The Moth Now Streams its Brilliant & Quietly Addictive Stories on the Web

in Life, Literature, Podcasts | October 27th, 2012

The Moth, a New York City-based sto­ry­telling orga­ni­za­tion, is a rare crea­ture indeed. Found­ed in 1997 by poet and nov­el­ist George Dawes Green, The Moth was orig­i­nal­ly Green’s attempt to re-cre­ate sum­mer nights in his native Geor­gia, when friends would gath­er on the porch and tell each oth­er stories—a south­ern tra­di­tion Green missed in the north, sym­bol­ized by the moths he remem­bered as part of the scene. From its begin­nings in Green’s New York liv­ing room, the orga­ni­za­tion has grown into a mul­ti-media phe­nom­e­non, with live sto­ry­tellers on stage in New York and Los Ange­les, and on tour around the world, a pod­cast, and The Moth Radio Hour, air­ing on over 200 sta­tions nation­wide.

So who tells sto­ries at The Moth? An amaz­ing range of peo­ple, from actors, authors, and musi­cians, to every­day peo­ple with some­thing to say and the courage to say it in front of a crowd. In fact, if you feel like you belong in that last cat­e­go­ry, The Moth invites you to pitch them two min­utes of your sto­ry and sub­mit it for a chance to tell it live. Oh, one oth­er thing: The Moth stip­u­lates that all sto­ries must be true sto­ries and must be your sto­ries, not some­one else’s. How do they know? I sup­pose they’ve just got fine­ly-tuned BS detec­tors after 15 years in the sto­ry­telling busi­ness.

To give you an idea of what a Moth sto­ry is like (I almost wrote “a typ­i­cal Moth sto­ry,” but there is no such thing) have a look at the video above, with Neil Gaiman telling a dri­ly humor­ous sto­ry from his teenage years. Gaiman’s pre­sen­ta­tion is sub­dued, in his under­stat­ed Eng­lish way, and replete with delight­ful digres­sions and asides. An exam­ple of a more impas­sioned, urgent Moth tale comes from come­di­an Antho­ny Grif­fith, who tells the sto­ry of his rise to com­ic fame with his Tonight Show appear­ances while he was also nurs­ing his young daugh­ter who had can­cer.

As I said, there is no “typ­i­cal Moth sto­ry,” and that’s the appeal. Every­one who takes the stage has some­thing to say that no one else could, because it’s theirs alone. Both of the videos above are avail­able on The Moth’s Youtube chan­nel, which fea­tures dozens more live sto­ry­tellers (I’d rec­om­mend Dan Savage’s sto­ry among so many oth­ers).

Oh, but wait, there’s more! (Can you tell I’m excit­ed about this?). The Moth is now stream­ing audio of recent sto­ry­telling events on its web­site, with some avail­able for free down­load. Some here are not-to-be-missed. For instance, you should drop what­ev­er you’re doing (read­ing this sen­tence, I assume) and lis­ten to Damien Echols’ har­row­ing sto­ry of his 18 years on death row as one of the wrong­ly-con­vict­ed, and recent­ly freed, “West Mem­phis Three.” Still here? Fine. Then you must imme­di­ate­ly go away and lis­ten to play­wright A.E. Hotch­n­er tell his sto­ry about watch­ing a bull­fight with his friend Ernest Hem­ing­way. If nei­ther of these appeals, you’re prob­a­bly hope­less, but hey, what can it hurt to scroll through the exten­sive list of sto­ries stream­ing on The Moth web­site and find a few that speak to you? Invari­ably, this will hap­pen: when you start lis­ten­ing to Moth sto­ry­tellers, you’ll find it very hard to stop. It’s a pret­ty great non-prof­it rack­et they’ve got going: bank­ing on the old­est and most durable form of enter­tain­ment and human con­nec­tion.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Hear Sylvia Plath Read Her Poem ‘A Birthday Present’

in Literature, Poetry | October 27th, 2012

Sylvia Plath would have turned 81 years old today. It’s a strange thing to imag­ine. Plath’s rep­u­ta­tion as a poet is so sad­ly bound up with her death by sui­cide at the age of 30, and so many of the lines in her lat­er poet­ry sound like sui­cide notes, that it seems impos­si­ble to pic­ture her mak­ing it to old age. In “Lady Lazarus,” Plath writes: “Dying/Is an art, like every­thing else./I do it excep­tion­al­ly well.”

Plath is remem­bered main­ly for the poems she wrote in the last half year of her life, when she had sep­a­rat­ed from her hus­band, the poet Ted Hugh­es. It was then that Plath found her “real voice,” as Hugh­es put it, in a marathon burst of cre­ativ­i­ty that result­ed in the com­po­si­tion of some 70 poems, over half of which were col­lect­ed in her posthu­mous book, Ariel.

But the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Plath’s final days–her anger and sense of betray­al over her hus­band’s infi­deli­ty, her deci­sion to kill her­self by turn­ing on the gas and plac­ing her head in an unlight­ed oven while her two young chil­dren slept in anoth­er room–have com­pli­cat­ed her lit­er­ary lega­cy. A mor­bid cult has sur­round­ed Plath, with many of her most fer­vent admir­ers gloss­ing over the poet­’s long strug­gle with men­tal ill­ness to find in her a mar­tyred fem­i­nist saint, a mod­ern Ophe­lia.

“It has fre­quent­ly been asked whether the poet­ry of Plath would have so aroused the atten­tion of the world if Plath had not killed her­self,” writes Janet Mal­colm in The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hugh­es. “I would agree with those who say no. The death-rid­den poems move us and elec­tri­fy us because of our knowl­edge of what hap­pened.” It’s a shame, because Plath’s achieve­ment should be judged on its own mer­its. In 2000, Joyce Car­ol Oates described some of the qual­i­ties she admired in Plath’s writ­ing:

The most mem­o­rable of Sylvia Plath’s incan­ta­to­ry poems, many of them writ­ten dur­ing the final, tur­bu­lent weeks of her life, read as if they’ve been chis­eled, with a fine sur­gi­cal instru­ment, out of Arc­tic ice. Her lan­guage is taught and orig­i­nal; her strat­e­gy elip­ti­cal; such poems as “Les­bos,” “The Munich Man­nequins,” “Par­a­lyt­ic,” “Dad­dy” (Plath’s most noto­ri­ous poem), and “Edge” (Plath’s last poem, writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary, 1963), and the pre­scient “Death & Co.” linger long in the mem­o­ry, with the pow­er of malev­o­lent nurs­ery rhymes. For Plath, “The blood jet is poet­ry,” and read­ers who might know lit­tle of the poet­’s pri­vate life can nonethe­less feel the authen­tic­i­ty of Plath’s recur­ring emo­tions: hurt, bewil­der­ment, rage, sto­ic calm, bit­ter res­ig­na­tion. Like the great­est of her pre­de­ces­sors, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Plath under­stood that poet­ic truth is best told slant­wise, in as few words as pos­si­ble.

Oates called Plath “our acknowl­edged Queen of Sor­rows, the spokes­woman for our most pri­vate, most help­less night­mares.” The poem above, “A Birth­day Present,” is one of the pri­vate and night­mar­ish poems col­lect­ed in Ariel. Plath wrote it just over half a cen­tu­ry ago as she was con­tem­plat­ing the approach of her 30th birth­day, and some­thing dark­er. The record­ing is from a BBC broad­cast in Decem­ber of 1962, only two months before Plath’s death. (You can read the text as you lis­ten.) In his 1966 fore­ward to the first U.S. edi­tion of Ariel, the poet Robert Low­ell made the fol­low­ing assess­ment of Plath:

Sui­cide, father-hatred, self-loathing–nothing is too much for the macabre gai­ety of her con­trol. Yet it is too much; her art’s immor­tal­i­ty is life’s dis­in­te­gra­tion. The sur­prise, the shim­mer­ing, unwrapped birth­day present, the tran­scen­dence “into the red eye, the caul­dron of morn­ing,” and the lover, who are always wait­ing for her, are Death, her own abrupt and defi­ant death.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dylan Thomas Recites ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’ and Oth­er Poems

Charles Bukows­ki Reads His Poem “The Secret of My Endurance”

Allen Gins­berg Reads His Famous­ly Cen­sored Beat Poem, Howl

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

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The Amazing Flights of Wingsuit Champion Espen Fadnes

in Life | October 26th, 2012

The 2011 video, Sense of Fly­ing (below), gave view­ers a remark­able look at Espen Fadnes fly­ing down moun­tain sides at speeds of 155 miles per hour. If you saw the video along with 2.5 mil­lion oth­ers, you per­haps won­dered: What could be going through this guy’s head? Well, now is your chance to find out. A new­ly-released video, Split of a Sec­ond (above), gets into the psy­che and moti­va­tion of the Nor­we­gian Wing­suit World Cham­pi­on. It also shows the extent to which this guy real­ly lives on a razor’s edge. Strap your­self in. Put on your crash hel­met. And enjoy the ride.

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Watch Nosferatu, the Seminal Vampire Film, Free Online (1922)

in Film | October 26th, 2012

What, you haven’t seen Nos­fer­atu yet? But you’re in luck: not only do you still have a few days left to fit this sem­i­nal clas­sic of vam­pir­ic cin­e­ma into your Hal­loween view­ing rota­tion, but when the 31st comes, you can watch it free online yet again. An inspi­ra­tion for count­less vam­pire films that would fol­low over the next nine­ty years, F.W. Mur­nau’s 1922 silent fea­ture adapts Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la, but just loose­ly enough so that it could put its own stamp on the myth and not actu­al­ly have to pay for rights to the nov­el. Jonathan and Mina Hark­er? Now Thomas and Ellen Hut­ter. Jonathan’s boss Ren­field? Now a fel­low named Knock. Count Drac­u­la, to whose vast and crum­bling estate Ren­field sends the hap­less Jonathan? Now Count Orlok — and unfor­get­tably so. We can post no more rel­e­vant endorse­ment of Nos­fer­atu’s endur­ing val­ue than to say that it remains scary, or at least eerie, to this day. I defy any sophis­ti­cat­ed mod­ern view­er to spend All Hal­lows’ eve with this pic­ture and not come away feel­ing faint­ly unset­tled.

Part of it has to do with sheer age: while some visu­al effects haven’t held up — get a load of Orlok escap­ing his cof­fin in the ship’s car­go hold, employ­ing a tech­nique trust­ed by every nine-year-old with a video cam­era — the deeply worn look and feel seems, at moments, to mark the film as com­ing from a dis­tant past when aris­to­crat­ic blood-suck­ing liv­ing corpses may as well have exist­ed.

This same process has, over four decades, imbued with a pati­na of men­ace every hor­ror film made in the sev­en­ties. Fans of the 1979 Wern­er Her­zog-Klaus Kin­s­ki col­lab­o­ra­tion Nos­fer­atu the Vampyre, a com­pan­ion piece obvi­ous­ly worth view­ing in any case, can attest to this. You might also con­sid­er incor­po­rat­ing in your Hal­loween night view­ing E. Elias Mer­hige’s Shad­ow of the Vam­pire, a satire of the 1920s film indus­try’s col­li­sion of eccen­tric old-world crafts­man­ship and sav­age com­mer­cial buf­foon­ery which imag­ines Orlok as hav­ing been played by a geni­une vam­pire. As for Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s rights-hav­ing 1992 adap­ta­tion Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la… well, its chief point of inter­est is still Gary Old­man’s hair­style.

You can always find Nos­fer­atu on our list of Great Silent Films, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis: Uncut & Restored

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Stephen King Turns Short Story into a Free Webcomic

in Books, Deals | October 26th, 2012

Pri­or to becom­ing a house­hold name, Stephen King did time as a high school Eng­lish teacher and a labor­er in an indus­tri­al laun­dry. These days, he could insu­late his love­ly Vic­to­ri­an home with crisp hun­dreds if such were his whim. Yet it seems he has­n’t for­got­ten what it’s like to watch every pen­ny, wish­ing there was enough fat in the bud­get for the pur­chase of one measly com­ic book based on an insane­ly famous author’s obscure short sto­ry…

Are gen­eros­i­ty and the remem­brance of past strug­gles moti­vat­ing King to dole out artist Den­nis “X‑Men Noir” Calero’s graph­ic adap­ta­tion of his short sto­ry, “The Lit­tle Green God of Agony,”  for the next sev­en weeks?

Or is he research­ing what it feels like to be an undis­cov­ered writer in the dig­i­tal age, anx­ious­ly dan­gling free con­tent on his web­site in an attempt to build read­er­ship?

Bro­ken into thrice week­ly install­ments to be deliv­ered over a peri­od of eight weeks, King’s sto­ry con­cerns one Andrew New­some, the sixth rich­est man in the world, and Kat Mac­Don­ald, the expo­nen­tial­ly less well-to-do RN car­ing for him in the wake of a debil­i­tat­ing acci­dent, anoth­er sub­ject to which King is no stranger. As of this writ­ing, the com­ic is only avail­able on the author’s web­site, though the King jug­ger­naut is so unstop­pable, the next move may well be a film, a tv minis­eries or a Broad­way musi­cal. Maine win­ters are long and cold. Per­haps even the mas­ter of sus­pense warms to the prospect of some extra insu­la­tion.

You can start fol­low­ing the “The Lit­tle Green God of Agony” here.

via Gal­l­ey­Cat

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Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gadget That Will Save Music

in Music, Technology | October 26th, 2012

In the open­ing min­utes of his new mem­oir Wag­ing Heavy Peace (I lis­tened to the audio book, and you can too for free), Neil Young talks about his mod­el trains, his exten­sive col­lec­tion of vin­tage cars, and not much about music per se — although he does high­light his entre­pre­neur­ial effort to save the music indus­try with a new-fan­gled audio sys­tem called Pure­Tone. 

For quite some time now, Young has lament­ed the decline of music dur­ing the dig­i­tal age. It’s not pirat­ing that’s the cul­prit. It’s the MP3, a for­mat that degrades the qual­i­ty of the music we hear. Speak­ing at a Wall Street Jour­nal con­fer­ence ear­li­er this year (watch here), Young com­plained that the MP3 can’t “trans­fer the depth of the art.” “My goal,” he con­tin­ued, “is to try and res­cue the art form that I’ve been prac­tic­ing for the past 50 years.”

Enter Pure­Tone, which has actu­al­ly been renamed Pono more recent­ly. The device/music ser­vice will hit the mar­ket next year, and it essen­tial­ly promis­es to let fans hear record­ings in super high fideli­ty, as if they owned the orig­i­nal mas­ter tapes cre­at­ed by var­i­ous artists. Not long ago, Flea, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, raved about the sound of Pono, telling Rolling Stone: “It’s not like some vague thing that you need dogs’ ears to hear. It’s a dras­tic dif­fer­ence.”

If that’s right, Young may do a great ser­vice for musi­cians every­where, and make a lot of mon­ey for him­self and oth­ers along the way. I mean imag­ine the num­ber of remas­ters that could hit the mar­ket in the com­ings years, start­ing with two by Bob Dylan — The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan and High­way 61 Revis­it­ed. A per­fect place to begin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

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Calibre’s Open Source Software Makes It Easy to Read Free eBooks (and Much More)

in Amazon Kindle, e-books, iPad, iPhone, Software | October 25th, 2012

We at Open Cul­ture have dis­cov­ered a handy piece of soft­ware that will make it eas­i­er to use our col­lec­tion, 600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. Cal­i­bre is a free e‑book library man­age­ment soft­ware that lets users con­vert e‑books from one for­mat to anoth­er.

Say that you’ve down­loaded Jane Austen’s Pride and Prej­u­dice in the open ePUB for­mat and want to move the book onto your Kin­dle. Cal­i­bre can con­vert the text into all of the major e‑reader for­mats, includ­ing Kindle’s pro­pri­etary for­mat. The pro­gram will then sync the text to your device and you’re good to go.

Cal­i­bre sup­ports e‑book for­mats used by major man­u­fac­tur­ers (includ­ing Ama­zon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Sony), but if your device isn’t list­ed in the program’s list, Calibre’s “gener­ic device” option will most like­ly do the job.

The pro­gram also offers a default view­er for read­ing texts on your com­put­er, and books can be con­vert­ed from one plat­form to anoth­er, mak­ing it easy to move books from your phone to iPad to lap­top and beyond.

Cal­i­bre fills a niche for e‑book read­ers, pro­vid­ing a sim­ple way to man­age e‑libraries. The pro­gram also helps man­age and orga­nize online mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers and oth­er read­ing mate­ri­als. Click “Fetch News” and Cal­i­bre will scan select­ed online news out­lets and cat­a­log them in your col­lec­tion.

You can even buy books by using Calibre’s inter­face to search for the best price on a select­ed title.

You can down­load Cal­i­bre here and then start min­ing our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free eBooks.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal cul­ture and edu­ca­tion. Find more of her work at .

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Fellini: I’m a Born Liar Profiles the Filmmaker’s Love of Artifice (and Features Italo Calvino)

in Film | October 25th, 2012

“If you know lit­tle about Felli­ni,” warns Roger Ebert in his review of Felli­ni: I’m a Born Liar (watch it free online here), “this is not the place to start.” Per­haps he right­ly issues such a dis­claimer about a for­mal­ly unortho­dox doc­u­men­tary that plunges deeply and imme­di­ate­ly into the aes­thet­ics of its sub­jec­t’s work while pay­ing bare­ly any heed to the facts of his life. But if you can’t say that Fed­eri­co Felli­ni dealt near-exclu­sive­ly in aes­thet­ics, you can’t say it about any­one. The direc­tor’s love of arti­fice, which even­tu­al­ly led to his total ded­i­ca­tion to shoot­ing all scenes on a sound­stage, pro­duced motion pic­tures so flam­boy­ant yet so dis­tinc­tive and per­son­al that first-time view­ers still find them­selves unde­cid­ed as to whether to call them ele­gant or grotesque. The ver­dict, as any reg­u­lar attendee of revival screen­ings of 8½, Juli­et of the Spir­its, Satyri­con, and Amar­cord knows, is that they’re both: grotesque to the extent of their ele­gance, and ele­gant to the extent of their grotesque­ness. This already gives doc­u­men­tar­i­an Dami­an Pet­ti­grew much to work with, and indeed, he would have had the mate­r­i­al and exper­tise to assem­ble a robust essay film on Fellini’s visu­als alone. But he chose to make a fresh­er exam­i­na­tion.

Though he pre­miered the movie in 2002, Pet­ti­grew’s real work on I’m a Born Liar began near­ly twen­ty years before. In 1983, he met with the Ital­ian nov­el­ist Ita­lo Calvi­no, intend­ing to shoot a doc­u­men­tary about him. But upon real­iz­ing that their con­ver­sa­tions came around inevitably to Felli­ni, the writer arranged a sur­prise meet­ing of the two film­mak­ers. Years lat­er, Felli­ni would sub­mit to the ten-hour inter­view from Pet­ti­grew that struc­tures this film. Cer­tain col­lab­o­ra­tors give tes­ti­mo­ny, notably still-shak­en actors like Don­ald Suther­land and Ter­ence Stamp. But Calvi­no’s own appear­ance turns out to shed the most light on his coun­try­man’s work, and vice ver­sa, not least because both of them pre­ferred to find the truth through elab­o­rate fab­ri­ca­tion. I’m a Born Liar’s sur­pris­ing­ly thor­ough Wikipedia page quotes a pas­sage from Calvi­no’s Mr. Palo­mar that sup­pos­ed­ly inspired Felli­ni on a shoot, but may also reflect the whole basis of his craft: “Life on the sur­face is so rich and var­i­ous that I have no urge to enquire fur­ther. I believe that it is only when you’ve come to know the sur­face of things that you can try to find out what lies beneath. But the sur­face of things is inex­haustible.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fed­eri­co Felli­ni Intro­duces Him­self to Amer­i­ca in Exper­i­men­tal 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Historic Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)

in History, Random | October 25th, 2012

When I first heard that 43-year old Aus­tri­an dare­dev­il and for­mer mil­i­tary para­chutist Felix Baum­gart­ner would be jump­ing 128,000 feet from space, my imme­di­ate reac­tion was, “What? Why?!” Because why would any­one do that? And I assumed it was all some macho stunt to pro­mote Red Bull, his cor­po­rate spon­sor, which isn’t entire­ly unfound­ed. But I also had no sense of the his­toric con­text, the sci­en­tif­ic impli­ca­tions, and until I read the details, the tru­ly death-defy­ing mag­ni­tude of it all. As I watched the jump and then learned more, my won­der and admi­ra­tion grew, par­tic­u­lar­ly in read­ing Baumgartner’s own accounts of his sev­en years of prepa­ra­tion for the feat.

Baum­gart­ner best­ed Chuck Yea­ger on the same day in his­to­ry that Yea­ger broke the sound bar­ri­er (he says Yeager’s going to be “pissed”). He also broke the record set by Joseph Kit­tinger, an Air Force pilot who leapt from 102,800 feet (19.5 miles) above earth in 1960. You can watch a short doc­u­men­tary of Kittinger’s famous jump above. The tech­nol­o­gy of 1960 didn’t allow for the crys­tal-clear images Baum­gart­ner cap­tured with his two suit cam­eras, but it’s still an impres­sive lit­tle film, made more so by Kittinger’s voice over describ­ing the sen­sa­tions he expe­ri­enced dur­ing free fall. Below is a clas­sic 1960 news­reel film of the jump, with a dra­mat­ic announc­er and tri­umphal, mar­tial music.

Kit­tinger and Baum­gart­ner first met in 2008, and the elder test pilot sup­port­ed and helped plan the Red Bull Stratos project that would break his record. He also served as Baum­gart­ner’s mis­sion con­trol, guid­ing him from his tiny space cap­sule to the ground. The jump was appar­ent­ly sup­posed to take place two years ear­li­er, on the 50th anniver­sary of Kittinger’s, but was delayed. Below, you can watch Kit­tinger dis­cuss the project and his own career in a 2010 inter­view with Red Bull.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Writer Who Couldn’t Read … And What That Tells Us About the Brain

in Science | October 25th, 2012

It hap­pened sud­den­ly one day. Howard Engel, a Cana­di­an mys­tery writer, woke up and real­ized he could­n’t read the dai­ly news­pa­per, let alone his own nov­els. He had suf­fered a stroke, it turns out, that left him with a rare con­di­tion called alex­ia sine agraphia, a con­di­tion that strange­ly leaves vic­tims unable to read, but able to write. It seems para­dox­i­cal. Read­ing and writ­ing go hand in hand, right? Not nec­es­sar­i­ly, and that’s why we’re glad that we have NPR’s art­ful video here to explain.

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Remembering Janis Joplin: Some Classic Live Performances and Previews of a New Joplin Musical

in Music | October 24th, 2012

Janis Joplin died forty-two years ago this month at age 27 of the same excess­es that killed many of her peers and at the absolute height of her career. But in the mid-nine­teen fifties, Joplin was a mis­fit kid with ter­ri­ble acne liv­ing a lone­ly exis­tence in Port Arthur, Texas. Then she dis­cov­ered the blues, and it trans­formed her. Bessie Smith and Lead­bel­ly, Odet­ta and Aretha Franklin. By 1964, she was liv­ing in San Fran­cis­co and record­ing blues stan­dards with future Jef­fer­son Air­plane gui­tarist Jor­ma Kauko­nen. She rose to promi­nence and found her­self a place to fit in with psy­che­del­ic pio­neers Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny. Big Broth­er didn’t ini­tial­ly take to Joplin’s soul­ful rasp, but she even­tu­al­ly won them over, and won mil­lions of fans over to the band, par­tic­u­lar­ly with their sec­ond album Cheap Thrills, which spawned the sin­gle “Piece of My Heart,” and my favorite, her ren­di­tion of blues clas­sic “Ball and Chain.” Her per­for­mance of the lat­ter at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in 1967 is leg­endary, and the record­ing of it above is pris­tine, with excel­lent live sound qual­i­ty and close-up cam­era angles of Joplin and the rest of the band.

Joplin broke away from Big Broth­er short­ly after Cheap Thrills and formed a solo act, tour­ing and record­ing with The Kozmic Blues Band, with whom she record­ed just one album, I Got Dem ‘Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama!. Crit­ics didn’t love it, but this tran­si­tion­al phase was impor­tant for Janis since it enabled her to work in a more blue-based sound bet­ter suit­ed to her dra­mat­ic per­sona. Kozmic draws on the clas­sic Stax/Volt records tem­plate, with horns and back­ing vocals as promi­nent accom­pa­ni­ment.  The record’s strongest moments are prob­a­bly the Bee Gees-penned “To Love Some­body” and the funk-soul “Try (Just a Lit­tle Bit Hard­er)” (above in Frank­furt, Ger­many).

In the last year of her life, Joplin head­lined the all-star Fes­ti­val Express train tour through Cana­da, with Bud­dy Guy, The Band, The Grate­ful Dead, and oth­ers. The tour was doc­u­ment­ed by Acad­e­my Award win­ning cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Peter Biziou and the footage has been acquired by His­toric Films Archive, who are dig­i­tiz­ing almost 96 hours of film from the tour, includ­ing, they claim, the only known live footage of Joplin singing “Me and My Bob­by McGee.” Below is a full, ener­getic, per­for­mance of “Tell Mama” from the Fes­ti­val Express tour:

Joplin con­tin­ued, through most of that year, to ele­vate her art, record­ing the best-sell­ing, posthu­mous­ly-released Pearl with new back­ing band Full Tilt Boo­gie. This is the Joplin most casu­al fans know—of “Me and My Bob­by McGee” and “Mer­cedes Benz,” and for good rea­son. One of her final pub­lic appear­ances was on The Dick Cavett Show in June of 1970 (below), where she per­forms sev­er­al live num­bers with Full Tilt Boo­gie. In Cavett’s inter­view with her, Joplin returns to her painful teenage years, say­ing that her high school class­mates “laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state.”


While the final peri­od of Joplin’s life saw her pro­duce some incred­i­ble work, her name occa­sion­al­ly becomes a short­hand for rock and roll excess­es that obscure her amaz­ing, if all-too-brief, career. In an effort to cel­e­brate her life, rather than dwell on her death, the pro­duc­ers of the new show One Night With Janis Joplin (cur­rent­ly at the Are­na Stage in Wash­ing­ton, DC) elide the drug abuse that killed her and focus on the music. Joplin’s broth­er Michael talks about their musi­cal upbring­ing in the video below, which also includes clips from the loose­ly-plot­ted musi­cal, with Mary Brid­get Davies as the star.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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