Hear Nico’s Pre-Velvets Recording, “I’m Not Sayin,” Backed by the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones & Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page (1965)

in Music | September 20th, 2018

For most of us, the Teu­ton­ic singer Nico has always been asso­ci­at­ed with the first Vel­vet Under­ground album and then a series of fas­ci­nat­ing solo albums (often with Vel­vets con­nec­tions) released dur­ing the ‘70s and ‘80s before her untime­ly death in 1988. The voice and the look are unmis­tak­able, that far away stare, that detached, brood­ing and flat tone. It might also feel like she mag­i­cal­ly appeared from a cloud of smoke in 1967 New York City.

But before she met Andy Warhol, the for­mer teen mod­el had crossed paths with a who’s who of ’50 and ‘60s cool: Coco Chanel, Mario Lan­za, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (who cast her in a bit part in La Dolce Vita), Lee Stras­berg, Jean Paul Bel­mon­do, Alain Delon (who alleged­ly fathered her first child).

In 1965 Nico met and began dat­ing Rolling Stones’ gui­tarist Bri­an Jones, and that’s how we get to the video above. Already hav­ing sung in night­clubs in New York, her smoky voice was estab­lished, but Jones con­vinced the Stones’ man­ag­er Andrew Loog Old­ham to sign her to his bou­tique label Imme­di­ate, which had just start­ed.

Old­ham brought in his reli­able stu­dio musi­cian and A&R man, a young gui­tarist called Jim­my Page, to pro­duce and play gui­tar (along with Jones) on both sides of Nico’s first sin­gle, the A‑side “I’m Not Say­ing” (a Gor­don Light­foot cov­er) and the B‑Side “The Last Mile” (writ­ten by Page and Old­ham). As a ses­sion musi­cian, Page is on a *lot* of British hit sin­gles, includ­ing Petu­la Clark’s “Down­town,” Them’s “Here Comes the Night,” Mar­i­anne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By,” and a sur­pris­ing amount more.

The result­ing pleas­ant-enough sin­gle didn’t exact­ly rock the charts, but it was a first foot in the door. Jones would intro­duce Nico to Andy Warhol soon after that and she began to appear in some of his films like Chelsea Girls. Des­tiny was right around the cor­ner.

For a singer so tied to the Vel­vets, it’s worth remem­ber­ing she was only on three songs on the 11 song debut album and then left. But her place in rock his­to­ry was assured, even though it was the odd­est of team-ups at the time.

On a side note, the video for “I’m Not Say­ing” was shot at Canary Wharf on the Thames, long before it was turned into shiny tow­ers for the rich. It’s a win­dow back into a very dif­fer­ent time.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Crazy, Icon­ic Life of Nico; Andy Warhol Muse, Vel­vet Under­ground Vocal­ist, Enig­ma in Amber

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Pat­ti Smith’s New Haunt­ing Trib­ute to Nico: Hear Three Tracks

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.

Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Classic Poem, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

in Poetry | September 19th, 2018

When Dylan Thomas was a lit­tle boy his father would read Shake­speare to him at bed­time. The boy loved the sound of the words, even if he was too young to under­stand the mean­ing. His father, David John Thomas, taught Eng­lish at a gram­mar school in south­ern Wales but want­ed to be a poet. He was bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed with his sta­tion in life.

Many years lat­er when the father lay on his deathbed, Dylan Thomas wrote a poem that cap­tures the pro­found sense of empa­thy he felt for the dying old man. The poem, “Do not go gen­tle into that good night,” was writ­ten in 1951, only two years before the poet­’s own untime­ly death at the age of 39. Despite the impos­si­bil­i­ty of escap­ing death, the anguished son implores his father to “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

The poem is a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the vil­lanelle form, which fea­tures two rhymes and two alter­nat­ing refrains in verse arranged into five ter­cets, or three-lined stan­zas, and a con­clud­ing qua­train in which the two refrains are brought togeth­er as a cou­plet at the very end. You can hear Thomas’s famous 1952 recital of the poem above. To see the poem’s struc­ture and read along as you lis­ten, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.

And to hear more of Thomas recit­ing his own works (and more), please vis­it our pri­or post 8 Glo­ri­ous Hours of Dylan Thomas Read­ing Poetry–His Own & Oth­ers’.

All poems have been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Note: an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in August 2012.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Antho­ny Hop­kins Reads ‘Do Not Go Gen­tle into That Good Night’

Hear Dylan Thomas Read Three Poems by W.H. Auden, Includ­ing “Sep­tem­ber 1, 1939”

This Man Flew to Japan to Sing ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” in a Big Cold River

in Random | September 18th, 2018

Austin Weber trav­eled to Kyoto and sang ABBA’s “Mam­ma Mia” in a big cold riv­er. What made the result­ing video so strange­ly com­pelling? Maybe, as one YouTube com­menter not­ed, it’s that the “video has about 100 pix­els but every one is used to their full poten­tial.” Or maybe, as anoth­er YouTu­ber said, “it’s the syn­thy ABBA, the goofy zooms and edit­ing, or the bit­ter­sweet premise com­bined with the song.” Or maybe it’s that the video sim­ply “brings us back to the mid 2000’s,” when our YouTube cul­ture all got start­ed. It’s hard to know. But maybe we should­n’t over­think it and just enjoy.

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!

Tom Waits Releases a Timely Cover of the Italian Anti-Fascist Anthem “Bella Ciao,” His First New Song in Two Years

in Music, Politics | September 14th, 2018

“La Com­plaine du Par­ti­san,” a song about the French Resis­tance writ­ten in 1943 by Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie with music by Anna Marly, was adapt­ed into Eng­lish as “The Par­ti­san” by Hy Zaret, author of the Right­eous Brother’s “Unchained Melody.” Cov­ered by artists like Joan Baez and, most famous­ly, Leonard Cohen, the song’s folk melody and melan­choly lyri­cism have become so close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Cohen that it has often been cred­it­ed to him. Even Cohen him­self remarked “I kind of re-intro­duced [“The Par­ti­san”] into the world of pop­u­lar music. I feel I wrote it, but I actu­al­ly didn’t.”

Now anoth­er artist of Cohen’s stature, Tom Waits, may do the same for those who have nev­er heard the World War II Ital­ian anti-fas­cist song, “Bel­la Ciao,” which has been cov­ered for decades in many lan­guages and now appears as the first release on gui­tarist and com­pos­er Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resis­tance: 1942–2018, an album of protest music that comes out today and fea­tures guest vocals by Waits, Steve Ear­le, Meshell Nde­geo­cel­lo, Justin Vivian Bond, and more. You can stream and buy the album here at Ribot’s Band­camp page. Waits’ track is the first song he has released in two years, and it’s a hel­lu­va return.

The song comes from an old Ital­ian folk bal­lad that was “revised and re-writ­ten dur­ing World War II for the Ital­ian anti-fas­cist resis­tance fight­ers,” notes Sam Barsan­ti at The Onion’s A.V. Club. It has “since become an anthem of sorts for any­one look­ing to stick it to fas­cists.” Ribot and his col­lab­o­ra­tors fit the descrip­tion. Waits’ “Bel­la Ciao” was released with a video, direct­ed by Jem Cohen, “that makes its par­al­lels with mod­ern life very explic­it,” Barsan­ti writes, “pair­ing Waits’ vocals with footage of police and sol­diers guard­ing bar­ri­cades at anti-Trump protests. It may sound heavy-hand­ed, but fuck it, nobody said fight­ing fas­cists had to be sub­tle.”

Sub­tle it isn’t, but nei­ther is the ban­ning of Mus­lim refugees, the kid­nap­ping and deten­tion in camps of hun­dreds of migrant chil­dren, the trans­fer of $169 mil­lion dol­lars from oth­er pro­grams—includ­ing FEMA and the Coast Guard dur­ing yet anoth­er fatal hur­ri­cane season—for even more camps and ICE raids, the lying denial that thou­sands were left to die in Puer­to Rico last year, and so on and so on.

Oth­er songs on the album draw from the U.S. civ­il rights move­ment and Mex­i­can protest bal­lads. At his site, Ribot acknowl­edges the peren­ni­al prob­lem of the protest song. “There’s a lot of con­tra­dic­tion in doing any kind of polit­i­cal music, how to act against some­thing with­out becom­ing it, with­out resem­bling what you detest… I imag­ine we’ll make mis­takes,” he avows, but says the stakes are too high not to speak out. “From the moment Don­ald Trump was elect­ed,” he decid­ed “I’m not going to play down­town scene Furt­wan­gler to any orange-comb-over dic­ta­tor wannabe.” (The ref­er­ence is to Wil­helm Furtwän­gler, lead­ing clas­si­cal con­duc­tor in Ger­many under the Nazi regime.)

Like so many folk songs, “Bel­la Ciao” has a com­plex and murky his­to­ry: the orig­i­nal ver­sion, a peas­ant work song, may have a Yid­dish ori­gin, or in any case—explains the blog Poe­mas del rio wang—emerged from a region “where Jews, Roma­ni­ans, Rusyns, Gyp­sies, Ukra­ni­ans, Hun­gar­i­ans, Ital­ians, Rus­sians, Slo­va­kians, Pol­ish, Czech, Arme­ni­ans, [and] Taters lived togeth­er” and where “melodies did not remain the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of only one eth­nic group.” This sub­merged back­ground gives the re-writ­ten “Bel­la Ciao” an even deep­er res­o­nance with the anti-fas­cism of the 1940s and that of today.

See the video and hear Waits and Ribot’s hag­gard yet deter­mined “Bel­la Ciao (Good­bye Beau­ti­ful)” at the top; hear Ital­ian singer Gio­van­na Daffini’s record­ing above (hear her ver­sion of the orig­i­nal folk song here); read more about the song’s long his­to­ry here; and read Waits’ lyrics, slight­ly revised from ear­li­er ver­sions to be even more explic­it­ly anti-fas­cist, below. All pro­ceeds from Ribot’s album will be donat­ed to the Indi­vis­i­ble Project.

One fine morn­ing
I woke up ear­ly
o bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
bel­la ciao, ciao, ciao
One fine morn­ing
I woke up ear­ly
to find the fas­cists at my door

Oh par­ti­giano
take me with you
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
oh par­ti­giano
please take me with you
I’m not afraid any­more

And if I die
a par­ti­giano
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
Bury me
up on that moun­tain
beneath the shad­ow of the flower

So all the peo­ple
the peo­ple pass­ing
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
good­bye, beau­ti­ful
So all the peo­ple
the peo­ple pass­ing
will say: “What a beau­ti­ful flower”

This is the flower
of the par­ti­san
bel­la ciao, bel­la ciao
bel­la ciao
this is the flower
of the par­ti­san
who died for free­dom

this is the flower
of the par­ti­san
who died for free­dom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Rebec­ca Sol­nit Picks 13 Songs That Will Remind Us of Our Pow­er to Change the World, Even in Seem­ing­ly Dark Times

Stream All of Tom Waits’ Music in a 24 Hour Playlist: The Com­plete Discog­ra­phy

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

Why We Say “OK”: The History of the Most Widely Spoken Word in the World

in English Language, Life, Psychology | September 14th, 2018

Ok, not to be con­trary, but any­one else wor­ry that we may be get­ting punked here?

Is Cole­man Lown­des’ clever col­lage-style video on the ubiq­ui­ty and ori­gins of the word “ok” a bit too clever for its own good?

His asser­tion that the word “ok” was the inven­tion of wag­gish Boston­ian hip­sters in the late 1830s sounds like an Onion head­line.

It’s hard to believe that clever young adults once amused them­selves by bandy­ing about delib­er­ate­ly mis­spelled abbre­vi­a­tions.

Also does any­one else remem­ber hear­ing that “OK” could be traced to the 1840 reelec­tion cam­paign of Pres­i­dent Mar­tin “Old Kinder­hook” Van Buren?

Or folksinger Pete Seeger’s salute to the lin­guis­tic melt­ing pot, “All Mixed Up,” which per­pet­u­at­ed the notion of OK as a cor­rup­tion of the Choctaw word “okeh.”

Both of those expla­na­tions sound a lot more prob­a­ble than a jokey bas­tardiza­tion of “all cor­rect.”

Aka “oll kor­rect.”

As in OK, pal, what­ev­er you say.

(That was the wit­ti­est jape of the sea­son?)

Ety­mol­o­gist Dr. Allen Walk­er Read’s con­sid­er­able research sup­port­ed “ok” as the lone sur­vivor of 19th-cen­tu­ry smart set word­play, to the point where it was the lede in his obit­u­ary.

(The writer not­ed, as Lown­des does, how “ok” was among the first words out of astro­naut Buzz Aldrin’s mouth when he set foot on the moon.)

Oookay…

If you’d like to know more, you can always delve into Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Allan Met­calf”s book, OK: The Improb­a­ble Sto­ry of America’s Great­est Word, which cites the telegraph’s role in the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of everyone’s favorite neu­tral affir­ma­tive, as well as our pow­er­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal attrac­tion to the let­ter “k.”

(Kare for a Krispy Kreme with that Kool-Aid? … The answer is an emphat­ic yes, I mean, OK, in any lan­guage.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Largest His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of Eng­lish Slang Now Free Online: Cov­ers 500 Years of the “Vul­gar Tongue”

Read A Clas­si­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Vul­gar Tongue, a Hilar­i­ous & Infor­ma­tive Col­lec­tion of Ear­ly Mod­ern Eng­lish Slang (1785)

The His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Lan­guage in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

How Breaking Bad Crafted the Perfect TV Pilot: A Video Essay

in Television | September 6th, 2018

“A high school teacher finds out that he has ter­mi­nal can­cer and decides to cook meth in order to make mon­ey for his fam­i­ly.” Twen­ty years ago that would have sound­ed like an insane premise for a tele­vi­sion show. Ten years ago that show actu­al­ly pre­miered. Almost five years ago it end­ed its both wide­ly watched and crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed five-sea­son run. Break­ing Bad could only have emerged at a cer­tain point in tele­vi­sion his­to­ry, when the high-qual­i­ty, cin­e­mat­ic dra­ma became a viable prospect even for a basic-cable net­work like AMC. But it nev­er would have got any­where with­out an impres­sive pilot, the first episode of a series that pro­vides a sense of what the whole thing will be like.

A pilot, for its part, can nev­er get any­where with­out an impres­sive screen­play. Here, YouTube video essay chan­nel Lessons from the Screen­play breaks down the rea­sons the screen­play for Break­ing Bad’s pilot works so well, not least because it per­fect­ly exe­cutes the con­ven­tions of the form. First, it grabs the view­er’s atten­tion with the image of a man bar­rel­ing through the desert in a Win­neba­go, wear­ing only a under­pants and a gas mask. This open­ing sequence, the “teas­er,” quick­ly inten­si­fies and ends with a feel­ing of life-and-death stakes. Then, when the episode prop­er­ly begins, it intro­duces the man in the Win­neba­go, a chem­istry teacher named Walt, by tak­ing us through an ear­li­er day in his high­ly unsat­is­fac­to­ry life: dis­re­spect­ful stu­dents, finan­cial woes, a pas­sion­less mar­riage.

Soon the screen­play address­es the implic­it ques­tion, “What is miss­ing in Walt’s life?”  The scenes the pilot shows us illus­trate that “he is some­one who longs for con­trol and pur­pose, but lacks both.” Then it deliv­ers the “incit­ing inci­dent for the show”: his col­lapse on the job and sub­se­quent can­cer diag­no­sis. Such an inci­dent con­ven­tion­al­ly turns the pro­tag­o­nist’s life upside down, as this one turns Walt’s life upside down, and moti­vate that pro­tag­o­nist to take some kind of action, as it moti­vates Walt to team up with a for­mer stu­dent to start a meth-cook­ing oper­a­tion. Short­ly after that, the now fear­less Walt gets his first taste of pow­er in a fight at a cloth­ing store, begin­ning his trans­for­ma­tion from the meek, put-upon Walt into the steely drug king­pin Wal­ter White — a trans­for­ma­tion that trans­fixed Break­ing Bad’s audi­ence.

“Tele­vi­sion is his­tor­i­cal­ly good at keep­ing its char­ac­ters in a self-imposed sta­sis so that shows go on for years or even decades,” says cre­ator Vince Gilli­gan. “When I real­ized this, the log­i­cal next step was to think, how can I do a show in which the fun­da­men­tal dri­ve is toward change?” In this way, Break­ing Bad fur­thered the rev­o­lu­tion in cin­e­mat­ic tele­vi­sion not just with its look and feel or even its con­tent, but with its com­mit­ment to the idea that a char­ac­ter must come out of the sto­ry as a dif­fer­ent per­son than he was when he entered it. The pilot man­ages to do in its own self-con­tained sto­ry while also estab­lish­ing expec­ta­tions for the rest of the series. Break­ing Bad, most crit­ics will agree, met those expec­ta­tions and then some, but with­out a pilot as well-writ­ten as this, it almost cer­tain­ly would­n’t have had the chance to try.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

The Break­ing Bad Theme Played with Meth Lab Equip­ment

The Sci­ence of Break­ing Bad: Pro­fes­sor Don­na Nel­son Explains How the Show Gets it Right

Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias” in Omi­nous Teas­er for Break­ing Bad’s Last Sea­son

Break­ing Bad Illus­trat­ed by Gonzo Artist Ralph Stead­man

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

Margaret Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Creative Writing

in Online Courses, Writing | September 4th, 2018

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

FYI: Back in July, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed an online writ­ing course being devel­oped by Mar­garet Atwood, the author of The Hand­maid­’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, Alias Grace, and The Blind Assas­sin. As a quick fol­low up, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Atwood’s cre­ative writ­ing course has now gone live.

You can take this class by sign­ing up for a Mas­ter­Class’ All Access Pass. The All Access Pass will give you instant access to this course and 85 oth­ers for a 12-month peri­od.

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:

An Ani­mat­ed Mar­garet Atwood Explains How Sto­ries Change with Tech­nol­o­gy

Mal­colm Glad­well Teach­ing His First Online Course: A Mas­ter Class on How to Turn Big Ideas into Pow­er­ful Sto­ries

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

100 Great Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Women Writ­ers (Read 20 for Free Online)

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

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

Frida Kahlo’s Passionate Love Letters to Diego Rivera

in Art, Letters | September 4th, 2018

The truth young ide­al­is­tic lovers learn: rela­tion­ships are messy and complicated—filled with dis­ap­point­ments, mis­un­der­stand­ings, betray­als great and small. They fall apart and some­times can­not be put back togeth­er. It’s easy to grow cyn­i­cal and bit­ter. Yet, as James Bald­win famous­ly wrote, “you think your pain and your heart­break are unprece­dent­ed in the his­to­ry of the world, but then you read.” You read, that is, the life sto­ries and let­ters of writ­ers and artists who have expe­ri­enced out­sized roman­tic bliss and tor­ment, and who some­how became more pas­sion­ate­ly alive the more they suf­fered.

When it comes to per­son­al suf­fer­ing, Fri­da Kahlo’s biog­ra­phy offers more than one per­son could seem to bear. Already dis­abled by polio at a young age, she found her life for­ev­er changed at 18 when a bus acci­dent sent an iron rod through her body, frac­tur­ing mul­ti­ple bones, includ­ing three ver­te­brae, pierc­ing her stom­ach and uterus. Recall­ing the old Gre­go­ri­an hymn, Kahlo’s friend Mex­i­can writer Andrés Hen­e­strosa remarked that she “lived dying”—in near con­stant pain, endur­ing surgery after surgery and fre­quent hos­pi­tal­iza­tions.

In the midst of this pain, she found love with her men­tor and hus­band Diego Rivera—and, it must be said, with many oth­ers. Kahlo, writes Alexxa Got­thardt at Art­sy, “was a pro­lif­ic lover: Her list of romances stretched across decades, con­ti­nents, and sex­es. She was said to have been inti­mate­ly involved with, among oth­ers, Marx­ist the­o­rist Leon Trot­sky, dancer Josephine Bak­er, and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nick­o­las Muray. How­ev­er, it was her obses­sive, abid­ing rela­tion­ship with fel­low painter Diego Rivera—for whom she’d har­bored a pas­sion­ate crush since she laid eyes on him at age 15—that affect­ed Kahlo most pow­er­ful­ly.”

Her let­ters to Rivera—himself a pro­lif­ic extra-mar­i­tal lover—stretch “across the twen­ty-sev­en-year span of their rela­tion­ship,” writes Maria Popo­va; they “bespeak the pro­found and abid­ing con­nec­tion the two shared, brim­ming with the seething caul­dron of emo­tion with which all ful­ly inhab­it­ed love is filled: ela­tion, anguish, devo­tion, desire, long­ing, joy.”

Diego.
Truth is, so great, that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or lis­ten, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, out­side time and mag­ic, with­in your own fear, and your great anguish, and with­in the very beat­ing of your heart. All this mad­ness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only con­fu­sion. I ask you for vio­lence, in the non­sense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no col­ors, because there are so many, in my con­fu­sion, the tan­gi­ble form of my great love.

So begins the let­ter pic­tured at the top. In anoth­er, equal­ly pas­sion­ate and poet­ic let­ter, pic­tured fur­ther up, she writes:

Noth­ing com­pares to your hands, noth­ing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. you are the mir­ror of the night. the vio­lent flash of light­ning. the damp­ness of the earth. The hol­low of your armpits is my shel­ter. my fin­gers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-foun­tain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.

Kahlo and Rivera fell in love in 1928, when she asked him to look at her paint­ings. Over her mother’s objec­tions, they mar­ried the fol­low­ing year. After ten tumul­tuous years, they divorced in 1939, then remar­ried in 1940 and stayed part­nered until her death in 1954. Over these years, she poured out her emo­tions in let­ters, many, like those above, first writ­ten in her illus­trat­ed diary. Let­ters to and from her many lovers have also just emerged in a trove of per­son­al arti­facts, recent­ly lib­er­at­ed from a bath­room at Casa Azul where they had been kept under lock and key at River­a’s behest.

Both artists’ many affairs caused tremen­dous pain and “cre­at­ed rifts between them per­son­al­ly,” notes Katy Fal­lon at Broad­ly, although “their rela­tion­ship has been mythol­o­gized past recog­ni­tion,” in the way of so many oth­er famous cou­ples. In the most egre­gious betray­al, Rivera even slept with Kahlo’s younger sis­ter Cristi­na, his favorite mod­el, an act that inspired Frida’s 1937 paint­ing Mem­o­ry, the Heart, a self-por­trait in which she stands with a met­al rod pierc­ing her chest, her hands seem­ing­ly ampu­tat­ed, face expres­sion­less. We learn the wrong lessons from roman­ti­ciz­ing “every­thing” about Fri­da and Diego’s life, Pat­ti Smith sug­gests in her trib­ute to Kahlo’s love let­ters. But there is also dan­ger in pass­ing judg­ment.

“I don’t look at these two as mod­els of behav­ior,” Smith says, but “the most impor­tant les­son… isn’t their indis­cre­tions and love affairs but their devo­tion. Their iden­ti­ties were mag­ni­fied by the oth­er. They went through their ups and downs, part­ed, came back togeth­er, to the end of their lives.” In a 1935 let­ter to Rivera, read by pianist Mona Golabek above, Kahlo for­gives his affairs, call­ing them “only flir­ta­tions…. At bot­tom, you and I love each oth­er dear­ly, and thus go through adven­tures with­out num­bers, beat­ings on doors, impre­ca­tions, insults, inter­na­tion­al claims. Yet, we will always love each oth­er…. All the ranges I have gone through have served only to make me under­stand in the end that I love you more than my own skin.”

Read many more excerpts from Frida’s let­ters to Diego at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:   

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

Artists Fri­da Kahlo & Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co: Vin­tage Footage from 1938

Rare Pho­tos of Fri­da Kahlo, Age 13–23

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

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emotionally-Charged Songs: “Losing My Religion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

in Music | September 3rd, 2018

Peo­ple lose their reli­gion all the time. It hap­pens in all sorts of ways. And R.E.M.’s 1991 song “Los­ing My Reli­gion” has spo­ken to so many in the midst of these expe­ri­ences that we might won­der if singer/songwriter Michael Stipe had a sim­i­lar life change when he wrote those lyrics. Not so much, he says above in an inter­view with Dutch sta­tion Top 2000 a gogo. “What the song is about has noth­ing to with reli­gion,” he says.

The lyric comes from an old South­ern col­lo­qui­al­ism mean­ing that some­thing so upset­ting has hap­pened “that you might lose your reli­gion.” Stipe used that old-time notion as a metaphor for unre­quit­ed love, a dif­fer­ent kind of faith, one he describes in painful­ly ten­ta­tive terms: “hold­ing back, then reach­ing for­ward, then pulling back again, then reach­ing for­ward again.”

He explains anoth­er of the song’s ambi­gu­i­ties hid­den with­in the ellip­ti­cal lyrics: “You don’t ever real­ly know if the per­son that I’m reach­ing out for is aware of me, if they even know that I exist.” It’s the heady tur­moil of a roman­tic crush raised to the heights of saint­ly suf­fer­ing. A brood­ing, alt-rock ver­sion of love songs like “Earth Angel.” Giv­en the role of devo­tion in so much reli­gious prac­tice, there’s no rea­son the song can’t still be about los­ing one’s reli­gion for lis­ten­ers, but now we know what Stipe him­self had in mind.

Some oth­er fun facts we learn about this huge hit: Stipe record­ed the song almost naked and kind of pissed-off—he had pushed to deliv­er his vocals in one emo­tion­al take, but the stu­dio engi­neer seemed half-asleep. And his awk­ward, angu­lar dance in the oh-so-90s video direct­ed by Tarsem Singh, above? He pulled his inspi­ra­tion from Sinead O’Connor’s St. Vitus dance in 1990s’ “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and—no surprise—from David Byrne’s “riv­et­ing” herky-jerky moves.

While the record com­pa­ny saw the song’s mass appeal, bassist Mike Mills express­es his ini­tial sur­prise at their choice of “Los­ing My Reli­gion” as Out of Time’s first sin­gle: “That’s a great idea. It makes no sense at all, it’s 5 min­utes long, it has no cho­rus, and a man­dolin is the lead instru­ment. It’s per­fect for R.E.M. because it flouts all the rules.” This peri­od saw the band fur­ther devel­op­ing its moody down­beat folk side, yet the album that pro­duced this song also gave us “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple,” the pop­pi­est, most upbeat song R.E.M.—and maybe any band—had ever record­ed, a true tes­ta­ment to their emo­tion­al range.

The fol­low­ing year, Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple came out, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al writ­ten dur­ing the Out of Time ses­sions and again fea­tur­ing two sin­gles that vast­ly con­trast­ed in tone, maudlin tear­jerk­er “Every­body Hurts” and the cel­e­bra­to­ry Andy Kauf­man trib­ute “Man on the Moon.” Anoth­er song from that album that didn’t get as much atten­tion, “Try Not to Breath,” hear­kens back to a much ear­li­er R.E.M. folk song, the Civ­il War-themed “Swan Swan H” from Life’s Rich Pageant.

As we hear the band explain above in an episode of Song Exploder, the song began its life on a Civ­il War-era instru­ment, the dul­cimer. Then its son­ic influ­ences expand­ed to include two of Peter Buck­’s favorite musi­cal gen­res, surf rock and spaghet­ti west­ern. The episode con­tains many more fas­ci­nat­ing insid­er insights from R.E.M. about “Try Not to Breathe,” which may be one of the sad­dest songs they’ve ever writ­ten, a song about choos­ing to die rather than suf­fer.

Hear the song’s orig­i­nal demo and ref­er­ences to Blade Run­ner, get a glimpse into Stipe’s visu­al song­writ­ing process, and learn the very per­son­al inspi­ra­tion from his fam­i­ly his­to­ry for lyrics like “baby don’t shiv­er now, why do you shiv­er now?” Unlike “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” this song does, in some ways, pull musi­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly from Stipe’s reli­gious back­ground.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

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

A Classic Video of Pablo Picasso Marking Art, Set to the Song, “Pablo Picasso,” by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

in Art, Music | August 31st, 2018

Before the Sex Pis­tols and the Ramones, there were the Mod­ern Lovers, the Boston pro­to-punk band helmed by lead singer Jonathan Rich­man. Their sound owed a lot to the Vel­vet Under­ground, a band the teenaged Rich­man idol­ized, fol­low­ing them to New York City and ingra­ti­at­ing him­self to such a degree that their man­ag­er allowed him to couch surf for a few weeks.

Their sole album, released two years after they broke up, was cob­bled togeth­er from two dif­fer­ent demo ses­sions, one of them pro­duced by the Vel­vets’ John Cale.

By the time it came out, Rich­man had already embraced the gen­tler, sun­nier per­sona and sound that’s made him a cel­e­brat­ed solo artist with fans of all ages. He famous­ly remarked that he didn’t want to make music that could hurt a baby’s ears. As for­mer band­mate, bassist Ernie Brooks told punk his­to­ri­an Legs McNeil:

Jonathan start­ed say­ing his old songs were too neg­a­tive and dark, and he start­ed writ­ing things like “Hey There Lit­tle Insect,” and maybe he was way ahead of us, but we couldn’t fol­low him—he want­ed us to go, “Buzz, buzz, buzz” on stage, but we were too cool!

Rich­man’s impulse was cor­rect. More than 40 years out from the Mod­ern Lovers, his solo career is going strong. (On lat­er record­ings attrib­uted to Jonathan Rich­man and the Mod­ern Lovers, he is the only holdover from the orig­i­nal line up.)

But that Mod­ern Lovers album has plen­ty of stay­ing pow­er, too.

Rolling Stone dubbed it both the 48th best debut album and the 381st great­est album of all time.

And while “Road­run­ner” may be its best known track, thanks to a long run­ning cam­paign to make it the offi­cial rock song of Mass­a­chu­setts (over Richman’s protes­ta­tions that it’s not good enough to deserve the hon­or), “Pablo Picas­so”‘s mem­o­rable cho­rus can­not be unheard:

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so nev­er got called an ass­hole

(Fran­coise Gilot, Picasso’s mod­el, and moth­er of two of his chil­dren, might say oth­er­wise, accord­ing to sev­er­al YouTube com­ments elicit­ed by the unat­trib­uted short film above.)

In 1980, a writer for the zine Boston Groupie News tried to get Rich­man to reveal the song’s prove­nance. He had pur­sued art as a teenag­er, tak­ing Sat­ur­day morn­ing class­es at Boston’s Muse­um of Fine Arts. He’d put his phone num­ber on the back of his can­vas­es, con­ceiv­ing of that as a way to con­nect with peo­ple. So, was Picas­so his favorite painter or…?

No, as it turns out:

I read about him when I was 18. I moved to New York and was intim­i­dat­ed by these girls who (I) thought were attrac­tive. I was afraid to approach them. I did­n’t have too high a self-image. I was self-con­scious and I thought “Well, Pablo Picas­so, he’s only 5 foot 3 but he did­n’t let things like that both­er him.” So I made up this song right after I saw those girls. You can pic­ture it; I had this sad lit­tle look on my face and I was think­ing ‘Why am I so scared to approach these girls?’ That was a song of courage for me.

Picas­so looks pret­ty chip­per in the well select­ed vin­tage footage, above. The expres­sion Rich­man cops to hav­ing cul­ti­vat­ed sounds gloomi­er, a delib­er­ate ploy to entice girls into think­ing he was a sad and like­ly soul­ful artist.

In oth­er words, irre­sistible. Like a rock star!

The Mod­ern Lovers’ pop­u­lar­i­ty let him drop the self-con­scious pose, but his inter­est in art remained.

He still paints, and recent­ly iden­ti­fied some of the artists who have inspired him in Art News’ Mus­es col­umn: 

Mon­et con­tributed to his appre­ci­a­tion of the Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee.”

There’s a direct line between “Road­run­ner” and the lone­li­ness of Edward Hopper’s “Gas.”

And Picas­so? That ass­hole doesn’t even make the list.

Well some peo­ple try to pick up girls

And get called ass­holes

This nev­er hap­pened to Pablo Picas­so

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare and

So Pablo Picas­so was nev­er called an ass­hole

Well the girls would turn the col­or

Of the avo­ca­do when he would dri­ve

Down their street in his El Dora­do

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so nev­er got called an ass­hole

Not like you

Alright

Well he was only 5′3″

But girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so nev­er got called an ass­hole

Not in New York

Oh well be not schmuck, be not obnox­ious

Be not bell­bot­tom bum­mer or ass­hole

Remem­ber the sto­ry of Pablo Picas­so

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare

Pablo Picas­so was nev­er called an ass­hole

Alright this is it

Well

Some peo­ple try to pick up girls

And they get called an ass­hole

This nev­er hap­pened to Pablo Picas­so

He could walk down your street

And girls could not resist his stare and so

Pablo Picas­so was nev­er called…

Want to hear it again? Try the ani­mat­ed take below, by the endear­ing­ly mod­est 7atenine22.

Read­ers, if you have any intel on the per­son respon­si­ble for the film at the top of the page, please let us know, so we can give cred­it where cred­it is due.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14 Self-Por­traits by Pablo Picas­so Show the Evo­lu­tion of His Style: See Self-Por­traits Mov­ing from Ages 15 to 90

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

Under­rat­ed Albums That You Want the World to Know About: What’s on Your List?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.