Hear JG Ballard’s ‘My Dream of Flying to Wake Island,’ Read by William Boyd

in | April 27th, 2019

Above, author William Boyd reads a JG Bal­lard sto­ry, ‘My Dream of Fly­ing to Wake Island,’ which is “dom­i­nat­ed by image and sym­bol rather than char­ac­ter and nar­ra­tive.” The sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in the 1978 sci-fi col­lec­tion, Low-Fly­ing Air­craft and Oth­er Sto­ries. The record­ing, which comes cour­tesy of The Guardian, will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

Hear Italo Calvino’s “The Night Driver,” Read by Jeanette Winterson

in | April 27th, 2019

Record­ed by The Guardian, Jeanette Win­ter­son reads Ita­lo Calvi­no’s 1967 sto­ry “The Night Dri­ver,” a sto­ry of two lovers falling out in the dis­tant era ‘b4 mobile phones.’

This read­ing has been added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

Donald Barthelme Reads “The Royal Treatment”

in | April 25th, 2019

Above, Don­ald Barthelme reads his sto­ry “The Roy­al Treat­ment,” a satir­i­cal piece pub­lished by The New York Times on Nov. 3, 1973 under the pseu­do­nym Lily McNeil. It was re-print­ed in the col­lec­tion, Guilty Plea­sures.

You can find this read­ing indexed in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

David Bowie’s Mystical Appearances in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

in Film | April 25th, 2019

Younger fans might find it hard to believe, but David Bowie was not exact­ly at the height of cool­ness when he first appeared in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me in 1992. The overblown Glass Spi­der tour was five years ear­li­er, fol­lowed by a Great­est Hits tour in 1990. He had tried to rein­vent him­self with Tin Machine for two albums. In fact, with Ryko rere­leas­ing his cat­a­log on CD, it looked most­ly like Bowie would spend the rest of his career cash­ing in on nos­tal­gia.

The same crit­i­cisms were hurled at Lynch after the Cannes pre­miere of the Twin Peaks “pre­quel”. Quentin Taran­ti­no, who was at that Cannes pre­miere and heard the col­lec­tive boos from the audi­ence, said “David Lynch had dis­ap­peared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see anoth­er David Lynch movie until I hear some­thing dif­fer­ent.”

But whad­dya know? It turns out that the rest of the ‘90s were very good for both artists. Lynch went on to make some of his best work, and Fire Walk With Me is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic. Bowie wound up work­ing with Eno again on the uncom­pro­mis­ing and dense Out­side.

Now Bowie has only one scene in Fire Walk With Me, but god­damn if it isn’t one of the best in the movie. I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber the chill that shot up my spine just before Bowie’s Philip Jeffries–an FBI field agent who escapes the Black Lodge–makes his crazed appear­ance in Philadel­phia. Like a quan­tum par­ti­cle, he is both there and not there, walk­ing through a freeze frame of Agent Coop­er as the FBI’s secu­ri­ty cam­eras lock up.

“I’m not going to talk about Judy,” he says. “In fact we’re not gonna talk about Judy at all.”
The “Miss­ing Pieces” ver­sion on the FWWM DVD shows the entire scene as it plays out as shot, with Jef­fries break­ing down in pain before being tele­port­ed back to a hotel in Buenos Aires. It’s pret­ty straight­for­ward and a bit clunky.

In the offi­cial FWWM cut, Lynch and his edi­tor Mary Sweeney work some spe­cial Black Lodge alche­my.

“Who do you think that is there?” Jef­fries says, point­ing at Coop as blue sta­t­ic fades in over the scene. Two real­i­ties then vie for pow­er: Jef­fries’ gnom­ic warn­ings ver­sus his visions from a vis­it to the Black Lodge, the space above the con­ve­nience store, where all sorts of spir­its live, lurk, and wait. Ange­lo Badalamenti’s score groans and shrieks and runs back­wards. The scene is dense with clues and men­ace, and once things in the FBI office return to “nor­mal,” Jef­fries is gone.

“We live inside a dream,” Jef­fries had warned, and 25 years lat­er in Twin Peaks: The Return, Coop­er him­self would deliv­er a sim­i­lar line inside anoth­er police sta­tion, as two real­i­ties played over each oth­er, dou­ble-exposed.

David Bowie wouldn’t return to Lynch-world as an actor, but the direc­tor used his Out­side song, “I’m Deranged,” as the open­ing and clos­ing music to 1997’s Lost High­way, a track like that FWWM scene teeters on the brink of mad­ness, filled with cut-and-paste lyrics and Mike Garson’s insane piano runs.

When Lynch announced the return of Twin Peaks, and after the pass­ing of Bowie, fans won­dered if by some mir­a­cle Jef­fries would appear on the screen. Had Lynch man­aged to grab footage of the singer, like he had done for Cather­ine Coul­son, so close to their exit?

Instead, when Evil Coop­er final­ly met Jef­fries again, it was as a machine–fans jok­ing­ly called it a gigan­tic tea kettle–that both spoke in Eng­lish and puffed out numbers/clues in a cloud of steam.

Bowie report­ed­ly nev­er liked his 1992 per­for­mance because of his Louisiana accent, so when Lynch informed Bowie through his lawyer about his character’s return, Bowie asked for it to be redubbed by a real actor from Louisiana: Nathan Frizzell. (It may be authen­tic, but it ain’t no Bowie.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

The Ten Greatest Films of All Time According to 358 Filmmakers

in Film | April 25th, 2019

Every ten years, film jour­nal Sight and Sound con­ducts a world­wide sur­vey of film crit­ics to decide which films are con­sid­ered the best ever made. Start­ed in 1952, the poll is now wide­ly regard­ed as the most impor­tant and respect­ed out there.

And the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus for a long time was that the mas­ter­piece Cit­i­zen Kane by Orson Welles is the best of the best. The film topped the list for five decades from 1962 until 2002. Then in 2012, per­haps out of Kane fatigue, Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go mus­cled its way to the top.

That’s what the crit­ics think. But what about the film­mak­ers?

Begin­ning in 1992, Sight and Sound start­ed to poll famed direc­tors about their opin­ions. Peo­ple like Mar­tin Scors­ese, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Mike Leigh and Michael Mann. So what is the best movie ever made accord­ing to 358 direc­tors polled in 2012? Kane? Ver­ti­go? Per­haps Jean Renoir’s bril­liant Rules of the Game, the only movie to appear in the top ten for all sev­en crit­ics polls? No.

Instead, the top prize goes to Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry.

It’s a sur­pris­ing, an enlight­ened, choice. Ozu’s work is miles away from the flash of Kane and the psy­cho­sex­u­al weird­ness of Ver­ti­go. Tokyo Sto­ry is a gen­tle, nuanced por­trait of a fam­i­ly whose bonds are slow­ly, inex­orably being frayed by the demands of mod­ern­iza­tion. The movie’s emo­tion­al pow­er is restrained and cumu­la­tive; by the final cred­its you’ll be over­whelmed both with a Bud­dhist sense of the imper­ma­nence of all things and a strong urge to call your moth­er.

But per­haps the rea­son film­mak­ers picked Tokyo Sto­ry of all the oth­er cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces out there is because of Ozu’s unique approach to film. Since the days of D. W. Grif­fith, almost every film­mak­er under the sun, even cin­e­mat­ic rebels like Jean-Luc Godard, fol­lowed some basic con­ven­tions of the form like con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing, the 180-degree rule and match­ing eye­lines. Ozu dis­card­ed all of that. Instead, he con­struct­ed a high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage revolv­ing around match cuts and rig­or­ous­ly com­posed shots. His film form was rad­i­cal but his sto­ries were uni­ver­sal. That is the para­dox of Ozu. You can see the trail­er of the movie above.

Cit­i­zen Kane does make num­ber two on the list but the film is tied with anoth­er for­mal­ly rig­or­ous mas­ter­piece – Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Next on the list is per­haps the best movie ever about mak­ing a movie – Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8 ½. And Ozu’s film might be num­ber one, but Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la is the only film­mak­er to have two movies on the list – The God­fa­ther and Apoc­a­lypse Now. And that’s no mean feat.

You can see the full list below:

1. Tokyo Sto­ry — Yasu­jiro Ozu (1953)
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stan­ley Kubrick (1968)
3. Cit­i­zen Kane – Orson Welles (1941)
4. 8 ½ — Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (1963)
5. Taxi Dri­ver – Mar­tin Scors­ese (1976)
6. Apoc­a­lypse Now – Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1979)
7. The God­fa­ther – Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1972)
8. Ver­ti­go – Alfred Hitch­cock (1958)
9. Mir­ror – Andrei Tarkovsky (1974)
10. Bicy­cle Thieves – Vit­to­rio De Sica (1949)

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

What Makes Yasu­jirō Ozu a Great Film­mak­er? New Video Essay Explains His Long-Admired Cin­e­mat­ic Style

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

60 Free Film Noir Movies

The Top 100 Amer­i­can Films of All Time, Accord­ing to 62 Inter­na­tion­al Film Crit­ics

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Hear Isaac Asimov’s Story Award-Winning Story “Nightfall” Read by Stephen Eley

in | April 24th, 2019

Above hear Isaac Asi­mov’s sto­ry “Night­fall” read by Stephen Eley. The novelette–which first appeared in Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion, Sep­tem­ber 1941–tells the sto­ry about “the com­ing of dark­ness to the peo­ple of a plan­et ordi­nar­i­ly illu­mi­nat­ed by sun­light at all times.” In 1968, The Sci­ence Fic­tion Writ­ers of Amer­i­ca vot­ed “Night­fall” the best sci fi short sto­ry writ­ten pri­or to the 1965 estab­lish­ment of the Neb­u­la Awards.

The pro­duc­tion above was cre­at­ed by the sci-fi pod­cast Escape­Pod. It will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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!

Stream Free Online 200 Films from Tribeca Film Festivals

in Film | April 24th, 2019

FYI: The Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val is get­ting under­way today. And to mark the occa­sion, Kanopy is show­cas­ing a line­up of 200 titles from past fes­ti­vals and let­ting you stream them free online. Kanopy writes:

Kanopy’s selec­tion of Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val titles includes recent fes­ti­val favorites The Lovers, star­ring Debra Winger (An Offi­cer and a Gen­tle­man) & Tra­cy Letts (Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf?), and Back Roads star­ring Alex Pet­tyfer (Storm­break­er) and  Jen­nifer Mor­ri­son (House). A selec­tion of dynam­ic doc­u­men­taries such as Dior and I and Plan­et of Snail is avail­able along­side films with unfor­get­table female per­for­mances includ­ing Woman Walks Ahead, star­ring Jes­si­ca Chas­tain (Zero Dark Thir­ty) and Oscar-award win­ning short film The Phone Call, star­ring Sal­ly Hawkins (The Shape of Water). Sev­er­al Tribeca-win­ning films includ­ing the 2015 Best Direc­tor win­ner About Elly and the 2017 Audi­ence Award for Best Nar­ra­tive Film, The Divine Order are also avail­able.

You can find a com­plete list of Tribeca films here. As you may know, Kanopy offers a large col­lec­tion of award-win­ning films and doc­u­men­taries that are free to mem­bers of par­tic­i­pat­ing libraries. To see if your library is a par­tic­i­pat­ing mem­ber, vis­it this page on the Kanopy web­site.

Beyond the 200 films fea­tured in the Tribeca col­lec­tion, there are cur­rent­ly 30,000 films on the Kanopy ser­vice. Enjoy the shows.

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!

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in Vintage Recordings from the Early 1950s

in Books, Literature | April 23rd, 2019

J.R.R. Tolkien was not a big fan of his fan­dom. He had seri­ous doubts about whether any of the mil­lions of read­ers who adored The Hob­bit and The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy under­stood any­thing about what he was try­ing to do. But none of them can be blamed, since he didn’t at first set out to write fic­tion at all—at least not when it came to The Lord of the Rings. The books, he said, were “an attempt to cre­ate a world in which a form of lan­guage agree­able to my per­son­al aes­thet­ic might seem real.”

The most famous fan­ta­sy series of all time began its life as a lin­guis­tic exper­i­ment, in oth­er words. “The inven­tion of lan­guages is the foun­da­tion,” said Tolkien. “The ‘sto­ries’ were made rather to pro­vide a world for the lan­guages than the reverse.” Of course, Tolkien fans know quite a bit about how per­son­al his sto­ries became, even as they incor­po­rat­ed more and more myth­i­cal ele­ments. How could we pos­si­bly under­stand these sto­ries the way Tolkien did?

Authors do not get to choose their read­ers, nor can they direct the inter­pre­ta­tions of their work. Still Tolkien may have been more mis­un­der­stood than oth­ers, and maybe more enti­tled to com­plain. The schol­ar­ly work of philol­o­gists like himself—academics who stud­ied the roots of lan­guages and mythologies—had been man­gled and mis­used by the Nazis. The fact caused Tolkien to con­fess to his son “a burn­ing pri­vate grudge against that rud­dy lit­tle igno­ra­mus Adolf Hitler” for “ruin­ing, per­vert­ing, mis­ap­ply­ing, and mak­ing for ever accursed” the his­to­ry Tolkien had made his life’s work. (He also penned a scathing reply to a Ger­man pub­lish­er who asked him for proof of his “Aryan” descent.)

He would also have been appalled that not long after his death, Mid­dle Earth became a “mer­chan­dis­ing jug­ger­naut,” as one stu­dent of his effect on pop­u­lar cul­ture puts it. Tolkien had stren­u­ous­ly resist­ed efforts by Dis­ney to buy the rights to his fic­tion, object­ing to what he saw as vul­gar, mer­ce­nary com­mer­cial­ism. The hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars poured into the Hob­bit and Lord of the Rings films, and the empire of games, action fig­ures, t‑shirts, etc., might have seemed to him the very image of pow­er-mad wiz­ard Saruman’s designs for world dom­i­na­tion.

This isn’t to say we should hear Tolkien scold­ing us as we pick up our box set of spe­cial edi­tion books, Blu-Rays, and LOTR tchotchkes. He was no stranger to mar­ket­ing. And he pro­duced the inspi­ra­tion for some of the most beloved adap­ta­tions with his own cov­er art designs and over a hun­dred draw­ings and paint­ings of Mid­dle Earth and its Eng­lish ref­er­ents. But per­haps it would repay fans of the many LOTR-themed con­sum­ables to attend to the cre­ator of the now-self-exis­tent world of Mid­dle Earth every now and then—to get clos­er, if not to Tolkien’s inten­tions, then at least to his mind and voice, both record­ed in his let­ters and his own read­ings from his work.

In the clips here, you can lis­ten to Tolkien him­self read from The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit, includ­ing a record­ing at the top of him read­ing one of the fan­ta­sy lan­guages he invent­ed, then cre­at­ed an entire world around, the Elvish tongue Quenya in the poem “Namarie.” Some of these YouTube clips have received their own cin­e­mat­ic treat­ment, in a YouTube sort of way, like the video below with a mon­tage of Tolkien-inspired media and a dra­mat­ic score. This may or may not be to your lik­ing, but the ori­gin sto­ry of the record­ing deserves a men­tion.

Shown a tape recorder by a friend, whom Tolkien had vis­it­ed to pick up a man­u­script of The Lord of the Rings, the author decid­ed to sit down and record him­self. Delight­ed with the results, he agreed to read from The Hob­bit. He liked the tech­nol­o­gy enough that he con­tin­ued to record him­self read­ing from his own work. Tolkien may not have desired to see his books turned into spec­ta­cles, but as we lis­ten to him read, it’s hard to see how any­one could resist the temp­ta­tion to put his mag­nif­i­cent descrip­tions on the big screen. Hear the sec­ond part of that Hob­bit read­ing here, and more Tolkien read­ings in the many links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J.R.R. Tolkien, Using a Tape Recorder for the First Time, Reads from The Hob­bit for 30 Min­utes (1952)

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

J.R.R. Tolkien Reads From The Two Tow­ers, the Sec­ond Book of The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read From The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit

J.R.R. Tolkien Expressed a “Heart­felt Loathing” for Walt Dis­ney and Refused to Let Dis­ney Stu­dios Adapt His Work

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a Ger­man Pub­lish­er Ask­ing for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

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

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

in Music | April 23rd, 2019

Pink Floyd is sure­ly the most quotable of psych-rock and pro­gres­sive bands. Every­one, no mat­ter their musi­cal tastes, knows lines like “we don’t need no edu­ca­tion, we don’t need no thought con­trol,” “I have become com­fort­ably numb,” and “we’re just two lost souls swim­ming in a fish bowl, year after year.”

The band’s first album with Syd Bar­rett was full of word­play and whim­sy. Lat­er song­writ­ing cut right to the heart of things, with razor-sharp obser­va­tions, heart­break­ing state­ments, sneer­ing jibes, and stri­dent pro­nounce­ments. In their finest iter­a­tions, they were a band with some­thing to say.

These qual­i­ties make it all the more strik­ing that one of their most mov­ing com­po­si­tions is a song with­out any words, unless we count the vocal sam­ples at the begin­ning from writer Mal­colm Mug­geridge. Smack in the mid­dle of Dark Side of the Moon, “The Great Gig in the Sky” show­cas­es a soul­ful impro­vi­sa­tion by guest vocal­ist Clare Tor­ry (who final­ly, right­ful­ly, received a writ­ing cred­it in 2004). Her voice pro­vides all the dra­mat­ic ten­sion the song needs, com­mu­ni­cat­ing more, in pure­ly emo­tion­al terms, than any lyric the band might have writ­ten.

Does the effect come through when her per­for­mance is replayed on a Theremin? You be the judge. The song made famous by its word­less inten­si­ty meets an instru­ment played with­out any touch—it’s a poet­ic kind of mashup, and a well-exe­cut­ed cov­er. Theremin play­er Char­lie Drap­er doesn’t only play Torry’s vocal, but also David Gilmour’s ped­al steel gui­tar parts, which are prob­a­bly bet­ter suit­ed to the instru­ment. As an added bonus, he plays over one of the ear­li­er instru­men­tal demos of the song with sam­ples from Apol­lo 17 astro­nauts, adding a few more words that serve only as more atmos­phere behind the melody.

The Theremin is often pegged as a nov­el­ty instru­ment, defin­ing the sound of B‑movie sci-fi, but it has a long and dis­tin­guished his­to­ry. First called the Ether­phone by Russ­ian inven­tor Leon Theremin, it became the pas­sion­ate instru­ment of choice for clas­si­cal play­er Clara Rock­more in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. A sort of mini-Theremin revival has brought it back into promi­nence as a seri­ous inter­preter of clas­si­cal and mod­ern music. On his YouTube chan­nel, Drap­er demon­strates his appre­ci­a­tion for the Theremin’s range, play­ing Mozart, Grieg, Gersh­win, and the theme from the film First Man. Just above, Hank Green tells us all about the physics of the Theremin, in a SciShow crash course that could answer many of the ques­tions you might have had while watch­ing Drap­er play Pink Floyd on one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Down­right Great

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

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

How the Vietnam War Shaped Classic Rock–And How Classic Rock Shaped the War

in Music | April 18th, 2019

There are a hand­ful of pop­u­lar songs that have become cliche and short­hand for film­mak­ers wish­ing to take us back to the trau­ma of the Viet­nam War: Jimi Hendrix’s cov­er of Dylan’s “All Along the Watch­tow­er” or Edwin Starr’s “War,” to name two. Yet at the same time, while clas­sic rock lives for­ev­er, mem­o­ries or lessons of Viet­nam have not. Buf­fa­lo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” orig­i­nal­ly was a com­ment on the Sun­set Strip Cur­few (anti-war) riots, but now its mean­ing is open end­ed enough to suit any poten­tial­ly vio­lent protest.

In Polyphonic’s two-part series, clev­er­ly titled “How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock” for the first half and “How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the Viet­nam War” for the sec­ond, Noah Lefevre per­forms a need­ed reeval­u­a­tion on dozens of rock and soul songs, plac­ing them back in their his­tor­i­cal con­text and show­ing how the pow­er and mes­sage of music evolved as the war descend­ed into chaos and defeat.

The Viet­nam War dragged on so long that music and cul­ture were both vast­ly dif­fer­ent by the time Saigon fell and the Amer­i­cans pulled out. Poly­phon­ic begins with the first line of protest, the Amer­i­can folk singers in Green­wich Vil­lage, in par­tic­u­lar Phil Ochs and his appren­tice Bob Dylan. Folk was the tra­di­tion­al way that protest reached the Amer­i­can public–it need­ed a singer and a gui­tar and noth­ing more–but Dylan would pro­vide the bridge that rock music need­ed, as he strad­dled both camps for a while (and Ochs did not).

How­ev­er, as Lefevre astute­ly points out, the troops them­selves weren’t lis­ten­ing to folk. They were like any­body else their age at that time and lis­ten­ing to rock and r’n’b. Their top of their pops, cir­ca 1965, was The Ani­mals’ “We’ve Got­ta Get Out of This Place” (orig­i­nal­ly about small town alien­ation, but per­fect for being stuck thou­sands of miles from home) and Nan­cy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walk­ing.”

Things changed as the war esca­lat­ed in 1966 and the first sol­diers returned home, many of whom would join in the protest move­ment.

And while on one hand psy­che­del­ic drugs pow­ered the Sum­mer of Love, advance­ments in tech pow­ered the images of the war that now got beamed into all our tele­vi­sion sets. The war was dirt­i­er, messier, and more hor­rif­ic than most peo­ple imag­ined, and music respond­ed in two ways. One was to bounce out­side that real­i­ty and pro­claim peace the answer, as John Lennon and Yoko Ono did, squar­ing off against the gov­ern­ment and rad­i­cal­ized youth alike. The oth­er was to cre­ate a music sound that tried to match the mad­ness. Jimi Hen­drix man­aged it sev­er­al times, includ­ing “Machine Gun” and his infa­mous ren­di­tion of “The Star Span­gled Ban­ner.” But King Crimson’s “21st Cen­tu­ry Schizoid Man” and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” were even dark­er. And then there was Mar­vin Gaye’s mas­ter­piece What’s Going On, which is nei­ther peacenik nor hor­ror­show. Instead it’s a sigh of melan­choly and sad­ness, tak­ing in man’s cycle of vio­lence towards itself and to the earth.

Poly­phon­ic real­ly stepped it up in these two mini docs, gain­ing access to high qual­i­ty archival footage. There’s plen­ty more to learn and hear in them, so click play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

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

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.