Wolfgang Grajonca had a hard childhood. Young and orphaned during World War II, Grajonca moved from Germany to Paris, Marseille and Lisbon, and eventually the United States by sea, each time staying one step ahead of the westward-moving Nazis. The 10 year old settled in New York, changed his name to Bill Graham, later fought in Korea, and headed to San Francisco, where he became a legendary concert promoter. Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish, The Rolling Stones — Graham put them all on the West coast stage.
The promoter of the Counterculture was killed in a helicopter crash in October 1991 and left behind a huge trove of recordings and memorabilia. Out of the ashes arose Wolfgang’s Vault, a website that peddles many Bill Graham goods, but also features a good number of free concerts from the heyday: The Who and Miles Davis (Tanglewood, 1970), The Allman Brothers Band (New York, 1970), Muddy Waters (Los Angeles, 1971), Bob Marley and the Wailers and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (1978). They’re all available online, along with other acts including Van Morrison, AC/DC, Santana, The Band, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Jump into the collection here.
A few weeks ago, we posted New York Times critic A.O.Scott’s thoughtful three-minute look back at the surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou. The 1929 Buñuel/Dalí production may well be the world’s most famous bit of early surrealist cinema, but it was not the first. That honor goes to another very strange (and indubitably surreal) short film screened in Paris in 1928, prompting the now infamous condemnation from the British Board of Film Censors. It insisted that the 31-minute film was “apparently meaningless.” They then added, “If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable.”
The Seashell and the Clergyman, based on Antonin Artaud’s screenplay about a priest who lusts after a General’s wife, was directed by the cinema theorist, journalist, and critic Germaine Dulac (1882–1942). Dulac was also a groundbreaking feminist filmmaker — she is best known today for The Smiling Mrs. Beudet (1923), a seminal silent film about a woman trapped in a loveless marriage.
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.
During World War II, all hands were on deck, even in Hollywood. Many of America and Britain’s finest filmmakers, from Hitchcock to Frank Capra, were recruited to create propaganda films to support the war effort. (More on that here.) And the same went for Walt Disney, who turned his lovable cartoon characters into good patriots.
In 1942, Disney released “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” an anti-Nazi propaganda movie that bolstered support for the war, and eventually won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Then, a year later, came The Spirit of ’43, which features Donald Duck helping Americans to understand why they need to pay their taxes. Other wartime Disney shorts include Donald Gets Drafted (1942), The Old Army Game (1943), and Commando Duck (1944). Then, coming out of this propaganda tradition, you’ll also find Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck, a recent spoof by Jonathan McIntosh (of Rebellious Pixels). It’s a good bit of fun.
Talented but troubled singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London apartment on Saturday, July 23. The 27 year-old, whose deep voice had always expressed a level of maturity and soulfulness that belied her age, was known to be struggling with drug addiction. In recent months, both her appearance and ability to perform live had deteriorated markedly.
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.
Back in November 2008, just days after the historic election of Barack Obama, Chris “Shockwave” Sullivan took to the streets of New York City and invited unsuspecting pedestrians to rap with him. The video went online in 2009, but it’s only going viral today. Funny how the web works. H/T Kottke
Hunter Thompson entered this terra incognita [the world of the Hell’s Angels] to become its cartographer. For almost a year, he accompanied the Hell’s Angels on their rallies. He drank at their bars, exchanged home visits, recorded their brutalities, viewed their sexual caprices, became converted to their motorcycle mystique, and was so intrigued, as he puts it, that “I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hell’s Angels or being slowly absorbed by them.” At the conclusion of his year’s tenure the ambiguity of his position was ended when a group of Angels knocked him to the ground and stomped him…
Hunter Thompson has presented us with a close view of a world most of us would never dare encounter, yet one with which we should be familiar. He has brought on stage men who have lost all options and are not reconciled to the loss. They have great resources for violence which doesn’t as yet have any effective focus. Thompson suggests that these few Angels are but the vanguard of a growing army of disappropriated, disaffiliated and desperate men. There’s always the risk that somehow they may force the wrong options into being.
This clip, which aired on Canadian television in 1967, describes the circumstances that led up to the Angels giving HST a beat down. The misogyny that’s on display will make you shudder.
Lucian Freud, distinguished artist and grandson of Sigmund Freud, died yesterday at the age of 88. The painter was best known for his contributions to figurative art and his uncompromising portraits, which The New York Times has collected in an impressive online gallery.
Freud was also known for his rigorous (some would say cruel) demands on his subjects. From his New York Times obituary:
To the artist and Freud biographer Lawrence Gowing [Lucian Freud] said, “For me the paint is the person.” Mr. Freud’s dingy studio became his artistic universe, a grim theater in which his contorted subjects, stripped bare and therefore unidentifiable by class, submitted to the artist’s unblinking, merciless inspection.
You can learn more about Lucian Freud’s work and legacy through a discussion of his painting Standing by the Rags at SmART History (video posted above or click here).
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.
Jeff Smith, an independent filmmaker from Indianapolis, must have spent quite a bit of time going through hundreds of movies to come up with his final montage of 120 movies containing the line “You just don’t get it, do you?”. If you want to invest some time as well, try to guess the movies first and then compare your results with the list of actual movies here.
If you enjoy guessing movies, you can take a look at Jeff’s blog post “Name That Film,” in which he shows you tricky movie stills (don’t worry, he also provides the solutions).
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.
As if your Twitter, Google +, and RSS feeds weren’t overwhelming enough, you can now watch a time lapse video of a year’s worth of The New York Times — in 12,000 screenshots. Enjoy, and try not get dizzy.
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.
The documents are all written in Japanese, which creates something of a language barrier for many readers. But a tour through the archive will tell you something important — something important about the Hiroshima bombing and how we’re memorializing the past in our new digital age.
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