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.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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.

The 10 Paradoxical Traits of Creative People, According to Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (RIP)

in Creativity, Psychology | November 1st, 2021

Despite decades of research, sci­en­tists still know lit­tle about the source of cre­ativ­i­ty. Nonethe­less, humans con­tin­ue to cre­ate things. Or, at least, we con­tin­ue to be fas­ci­nat­ed by cre­ativ­i­ty; now more than ever, it seems. There may be as many best-sell­ing books on cre­ativ­i­ty as there are on diet­ing or rela­tion­ships. The cur­rent focus on cre­ativ­i­ty isn’t always a net pos­i­tive. Any­one who does cre­ative work may be labeled a “Cre­ative” (used as a noun) at some point in their career. The term lumps all work­ing artists togeth­er, as though their work were inter­change­able deliv­er­ables mea­sured in bill­able hours. The word sug­gests that those who don’t work as “Cre­atives” have no busi­ness in the area of cre­ativ­i­ty. As psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi put it:

Not so long ago, it was accept­able to be an ama­teur poet…. Nowa­days if one does not make some mon­ey (how­ev­er piti­ful­ly lit­tle) out of writ­ing, it’s con­sid­ered to be a waste of time. It is tak­en as down­right shame­ful for a man past twen­ty to indulge in ver­si­fi­ca­tion unless he receives a check to show for it.

Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, who passed away this month, deplored the instru­men­tal­iza­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty. He wrote, Austin Kleon notes, “about the joys of being an ama­teur” — which, in its lit­er­al sense, means being a devot­ed lover. Like Carl Jung, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi believed that cre­ation pro­ceeds, in a sense, from falling in love with an activ­i­ty and los­ing our­selves in a state beyond our pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with self, oth­ers, or the past and future. He called this state “flow” and wrote a nation­al best­seller about it while found­ing the dis­ci­pline of pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy and co-direct­ing the Qual­i­ty of Life Research Cen­ter at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty .

You can see an ani­mat­ed sum­ma­ry of Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow: The Psy­chol­o­gy of Opti­mal Expe­ri­ence above (includ­ing a pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Csikszentmihalyi’s name). Cre­ativ­i­ty should not only refer to skills we sell to our employ­ers. It is the prac­tice of doing things that make us hap­py, not the things that make us mon­ey, whether or not those two things are the same. This is a sub­ject close to Austin Kleon’s heart. The writer and design­er has been offer­ing tips for train­ing and hon­ing cre­ativ­i­ty for years, in books like Show Your Work, a guide “not just for ‘cre­atives’!” but for any­one who wants to cre­ate. Like Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi, he refutes the idea that there’s such a thing as a “cre­ative type.”

Instead, in his book Cre­ativ­i­ty: Flow and the Psy­chol­o­gy of Dis­cov­ery and Inven­tion, Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi notes that peo­ple who spend their time cre­at­ing exhib­it a list of 10 “para­dox­i­cal traits.”

1. Cre­ative peo­ple have a great deal of phys­i­cal ener­gy, but they’re also often qui­et and at rest.
2. Cre­ative peo­ple tend to be smart yet naive at the same time.
3. Cre­ative peo­ple com­bine play­ful­ness and dis­ci­pline, or respon­si­bil­i­ty and irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty.
4. Cre­ative peo­ple alter­nate between imag­i­na­tion and fan­ta­sy, and a root­ed sense of real­i­ty.
5. Cre­ative peo­ple tend to be both extro­vert­ed and intro­vert­ed.
6. Cre­ative peo­ple are hum­ble and proud at the same time.
7. Cre­ative peo­ple, to an extent, escape rigid gen­der role stereo­typ­ing.
8. Cre­ative peo­ple are both rebel­lious and con­ser­v­a­tive.
9. Most cre­ative peo­ple are very pas­sion­ate about their work, yet they can be extreme­ly objec­tive about it as well.
10. Cre­ative people’s open­ness and sen­si­tiv­i­ty often expos­es them to suf­fer­ing and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoy­ment.

We may well be remind­ed of Walt Whitman’s “Do I con­tra­dict myself? Very well then I con­tra­dict myself,” and per­haps it is to Whit­man we should turn to resolve the para­dox. Cre­ativ­i­ty involves the will­ing­ness and courage to become “large,” the poet wrote, to get weird and messy and “con­tain mul­ti­tudes.” Maybe the best way to become a more cre­ative per­son, to lose one­self ful­ly in the act of mak­ing, is to heed Bertrand Russell’s guid­ance for fac­ing death:

[M]ake your inter­ests grad­u­al­ly wider and more imper­son­al, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increas­ing­ly merged in the uni­ver­sal life. An indi­vid­ual human exis­tence should be like a riv­er: small at first, nar­row­ly con­tained with­in its banks, and rush­ing pas­sion­ate­ly past rocks and over water­falls. Grad­u­al­ly the riv­er grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more qui­et­ly, and in the end, with­out any vis­i­ble break, they become merged in the sea… 

This elo­quent pas­sage — Csik­szent­mi­ha­lyi might have agreed — express­es the very essence of cre­ative “flow.”

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cre­ativ­i­ty, Not Mon­ey, is the Key to Hap­pi­ness: Dis­cov­er Psy­chol­o­gist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly’s The­o­ry of “Flow”

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

Slavoj Žižek: What Full­fils You Cre­ative­ly Isn’t What Makes You Hap­py

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

How Randy Bachman Found His Stolen Favorite Guitar After 45 Years, with the Help of Facial-Recognition Software

in History, Music, Technology | October 25th, 2021

Facial-recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy has come into its own in recent decades, though its imag­ined large-scale uses do tend to sound trou­bling­ly dystopi­an. Still, some of its actu­al suc­cess sto­ries have been pleas­ing indeed, few of them so much as the one briefly told in the video above by Bach­man Turn­er Over­drive’s Randy Bach­man. Its pro­tag­o­nist is not Bach­man him­self but one of his gui­tars: a 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins, a mod­el named after the star Nashville gui­tarist. “This is the first real­ly good expen­sive elec­tric gui­tar I got,” he says, adding that he “played it on many, many BTO hits, and in 1975 it was stolen from a Hol­i­day Inn hotel room in Toron­to.”

“The dis­ap­pear­ance trig­gered a decades-long search,” writes Todd Coyne in a fea­ture at CTV News. “Bach­man enlist­ed the help of the RCMP” — also known at the Moun­ties — “the Ontario Provin­cial Police and vin­tage instru­ment deal­ers across Cana­da and the Unit­ed States. It also trig­gered what Bach­man now rec­og­nizes as a mid-life cri­sis,” result­ing in his even­tu­al pur­chase of 385 Gretsch gui­tars. Those includ­ed a dozen 6120s from the 1950s, but none of them were the one he bought at age 20 from Win­nipeg Piano. He must have giv­en up hope by the time the mes­sage arrived: “I found your Gretsch gui­tar in Tokyo.”

The sender, an old neigh­bor of Bach­man’s, had in fact found the Gretsch on Youtube. In the video below, made for Christ­mas 2019, a Japan­ese gui­tarist named Takeshi plays “Rockin’ Around the Christ­mas Tree” on an orange 6120 that Bach­man imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized as his long-lost favorite instru­ment. Coyne writes that the neigh­bor “had used some old pho­tographs of the gui­tar and rejigged some facial-recog­ni­tion soft­ware to iden­ti­fy and detect the unique wood-grain pat­terns and lines of cracked lac­quer along the instrument’s body,” as seen in the orig­i­nal video for BTO’s “Lookin’ Out for #1.” Sub­se­quent­ly, he “ran scans of this unique pro­file against every image he could find of an orange 1957 Chet Atkins gui­tar post­ed online over the last decade and a half.”

Per­sis­tence, at least in this case, paid off. But since Takeshi felt near­ly as strong a con­nec­tion to the gui­tar as Bach­man did, an arrange­ment had to be made. With the Japan­ese wife of his son Tal (also a musi­cian, best known for the 1990s hit “She’s So High”) act­ing as inter­preter, he nego­ti­at­ed with Takeshi the terms of an exchange. As Bach­man tells it, “He said he would give me back my gui­tar, but I had to find him its twin”: the same mod­el — of which only 35 were made in 1957 — in mint con­di­tion with all the same parts and no addi­tion­al mod­i­fi­ca­tions. And for a mere thir­ty times the $400 price he orig­i­nal­ly paid, he even­tu­al­ly found that twin. Now all that remains, as soon trav­el restric­tions ease between the U.S. and Japan, is for Bach­man and Takeshi to meet up at the Gretsch fac­to­ry in Nagoya, play a gig togeth­er, and take care of busi­ness.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of The Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night”

Eric Clap­ton Tries Out Gui­tars at Home and Talks About the Bea­t­les, Cream, and His Musi­cal Roots

Gui­tar Sto­ries: Mark Knopfler on the Six Gui­tars That Shaped His Career

The Cap­ti­vat­ing Art of Restor­ing Vin­tage Gui­tars

Hear Joni Mitchell’s Ear­li­est Record­ing, Redis­cov­ered After More than 50 Years

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

Behold the Photographs of John Thomson, the First Western Photographer to Travel Widely Through China (1870s)

in History, Photography, Travel | October 13th, 2021

In the ear­ly 1860s, a few West­ern­ers had seen Chi­na — but near­ly all of them had seen it for them­selves. The still-new medi­um of pho­tog­ra­phy had yet to make images of every­where avail­able to view­ers every­where else, which meant an oppor­tu­ni­ty for trav­el­ing prac­ti­tion­ers like John Thom­son. “The son of a tobac­co spin­ner and shop­keep­er,” says BBC.com, ” he was appren­ticed to an Edin­burgh opti­cal and sci­en­tif­ic instru­ment man­u­fac­tur­er where he learned the basics of pho­tog­ra­phy.”

In 1862 Thom­son sailed from Lei­th “with a cam­era and a portable dark room. He set up in Sin­ga­pore before explor­ing the ancient civ­i­liza­tions of Chi­na, Thai­land — then known as Siam — and Cam­bo­dia.” It is for his exten­sive pho­tog­ra­phy of Chi­na in the late 1860s and ear­ly 1870s that he’s best known today.

First lav­ish­ly pub­lished in a series of books titled Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na and Its Peo­ple (now avail­able to read free online at the Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Library: vol­ume one, vol­ume two, vol­ume three, vol­ume four), they now con­sti­tute some of the ear­li­est and rich­est direct visu­al records of Chi­nese land­scapes, cityscapes, and soci­ety as they were in the late 19th cen­tu­ry.

“The first West­ern pho­tog­ra­ph­er to trav­el wide­ly through the length and breadth of Chi­na,” Thom­son brought his cam­era on jour­neys “far more exten­sive than those under­tak­en by most West­ern­ers of his gen­er­a­tion,” extend­ing “beyond the rel­a­tive com­fort and safe­ty of the coastal treaty ports.” Those words come from schol­ar of the 19th-cen­tu­ry Allen Hock­ley, whose five-part visu­al essay “John Thom­son’s Chi­na” at MIT Visu­al­iz­ing Cul­tures pro­vides a detailed overview and his­tor­i­cal con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of Thom­son’s work in Asia.

Thom­son’s pho­tographs, writes Hock­ley, “fall into two broad cat­e­gories: scenic views and types. Views encom­passed both nat­ur­al land­scapes and built envi­ron­ments. They could be panoram­ic, tak­ing in large swaths of scenery, or they might high­light spe­cif­ic nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na or indi­vid­ual struc­tures.”

Types “focused on the man­ners and cus­toms of Chi­nese peo­ple and tend­ed to high­light the defin­ing fea­tures of gen­der, age, class, eth­nic­i­ty, and occu­pa­tion.” A cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, both Thom­son’s views and types have giv­en schol­ars in a vari­ety of dis­ci­plines much to dis­cuss.

“It is clear from his com­men­tary to Illus­tra­tions of Chi­na that, how­ev­er sym­pa­thet­ic he was towards Chi­nese peo­ple, he could often be supe­ri­or and high-hand­ed,” writes Andrew Hiller at Visu­al­iz­ing Chi­na. “If Thom­son nev­er sought to ques­tion the valid­i­ty of Britain’s pres­ence, his atti­tude towards Chi­na was ambiva­lent. Whilst crit­i­cal of what he saw as the cor­rup­tion and obfus­ca­tion of Qing offi­cials, he nev­er­the­less could see the country’s poten­tial.”

Thom­son also helped oth­ers to see that poten­tial — or at least those who could afford to buy his books, whose prices matched the qual­i­ty of their pro­duc­tion. But today, thanks to online archives like His­tor­i­cal Pho­tographs of Chi­na and Well­come Col­lec­tion, they’re free for every­one to behold. Chi­na itself has become much more acces­si­ble since Thom­son’s day, of course, but it’s famous­ly a much dif­fer­ent place than it was 25 years ago, let alone 150 years ago. The land through which he trav­eled — and of which he took so many of the very ear­li­est pho­tographs — is now infi­nite­ly less acces­si­ble to us than it ever was to his fel­low West­ern­ers of the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Hear a lec­ture on Thom­son’s pho­tog­ra­phy in Chi­na from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don here.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Hand-Col­ored Pho­tographs from 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan: 110 Images Cap­ture the Wan­ing Days of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Soci­ety

How Vivid­ly Col­orized Pho­tos Helped Intro­duce Japan to the World in the 19th Cen­tu­ry

1850s Japan Comes to Life in 3D, Col­or Pho­tos: See the Stereo­scop­ic Pho­tog­ra­phy of T. Ena­mi

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

How Victorian Homes Turned Deadly: Exploding Stoves, Poison Wallpaper, Ever-Tighter Corsets & More

in History | September 15th, 2021

The British have a num­ber of say­ings that strike lis­ten­ers of oth­er Eng­lish-speak­ing nation­al­i­ties as odd. “Safe as hous­es” has always had a curi­ous ring to my Amer­i­can ear, but it turns out to be quite iron­ic as well: the expres­sion grew pop­u­lar in the Vic­to­ri­an era, a time when Lon­don­ers were as like­ly to be killed by their own hous­es as any­thing else. That, at least, is the impres­sion giv­en by “The Bizarre Ways Vic­to­ri­ans Sab­o­taged Their Own Health & Lives,” the doc­u­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion star­ring his­to­ri­an Suzan­nah Lip­scomb above.

Through­out the sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, many an Eng­lish­man would have regard­ed him­self as liv­ing at the apex of civ­i­liza­tion. He would­n’t have been wrong, exact­ly, since that place and time wit­nessed an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of large-scale inno­va­tions indus­tri­al, sci­en­tif­ic, and domes­tic.

But a lit­tle knowl­edge can be a dan­ger­ous thing, and the Vic­to­ri­ans’ under­stand­ing of their favorite new tech­nolo­gies’ ben­e­fits ran con­sid­er­ably ahead of their under­stand­ing of the atten­dant threats. The haz­ards of the dark satan­ic mills were com­par­a­tive­ly obvi­ous, but even the heights of domes­tic bliss, as that era con­ceived of it, could turn dead­ly.

Speak­ing with a vari­ety of experts, Lip­scomb inves­ti­gates the dark side of a vari­ety of accou­trements of the Vic­to­ri­an high (or at least com­fort­ably mid­dle-class) life. These harmed not just men but women and chil­dren as well: take the breed­ing-ground of dis­ease that was the infant feed­ing bot­tle, or the organ-com­press­ing corset — one of which, adher­ing to the expe­ri­en­tial sen­si­bil­i­ty of British tele­vi­sion, Lip­scomb tries on and strug­gles with her­self. Mem­bers of the even­tu­al anti-corset revolt includ­ed Con­stance Lloyd, wife of Oscar Wilde, and it is Wilde’s apoc­ryphal final words that come to mind when the video gets into the arsenic con­tent of Vic­to­ri­an wall­pa­per. “Either that wall­pa­per goes, or I do,” Wilde is imag­ined to have said — and as mod­ern sci­ence now proves, it could have been more than a mat­ter of taste.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 108-Year-Old Woman Recalls What It Was Like to Be a Woman in Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land

The Col­or That May Have Killed Napoleon: Scheele’s Green

The 1855 Map That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Dis­ease Pre­ven­tion & Data Visu­al­iza­tion: Dis­cov­er John Snow’s Broad Street Pump Map

Hand-Col­ored Maps of Wealth & Pover­ty in Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don: Explore a New Inter­ac­tive Edi­tion of Charles Booth’s His­toric Work of Social Car­tog­ra­phy (1889)

Poignant and Unset­tling Post-Mortem Fam­i­ly Por­traits from the 19th Cen­tu­ry

Behold the Steam­punk Home Exer­cise Machines from the Vic­to­ri­an Age

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.