In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hendrix Invites Paul McCartney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

in Music | May 13th, 2013

McCartneytelegram

Click above for a (slight­ly) larg­er image

A trend­ing sto­ry this week­end brings to light what could have been a pret­ty super 1969 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Miles Davis, his phe­nom­e­nal long­time drum­mer Tony Williams, Jimi Hen­drix and Paul McCart­ney. Davis and Hen­drix had already been jam­ming togeth­er infor­mal­ly in New York, plan­ning to record an album. The pair­ing seems nat­ur­al con­sid­er­ing this was Davis’ Bitch­es Brew psy­che­del­ic fusion phase.

The inclu­sion of McCartney’s pop sen­si­bil­i­ties seems odd, though, and pos­si­bly inspired. It could have result­ed in some real­ly fas­ci­nat­ing music, or a mess of per­son­al­i­ties and ideas. But alas, it nev­er came to pass. Davis and Hen­drix sent McCart­ney an impromp­tu Octo­ber 21st, 1969 telegram request to record with them in New York: “We are record­ing an LP togeth­er this week­end. How about com­ing in to play bass stop call Alan Dou­glas 212–5812212. Peace Jimi Hen­drix Miles Davis Tony Williams.” [Alan Dou­glass was the osten­si­ble pro­duc­er.] But, as Rolling Stone explains:

It’s unclear if McCart­ney was aware of the request….  Bea­t­les aide Peter Brown respond­ed the next day, telling Hen­drix and Davis that McCart­ney was out on vaca­tion and was­n’t expect­ed back for two weeks.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the only repro­duc­tions of the cor­re­spon­dence avail­able online are the poor­ly vis­i­ble images at the top and below. Nonethe­less, you can make out Davis, Hen­drix, and Williams’ request on the right, and the response at the left (the order is reversed below). Both telegrams are locat­ed at the Hard Rock Café in Prague. For more on the sto­ry, read the Tele­graph’s sum­ma­tion. I’m sure it won’t be long before some enter­pris­ing music hack­er cre­ates the ulti­mate Davis/Hendrix/McCartney mashup and gives us a taste of what might have been.

McCartneyResponsetelegram

Click to (slight­ly) enlarge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Miles Davis Live Record­ings Cap­ture the Jazz Musi­cian at the Height of His Pow­ers

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

Paul McCart­ney Shoots New Music Video with Natal­ie Port­man and John­ny Depp

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Astronaut Chris Hadfield Sings David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” On Board the International Space Station

in Astronomy, Music | May 12th, 2013

Chris Had­field has spent the past five months on the ISS. And, if you reg­u­lar­ly fol­low our site, you’ll know that the media-savvy astro­naut has engaged earth­lings with a steady stream of tweets, a series of edu­ca­tion­al videos (see below), and the occa­sion­al enter­tain­ing rou­tine. In recent months, he has kib­itzed with William Shat­ner and even strummed a tune for Peter Gabriel. Now, before hand­ing over com­mand of the ISS to a Russ­ian cos­mo­naut, Had­field bade us farewell by singing a zero grav­i­ty ver­sion of “Space Odd­i­ty,” the song that helped launch David Bowie’s music career back in 1969. What could be a more per­fect pick? In case you’re won­der­ing, Had­field is play­ing a Lar­rivée Par­lor gui­tar, which he used to make the first album ever record­ed in orbit. We’ll even­tu­al­ly tell you more about that.…

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Going to the Bath­room in Space But Were Afraid to Ask

If Astro­nauts Cry in Space, Will Their Tears Fall?

William Shat­ner Puts in a Long Dis­tance Call to Astro­naut Aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

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The Romantic George Carlin Writes a Nano-Powered, Sub Atomic-Filled Love Letter to His Wife

in Comedy, Life, Science | May 11th, 2013

Carlin Letter

George Car­lin was more than a Class Clown. He was also a class act, as evi­denced by this undat­ed mis­sive to com­e­dy writer Sal­ly Wade, with whom he shared the final decade of his life. The man who once parsed the Sev­en Words You Can Nev­er Say on Tele­vi­sion show­ered his “spouse with­out papers” with such notes dai­ly.

Giv­en such a prodi­gious out­put, he wise­ly turned to sci­ence to quan­ti­fy his ardor in the repro­duc­tion above. (His physi­cian’s scrawl can be dif­fi­cult to deci­pher — a tran­scrip­tion is sup­plied below.)

SALLYBURGER,

If you took THE NUMBER OF SUB-ATOMIC PARTICLES IN THE UNIVERSE and mul­ti­plied that num­ber times itself THAT MANY TIMES; and then added the total num­ber of MICRO-SECONDS since the begin­ning of time, times itself; and then added 803—you would STILL have only the tini­est frac­tion of A BILLION-BILLIONTH PER CENT of the amount of love I HAVE FOR YOU.

Love,

your can­dle part­ner,
the roman­tic Mr Car­lin,
your eter­nal flame

A por­tion of these sweet noth­ings were col­lect­ed in The George Car­lin Let­ters. Its sub­ti­tle, The Per­ma­nent Courtship of Sal­ly Wade, was tak­en from the note he left on her com­put­er the day he died, two days shy of their 10th anniver­sary.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

RIP: George Car­lin on the Tonight Show (1966)

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

George Car­lin: The Mod­ern Man in Three Min­utes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day has been lov­ing on Greg Kotis since 1991. Such notes as there are remain pri­vate, but you can fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Record-a-Poem for Mother’s Day

in Poetry | May 11th, 2013

Moth­er’s Day is tomor­row, and you haven’t got­ten Mom a present yet. No wor­ries, head over to poetryfoundation.org, where you can find a selec­tion of Moth­er’s Day poems — or search for your own. You can even fol­low the direc­tions here to join the Record-a-Poem group on Sound­cloud and then share your poem with Mom. It’ll be bet­ter than any Hall­mark card, that’s for sure.

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.

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How Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive Will Preserve the Infinite Information on the Web

in Archives, Internet Archive, Technology, TED Talks, Web/Tech | May 11th, 2013

Brew­ster Kahle is an unas­sum­ing man. But as an inter­net pio­neer and dig­i­tal librar­i­an, he may right­ly be called a found­ing father of the Open Cul­ture ethos. In 1996, Kahle began work on the Inter­net Archive, a tremen­dous­ly impor­tant project that acts as a safe­ty net for the mem­o­ry hole prob­lem of Inter­net pub­lish­ing. Kahle devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy that finds and aggre­gates as much of the inter­net as it is able in his mas­sive dig­i­tal library.

Along with the archive, which Open Cul­ture has drawn from many a time, comes Kahle’s “Way­back Machine,” named for the time-trav­el­ing device in a Rocky and Bull­win­kle seg­ment fea­tur­ing the genius dog Mr. Peabody and his pet boy Sher­man (the car­toon spelled it as an acronym: WABAC). The “Way­back Machine,” as you prob­a­bly know, logs pre­vi­ous ver­sions of web­sites, hold­ing on to the web’s past like clas­sic paper libraries hold on to an author’s papers. (Here’s what we looked like in 2006.)

In the ani­mat­ed adven­tures of Peabody and Sher­man, the Way­back Machine was a mon­strous con­trap­tion that occu­pied half of Peabody’s den. And while we often think of Inter­net space as lim­it­less and dis­em­bod­ied, Kahle’s Inter­net Archive is also phys­i­cal­ly housed, in a for­mer Chris­t­ian Sci­ence church now lined with tow­er­ing servers that store dig­i­tized books, music, film and oth­er media for free access. It’s an impres­sive space for an impres­sive project that will like­ly expand past its phys­i­cal bound­aries. As Kahle says above, “it turns out there is no end; the web is, in fact, infi­nite.”

Kahle is deeply invest­ed in data. The chal­lenges of main­tain­ing the Inter­net Archive are immense, includ­ing trans­lat­ing old, unplayable for­mats to new ones. But what Kahle calls the great­est chal­lenge is the peren­ni­al threat to all libraries: “they burn.” And he’s com­mit­ted to design­ing for that even­tu­al­i­ty by mak­ing copies of the archive and dis­trib­ut­ing them around the world. If you’re inter­est­ed in what moti­vates Kahle, you should watch his 2007 TED talk above. He frames the busi­ness of archiv­ing the inter­net as one of mak­ing avail­able “the best we have to offer” to suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions. “If we don’t do that,” Kahle warns, “we’re going to get the gen­er­a­tion we deserve.” It’s a warn­ing worth heed­ing, I think.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Clas­sic Films from the Inter­net Archive

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

Kids (and Less Savvy Mar­keters) Imag­ine the Inter­net in 1995

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Listen to The John Bonham Story, a Radio Show Hosted by Dave Grohl

in Music, Radio | May 10th, 2013

Rock and roll bands do have a ten­den­cy to burn through drum­mers. The phe­nom­e­non has been so notice­able over the years that Spinal Tap did a mem­o­rable par­o­dy of it. But when Led Zep­pelin’s pow­er­house of a drum­mer John Bon­ham died unex­pect­ed­ly at the age of 32 on Sep­tem­ber 25, 1980, there would be no replac­ing him. Bon­ham’s dis­tinc­tive play­ing was such an inte­gral part of the Led Zep­pelin sound that it was hard to imag­ine any­one else fill­ing his shoes. A few months after his death, the drum­mer’s grief-strick­en band­mates issued a state­ment announc­ing the break-up of the group. With­out Bon­ham, they said, “we could not con­tin­ue as we were.”

The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, first broad­cast on BBC radio in 2010, is an engag­ing one-hour pro­gram host­ed by Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl, for­mer drum­mer of Nir­vana and a life­long fan of Bon­ham. The show (above, in its entire­ty) includes musi­cal per­for­mances, many of them rare, along with inter­views of the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Led Zeppelin–Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones–and oth­ers who knew Bon­ham well, like Vanil­la Fudge drum­mer Carmine Appice, Bad Com­pa­ny singer Paul Rodgers, Bon­ham’s younger sis­ter Deb­o­rah and his son Jason. The John Bon­ham Sto­ry is a nice­ly pro­duced pro­gram, a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the life and music of the man who is wide­ly thought of as the quin­tes­sen­tial rock and roll drum­mer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Bon­ham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zep­pelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Kash­mir”

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Google Reveals the Evolution of Our Planet in Timelapse Motion

in Google | May 10th, 2013

Columbia_400Yes­ter­day Google released a trove of time­lapse images that offers, it believes, “the most com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of our chang­ing plan­et ever made avail­able to the pub­lic.” Fea­tur­ing a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry of images tak­en from space by NASA and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, the repos­i­to­ry lets you wit­ness the retreat of glac­i­ers (see above), the defor­esta­tion of wide swathes of rain­for­est, the growth of sprawl­ing cities, and the build­ing of huge arti­fi­cial islands, all hap­pen­ing in time­lapse motion.

To cre­ate its Time­lapse web­site, Google “sift­ed through 2,068,467 images—a total of 909 ter­abytes of data—to find the high­est-qual­i­ty pix­els … for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth.” They then used this data to cre­ate com­pos­ite images for each year, all view­able in brows­able HTML5 ani­ma­tion. Some strik­ing images have also been post­ed on Google+.

via Google

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

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Freiheit, George Lucas’ Short Student Film About a Fatal Run from Communism (1966)

in Film | May 10th, 2013

Here we have an ear­ly short film by Star Wars mas­ter­mind George Lucas that con­tains no invent­ed worlds, elab­o­rate spe­cial effects, or con­scious myth­mak­ing. But Frei­heit, the third film Lucas made while a film-school stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and the first with a nar­ra­tive, has the kind of impact that con­vinces you its fledg­ling cre­ator just might have an inter­est­ing pic­ture or two in him. Titled with the Ger­man word for “free­dom,” the short uses Sovi­et-era Ger­many as a set­ting and free­dom as its dri­ving con­cept, fol­low­ing a young pro­tag­o­nist trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin bor­der who attempts a flight from his restric­tive soci­ety but meets a grim end.

Even those of you who don’t respect what we now think of as George Lucas’ brand of moviemak­ing may find much of inter­est in Frei­heit’s three-minute run­time. From the title card read­ing “a film by LUCAS” onward, you know you’re in for more of an “art” film than you may have expect­ed. Lucas com­bines still with mov­ing images and dynam­i­cal­ly varies the speed of the lat­ter to build as much visu­al inter­est as pos­si­ble in a short time (and on an undoubt­ed­ly near-nonex­is­tent bud­get). He cre­ates an urgent mood quick­ly by using both music and abstract sound, ulti­mate­ly intro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion of spo­ken words about free­dom itself. Lucas would clear­ly remain fas­ci­nat­ed, even while mak­ing block­buster space operas, by the nature of oppres­sive pow­er struc­tures, but this lit­tle project reveals his aes­thet­ic road not tak­en.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

David Lynch’s Ear­ly Short Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Rare 1952 Film: William Faulkner on His Native Soil in Oxford, Mississippi

in Film, Literature | May 9th, 2013

Ear­ly in his life, William Faulkn­er had an epiphany: “I dis­cov­ered that my own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil was worth writ­ing about, and that I would nev­er live long enough to exhaust it.” And so, as he told The Paris Review in 1956, “by sub­li­mat­ing the actu­al into the apoc­ryphal” Faulkn­er was able to take his home­town of Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side and use it to cre­ate his own imag­i­nary cos­mos. He called it Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty.

In Novem­ber of 1952, the nor­mal­ly reclu­sive Faulkn­er allowed a film crew into his seclud­ed world at Oxford to make a short doc­u­men­tary about his life. The film, shown here in five pieces, was fund­ed by the Ford Foun­da­tion and broad­cast on Decem­ber 28, 1952 on the CBS tele­vi­sion pro­gram Omnibus. The script­ed film re-enacts events from Novem­ber 1950, when Faulkn­er received the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, through the spring of 1951, when he spoke at his daugh­ter Jil­l’s high school grad­u­a­tion.

There are scenes of Faulkn­er at Rowan Oak, his ante­bel­lum house on the edge of Oxford, and at Green­field Farm, 17 miles away, where he is shown dri­ving a trac­tor and talk­ing with work­ers. Faulkn­er is also shown briefly with his wife, Estelle, and with sev­er­al promi­nent Oxford res­i­dents, includ­ing drug­gist Mac Reed, Oxford Eagle edi­tor Phil Mullen, who col­lab­o­rat­ed  with the film­mak­ers on the script, and lawyer Phil Stone, who was an ear­ly lit­er­ary men­tor and cham­pi­on of Faulkn­er. Accord­ing to Joseph Blot­ner in his biog­ra­phy Faulkn­er, the famous writer put aside his usu­al can­tan­ker­ous­ness when the film­mak­ers arrived in Oxford:

To the plea­sure of direc­tor Howard T. Mag­wood and his ten-man crew, Faulkn­er showed him­self to be a con­sid­er­ate host and an inter­est­ed actor. He even offered Mullen some advice on read­ing his lines. He was at ease when he appeared with Mac Reed, but in a scene with Phil Stone he seemed stiff and dis­tant.

The uneasi­ness between Faulkn­er and Stone may have had some­thing to do with Stone’s feel­ing (as Mullen report­ed­ly said lat­er) that Faulkn­er had come down with a bad case of “Nobelitis in the Head.” Actu­al­ly the entire film is stiff and unre­al­is­tic. It’s a bit of a shock to see Faulkn­er, a mas­ter of the nar­ra­tive form, going through the motions as a bad actor in a hor­ri­bly writ­ten sto­ry about his own life. But any lit­er­ary fan should be fas­ci­nat­ed by this rare glimpse of the mas­ter at home on his own lit­tle postage stamp of native soil.

 

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

Drink­ing with William Faulkn­er

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

William Faulkn­er Explains Why Writ­ing is Best Left to Scoundrels

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Five Cultural Tours of Los Angeles

in Travel | May 9th, 2013

As an Open Cul­ture read­er, you sure­ly enjoy a vast range of inter­ests, and what serves as a more robust nexus of inter­ests than the mod­ern city? Each city pro­duces an infini­tude of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies in archi­tec­ture, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, and social psy­chol­o­gy. But even when you exam­ine the less obvi­ous­ly city-rel­e­vant intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits — lan­guage, film, lit­er­a­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, style — count­less more con­nec­tions reveal them­selves. Because I’ve found orga­niz­ing cul­tur­al inter­ests by city so fruit­ful, I offer you here a set of resources to do with Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia. These are just a few of the count­less pos­si­ble per­cep­tions of the cap­i­tal of main­stream cin­e­ma, the ter­mi­nus of mankind’s west­ward push, the cre­ator and destroy­er of new urban forms, and above all the great divider of opin­ion. Archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham voic­es his own at the top of Reyn­er Ban­ham Loves Los Ange­les, a 1972 BBC tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary in which the archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an gives a per­son­al tour of the city: “I love the place with a pas­sion that goes beyond sense or rea­son.”

“They make movies here,” says CalArts pro­fes­sor Thom Ander­sen in the nar­ra­tion of Los Ange­les Plays Itself. “I live here. Some­times I think that gives me the right to crit­i­cize the way movies depict my city.” But he does much more than crit­i­cize in his video essay’s near­ly three-hour analy­sis of the roles Los Ange­les has played onscreen: as itself, as oth­er cities, and, most often, as no city in par­tic­u­lar. Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty’s Huell Hows­er Archive col­lects the late Cal­i­for­nia-explor­er’s non­fic­tion­al video jour­neys in places like Venice Beach, the ever-ris­ing down­town, and even in a heli­copter above the city. For a sim­i­lar­ly aer­i­al per­spec­tive, but a his­tor­i­cal one, watch this 1958 footage of Hol­ly­wood from above. And for a point of view more force­ful­ly expressed, look no fur­ther than Ice Cube’s cel­e­bra­tion of Los Ange­les as mid­cen­tu­ry design mec­ca, espe­cial­ly for the work of aes­thet­ic lumi­nar­ies (and Pow­ers of Ten film­mak­ers) Charles and Ray Eames. “A lot of peo­ple think L.A. is just eye­sore after eye­sore, full of mini-malls, palm trees and bill­boards,” he says. “So what? They don’t know the L.A. I know.”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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An Animated Visualization of Every Observed Meteorite That Has Hit Earth Since 861 AD

in Animation, Science | May 9th, 2013

Car­lo Zap­poni, a data visu­al­iza­tion design­er at Nokia, has cre­at­ed a pret­ty splen­did visu­al­iza­tion of the 1,042 mete­orites that humans have wit­nessed hit­ting our plan­et since 861 AD. If you click the image above, you will see the visu­al­iza­tion in full screen mode. And if you then click on var­i­ous points along the time­line, you’ll get essen­tial data (pro­duced by The Mete­orit­i­cal Soci­ety) about each observed mete­or strike. Most are clus­tered in the 19th and 20th cen­turies. The last is the ter­ri­fy­ing rock that blast­ed through Siberia ear­li­er this year.

Note: A total of 34,513 mete­orites have hit our plan­et since 2500 BC. But the vast major­i­ty were nev­er observed. They were only lat­er found.

via The Guardian 

Oth­er Great Visu­al­iza­tions:

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of Our Ocean Cur­rents

Visu­al­iz­ing WiFi Sig­nals with Light

Watch a Cool and Creepy Visu­al­iza­tion of U.S. Births & Deaths in Real-Time

Stephen Hawking’s Uni­verse: A Visu­al­iza­tion of His Lec­tures with Stars & Sound

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