, like physics and cosmology–are often asked for their views on religion. In this short video from Big Think, astrophysicist and popular science writer Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why he is loathe to take sides on the issue, and why he dislikes the word “atheist.”
“The moment when someone attaches you to a philosophy or a movement,” says Tyson, “then they assign all the baggage, and all the rest of the philosophy that goes with it, to you. And when you want to have a conversation, they will assert that they already know everything important that there is to know about you because of that association. And that’s not the way to have a conversation.”
In 1987, Compuserve begatteth Image Format 87A.
Image Format 87A begatteth Graphics Interchange Format or GIF (rhymes with a certain brand of peanut butter, the video history above helpfully points out).
The proliferations of free online GIF generators begatteth the countless annoying, smarmy, boneheaded animated loops you’ve seen junking up emails, profile pictures, and MySpace pages.
Of course, some of them are also pretty cool, which is why they’re being celebrated with a festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. No tickets necessary. Moving the Still: A GIF Festival will be screening through June on the outdoor electronic billboard meant to promote upcoming and current attractions. Conceivably, viewers with wheels and time to spare could take it in on an endless loop of their own, by circling up Flatbush to Lafayette, then moving up when the light changes, battling traffic from the nearby Barclays Center on the return leg.
What do we stand to see in this festival? The video history leads us to believe that anything is possible, though certain things—accidental happenings, laser cats, colorful barfing (…wait, colorful barfing?)—have a built in appeal.
Considering the possibility of a truly proletarian art, the great English literary critic William Empson once wrote, “the reason an English audience can enjoy Russian propagandist films is that the propaganda is too remote to be annoying.” Perhaps this is why American artists and bohemians have so often taken to the political iconography of far-flung regimes, in ways both romantic and ironic. One nation’s tedious socialist realism is another’s radical exotica.
But do U.S. cultural exports have the same effect? One need only look at the success of our most banal branding overseas to answer in the affirmative. Yet no one would think to add Abstract Expressionist painting to a list that includes fast food and Walt Disney products. Nevertheless, the work of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning wound up as part of a secret CIA program during the height of the Cold War, aimed at promoting American ideals abroad.
The artists themselves were completely unaware that their work was being used as propaganda. On what agents called a “long leash,” they participated in several exhibitions secretly organized by the CIA, such as “The New American Painting” (see catalog cover at top), which visited major European cities in 1958–59 and included such modern primitive works as surrealist William Baziotes’ 1947 Dwarf (below) and 1951’s Tournament by Adolph Gottlieb above.
Of course what seems most bizarre about this turn of events is that avant-garde art in America has never been much appreciated by the average citizen, to put it mildly. American Main Streets harbor undercurrents of distrust or outright hatred for out-there, art-world experimentation, a trend that filters upward and periodically erupts in controversies over Congressional funding for the arts. A 1995 Independent article on the CIA’s role in promoting Abstract Expressionism describes these attitudes during the Cold War period:
In the 1950s and 1960s… the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art—President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
Why, then, did they receive such backing? One short answer:
This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy’s hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy.
The one-way relationship between modernist painters and the CIA—only recently confirmed by former case officer Donald Jameson—supposedly enabled the agency to make the work of Soviet Socialist Realists appear, in Jameson’s words, “even more stylized and more rigid and confined than it was.” (See Evdokiya Usikova’s 1959 Lenin with Villagers below, for example). For a longer explanation, read the full article at The Independent. It’s the kind of story Don DeLillo would cook up.
William Empson goes on to say that “a Tory audience subjected to Tory propaganda of the same intensity” as Russian imports, “would be extremely bored.” If he is correct, it’s likely that the average true believer socialist in Europe was already bored silly by Soviet-approved art. What surprises in these revelations is that the avant-garde works that so radically altered the American art world and enraged the average congressman and taxpayer were co-opted and collected by suave U.S. intelligence officers like so many Shepard Fairey posters.
Put yourself in the mind of an artistic young woman who goes to see Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when it first opens in 1937. Captivated by the film’s groundbreaking cel-based cinematic animation, understanding that it represents the future of the art form, you feel you should pursue a career with a studio yourself. Alas, in response to the letter of inquiry you send Disney’s way, you receive the terse rejection letter above. “Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen,” it flatly states, “as that work is performed entirely by young men. For this reason girls are not considered for the training school.” Your only remaining hope? To aim lower on the totem pole and become an “Inker” or “Painter,” but “it would not be advisable to come to Hollywood with the above specifically in view, as there are really very few openings in comparison with the number of girls who apply.”
Times have changed; women now create animation. But to catch a glimpse of the industry in decidedly pre-changed times, revisit the 1939 promotional documentary short How Walt Disney Cartoons Are Made. In it, you’ll see these very young men hard at work, as well as those “pretty girls” hired to do inking and color. Prewar Disney turned out some masterpieces, no doubt, but by today’s standards their attitudes toward gender may leave something to be desired. “This letter originally belonged to my grandmother,” writes the user who discovered the note above. “After she passed away we discovered it and were surprised at how well it was preserved for being nearly 70 years old.” Young women like her, aspiring to high places in animation, found themselves forced to find alternate routes in, although after receiving that rejection letter on that stationery — emblazoned with Snow White herself, adding insult to injury — I wouldn’t blame them for looking into other fields entirely.
You don’t hear much about Guantanamo these days, unless you keep an eye on the writings of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage. Last week, Savage reported on a hunger strike involving 93 prisoners that’s now in its third month. Ostensibly the protest is in response to prison guards handling the Koran in disrespectful ways. But the real cause comes down to this: “a growing sense among many prisoners, some of whom have been held without trial for more than 11 years, that they will never go home.”
As part of Savage’s reporting on Gitmo, he has also created a photo blog that gives us insight into the prison library and its odd collection of books. The library offers prisoners access to Captain America comics (that must go over well with enemy combatants); pulp romance books by Danielle Steele (another choice pick for Islamists); the complete Harry Potter series (I imagine the Prisoner of Azkaban volume hits home); some more serious works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien and Charles Dickens; an assortment of religious books; and the occasional self help book like The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook.
According to news reports, the library currently has 3,500 volumes on pre-approved topics. Prisoners have to order books in advance. (They can’t just wonder through the stacks.) And the most popular books include Agatha Christie mysteries, the self-help manual Don’t Be Sad; the The Lord of the Rings; and, of course, Harry Potter.
We know that other prisons have given their residents access to our collections of Free Audio Books and Free eBooks. But I doubt that will be happening at Gitmo any time soon.
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