Watch the First Trailer for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s Adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Classic Sci-Fi Novel

in Books, Film, Sci Fi | September 10th, 2020

It takes a fear­less film­mak­er indeed to adapt Dune. Atop its rich lin­guis­tic, polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, reli­gious, and eco­log­i­cal foun­da­tions, Frank Her­bert’s saga-launch­ing 1965 nov­el also hap­pens to have a plot “con­vo­lut­ed to the point of pain.” So writes David Fos­ter Wal­lace in his essay on David Lynch, who direct­ed the first cin­e­mat­ic ver­sion of Dune in 1984. That the result is remem­bered as a “huge, pre­ten­tious, inco­her­ent flop” (with an accom­pa­ny­ing glos­sary hand­out) owes to a vari­ety of fac­tors, not least stu­dio med­dling and the unsur­pris­ing incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty of the man who made Eraser­head with large-scale Hol­ly­wood sci-fi. The ques­tion lin­gered: could Dune be suc­cess­ful­ly adapt­ed at all?

Well before Lynch took his crack, El Topo and The Holy Moun­tain direc­tor Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky put togeth­er his own Dune adap­ta­tion. If all had gone well it would have come out as a ten-hour film fea­tur­ing the art of H.R. Giger and Moe­bius as well as the per­for­mances of Orson Welles, Glo­ria Swan­son, David Car­ra­dine, Alain Delon, Mick Jag­ger, and Sal­vador Dalí.

But all did not go well, and cin­e­ma was deprived of what would have been a sin­gu­lar spec­ta­cle no mat­ter how it turned out. At least one ele­ment of Jodor­owsky’s Dune has sur­vived, how­ev­er, in the lat­est attempt to bring Her­bert’s com­plex best­seller to the screen: the music of Pink Floyd, heard in the just-released trail­er for Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune, star­ring Tim­o­th­ée Chalemet as the young hero Paul Atrei­des (as well as Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, and a host of oth­er cur­rent­ly big names), sched­uled for release in Decem­ber.

If a cred­i­ble Dune movie is pos­si­ble, Vil­leneuve is the man to direct it. His pre­vi­ous two pic­tures, Blade Run­ner 2049 and the alien-vis­i­ta­tion dra­ma Arrival, demon­strate not just his capa­bil­i­ties with sci­ence fic­tion but his sense of the sub­lime. Begin­ning with its set­ting, the desert-waste­land plan­et of Arrakis, Dune demands to be envi­sioned with the kind of beau­ty that inspires some­thing close to dread and fear. (The first direc­tor asked to adapt Dune was David Lean, per­haps due to his track record with majes­tic views of sand.) Vil­leneuve has also made the wise choice of refus­ing to com­press the entire book into a sin­gle fea­ture, pre­sent­ing this as the first of a two-part adap­ta­tion. And as a life­long Dune fan, he under­stands the atti­tude nec­es­sary to approach­ing this chal­lenge: “Fear is the mind-killer,” as Paul famous­ly puts it — so famous­ly that the trail­er could­n’t pos­si­bly exclude Cha­la­met’s deliv­ery of the line.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why You Should Read Dune: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Frank Herbert’s Eco­log­i­cal, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci-Fi Epic

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

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

The Fall of Civilizations Podcast Engagingly Explores the Collapse of Civilizations & Empires Throughout History

in History, Podcasts | September 8th, 2020

Now the coun­try does not even boast a tree.

—Robert Brown­ing, “Love Among the Ruins”

Every empire seems to think (as much as empires seem to think) that it will be the one to out­last them all. And all of them have end­ed up more or less the same way in the end. This isn’t just a gloomy fact of human his­to­ry, it’s a fact of entropy, mor­tal­i­ty, and the lin­ear expe­ri­ence of time. If impe­r­i­al rulers forget—begin to think them­selves immortal—there have always been poets to remind them, though maybe not so direct­ly. Epic poet­ry often legit­imizes the found­ing of empires. Anoth­er form, the poet­ry of ruin, inter­prets their inevitable demise.

All the Roman­tics were doing it, and so too was an unknown 8th cen­tu­ry British poet who encoun­tered Roman ruins dur­ing the so-called “Dark Ages.” The poem they left behind “gives us a glimpse of a world of mys­tery,” says Paul Coop­er above in episode one of his Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions pod­cast, which begins with Roman Britain and con­tin­ues, in each sub­se­quent (but not chrono­log­i­cal) episode, to explore the col­lapse of empires around the world through lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture. “Every ruin,” says Coop­er in an inter­view with the North Star Pod­cast, “is a place where a phys­i­cal object was torn apart, and that hap­pened because of some his­tor­i­cal force.”

We are enthralled with ruins, though this can seem like the prod­uct of a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern sensibility—that of the poets who inhab­it­ed what nov­el­ist Rose Macaulay called in her 1953 study Plea­sure of Ruins “a ruined and ruinous world.”

But as our Old Eng­lish poet above demon­strates, the fas­ci­na­tion pre­dates Shake­speare and Mar­lowe. Coop­er would know. He has ded­i­cat­ed his life to study­ing and writ­ing about ruins, earn­ing a PhD in their cul­tur­al and lit­er­ary sig­nif­i­cance. Along the way, he has writ­ten for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine, and the BBC.

Coop­er also began pub­lish­ing one of the most intrigu­ing Twit­ter feeds in 2017, detail­ing in “sev­er­al nest­ed threads” var­i­ous “ruin-relat­ed thoughts and feel­ings,” as Shru­ti Ravin­dran writes at Tim­ber Media. His tweets became so pop­u­lar that he turned them into a pod­cast, and it is not your stan­dard infor­mal­ly chat­ty pod­cast fare. Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions engages deeply with its sub­jects on their own terms, and avoids the sen­sa­tion­al­ist clich­es of so much pop­u­lar his­to­ry. Coop­er “knew, for cer­tain, what he want­ed to avoid,” when he began: the “focus on grue­some tor­ture tech­niques, exe­cu­tions, and the sex­ca­pades of nobles.”

“His­to­ry writ­ers often don’t trust their audi­ence will be inter­est­ed in the past if they don’t Hol­ly­wood­ize it,” says Coop­er. Instead, in the lat­est episode on the Byzan­tine Empire he recruits the choir from the Greek Ortho­dox Cathe­dral in Lon­don, “and a num­ber of musi­cians play­ing tra­di­tion­al Byzan­tine instru­ments such as the Byzan­tine lyra, the Qanun and the Greek San­tur,” he explains. In his episode on the Han dynasty, Coop­er looks back through “ancient Chi­nese poet­ry, songs and folk music” to the empire’s rise, “its remark­able tech­no­log­i­cal advances, and its first, ten­ta­tive attempts to make con­tact with the empires of the west.”

This is a rich jour­ney through ancient his­to­ry, guid­ed by a mas­ter sto­ry­teller ded­i­cat­ed to tak­ing ruins seri­ous­ly. (Coop­er has pub­lished a nov­el about ruins, Riv­er of Ink, “inspired by time spent in UNESCO sites in Sri Lan­ka,” Ravin­dran reports.) There is “love among the ruins,” wrote Robert Brown­ing, and there is poet­ry and music and sto­ry and song—all of it brought to bear in Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions to “make sense about what must have hap­pened,” says Coop­er. Find more episodes, on fall­en civ­i­liza­tions all around the world, on YouTube or head to Fall of Civ­i­liza­tions to sub­scribe through the pod­cast ser­vice of your choice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture Pod­cast Takes You on a Lit­er­ary Jour­ney: From Ancient Epics to Con­tem­po­rary Clas­sics

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & More

The His­to­ry of Lit­er­a­ture Pod­cast Takes You on a Lit­er­ary Jour­ney: From Ancient Epics to Con­tem­po­rary Clas­sics

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

How Charlie Parker Changed Jazz Forever

in Music | September 8th, 2020

Jazz has often moved for­ward in seis­mic shifts, pow­ered by rev­o­lu­tion­ary fig­ures who make every­thing that came before them seem quaint by com­par­i­son and radi­ate their influ­ence beyond the jazz world. Per­haps no fig­ure epit­o­mizes such a leap for­ward more than Char­lie Park­er. The leg­endary inven­tor of bebop, born a lit­tle over a cen­tu­ry ago, may be the most uni­ver­sal­ly respect­ed and admired musi­cian in jazz, and far beyond.

Kansas City trum­pet play­er Lon­nie McFad­den, who grew up hear­ing sto­ries about home­town hero Park­er, was told by every­one he met to learn from the mas­ter. “Every­body. It was a con­sen­sus. All of them said, ‘You got to lis­ten to Bird. You got to lis­ten to Char­lie Park­er.’” Fur­ther­more, he says, “every tap dancer I know, every jazz musi­cian I know, every rock and blues musi­cian I know hon­ors Char­lie Park­er.”

Park­er has been called “The Great­est Indi­vid­ual Musi­cian Who Ever Lived.” Not just jazz musi­cian, but musi­cian, peri­od, as the PBS Sound Field short intro­duc­tion above notes, because there had nev­er been one sin­gle musi­cian who influ­enced “all instru­ments.” Kansas City sax­o­phone play­er Bob­by Wat­son and archivist Chuck Had­dix explain how Park­er made such an impact at such a young age, before dying at 34.

Unlike the swing of Ben­ny Good­man or Louis Arm­strong, Parker’s bebop is com­plete­ly non-dance­able. He didn’t care. He was not an enter­tain­er, he insist­ed, but an artist. Jazz might even­tu­al­ly return to dance­abil­i­ty in the late 20th cen­tu­ry, but the music—and pop­u­lar music writ large—would nev­er be the same.

The video’s host, LA Buck­n­er gives a brief sum­ma­ry of the evo­lu­tion of jazz in four region­al centers—New Orleans, Chica­go, Kansas City, and New York. Park­er made a tran­sit through the last three of these cities, even­tu­al­ly end­ing up on big apple stages. “By 1944,” Jazz­wise writes, “the altoist was… mak­ing a huge impact on the young Turks hang­ing out in Harlem, Dizzy Gille­spie and Thelo­nious Monk in par­tic­u­lar… no one had ever played sax­o­phone in this man­ner before, the har­mon­ic, rhyth­mic and melod­ic imag­i­na­tion and the emo­tion­al inten­si­ty prov­ing an over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence.”

It’s too bad more musi­cians didn’t lis­ten to Bird when it came to play­ing high. “Any­one who said they played bet­ter when on drugs or booze ‘are liars. I know,’” he said. Hero­in and alco­hol abuse end­ed his career pre­ma­ture­ly, but per­haps no sin­gle instru­men­tal musi­cian since has cast a longer shad­ow. Jazz crit­ic Stan­ley Crouch, author of Park­er biog­ra­phy Kansas City Light­ning: The Rise and Times of Char­lie Park­er, explains in an inter­view how Park­er cre­at­ed his own mys­tique.

Park­er some­times gave the impres­sion that he was large­ly a nat­ur­al, an inno­cent into whom the cos­mos poured its knowl­edge while nev­er both­er­ing his con­scious­ness with expla­na­tions.

The facts of his devel­op­ment were quite dif­fer­ent. He worked for every­thing he got, and when­ev­er pos­si­ble, he did that work in asso­ci­a­tion with a mas­ter.

Park­er was not appre­ci­at­ed at first, either in his home­town of Kansas City or in New York, where “peo­ple didn’t like the way he played” when he first arrived in 1939. He respond­ed to crit­i­cism with cease­less prac­tice, learn­ing, and exper­i­men­ta­tion, an almost super­hu­man work eth­ic that prob­a­bly wasn’t great for his health but has grown into a leg­end all its own, giv­ing musi­cians in every form of music a mod­el of ded­i­ca­tion, inten­si­ty, and fear­less­ness to strive toward.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in the Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music of 3 Char­lie Park­er Jazz Clas­sics: “Con­fir­ma­tion,” “Au Pri­vave” & “Bloom­di­do”

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

Watch an Epic Drum Battle, Pitting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fighter Dave Grohl

in K-12, Music | September 7th, 2020

Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl, for­mer­ly of Nir­vana, and Nan­di Bushell, an Ipswich ele­men­tary school­er, have some­thing in com­mon besides their incred­i­ble com­mand of the drums.

By all appear­ances, both seem to have ben­e­fit­ed from being reared by ground­ed, encour­ag­ing par­ents.

Nan­di, at 10, like­ly has a few more years under her folks’ roof despite her grow­ing renown—she’s jammed with Lenny Kravitz, gone viral in last year’s Argos Christ­mas advert, and most recent­ly, matched Grohl beat for beat in an epic drum bat­tle, above.

Nan­di demon­strat­ed a nat­ur­al rhyth­mic ear at an ear­ly age, bob­bing along to the Tele­tub­bies while still in dia­pers.

Of course, every­thing she’s achieved thus far can be con­sid­ered to have occurred at an ear­ly age.

On the oth­er hand, it was half a life­time ago when her father, a soft­ware engi­neer and self-described “mas­sive music fan” intro­duced the then-5-year-old to “Hey, Jude,” as part of a week­ly tra­di­tion where­in he makes pan­cakes with his chil­dren while shar­ing YouTube links to favorite songs.

She was imme­di­ate­ly tak­en with Ringo Starr, and the joy he exud­ed behind his kit.

Short­ly there­after, she passed a math exam, earn­ing a trip to Toys “R” Us to pick out a promised treat. Her eye went imme­di­ate­ly to a £25 kid­die drum set.

The plas­tic toy was a far cry from the pro­fes­sion­al kit she uses today, but she’s shown her­self to be adapt­able in a recent series of video tuto­ri­als for Daniel Bedingfield’s “Gonna Get Through This,” encour­ag­ing view­ers who lack equip­ment to bang on whatever’s handy—colanders, pot lids, bis­cuit tins… She rec­om­mends kebab skew­ers tipped with cel­lo­phane tape for the stick­less.

Her YouTube chan­nel def­i­nite­ly reveals a pref­er­ence for hard rock.

Her father, John, dis­likes play­ing pub­licly, but occa­sion­al­ly accom­pa­nies her on gui­tar, hop­ing she’ll grow accus­tomed to play­ing with oth­er peo­ple.

Doc­u­ment­ing his daughter’s per­for­mances lies more with­in his com­fort zone as he told Drum Talk TV in a very glitchy, ear­ly-pan­dem­ic vir­tu­al inter­view. Asked by host Dan Shin­der to share tips for oth­er par­ents of young drum­mers, par­tic­u­lar­ly girls, he coun­sels expos­ing them to as many musi­cal gen­res as pos­si­ble, nur­tur­ing their desire to play, and resolv­ing to have as much fun as pos­si­ble.

It’s clear that Nan­di is hav­ing a ball twirling her sticks and whal­ing on the drum part of Foo Fight­ers’ hit “Ever­long,” in a video uploaded last month.

Grohl got wind of the video and the chal­lenge con­tained there­in.

He took the bait, respond­ing with an “epic” video of his own, play­ing a set of drums bor­rowed from his 11-year-old daugh­ter:

I haven’t played that song since the day I record­ed it in 1997, but Nan­di, in the last week I’ve got­ten at least 100 texts from peo­ple all over the world say­ing ‘This girl is chal­leng­ing you to a drum-off, what are you going to do?’

Look, I’ve seen all your videos. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re an incred­i­ble drum­mer. I’m real­ly flat­tered that you picked some of my songs… and you’ve done them all per­fect­ly. So today, I’m gonna give you some­thing you may not have heard before. This is a song called “Dead End Friends” from a band called Them Crooked Vul­tures… now the ball is in your court.

(Fast for­ward to the final thir­ty sec­onds if you want to see the ulti­mate in hap­py dances.)

The young chal­lenger calls upon the rock Gods of old—Bon­zo, Bak­er, Peart, Moon—to back her side for “THE GREATEST ROCK BATTLE IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK!!!”

(In addi­tion to drum lessons, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ipswich Rock Project and  junior jam ses­sions, it looks like her act­ing class­es at Stage­coach Per­form­ing Arts Ipswich are so pay­ing off.)

Five days after Grohl threw down his gaunt­let, she’s back on her drum throne, clad in a pre­teen ver­sion of Grohl’s buf­fa­lo check shirt and black pants, her snare bear­ing the leg­end “Grohl rocks.”

That sen­ti­ment would sure­ly please Grohl’s moth­er, Vir­ginia, author of From Cra­dle to Stage: Sto­ries from the Moth­ers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars.

A born enter­tain­er in his mother’s opin­ion, Grohl didn’t take up music until he was around the age Nan­di is now, after which it monop­o­lized his focus and ener­gy, lead­ing to a dis­as­trous 6th grade report card.

Rather than freak­ing out about gen­er­al edu­ca­tion dips, Vir­ginia, a pub­lic school teacher, was sup­port­ive when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose for him to tour Europe at 17 with the Wash­ing­ton, DC band Scream after the depar­ture of drum­mer Kent Stax.

Wise move. Her son may be a high school drop-out, but he’s using his fame to shine a spot­light on the con­cerns of teach­ers, who are essen­tial work­ers in his view. Check out his essay in The Atlantic, in which he writes that he wouldn’t trust the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Per­cus­sion to tell him how to play “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” if they had nev­er sat behind a drum set:

It takes a cer­tain kind of per­son to devote their life to this dif­fi­cult and often-thank­less job. I know because I was raised in a com­mu­ni­ty of them. I have mowed their lawns, paint­ed their apart­ments, even babysat their chil­dren, and I’m con­vinced that they are as essen­tial as any oth­er essen­tial work­ers. Some even raise rock stars! Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine, Adam Levine, Josh Groban, and Haim are all chil­dren of school work­ers (with hope­ful­ly more aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly reward­ing results than mine).

He’s also leav­ing time in his sched­ule for anoth­er drum bat­tle:

Ok, @Nandi_Bushell .…..you win round one.…but it ain’t over yet! Buck­le up, cuz I have some­thing spe­cial in mind…

Stay tuned, Dave https://t.co/THyApmHHep — Foo Fight­ers (@foofighters) Sep­tem­ber 4, 2020

Watch more of Nan­di Bushell’s drum and gui­tar cov­ers on her par­ent-mon­i­tored YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fun­da­men­tals of Jazz & Rock Drum­ming Explained in Five Cre­ative Min­utes

The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Great­est Drum­mers

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Short Introduction to Caravaggio, the Master Of Light

in Art | September 3rd, 2020

Like many a great artist, the for­tunes of Michelan­ge­lo Merisi da Car­avag­gio rose and fell dra­mat­i­cal­ly. After his death, pos­si­bly from syphilis or mur­der, his influ­ence spread across the con­ti­nent as fol­low­ers called Car­avaggisti took his extreme use of chiaroscuro abroad. He influ­enced Rubens, Rem­brandt, and Velázquez—indeed, the entire Baroque peri­od in Euro­pean art his­to­ry prob­a­bly would nev­er have hap­pened with­out him. “With the excep­tion of Michelan­ge­lo,” art his­to­ri­an Bernard Beren­son wrote, “no oth­er Ital­ian painter exer­cised so great an influ­ence.”

But lat­er crit­ics sav­aged his hyper-dra­mat­ic, high-con­trast real­ism. His style, called “tene­brism” for its use of deep dark­ness in paint­ings like The Call­ing of St. Matthew, is shock­ing by com­par­i­son with the fan­ci­ful Man­ner­ism that came before. In the video above, Evan Puschak, the Nerd­writer, explains what makes Caravaggio’s work so strange­ly hyper­re­al. He “pre­ferred to paint his sub­jects as the eye sees them,” the Car­avag­gio Foun­da­tion writes, “with all their nat­ur­al flaws and defects instead of as ide­al­ized cre­ations…. This shift from stan­dard prac­tice and the clas­si­cal ide­al­ism of Michelan­ge­lo was very con­tro­ver­sial at the time…. His real­ism was seen by some as unac­cept­ably vul­gar.”

Also con­tro­ver­sial was Car­avag­gio him­self. His wild life made an ide­al sub­ject for Derek Jarman’s 1986 art­house biopic star­ring Til­da Swin­ton. Famous for brawl­ing, “the tran­scripts of his police records and tri­al pro­ceed­ings fill sev­er­al pages.” He nev­er mar­ried or set­tled down and the male eroti­cism in his paint­ings has led many to sug­ges­tions he was gay .(Jarman’s film makes this an explic­it part of his biog­ra­phy.) It’s like­ly, art his­to­ri­ans think, that the painter had many tumul­tuous rela­tion­ships, sex­u­al and oth­er­wise, with both men and women before his ear­ly death at the age of 38.

Despite his pro­fane life, Caravaggio’s paint­ings evince a “remark­able spir­i­tu­al­i­ty” and illus­trate, as Puschak notes, exact­ly the kind of pas­sion­ate inten­si­ty the counter-Ref­or­ma­tion Catholic Church want­ed to use to stir the faith­ful. Caravaggio’s pop­u­lar­i­ty meant com­mis­sions from wealthy patrons, and for a time, he was the most famous painter in Rome, as well as one of the city’s most infa­mous char­ac­ters. Car­avag­gio paint­ed from life, stag­ing his intri­cate arrange­ments with real mod­els who held the pos­es as he worked.

His fig­ures were ordi­nary peo­ple one might meet on the 17th cen­tu­ry streets of the city. And Car­avag­gio him­self, despite his enor­mous tal­ent, was an ordi­nary per­son as well, stereo­types of trag­ic, tor­tured genius­es aside. He was deeply flawed, it’s true, yet dri­ven by an incred­i­ble long­ing to become some­thing greater.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Liv­ing Paint­ings: 13 Car­avag­gio Works of Art Per­formed by Real-Life Actors

Paint­ings by Car­avag­gio, Ver­meer, & Oth­er Great Mas­ters Come to Life in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Why Babies in Medieval Paint­ings Look Like Mid­dle-Aged Men: An Inves­tiga­tive Video

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

Hear Patti Smith’s First Poetry Reading, Accompanied by Her Longtime Guitarist Lenny Kaye (St. Mark’s Church, 1971)

in Music, Poetry | September 1st, 2020

There are so many ori­gin sto­ries of punk that no sin­gle his­to­ry can count as defin­i­tive. But there’s also no dis­put­ing its roots in the New York poet­ry scene from which Pat­ti Smith emerged in the 1960s and 70s. She learned from Allen Gins­berg and William S. Bur­roughs, and Gre­go­ry Cor­so and Sam Shep­herd inspired the poetry/rock hybrid that would become the music of Hors­es.

Cor­so, who called him­self a “punk debauche” in his 1960 poem “1959,” lived up to the label. He would heck­le poets “dur­ing their list­less per­for­mances,” writes Kem­brew McLeod in Down­town Pop Under­ground, “yelling, ‘Shit! Shit! No blood! Get a trans­fu­sion!’ Sit­ting at Corso’s side,” dur­ing poet­ry read­ings host­ed by the Poet­ry Project at St. Mark’s Church, “Smith made a men­tal note not to be bor­ing.”

She fol­lowed her friend Sam Shepard’s advice to add music to her first pub­lic read­ing and called gui­tar play­er Lenny Kaye to accom­pa­ny her. “It was pri­mar­i­ly a solo poet­ry read­ing,” McLeod writes, “with occa­sion­al gui­tar accom­pa­ni­ment.” The 1971 appear­ance, which you can hear in the record­ing above, set the tone for almost all of her sub­se­quent per­for­mances for the next sev­er­al decades.

“We did ‘Mack the Knife,” Kaye recalls, “because it was Bertolt Brecht’s birth­day, and then I came back for the last three musi­cal pieces. I hes­i­tate to call them ‘songs,’ but in a sense they were the essence of what we would pur­sue.” Odd­ly, that year also marked the first usage of “punk” to describe a style of music, though it was applied to the garage rock of ? and the Mys­te­ri­ans, not to Smith and Kaye’s music. She her­self has said she didn’t con­sid­er what they were doing to be “punk” at all.

This does­n’t much mat­ter. It was atti­tude and the ener­gy Smith trans­lat­ed from St. Marks to the CBG­Bs scene that secures her “God­moth­er” sta­tus. She was impressed, as she says above, by Jim Mor­ri­son and Jimi Hen­drix. She was also impressed by a 1971 essay writ­ten by Andrew Wylie, who pub­lished her first book after her St. Mark’s read­ing. “Liv­ing as we were in an extreme­ly vio­lent, frag­ile time,” Smith’s Unau­tho­rized Biog­ra­phy recounts, “[Wylie] was drawn to short, almost ampu­tat­ed works.” He con­clud­ed that “just to be alive in such times was an act of vio­lence.”

Punk poet­ry, or what­ev­er we want to call it, was born in a church on St. Mark’s Place in New York City in 1971. From then on, what­ev­er oth­er strains came togeth­er to make punk rock, Smith’s chan­nel­ing of Cor­so, Shep­ard, Bur­roughs, Mor­ri­son, etc., backed by Kaye’s steady gui­tar work, has res­onat­ed through the music into the present.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pat­ti Smith “Saved” Rock and Roll: A New Video Makes the Case

Pat­ti Smith’s List of Favorite Books: From Rim­baud to Susan Son­tag

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

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

Watch Bob Dylan Perform “Only A Pawn In Their Game,” His Damning Song About the Murder of Medgar Evers, at the 1963 March on Washington

in History, Music, Politics | August 31st, 2020

Trau­ma is rep­e­ti­tion, and the Unit­ed States seems to inflict and suf­fer from the same deep wounds, repeat­ed­ly, unable to stop, like one of the ancient Bib­li­cal curs­es of which Bob Dylan was so fond. The Dylan of the ear­ly 1960s adopt­ed the voice of a prophet, in var­i­ous reg­is­ters, to tell sto­ries of judg­ment and gen­er­a­tional curs­es, sym­bol­ic and his­tor­i­cal, that have beset the coun­try from its begin­nings.

The vers­es of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” from 1963’s The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, enact this rep­e­ti­tion, both trau­mat­ic and hyp­not­ic. In its dual refrains—“how many times…?” and “the answer is blowin’ in the wind” (ephemer­al, impos­si­ble to grasp)—the song cycles between earnest Lamen­ta­tions and the acute, world-weary res­ig­na­tion of Eccle­si­astes. “This ambi­gu­i­ty is one rea­son for the song’s broad appeal,” as Peter Dreier writes at Dis­sent.

Just three months after its release, when Dylan per­formed at the March on Wash­ing­ton for Jobs and Free­dom on August 28, 1963, “Blowin’ in the Wind” had become a mas­sive civ­il rights anthem. But he had already ced­ed the song to Peter, Paul & Mary, who played their ver­sion that day. Dylan ignored his sopho­more album entire­ly to play songs from the upcom­ing The Times They Are a‑Changing—songs that stand out for their indict­ments of the U.S. in some very spe­cif­ic terms.

Dylan played three songs from the new album: “When the Ship Comes In” with Joan Baez, “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” and “With God on Our Side.” (He also played the pop­u­lar folk song “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.”) In con­trast to his vague­ly allu­sive pop­u­lar anthems, “Only a Pawn in Their Game”—about the mur­der of Medgar Evers—isn’t coy about the cul­prits and their crimes. We might say the song offers an astute analy­sis of insti­tu­tion­al racism, white suprema­cy, and sto­chas­tic ter­ror­ism.

A bul­let from the back of a bush
Took Medgar Evers’ blood
A fin­ger fired the trig­ger to his name
A han­dle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game

A South politi­cian preach­es to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t com­plain
You’re bet­ter than them, you been born with white skin, ” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politi­cian’s gain
As he ris­es to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

The deputy sher­iffs, the sol­diers, the gov­er­nors get paid
And the mar­shals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To pro­tect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he nev­er thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

From the pover­ty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof­beats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ‘neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bul­let he caught
They low­ered him down as a king
But when the shad­owy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epi­taph plain
Only a pawn in their game

These lyrics have far too much rel­e­vance to cur­rent events, and they’re indica­tive of the chang­ing tone of Dylan’s muse. His refrains drip with irony. The killer of Medgar Evers “can’t be blamed”—an eva­sion of respon­si­bil­i­ty that becomes a pow­er­ful force all its own.

Dylan revis­its the themes of gen­er­a­tional trau­ma and mur­der in “With God on Our Side” (hear him sing it with Baez at New­port, above). The song is a sharp satire of his his­tor­i­cal edu­ca­tion, with its inevitable rep­e­ti­tions of war and slaugh­ter. Here, Dylan presents the expo­nen­tial­ly gross, exis­ten­tial­ly dread­ful, con­se­quences of a nation­al abdi­ca­tion of blame for his­tor­i­cal vio­lence.

Oh my name it ain’t noth­in’
My age it means less
The coun­try I come from
Is called the Mid­west
I was taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side

Oh, the his­to­ry books tell it
They tell it so well
The cav­al­ries charged
The Indi­ans fell
The cav­al­ries charged
The Indi­ans died
Oh, the coun­try was young
With God on its side

The Span­ish-Amer­i­can
War had its day
And the Civ­il War, too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I was made to mem­o­rize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The rea­son for fight­ing
I nev­er did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side

The Sec­ond World War
Came to an end
We for­gave the Ger­mans
And then we were friends
Though they mur­dered six mil­lion
In the ovens they fried
The Ger­mans now, too
Have God on their side

I’ve learned to hate the Rus­sians
All through my whole life
If anoth­er war comes
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all brave­ly
With God on my side

But now we got weapons
Of chem­i­cal dust
If fire them, we’re forced to
Then fire, them we must
One push of the but­ton
And a shot the world wide
And you nev­er ask ques­tions
When God’s on your side

Through many a dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ was
Betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscar­i­ot
Had God on his side.

So now as I’m leav­in’
I’m weary as Hell
The con­fu­sion I’m feel­in’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
That if God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war

Dylan’s race/class analy­sis in “Only a Pawn in the Game” and his suc­cinct People’s His­to­ry of Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism in “With God on Our Side” stand out as inter­est­ing choic­es for the March for sev­er­al rea­sons. For one thing, it’s as though he had writ­ten these songs express­ly to take the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and reli­gious mech­a­nisms and mytholo­gies of racism apart. This was rad­i­cal speech in an event that was policed by its orga­niz­ers to tone down inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric for the cam­eras.

23-year-old John Lewis, for exam­ple, was forced to tem­per his speech, in which he meant to say, “We will march through the South, through the heart of Dix­ie, the way Sher­man did. We shall pur­sue our own scorched earth pol­i­cy and burn Jim Crow to the ground — non­vi­o­lent­ly.… the rev­o­lu­tion is at hand, and we must free our­selves of the chains of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic slav­ery.” As a pop­u­lar white artist, rather than a poten­tial­ly sedi­tious Black orga­niz­er, Dylan had far more license and could “use his priv­i­lege,” as they say, to describe the sys­tems of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic oppres­sion Lewis had want­ed to name.

Dylan’s per­for­mance was one of a hand­ful of mem­o­rable musi­cal appear­ances. Most of the singers made a far big­ger impres­sion, like Mahalia Jack­son, Mar­i­an Ander­son, and Baez her­self, whose “We Shall Over­come” cre­at­ed a leg­endary moment of har­mo­ny. No one sang along to Dylan’s new songs—they wouldn’t have known the words. But Dylan was nev­er care­less. He chose these words for the moment, hop­ing to have some impact in the only way he could.

The 1963 March’s pur­pose has been over­shad­owed by a few pas­sages in Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.‘s pow­er­ful “I Have a Dream” speech, co-opt­ed by every­one and reduced to meme-able quotes. But the protest “remains one of the most suc­cess­ful mobi­liza­tions ever cre­at­ed by the Amer­i­can Left,” his­to­ri­an William P. Jones writes. “Orga­nized by a coali­tion of trade union­ists, civ­il rights activists, and feminists–most of them African Amer­i­can and near­ly all of them social­ists.”

Dylan sang sto­ries of how the coun­try got to where it was, through a his­to­ry of vio­lence still play­ing out before the marchers’ eyes. What­ev­er polit­i­cal ten­sions there were among the var­i­ous orga­niz­ers and speak­ers did not dis­tract them from push­ing through the 1964 Civ­il Rights Act and the Fair Employ­ment Prac­tices clause ban­ning dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of race, reli­gion, nation­al ori­gin, or sex—protections that have been broad­ened since that time, and also chal­lenged, threat­ened, and stripped away.

Fifty-sev­en years lat­er, as the RNC con­ven­tion ends and anoth­er March on Wash­ing­ton hap­pens, we might reflect on Dylan’s small but pre­scient con­tri­bu­tions in 1963, in which he apt­ly char­ac­ter­ized the trau­mat­ic rep­e­ti­tions we’re still con­vul­sive­ly expe­ri­enc­ing over half a cen­tu­ry lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moment When Bob Dylan Went Elec­tric: Watch Him Play “Maggie’s Farm” at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1965

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

James Bald­win Talks About Racism in Amer­i­ca & Civ­il Rights Activism on The Dick Cavett Show (1969)

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

Billie Eilish Performs an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, with a Little Bit of Technology & Magic

in Music | August 27th, 2020

Even COVID-19 can’t stop NPR’s series of Tiny Desk Con­certs, which has pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Yo-Yo Ma, Adele, Wilco, The Pix­ies, and many, many oth­er tal­ent­ed musi­cians. As NPR explains below, the per­for­mance involved a lit­tle bit of tech­nol­o­gy and some mag­ic. Enjoy:

It did­n’t take long for Bil­lie Eil­ish to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world, sweep the Gram­my Awards’ major cat­e­gories and release the lat­est James Bond theme. And today, at just 18, she and her broth­er, Finneas, have accom­plished what no one has been able to do for five and a half months: per­form a Tiny Desk con­cert in what cer­tain­ly appears to be the NPR Music offices.

Of course, due to safe­ty con­cerns, even the NPR Music staff can’t set foot in the build­ing that hous­es Bob Boilen’s desk. But if you look over Eil­ish’s shoul­der, there’s no mis­tak­ing the signs that she’s appear­ing at the Tiny Desk in its present-day form: On the last day before staff began work­ing from home, I took home the Green Bay Pack­ers hel­met that sat on the top shelf — the one Har­ry Styles had signed a few weeks ear­li­er — for safe keep­ing. In this per­for­mance, that spot is emp­ty.

So how the heck did they do it?

Hon­est­ly, it’s best that you watch the whole video to expe­ri­ence the extent of the tech­ni­cal feat — which, in the spir­it of Eil­ish’s Sat­ur­day Night Live per­for­mance, they’re will­ing to share with you. And thank­ful­ly, we still have our ways of pho­tograph­ing the desk, even if the room has fall­en silent.

So set­tle in for a wel­come jolt of Tiny Desk inno­va­tion, not to men­tion two of the excel­lent stand­alone sin­gles Bil­lie Eil­ish has released in the past year: “my future” and “every­thing i want­ed.” And, seri­ous­ly, be sure to watch until the very end.

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

Yo-Yo Ma Per­forms the First Clas­si­cal Piece He Ever Learned: Take a 12-Minute Men­tal Health Break and Watch His Mov­ing “Tiny Desk” Con­cert

Peter Framp­ton Plays a Tiny Desk Con­cert for NPR, Fea­tur­ing Acoustic Ver­sions of His Clas­sic Songs

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

JamBase Launches a New Video Archive of 100,000 Streaming Concerts: Phish, Wilco, the Avett Brothers, Grateful Dead & Much More

in Music | August 27th, 2020

Peo­ple do not tend to answer the ques­tion, “do you like Phish?” with, “yeah, I guess they’re okay.” Those who like Phish, love Phish, devot­ed­ly and with­out reser­va­tion. And those who don’t like Phish, well….

For the pur­pos­es of main­tain­ing objec­tiv­i­ty, I shall pre­tend to remain agnos­tic on the ques­tion, but I do hap­pen to think this kind of polar­iza­tion is a mark of great­ness, wher­ev­er one lands. Great art pro­vokes. What could be more provoca­tive than awe­some riffs, 20-minute jams, and obscure in-jokes? There is, admit­ted­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant you-had-to-have-been-there qual­i­ty to Phish fan­dom.…

Phish, and The Grate­ful Dead before them, have been instru­men­tal in keep­ing live music—played at length and with abandon—relevant, not only through their con­stant tour­ing but through the num­ber of bands in their orbit who inspire their own devot­ed fol­low­ings. Now the pan­dem­ic has made it impos­si­ble for fans of Phish, the String Cheese Inci­dent, the Dave Matthews Band, Wide­spread Pan­ic, or the Avett Broth­ers to make it out to shows.

To ease their pain, Jam­Base launched a Live Video Archive, a music aggre­ga­tor that allows fans to search 100,000 free stream­ing con­certs on YouTube. “Look­ing to find videos of Phish per­form­ing ‘Har­ry Hood’ in 2013? Enter ‘Har­ry Hood’ in the song fil­ter and you’ll see a list of every ver­sion in our data­base,” Jam­base explains.

“Use the ‘Event Year’ fil­ter to pick 2013. You’ll then see many videos to choose from. Press ‘Play’ to watch in the play­er or press ‘queue’ to start a list of videos that will dis­play in the order you select­ed to view at your leisure.”

Giv­en their audi­ence, JamBase’s cat­a­logue skews heav­i­ly toward jam and jam-adja­cent bands. But you’ll also find a huge archive of per­for­mances, over 14,000 clips, from Seat­tle inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion KEXP. “Per­for­mances from The Barr Broth­ers, Wilco, Jason Isbell and Yo La Ten­go are just a few of the dozens of acts fea­tured in KEXP videos on the JBLVA.”

JamBase’s own home­page is also full of great stuff for fans not only of jams and blue­grass bands but oth­er gen­res as well, from Lucin­da Williams’ grit­ty coun­try folk to Emi­ly King’s acoustic R&B, such as her lat­est sin­gle “See Me,” released in sup­port of Black Lives Mat­ter. These are tough times all around. It can be easy to lose sight of the good things we’re miss­ing as we watch cur­rent events unfold. Let the Jam­Base Live Video Archive remind us of groovy times we had, and will have again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Metal­li­ca Is Putting Free Con­certs Online: 6 Now Stream­ing, with More to Come

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

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

How Stevie Nicks Wrote “Rhiannon” & Embodied the Medieval Witch Character Onstage

in Music | August 26th, 2020

It seems as inevitable as bell bot­toms and shoul­der-wide col­lars that Ste­vie Nicks would trans­form into the New Age priest­ess who greet­ed the 70s with a wave of a bil­lowy, shawl-draped arm. “It makes sense,” Bill DeMain writes at Clas­sic Rock, that her “sig­na­ture song was inspired by a kind of ancient mag­ic” of the kind that every­body was get­ting into. That song, “Rhi­an­non,” takes its name from “an old Welsh witch,” as Nicks would often announce onstage. Dur­ing Fleet­wood Mac’s Nicks/Buckingham hey­day, Nicks embod­ied the char­ac­ter as though pos­sessed, her per­for­mances of the song “like an exor­cism,” Mick Fleet­wood recalled.

The sto­ry of how “Rhi­an­non” came to be, how­ev­er, is not as straight­for­ward as Nicks’ reach­ing into the pages of the Mabino­gion, the Welsh prose cycle in which Rhi­an­non first appears. The name came to her sev­er­al steps removed from its myth­i­cal ori­gins, from a nov­el by Mary Leader called Tri­ad.

“It was just a stu­pid lit­tle paper­back that I found some­where at somebody’s house,” she recalls of the uncan­ny 1974 com­po­si­tion. “And it was all about this girl who becomes pos­sessed by a spir­it named Rhi­an­non. I read the book, but I was so tak­en with that name that I thought: ‘I’ve got to write some­thing about this.’ So I sat down at the piano and start­ed this song about a woman that was all involved with these birds and mag­ic.”

“I come to find out,” she says, “after I’ve writ­ten the song, that in fact Rhi­an­non was the god­dess of steeds, mak­er of birds.” The per­fect anthem for a singer on the thresh­old of turn­ing the already famous Fleet­wood Mac into one of the biggest rock bands in the world. They were in a kind of wilder­ness peri­od, hav­ing fired long­time gui­tarist and musi­cal linch­pin Dan­ny Kir­wan and lost gui­tarist Bob Welch. When Lind­say Buck­ing­ham, his replace­ment, insist­ed that Nicks join with him, she brought the song “about an old Welsh witch” along with the pair’s col­lec­tion of shawls, capes, and kimonos.

You can learn more about the myths of the Mabino­gion, the old­est known prose sto­ries in Britain, in the Poly­phon­ic video above. The col­lec­tion inspired the epic fan­tasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, and by proxy the epic fan­tasies of Led Zep­pelin and every heavy met­al band there­after. It also fea­tures in Lloyd Alexander’s 1960’s fan­ta­sy series Chron­i­cles of Pry­dain (lat­er poor­ly adapt­ed in Disney’s The Black Caul­dron). The pop cul­ture of the 70s had been infused with ancient Welsh before Rhi­an­non came along, but the god­dess her­self seemed to belong exclu­sive­ly to Ste­vie Nicks, who intu­it­ed a deep mag­ic in the music of her ancient name.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

When Lucy Law­less Imper­son­at­ed Ste­vie Nicks & Imag­ined Her as the Own­er of a Bad Tex-Mex Restau­rant: A Cult Clas­sic SNL Skit

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