How David Bowie Delivered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Ziggy Stardust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

in Music | June 7th, 2019

When David Bowie left us on Jan­u­ary 10, 2016, we imme­di­ate­ly start­ed see­ing the just-released Black­star, which turned out to be his final album, as a farewell. But then, if we looked back across his entire career — a span of more than half a cen­tu­ry — we saw that he had been deliv­er­ing farewells the whole time. Through­out much of that career, Bowie’s observers have reflex­ive­ly com­pared him to a chameleon, so often and so dra­mat­i­cal­ly did he seem to revise his per­for­ma­tive iden­ti­ty to suit the zeit­geist (if not to shape the zeit­geist). But peri­od­ic cre­ative rebirth entails peri­od­ic cre­ative death, and as the Poly­phon­ic video essay above shows us, no rock star could die as cre­ative­ly as Bowie.

The video con­cen­trates on two of Bowie’s most famous farewells, in par­tic­u­lar: his last, on Black­star and the musi­cal Lazarus, and his first, deliv­ered onstage 43 years ear­li­er in his last per­for­mance in the char­ac­ter of Zig­gy Star­dust. “Not only is it the last show of the tour,” he announced to 3,500 scream­ing fans at Lon­don’s Ham­mer­smith Odeon, “but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.”

There fol­lowed a clos­ing per­for­mance of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Sui­cide,” a song described by the video’s nar­ra­tor as “Zig­gy Star­dust’s final moments, washed up and exhaust­ed from life as a rock star.” Though only 26 years old at the time, Bowie had already released six stu­dio albums and expe­ri­enced more than enough to reflect elo­quent­ly in song on “a life well lived.”

But then, if the phe­nom­e­non of David Bowie teach­es us any­thing, it teach­es us how a life can be com­posed of var­i­ous dis­crete life­times. Bowie under­stood that, as did the oth­er artists whose work he ref­er­enced in his farewells: names cit­ed in this video’s analy­sis include Jacques Brel, Charles Bukows­ki, and the Span­ish poet Manuel Macha­do. And as any fan knows, Bowie was also adept at ref­er­enc­ing his own work, a ten­den­cy he kept up until the end as in, for exam­ple, the reap­pear­ance of his mid-70s char­ac­ter (and sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Poly­phon­ic study) the Thin White Duke in the “Lazarus” music video. In that work he also left plen­ty of mate­r­i­al to not just inspire sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of cre­ators, but to send them back to the realms of cul­ture that inspired him. We may have heard David Bowie’s final farewell, but in our own life­times we sure­ly won’t hear the end of his influ­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Very Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust (1973)

David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Dark­est Char­ac­ter

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Jared Diamond Describes How the U.S. Could Become a Dictatorship in 10 Years

in Politics | June 5th, 2019

It can hap­pen here, and it has.

By “it” I mean the enor­mous con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and polit­i­cal pow­er in the hands of a very few, and by “here” I mean the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, a coun­try that adver­tis­es itself as a democ­ra­cy, but should right­ly be referred to as an oli­garchy, ruled by a wealthy elite.

But the coun­try is not a dic­ta­tor­ship yet. I say “yet” because that too can hap­pen here, giv­en the afore­men­tioned con­cen­tra­tion of wealth and pow­er, the increas­ing tol­er­ance for nation­al­ism, cru­el­ty, xeno­pho­bia, and near-con­stant lying, and the craven acqui­es­cence so many of the country’s legislators—who are sup­posed to put a check on such things—have shown to the whims of a bald­ly auto­crat­ic exec­u­tive.

Per­haps it is only a mat­ter of time, giv­en the above. How much time? Maybe ten years, argues Jared Dia­mond, Pulitzer Prize-win­ning anthro­pol­o­gist, geo­g­ra­ph­er, his­to­ri­an, and ecol­o­gist, and author of The Third Chim­panzee; Guns, Germs, and Steel; Col­lapse: How Soci­eties Choose to Fail or Suc­ceed; and The World Until Yes­ter­day.

In the Big Think video inter­view clip above, Dia­mond frames the prob­lem as one of an unwill­ing­ness to com­pro­mise, using the anal­o­gy of a hap­py mar­riage. “The best you can hope for in a mar­riage is an agree­ment on 80%. If you agree on 80%, that’s fan­tas­tic.” For any two peo­ple, mar­ried or oth­er­wise, 80% agree­ment seems opti­mistic. For an entire coun­try, it seems almost utopi­an.

But what­ev­er num­ber you want to set as a real­is­tic goal, the U.S. has fall­en far below it—at least when it comes to the way our gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies work, or don’t, togeth­er. This is not a prob­lem reducible to “both sides.” One par­ty in par­tic­u­lar has con­sis­tent­ly refused to work with the oth­er and used every dirty trick—from extreme ger­ry­man­der­ing to refus­ing to let a sit­ting Pres­i­dent appoint a Supreme Court Justice—to hold pow­er.

Pol­i­tics is a dirty busi­ness, you may say, and yes, it is. But—to return to Diamond’s point—a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy requires com­pro­mise. These days, con­gress can­not pass leg­is­la­tion; “leg­is­la­tures are at odds with the judi­cia­ry” (Dia­mond cites the exam­ple of the Repub­li­can-con­trolled West Vir­ginia con­gress impeach­ing the state’s entire, Demo­c­ra­t­ic-major­i­ty, supreme court in 2018); state gov­ern­ments are suing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and vice-ver­sa.

The fail­ure of com­pro­mise, says Dia­mond, is “the only prob­lem that could pre­cip­i­tate the Unit­ed States into the end of democ­ra­cy and into a dic­ta­tor­ship in the next decade.” The usu­al his­tor­i­cal exam­ples can be more or less instruc­tive on this point. But there are oth­er, more recent, dic­ta­tor­ships that do not receive near­ly enough attention—perhaps by design, since they have been “friend­ly” regimes that the U.S. helped cre­ate.

Dia­mond describes the sit­u­a­tion in Chile, for exam­ple, where he lived in the late 60s. When he first moved there, it had been “the most demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try in Latin Amer­i­ca,” a coun­try that prid­ed itself on its abil­i­ty to com­pro­mise. But this qual­i­ty was in decline, he says, and its loss led to the country’s mil­i­tary coup in 1973, which brought the bru­tal dic­ta­tor Augus­to Pinochet to pow­er (with the help of the CIA and cer­tain Amer­i­can econ­o­mists).

The new Chilean gov­ern­ment “smashed world records for sadism and tor­ture,” says Dia­mond, shock­ing those Chileans who believed their coun­try was immune to the excess­es of oth­er Latin Amer­i­can nations that had suc­cumbed to repres­sive author­i­tar­i­an­ism. If that hap­pens here, he argues, it will not come through a mil­i­tary coup, but rather through “what we see going on now”—namely restric­tions on the right to vote and vot­er apa­thy.

Vot­ing is the pri­ma­ry solu­tion, Dia­mond claims, but vot­ing alone may not address the prob­lem of oli­garchy. When a hand­ful of the wealthy con­trol mass media, fund local and nation­al polit­i­cal cam­paigns, and oth­er­wise exert undue influ­ence, through mass sur­veil­lance, manip­u­la­tion, and the use of for­eign agents, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of free and fair elec­tions may dis­ap­pear, if it hasn’t already.

Nonethe­less, Diamond’s point deserves some seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. If we want to avert dic­ta­tor­ship in the U.S., how can we encour­age compromise—without, that is, relin­quish­ing our most fun­da­men­tal val­ues? It’s a point to pon­der.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aldous Hux­ley Warns Against Dic­ta­tor­ship in Amer­i­ca

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Han­nah Arendt on “Per­son­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty Under Dic­ta­tor­ship:” Bet­ter to Suf­fer Than Col­lab­o­rate

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Bill Gates Recommends Five Books to Read This Summer

in Books | May 28th, 2019

It’s becom­ing an annu­al rit­u­al. Every sum­mer Bill Gates offers us a read­ing list–5‑books to take on vaca­tion. As you’ll see, his list assumes that even if you’re phys­i­cal­ly on vaca­tion, your mind isn’t. The curi­ous mind takes no breaks. Bill writes:

Upheaval, by Jared Dia­mond. I’m a big fan of every­thing Jared has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. The book explores how soci­eties react dur­ing moments of cri­sis. He uses a series of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies to show how nations man­aged exis­ten­tial chal­lenges like civ­il war, for­eign threats, and gen­er­al malaise. It sounds a bit depress­ing, but I fin­ished the book even more opti­mistic about our abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems than I start­ed. More here.

Nine Pints, by Rose George. If you get grossed out by blood, this one prob­a­bly isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fas­ci­nat­ing, you’ll enjoy this book by a British jour­nal­ist with an espe­cial­ly per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sub­ject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one spe­cif­ic top­ic, so Nine Pints (the title refers to the vol­ume of blood in the aver­age adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-inter­est­ing facts that will leave you with a new appre­ci­a­tion for blood. More here.

A Gen­tle­man in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It seems like every­one I know has read this book. I final­ly joined the club after my broth­er-in-law sent me a copy, and I’m glad I did. Towles’s nov­el about a count sen­tenced to life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel is fun, clever, and sur­pris­ing­ly upbeat. Even if you don’t enjoy read­ing about Rus­sia as much as I do (I’ve read every book by Dos­toyevsky), A Gen­tle­man in Moscow is an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one can enjoy. More here.

Pres­i­dents of War, by Michael Beschloss. My inter­est in all aspects of the Viet­nam War is the main rea­son I decid­ed to pick up this book. By the time I fin­ished it, I learned a lot not only about Viet­nam but about the eight oth­er major con­flicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw impor­tant cross-cut­ting lessons about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. More here.

The Future of Cap­i­tal­ism, by Paul Col­lier. Collier’s lat­est book is a thought-pro­vok­ing look at a top­ic that’s top of mind for a lot of peo­ple right now. Although I don’t agree with him about everything—I think his analy­sis of the prob­lem is bet­ter than his pro­posed solutions—his back­ground as a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist gives him a smart per­spec­tive on where cap­i­tal­ism is head­ed.

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:

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer (2018)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

Watch Patti Smith’s New Tribute to the Avant-Garde Poet Antonin Artaud

in Life, Music, Poetry, Psychology | May 27th, 2019

The force of Artaud, you couldn’t kill him! — Pat­ti Smith

Found sound enthu­si­asts Sound­walk Col­lec­tive join forces with the God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith for “Ivry,” the musi­cal trib­ute to poet and the­ater­mak­er Antonin Artaud, above.

The track, fea­tur­ing Smith’s hyp­not­ic impro­vised nar­ra­tion, alter­nate­ly spo­ken and sung over Tarahu­mara gui­tars, Cha­pareke snare drums, and Chi­huahua bells from Mex­i­co’s Sier­ra Tarahu­mara, the region that pro­vid­ed the set­ting for Artaud’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal The Pey­ote Dance, has the sooth­ing qual­i­ty of lul­la­bies from such pop­u­lar children’s music Folk Revival­ists as Eliz­a­beth Mitchell and Dan Zanes.

We’d refrain from show­ing the kid­dies this video, though, espe­cial­ly at bed­time.

It begins inno­cent­ly enough with mir­ror images of the beau­ti­ful Artaud—as the Dean of Rouen in 1928’s silent clas­sic The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc, and lat­er in the pri­vate psy­chi­atric clin­ic in Ivry-sur-Seine where he end­ed his days.

Things get much rougher in the final moments, as befits the founder of the The­ater of Cru­el­ty, an avant-garde per­for­mance move­ment that employed scenes of hor­ri­fy­ing vio­lence to shock the audi­ence out of their pre­sumed com­pla­cen­cy.

Noth­ing quite so hairy as Artaud’s vir­tu­al­ly unpro­duce­able short play, Jet of Blood—or, for that mat­ter, Game of Thrones—but we all remem­ber what hap­pened to Joan of Arc, right? (Not to men­tion the gris­ly fate of the many peas­ants whose names his­to­ry fails to note…)

In-between is footage of indige­nous Rará­muri (or Tarahu­mara) tribes­peo­ple enact­ing tra­di­tion­al rit­u­als—the mir­rors on their head­dress­es and the film­mak­ers’ use of reflec­tive sym­me­try hon­or­ing their belief that the after­life mir­rors the mor­tal world.

“Ivry” is the penul­ti­mate track on a brand new Artaud-themed album, also titled The Pey­ote Dance, which delves into the impulse toward expand­ed vision that pro­pelled the artist to Mex­i­co in the 1930s.

Pri­or to bring­ing Smith into the stu­dio, mem­bers of Sound­walk Col­lec­tive revis­it­ed Artaud’s jour­ney through that coun­try (includ­ing a cave in which he once lived), amass­ing stones, sand, leaves, and hand­made Rará­muri instru­ments to “awak­en the landscape’s sleep­ing mem­o­ries and uncov­er the space’s son­ic gram­mar.”

This mis­sion is def­i­nite­ly in keep­ing with Smith’s prac­tice of mak­ing pil­grim­ages and col­lect­ing relics.

The Pey­ote Dance is the first entry in a trip­tych titled The Per­fect Vision. Tune in lat­er this year to trav­el to Ethiopia’s Abyssin­ian val­ley in con­sid­er­a­tion of anoth­er Smith favorite, poet Arthur Rim­baud, and the Indi­an Himalayas, in hon­or of spir­i­tu­al Sur­re­al­ist René Dau­mal, whose alle­gor­i­cal nov­el Mount Ana­logue: A Nov­el of Sym­bol­i­cal­ly Authen­tic Non-Euclid­ean Adven­tures in Moun­tain Climb­ing end­ed in mid-sen­tence, when he died at 36 from the effects of tuber­cu­lo­sis (and, quite pos­si­bly, youth­ful exper­i­ments with such psy­choac­tive chem­i­cals as car­bon tetra­chlo­ride.)

You can order Sound­walk Collective’s album, The Pey­ote Dance, which also fea­tures the work of actor Gael Gar­cía Bernal, here.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Finance Theory: A Free Online Course from Yale University

in | May 26th, 2019

This course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty “attempts to explain the role and the impor­tance of the finan­cial sys­tem in the glob­al econ­o­my. Rather than sep­a­rat­ing off the finan­cial world from the rest of the econ­o­my, finan­cial equi­lib­ri­um is stud­ied as an exten­sion of eco­nom­ic equi­lib­ri­um. The course also gives a pic­ture of the kind of think­ing and analy­sis done by hedge funds.”

Finance The­o­ry is taught by John Geanako­p­los, a Yale econ­o­mist. (He received his Ph.D. in Eco­nom­ics from Har­vard in 1980.) You can find the 26 lec­tures from the course all embed­ded above, or over on YouTube and iTunes.

Finance The­o­ry has been added to our list of Free Eco­nom­ics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

Take a Free Course on the Finan­cial Mar­kets with Robert Shiller, Win­ner of the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ics

Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Launch­es, Bring­ing Free Online Cours­es in Eco­nom­ics to the Web

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

How Computers Ruined Rock Music

in Music | May 24th, 2019

There are purists out there who think com­put­ers ruined elec­tron­ic music, made it cold and alien, removed the human ele­ment: the warm, war­bling sounds of ana­log oscil­la­tors, the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of ana­log drum machines, syn­the­siz­ers that go out of tune and have minds of their own. Musi­cians played those instru­ments, plugged and patched them togeth­er, tried their best to con­trol them. They did not pro­gram them.

Then came dig­i­tal sam­plers, MIDI, DAWs (dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tions), pitch cor­rec­tion, time cor­rec­tion… every note, every arpeg­gio, every drum fill could be mapped in advance, exe­cut­ed per­fect­ly, end­less­ly editable for­ev­er, and entire­ly played by machines.

All of this may have been true for a short peri­od of time, when pro­duc­ers became so enam­ored of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy that it became a sub­sti­tute for the old ways. But ana­log has come back in force, with both tech­nolo­gies now exist­ing har­mo­nious­ly in most elec­tron­ic music, often with­in the same piece of gear.

Dig­i­tal elec­tron­ic music has virtues all its own, and the dizzy­ing range of effects achiev­able with vir­tu­al com­po­nents, when used judi­cious­ly, can lead to sub­lime results. But when it comes to anoth­er argu­ment about the impact of com­put­ers on music made by humans, this con­clu­sion isn’t so easy to draw. Rock and roll has always been pow­ered by human error—indeed would nev­er have exist­ed with­out it. How can it be improved by dig­i­tal tools designed to cor­rect errors?

The ubiq­ui­tous sound of dis­tor­tion, for exam­ple, first came from ampli­fiers and mix­ing boards pushed beyond their frag­ile lim­its. The best songs seem to all have mis­takes built into their appeal. The open­ing bass notes of The Breeder’s “Can­non­ball,” mis­tak­en­ly played in the wrong key, for exam­ple… a zeal­ous con­tem­po­rary pro­duc­er would not be able to resist run­ning them through pitch cor­rec­tion soft­ware.

John Bonham’s thun­der­ing drums, a force of nature caught on tape, feel “impa­tient, ster­ile and unin­spired” when sliced up and snapped to a grid in Pro Tools, as pro­duc­er and YouTu­ber Rick Beato has done (above) to prove his the­o­ry that com­put­ers ruined rock music. You could just write this off as an old man rant­i­ng about new sounds, but hear him out. Few peo­ple on the inter­net know more about record­ed music or have more pas­sion for shar­ing that knowl­edge.

In the video at the top, Beato makes his case for organ­ic rock and roll: “human beings play­ing music that is not metro­nom­ic, or ‘quantized’”—the term for when com­put­ers splice and stretch acoustic sounds so that they align math­e­mat­i­cal­ly. Quan­tiz­ing, Beato says, “is when you deter­mine which rhyth­mic fluc­tu­a­tions in a par­tic­u­lar instrument’s per­for­mance are impre­cise or expres­sive, you cut them, and you snap them to the near­est grid point.” Overuse of the tech­nol­o­gy, which has become the norm, removes the “groove” or “feel” of the play­ing, the very imper­fec­tions that make it inter­est­ing and mov­ing.

Beato’s thor­ough demon­stra­tion of how dig­i­tal tools turn record­ed music into mod­u­lar fur­ni­ture show us how the pro­duc­tion process has become a men­tal exer­cise, a design chal­lenge, rather than the pal­pa­ble, spon­ta­neous out­put of liv­ing, breath­ing human bod­ies. The “present state of affairs,” as Nick Mes­sitte puts it, is “key­boards trig­ger­ing sam­ples quan­tized to with­in an inch of their human­i­ty by pro­duc­ers in the pre-pro­duc­tion stages.” Any­one resist­ing this sta­tus quo becomes an acoustic musi­cian by default, argues Mes­sitte, stand­ing on one side of the “acoustic ver­sus syn­thet­ic” divide.

Whether the two modes of music can be har­mo­nious­ly rec­on­ciled is up for debate, but at present, I’m inclined to agree with Beato: dig­i­tal record­ing, pro­cess­ing, and edit­ing tech­nolo­gies, for all their incred­i­ble con­ve­nience and unlim­it­ed capa­bil­i­ty, too eas­i­ly turn rhythms made with the elas­tic tim­ing of human hearts and hands into machin­ery. The effect is fatigu­ing and dull, and on the whole, rock records that lean on these tech­niques can’t stand up to those made in pre­vi­ous decades or by the few hold­outs who refuse to join the arms race for syn­thet­ic pop per­fec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Mistakes/Studio Glitch­es Give Famous Songs Their Per­son­al­i­ty: Pink Floyd, Metal­li­ca, The Breed­ers, Steely Dan & More

The Dis­tor­tion of Sound: A Short Film on How We’ve Cre­at­ed “a McDonald’s Gen­er­a­tion of Music Con­sumers”

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

in History, Music | May 23rd, 2019

“For six­ty years, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom has told us that women gen­er­al­ly did not per­form rock and roll dur­ing the 1950s,” writes Leah Branstet­ter, Ph.D. can­di­date in musi­col­o­gy at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty. Like so many cul­tur­al forms into which we are ini­ti­at­ed, through edu­ca­tion, per­son­al inter­est, and gen­er­al osmo­sis, this pop­u­lar form of West­ern music—now a genre with sev­en­ty years under its belt—has func­tioned as an almost ide­al exam­ple of the great man the­o­ry of his­to­ry.

It can seem like set­tled fact that Chuck Berry, Elvis Pres­ley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Lit­tle Richard, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and their cel­e­brat­ed male con­tem­po­raries invent­ed the music; and that women played pas­sive roles as fans, stu­dio audi­ence mem­bers, groupies, per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of cars and gui­tars.…

The recog­ni­tion of rare excep­tions, like Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, does not chal­lenge the rule. But Branstetter’s Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave project almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly does.

The real­i­ty is, how­ev­er, that hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls per­formed and record­ed rock and roll in its ear­ly years. And many more par­tic­i­pat­ed in oth­er ways: writ­ing songs, own­ing or work­ing for record labels, work­ing as ses­sion or tour­ing musi­cians,design­ing stage wear, danc­ing, or man­ag­ing tal­ent…. [W]omen’s careers didn’t always resem­ble those of their more famous male coun­ter­parts. Some female per­form­ers were well known and per­formed nation­al­ly as stars, while oth­ers had more influ­ence region­al­ly or only in one tiny club. Some made the pop charts, but even more had impact through live per­for­mance. Some women exhib­it­ed the kind of wild onstage behav­ior that had come to be expect­ed from fig­ures Jer­ry Lee Lewis or Lit­tle Richard—but that wasn’t the only way to be rebel­lious, and oth­ers found their own meth­ods of being rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

Branstetter’s project, a dig­i­tal dis­ser­ta­tion, cov­ers dozens of musi­cians from the peri­od, just a frac­tion of the names she has uncov­ered in her research. Some of the women pro­filed were nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known. Many more were accom­plished stars before the 60’s girl group phe­nom­e­non, and con­tin­ued per­form­ing into the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Meet rock­ers like Sparkle Moore (see up top), born in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka and inspired by Bill Haley in the mid-fifties to play rock­a­bil­ly in her home­town. She went on to tour the coun­try, putting out record after record. “By 1957,” writes Branstet­ter, “she had about forty song­writ­ing cred­its to her name.” Teen mag­a­zine Dig wrote that Moore had “an amaz­ing resem­blance to the late James Dean… Presley’s style and Dean’s looks.” She is still a “favorite with rock­a­bil­ly fans,” notes her biog­ra­phy. Moore “has been induct­ed into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also made a new album in 2010 enti­tled Spark-a-Bil­ly.”

Meet Lil­lie Bryant, one half of duo Bil­lie & Lil­lie, whose breezi­er R&B sounds and more whole­some image res­onat­ed with ear­ly rock and roll fans, pro­mot­ers, and stars. Bryant began per­form­ing in New York City clubs as a teenag­er. Then pro­duc­ers Bob Crewe and Frank Slay turned her and singer Bil­lie Ford into a duo who went on to star in leg­endary DJ Alan Freed’s stage shows, “includ­ing a six-week tour with Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon” and an appear­ance on Amer­i­can Band­stand. Bryant still per­forms in her home­town of New­burgh, New York.

Meet The Chan­tels. “Formed in the Bronx, New York in the ear­ly 1950s,” they were “among the first African-Amer­i­can female vocal groups to gain nation­al atten­tion.” They also toured with Alan Freed and appeared on Amer­i­can Band­stand and The Dick Clark Show. In 1961, their hit “Look in My Eyes” went to num­ber 14 on the pop charts and 6 on the R&B charts. (Thir­ty years lat­er, it appeared on the Good­fel­las sound­track.)

Most peo­ple who grew up on the music of the 50s and 60s have like­ly heard of many of these women rock­ers, or have at least heard their music if they didn’t know the names and faces. But Branstetter’s project does more than tell the sto­ries of individuals—in biogra­phies, inter­views (with, for one, Jer­ry Lee Lewis’s sis­ter, singer and piano play­er Lin­da Gail Lewis), blog posts, playlists (hear one below), song analy­ses, and essays.

She also sub­stan­ti­ates her larg­er claim that women’s “con­tri­bu­tions shaped the cul­ture and sound of rock and roll,” in numer­ous well-doc­u­ment­ed ways. This despite the fact that women in ear­ly rock were told ver­sions of the same thing Joan Jett heard 20 years later—“girls don’t play rock and roll.” They some­times heard it from oth­er women in the music busi­ness. Pop singer Con­nie Frances, for exam­ple, offered her opin­ion in a 1958 issue of Bill­board: “A girl can’t sing rock and roll. It’s basi­cal­ly too sav­age for a girl singer to han­dle.”

Atti­tudes like these per­sist­ed so long, and became so uncon­scious, that one of the largest gui­tar mak­ers in the world, Fend­er, and sev­er­al oth­er musi­cal instru­ment mak­ers, may have lost mil­lions in sales before they final­ly real­ized that women make up half of new gui­tar play­ers. Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave will inspire and enlight­en many of those young musi­cians who did­n’t grow up know­ing any­thing about Sparkle Moore or The Chan­tels, but should have. Unless rock his­to­ri­ans will­ing­ly ignore the work of schol­ars like Branstet­ter, sub­se­quent accounts should reflect a more expan­sive, inclu­sive, view of the ter­ri­to­ry. Start here.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Hot Gui­tar Solos of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, “America’s First Gospel Rock Star”

How Joan Jett Start­ed the Run­aways at 15 and Faced Down Every Bar­ri­er for Women in Rock and Roll

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

in Art, Current Affairs | May 22nd, 2019

Jux­tapoz writes: “Nev­er invit­ed to be the part of Venice Bien­nale, Banksy once again invit­ed him­self to show­case his work. Using a typ­i­cal pop-up stand that usu­al­ly sells tacky paint­ings and sou­venirs, he assem­bled a selec­tion of 9 works that col­lec­tive­ly built an image of a mas­sive cruise ship block­ing the city.”

In recent years, the flood of mas­sive cruise ships into Venice has cre­at­ed ten­sions between Vene­tians and tourism com­pa­nies. It’s pret­ty clear on what side the street artist comes down.

Get more at Jux­tapoz.

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:

How Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

The Venice Time Machine: 1,000 Years of Venice’s His­to­ry Gets Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­served with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Big Data

Watch City Out of Time, A Short Trib­ute to Venice, Nar­rat­ed by William Shat­ner in 1959

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

Fleetwood Mac Unveils Their New Singer Stevie Nicks & The World Takes Notice: Watch Bewitching Performances of “Rhiannon” (1975–1976)

in Music, Television | May 22nd, 2019

Fleet­wood Mac lost one lead singer and gui­tarist after anoth­er in the 70s, first to a men­tal health cri­sis, then a reli­gious cult, then dra­mat­ic fir­ings and rela­tion­al break­downs. They were in a bit of a sham­bles when new prospect Lind­say Buck­ing­ham arrived, bring­ing with him even more dra­ma, as well as an unknown singer, Ste­vie Nicks. One year lat­er, their breakup coin­cid­ed with the dis­so­lu­tion of John and Chris­tine McVie’s mar­riage, and drum­mer and name­sake Mick Fleet­wood’s divorce, dur­ing the record­ing of the mas­sive-sell­ing Rumors album in 1976.

Some­how, the band kept on, mak­ing greater leaps for­ward with Tusk, sur­viv­ing into the 90s intact and mount­ing sev­er­al reunion tours after­ward. How? Many a book and doc­u­men­tary have tack­led the sub­ject. But maybe the main rea­son is plain.

Despite endur­ing cir­cum­stances that would tear most bands apart, despite the cyn­i­cal lures and traps of wealth and fame, Fleet­wood Mac’s pro­fes­sion­al longevi­ty came from the fact that they were musi­cians who loved play­ing togeth­er, who knew how good they were at what they did, and knew they were bet­ter when they did it togeth­er.

Not only did the new five-piece put aside huge per­son­al con­flicts and an already leg­endary his­to­ry to make some of the great­est pop music ever writ­ten, both col­lab­o­rat­ing and let­ting indi­vid­ual song­writ­ers take the lead, but they had the smarts to rec­og­nize the enor­mous tal­ent they had in Nicks, who first joined the band at Buckingham’s insis­tence then quick­ly became its star front­woman. Her mag­net­ism was unde­ni­able, her song­writ­ing bewitch­ing, her stage pres­ence trans­for­ma­tive.

Fans see­ing Nicks onstage with the band after the release of 1975’s Fleet­wood Mac have “no idea who Ste­vie Nicks is,” writes Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone. They have “heard ‘Rhi­an­non’ on the radio,” have maybe bought the record, but “they’ve nev­er seen her rock.” Then they did—explaining the ori­gins of “Rhi­an­non” on The Old Grey Whis­tle Test (top) before launch­ing into the “song about a Welsh witch,” and going full-on new-age diva with super-feath­ered hair on The Mid­night Spe­cial (above).

“She’s the new girl in a long-run­ning band,” writes Sheffield, “but she’s here to blow all that his­to­ry away. She keeps push­ing the song hard­er, faster, as if she’s impa­tient to prove the new Mac is a real sav­age-like rock mon­ster, now that she’s ful­ly arrived.” Buck­ing­ham was the right gui­tarist at the right time in the band’s evo­lu­tion, step­ping into sev­er­al huge pairs of shoes to help them recre­ate their sound. But Ste­vie Nicks pro­vid­ed the voice and elec­tri­fy­ing­ly weird ener­gy they need­ed to become their best new selves.

Big, dra­mat­ic TV appear­ances were one thing, but the band’s tran­si­tion from British blues rock­ers to pop radio super­stars wasn’t a total eclipse of their past. While they may have been pro­mot­ed as a Ste­vie Nicks-cen­tric enti­ty, Chris­tine McVie still played a major singer/songwriter role, as did Buck­ing­ham. In one of their first live con­certs with the two new mem­bers, at the Capi­tol The­atre in New Jer­sey, above, McVie opens the set with “Get Like You Used to Be” and “Spare Me a Lit­tle of Your Love.”

Buck­ing­ham shows off his impec­ca­ble blues and coun­try chops, and Nicks sits in on back­ing vocals, then takes the lead three songs in on “Rhi­an­non.” Oth­er new songs in the short setlist include “World Turn­ing,” sung by McVie and Buck­ing­ham, and the Buck­ing­ham-led “Blue Let­ter” and “I’m So Afraid.” (They reach as far back in the back cat­a­log as Peter Green’s “Green Man­al­ishi.”) It’s clear at this point that the band doesn’t quite know what to do with Ste­vie Nicks. But once they debuted on tele­vi­sion, she knew exact­ly how to sell her­self to audi­ences.

FYI: If you hap­pen to be an Audi­ble mem­ber, you can down­load Rob Sheffield­’s audio­book, The Wild Heart of Ste­vie Nicks, as a free addi­tion­al book this month. (It’s part of their Audi­ble Orig­i­nals pro­gram.) If you’re not an Audi­ble mem­ber, you can always sign up for a free 30-day tri­al here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances by Peter Green, Founder of Fleet­wood Mac & the Only British Blues Gui­tarist Who Gave B.B. King “the Cold Sweats”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Would You Go Back to 1889 and Take Out Baby Hitler?: Time-Travel Expert James Gleick Answers the Philosophical Question

in History, Sci Fi | May 14th, 2019

The vast major­i­ty of us have no incli­na­tion to kill any­one, much less a small child. But what if we had the chance to kill baby Adolf Hitler, pre­vent­ing the Holo­caust and indeed the Sec­ond World War? That hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion has endured for a vari­ety of rea­sons, touch­ing as it does on the con­cepts of geno­cide and infant mur­der in forms even more high­ly charged than usu­al. It also presents, in the words of Time Trav­el: A His­to­ry author James Gle­ick, “two prob­lems at once. There’s a sci­en­tif­ic prob­lem — you can set your mind to work imag­in­ing, ‘Could such a thing be pos­si­ble and how would that work?’ And then there’s an eth­i­cal prob­lem. ‘If I could, would I, should I?’ ”

By the sim­plest analy­sis, writes Vox’s Dylan Matthews, the ques­tion comes down to, “Is it eth­i­cal to kill one per­son to save 40-plus mil­lion peo­ple?” But time-trav­el fic­tion has been around long enough that we’ve all inter­nal­ized the mes­sage that it’s not quite so sim­ple. We can even ques­tion the assump­tion that killing baby Hitler would pre­vent the Holo­caust and World War II in the first place.

Maybe those ter­ri­ble events hap­pen on any time­line, regard­less of whether Hitler lives or dies: that would align with the Novikov self-con­sis­ten­cy prin­ci­ple, which holds that “time trav­el could be pos­si­ble, but must be con­sis­tent with the past as it has already tak­en place,” and which has been dra­ma­tized in time-trav­el sto­ries from La Jetée to The Ter­mi­na­tor.

Gle­ick does­n’t have a straight answer in the Vox video on the killing-baby-hitler ques­tion above as to whether he him­self would go back to 1889 and put baby Hitler out of action. “When you change his­to­ry,” he says of the moral of the count­less many time trav­el sto­ries he’s read, “you don’t get the result you’re look­ing for. Every day, every­thing we do is a turn­ing point in his­to­ry, whether it’s obvi­ous to us or not.” This in con­trast to for­mer Flori­da gov­er­nor and Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Jeb Bush, who, when he had the big baby-Hitler ques­tion put to him by the Huff­in­g­ton Post, returned a hearty “Hell yea I would.” But giv­en time to reflect, even he con­clud­ed that such an act “could have a dan­ger­ous effect on every­thing else.” It appears that some of the lessons of time-trav­el sto­ries have been learned, but as for what human­i­ty will do if it actu­al­ly devel­ops time-trav­el tech­nol­o­gy — maybe we’d rather not peer into the future to find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Ori­gin of Time Trav­el Fic­tion?: New Video Essay Explains How Time Trav­el Writ­ing Got Its Start with Charles Dar­win & His Lit­er­ary Peers

What Hap­pened When Stephen Hawk­ing Threw a Cock­tail Par­ty for Time Trav­el­ers (2009)

Pro­fes­sor Ronald Mal­lett Wants to Build a Time Machine in this Cen­tu­ry … and He’s Not Kid­ding

Carl Jung Psy­cho­an­a­lyzes Hitler: “He’s the Uncon­scious of 78 Mil­lion Ger­mans.” “With­out the Ger­man Peo­ple He’d Be Noth­ing” (1938)

How Did Hitler Rise to Pow­er? : New TED-ED Ani­ma­tion Pro­vides a Case Study in How Fas­cists Get Demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly Elect­ed

The New York Times’ First Pro­file of Hitler: His Anti-Semi­tism Is Not as “Gen­uine or Vio­lent” as It Sounds (1922)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.