New Digital Archive, “Richard Pryor’s Peoria,” Takes You Inside the Dark, Lively World That Shaped the Pioneering Comedian

in Comedy, History | February 18th, 2016

By Scott Saul:

Richard Pry­or is a leg­endary com­ic, and for good rea­son. He had extra­or­di­nary gifts as a mim­ic, sto­ry­teller, phys­i­cal come­di­an, satirist, and impro­vis­ing actor — gifts he brought togeth­er in an act that had the dan­ger­ous elec­tric­i­ty of an unin­su­lat­ed wire. Mean­while he estab­lished a feed­back loop between his act and his per­son­al life, mak­ing use of all those stage chops to draw com­e­dy out of a life that was painful­ly full of self-sab­o­tage, may­hem, and var­i­ous forms of abuse.

It was my task, as Pryor’s biog­ra­ph­er, to probe the leg­ends of his life, start­ing with the vivid sto­ries he told of his for­ma­tive years in the red-light dis­trict of Peo­ria, Illi­nois. In his stage act and rem­i­nis­cences, Pry­or relat­ed how he’d been raised in a broth­el by a grand­moth­er and father who worked, respec­tive­ly, as madam and pimp, and how he had both suf­fered at their hands and learned from them. He told, too, how he’d made his way in a larg­er world that, while bru­tal, was also touched with grace — that grace he felt when he ven­tured onstage, at school or in a club, and start­ed to find him­self as a per­former. 

Ear­li­er biog­ra­phers had won­dered how much Pry­or had embell­ished his past in build­ing his act around his life sto­ry. In my research I dis­cov­ered a moth­er­lode of mate­r­i­al — fam­i­ly pho­tos, court records, news­pa­per arti­cles, and more — that not only cor­rob­o­rat­ed the out­lines of Pryor’s sto­ry but also filled in the pic­ture and gave it a his­tor­i­cal depth. I could see, for instance, how Pryor’s taboo-bust­ing com­e­dy was root­ed in his child­hood envi­ron­ment, a black work­ing-class under­ground where taboos were bust­ed on a reg­u­lar basis, and hypocrisies called to account. You can watch a short, four-minute film above that sets the sto­ry of the young Richard and his fam­i­ly against the back­drop of “Roarin’ Peo­ria.”

Ulti­mate­ly, I dis­cov­ered so much in my research into Pryor’s for­ma­tive years that I felt it couldn’t be con­tained in the book I was writ­ing (in which Pryor’s first two decades in Peo­ria make up only one of five sec­tions). So I built a dig­i­tal com­pan­ion where you can explore over 200 doc­u­ments from “Richard Pryor’s Peo­ria”. Here you can see, through the young Richard’s report card, how he strug­gled in the con­fines of Peo­ria schools. You can see, through the divorce case of his par­ents, how his moth­er (con­trary to reports that she aban­doned him) tried, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to steal Richard away from his grand­moth­er and father, and from the red-light dis­trict itself. You can see, through the paper trail of Richard’s for­mi­da­ble grand­moth­er Marie, how she fought — with wil­i­ness and blunt force — against her abu­sive hus­band and against the sys­tem of Jim Crow. And you can vis­it the var­i­ous scenes of Richard’s youth, from his family’s tav­ern and the com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter where he first took the stage to the some­times rau­cous, some­times styl­ish clubs where he got his start as an enter­tain­er. 

Richard Pry­or was an excep­tion­al human being — a genius who changed the rules of com­e­dy in Amer­i­ca — and the web­site aims to show how the seeds of that genius were plant­ed. At the same time, it sug­gests how Pryor’s life sto­ry makes rich­er sense when set against larg­er his­tor­i­cal back­drops: the sto­ry of how the Midwest’s pre­mier “Sin City” became, dur­ing the Cold War, a lead­ing “All-Amer­i­can City”; the sto­ry of how black neigh­bor­hoods were demol­ished in “urban renew­al” efforts (Pryor’s child­hood home was itself tar­get­ed by a wreck­ing ball so that Peo­ria might be linked to an inter­state high­way); and, most of all, the sto­ry of how black Amer­i­cans, while locked into seg­re­ga­tion in the Mid­west, defied that sys­tem in inven­tive and force­ful ways.

This post is by Scott Saul, the author of Becom­ing Richard Pry­or (Harper­Collins), now out in paper­back.  He teach­es Amer­i­can his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture at UC-Berke­ley, and also is the host of the Chap­ter & Verse pod­cast. Fol­low him on Twit­ter @scottsaul4.

The 120 Minutes Archive Compiles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alternative Music Show (1986–2013)

in Music, Television | February 15th, 2016

In the first cou­ple years after MTV’s 1981 debut, the fledg­ling cable net­work more or less repro­duced the 70’s album-ori­ent­ed rock radio for­mat with video accom­pa­ni­ment, to the exclu­sion of a num­ber of emerg­ing pop­u­lar artists (a fact David Bowie bemoaned in ’83). In the mid-80s, the net­work diver­si­fied: Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean” broke the col­or bar­ri­er in 1984, and in the fol­low­ing years, the net­work moved toward edgi­er music with shows like Headbanger’s Ball in ’85 (orig­i­nal­ly Heavy Met­al Mania) and, a few years lat­er, Yo! MTV Raps.

In 1986, anoth­er show appeared that solid­i­fied MTV’s status—for a few years at least—as a gen­uine source for new, “alter­na­tive” music, before that term became an emp­ty mar­ket­ing word. Tucked away in a mid­night to 2 A.M. slot, 120 Min­utes ini­tial­ly “guid­ed view­ers through the late ‘80s col­lege rock land­scape, which was large­ly inspired by trends hap­pen­ing in the UK at the time.”

So writes Tyler at Tylerc.com, who hosts the huge­ly impres­sive 120 Min­utes Archive, a recre­ation of the 27-year run of the two-hour music video, news, and inter­view show that broke many an “alter­na­tive” artist in the U.S. and gave many more a plat­form to pro­mote their music, caus­es, and per­son­al­i­ties. Enter the archive here.

I well remem­ber stay­ing up late, the vol­ume turned down as low as pos­si­ble so as not to wake the fam­i­ly, and catch­ing videos for the Pix­ies’ “Here Comes Your Man” (above) and R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World (As We Know It),” among so many oth­er bands art-pop, new wave, post-punk, indus­tri­al, etc. The show was like a video ana­logue to Trouser Press—and brows­ing the online data­base of that “’bible’ of alter­na­tive rock” will give you a good sense of 120 Min­utes’ breadth. Though it fea­tured a very healthy mix of hard­core, elec­tron­ic, and new wave music from both sides of the pond, the show often seemed to be dom­i­nat­ed by British bands like the Cure (whose Robert Smith once guest host­ed), Depeche Mode, the Psy­che­del­ic Furs, and (sec­ond from top) Big Audio Dyna­mite, Mick Jones’ post-Clash project, which Lou Reed dis­cuss­es briefly in the clip at the top from his 1986 stint as a guest host. (See sev­er­al more clips of his host­ing here.)

In the 90s, 120 Min­utes became a show­case for much more home­grown prod­uct as the “blender of post-punk, goth, indus­tri­al, and jan­gle-rock gave way… to a coa­lesced grunge move­ment” after the seis­mic debut of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” in 1991, with the likes of Mud­honey, Soundgar­den, the Dandy Warhols, and the Smash­ing Pump­kins tak­ing over for much of the British new wave. Those who came of age in the 90s will remem­ber the show’s host Matt Pin­field­’s obses­sive, rock critic’s approach to “the rise and fall of alter­na­tive rock.” Soon, the show became a heav­i­ly eclec­tic mix: Brit pop arrived (along with the bag­gy Mad­ch­ester of the Hap­py Mon­days, Stone Ros­es, etc.), and “post-grunge bands, left of cen­ter singer-song­writ­ers, west coast ska-inspired bands, and alter­na­tive hip hop acts” joined the playlist.

The mid-nineties seem like gold­en years in ret­ro­spect. Flush with cash, record com­pa­nies threw mon­ey at any­thing vague­ly Nir­vana-shaped, which enabled a num­ber of excel­lent bands and artists to break out of their local scenes and into larg­er stu­dios and stages like the trav­el­ing cir­cus of Lol­la­palooza. (The sit­u­a­tion also pro­duced a drag of deriv­a­tive, dumb­ed-down awful­ness.) Scroll through the playlists Tyler C has com­piled for 1994, for exam­ple, a year I fond­ly, most­ly, remem­ber, to get a sense of the range of artists and gen­res the show embraced by this time—from the ham­mer­ing indus­tri­al-met­al of Min­istry (above) to the hazy, ethe­re­al psych-folk of Mazzy Star (below). Post-Nir­vana “alter­na­tive rock” went so main­stream that the net­work even­tu­al­ly ran a com­pan­ion show every week­night called Alter­na­tive Nation, so named despite the fact that “alter­na­tive” came to mean pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of the out­sider sta­tus it had once described.

The boom times couldn’t last. As the mil­len­ni­um waned, so did the hey­day of alt-rock music videos. Real­i­ty TV and bub­blegum pop took over. “In the era of TRL,” writes Tyler C, “the future of 120 Min­utes on MTV was uncer­tain.” As MTV rel­e­gat­ed music videos—once its rai­son d’e­tre—to the mar­gins, 120 Min­utes became MTV’s “de fac­to rock show,” then moved to MTV 2, then off the air alto­geth­er in 2003 after a 17-year run. Then, as indie rock ascend­ed to pop­u­lar­i­ty, the show was revived for a 2003–2011 run as Sub­ter­ranean and again as 120 Min­utes until 2013.

Though Tyler C’s exhaus­tive archive con­tains few actu­al clips from the show, it does doc­u­ment 120 Min­utes’ entire his­to­ry, from its under­ground late 80s incep­tion, through the main­stream 90s, and into the sub­dued 2000’s, with playlists from each episode and, writes Buz­zfeed, “his­to­ries of what bands played, descrip­tions of tours the show appeared on, and anec­dotes where pos­si­ble.” You can watch full episodes of the show’s last cou­ple years with Matt Pin­field on MTV Hive (Many, like this one, broad­cast from New York’s Cake Shop).

The archive, Tyler told Buz­zfeed, res­onates with Gen X’ers because “it’s all about nostalgia”—and I can cer­tain­ly tes­ti­fy to that effect—and appeals to younger peo­ple “because that era of music in the ’90s was so impor­tant. It was the age of EVERYTHING alter­na­tive.” For those of us who lived through the decade, and who aged out of MTV’s demo­graph­ic around the time that Tyler aged in, it’s also an oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch up with lat­er sea­sons of the show we prob­a­bly missed. They may be as essen­tial someday—in their own way—as the ones we so wist­ful­ly recall.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

The First 10 Videos Played on MTV: Rewind the Video­tape to August 1, 1981

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

Producer Tony Visconti Breaks Down the Making of David Bowie’s Classic “Heroes,” Track by Track

in Music | January 25th, 2016

Those famil­iar with David Bowie lore may know one or two things about the record­ing of his sem­i­nal 1978 track “Heroes.” One is that the record­ing stu­dio did, in fact, look out over the Berlin Wall and the lovers that Bowie saw made it into the lyrics (“I can remem­ber stand­ing by the wall/And the guns shot above our heads/And we kissed as though noth­ing could fall”). The oth­er is the micro­phone set up in Hansa’s expan­sive record­ing stu­dio: one next to Bowie’s mouth, anoth­er 15 — 20 feet away, and anoth­er at the far end of the room to catch the reverb. (Hands up how many of us learned about that when Steve Albi­ni copied it for Nirvana’s “All Apolo­gies”? Any­body?) But as this video above with pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti shows, that’s only a few of the mag­i­cal inven­tions and dar­ing deci­sions made for this record­ing. The ses­sion con­tains lessons for any young pro­duc­er end­less­ly fid­dling about with their Pro­Tools and the mil­lions of choic­es afford­ed by a $2.99 synth app for the iPad.

When Bowie added his vocals at the end of the record­ing ses­sion, there was only one track left on the tape, hav­ing filled up the 23 oth­er tracks with the band’s back­ing track, Eno’s synths, extra per­cus­sion, three (!) tracks of Robert Fripp com­mand­ing the gods through his gui­tar pick­up and feed­back, and more. If they didn’t like the take, they’d erase over it with the new one. Those were the ana­log days. But as Vis­con­ti says, that scary deci­sion elec­tri­fied Bowie. As an artist, every­thing was at stake. It’s like they knew they were mak­ing a song for the ages. Maybe it’s Visconti’s 20/20 hind­sight, but they were right.

This small seg­ment above is part of a longer three-hour tour through Visconti’s career, record­ed in 2011 for the Red Bull Acad­e­my lec­ture series. Vis­con­ti talks about work­ing with Marc Bolan, Mor­ris­sey, Paul McCart­ney and oth­ers, along with his thoughts on pro­duc­ing, and a great deal about Bowie’s “Berlin Tril­o­gy.” (The sec­ond half of the talk is here.)

But there’s so much more to be dis­cov­ered among those 24 audio tracks of “Heroes.” In this won­der­ful BBC doc­u­men­tary from 2012 (also see up top), Vis­con­ti sits down with the dig­i­tal­ly trans­ferred mas­ter tapes and takes us through the con­struc­tion of the song. Here we get to hear Robert Fripp’s raw gui­tar tracks which sound so incred­i­bly abra­sive it’s hard to believe they exist in the song; Visconti’s “cow­bell,” which is him hit­ting a pipe out­side in the yard; Eno’s synth in a brief­case, the EMS Synthi‑A; and numer­ous painter­ly daubs of audio that all make up the mix. And then there’s that vocal, which Vis­con­ti lets play with­out any of the music, a song for the his­to­ry books, a voice that couldn’t be con­strained to just one mic. The video unfor­tu­nate­ly could­n’t be embed­ded on our site, but it’s def­i­nite­ly worth your time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

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

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

John Cleese on The Importance of Making and Embracing Mistakes

in Business, Life | January 20th, 2016

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Paul Box­ley

In his essay “The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty of Wrong,” Isaac Asi­mov argues per­sua­sive­ly against the com­mon belief that “’right’ and ‘wrong’ are absolute; that every­thing that isn’t per­fect­ly and com­plete­ly right is total­ly and equal­ly wrong.” Instead, he says, “it seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy con­cepts,” and that cer­tain ideas can be true in a sense, but still in need of fur­ther cor­rec­tion with new infor­ma­tion. I can’t tes­ti­fy as to the strength of his argu­ment when it comes to the­o­ret­i­cal physics, but as far as basic induc­tive rea­son­ing goes it seems per­fect­ly sound to me, and a point worth mak­ing fre­quent­ly. We don’t expe­ri­ence a world of bina­ries, but one full of “fuzzi­ness” and near miss­es of all kinds.

As in science—argues for­mer Mon­ty Python mem­ber, com­e­dy writer, and intel­lec­tu­al gad­fly John Cleese—so in busi­ness. Cleese gave a moti­va­tion­al speech called “The Impor­tance of Mis­takes” in 1988 to an audi­ence of 500 busi­ness­man at the British-Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce, a demo­graph­ic he has addressed remote­ly since 1972 with a series of busi­ness train­ing videos made by his com­pa­ny, Video Arts. (“Bet­ter job train­ing through enter­tain­ment,” as Kate Callen at UPI describes the com­pa­ny’s mis­sion. Videos have titles like “Meet­ings, Bloody Meet­ings,” and “If Looks Could Kill.”)

In “The Impor­tance of Mis­takes,” Cleese explains that we do not veer wild­ly off course into total wrong­ness every time we make an error. Instead, our mis­takes pro­vide us with oppor­tu­ni­ties for feed­back, which enables us to make course cor­rec­tions, where we will inevitably make anoth­er mis­take, receive more feed­back, etc., until we hit the mark. These metaphors are not mine; Cleese uses a sto­ry called Gor­don the Guid­ed Mis­sile as his pri­ma­ry example—which he dubi­ous­ly claims was “the first nurs­ery sto­ry I ever remem­ber my moth­er read­ing to me”:

Gor­don the guid­ed mis­sile sets off in pur­suit of its tar­get. It imme­di­ate­ly sends out sig­nals to dis­cov­er if it is on the right course to hit that tar­get. Sig­nals come back: “No, you are not on course. So change it. Up a bit and slight­ly to the left.” And Gor­don changes course as instruct­ed and then, ratio­nal lit­tle fel­low that he is, sends out anoth­er sig­nal. “Am I on course now?” Back comes the answer, “No, but if you adjust your present course a bit fur­ther up and a bit fur­ther to the left, you will be.” He adjusts his course again and sends out anoth­er request for infor­ma­tion. Back comes the answer, “No, Gor­don, you’ve still got it wrong. Now you must come down a bit and a foot to the right.” And the guid­ed mis­sile goes on and on mak­ing mis­takes, and on and on lis­ten­ing to feed­back and on and on cor­rect­ing its behav­ior until it blows up the nasty ene­my thing. And we applaud the mis­sile for its skill. If, how­ev­er some crit­ic says, “Well, it cer­tain­ly made a lot of mis­takes on the way”, we reply, “Yes, but that didn’t mat­ter, did it? It got there in the end.” All its mis­takes were lit­tle ones, in the sense that they could be imme­di­ate­ly cor­rect­ed. And as a results of mak­ing many hun­dreds of mis­takes, even­tu­al­ly the mis­sile suc­ceed­ed in avoid­ing the one mis­take which real­ly would have mat­tered: miss­ing the tar­get.

The sto­ry illus­trates, Cleese says, the impor­tance of a “tol­er­ant atti­tude towards mistakes”—even, a “pos­i­tive atti­tude.” To take any oth­er view would be to behave “irra­tional­ly, unsci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, and unsuc­cess­ful­ly.” Cleese more or less rec­om­mends his audi­ence adopt Asimov’s sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive on error: mis­takes are not dis­as­trous­ly irrecov­er­able mis­steps, but ways of learn­ing how to get things “less wrong.”

Some clar­i­fi­ca­tion: Cleese means to val­i­date only “those mis­takes which, at the time they were com­mit­ted, did have a chance.” A rea­son­ably good try, in oth­er words. There are some absolutes in the world, after all, and there are “true cop­per bot­tomed mis­takes, like spelling the word ‘rab­bit with three m’s or … start­ing a land war in Asia.” But the point stands. We’re usu­al­ly in the realm of in-between, and instead of let­ting the anx­i­ety of inde­ter­mi­na­cy over­whelm us, Cleese rec­om­mends we take risks and “gain the con­fi­dence to con­tribute spon­ta­neous­ly to what’s hap­pen­ing,” thus over­com­ing inhi­bi­tions and the fear of look­ing ridicu­lous.

Cleese deliv­ered this speech to a body of peo­ple not typ­i­cal­ly known for act­ing spon­ta­neous­ly. And while it seems to me that these days top exec­u­tives can make egre­gious errors (or com­mit egre­gious fraud) and land square­ly on their feet, I won­der if those on the tiers below have the priv­i­lege of dar­ing to make errors in most indus­tries. In any case, whether an assem­bly of cor­po­rate man­agers can afford to loosen up, the rest of us prob­a­bly can, if we’re will­ing to adopt a “pos­i­tive atti­tude” toward mis­takes and consistently—scientifically, even—view them as oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn.

All of this requires a fine bal­ance of the con­fi­dence to screw up and the humil­i­ty to take con­struc­tive feed­back when you do. “Healthy behav­ior actu­al­ly aris­es out of con­fi­dence,” Cleese observed in an inter­view after his speech, and yet, “the worst prob­lem in management—in fact, the worst prob­lem in life—is the ego.”

Read many more excerpts from Cleese’s speech here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

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

The Negro Travelers’ Green Book, the Pre-Civil Rights Guide to Traveling Safely in the U.S. (1936–66)

in Books, History, Life, Travel | January 18th, 2016

Pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment has roman­ti­cized the idea of the road trip as a whol­ly spon­ta­neous adven­ture, but for mid-cen­tu­ry African Amer­i­can motorists, plan­ning was essen­tial. The lodg­ings, restau­rants, and tourist attrac­tions where they could be assured of a warm wel­come were often few and far between in the era of seg­re­ga­tion.

The Negro Trav­el­ers’ Green Book, first print­ed in 1936, was an invalu­able resource for trav­el­ers of col­or, par­tic­u­lar­ly when their route took them out­side of urban areas. In the pre-Inter­net age, pub­lish­er Vic­tor Green, a Harlem-dwelling mail­man, relied on read­ers to sup­ply feed­back and new loca­tions for sub­se­quent edi­tions:

There are thou­sands of first class busi­ness places that we don’t know about and can’t list, which would be glad to serve the trav­el­er, but it is hard to secure list­ings of these places since we can’t secure enough agents to send us the infor­ma­tion. Each year before we go to press the new infor­ma­tion is includ­ed in the new edi­tion. When you are trav­el­ing please men­tion the Green Book, in order that they might know how you found their place of busi­ness, as they can see that you are strangers. If they haven’t heard about this guide, ask them to get in touch with us so that we might list their place. If this guide has proved use­ful to you on your trips, let us know. If not, tell us also as we appre­ci­ate your crit­i­cisms and ideas in the improve­ment of this guide from which you ben­e­fit. There will be a day some­time in the near future when this guide will not have to be pub­lished. That is when we as a race will have equal oppor­tu­ni­ties and priv­i­leges in the Unit­ed States. It will be a great day for us to sus­pend this pub­li­ca­tion for then we can go wher­ev­er we please, and with­out embar­rass­ment. But until that time comes we shall con­tin­ue to pub­lish this infor­ma­tion for your con­ve­nience each year.

- from the intro­duc­tion to the 1949 edi­tion

The New York Pub­lic Library’s Schom­burg Cen­ter for Research in Black Cul­ture has dig­i­tized 21 vol­umes of its Green Book col­lec­tion for your brows­ing plea­sure. It’s a trip back in time.

1936’s pre­mier edi­tion is geared toward vis­i­tors spend­ing time in and around New York City. In appear­ance, it resem­bles a church bul­letin or com­mu­ni­ty the­ater pro­gram, with busi­ness card ads for beau­ty salons spe­cial­iz­ing in mar­cel wav­ing and restau­rants serv­ing South­ern home cook­ing. Pub­lish­er Green extols the won­ders of Coney Island, Chi­na­town, and the The­atri­cal Dis­trict, even as he notes that “the col­ored show hous­es are in Harlem.” He also seeks to give read­ers a laugh with “How to Keep From Grow­ing Old,” a dri­ver-spe­cif­ic list that could be read aloud from the pas­sen­ger seat for the mer­ri­ment of every­one in the car. (“In slop­py weath­er, dri­ve close to pedes­tri­ans. Dry clean­ers appre­ci­ate this.”)

The Green Book soon swelled to include nation­al list­ings, as tourists and busi­ness trav­el­ers heed­ed Green’s call to beef up the info.

1961’s 25th anniver­sary edi­tion includes a his­to­ry of the enter­prise, a fair amount of typos, newsy updates on the staff, and a renewed promise to list the best places on the moon, should lunar trav­el become an option.

Arm­chair trav­el­ers can take the NYPL’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion out for a spin by enter­ing coor­di­nates into a map­ping fea­ture for 1947 or 1956.

Start­ing in my Indi­ana home­town with sights set on Man­hat­tan took me to the Cot­tage Restau­rant in Colum­bus, Ohio, the Jones Restau­rant in Grafton, West Vir­ginia, and the beau­ti­ful­ly named Trott Inn in Philadel­phia, before I final­ly lay my vir­tu­al head at the Amer­i­ca Hotel. (These days, it would be the Mil­len­ni­um Broad­way.)

Enjoy your trip. In the words of Vic­tor Green, “let’s all get togeth­er and make motor­ing bet­ter.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Mar­tin Luther King and The Mont­gomery Sto­ry: The Influ­en­tial 1957 Civ­il Rights Com­ic Book

Robert Penn War­ren Archive Brings Ear­ly Civ­il Rights to Life

Vin­tage 1930s Japan­ese Posters Artis­ti­cal­ly Mar­ket the Won­ders of Trav­el

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She doc­u­ment­ed her mis­ad­ven­tures on the road in No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Memorial Service & Celebration of “Lemmy” Kilmister, Motörhead Frontman, is Now Streaming Live

in Music | January 9th, 2016

Note: Though the ser­vice came to an end ear­li­er today, it looks like you can now watch a record­ing of the farewell cer­e­mo­ny above. If you make it to the end, you’ll notice that there was an issue with the audio when Dave Grohl began speak­ing. You can hear a slight­ly touched-up ver­sion here.

Just a quick note: “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice is now stream­ing live on Youtube. Click play above. Ian Fras­er Kilmis­ter was an Eng­lish musi­cian, singer and song­writer who found­ed and front­ed the rock band Motör­head. He died on Decem­ber 29th, at the age of 70.

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Bruce Lee’s Only Surviving TV Interview, 1971: Lost and Now Found

in Sports, Television | January 7th, 2016

Bruce Lee’s TV act­ing career began in 1966, when he land­ed a part in The Green Hor­net. (Watch his thrilling audi­tion here). But it took anoth­er five years before he gave his first–and, it turns out, only tele­vi­sion inter­view in Eng­lish. For 25 min­utes in Decem­ber 1971, the mar­tial arts star sat down with Pierre Berton, a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, in Hong Kong. And their con­ver­sa­tion cov­ered a fair amount of ground – Lee’s suc­cess star­ring in Man­darin films .… despite only speak­ing Can­tonese; his dif­fi­cul­ty devel­op­ing a career in a coun­try still hos­tile toward Chi­na; and his work train­ing oth­er Hol­ly­wood stars in the mar­tial arts.

Taped in 1971, the inter­view aired only once, then went miss­ing, and was­n’t found until 1994, when it final­ly aired again as a TV spe­cial called ”Bruce Lee: The Lost Inter­view’.’ First fea­tured on Open Cul­ture in 2011, the record­ing is now con­sid­ered his only sur­viv­ing on-cam­era inter­view and/or his only mean­ing­ful inter­view con­duct­ed in Eng­lish. A some­what restored ver­sion can be viewed on Vimeo here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

The Poet­ry of Bruce Lee: Dis­cov­er the Artis­tic Life of the Mar­tial Arts Icon

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Star­ring Role (1950)

An Artful, Animated Tribute to The Wire, Created by a Fan of the Critically-Acclaimed TV Series

in Animation, Television | January 6th, 2016

From direc­tor, design­er, and ani­ma­tor Elliot Lim comes an ani­mat­ed trib­ute to his “favorite show of all time,” HBO’s The Wire – a sen­ti­ment that he shares with Pres. Oba­ma, count­less crit­ics, and many casu­al TV view­ers. As much as the episodes them­selves, fans fond­ly remem­ber The Wire’s open­ing cred­its, which func­tioned, Andrew Dig­nan once wrote, as short films that “dis­till each sea­son’s themes, goals, and motifs.” The open­ing cred­its are what get the ani­mat­ed treat­ment in Lim’s video. Whether his video dis­tills a par­tic­u­lar set of themes, goals and motifs, I’m not yet sure. I’ll need to watch it a few more times and report back soon.

For more on The Wire and the Art of the Cred­it Sequence watch this 2012 video essay.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Chats with David Simon About Drugs, The Wire & Omar

The Wire as Great Vic­to­ri­an Nov­el

Charles Min­gus’ Instruc­tions For Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat, Read by The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey

Bill Gates, Book Critic, Names His Top 5 Books of 2015

in Books | January 4th, 2016

When you think Bill Gates, you think Microsoft co-founder and big-time phil­an­thropist. Now you can add to the list, book crit­ic. This week­end, The New York Times pro­filed Bill Gates’ pen­chant for review­ing books on his blog, Gates Notes, and how (much like Oprah) when Gates gives a book a thumbs up, it moves copies. Many copies.

Above, you can watch a Gates-nar­rat­ed video high­light­ing his five favorite books of 2015. It includes: 1.) Thing Explain­er: Com­pli­cat­ed Stuff in Sim­ple Words by Ran­dall Munroe, which “explains var­i­ous subjects—from how smart­phones work to what the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion says—using only the 1,000 most com­mon words in the Eng­lish lan­guage and blue­print-style dia­grams”; 2) Mind­set: The New Psy­chol­o­gy of Suc­cess by Car­ol S. Dweck, a best­selling book that uses “clever research stud­ies and engag­ing writ­ing” to illu­mi­nate “how our beliefs about our capa­bil­i­ties exert tremen­dous influ­ence on how we learn and which paths we take in life”; and 3) Sus­tain­able Mate­ri­als With Both Eyes Open, a book writ­ten by Cam­bridge researchers that explores the ques­tion, “How much can we reduce car­bon emis­sions that come from mak­ing and using stuff?”. Oth­er books on Gates’ short list includes David Brooks’ The Road to Char­ac­ter and Being Nixon: A Man Divid­ed, by Evan Thomas.

You can find a num­ber of Gates’ book reviews in the Books sec­tion of his site.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Six Books (and One Blog) Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

View Bill Gates’ Mobile Library: The Books & Cours­es That Help Him Change The World

Hear Tom Lehrer Sing the Names of 102 Chemical Elements to the Tune of Gilbert & Sullivan

in Math, Music | December 29th, 2015

Tom Lehrer earned a BA and MA in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard dur­ing the late 1940s, then taught math cours­es at MIT, Har­vard, Welles­ley, and UC-San­ta Cruz. Math was his voca­tion. But, all along, Lehrer nur­tured an inter­est in music. And, by the mid 1950s, he became best known for his satir­i­cal songs that touched on some­times polit­i­cal, some­times aca­d­e­m­ic themes.

Today we’re pre­sent­ing one of his clas­sics: “The Ele­ments.” Record­ed in 1959, the song fea­tures Lehrer recit­ing the names of the 102 chem­i­cal ele­ments known at the time (we now have 115), and it’s all sung to the tune of Major-Gen­er­al’s Song from The Pirates of Pen­zance by Gilbert and Sul­li­van. You can hear a stu­dio ver­sion below, and watch a nice live ver­sion taped in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, in Sep­tem­ber 1967.

Decades lat­er, this clas­sic piece of “Tom­fool­ery” stays with us, pop­ping up here and there in pop­u­lar cul­ture. For exam­ple, Daniel Rad­cliffe (of Har­ry Pot­ter fame) per­formed Lehrer’s song on the BBC’s Gra­ham Nor­ton Show in 2010. Enjoy.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es

The Math in Good Will Hunt­ing is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton