Woody Guthrie at 100: Celebrate His Amazing Life with a BBC Film

in History, Music | July 13th, 2012

Sat­ur­day marks the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, the great­ly influ­en­tial folk singer whose music was insep­a­ra­ble from the hard cir­cum­stances of his life and his deep sense of social jus­tice.

“A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it,” Guthrie once said, “or it could be who’s hun­gry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and where the job is or who’s broke and where the mon­ey is or who’s car­ry­ing a gun and where the peace is.”

To help mark the mile­stone we bring you rare footage, above, of Guthrie singing “The Ranger’s Com­mand” in 1945. The clip is from the 1988 BBC Are­na doc­u­men­tary, Woody Guthrie, which can be seen in its entire­ty below. The film is a vivid por­trait of the singer, with rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing, along with inter­views with Alan Lomax, Jack Elliot, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers. As BBC Are­na edi­tor Antho­ny Wall writes of the film’s sub­ject:

“This land is your land”, sang Woody Guthrie, his mis­sion to reclaim the true Amer­i­ca from the lawyers and politi­cians and thugs and return it to the peo­ple. He said he was just try­ing ‘to tell peo­ple what they already know’. Orig­i­nal­ly from a com­fort­ably-off fam­i­ly in Okla­homa, he took to the road and rails to chron­i­cle in song the depres­sion and dust­bowl. A fab­u­lous exam­ple of Amer­i­can self-inven­tion, ‘Guthrie came with the dust and he went with the wind’

For more on the Woody Guthrie Cen­ten­ni­al, vis­it Woody100.com. The Web site fea­tures a biog­ra­phy with pho­tographs and oth­er mate­ri­als, a “song of the day,” and a 2012 cal­en­dar of events. This week­end there are sev­er­al big events in New York, includ­ing a birth­day par­ty Sat­ur­day on Coney Island, with appear­ances by Bil­ly Bragg, Steve Ear­le and Guthrie’s daugh­ter, Nora, along with a free screen­ing the film “Bound For Glo­ry” on the beach. On Sun­day, Arlo Guthrie and oth­ers in the Guthrie fam­i­ly will give a free con­cert in Cen­tral Park.

And for more Guthrie resources, go to:

  • SoundPortraits.org to down­load audio of Alan Lomax’s 1940 inter­view with Guthrie, along with a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion.
  • CulturalEquity.org, host of the Alan Lomax Archives, for sev­er­al short but inter­est­ing takes of Guthrie singing polit­i­cal songs in 1948, includ­ing “If Dewey Gets Elect­ed” and “The Road is Rocky.”
  • NPR.org for a 40-minute radio pro­gram, “Fresh Air Cel­e­brates Woody Guthrie at 100.” Ter­ry Gross inter­views Guthrie biog­ra­ph­er Ed Cray and Smith­son­ian Folk­ways archivist Jeff Place, who co-pro­duced the new box set Woody at 100.
  • DemocracyNow.org for a one-hour tele­vi­sion spe­cial, “On Woody Guthrie’s Cen­ten­ni­al, Cel­e­brat­ing the Life, Pol­i­tics & Music of the ‘Dust Bowl Trou­ba­dour.’ ” Hosts Amy Good­man and Juan Gon­za­lez inter­view Woody’s daugh­ter Nora Guthrie, author of the new book, My Name is New York: Ram­blin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town, and his grand­daugh­ter Anna Canoni, along with musi­cian Steve Ear­le. The show also fea­tures rare audio record­ings of Guthrie speak­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Ban­jo Play

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Henry Rollins Remembers the Life-Changing Decision That Brought Him From Häagen-Dazs to Black Flag

in Life, Music | July 13th, 2012

Metafil­ter recent­ly fea­tured this Big Think clip of Hen­ry Rollins telling the sto­ry of his most life-chang­ing deci­sion. This choice, of course, was the one that brought him to the front of punk rock band Black Flag. Before he made it, he could call him­self only a col­lege dropout assis­tant-man­ag­ing a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Häa­gen-Dazs. In 1981, after catch­ing one of Black Flag’s New York shows — dur­ing which he hap­pened to climb onstage and sing a song with them — he decid­ed to try out to become the group’s actu­al singer. When Rollins ditched the ice cream game for the day (a for­feit, he recalls, of no more than $21) to audi­tion, Black Flag went from his favorite band to his band. Think­ing back, he real­izes he had lit­tle to lose: if he did­n’t give it a shot, he’d find him­self look­ing down the bar­rel of a long, hard exis­tence on his feet, answer­ing to cus­tomers all day, every day. If he gave it a shot and did­n’t make it, he’d at worst feel humil­i­at­ed, but, as he puts it, “humil­i­a­tion and young peo­ple kind of go togeth­er.”

“I don’t have tal­ent,” Rollins insists. “I have tenac­i­ty. I have dis­ci­pline. There was no choice for me but to work real­ly hard.” You may recall him mak­ing a sim­i­lar point in his pre­vi­ous Big Think video we fea­tured, in which he rec­om­mend­ed going at one’s pur­suits with a “monas­tic obses­sion.” But this time, he adds a note of fear. He talks about com­ing to under­stand that, with­out rely­ing on his four pil­lars of “appli­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline, focus, rep­e­ti­tion,” an enti­ty he calls “the Amer­i­ca” would have got­ten the bet­ter of him. This term seems to refer to the con­stant threat of crush­ing medi­oc­rity he feels in the Unit­ed States. “Every moment I am alive is because I have not been mur­dered by the Amer­i­ca,” he says in anoth­er inter­view. “The tasks I set out for myself are what I do to beat the per­fect point­less­ness of life.” Even if you don’t con­ceive of your own sit­u­a­tion quite so grim­ly, Rollins offers a per­spec­tive worth con­sid­er­ing. Per­haps his recruit­ment into Black Flag strikes you as a lucky break; he cer­tain­ly con­sid­ers it one. But as Bri­an Eno, anoth­er cul­tur­al fig­ure as well known for his point of view as his music, once said, “Luck is being ready.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Does God Exist? Christopher Hitchens Debates Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig (2009)

in Philosophy, Religion | July 12th, 2012

When we talk about reli­gion around here, we often end up talk­ing about some­thing that falls between agnos­ti­cism and athe­ism. That’s because pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als who com­ment on reli­gion fre­quent­ly fall into those camps. Here and there, the­ists polite­ly call us on it. They ask us to con­sid­er show­ing The Four Horse­men (Hitchens/Dawkins/Dennett/Harris) in mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with reli­gious thinkers. It would be a step toward cre­at­ing some bal­ance, they say. We’ve done some of that before. But it has been a while. So we’re bring­ing you today the 2009 debate between Hitchens and William Lane Craig, a Chris­t­ian philoso­pher. It was held at Bio­la Col­lege, a school that offers a “Bib­li­cal­ly Cen­tered Edu­ca­tion,” which puts Craig on the home court.

The basic ques­tion fram­ing the debate is “Does God Exist?,” and the answers are all ground­ed in phi­los­o­phy, though that did­n’t stop the con­ver­sa­tion from veer­ing into biol­o­gy, physics, cos­mol­o­gy, and moral the­o­ry. You might be sur­prised that Hitchens does­n’t take the stri­dent athe­ist posi­tion that would have let more sparks fly. No, he ends up in a more agnos­tic place, and there’s a kind of a humil­i­ty to his posi­tion, an accep­tance that we just can’t know the answers to the big ques­tions, at least not yet. That speaks to me intel­lec­tu­al­ly. But I’m sure oth­ers will see things dif­fer­ent­ly.

If you’re hun­ger­ing for more, you can watch Craig debate Sam Har­ris here. We thank Tay­lor for send­ing these videos along.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

Before Mad Men: Familiar and Forgotten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

in Business, History, Media, Television | July 12th, 2012

Before com­ing up with the slo­gan “Utz Are Bet­ter Than Nuts!” for the real-world Utz pota­to chip com­pa­ny on Mad Men, Don Drap­er and his crew had to study the com­pe­ti­tion, like this ad for Beech Nut or this one with Andy Grif­fith for Gen­er­al Foods.

Today we’re sat­u­rat­ed with ads, more than the ad men that inspired Draper’s char­ac­ter could have ever imag­ined. They’re everywhere—on the dark inte­ri­ors of tun­nels as we speed along in light rail trains, in the games we let our kids play on smart phones—and they reveal a lot to us about our­selves.

Duke University’s John W. Hart­man Cen­ter for Sales, Adver­tis­ing & Mar­ket­ing His­to­ry put togeth­er Adviews, a col­lec­tion that brings togeth­er thou­sands of his­toric com­mer­cials from the 1950s to 1980s. Col­lect­ed or cre­at­ed by the D’Arcy Masius Ben­ton & Bowles adver­tis­ing agency, the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion is avail­able online and on iTune­sU as a free archive. It’s also found at the Inter­net Archive, where ads can be down­loaded as MP4 videos.

Watch Ster­ling Cooper’s (fic­tion­al) ad for Utz pota­to chips and then com­pare it to this goofy com­mer­cial for Dad­dy Crisp chips above.

Vis­it the amaz­ing world of con­ve­nience foods that made house­wives cheer and mir­a­cle fibers that made clean-up a snap.

We may have grown more savvy and sus­pi­cious of prod­ucts that promise bet­ter health and effi­cien­cy, but if any­thing we’re more fas­ci­nat­ed by adver­tis­ing than ever. Since launch­ing the archive in 2009, the com­mer­cials have logged 2.5 mil­lion down­loads.

And for y’all who miss Andy Grif­fith, there’s a wealth of great stuff.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Cinecitta Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

in Film, History | July 12th, 2012

Italy’s Cinecit­ta Luce pos­sess­es more than 100,000 films dat­ing back to 1927. Any­one with an inter­est in Ital­ian cul­ture, his­to­ry, or cin­e­ma will sure­ly want to take a look at them, and now, thanks to a part­ner­ship between Cinecit­ta Luce and Google, they can. As those 100,000 films under­go dig­i­ti­za­tion, they’ll make their way to Cinecit­ta Luce’s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel, which offers, to rough­ly trans­late the Ital­ian on the page, “sev­en­ty years of Ital­ian his­to­ry and social life from the twen­ties to the nineties,” the “price­less pat­ri­mo­ny of our visu­al mem­o­ry.” So far, the chan­nel has bro­ken the films into sev­en cat­e­gories: art, sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture; the Sec­ond World War; movie stars and the cat­walk; pro­tag­o­nists of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry; the “dust archive” (which seems mis­cel­la­neous); mate­r­i­al relat­ed to Cinecit­ta Luce’s cur­rent film fes­ti­vals; and la dolce vita (a phrase, I would argue, bet­ter pre­sent­ed in the orig­i­nal).

At the top of this post, you’ll find a two-and-a-half-minute sequence show­cas­ing the kind of his­to­ry in motion to be found in Cinecit­ta Luce’s archive: musi­cal per­for­mances, beau­ty pageants, culi­nary fes­ti­vals, sport­ing events, movie pre­mieres, impor­tant moments in pol­i­tics and indus­try, and — for what­ev­er rea­son — all sorts of march­es. Just above this para­graph, we’ve embed­ded some news­reel footage of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni fresh off his Best For­eign-Lan­guage Film Acad­e­my Award win for 8½. But the hours of mate­r­i­al now on Cinecit­ta Luce’s Youtube chan­nel rep­re­sent only the tip of the ice­berg. We hard­ly need tell Italophiles that they’ll want to con­sid­er sub­scrib­ing, so as not to miss more from an archive the Hol­ly­wood Reporter describes as “rich in videos from the Vat­i­can, the 1960 Olymics in Rome, and sceners from gen­er­a­tions of every-day life in Rome.” And giv­en that Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed the Cinecit­ta film stu­dios and the Luce archives as engines of pro­pa­gan­da, they still retain the world’s largest col­lec­tion of Mus­soli­ni-relat­ed film. Schol­ars of dic­ta­tor­ships, take spe­cial note!

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mus­soli­ni Sends a Hap­py Mes­sage to Amer­i­ca, Helps Change Cin­e­ma His­to­ry (1927)

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Learn Ital­ian for Free

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

40 Years Ago Today: Chess Rivals Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Century’

in History | July 11th, 2012

They called it the “Match of the Cen­tu­ry.” The eccen­tric Amer­i­can chess mas­ter Bob­by Fis­ch­er and the reign­ing world cham­pi­on Boris Spassky of the Sovi­et Union faced off against one anoth­er 40 years ago today in Reyk­javik, Ice­land. As the world looked on, the Cold War strug­gle between two super­pow­ers was played out in proxy, on a chess board.

The tense atmos­phere and enor­mous fan­fare sur­round­ing the event are cap­tured in this excerpt from the 2006 GSN doc­u­men­tary Any­thing to Win: The Mad Genius of Bob­by Fis­ch­er. Spassky won the first game, on July 11, 1972, when Fis­ch­er made a sur­pris­ing blun­der. Game two went to Spassky when Fis­ch­er refused to play because the tele­vi­sion cam­eras were both­er­ing him. Before the start of game three, Fis­ch­er went around the room inspect­ing TV equip­ment for sources of noise. The entire sequence of events was per­haps an elab­o­rate game of psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare. When Fis­ch­er final­ly sat down to play, Spassky’s equa­nim­i­ty was shat­tered: The third game went to Fis­ch­er, and the tide had turned. When the match final­ly con­clud­ed on Sep­tem­ber 1, the score was Fis­ch­er 12½, Spassky 8½. To learn more about the match, and Fis­cher’s extra­or­di­nary life, you can watch the entire one-hour GSN doc­u­men­tary here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reen­act­ed with Clay­ma­tion

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Mr. Deity Greets Christopher Hitchens at the Gates of Heaven

in Comedy, Religion | July 11th, 2012

Christo­pher Hitchens left us sev­en months ago. Maybe, just maybe, that’s enough time for the light­heart­ed humor to begin. Enter Mr. Deity, the satir­i­cal video series that looks at the mun­dane strug­gles of our Cre­ator. In the new­ly-released sev­enth episode of Sea­son 5, Mr. Deity bum­bles his way through the lat­est dilem­ma — how to wel­come Hitchens to the heav­ens. Hitch remains, it turns out, as scrap­py and argu­men­ta­tive in death as in life. And, of course, there’s some­thing funny/ironic about a hard­ened athe­ist mak­ing a ruckus in the after­life. But per­haps you did­n’t need me to point that out.…

If you’re not acquaint­ed with Mr. Deity, you can start with the ear­li­est episodes here.

via Richard Dawkins

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Neal Stephenson, SciFi Author, Crowdsources $500,000 for New Sword-Fighting Video Game

in Literature, Technology | July 11th, 2012

Neal Stephen­son (Crypto­nom­i­con, Snow Crash, Anath­em) is a hard­work­ing man. In addi­tion to not get­ting any of his sci-fi nov­els made into movies, hang­ing out at Google, writ­ing some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing non­fic­tion in print or online, and being awe­some, he’s work­ing on a project called Clang, a first-per­son sword­fight­ing game, and he’s fund­ing it through Kick­starter. As of yes­ter­day he exceed­ed his goal of $500,000 with over 9,000 back­ers. And why not? Like most of Stephenson’s ideas, it’s bril­liant.

Stephenson—a self-described “swords­man­ship geek”—explains in the video above why he’s decid­ed to cre­ate a real­is­tic sword fight­ing game, in a gam­ing scene rid­dled with high-tech first-per­son shoot­ers. And even though Stephen­son admits to being only a “casu­al gamer,” as you can see, he’s dead­ly seri­ous about the devel­op­ment of Clang. Watch him test sev­er­al dif­fer­ent medieval weapon designs to repli­cate the weight and feel of a real blade and cre­ate the intense inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence of games like Medal of Hon­or and Met­al Gear Sol­id.

Stephen­son and his team are mak­ing use of a cut­ting-edge track­ing tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped by a com­pa­ny called Six­ense, which promis­es very low laten­cy and “unpar­al­leled pre­ci­sion.” The Clang team are con­fi­dent that their track­ing tech­nol­o­gy, embed­ded in the Raz­er Hydra game con­troller, will bring the thrills and chal­lenges of Medieval sword fight­ing into the hands of fel­low geeks very soon.

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Tom Waits and David Letterman: An American Television Tradition

in Music, Television | July 11th, 2012

Whether or not you lis­ten to his music, you have to appre­ci­ate the fact that a singer like Tom Waits has enjoyed decades of fame. When I first heard a song of his — “Inno­cent When You Dream” over the end cred­its of Wayne Wang’s Smoke — I assumed the voice I was hear­ing could­n’t pos­si­bly have come from a human being. Or if it did, maybe it came from a human being imi­tat­ing the man­ner of some sort of crag­gy, immor­tal mon­ster, processed through sev­er­al dis­tor­tion box­es. But no, I was hear­ing the sound of purest Waits, one of the few per­form­ers who deliv­ers an entire per­son­al­i­ty — whether his own or one he’s invent­ed — when deliv­er­ing a sin­gle line. You’ll find evi­dence of his cap­ti­va­tion fac­tor above, in a per­for­mance of “Choco­late Jesus,” a song inspired by lit­er­al­ly that, on Late Show with David Let­ter­man. Per­haps you won’t feel it, but you can’t argue with its view count on YouTube — 5.3 mil­lion and ris­ing.

Waits has made some­thing of a tra­di­tion of vis­it­ing Let­ter­man’s show, or maybe Let­ter­man has made a tra­di­tion of invit­ing him. Music jour­nal­ists often slap the word “reclu­sive” in front of his name, but Waits does make his media appear­ances, the best of which he makes on Let­ter­man’s show. You’ll find many such seg­ments on Youtube, includ­ing ones from 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 2002, 2004, and this year. In 1986, Let­ter­man intro­duced Waits as “prob­a­bly the only guest we’ve had on this pro­gram who was born in the back of a taxi,” which I assume still holds true. Just above, we’ve embed­ded his 1983 Christ­mas­time sit-down, which Waits’ fans seem to regard with spe­cial fond­ness, and in which Let­ter­man first learns this choice fact. Beyond that, Waits sings two songs and dis­cuss­es his var­i­ous unortho­dox res­i­dences (motel, trail­er, car), the use of brake drums as per­cus­sive drums on his then-lat­est album, and how he inter­vened when a school­boy was sus­pend­ed for bring­ing one of Waits’ records to show-and-tell. In Waits, we have the prime liv­ing exem­plar of a cer­tain par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can style of per­form­ing and song­writ­ing, and in Let­ter­man, we have the prime liv­ing exem­plar of a cer­tain par­tic­u­lar­ly Amer­i­can style of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sil­ly and self-aware humor. What luck for the coun­try that these two can get togeth­er as often as they do.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Waits Fish­ing with John Lurie: ‘Like Wait­ing for Godot on Water’

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

An Abridged History of Western Music: “What a Wonderful World” Sung in 16 Different Styles

in Music | July 10th, 2012

Joe Sabia, Michael Thurber and Matt McCorkle teamed up to form cdza, a group ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing “musi­cal video exper­i­ments.” They start­ed with a His­to­ry Of Lyrics That Aren’t Lyrics and A His­to­ry of Whistling. Now, nine months into their project, they’re up to their Opus No. 7 — An Abridged His­to­ry of West­ern Music in 16 Gen­res. In a fun three min­utes, they tease apart Louis Arm­strong’s chest­nut, What a Won­der­ful World, pre­sent­ing it in var­i­ous West­ern styles of music. Gre­go­ri­an Chant. Baroque. Blue­grass. Reg­gae. Rap. Punk. The list goes on. Enjoy.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Lis­ten­ing to Music. Yale Course added to our col­lec­tion 500 Free Cours­es Online

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Piece by Mozart Per­formed on His Own Fortepi­ano

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Cindy Sherman and the Art of Impersonation

in Art, Photography | July 10th, 2012

This Sat­ur­day the much-not­ed Muse­um of Mod­ern Art ret­ro­spec­tive of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cindy Sher­man’s work will make it’s West Coast debut at the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. The show, says New York Times art crit­ic Rober­ta Smith, reveals “an artist with an urgent, sin­gu­lar­ly per­son­al vision, who for the past 35 years has con­sis­tent­ly turned pho­tog­ra­phy against itself.”

Where the medi­um typ­i­cal­ly involves a pho­tog­ra­pher’s direct obser­va­tion of the world, Sher­man usu­al­ly points the cam­era at her­self as she takes a vari­ety of guis­es. “Aid­ed by ever-shift­ing arrays of cos­tumes, wigs, make­up tech­niques, acces­sories, props and at times masks and pros­thet­ic body parts,” writes Smith, “Ms. Sher­man has aggres­sive­ly role-played and stage-direct­ed her way through, and in many ways laid waste to, a lex­i­con of most­ly female stereo­types.”

The role-play­ing is appar­ent­ly infec­tious, because when NPR’s Ira Glass and a friend vis­it­ed the exhib­it before it closed in New York, they met a woman claim­ing to be Sher­man. Unsure whether she was the real thing or an imper­son­ator, Glass decid­ed to tele­phone Sher­man. You can lis­ten to her response at This Amer­i­can Life.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    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.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast