Discovered: Lost Johnny Cash Concert Recorded by the Grateful Dead’s LSD Chemist Owsley Stanley (1968)

in Music | January 18th, 2022

On Jan­u­ary 13, 1968, John­ny Cash record­ed his famous live con­certs with­in the walls of Fol­som State Prison, Cal­i­for­nia, a week into what would be one of his busiest years of tour­ing. While Colum­bia Records worked on trim­ming down the two sets into one LP, Cash set off across the States, into Cana­da and back, play­ing almost every night, and return­ing to the West Coast for a final stop at the Carousel Ball­room in San Fran­cis­co.

Record­ing the gig that night was Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley, the Grate­ful Dead’s engi­neer and also the man respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing the purest LSD on the West Coast. As Rolling Stone once asked, would there have been a Sum­mer of Love if not for Stan­ley? Appar­ent­ly, Stan­ley had *anoth­er* secret stash, and we are only now hear­ing a tiny frac­tion of it. This gig is one of over 1,300 the engi­neer record­ed and kept in his pri­vate col­lec­tion. Stan­ley died in 2011, and ten years lat­er the Oswald Stan­ley Foun­da­tion is selec­tive­ly releas­ing record­ings from this trea­sure trove as a way to pre­serve the record­ings and fund more releas­es. This Cash set was one of the first releas­es in the “Bear’s Son­ic Jour­nals” series, released in Octo­ber of 2021.

Cash’s new bride June Carter Cash joined him onstage. It was on the Ontario stop of the afore­men­tioned tour that Cash pro­posed to her live on stage, and they were mar­ried March 1 in Ken­tucky. You can hear his pride as he intro­duces her to the audi­ence; the two imme­di­ate­ly launch into “Jack­son.” “We got mar­ried in a fever,” indeed. (The two remained mar­ried until her death in 2003.) June sings sev­er­al num­bers, includ­ing “Wabash Can­non­ball,” and Carl Perkins’ “Long Legged Gui­tar Pickin’ Man.”

The oth­er artist fig­ur­ing promi­nent­ly in these record­ings (as an influ­ence) is Bob Dylan. The two had been cir­cling each oth­er in admi­ra­tion for years, and here Cash cov­ers “One Too Many Morn­ings” and then “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” The man owns it, turns it into what sounds like a Ten­nessee Three orig­i­nal. Dylan and Cash would final­ly record togeth­er in 1969, in ses­sions that would be boot­legged until a recent offi­cial release.

Stan­ley record­ed these sets for him­self, com­ing straight out of the sound­board. Where the Carousel Ball­room con­cert lacks in quality—-vocals, audi­ence, and Cash’s gui­tar are on the left, the band to the right—-they make up for in his­to­ry and excite­ment.

Cur­rent­ly, the label has released full con­certs from Tim Buck­ley, Ali Akbar Khan, with Indranil Bhat­tacharya and Zakir Hus­sain, Com­man­der Cody & His Lost Plan­et Air­men, New Rid­ers of The Pur­ple Sage, Jor­ma Kauko­nen & Jack Casady, The All­man Broth­ers Band, and Doc and Mer­le Wat­son. As Stan­ley record­ed for two decades of his career, the cat­a­log promis­es untold delights.

The full playlist from the Carousel Ball­room gig is below:

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grate­ful Dead Fan Cre­ates a Faith­ful Mini Repli­ca of the Band’s Famous “Wall of Sound” Dur­ing Lock­down

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

Take a Trip to the LSD Muse­um, the Largest Col­lec­tion of “Blot­ter Art” in the World

John­ny Cash’s Short and Per­son­al To-Do List

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Watch Nirvana Perform as an Opening Band, Two Years Before Their Breakout Album Nevermind (1989)

in Music | January 6th, 2022

The sto­ry of Nir­vana’s first album, first sin­gle, and first video launch­ing the band to instant mega-star­dom, and the sto­ry of their trag­ic crash back down to Earth, have been told too many times to count. Less well known are the years of the band’s ear­ly ascent through the local Pacif­ic North­west scene, open­ing for then-big­ger acts like TAD (who got swept up, then left behind in grunge’s first wave). Nir­vana first formed in 1987 in Aberdeen, WA and played as a few iter­a­tions with names like Fecal Mat­ter and Skid Row, always as a three-piece with Kurt Cobain out front and Krist Novosel­ic on bass.

As they ironed out their image (avoid­ing a law­suit from the Jer­sey hair met­al band), Nir­vana also moved through a cou­ple dif­fer­ent drum­mers behind the kit before luck­ing into Dave Grohl. “Aaron Bur­ck­hard was Nir­vana’s first drum­mer,” writes the Muse­um of Pop Cul­ture, “but he and the band ulti­mate­ly part­ed ways. While the band searched for a replace­ment, Dale Crover helped Nir­vana with their first demo and Dave Fos­ter hon­ored their live book­ings. Chad Chan­ning offi­cial­ly joined Nir­vana in 1988, and the band began work on their debut album Bleach, which was offi­cial­ly released in June of 1989 fol­lowed by a short Amer­i­can tour and a lengthy UK tour.” Just above, you can see them open for TAD on Decem­ber 1, 1989 at Fahren­heit, Issy-les-Moulin­eaux, France.

Signed to Seat­tle indie label Sub Pop at the time, the band was eager for suc­cess but had­n’t quite nailed down their sound. When Nev­er­mind pro­duc­er Butch Vig heard Bleach the fol­low­ing year, after Sub Pop recruit­ed him to work with the band, he “thought it was pret­ty one-dimen­sion­al,” he writes, “except that one song, ‘About a Girl.’ ” Cobain would only say he want­ed the band to sound like “Black Sab­bath.” The label’s Jonathan Pone­man assured Vig that Nir­vana “would be as big as The Bea­t­les,” but that would­n’t hap­pen until Chan­ning left, or felt pushed out. As Vig remem­bers, there was con­sid­er­able “ten­sion between Kurt and Chad” dur­ing their first ses­sions in Madi­son, Wis­con­sin in 1990. “Kurt would some­times go behind the drums and show Chad how to play.” Of course, that’s some­thing the moody Cobain was also known to do to Chan­ning’s replace­ment.

Musi­cal ten­sion did not result in long-term hard feel­ings, Chan­ning says. “I found out what a real­ly nice guy Dave is.” For his part, Grohl has pushed for recog­ni­tion of Chan­ning’s con­tri­bu­tions, object­ing to his exclu­sion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. “Grohl took steps to rec­ti­fy the injus­tice,” notes Far Out Mag­a­zine. “With Chan­ning in atten­dance, Grohl pub­licly applaud­ed and thanked Chan­ning for his vital con­tri­bu­tions to the band, and more crit­i­cal­ly, not­ed that some of Nir­vana’s most icon­ic drum riffs from the peri­od were, in fact, Chan­ning’s.” Hear some of the evi­dence above in a setlist that includes sev­er­al tracks from Bleach, includ­ing “About a Girl,” and “Pol­ly” from the upcom­ing Nev­er­mind. And stick around for TAD, for­got­ten stal­warts of the Seat­tle scene.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Record­ing Secrets of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind Revealed by Pro­duc­er Butch Vig

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

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

Explore the New 717-Gigapixel Scan of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, the Most Detailed Photo Ever Taken of a Work of Art

in Art, History, Technology | January 5th, 2022

Film­mak­er and seri­ous Rem­brandt enthu­si­ast Peter Green­away once called The Night Watch the most famous paint­ing in the West­ern world, behind the Mona Lisa, The Last Sup­per, and the ceil­ing of the Sis­tine Chapel. But if the resources devot­ed to its scruti­ny are any­thing to go by, the Dutch mas­ter­work has been gain­ing on those oth­er three in recent years. Can any work of Leonar­do or Michelan­ge­lo, for exam­ple, boast of hav­ing been dig­i­tized at a res­o­lu­tion of 717 gigapix­els, as the Rijksmu­se­um has just done with The Night Watch?

In fact, no oth­er work of art in exis­tence has ever been the sub­ject of such a large and detailed pho­to­graph. Each of its 717,000,000,000 pix­els, says the Rijksmu­se­um’s site, “is small­er than a human red blood cell.”

This neces­si­tat­ed the use of “a 00-megapix­el Has­sel­blad H6D 400 MS-cam­era to make 8439 indi­vid­ual pho­tos mea­sur­ing 5.5cm x 4.1cm. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was used to stitch these small­er pho­tographs togeth­er to form the final large image, with a total file size of 5.6 ter­abytes.” You may remem­ber arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence also hav­ing played a role in the recon­struc­tion of the paint­ing’s miss­ing sec­tions, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

The result far sur­pass­es the dig­i­tal ver­sion of The Night Watch made avail­able by the Rijksmu­se­um in 2020, itself high-res­o­lu­tion enough to allow view­ers to zoom in to see the paint­ing’s every indi­vid­ual brush stroke. (It even out­does last year’s 10-bil­lion-pix­el scan of Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, the best-known work by Rem­brandt’s fel­low Dutch mas­ter Johannes Ver­meer.) Now, writes Colos­sal’s Grace Ebert, you can see all the way down to “the cracked tex­ture of the paint, brush­strokes, and slight pig­ment vari­a­tions that wouldn’t be vis­i­ble even if you were stand­ing in front of the work itself.”

380 years after Rem­brandt paint­ed it, The Night Watch remains almost unique­ly strik­ing in its employ­ment of con­trast­ing shad­ow and light, all in ser­vice of a large-scale com­po­si­tion at once life­like and some­how more vivid than real­i­ty. This dig­i­ti­za­tion and the AI-assist­ed com­ple­tion are both arts of “Oper­a­tion Night Watch,” the thor­ough­go­ing restora­tion project now under­way at the Rijksmu­se­um, which will make all the ele­ments of that com­po­si­tion more imme­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble than they’ve been in gen­er­a­tions.

But the ques­tion of how, exact­ly, Rem­brandt achieved such pow­er­ful effects can be answered only through rig­or­ous exam­i­na­tion of each and every detail, an activ­i­ty open to all on the 717-gigapix­el scan at the Rijksmu­se­um’s site.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

Enter an Online Inter­ac­tive Doc­u­men­tary on Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Learn About the Painting’s Many Hid­den Secrets

The Long-Lost Pieces of Rembrandt’s Night Watch Get Recon­struct­ed with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Restora­tion of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Begins: Watch the Painstak­ing Process On-Site and Online

Late Rem­brandts Come to Life: Watch Ani­ma­tions of Paint­ings Now on Dis­play at the Rijksmu­se­um

A 10 Bil­lion Pix­el Scan of Vermeer’s Mas­ter­piece Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring: Explore It Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

The Famous Downfall Scene Explained: What Really Happened in Hitler’s Bunker at the End?

in Film, History, YouTube | December 29th, 2021

Before his role as Hitler in the 2004 Ger­man film Down­fall turned Swiss actor Bruno Ganz into a viral inter­net star, he was best known for play­ing an angel who com­forts the dying in Wim Wen­ders’ 1987 Wings of Desire. “Peo­ple real­ly seemed to think of me as a guardian angel,” he told The Irish Times in 2005. “Peo­ple would bring their chil­dren before me for a bless­ing or some­thing.” Sev­en­teen years lat­er, the self-described intro­vert trans­formed his gen­tle, com­fort­ing face into the Nazi screen mon­ster: “Noth­ing pre­pared me for what must be the most con­vinc­ing screen Hitler yet,” wrote The Guardian’s Rob Mack­ie. “An old, bent, sick dic­ta­tor with the shak­ing hands of some­one with Parkinson’s, alter­nat­ing between rage and despair in his last days in the bunker.”

This por­tray­al has nev­er been sur­passed, and per­haps it nev­er will be. How many fic­tion­al­ized film treat­ments of these events do we need? Espe­cial­ly since this one lives for­ev­er in meme form: Ganz end­less­ly spit­ting and ges­tic­u­lat­ing, while cap­tions sub­ti­tle him rant­i­ng about “his piz­za arriv­ing late” – Gael Fash­ing­baeur Coop­er writes at cnet – or “the Red Wed­ding scene on Game of Thrones, or find­ing out he was­n’t accept­ed into Har­ry Pot­ter’s Hog­warts.” As Vir­ginia Hef­fer­nan wrote at The New York Times in 2008 – maybe the height of the meme’s viral­i­ty – “It seems that late-life Hitler can be made to speak for almost any­one in the midst of a cri­sis…. Some­thing in the spec­ta­cle of an auto­crat falling to pieces evi­dent­ly has wide­spread appeal.”

Giv­en the wide­spread pref­er­ence for memes over facts, the ubiq­ui­ty of the Down­fall clip as viral spec­ta­cle, and the renewed rel­e­vance of mur­der­ous autoc­ra­cy in the West, we might find our­selves won­der­ing about the his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy of Down­fall’s por­tray­al. Did the dic­ta­tor real­ly lose it in the end? And why do we find this idea so sat­is­fy­ing? To begin to answer the first ques­tion, we might turn to the video above, “That Down­fall Scene Explained,” from the mak­ers of The Great War, billed as the “biggest ever crowd­fund­ed his­to­ry doc­u­men­tary.” Despite tak­ing as their sub­ject the First World War, the film­mak­ers also cov­er some of the events of WWII for fans.

First, we must remem­ber that Down­fall is an “artis­tic inter­pre­ta­tion.” It con­dens­es weeks into days, days into hours, and takes oth­er such dra­mat­ic lib­er­ties with accounts gath­ered from eye­wit­ness­es. So, “what is Hitler freak­ing out about” in the famous scene?, the sub­ti­tle asks. It is April 1945. The Red Army is 40 kilo­me­ters from Nazi head­quar­ters in Berlin. The dictator’s Chief of the Army Gen­er­al Staff Hans Krebs explains the sit­u­a­tion. Hitler remains in con­trol, draw­ing pos­si­ble lines of attack on the map, believ­ing that SS com­man­der Felix Steiner’s Panz­er divi­sions will repel the Sovi­ets.

Lit­tle does he know that Steiner’s divi­sions exist only on paper. In real­i­ty, the SS leader has refused to take to the field, con­vinced the bat­tle can­not be won. Anoth­er Gen­er­al, Alfred Jodel, steps in and deliv­ers the news. Hitler then clears the room of all but Jodl, Krebs, and two oth­er high-rank­ing gen­er­als. Joseph Goebbels and Mar­tin Bor­mann stay behind as well. Then (as played by Ganz, that is) Hitler has that famous screen melt­down. The out­burst “shows just how he had cen­tral­ized the chain of com­mand,” and how it failed him.

This may have been so. Down­fall presents us with a con­vinc­ing, if high­ly con­densed, por­trait of the major per­son­al­i­ties involved. But “the scene that spawned a thou­sand YouTube par­o­dies,” writes Alex Ross at The New York­er, “is based, in part, on prob­lem­at­ic sources.” One of these, the so-called Hitler Book, was com­piled from “tes­ti­mo­ny of two Hitler adju­tants, Otto Gün­sche and Heinz Linge, who had been cap­tured by the Red Army and inter­ro­gat­ed at length…. The most curi­ous thing about The Hitler Book is that it was intend­ed for a sin­gle read­er: Joseph Stal­in.” The Sovi­et dic­ta­tor want­ed, and got, “a lav­ish­ly detailed chron­i­cle of Hitler’s psy­cho­log­i­cal implo­sion.” Oth­er sources “con­vey a more com­plex pic­ture.”

Accord­ing to oth­er accounts, Hitler was “gen­er­al­ly com­posed” when learn­ing about the Red Army attack on Berlin, even as he decid­ed to give up and die in the bunker. Accord­ing to Nazi stenog­ra­ph­er, Ger­hard Her­rge­sell, it was the gen­er­als who “vio­lent­ly opposed” sur­ren­der and spoke harsh­ly to Hitler to per­suade him to defend the city – a speech that had some effect dur­ing an April 22nd meet­ing. It did not, of course, pre­vent Hitler and his new bride Eva Braun’s even­tu­al April 30 sui­cide. For Ross, how­ev­er, this more com­plex his­tor­i­cal pic­ture shows “how cults of per­son­al­i­ty feed as much upon the aspi­ra­tions of their mem­bers as upon the ambi­tions of their lead­ers.” The mem­bers of Hitler’s inner cir­cle were as com­mit­ted to the ide­ol­o­gy as the leader him­self.

There is more to the film’s title in Ger­man, Unter­gang, than its trans­la­tion sug­gests, Ross writes: “It car­ries con­no­ta­tions of decline, dis­so­lu­tion, or destruc­tion.” When we fix the end of Nazism to the sui­ci­dal death of one delu­sion­al, drug-addled mad­man, we lose sight of this wider mean­ing. In the viral spread of the Hitler meme, we see a kind of com­i­cal­ly banal tri­umph. It is “the out­come,” Hef­fer­nan argues, that “Hitler, the his­tor­i­cal fig­ure sought….” A sit­u­a­tion in which he becomes “not the author of the Holo­caust” but “the brute voice of the every­man uncon­scious,” a pro­lif­er­at­ing griev­ance machine. From anoth­er per­spec­tive, imag­in­ing Hitler’s end may offer “com­fort­ing moral clo­sure to a sto­ry of lim­it­less hor­ror,” writes Ross. But it has helped feed the myth that it could only hap­pen there and then: “Now Ger­man his­to­ri­ans are end­ing their books on Nazism with thin­ly veiled ref­er­ences to an Amer­i­can Unter­gang.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

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

Hitler Was ‘Blitzed’ On Cocaine & Opi­ates Dur­ing World War II: Hear a Wide-Rang­ing Inter­view with Best-Sell­ing Author Nor­man Ohler

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

Doreen Ketchens’ Astonishing Rendition of “The House of the Rising Sun”: A World-Class Clarinetist Busks on the Streets of New Orleans

in Education, Jazz, Music | December 27th, 2021

Dirt­i­ness has no descrip­tion. It is a  feel­ing. — music tran­scriber George Col­lier

You may be able to read music and play the clar­inet, but it’s extreme­ly unlike­ly you — or any­one — will be able to play along with Doreen Ketchens’ “dirty” solo on “The House of the Ris­ing Sun,” above, despite an assist from Tom Pick­les’ scrolling tran­scrip­tion.

Down­load the tran­scrip­tion for free and keep try­ing.

It’s what Ketchens, a world renowned clar­inetist and music edu­ca­tor, who has played for four US pres­i­dents and busks reg­u­lar­ly in the French Quar­ter, would advise.

“You have to prac­tice and be ready to per­form at the drop of a hat” she told The Clar­inet’s Ben Red­wine, when he asked if she had any advice for young musi­cians hop­ing to make it pro­fes­sion­al­ly.

She’s also a strong advo­cate of lis­ten­ing robust­ly, not throw­ing in the tow­el when some­one else gets the job instead of you, and let­ting your per­son­al­i­ty come through in your play­ing:

You don’t want to sound like you’re play­ing an etude book. This is for all types of music – even clas­si­cal. You want to move the audi­ence, you want to touch them.

Trained as a clas­si­cal clar­inetist, Ketchens cozied up to jazz short­ly after she cozied up to the tuba play­er who would become her hus­band. “All of the sud­den, jazz wasn’t so bad,” she says:

I start­ed to lis­ten to jazz so I could learn the tunes and fit in with his band. I start­ed lis­ten­ing to Louis Arm­strong. He is my biggest influ­ence. Some peo­ple call me Mrs. Satch­mo, I guess because that con­cept is in my head. I’ll hear some­thing he plays, which I’ve heard thou­sands of times, and I’ll think, “What? How did he do that?” Then, I lis­tened to the clar­inetists who played with him: Edmund Hall, Buster Bai­ley, Bar­ney Bigard. Those cats were awe­some too! Edmund Hall had this thing he could do, where it sounds like he was play­ing two tones at the same time. Peo­ple today might hum while they play to achieve some­thing sim­i­lar, but I don’t think that was what he was doing. Buster Bai­ley had a sim­i­lar back­ground to me, start­ing out with clas­si­cal music, then learn­ing jazz. Ear­ly on, I emu­lat­ed Jer­ry Fuller, clar­inetist with the Dukes of Dix­ieland. I would steal so many of his solos just so I could keep up with my husband’s band. Even­tu­al­ly, I real­ized what he was doing, and it trans­lat­ed into me being able to impro­vise. I’d start out tran­scrib­ing solos, then play­ing by ear, copy­ing what those clar­inetists were doing. I don’t remem­ber those solos now, but I’m sure that I still play snip­pets of them that creep into my impro­vi­sa­tions.

How­ev­er she got there, she pos­sess­es a sin­gu­lar abil­i­ty to make her instru­ment growl and her com­mand of 32nd notes makes us feel a lit­tle light­head­ed.

Clar­inetists abound in New Orleans, and they prob­a­bly all cov­er “The House of the Ris­ing Sun,” but you’ll be hard pressed to find a more excit­ing ren­di­tion than Ketchens’ on the cor­ner of St. Peter and Roy­al, with hus­band Lawrence on tuba and daugh­ter Dori­an on drums.  Here’s the full ver­sions, sans tran­scrip­tion.

You want an encore? Of course you do.

How about Ketchens’ mag­nif­i­cent solo on “Just a Clos­er Walk With Thee” for the Louisiana Phil­har­mon­ic Orches­tra?

Find more aston­ish­ing, tran­scribed solos and a heap­ing help­ing of Jacob Col­lier on George Collier’s (no rela­tion) YouTube Chan­nel.

His tran­scrip­tions, and those of col­lab­o­ra­tor Tom Pick­les, are avail­able for free down­load here, unless the artist sells their own tran­scrip­tion, in which case he encour­ages you to sup­port the artist with your pur­chase.

If you’re a music nerd who would like to dis­cuss tran­scrip­tions, give feed­back on oth­ers’ attempts, and upload your own, join his com­mu­ni­ty on Dis­cord.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

Jazz Vir­tu­oso Oscar Peter­son Gives Dick Cavett a Daz­zling Piano Les­son (1979)

Lit­tle Kid Mer­ri­ly Grooves to ZZ Top While Wait­ing for the Bus

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, the­ater­mak­er, and the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her lat­est book, Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo, will be pub­lished in ear­ly 2022.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

George Harrison “My Sweet Lord” Gets an Official Music Video, Featuring Ringo Starr, Al Yankovic, Patton Oswalt & Many Others

in Music | December 16th, 2021

To help cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of George Har­rison’s clas­sic solo album, All Things Must Pass, the clas­sic track, “My Sweet Lord,” has now received an offi­cial music video. And it fea­tures a num­ber of cameo appearances–from oth­er for­mer Bea­t­les (Ringo Starr), to fam­i­ly mem­bers (Olivia Har­ri­son and Dhani Har­ri­son), to oth­er guests (Mark Hamill, Fred Armisen, Al Yankovic, Rosan­na Arquette). Enjoy.

Fea­tur­ing In Order of Appear­ance:

Mark Hamill
Fred Armisen
Vanes­sa Bay­er
Moshe Kash­er
Natasha Leg­gero
Jeff Lynne
Reg­gie Watts
Dar­ren Criss
Pat­ton Oswalt
Al Yankovic
David Gborie
Sam Richard­son
Atsuko Okat­su­ka
Rosan­na Arquette
Bran­don Wardell
Ringo Starr
Joe Walsh
Jon Hamm
Brett Met­ter
Anders Holm
Dhani Har­ri­son
Rupert Friend
Angus Samp­son
Tai­ka Wait­i­ti
Eric Ware­heim
Tim Hei­deck­er
Kate Micuc­ci
Riki Lind­home
Alyssa Stono­ha
Mitra Jouhari
Sandy Honig
Olivia Har­ri­son
Aimee Mullins
Court­ney Pau­roso
Natal­ie Palamides
Shep­ard Fairey
Clau­dia O’Do­her­ty
Tom Scharpling
Paul Scheer
Sarah Bak­er

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

George Har­ri­son Wrote His Last Let­ter to Austin Pow­ers Cre­ator Mike Myers, Ask­ing for a Mini Me Doll (2001)

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Will Be Retold from a Woman’s Point of View

in Books, Literature | December 9th, 2021

Nine­teen Eighty-Four has been a byword for total­i­tar­i­an dystopia longer than most of us have been read­ing books. But apart from its the title and cer­tain words from its invent­ed “newspeak” — dou­ble­plus­good, unper­son, thought­crime — how deeply is George Orwell’s best-known nov­el embed­ded into the cul­ture? Most of us rec­og­nize the name Win­ston Smith, and many of us may even remem­ber details of his job at the Min­istry of Truth, where the facts of his­to­ry are con­tin­u­al­ly rewrit­ten to suit ever-shift­ing polit­i­cal exi­gen­cies. But how much do we know about the oth­er major char­ac­ter: Julia, Win­ston’s fel­low min­istry employ­ee who becomes his clan­des­tine co-dis­si­dent and for­bid­den lover?

“In some ways she was far more acute than Win­ston, and far less sus­cep­ti­ble to Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da,” writes Orwell in Nine­teen Eighty-Four. “But she only ques­tioned the teach­ings of the Par­ty when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the offi­cial mythol­o­gy, sim­ply because the dif­fer­ence between truth and false­hood did not seem impor­tant to her.” Juli­a’s amoral­i­ty throws the rigid­i­ty of Win­ston’s own atti­tudes into con­trast, and also shows up their imprac­ti­cal­i­ty. Now, in the hands of nov­el­ist San­dra New­man, Julia will become not just star of the sto­ry but its nar­ra­tor.

Or so it looks, at least, from the brief pas­sage quot­ed in the Guardian’s announce­ment of Julia, a re-telling of Nine­teen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate and to be pub­lished in time for the 75th anniver­sary of the orig­i­nal. Though it has no firm pub­li­ca­tion date yet, Julia will come out some time after New­man’s next book The Men, in which, as the Guardian’s Ali­son Flood puts it, “every sin­gle per­son with a Y chro­mo­some van­ish­es from the world.” It will join an abun­dance of recent retellings from the wom­an’s point of view, includ­ing every­thing from “Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a ver­sion of the Ili­ad from the per­spec­tive of Bri­seis, to Mag­gie O’Farrell’s Ham­net, which cen­ters on the life of Shakespeare’s wife.”

Entrust­ing a lit­er­ary prop­er­ty to a writer of anoth­er era, cul­ture, and sen­si­bil­i­ty is a tricky busi­ness, but there arguably has nev­er been a more oppor­tune time to put out a book like Julia. It seems the dystopia-hun­gry pub­lic has nev­er been read­ier to iden­ti­fy the “Orwellian” in life, nor more respon­sive to re-inter­pre­ta­tions and expan­sions of long-estab­lished bod­ies of pop­u­lar myth. And what with women hav­ing con­quered the world of fic­tion, there will nat­u­ral­ly be great inter­est in Juli­a’s take on life under Big Broth­er — as well as in its inevitable tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion.

via The Guardian/Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Live TV Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four, the Most Con­tro­ver­sial TV Dra­ma of Its Time (1954)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

8 Hours of David Bowie’s Historic 1980 Floor Show: Complete & Uncut Footage

in Music, Television | November 19th, 2021

Bowie com­pletists rejoice. Eight hours of footage from his 1973 tele­vi­sion pro­gram “The 1980 Floor Show,” have found their way to YouTube, includ­ing, Boing Boing notes, “uncut footage… mul­ti­ple takes, back­stage moments, and all of the dance rehearsals.” The show — actu­al­ly an episode of the NBC series The Mid­night Spe­cial curat­ed by Bowie — lived up to its title (itself a pun on “1984,” the open­ing song of the broad­cast), with elab­o­rate dance num­bers, major cos­tume changes, and sev­er­al guest per­form­ers: The Trog­gs, Aman­da Lear, Car­men, and — most impor­tant­ly — Mar­i­anne Faith­full, in career free-fall at the time but also in top form for this cabaret-style vari­ety show.

When Mid­night Spe­cial pro­duc­er Burt Sug­ar­man approached Bowie about doing the hour-long show, the singer agreed on the con­di­tion that he could have com­plete cre­ative con­trol. He chose to hold rehearsals and per­for­mances at London’s Mar­quee Club. The audi­ence con­sist­ed of 200 young fans drawn from the Bowie fan club. Faith­full was “actu­al­ly invit­ed as one of the reserve acts,” notes Jack What­ley at Far Out, “ready to be called upon should some­one else drop out.”

“The show was heav­i­ly adver­tised in the US press in the run up to the broad­cast,” not­ed Bowie 75 in 2018, “but has nev­er been shown out­side the US or offi­cial­ly released,” though bootlegs cir­cu­lat­ed for years. Shoot­ing took place over three days in late Octo­ber, just a few months after Bowie played his final show as Zig­gy Star­dust at the Ham­mer­smith Odeon The­atre, cryp­ti­cal­ly announc­ing at the end, “not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do.” Bowie then went on to release Aladdin Sane and his cov­ers record Pin-Ups the fol­low­ing year, drop­ping the Zig­gy char­ac­ter entire­ly.

But Bowie brought Zig­gy back, at least in cos­tume, for one last gig in “The 1980 Floor Show,” wear­ing some of the out­fits Kan­sai Yamamo­to designed for the Zig­gy Star­dust tours and still sport­ing the sig­na­ture spiked red mul­let he would con­tin­ue to wear as his dystopi­an Hal­loween Jack per­sona on 1974’s Dia­mond Dogs. “The 1980 Floor Show” pro­mot­ed songs from Aladdin Sane and Pin-Ups while visu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing the tran­si­tion from Bowie’s space alien vis­i­tor per­sona to a dif­fer­ent kind of out­sider — an alien in exile, just like the char­ac­ter he played a few years lat­er in Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. As Maria Math­eos writes at Has­ta:

Zig­gy no longer played gui­tar: Bowie had meta­mor­phosed into Aladdin Sane. Parad­ing across the stage in red plat­form boots and a patent-leather black and white bal­loon leg jump­suit, referred to by design­er Yamamo­to as the ‘Tokyo pop’ jump­suit, Bowie sought to assault the sens­es of his audi­ence. Com­plete­ly over the top? Yes. Verg­ing on a par­o­dy of excess? Pos­si­bly. Would he have want­ed us to take him seri­ous­ly? He cer­tain­ly did not (take him­self seri­ous­ly).

With Aladdin Sane, Bowie gave us a hyper­bol­ic exten­sion of his pri­or alien dop­pel­ganger; adding that his char­ac­ter, a pun on ‘A Lad Insane’, rep­re­sent­ed “Zig­gy under the influ­ence of Amer­i­ca.”

See how Bowie con­struct­ed that new, and short-lived, per­sona from the mate­ri­als of his for­mer glam super­star char­ac­ter, and see the rev­e­la­tion that was Mar­i­anne Faith­full. The singer per­formed her 1964 hit, writ­ten by The Rolling Stones, “As Tears Go By,” solo. But the high­light of the show, and of her mid-sev­en­ties peri­od, was the duet of Son­ny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” with which she and Bowie closed the show. “The cos­tumes of the pair are mag­i­cal.” What­ley writes,” with Bowie “in full Zig­gy attire… aka his ‘Angel of Death’ costume—while Faith­full has on a nun’s habit that was open at the back.”

Bowie report­ed­ly intro­duced the song with the tossed-off line, “This isn’t any­thing seri­ous, it’s just a bit of fun. We’ve hard­ly even rehearsed it.” You can scroll through the 8 hours of footage at the top to see those rehearsals, and so many more pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able Bowie moments caught on film.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

David Bowie on Why It’s Crazy to Make Art–and We Do It Any­way (1998)

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

Watch 30+ Exceptional Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screening Room

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Magazines | November 12th, 2021

For short films, find­ing an audi­ence is an often uphill bat­tle. Even major award win­ners strug­gle to reach view­ers out­side of the fes­ti­val cir­cuit.

Thank good­ness for The Screen­ing Room, The New Yorker’s online plat­form for shar­ing short films.

It’s a mag­nif­i­cent free buf­fet for those of us who’d like noth­ing bet­ter than to gorge our­selves on these lit­tle gems.

If you’re not yet a fan of the form, allow us to sug­gest that any one of the 30 fic­tion­al shorts post­ed in The Screen­ing Room could func­tion as a superb palate cleanser between binge watch­es of more reg­u­lar fare.

Take co-direc­tors Ami­na Sut­ton and Maya Tanaka’s hilar­i­ous The Price of Cheap Rent, clock­ing in at 6 1/2 min­utes, above.

A com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ed project, star­ring Sut­ton and shot in Tanaka’s Brook­lyn apart­ment, it’s a com­e­dy of man­ners that brings fresh mean­ing to the semi-con­tro­ver­sial phrase “Bed Stuy, Do or Die.”

Sut­ton plays a young Black artist with a mas­ters from Yale, a gig behind the bar at Applebee’s, and a keen inter­est in posi­tion­ing her­self as an influ­encer, an ambi­tion the film­mak­ers lam­poon with glee.

When she dis­cov­ers that her new apart­ment is haunt­ed, she is “so freaked the f&ck out,” she spends a week sleep­ing in the park, before ven­tur­ing back:

And it’s a stu­dio, so it’s like liv­ing in a clown car of hell.

But once she dis­cov­ers (or pos­si­bly just decides) that the major­i­ty of the ghosts are Black, she begins plan­ning a pod­cast and makes her peace with stay­ing put.

Pros: the rent’s a lot less than the 1‑bathroom dump she shared with five room­mates, there’s laun­dry in the base­ment, and the ghosts, whom she now con­ceives of as ances­tors, share many of her inter­ests — his­to­ry, the arts, and the 1995 live action/CGI adap­ta­tion of Casper the Friend­ly Ghost. (They give Ghost­busters a thumbs down.)

Cons: the ghost of an 18th-cen­tu­ry Dutch Protes­tant set­tler whose white fragili­ty man­i­fests in irri­tat­ing, but man­age­able ways.

Those with 18 min­utes to spare should check out Joy Joy Nails, anoth­er very fun­ny film hing­ing on iden­ti­ty.

Every day a group of salty, young Kore­an women await the van that will trans­port them from their cramped quar­ters in Flush­ing, Queens, to a nail salon in a ritzi­er — and, judg­ing by the cus­tomers, far whiter — neigh­bor­hood.

Writer-direc­tor Joey Ally con­trasts the salon’s aggres­sive­ly pink decor and the employ­ees’ chum­my def­er­ence to their reg­u­lar cus­tomers with the grub­bi­ness of the break room and the trans­ac­tion­al nature of the exchange.

“Any­one not fired with enthu­si­asm… will be!” threat­ens a yel­lowed notice taped in the employ­ees only area.

Behind the reg­is­ter, the veil is lift­ed a bit, nar­row­ing the upstairs/downstairs divide with real­is­ti­cal­ly home­made signs:

“CASH! FOR TIP ONLY”

Like Sut­ton and Tana­ka, Ally is versed in hor­ror tropes, inspir­ing dread with close ups of pumice stones, emory boards, and cuti­cle trim­mers at work.

When a more objec­tive view is need­ed, she cuts to the black-and-white secu­ri­ty feed under the recep­tion counter.

When one of the cus­tomers calls to ask if her miss­ing ear­ring was left in the wax­ing room, the sto­ry takes a trag­ic turn, though for rea­sons more com­plex than one might assume.

Ally’s script punc­tures the all-too-com­mon per­cep­tion of nail salon employ­ees as a mono­lith­ic immi­grant mass to explore themes of dom­i­nance and bias between rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­ied cul­tures, a point dri­ven home by the sub­ti­tles, or absence there­of.

The 2017 film also tapped into its release year zeit­geist with a plot point involv­ing the boss’ son.

On a tight sched­ule? You can still squeeze in Undis­cov­ered, direc­tor Sara Litzen­berg­er’s 3‑minute ani­ma­tion from 2014.

Iden­ti­ty fac­tors in here, too, as a Sasquatch-like crea­ture ter­ri­fies a string of cam­era wield­ing humans in its attempt to get a pho­to­graph that will show it as it wish­es to be per­ceived.

It’s an eas­i­ly digest­ed delight, suit­able for all ages.

Explore all 30+ fic­tion­al shorts in the Screen­ing Room for free here or on The New York­er’s YouTube playlist. You can find them all embed­ded and stream­able below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short “Hair Love”

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 36 Short Ani­ma­tions That Tell the Ori­gin Sto­ries of Mexico’s Indige­nous Peo­ples in Their Own Lan­guages

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Richard Pryor & George Carlin Appear Together on a Classic Episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

in Comedy | November 5th, 2021

George Car­lin and Richard Pry­or nev­er got to star in a film togeth­er, so this appear­ance of the two on this 1981 Tonight Show clip is a great, rare chance to see two giants togeth­er. Actu­al­ly, make that three, because host John­ny Car­son shows why he set the stan­dard in that very Amer­i­can genre, the late night talk show. It’s also an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see how much has changed in the world of late night.

Late night talk shows are almost exclu­sive­ly a polit­i­cal affair these days. For many Amer­i­cans, this is the place to get their satir­i­cal take on the news in the open­ing mono­logue, pos­si­bly their only take. Some nights you can watch the three main net­works and sev­er­al pre­mi­um cable/streaming chan­nels and find the same news item, riffed on a dozen dif­fer­ent ways.

The Tonight Show with John­ny Carson wasn’t a “sim­pler time,” but it was very dif­fer­ent. More casu­al, def­i­nite­ly, and more per­son­able. I think that’s what comes across in this clip. Car­son knows both Car­lin and Pry­or and their par­tic­u­lar tal­ents.

Carlin’s rou­tine is pure­ly obser­va­tion­al. Cur­rent­ly he is a meme on many a boomer’s feed, but always late-stage Car­lin, the angry, nihilis­tic polit­i­cal come­di­an. (That’s not a bad thing, and inter­est­ing that he’s being claimed these days by both the Left and the Right). Here he’s still Class Clown Car­lin, with an elas­tic face, deliv­er­ing a ver­sion of his “stuff vs. crap” rou­tine, capped off with an out-of-nowhere abor­tion joke. It’s polit­i­cal in the vaguest sense.

His sit down with Car­son is more of a chance to riff on char­i­ty orga­ni­za­tion names, and Car­son lets him at it.

Pry­or is on to pro­mote Bustin’ Loose, his odd­ly sen­ti­men­tal 1981 com­e­dy. But all that’s on Carson’s and the audience’s mind is the after­math of the free­bas­ing inci­dent, where he doused him­self with rum and set him­self on fire while high on cocaine. He near­ly died.

The del­i­cate inter­change between Carson—who legit­i­mate­ly wants to know how Pry­or is doing—and Pry­or, who both mocks him­self, admits too much, and retreats behind a wall of humor, makes this essen­tial view­ing. Pry­or rem­i­nisces about his father and his time com­ing up through standup with Car­lin at Green­wich Village’s Cafe au Go-Go. He even admits, because why not, to lift­ing his ear­ly jokes as a com­ic from Bill Cos­by and Dick Gre­go­ry. The lat­ter “used to have stuff in Jet Mag­a­zine, you know, and that’s how I start­ed, read­ing his mate­r­i­al. I’d do it on stage. And that was my first break­through. I got a lot of laughs with his mate­r­i­al.”

Pry­or rides that line between telling on your­self and telling a fib.

And that last fas­ci­nat­ing shot: cred­its rolling over Car­son, the guests, and Ed McMa­hon, stand­ing around, hav­ing a chat, as if they’re wait­ing for the coat check atten­dant in the lob­by.

Ram­sey Ess, who wrote about the whole episode—includ­ing Carson’s decid­ed­ly non-polit­i­cal mono­logue— on Vul­ture in 2012, not­ed about the Pry­or inter­view:

When John­ny asks Richard about his dreams, you for­get about the audi­ence, you for­get about George Car­lin sit­ting over there and you sud­den­ly are brought into a place where this is an impor­tant ques­tion and you need to hear that answer, even though you nev­er would have thought to won­der about such a thing on your own. This inti­ma­cy, for me, is what made Car­son dif­fer­ent.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Carlin’s “Mod­ern Man” Rap

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

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

Carl Sagan Tells John­ny Car­son What’s Wrong with Star Wars: “They’re All White” & There’s a “Large Amount of Human Chau­vin­ism in It” (1978)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.