Syd Barrett’s “Effervescing Elephant” Comes to Life in a New Retro-Style Animation

in Animation, Music | July 13th, 2017

The sto­ry is well known. Syd Bar­rett, spi­ralling into depres­sion, “hal­lu­ci­na­tions, dis­or­ga­nized speech, mem­o­ry laps­es, intense mood swings, and peri­ods of cata­to­nia,” left Pink Floyd in April, 1968, before record­ing two solo albums (The Mad­cap Laughs and Bar­rett) and then fad­ing into obscu­ri­ty. Above you can watch a delight­ful, new ani­ma­tion of “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant,” a song Bar­rett first wrote dur­ing his teenage years and record­ed in 1970. The new “retro-style” ani­ma­tion comes from Yoann Her­vo. Below, find anoth­er ani­mat­ed take on “Effer­vesc­ing Ele­phant,” this one from Steve Bobinksi.

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:

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Short Film Syd Barrett’s First Trip Reveals the Pink Floyd Founder’s Psy­che­del­ic Exper­i­men­ta­tion (1967)

Pink Floyd Per­forms on US Tele­vi­sion for the First Time: Amer­i­can Band­stand, 1967

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”

in Literature, Writing | July 12th, 2017

In a 1904 let­ter, Franz Kaf­ka famous­ly wrote, “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us,” a line immor­tal­ized in pop cul­ture by David Bowie’s “Ash­es to Ash­es.” Where Bowie referred to the frozen emo­tions of addic­tion, the arc­tic waste inside Kaf­ka may have had much more to do with the agony of writ­ing itself. In the year that he com­posed his best-known work, The Meta­mor­pho­sis, Kaf­ka kept a tor­tured jour­nal in which he con­fessed to feel­ing “vir­tu­al­ly use­less” and suf­fer­ing “unend­ing tor­ments.” Not only did he need to break the ice, but “you have to dive down,” he wrote on Jan­u­ary 30th, “and sink more rapid­ly than that which sinks in advance of you.”

Whether as writ­ers we find the evi­dence of Kafka’s crip­pling self-doubt to be a com­fort I can­not say. For many peo­ple, no mat­ter how suc­cess­ful, or pro­lif­ic, some degree of pain inevitably attends every act of writ­ing. And many, like Kaf­ka, have left per­son­al accounts of their most pro­duc­tive peri­ods. John Stein­beck strug­gled might­i­ly dur­ing the com­po­si­tion of his mas­ter­piece, The Grapes of Wrath. His jour­nal entries from the peri­od tell the sto­ry of a frayed and anx­ious man over­whelmed by the seem­ing enor­mi­ty of his task. But his exam­ple is instruc­tive as well: despite his frag­ile men­tal state and lack of con­fi­dence, he con­tin­ued to write, telling him­self on June 11th, 1938, “this must be a good book. It sim­ply must.” (See some of Stein­beck­’s hand­writ­ten entries in the image above, cour­tesy of Austin Kleon.)

In set­ting the bar so high—“For the first time I am work­ing on a real book,” he wrote—Steinbeck often felt crushed at the end of a day. “My whole ner­vous sys­tem in bat­tered,” he wrote on June 5th. “I hope I’m not head­ed for a ner­vous break­down.” He finds him­self a few days lat­er “assailed with my own igno­rance and inabil­i­ty.” He con­tin­ues in this vein. “Where has my dis­ci­pline gone?” he asks in August, “Have I lost con­trol?” By Sep­tem­ber he’s seek­ing per­spec­tive: “If only I wouldn’t take this book so seri­ous­ly. It is just a book after all, and a book is very dead in a very short time. And I’ll be dead in a very short time too. So to hell with it.” The weight of expec­ta­tion comes and goes, but he keeps writ­ing.

The “pri­vate fruit” of Steinbeck’s diary entries, writes Maria Popo­va, “is in many ways at least as impor­tant and moral­ly instruc­tive” as the nov­el itself. At least that may be so for writ­ers who are also beset by dev­as­tat­ing neu­roses. For Stein­beck, the diary (pub­lished here) was “a tool of dis­ci­pline” and “hedge against self-doubt.” This may sound coun­ter­in­tu­itive, but keep­ing a diary, even when the nov­el stalls, is itself a dis­ci­pline, and an acknowl­edge­ment of the impor­tance of being hon­est with one­self, allow­ing tur­bu­lence and dol­drums to be a con­scious part of the expe­ri­ence.

Stein­beck “feels his feel­ings of doubt ful­ly, lets them run through him,” writes Popo­va, “and yet main­tains a high­er aware­ness that they are just that: feel­ings, not Truth.” His con­fronta­tions with neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty can sound like “Bud­dhist scrip­ture,” antic­i­pat­ing Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writ­ing. We needn’t attribute any reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance to Steinbeck’s jour­nals, but they do begin to sound like con­fes­sions of the kind many mys­tics have record­ed over the cen­turies, includ­ing the imposter syn­drome many a saint and bod­hisatt­va has admit­ted to feel­ing. “I’m not a writer,” he laments in one entry. “I’ve been fool­ing myself and oth­er peo­ple.” Nonethe­less, no mat­ter how excru­ci­at­ing, lone­ly, and con­fus­ing the effort, he resolved to devel­op a “qual­i­ty of fierce­ness until the habit pat­tern of a cer­tain num­ber of words is estab­lished.” A rit­u­al act, of a sort, which “must be a much stronger force than either willpow­er or inspi­ra­tion.”

In the audio above, hear actor Paul Hecht read excerpts from Stein­beck­’s diaries in an episode of the Mor­gan Library’s Diary Pod­cast. You can read Stein­beck­’s diaries in the pub­lished vol­ume, Work­ing Days: The Jour­nal of The Grapes of Wrath, 1938–1941.

via Austin Kleon 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franz Kaf­ka Ago­nized, Too, Over Writer’s Block: “Tried to Write, Vir­tu­al­ly Use­less;” “Com­plete Stand­still. Unend­ing Tor­ments” (1915)

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

See John Stein­beck Deliv­er His Apoc­a­lyp­tic Nobel Prize Speech (1962)

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

How Did the Romans Make Concrete That Lasts Longer Than Modern Concrete? The Mystery Finally Solved

in Architecture, History, Science | July 11th, 2017

An explo­sion in recent years of so-called “ruin porn” pho­tog­ra­phy has sparked an inevitable back­lash for its sup­posed fetishiza­tion of urban decay and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion. Doc­u­ment­ing, as the­o­rist Bri­an McHale writes, the “ruin in the wake of the dein­dus­tri­al­iza­tion of North Amer­i­can ‘Rust Belt’ cities” like Detroit, “ruin porn” shows us a world that only a few decades ago, thrived in a post-war eco­nom­ic boom that seemed like it might go on for­ev­er. Our mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion with images from the death of Amer­i­can man­u­fac­tur­ing offers a rich field for soci­o­log­i­cal inquiry. But when sci­en­tists look over what has hap­pened to so much of the archi­tec­ture from the ear­ly to mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, they’ve most­ly had one very press­ing ques­tion:

What is going on with the con­crete?

Or more specif­i­cal­ly, why do struc­tures built only a few years ago look like they’ve been weath­er­ing the ele­ments for cen­turies, when build­ings thou­sands of years old, like many parts of the Pan­theon or Trajan’s Mar­kets in Rome, look like they’re only a few years old? The con­crete struc­tures of the Roman Empire, writes Nicole Davis at The Guardian, “are still stand­ing more than 1,500 years after the last cen­tu­ri­on snuffed it.” Roman con­crete was a phe­nom­e­nal feat of ancient engi­neer­ing that until recent­ly had stumped sci­en­tists who stud­ied its dura­bil­i­ty. The Romans them­selves “were aware of the virtues of their con­crete, with Pliny the Elder wax­ing lyri­cal in his Nat­ur­al His­to­ry that it is ‘impreg­nable to the waves and every day stronger.”

The mys­tery of the Roman con­crete recipe has final­ly been revealed. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah have just pub­lished a study in Amer­i­can Min­er­al­o­gist show­ing how the com­pound of “vol­canic ash, lime (cal­ci­um oxide), sea­wa­ter and lumps of vol­canic rock” actu­al­ly did, as Pliny claimed, become stronger over time, through the very action of those waves. “Sea­wa­ter that seeped through the con­crete,” notes Davis, “dis­solved the vol­canic crys­tals and glass­es, with alu­mi­nous tober­morite and phillip­site crys­tal­iz­ing in their place.” These new crys­tals rein­force the con­crete, mak­ing it more imper­vi­ous to the ele­ments. Mod­ern con­crete, “by con­trast… is not sup­posed to change after it hardens—meaning any reac­tions with the mate­r­i­al cause dam­age.” (The short video above explains the process in brief.)

The recent study builds on pre­vi­ous work con­duct­ed by lead author, Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah geol­o­gist Marie Jack­son. In 2014, Jack­son, then at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, recre­at­ed the Roman con­crete recipe and dis­cov­ered one of the min­er­als with­in it that makes it supe­ri­or to the mod­ern stuff. But it took a cou­ple more years before she and her col­leagues fig­ured out the role of sea­wa­ter on form­ing the rare crys­tals. Now, they are rec­om­mend­ing that builders begin using Roman con­crete in the near future for sea­walls and oth­er marine struc­tures. The research “opens up a com­plete­ly new per­spec­tive for how con­crete can be made,” says Jack­son. “What we con­sid­er cor­ro­sion process­es can actu­al­ly pro­duce extreme­ly ben­e­fi­cial min­er­al cement and lead to con­tin­ued resilience, in fact, enhanced per­haps resilience over time.”

As we increas­ing­ly turn our post­mod­ern gaze toward the fail­ures of post­war industrialization–toward not only crum­bling cities but crum­bling dams and bridges–one secret for build­ing infra­struc­ture that can last for cen­turies comes to us not from an algo­rithm or an AI but from an ancient recipe com­bin­ing the primeval forces of vol­ca­noes and ocean waves.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale 

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Ancient Rome’s Sys­tem of Roads Visu­al­ized in the Style of Mod­ern Sub­way Maps

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

A Digital Archive of Soviet Children’s Books Goes Online: Browse the Artistic, Ideological Collection (1917–1953)

in Books, History, K-12 | July 5th, 2017

At both a geo­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal dis­tance, the Sovi­et Union does­n’t look like much of a place for kids. If you grew up dur­ing the Cold War in, say, the Unit­ed States, you might well have the impres­sion (of which The Simp­sons’ “Work­er and Par­a­site” remains the defin­ing crys­tal­liza­tion) of a gray, harsh­ly util­i­tar­i­an land behind the Iron Cur­tain con­cerned with noth­ing more whim­si­cal than bread lines and pro­duc­tion quo­tas. But if you grew up in the Sovi­et Union, at least at one of the right times and in one of the right places, you might feel a now much-dis­cussed nos­tal­gia, not for the eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties of your Sovi­et child­hood, but for the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the van­ished soci­ety you grew up in. An online inter­ac­tive data­base called Play­ing Sovi­et: The Visu­al Lan­guages of Ear­ly Sovi­et Children’s Books, 1917–1953 pro­vides a kid’s-eye view into the ear­ly decades of that soci­ety.

A project of the Cot­sen Col­lec­tion at Princeton’s Fire­stone Library, the archive con­tains a vari­ety of ful­ly dig­i­tized chil­dren’s books that show one venue in which, amid these years of “Russia’s accel­er­at­ed vio­lent polit­i­cal, social and cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion,” in the words of the data­base’s front page, cer­tain kinds of graph­ic art could flour­ish. “The illus­tra­tion and look of Sovi­et children’s books was of tan­ta­mount impor­tance as a vehi­cle for prac­ti­cal and con­crete infor­ma­tion in the new Sovi­et regime.”

This ambi­tious effort, dri­ven by “direc­tives for a new kind of children’s lit­er­a­ture” to be “found­ed on the assump­tion that the ‘lan­guage of images’ was imme­di­ate­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble to the mass read­er, far more so than the typed word,” brought in a great many artists and design­ers such as Alexan­der Deine­ka, El Lis­sitzky, and Vladimir Lebe­dev, task­ing them all with cre­at­ing “imag­i­na­tive mod­els for Sovi­et youth in the new lan­guages of Sovi­et mod­ernism.”

Men­tal Floss’ Shau­na­cy Fer­ro notes how many of the books “were designed to indoc­tri­nate chil­dren into the world of the ‘right’ way to think about Sovi­et cul­ture and his­to­ry,” point­ing to a vol­ume called How the Rev­o­lu­tion Was Vic­to­ri­ous, which meant “to ensure the cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of the anti-gov­ern­men­tal coup among the young gen­er­a­tion of new Sovi­et read­er­ship.” Some of the oth­er read­ing mate­r­i­al that result­ed, like 1930’s indus­tri­al­ly focused What Are We Build­ing? or the slight­ly ear­li­er How Sen­ka Ezhik Made a Knife, wears its instruc­tion­al val­ue on its sleeve (or rather, its cov­er). Oth­ers, like 1925’s The Lit­tle Octo­brist Ras­cal or that same year’s Chi­na-set A Cup of Tea, offer high­er dos­es of play­ful­ness mixed in with the ide­ol­o­gy.

Play­ing Sovi­et also includes the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose Whom Should I Be?, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive book from the “gold­en age” of Sovi­et Chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture ear­li­er this year. Rus­sia Beyond the Head­lines’ Alexan­dra Gueza high­lights Mayakovsky’s  What is Good and What is Bad? (“in which he explains that walk­ing in the rain and thun­der­storms is bad, clean­ing your teeth is good, fight­ing with the boys is bad, while study­ing is good”) and Octo­ber 1917–1918: Heroes and Vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion, whose “good guys” include “a work­er, a Red Army sol­dier, a sailor, a seam­stress” and whose “bad guys” include “a fac­to­ry own­er, a landown­er, a rich farmer, a priest, a mer­chant.” Good­night Moon it cer­tain­ly isn’t, but then, how many Amer­i­can chil­dren’s books had to attempt a fun­da­men­tal rein­ven­tion of soci­ety?

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Children’s Book Whom Should I Be?: A Clas­sic from the “Gold­en Age” in Sovi­et Children’s Lit­er­a­ture

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Enter an Archive of 6,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized and Free to Read Online

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

The First Children’s Pic­ture Book, 1658’s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

John Wayne Recites and Explains the Pledge of Allegiance (1972)

in Politics | July 4th, 2017

Back in 1972, John Wayne record­ed a spo­ken word album called Amer­i­ca, Why I Love Her, described as “a series of heart­felt, patri­ot­ic speech­es over a bed of stir­ring music.” You can stream the entire album below (or over on Spo­ti­fy). Above, we’re fea­tur­ing the 8th track on the release, Wayne’s recita­tion and exe­ge­sis of the Pledge of Alle­giance. Some will find it corny, oth­ers rous­ing. Per­son­al­ly, I’m not a fan of syrupy nation­al­ism. But I’ll give Wayne’s inter­pre­ta­tion this–his take rec­og­nizes Amer­i­ca as a place of inclu­sive­ness and open­ness, giv­ing every­one equal access to its oppor­tu­ni­ties and insti­tu­tions. Com­pare it with the nation­al­ist rhetoric you hear today, and, you might find your­self long­ing for John Wayne’s sun­nier Amer­i­ca.

“I pledge alle­giance to the flag”

What do those words mean to you? To me they say, “Thank
you, Amer­i­ca, for your strength, your courage and your
freedom…which has been a bea­con to the world for two
hun­dred years.”

“Of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca”

Whose bright stars are fifty states…each bear­ing its
own stamp of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. People…two hun­dred
mil­lion strong…people who have come to her from all
cor­ners of the earth.

“And to the repub­lic for which it stands”

A land of laws…with an inge­nious sys­tem of checks and
bal­ances that allows no man to become a tyrant…and
lets no group prevail…if their pow­er is not tem­pered
with a real con­cern for the governed…A land where the
right of dis­sent and of free speech is jeal­ous­ly
guarded…where the bal­lot box is the sword…and the
peo­ple its wield­er.

“One nation under God”

A land where free­dom of wor­ship is a cor­ner­stone of her
being…A land graced with tem­ples and church­es,
syn­a­gogues and altars that rise in pro­fu­sion to embrace
all the reli­gions of the world.

“Indi­vis­i­ble”

A land forged by the hot steel of raw courage…and
formed forever…by the awful cru­cible of civ­il war.

“With lib­er­ty”

Where man in pur­suit of an hon­est life will not be
denied his chance…where her cit­i­zens move freely
with­in her vast bor­ders with­out hin­drance or fear…A
land brim­ming with opportunity…where free­dom of
choice is the guide for all.

“And jus­tice”

The courts of our land are open to all. Its wheels of
jus­tice grind for all causes…all peo­ple. They look to
every avenue for justice…every con­cern of the
law…and they tem­per their rea­son­ing with mer­cy…

“For all!”

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!

Browse a Collection of Over 83,500 Vintage Sewing Patterns

in Design, Fashion, History, Life | June 30th, 2017

My cos­tume design pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, Vir­gil John­son, delight­ed stu­dents with his for­mu­la for peri­od cloth­ing. I have for­got­ten some of the math­e­mat­ic and seman­tic particulars—does dress­ing some­one five years behind the times a “frumpy” char­ac­ter make? Or is it mere­ly one?

I do recall some anx­ious hours, prepar­ing for the school’s main stage pro­duc­tion of the inces­tu­ous Jacobean revenge tragedy, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. The soci­etal cor­rup­tion of the play was under­scored by hav­ing the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters slouch around, snort­ing mimed cocaine in cut­ting edge, mid-80s Vogue Pat­terns … those big unstruc­tured jack­ets were very a la mode, but they gob­bled up a lot of high-bud­get fab­ric, and I didn’t want to be the one to make a cost­ly sewing mis­take.

What sticks in my mind most clear­ly is that 20 years was the sweet spot, the appro­pri­ate amount of elapsed time to ensure that one would not appear dumpy, dowdy, or obliv­i­ous, but rather pru­dent and dis­cern­ing. Don­ning a gar­ment that was 15 years out of fash­ion might be dar­ing­ly “retro,” but anoth­er five and that same gar­ment could be her­ald­ed as “vin­tage.”

The col­lab­o­ra­tive Vin­tage Pat­tern Wiki puts the mag­ic num­ber at 25, request­ing that con­trib­u­tors make sure the pat­terns they post are from 1992 or ear­li­er, and also out-of-print.

The brows­able col­lec­tion of over 83,500 pat­terns runs the gamut from Dynasty-inspired pussy bow pow­er suits to Bet­ty Drap­er-esque frocks fea­tur­ing mod­els in white gloves to an 1895 boys’ Reefer Suit with fly-free short trousers.

Vis­i­tors can nar­row their search to focus on a par­tic­u­lar gar­ment, design­er or decade. If you click these links, you can see pat­terns from the fol­low­ing decades: 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

The movie star col­lec­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly fun. (Flat­ter­ing or no, I’ve always want­ed a pair of Katharine Hep­burn pants…)

And it goes with­out say­ing that the dog days of sum­mer are the per­fect time to get a jump on your Hal­loween cos­tume.

Those who are itch­ing to get sewing should check the links below each pat­tern enve­lope cov­er for ven­dors who have the pat­tern in stock and pho­tos and posts by com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who have made that same gar­ment.

The prices and hand­writ­ten jot­tings of the orig­i­nal own­ers will also put you in a vin­tage mood.

The hunt starts here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Online Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library: Down­load 300 Knit­ting Books Pub­lished From 1849 to 2012

Fri­da Kahlo’s Col­or­ful Clothes Revealed for the First Time & Pho­tographed by Ishi­uchi Miyako

Google Cre­ates a Dig­i­tal Archive of World Fash­ion: Fea­tures 30,000 Images, Cov­er­ing 3,000 Years of Fash­ion His­to­ry

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Dr. Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

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

Watch Johnny Cash’s Poignant Final Interview & His Last Performance: “Death, Where Is Thy Sting?” (2003)

in Music | June 29th, 2017

“Ask some­one to name a song that always has the pow­er to reduce them to tears,” writes Inde­pen­dent cul­ture edi­tor Christo­pher Hooton, “and the chances are they’ll swift­ly reply ‘John­ny Cash. Hurt,’” the coun­try leg­end’s heart­break­ing cov­er of Trent Reznor’s masochis­tic anthem. Asked to name a music video with the same emo­tion­al res­o­nance, and you’re just as like­ly to get the same answer. I find myself tear­ing up just read­ing Hooton’s descrip­tion of it. Shot at The House of Cash, the singer’s decrepit home (and shut­tered muse­um), direc­tor Mark Romanek’s wrench­ing video speaks to us of “the tran­sience of life, the grace­less­ness of death, the Ozy­man­di­an crum­bling of an oeu­vre and the decline of a genre, an era and an atti­tude.”

It does all that, but does much more besides: the video, and Cash’s last record­ings in gen­er­al, show us a man in the depths of lovelorn grief, yet unafraid to face mor­tal­i­ty and decline and unwill­ing to deny their rav­ages. We mourn with Cash and for him, but his final per­for­mances are so riv­et­ing because, while most of us may fear death, he did not.

“Corinthi­ans 15:55,” his last orig­i­nal song—on his final, posthu­mous col­lec­tion, Ain’t No Grave—is named after the verse that asks “Death, where is thy sting?” Through­out the album, Cash sounds, writes Adam Richter, “unim­pressed by the threat of death…. Singers are almost nev­er as pre­pared as Cash was to bid adieu to all that.”

The “Hurt” video net­ted Cash, Romanek, and his team six MTV Video Music Award nom­i­na­tions. Before it won for Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, Cash sat down with Kurt Loder on August 20th, 2003, for what would turn out to be his final inter­view. Although he con­fess­es to a dis­taste for the work of mak­ing videos, of “Hurt,” he says, “I felt we were doing some­thing worth­while.” He talks about meet­ing Rick Rubin and mak­ing the Amer­i­can Record­ings series of albums, some of the most wide­ly praised records of his career, and the music he had always want­ed to make. And he express­es the fierce inde­pen­dence, com­pas­sion, and authen­tic­i­ty that made him such a phe­nom­e­nal writer and admirable human being.

“You can’t let peo­ple del­e­gate to you what you should do,” Cash says, point­ing at his heart, “when it’s com­ing from way in here, you know?… I wouldn’t let any­body influ­ence me into think­ing I was doing the wrong thing by singing about death, hell, and drugs.” We’re all lucky that he didn’t. Cash’s expres­sions of grief after the death of June Carter cut deep, but it was his abil­i­ty not only to play the out­law but also to empathize with peo­ple who are abused, per­se­cut­ed, and exclud­ed by the law that set him apart from oth­er coun­try and gospel singers, and made him a hero to mil­lions of peo­ple who don’t share his roots or his faith.

The month before Cash gave his final inter­view, he gave his last per­for­mance at the Carter Ranch. (Watch it above.) Less than a month after the inter­view, he was dead. In 2007, the House of Cash, the house Cash had lived in since 1968, burned to the ground. Cash sure­ly would have mourned the loss, but it would­n’t have kept him down for long, I sus­pect. Not only did he stare down death with grace, humor, and dig­ni­ty, but he faced the pains of life with those same qual­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

John­ny Cash’s Christ­mas Spe­cials, Fea­tur­ing June Carter, Steve Mar­tin, Andy Kauf­man & More (1976–79)

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

Test

in | June 28th, 2017

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Sed con­secte­tur ligu­la sed tor­tor lobor­tis com­mo­do. Cras at ligu­la eget dolor vene­natis dig­nis­sim non in augue. Nunc et lec­tus id eros sus­cip­it hen­drerit. Quisque port­ti­tor nul­la pretium laoreet gravi­da. Ut congue urna biben­dum urna eges­tas dapibus. Vestibu­lum phare­tra con­va­l­lis inter­dum. Sus­pendisse arcu mi, con­va­l­lis a eleifend eu, var­ius vitae ex. Nunc lacus ipsum, ali­quam sit amet ornare ac, pel­len­tesque non ligu­la. Sus­pendisse pul­v­inar quis lec­tus eu volut­pat. Nul­la nec con­se­quat felis. Sus­pendisse ullam­cor­p­er, nul­la port­ti­tor condi­men­tum plac­er­at, mau­ris nisl rutrum turpis, ac laoreet nibh velit id tel­lus. Nam quis velit diam. Aenean vene­natis, jus­to in fer­men­tum ornare, turpis sem hen­drerit felis, in pretium quam elit quis orci. Pel­len­tesque habi­tant mor­bi tris­tique senec­tus et netus et male­sua­da fames ac turpis eges­tas.

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The 10 Most Depressing Radiohead Songs According to Data Science: Hear the Songs That Ranked Highest in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

in Music | June 20th, 2017

One of my favorite music-themed com­e­dy sketch­es of recent years fea­tures a sup­port group of Radio­head fans flum­moxed and dis­ap­point­ed by the band’s post-Ok Com­put­er out­put. The sce­nario trades on the per­plex­i­ty that met Radio­head­’s abrupt change of musi­cal direc­tion with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary Kid A as well as on the fact that Radio­head fans tend toward, well… if not PTSD or severe mood dis­or­ders, at least a height­ened propen­si­ty for gen­er­al­ized depres­sion.

“Much of Radiohead’s music is unde­ni­ably sad,” writes Ana­lyt­ics Spe­cial­ist and Radio­head fan Char­lie Thomp­son. Rather than play some­thing “less depress­ing,” how­ev­er, as many an acquain­tance has asked him over the years, Thomp­son decid­ed “to quan­ti­fy that sad­ness, con­clud­ing in a data-dri­ven deter­mi­na­tion of their most depress­ing song.”

Now, pure­ly sub­jec­tive­ly, I’d place “How to Dis­ap­pear Com­plete­ly” in the top spot, fol­lowed close­ly by Amne­sia’s “Pyra­mid Song.” But my own asso­ci­a­tions with these songs are per­son­al and per­haps some­what arbi­trary. I might make a case for them based on lyri­cal inter­pre­ta­tions, musi­cal arrange­ment, and instru­men­ta­tion. But the argu­ment would still large­ly depend on mat­ters of taste and accul­tur­a­tion.

Thomp­son, on the oth­er hand, believes in “quan­ti­fy­ing sen­ti­ment.” To that end, he cre­at­ed a “gloom index,” which he used to mea­sure each song in the band’s cat­a­log. Rather than lis­ten­ing to them all, one after anoth­er, he relied on data from two online ser­vices, first pulling “detailed audio sta­tis­tics” from Spotify’s Web API. One met­ric in par­tic­u­lar, called “valence,” mea­sures a song’s “pos­i­tiv­i­ty.” These scores pro­vide an index “of how sad a song sounds from a musi­cal per­spec­tive.” (It’s not entire­ly clear what the cri­te­ria are for these scores).

Next, Thomp­son used the Genius Lyrics API to exam­ine “lyri­cal den­si­ty,” specif­i­cal­ly the con­cen­tra­tion of “sad words” in any giv­en song. To com­bine these two mea­sures, he leaned on an analy­sis by a fel­low data sci­en­tist and blog­ger, Myles Har­ri­son. You can see his result­ing for­mu­la for the “Gloom Index” above, and if you under­stand the pro­gram­ing lan­guage R, you can see exam­ples of his analy­sis at his blog, RChar­lie. (Read a less data-laden sum­ma­ry of Thompson’s study at the ana­lyt­ics blog Rev­o­lu­tions.) Thomp­son also plot­ted sad­ness by album, in the inter­ac­tive graph fur­ther up.

So, which song rat­ed high­est on the “Gloom Scale”? Well, it’s “True Love Waits” from their most recent album A Moon Shaped Pool (hear a live acoustic ver­sion up above.). It’s a damned sad song, I’ll grant, as are the nine run­ners-up, all of which you can hear in the YouTube and Spo­ti­fy playlists above). “Pyra­mid Song” appears at num­ber 5, but “How to Dis­ap­pear Com­plete­ly” doesn’t even rank in the top ten. From a pure­ly sub­jec­tive stand­point, this makes me sus­pi­cious of the whole oper­a­tion. But you tell us, read­ers, what do you think of Thomp­son’s exper­i­ment in “quan­ti­fy­ing sen­ti­ment” in music?

Here’s the top 10:

1. True Love Waits
2. Give Up The Ghost
3. Motion Pic­ture Sound­track
4. Let Down
5. Pyra­mid Song
6. Exit Music (For a Film)
7. Dol­lars & Cents
8. High And Dry
9. Tin­ker Tai­lor Sol­dier …
10. Video­tape

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiohead’s “Creep” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to the 6th Cen­tu­ry

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

A Free Course on Machine Learn­ing & Data Sci­ence from Cal­tech

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

Joni Mitchell Sings an Achingly Pretty Version of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

in Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | June 19th, 2017

“Records can be a bad trip. The audi­ence can play your mis­takes over and over. In a tele­vi­sion spe­cial they see you once and you work hard to make sure they’re see­ing you at your best.” 

—Mama Cass Elliot, The Argus

It’s hard to imag­ine any­one blessed with Mama Cass’ gold­en pipes being embar­rassed by a record­ed per­for­mance. A live gig, yes, though, celebri­ties of her era were sub­ject­ed to far few­er wit­ness­es.

The Inter­net was an undream­able lit­tle dream in 1969, when the sole episode of The Mama Cass Tele­vi­sion Show aired. The for­mer singer of the Mamas and the Papas died five years lat­er, pre­sum­ably unaware that future gen­er­a­tions would have knowl­edge of, let alone access to, her failed pilot.

She may have described her vari­ety show as “low key” to the Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia Argus, but the guest list was padded with high wattage friends, includ­ing come­di­an Bud­dy Hack­ett, and singers Mary Tra­vers and John Sebas­t­ian. Joni Mitchell, above, deliv­ered an above-reproach per­for­mance of “Both Sides Now.”

Lat­er, Mitchell and Tra­vers joined their host­ess for the heart­felt ren­di­tion of “I Shall Be Released” below, a per­for­mance that is only slight­ly marred by Elliot’s insane cos­tume and an unnec­es­sar­i­ly syrupy back­ing arrange­ment of strings and reeds.

Those who can’t live with­out see­ing the com­plete show can pur­chase DVDs online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Video of Joni Mitchell Per­form­ing in 1965 — Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

Watch 1970s Ani­ma­tions of Songs by Joni Mitchell, Jim Croce & The Kinks, Aired on The Son­ny & Cher Show

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll is appear­ing onstage in New York City through June 26 in Paul David Young’s polit­i­cal satire, Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.