The Airline Toilets Theatre Company: Watch One Man Stage Comical Shows in Airplane Bathrooms

in Comedy, Creativity, Theatre, Travel | June 1st, 2021

When COVID 19 struck, the­ater lovers were faced with a choice.

Let go entire­ly, or expand our def­i­n­i­tions of what con­sti­tutes “the­ater.”

We’ve had 14 months to get used to the idea of per­for­mances staged in clos­ets, in pod­cast form, or as phone calls hing­ing on audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion.

We’re sick of Zoom, but we no longer con­sid­er it manda­to­ry for the play­ers to inhab­it the same space as each oth­er or the audi­ence.

This is all old news to Peter Brooke Turn­er, a mem­ber of the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain and the founder of the Air­line Toi­lets The­atre Com­pa­ny.

The ATTC’s reper­toire con­sists of great works of lit­er­a­ture, song and dance… per­formed exclu­sive­ly in air­craft lava­to­ries, a true feat when one con­sid­ers that Turn­er, impre­sario and sole com­pa­ny mem­ber, is 6’8”.

2015’s inau­gur­al pro­duc­tion, above, remains among the company’s most ambi­tious —  a 50th anniver­sary recre­ation of Bob Dylan’s 1965 pro­mo­tion­al film clip for Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues, shot on var­i­ous flights through­out the Ukulele Orchestra’s US tour.

Before long, Turner’s car­ry-on was stuffed with props and cos­tumes — a toga, three self-adhe­sive Abra­ham Lin­coln beards, a fat suit, a plas­tic cig­ar, card­board face masks of Jimi Hen­drix and Queen’s Bri­an May, and a num­bers of inflat­a­bles, includ­ing a woman, a horse, and a not par­tic­u­lar­ly real­is­tic hand­gun.

Stag­ing solo, site spe­cif­ic mini pro­duc­tions struck Turn­er as a far more amus­ing prospect than remain­ing in his seat, watch­ing a movie:

I don’t like pas­sive con­sumerism — I’d rather make my own movie than watch some CGI block­buster on a plane. 90% of tour­ing is NOT per­form­ing but sit­ting around on a plane/train/bus star­ing into space — I’m just try­ing to do some­thing cre­ative to make the time pass. 

With advance plan­ning, the sim­pler pro­duc­tions can make it into the can on a sin­gle take.

The James Bond Trib­ute, below, which called for cos­tume changes, pup­pets and card­board masks of Sean Con­nery, Roger Moore, and Daniel Craig, was shot in seg­ments — Lon­don to Frank­furt, Sin­ga­pore to Auck­land, and Sin­ga­pore to Lon­don.

Rather than pro­ject­ing for the ben­e­fit of folks in the non-exis­tent back row, Turn­er prefers to lip synch pre­re­cord­ed lines, fed to him via ear­bud. This helps dial down the sus­pi­cions of flight atten­dants and fel­low pas­sen­gers. Once the “occu­pied” light comes on, he reck­ons he has between 7 to 10 min­utes to take care of busi­ness. Should any­one ques­tion the length of his stay, or his large bag of cos­tumes and props, his excuse is that “I suf­fer from haem­or­rhoids and need to change my pants. (Believe me, this is a con­ver­sa­tion no one wants to take fur­ther.)”

Watch a playlist of the Best of the Air­line Toi­lets The­ater Com­pa­ny here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Drift: Pas­sen­ger Shoots Strik­ing Short Film Out of Air­plane Win­dow

Pre-Flight Safe­ty Demon­stra­tion Gets Per­formed as a Mod­ern Dance: A Cre­ative Video from a Tai­wanese Air­line

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Art Historian Provides Hilarious & Surprisingly Efficient Art History Lessons on TikTok

in Art, Comedy, History, How to Learn for Free | May 31st, 2021

@_theiconoclassIf youse come at me again for my Aus­tralian pro­nun­ci­a­tion I swear 😂 #arthis­to­ry #arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #baroque♬ orig­i­nal sound — AyseD­eniz

Art His­to­ri­an Mary McGillivray believes art appre­ci­a­tion is an acquired skill. Her Tik­Tok project, The Icon­o­class, is bring­ing those lack­ing for­mal art his­to­ry edu­ca­tion up to speed.

The 25-year-old Aus­tralian’s pithy obser­va­tions dou­ble as sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy mnemon­ics, use­ful for nav­i­gat­ing world class col­lec­tions both live and online.

Some high­lights from her whirl­wind guide to the Baroque peri­od, above:

If it looks like the chaos after black­out where every­one is stum­bling around in the dark under one soli­tary emer­gency light, it’s a Car­avag­gio.

If there’s at least one per­son look­ing to the cam­era like they’re on The Office, it’s a Velázquez.

If there’s a room with some nice fur­ni­ture, a win­dow, and some women just going about their every­day busi­ness, it’s a Ver­meer.

Rather than the tra­di­tion­al chrono­log­i­cal pro­gres­sion, McGillivray mix­es and match­es, often in response to com­ments and Patre­on requests.

When a com­menter on the Baroque Tik­Tok took umbrage that she referred to Artemisia Gen­tileschi by first name only, McGillivray fol­lowed up with an edu­ca­tion­al video explain­ing the con­ven­tion from the 17th-cen­tu­ry per­spec­tive.

@_theiconoclassReply to @rajendzzz her dad was hot, com­ment if you agree #baroque #artemisia #arthis­to­ryclass♬ Guilty Love — Lady­hawke & Broods

At the urg­ing of a Patre­on sub­scriber, she leaps across four cen­turies to dis­cov­er an unex­pect­ed kin­ship between Cubism and Renais­sance painters, using George Braque’s Man with a Gui­tar and San­dro Botticelli’s Four Scenes from the Ear­ly Life of Saint Zeno­bius. One is attempt­ing to escape the shack­les of per­spec­tive by show­ing sur­faces not vis­i­ble when regard­ing a sub­ject from a sin­gle point. The oth­er is using a sin­gle space to depict mul­ti­ple moments in a subject’s life simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

@_theiconoclass#arthis­to­ry #arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #renais­sance #cubism #medievaltik­tok♬ orig­i­nal sound — Fin­ian Hack­ett

McGillivray is will­ing to be seen learn­ing along with her fol­low­ers. She’s open about the fact that she prefers Giot­to and Fra Angeli­co to con­tem­po­rary art (as per­haps befits an art his­to­ri­an whose face is more 1305 than 2021). Artist Dominic White’s wear­able, envi­ron­men­tal sculp­ture Hood­ie Empa­thy Suit does­n’t do much for her until a con­ver­sa­tion with the exhibit­ing gallery’s direc­tor helps ori­ent her to White’s objec­tives.

@_theiconoclassWant to see me tack­le more con­tem­po­rary art? Big thanks to @mprg_vic ❤️🪶#arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #arthis­to­ry #con­tem­po­rar­yart #art­gallery♬ orig­i­nal sound — Mary McGillivray

She tips her hand in an inter­view with Pedes­tri­an TV:

I’m not very inter­est­ed in decid­ing what is art and what isn’t. The whole “what is art” ques­tion has nev­er been very impor­tant to me. The ques­tions I pre­fer to ask are: Why was this image made?

She rec­om­mends art crit­ic John Berg­er’s 1972 four-part series Ways of See­ing to fans eager to expand beyond the Icon­o­class:

It’s got all the things you would expect from a 1970s BBC pro­duc­tion – wide col­lared shirts, long hair, smok­ing on tele­vi­sion – plus some of the most influ­en­tial insights into how we look at art and also how we look at the world around us.

Watch Mary McGillivray’s The Icon­o­class here. Sup­port her Patre­on here.

@_theiconoclassWant a part two? 😏😘 #arthis­to­ry­tik­tok #arthis­to­ry­ma­jor #learnon­tik­tok♬ Rasputin (Sin­gle Ver­sion) — Boney M.

via Bored Pan­da

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Art & Art His­to­ry Cours­es

One Minute Art His­to­ry: Cen­turies of Artis­tic Styles Get Packed Into a Short Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

Steve Mar­tin on How to Look at Abstract Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The Art of Balancing Stones: How Artists Use Simple Materials to Make Impossible Sculptures in Nature

in Art, Nature | May 31st, 2021

Not so long ago, a wave of long-form entreaties rolled through social media insist­ing that we stop build­ing rock cairns. Like many who scrolled past them, I could­n’t quite imag­ine the offend­ing struc­tures they meant, let alone recall con­struct­ing one myself. The cairns in ques­tion turned out, mun­dane­ly, to be those lit­tle stacks of flat rocks seen in parks, along­side trails and streams. They’re as com­mon in South Korea, where I live, as they seem to be in the Unit­ed States. Both coun­tries also share a great enthu­si­asm for Insta­gram, and it’s the appar­ent Insta­gram­ma­bil­i­ty of these cairns that has increased their num­ber (and con­se­quent eco­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al harm) in recent years.

No mat­ter how many likes they gar­ner, these com­mon cairns require lit­tle or no skill in the build­ing. The same can hard­ly be said of rock bal­anc­ing, an art that demands a great deal more dis­ci­pline and patience than many an influ­encer can muster. The Wired video at the top of the post pro­files one of the most famous liv­ing rock-bal­ancers, a Cana­di­an named Michael Grab.

“One of my core dri­ves is to make the for­ma­tion as impos­si­ble as pos­si­ble,” he says, refer­ring to the appar­ent defi­ance of grav­i­ty per­formed by all the rocks he finds and arranges into stacks, arcs, orbs, and oth­er unlike­ly shapes. In fact, it is grav­i­ty alone that holds his art­works togeth­er — and repeat­ed­ly destroys them in the count­less tri­als and errors before their com­ple­tion.

Yes, Grab has an Insta­gram account: Grav­i­ty Glue, on which he show­cas­es his pre­car­i­ous­ly sol­id sculp­tures as well as their nat­ur­al con­texts. So does Jon­na Jin­ton, a Swedish “artist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and Youtu­ber” who also bal­ances rocks. “It’s such a great way to also bal­ance myself,” she says in the short video just above, “and to cre­ate some­thing beau­ti­ful at the same time.” For her, the art has become a form of med­i­ta­tion: “As I try to find a tiny, tiny lit­tle bal­ance point, my thoughts are com­plete­ly silent, and that’s a very good feel­ing.” Jin­ton does­n’t say whether she per­son­al­ly ensures the destruc­tion of her works, as Grab does. But doing so, as one should note before enter­ing the rock-bal­ancer lifestyle, may keep you on the bet­ter side of the eco­log­i­cal rec­om­men­da­tions and indeed the law. But then the afore­men­tioned anti-cair­nism seemed to hit its zenith in ear­ly 2020, since which time, it’s fair to say, the world has had more press­ing con­cerns.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Philo­soph­i­cal Appre­ci­a­tion of Rocks in Chi­na & Japan: A Short Intro­duc­tion to an Ancient Tra­di­tion

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Watch a Mas­ter­piece Emerge from a Sol­id Block of Stone

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Plays a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Times

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

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.

Meet the Linda Lindas, the Tween Punk Band Who Called Out Racism & Misogyny and Scored a Record Deal

in Gender, K-12, Music | May 27th, 2021

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,” we chant­ed as kids, but “words will nev­er hurt me.” The say­ing seems to both invite phys­i­cal vio­lence and deny the real effects of ver­bal abuse. Maybe this was once effec­tive as a stock play­ground retort, but it’s nev­er been true, as any­one who’s been picked on as a child can attest. When the taunts are racist, the dam­age is expo­nen­tial­ly mul­ti­plied. Not only are kids being sin­gled out and mocked for immutable char­ac­ter­is­tics, but their fam­i­ly and entire cul­ture of ori­gin are being tar­get­ed.

What to do? Lash out? Fight back? Ignore it and pre­tend it isn’t hap­pen­ing? To quote anoth­er cliche, “the best revenge is suc­cess.” More appro­pri­ate­ly for the case at hand, take an orig­i­nal line from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke: “Be con­struc­tive with your blues.”

The Lin­da Lin­das, a four-piece punk band rang­ing in age from 10 to 16 would agree. When one of the girls was harassed by a class­mate, they got bummed about it, then ral­lied, wrote a song, went viral, and scored a record deal. Deal­ing with bul­lies will rarely lead to such joy­ful results, but it’s worth pay­ing atten­tion when it does.

The song, “Racist, Sex­ist Boy” has “become some­thing of a 2021 anthem,” writes NPR, with its glee­ful call-outs (“Pos­er! Block­head! Riffraff! Jerk face!”) and crunchy pow­er chords. “In what has become a very famil­iar cycle to music-indus­try watch­ers, the band land­ed a record deal almost as soon as its video went viral,” sign­ing with L.A.’s Epi­taph Records. “By Fri­day, the band’s per­for­mance of ‘Racist, Sex­ist Boy’ had been post­ed on Epi­taph’s YouTube chan­nel.” The video comes from a per­for­mance at the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library, which you can watch in full above, with an intro­duc­tion and inter­view with the band. (See a setlist on YouTube and don’t miss their cov­er of Biki­ni Kil­l’s “Rebel Girl” at 35:56.)

So, who are the Lin­da Lin­das? On their Band­camp page, they describe them­selves as “Half Asian / half Lat­inx. Two sis­ters, a cousin, and their close friend. The Lin­da Lin­das chan­nel the spir­it of orig­i­nal punk, pow­er pop, and new wave through today’s ears, eyes and minds.” You can meet the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed tweens and teens in the video above, made in 2019 by a fifth grade teacher to inspire his stu­dents. The girls are hard­ly new to the music busi­ness. Clips in the video show them per­form­ing with Mon­ey Mark and open­ing for Biki­ni Kill. They got their start in 2018 at Girlschool LA, “a cel­e­bra­tion of females chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo,” and they’ve been men­tored by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The Lin­da Lin­das also cap­tured the atten­tion of Amy Pohler, who fea­tured the band in her Net­flix doc­u­men­tary Mox­ie. See a clip above. Not every kid who fights bul­ly­ing with music — or art, sci­ence, sports, or what­ev­er their tal­ent — can expect celebri­ty, and we shouldn’t set kids up to think they can all win the inter­net lot­tery. But the Lin­da Lin­das have become heroes for mil­lions of young girls who look like them, and who dream not of fame and for­tune but of a unit­ed front of friend­ship and fun against racism, misog­y­ny, and the pains of grow­ing up.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ven­er­a­ble Female Artists, Musi­cians & Authors Give Advice to the Young: Pat­ti Smith, Lau­rie Ander­son & More

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Record­ed Song (1976)

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

Creative Thinking: A Free Online Course from Imperial College London

in Creativity, Online Courses | May 25th, 2021

From Peter Childs (Head of the Dyson School of Design Engi­neer­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don) comes a free course that explores cre­ative think­ing tech­niques, and how to apply them to every­day prob­lems and glob­al chal­lenges. The course descrip­tion for Cre­ative Think­ing: Tech­niques and Tools for Suc­cess reads:

In today’s ever-grow­ing and chang­ing world, being able to think cre­ative­ly and inno­v­a­tive­ly are essen­tial skills. It can some­times be chal­leng­ing to step back and reflect in an envi­ron­ment which is fast paced or when you are required to assim­i­late large amounts of infor­ma­tion. Mak­ing sense of or com­mu­ni­cat­ing new ideas in an inno­v­a­tive and engag­ing way, approach­ing prob­lems from fresh angles, and pro­duc­ing nov­el solu­tions are all traits which are high­ly sought after by employ­ers.

The great­est inno­va­tors aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the peo­ple who have the most orig­i­nal idea. Often, they are peo­ple- or teams- that have har­nessed their cre­ativ­i­ty to devel­op a new per­spec­tive or more effec­tive way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing an idea. You can train your imag­i­na­tion to seize oppor­tu­ni­ties, break away from rou­tine and habit, and tap into your nat­ur­al cre­ativ­i­ty.

This course will equip you with a ‘tool-box’, intro­duc­ing you to a selec­tion of behav­iours and tech­niques that will aug­ment your innate cre­ativ­i­ty. Some of the tools are suit­ed to use on your own and oth­ers work well for a group, enabling you to lever­age the pow­er of sev­er­al minds.

You can take Cre­ative Think­ing: Tech­niques and Tools for Suc­cess for free by select­ing the audit option upon enrolling. If you want to take the course for a cer­tifi­cate, you will need to pay a fee.

Cre­ative Think­ing will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Long Game of Cre­ativ­i­ty: If You Haven’t Cre­at­ed a Mas­ter­piece at 30, You’re Not a Fail­ure

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

David Lynch Explains How Sim­ple Dai­ly Habits Enhance His Cre­ativ­i­ty

Revisiting Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” and the Album That Opened R&B to Resistance: Revisited 50 Years Later

in Life, Music, Politics | May 24th, 2021

I just want to be heard and that’s all that mat­ters. — Mar­vin Gaye

R&B super­star Mar­vin Gaye was more than will­ing to risk his career on a record.

His pol­ished pub­lic per­sona was a false front behind which lurked some seri­ous demons — depres­sion and addic­tion, exac­er­bat­ed by the ill­ness and death of his close friend and duet mate, Tam­mi Ter­rell.

His down­ward spi­ral was also fueled by his dis­tress over events of the late 60s.

How else to respond to the Viet­nam War, the mur­der of civ­il rights lead­ers, police bru­tal­i­ty, the Watts Riots, a dire envi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tion, and the dis­en­fran­chise­ment and aban­don­ment of low­er income Black com­mu­ni­ties?

Per­haps by refus­ing to adhere to pro­duc­er Bar­ry Gordy’s man­date that all Motown artists were to steer clear of overt polit­i­cal stances….

He con­trolled their careers, but art is a pow­er­ful out­let.

Obie Ben­son also came under Gordy’s thumb as a mem­ber of the R&B quar­tet, the Four Tops. The shock­ing vio­lence he wit­nessed in Berkeley’s Peo­ple’s Park on Bloody Thurs­day while on tour with his band pro­vid­ed the lyri­cal inspi­ra­tion for “What’s Goin’ On.”

When the oth­er mem­bers of the group refused to touch it, not want­i­ng to rock the boat with a protest song, he took it to Gaye, who had lost all enthu­si­asm for the “bull­shit” love songs that had made him a star

Ben­son recalled that Gaye added some “things that were more ghet­to, more nat­ur­al, which made it seem more like a sto­ry than a song… we mea­sured him for the suit and he tai­lored the hell out of it.”

Gordy was not pleased with the song’s mes­sage, nor his loosey goosey approach to lay­ing down the track. Eli Fontaine’s famous sax­o­phone intro was impro­vised and “Motown’s secret weapon,” bassist James Jamer­son was so plas­tered on Metaxa, he was record­ed sprawl­ing on the floor.

Jamer­son told his wife they’d been work­ing on a “mas­ter­piece,” but Gordy dubbed “What’s Going On” “the worst thing I ever heard in my life,” pooh-poohing the “Dizzy Gille­spie stuff in the mid­dle, that scat­ting.” He refused to release it.

Gaye stonewalled by going on strike, refus­ing to record any music what­so­ev­er.

Eight months in, Motown’s A&R Head Har­ry Balk, des­per­ate for anoth­er release from one of the label’s most pop­u­lar acts, direct­ed sales vice pres­i­dent Bar­ney Ales to drop the new sin­gle behind Gordy’s back.

It imme­di­ate­ly shot to the top of the charts, sell­ing 70,000 copies in its first week.

Gordy, warm­ing to the idea of more sales, abrupt­ly reversed course, direct­ing Gaye to come up with an entire album of protest songs. It ush­ered in a new era in which Black record­ing artists were not only free, but encour­aged to use their voic­es to bring about social change.

The album, What’s Going On, recent­ly claimed top hon­ors when Rolling Stone updat­ed its  500 Great­est Albums list. Now, it is cel­e­brat­ing its 50th anniver­sary, and as Poly­phon­ic, pro­duc­ers of the mini-doc above note, its sen­ti­ments couldn’t be more time­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Hear Mar­vin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capel­la: The Haunt­ing Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her June 7 for a Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain: The Peri­od­i­cal Cica­da, a free vir­tu­al vari­ety hon­or­ing the 17-Year Cicadas of Brood X. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

John Steinbeck Wrote a Werewolf Novel, and His Estate Won’t Let the World Read It: The Story of Murder at Full Moon

in History, Literature | May 24th, 2021

Pho­to of Stein­beck by Sonya Noskowiak, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

John Stein­beck wrote Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden, but not before he’d put a few less-acclaimed nov­els under his belt. He did­n’t even break through to suc­cess of any kind until 1935’s Tor­tilla Flat, which lat­er became a pop­u­lar roman­tic-com­e­dy film with Spencer Tra­cy and Hedy Lamarr. That was already Stein­beck­’s fourth pub­lished nov­el, and he’d writ­ten near­ly as many unpub­lished ones. Two of those three man­u­scripts he destroyed, but a fourth sur­vives at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas in Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter, which spe­cial­ized in hoard­ing lit­er­ary ephemera, espe­cial­ly from Nobel lau­re­ates. The unpub­lished nov­el deals not with labor­ers, farm­ers, or wastrels, but a were­wolf.

“Set in a fic­tion­al Cal­i­forn­ian coastal town, Mur­der at Full Moon tells the sto­ry of a com­mu­ni­ty gripped by fear after a series of grue­some mur­ders takes place under a full moon,” writes The Guardian’s Dalya Alberge. “Inves­ti­ga­tors fear that a super­nat­ur­al mon­ster has emerged from the near­by marsh­es. Its char­ac­ters include a cub reporter, a mys­te­ri­ous man who runs a local gun club and an eccen­tric ama­teur sleuth who sets out to solve the crime using tech­niques based on his obses­sion with pulp detec­tive fic­tion.”

Alberge quotes Stan­ford lit­er­ary schol­ar Gavin Jones describ­ing the book as relat­ed to Stein­beck­’s “inter­est in vio­lent human trans­for­ma­tion – the kind of human-ani­mal con­nec­tion that you find all over his work; his inter­est in mob vio­lence and how humans are capa­ble of oth­er states of being, includ­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent mur­der­ers.”

Then still in his twen­ties, Stein­beck wrote Mur­der at Full Moon under the pseu­do­nym Peter Pym. After receiv­ing only rejec­tions from pub­lish­ers, he shelved the man­u­script and seems not to have giv­en it anoth­er thought, even in order to dis­pose of it. Though Stein­beck­’s estate has declared its lack of inter­est in its posthu­mous pub­li­ca­tion, Jones believes it would find a recep­tive read­er­ship today:  “It’s a hor­ror pot­boil­er, which is why I think read­ers would find it more inter­est­ing than a more typ­i­cal Stein­beck.” It also “pre­dicts Cal­i­forn­ian noir detec­tive fic­tion. It is an unset­tling sto­ry whose atmos­phere is one of fog-bound, mali­cious, malig­nant secre­cy.” It could at least have made quite a noir film, ide­al­ly one star­ring Lon Chaney, Jr., whose per­for­mance in Of Mice and Men proved he could play a Stein­beck char­ac­ter — to say noth­ing of his sub­se­quent turn in The Wolf Man.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Steinbeck’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer and His Nobel Prize Speech

John Stein­beck Reads Two Short Sto­ries, “The Snake” and “John­ny Bear” in 1953

John Stein­beck Has a Cri­sis in Con­fi­dence While Writ­ing The Grapes of Wrath: “I am Not a Writer. I’ve Been Fool­ing Myself and Oth­er Peo­ple”

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.

A Young Janis Joplin Plays a Passionate Set at One of Her First Gigs in San Francisco (1963)

in Music | May 20th, 2021

From her ear­ly, unhap­py teen years in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin seemed to know she want­ed to be a blues singer. She once said she decid­ed to become a singer when a friend “loaned her his Bessie Smith and Lead­bel­ly records,” writes biog­ra­ph­er Ellis Amburn. “Ten years lat­er, Janis was hailed as the pre­mier blues singer of her time. She paid trib­ute to Bessie by buy­ing her a head­stone for her unmarked grave.” She was devot­ed to the blues, from her ear­li­est encoun­ters with the music in her youth to her last record­ed song, the lone­ly, a capel­la blues, “Mer­cedes Benz.”

But when Joplin first appeared on the San Fran­cis­co scene in 1963, she did so as a Dylan-influ­enced folkie fresh from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin. The year before, she had been described by a pro­file in The Dai­ly Tex­an as an artist who “goes bare­foot­ed when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they’re more com­fort­able, and car­ries her auto­harp with her every­where she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy.” The arti­cle was titled “She Dares to Be Dif­fer­ent.”

Joplin’s folk per­sona was hard­ly unique in either San Fran­cis­co or Austin in the ear­ly 60s. “In fact, her love of Dylan and folk sim­ply marked her out as a rid­er of the zeit­geist,” writes music jour­nal­ist Chris Salewicz. “When, for exam­ple, a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas alum­nus called Chet Helms passed through [Austin] he was aston­ished at the wealth of folk music.” Helms, who had already moved west, promised Joplin gigs in San Fran­cis­co. The pair hitch­hiked to the city “mid­way through Jan­u­ary 1963, with con­sid­er­able trep­i­da­tion… a trek in which they spent 50 hours on the road.”

Once in North Beach, a neigh­bor­hood defined by City Lights book­store and the Beats, Helms found Joplin gigs at Cof­fee and Con­fu­sion, then the Cof­fee Gallery, where she “was just one of many future rock­ers to play the Cof­fee Gallery as a folkie,” writes Alice Echols. In South Bay cof­fee­hous­es, she met Jer­ry Gar­cia and future Jef­fer­son Air­plane gui­tarist Jor­ma Kauko­nen. Every­one made the cof­fee­house rounds, acoustic gui­tar in hand. It was the way to make a name in the scene, which Janis did quick­ly, appear­ing the same year she arrived in San Fran­cis­co on the side stage at the Mon­terey Folk Fes­ti­val.

But Janis brought some­thing dif­fer­ent than oth­er stu­dents of Dylan — big­ger and bold­er and loud­er and deeply root­ed in a South­ern blues tra­di­tion Joplin spread to aston­ished beat­niks like a “Blues His­to­ri­an,” one com­menter notes, “turn­ing a small audi­ence on to some obscure and for­got­ten per­form­ers, whose music would serve as the foun­da­tion for an entire genre yet to come.” You can hear her do just that in the gig above at the Cof­fee Gallery in 1963: “no drums, no crowds. Just Janis and a small group of peo­ple gath­ered to hear some sam­ples of rur­al blues, done by an enthu­si­ast from Texas.”

See the full setlist below. Oth­er per­form­ers on the record­ing, accord­ing to the YouTube uploader, are Lar­ry Han­ks on acoustic gui­tar and vocals, and Bil­ly Roberts (or pos­si­bly Roger Perkins) on acoustic gui­tar, as well as ban­jo, vocals, and har­mon­i­ca.

Leav­ing’ This Morn­ing (K.C. Blues)
Dad­dy, Dad­dy, Dad­dy
Care­less Love
Bour­geois Blues
Black Moun­tain Blues
Gospel Ship
Stealin’

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Janis Joplin’s Last TV Per­for­mance & Inter­view: The Dick Cavett Show (1970)

Hear a Rare First Record­ing of Janis Joplin’s Hit “Me and Bob­by McGee,” Writ­ten by Kris Kristof­fer­son

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai: An Introduction to the Iconic Japanese Woodblock Print in 17 Minutes

in Art | May 20th, 2021

When wood­cut artist Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai made his famous print The Great Wave off Kana­gawa in 1830 — part of the series Thir­ty-six Views of Mount Fuji — he was 70 years old and had lived his entire life in a Japan closed off from the rest of the world. In the 19th cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, “the rest of the world was becom­ing indus­tri­al­ized,” James Payne explains above in his Great Art Explained video, “and the Japan­ese were con­cerned about for­eign inva­sions.” The Great Wave shows “an image of Japan fear­ful that the sea — which has pro­tect­ed its peace­ful iso­la­tion for so long — would become its down­fall.”

It’s also true, how­ev­er, that The Great Wave would not have exist­ed with­out a for­eign inva­sion. Pruss­ian blue, the first sta­ble blue pig­ment, acci­den­tal­ly invent­ed around 1705 in Berlin, arrived in the ports of Nagasa­ki on Dutch and Chi­nese ships in the 1820s. Pruss­ian Blue would start a new artis­tic move­ment in Japan, aizuri‑e, wood­cuts print­ed in bright, vivid blues.

“Hoku­sai was one of the first Japan­ese print­mak­ers to bold­ly embrace the colour,” Hugh Davies writes at The Con­ver­sa­tion, “a deci­sion that would have major impli­ca­tions in the world of art.” When the country’s iso­la­tion­ist poli­cies end­ed in the 1850s, “a show­case at the inau­gur­al Japan­ese Pavil­ion ele­vat­ed the artis­tic sta­tus of wood­block prints and a craze for their col­lec­tion quick­ly fol­lowed.”

Chief among the works col­lect­ed in the Euro­pean and Amer­i­can fer­vor for Japan­ese prints were those from Hoku­sai, his con­tem­po­rary Hiroshige, and oth­er aizuri‑e artists. So famous was The Great Wave in the West by 1891 that French graph­ic artist Pierre Bon­nard would sat­i­rize its styl­ish spray in an adver­tise­ment for cham­pagne. A print of The Great Wave hung on Claude Debussy’s wall, and the first edi­tion of his La Mer bore an adap­ta­tion of a detail from the print. As Michael Cirigliano writes for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art:

Cul­tur­al cir­cles through­out Europe great­ly admired Hoku­sai’s work…. Major artists of the Impres­sion­ist move­ment such as Mon­et owned copies of Hoku­sai prints, and lead­ing art crit­ic Philippe Bur­ty, in his 1866 Chefs-d’oeu­vre des Arts indus­triels, even stat­ed that Hoku­sai’s work main­tained the ele­gance of Wat­teau, the fan­ta­sy of Goya, and the move­ment of Delacroix. Going one step fur­ther in his laud­ed com­par­isons, Bur­ty wrote that Hoku­sai’s dex­ter­i­ty in brush strokes was com­pa­ra­ble only to that of Rubens.

These com­par­isons are not mis­placed, John-Paul Stonard explains in The Guardian: “That the Great Wave became the best known print in the west was in large part due to Hokusai’s for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence of Euro­pean art.” Not only did he absorb Pruss­ian blue into his reper­toire, but “prints from ear­ly in his career show him attempt­ing, rather awk­ward­ly, to apply the les­son of math­e­mat­i­cal per­spec­tive, learnt from Euro­pean prints brought into Japan by Dutch Traders.” By the time of The Great Wave, he had per­fect­ed his own syn­the­sis of West­ern and Japan­ese art, over two decades before Euro­pean painters would attempt the same in the explo­sion of Japanophil­ia of the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

The Evo­lu­tion of The Great Wave off Kanaza­wa: See Four Ver­sions That Hoku­sai Paint­ed Over Near­ly 40 Years

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Watch the Mak­ing of Japan­ese Wood­block Prints, from Start to Fin­ish, by a Long­time Tokyo Print­mak­er

19th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Wood­blocks Illus­trate the Lives of West­ern Inven­tors, Artists, and Schol­ars (1873)

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More 

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

Why Collect? A Conversation about Collectibles from Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (#92)

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | May 20th, 2021

What dri­ves some­one to col­lect Star Wars fig­ures or Trans­form­ers or LEGOs or what­ev­er else? Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by guest Matt Young of the Hel­lo from the Mag­ic Tav­ern and Impro­vised Star Trek pod­casts to talk about this poten­tial­ly expen­sive and life-eat­ing habit. No kidult­ing required.

For a lit­tle extra infor­ma­tion on this top­ic, you may want to look at Wikipedia on the Psy­chol­o­gy of Col­lect­ing, this incom­plete list of nos­tal­gic col­lectible IPs (that’s “intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty”), or this weird list of col­lec­tions that includes erasers, con­fet­ti, traf­fic cones and sug­ar pack­ets.

Most of the lit­er­a­ture we found in research­ing this episode was either about what col­lec­tions might present a future invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty or oth­er tips for doing this as a finan­cial activ­i­ty (please don’t try to do this) and sur­prise that adults buy toys.

After the episode, Matt remained on the line for our Aftertalk, which is typ­i­cal­ly only avail­able for sup­port­ers via patreon.com/prettymuchpop, but this this case we’ve unleashed it to the pub­lic:

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.