Hear 100 Amazing Cover Versions of Beatles Songs

in Music | April 18th, 2016

If you’ve ever learned to play an instru­ment, espe­cial­ly the gui­tar or piano, odds are you’ve spent count­less hours try­ing to mas­ter the rhythms and melodies of your favorite songs. And odds are at least one of those songs was writ­ten by Messrs. Lennon & McCart­ney. If you’re any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly real­ized ear­ly in the exer­cise that The Bea­t­les weren’t only praised as great song­writ­ers because of their lyri­cism and social and roman­tic insights. Their songs are also packed with inge­nious chord changes, unex­pect­ed time shifts, unusu­al hooks, etc.

What may seem at first lis­ten like a sim­ple tune reveals itself as high­ly chal­leng­ing for the ama­teur musi­cian. I well remem­ber sweat­ing over two of my favorites—“Julia” and “Martha My Dear”—for many days.

Even in mod­i­fied ver­sions that sim­pli­fy dif­fi­cult voic­ings, I strug­gled to mas­ter the let­ter of the songs while still con­vey­ing the spir­it. Sure­ly, that’s a tes­ta­ment to my own lack of skill, and yet the trou­ble I’ve had pulling off my favorite Bea­t­les’ songs has giv­en me all the more respect for musi­cians who make it look easy.

Even a straight-ahead blues like “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road” ain’t easy to sell—far from it. But I’ve nev­er heard any­one do it bet­ter than Tul­sa, Okla­homa-born blues­man Low­ell Ful­som (top). Fur­ther down, St. Vin­cent does a stel­lar live ren­di­tion of anoth­er of my favorites, “Dig a Pony.” A great song can take all kinds of bend­ing, stretch­ing, and pulling and still retain its essence. In Pao­lo Nutini’s smooth, stripped-down, organ, voice, and drums take on Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down,” above, the pas­sion remains, even if the impas­sioned shouts have been tamed.

There are hun­dreds more great Bea­t­les’ cov­ers out there, and prob­a­bly hun­dreds of ter­ri­ble ones, too—and many an odd­ball inter­pre­ta­tion that sharply divides opin­ion in either direc­tion (such as Marc Ribot’s machine-shop “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” which I hap­pen to love). Just above, we’ve put togeth­er a Spo­ti­fy playlist of over 80 great cov­er ver­sions of Bea­t­les’ songs, culled from sug­ges­tions made by @openculture followers/fans on Twit­ter. (You can down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware here.) And in the list below, find links to 20 fab­u­lous cov­er ver­sions on Youtube. (Those weren’t avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, but they’re def­i­nite­ly worth hear­ing). In total, you’ll find 100 tracks, by artists rang­ing from Ray Charles, to Joe Cock­er and Sarah McLach­lan, to Pat­ti Smith, David Bowie, and John­ny Cash. It makes for 6 hours of Bea­t­les bliss.

If we’ve missed an essen­tial cov­er, let us know in the com­ments below, and drop in a link if you can.

Jimi Hen­drix — Sgt. Pep­per
The Pix­ies — Wild Hon­ey Pie  
David Gilmour — Here, There and Every­where
Alice Coop­er and the Bee Gees — Because
Kris Kristof­fer­son — Paper­back Writer 
Bryan Fer­ry — She’s Leav­ing Home
Pao­lo Nuti­ni — Don’t Let Me Down
The Fall — A Day in the Life 
Elliot Smith — Because 
Elvis Costel­lo — Pen­ny Lane 
Marc Ribot — While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps
Ben E. King — Don’t Let Me Down
Ike & Tina Turn­er – She Came in Through the Bath­room Win­dow
St Vin­cent — Dig a Pony  
Peer Framp­ton and the Bee Gees — Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band (sound­track)
Ray Charles — The Bea­t­les Cov­ers
Book­er T. & the MGS — McLemore Avenue (Cov­ers of Abbey Road)  
George Ben­son — The Oth­er Side of Abbey Road

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Peter Sell­ers Cov­ers the Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” “She Loves You” & “Help!”

Bea­t­les Trib­ute Band “The Fab Faux” Per­forms Live an Amaz­ing­ly Exact Repli­ca of the Orig­i­nal Abbey Road Med­ley

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

The 100 Most Memorable Shots in Cinema Over the Past 100 Years

in Film | April 18th, 2016

Harold Lloyd hang­ing high above the city on the hands of a sky­scrap­er’s clock. A shot through the eye on the Odessa steps. Anoth­er eye, this one read­ied for the razor blade. King Kong roar­ing atop a sky­scraper of his own. Snow White offer­ing a perch to the blue­bird. Dorothy, the Cow­ard­ly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scare­crow skip­ping off toward the dis­tant Emer­ald City. Charles Fos­ter Kane orat­ing before his own enor­mous por­trait. Nor­ma Desmond’s unset­tling approach through ever-soft­er focus.

Roger Thorn­hill pur­sued by the biplane. Pat­ton salut­ing before the enor­mous Amer­i­can flag. Alex DeLarge star­ing, in his bowler and past his pros­thet­ic eye­lash­es, straight into the cam­era. Rocky jog­ging up the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art steps. A cam­ou­flage-paint­ed Willard ris­ing out of the swamp. The slow-motion march of Messrs. Blonde, Blue, Brown, Orange, Pink, and White. The open­ing-night recep­tion dance after Max Fis­cher’s Heav­en and Earth. Leonidas kick­ing the mes­sen­ger into the hole. The young Mason Evans, Jr. flat on the grass, star­ing up at the skies.

Oh, and Char­lie Chap­lin using Scraps the dog as a pil­low. I could have described more of the most mem­o­rable shots of the past cen­tu­ry of cin­e­ma his­to­ry, but in the video above, which presents one hun­dred years of film with one shot select­ed from each year, they all speak for them­selves. “While many of these shots are the most rec­og­niz­able in film his­to­ry, oth­ers are equal­ly icon­ic in their own right,” writes the video’s cre­ator Jacob T. Swin­ney, “For exam­ple, some shots pio­neered a style or defined a genre, while oth­ers test­ed the bound­aries of cen­sor­ship and film­go­er expec­ta­tions.”

While the ear­li­est pic­tures here, a group start­ing in 1915 with D.W. Grif­fith’s The Birth of a Nation, have had plen­ty of time to estab­lish them­selves in our visu­al lex­i­con — even for those of us who’ve nev­er actu­al­ly sat down and watched the movies in full — the more recent selec­tions clear­ly require some guess­work: Swin­ney’s mem­o­rable shots from the past decade come from sources as var­ied as There Will Be Blood and The Tree of Life, Avatar, and The Avengers.

And some cin­e­ma purists, as opposed to struc­tur­al purists, will regret that, with these strict­ly sin­gle shots, the famous cuts (in both sens­es, when it comes to Un Chien Andalou’s eye­ball) don’t come across. Me, I’d have bent the rules to pay prop­er trib­ute to Lawrence blow­ing out the match, but that’s just one cinephile’s opin­ion. Besides, you’ve got to see it in con­text, pro­ject­ed in 70-mil­lime­ter, to real­ly feel why it can stand for all of 1962 in film — and then some.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

Vincent Price Reads the Poetry of Shelley; Ralph Richardson Reads the Poetry of Coleridge

in Poetry | April 14th, 2016

Many of us today think of Vin­cent Price as the face, and an even more so the voice, of mod­est­ly bud­get­ed mid­cen­tu­ry hor­ror movies. But over his long and pro­lif­ic career, he showed just what mul­ti­tudes he could con­tain. Price could ele­vate schlock, of course, but he could also rise to the chal­lenge of mas­ter­pieces: here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his read­ings, on record and on cam­era, of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, the orig­i­nal mas­ter of the psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly trou­bling tale. Today, we have for you a set of recita­tions well out­side the realm of the scary: Price read­ing the poet­ry of Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, free on Spo­ti­fy (whose soft­ware you can down­load here).

Shel­ley, as any­one inter­est­ed in 19th-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish poet­ry knows, did­n’t have a long career, but the can­dle that burns quick­ly, as they say, burns bright. Before his death at the age of 29 in a storm on the Gulf of Spezia, he man­aged to write such immor­tal works as Music, When Soft Voic­es Die, Ozy­man­dias, To a Sky­lark, Ode to the West Wind, and the dra­ma Prometheus Unbound, all of which we hear Price read whole, or in part, in this playlist. And for its final four tracks, we hear famed Eng­lish stage actor Ralph Richard­son deliv­er four poems from the equal­ly endur­ing lega­cy of Shel­ley’s rough con­tem­po­rary Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge, includ­ing Kubla Khan and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

The vivid­ness of the imagery and the time­less res­o­nance of the themes in both poets’ work hold up well on the page, but no mat­ter how many times you’ve read it, hear­ing it inter­pret­ed by per­form­ers like Price and Richard­son can let you expe­ri­ence it in a new way. Their dra­mat­ic back­grounds empow­er them to bring out lev­els of emo­tion you might nev­er have felt in your own read­ing; cer­tain­ly Price’s world-weary yet faint­ly arch tone does well with Ozy­man­dias’ gaze-into-the-abyss evo­ca­tion of hubris, imper­ma­nence, and the ulti­mate fate in obliv­ion of all things great and small. Maybe the man who starred in The Pit and the Pen­du­lum nev­er real­ly strayed far from hor­ror after all.

The Price/Richardson read­ing will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Watch Vin­cent, Tim Burton’s Ani­mat­ed Trib­ute to Vin­cent Price & Edgar Allan Poe (1982)

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

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

Learn to Write Through a Video Game Inspired by the Roman­tic Poets: Shel­ley, Byron, Keats

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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.

New LSD Research Provides the First Images of the Brain on Acid, and Hints at Its Potential to Promote Creativity

in Neuroscience, Science | April 13th, 2016

Talk to near­ly any vet­er­an of six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture, and you’re bound to hear a sto­ry or three about an acid trip. Some of those trips were bad, man, full of night­mare hal­lu­ci­na­tions and severe anx­i­ety. In oth­er accounts, how­ev­er, LSD gets cred­it for open­ing up the mind, releas­ing old pat­terns of thought, and free­ing up latent cre­ative ener­gy. From Ken Kesey to R. Crumb, these sto­ries abound. Are they cred­i­ble? Now that sci­en­tists have once again begun to study the drug—first syn­the­sized in 1938 and used in exper­i­ments in the 50s and 60s until it was banned near­ly everywhere—they are find­ing con­crete answers using the lat­est in brain imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

And it appears that LSD—-in a con­trolled lab­o­ra­to­ry set­ting at least—“can be seen as revers­ing the more restrict­ed think­ing we devel­op from infan­cy to adult­hood.” So reports The Guardian in regard to exper­i­ments recent­ly con­duct­ed by neu­rophar­ma­col­o­gist David Nutt, for­mer “drugs advi­sor” for the British gov­ern­ment. Nutt gave vol­un­teer sub­jects an injec­tion of LSD, then cap­tured the first images ever record­ed of the brain on acid. You can see dra­mat­ic ani­ma­tions of those scans in the video at the top of the post, com­par­ing the brains of test sub­jects on the drug and those on place­bo, and see some sta­t­ic images above. The study, says Nutt, “is to neu­ro­science what the Hig­gs boson was to par­ti­cle physics.” In an inter­view with Nature, he describes LSD research as a “way to study the bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non that is con­scious­ness.”

What the sub­jects expe­ri­enced won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sur­prise any­one who has been on one of those leg­endary, mind-alter­ing trips: researchers found, writes The Guardian, that “under the drug, regions [of the brain] once seg­re­gat­ed spoke to one anoth­er,” pro­duc­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions, “feel­ings of one­ness with the world,” and “a loss of per­son­al iden­ti­ty called ‘ego dis­so­lu­tion.’” How­ev­er, pri­or to this study, Nutt says, “we didn’t know how these pro­found effects were pro­duced.” There has been pre­cious lit­tle data, because “sci­en­tists were either scared or couldn’t be both­ered to over­come the enor­mous hur­dles to get this done.”

Work­ing with the Beck­ley Foun­da­tion, which stud­ies psy­choac­tive drugs and pro­motes pol­i­cy reform, Nutt and his col­league Robert Carhart-Har­ris crowd­fund­ed their study; in the video above, you can hear them both describe the goals and ratio­nale of their research. What they even­tu­al­ly found, The Guardian reports, was that “under the influ­ence, brain net­works that deal with vision, atten­tion, move­ment and hear­ing became far more con­nect­ed, lead­ing to what looked like a ‘more uni­fied brain.’”

But at the same time, oth­er net­works broke down. Scans revealed a loss of con­nec­tions between part of the brain called the parahip­pocam­pus and anoth­er region known as the ret­ro­s­ple­nial cor­tex.

Nutt and his col­leagues have more spe­cif­ic exper­i­ments planned, he tells Nature, “to look at how LSD can influ­ence cre­ativ­i­ty, and how the LSD state mim­ics the dream state.” And just as the drug was test­ed decades ago as a ther­a­py for addic­tions and psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, Nutt hopes he can con­duct sim­i­lar tri­als. But his research has an even larg­er scope: As Aman­da Feild­ing, direc­tor of the Beck­ley Foun­da­tion, puts it, “We are final­ly unveil­ing the brain mech­a­nisms under­ly­ing the poten­tial of LSD, not only to heal, but also to deep­en our under­stand­ing of con­scious­ness itself.” We look for­ward to Nut­t’s fur­ther research find­ings. Per­haps some­day, LSD will be avail­able with a pre­scrip­tion. Until then, it’s prob­a­bly wise not to try these exper­i­ments at home.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woman Takes LSD in 1956: “I’ve Nev­er Seen Such Infi­nite Beau­ty in All My Life,” “I Wish I Could Talk in Tech­ni­col­or”

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

Ken Kesey Talks About the Mean­ing of the Acid Tests in a Clas­sic Inter­view

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

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

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detection Kit”: 8 Tools for Skeptical Thinking

in Philosophy, Science | April 11th, 2016

Pho­to by NASA via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It is some­times said that sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy have grown so far apart that they no longer rec­og­nize each oth­er. Per­haps they no longer need each oth­er. And yet some of the most thought­ful sci­en­tists of modernity—those who most ded­i­cat­ed their lives not only to dis­cov­er­ing nature’s mys­ter­ies, but to com­mu­ni­cat­ing those dis­cov­er­ies with the rest of us—have been ful­ly steeped in a philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tion. This espe­cial­ly goes for Carl Sagan, per­haps the great­est sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor of the past cen­tu­ry or so.

Sagan wrote a num­ber of pop­u­lar books for lay­folk in which he indulged not only his ten­den­cies as a “hope­less roman­tic,” writes Maria Popo­va, but also as a “bril­liant philoso­pher.” He did not fear to ven­ture into the realms of spir­i­tu­al desire, and did not mock those who did like­wise; and yet Sagan also did not hes­i­tate to defend rea­son against “society’s most shame­less untruths and out­ra­geous pro­pa­gan­da.” These under­tak­ings best come togeth­er in Sagan’s The Demon-Haunt­ed World, a book in which he very patient­ly explains how and why to think sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, against the very human com­pul­sion to do any­thing but.

In one chap­ter of his book, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detec­tion,” Sagan laid out his method, propos­ing what he called “A Baloney Detec­tion Kit,” a set of intel­lec­tu­al tools that sci­en­tists use to sep­a­rate wish­ful think­ing from gen­uine prob­a­bil­i­ty. Sagan presents the con­tents of his kit as “tools for skep­ti­cal think­ing,” which he defines as “the means to con­struct, and to under­stand, a rea­soned argu­ment and—especially important—to rec­og­nize a fal­la­cious or fraud­u­lent argu­ment.” You can see his list of all eight tools, slight­ly abridged, below. These are all in Sagan’s words:

• Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble there must be inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion of the “facts.”
• Encour­age sub­stan­tive debate on the evi­dence by knowl­edge­able pro­po­nents of all points of view.
• Argu­ments from author­i­ty car­ry lit­tle weight — “author­i­ties” have made mis­takes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Per­haps a bet­ter way to say it is that in sci­ence there are no author­i­ties; at most, there are experts.
• Spin more than one hypoth­e­sis. If there’s some­thing to be explained, think of all the dif­fer­ent ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly dis­prove each of the alter­na­tives.
• Try not to get over­ly attached to a hypoth­e­sis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way sta­tion in the pur­suit of knowl­edge. Ask your­self why you like the idea. Com­pare it fair­ly with the alter­na­tives. See if you can find rea­sons for reject­ing it. If you don’t, oth­ers will.
• If what­ev­er it is you’re explain­ing has some mea­sure, some numer­i­cal quan­ti­ty attached to it, you’ll be much bet­ter able to dis­crim­i­nate among com­pet­ing hypothe­ses. What is vague and qual­i­ta­tive is open to many expla­na­tions.
• If there’s a chain of argu­ment, every link in the chain must work (includ­ing the premise) — not just most of them.
• Occam’s Razor. This con­ve­nient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypothe­ses that explain the data equal­ly well to choose the sim­pler. Always ask whether the hypoth­e­sis can be, at least in prin­ci­ple, fal­si­fied…. You must be able to check asser­tions out. Invet­er­ate skep­tics must be giv­en the chance to fol­low your rea­son­ing, to dupli­cate your exper­i­ments and see if they get the same result.

See the unabridged list at Brain Pick­ings, or read Sagan’s full chap­ter, ide­al­ly by get­ting a copy of The Demon-Haunt­ed World. As Popo­va notes, Sagan not only gives us suc­cinct instruc­tions for crit­i­cal think­ing, but he also makes a thor­ough list, with def­i­n­i­tions, of the ways rea­son fails us through “the most com­mon and per­ilous fal­lac­i­es of log­ic and rhetoric.” Sagan’s chap­ter on “Baloney Detec­tion” is, like the rest of the book, a high­ly lit­er­ary, per­son­al, engage­ment with the most press­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­sid­er­a­tions in our every­day life. And it is also an infor­mal yet rig­or­ous restate­ment of Aristotle’s clas­si­cal log­ic and rhetoric and Fran­cis Bacon’s nat­ur­al phi­los­o­phy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wis­dom of Carl Sagan Ani­mat­ed

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

Noam Chom­sky Calls Post­mod­ern Cri­tiques of Sci­ence Over-Inflat­ed “Poly­syl­lab­ic Tru­isms”

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

Tom Waits Names 14 of His Favorite Art Films

in Film, Music | April 6th, 2016

Tom Waits is that rare breed of artist who has equal amounts of cred­i­bil­i­ty in the art house the­aters and on the punk rock street. His depres­sion-era every­man blues and drunk­en skid row laments ring just as true as his high-con­cept vaude­ville the­ater act and cock­tail lounge per­for­mance art. Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to con­vinc­ing­ly set his brow high or low makes Waits an excel­lent ambas­sador for film, a medi­um sad­ly riv­en by brow height. While cable TV and Net­flix may be the art hous­es of the 21st cen­tu­ry, let’s not give up on the cul­tur­al reach of lega­cy archives like the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion just yet. Not before we hear Waits weigh in on his favorite art films.

Waits’ fil­mog­ra­phy as an actor is itself a tes­ta­ment to his brow-span­ning abilities—from such wide-release fare as Drac­u­la and Sev­en Psy­chopaths to the scrap­py, inti­mate films of Jim Jar­musch, and more or less every­thing in-between. The threads that run through all of his film choic­es as an actor are a cer­tain sur­re­al sense of humor and the off-kil­ter human­i­ty and for­mal anar­chy we know so well from his musi­cal choic­es.

We see sim­i­lar pro­cliv­i­ties in Waits’ film favorites, as com­piled by Chris Ambro­sio at Cri­te­ri­on. Most of the choic­es are of the, “Ah, of course” vari­ety in that these films so per­fect­ly explain, or illus­trate, the Tom Waits uni­verse. We might imag­ine many of them with alter­nate sound­tracks of songs from Real Gone, Sword­fishtrom­bones, Bone Machine, etc.

First, up, of course, Fellini’s neo­re­al­ist La Stra­da, a film about the sad­dest, sweet­est, gruffest trav­el­ing cir­cus act ever. Waits also con­fess­es a pas­sion for all of the beau­ti­ful­ly over­wrought films of Carl Theodor Drey­er, includ­ing the pro­found and dis­turb­ing 1928 The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc and 1932 hor­ror clas­sic Vampyr (both above). You can see the full list of Waits’ favs below. Let your pas­sion for art film be rekin­dled, and when watch­ing the silent films, con­sid­er putting on some Mule Vari­a­tions or Blood Mon­ey. You’ll prob­a­bly find it fits per­fect­ly.

1. La Stra­da, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (U.S. read­ers: watch Fellini’s films free on Hulu)
2. Zato­ichi: The Blind Swords­man
3. Put­ney Swope, Robert Downey, Sr.
4. Every­thing by Carl Theodor Drey­er
5. Amar­cord, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
6. 8 1/2, Fed­eri­co Felli­ni
7. The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton
8. Wise Blood, John Hus­ton
9. Two-Lane Black­top, Monte Hell­man
10. Eraser­head, David Lynch
11. Pick­up on South Street, Samuel Fuller
12. Ikiru, Aki­ra Kuro­sawa
13. Ver­non, Flori­da, Errol Mor­ris
14. In a Lone­ly Place, Nicholas Ray

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free on Hulu: Stream Fellini’s 8 1/2, La Stra­da & Oth­er Clas­sic & Con­tem­po­rary Films

Tom Waits, Play­ing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Clas­sic 1978 TV Per­for­mance

The Tom Waits Map: A Map­ping of Every Place Waits Has Sung About, From L.A. to Africa’s Jun­gles

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

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

330 Years of Female Printmakers (1570–1900) : Download Free Prints, Visit the Exhibit

in Art, Museums, Politics | April 4th, 2016

Hen­ri­et­ta Louisa Koe­nen was born a cen­tu­ry before the Guer­ril­la Girls, but her col­lect­ing habits are a strong argu­ment for hon­orary, posthu­mous mem­ber­ship in the activist group.

The wife of the Rijksmuseum’s Print Room’s first direc­tor, Koe­nen spent over three decades acquir­ing prints by female artists, though dis­cour­ag­ing­ly few of the 827 women in her col­lec­tion achieved much in the way of recog­ni­tion for their work.

Renais­sance aris­to­crat­ic painter, Sofon­is­ba Anguis­so­la, and por­traitist (and found­ing mem­ber of London’s Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts) Angel­i­ca Kauff­man, have the dis­tinc­tion of being namechecked in the Guer­ril­la Girl’s 1989 provo­ca­tion, below.

Nei­ther can be said to enjoy the muse­um tote bag celebri­ty of a Kahlo or O’Keeffe.

Self por­tait, Angel­i­ca Kauff­man

Their work can be expect­ed to attract some new fans, now that 80 some pieces from Koenen’s col­lec­tion are on dis­play as part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s exhib­it, Print­ing Women: Three Cen­turies of Female Print­mak­ers, 1570–1900.

(And it would be unseem­ly not to cred­it Amer­i­can art deal­er Samuel Put­nam Avery, for donat­ing Koe­nen’s col­lec­tion to the library at the turn of the last cen­tu­ry, twen­ty years after her death.)

Print­mak­ing is a fre­quent­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive art. The droll Young Girl Laugh­ing at the Old Woman, above, was drawn by Anguis­so­la and engraved by Jacob Bos.

And Maria Cosway’s Music Has Charms, at the top of this post, was a fam­i­ly affair, with Cosway print­ing hus­band Richard’s celes­tial ren­der­ing of daugh­ter Louisa Paoli­na Angel­i­ca. (Mrs. Cosway was also an accom­plished com­pos­er and painter of minia­tures and mytho­log­i­cal scenes, though his­to­ry has decreed her most endur­ing claim to fame should be her hold over a besot­ted Thomas Jef­fer­son.)

The library high­lights the con­tin­u­um with an online gallery show­cas­ing the work of con­tem­po­rary female print­mak­ers, some of whom are con­tribut­ing guest posts to cura­tor Madeleine Viljoen’s Print­ing Women blog.

Sara Sanders, whose 2010 Lith­o­graph, Unti­tled Chair #5, above, is part of a larg­er series, writes:

I believe that the domes­tic objects with which we spend our lives retain traces of our his­to­ries and tell sto­ries about our pasts. These prints are part of an ongo­ing series of por­traits of chairs drawn in the way we imag­ine them to be. Two of the chairs in this series were drawn from exist­ing objects with a rich his­to­ry, while the rest are imag­ined char­ac­ter stud­ies.

Her thoughts seem par­tic­u­lar­ly ger­mane, when the “less­er gen­res” of orna­ment, still-life, and land­scape were by default fre­quent sub­jects for the female artists in Koenen’s col­lec­tion. Pro­pri­ety deemed the fair­er sex should not be par­ty to the nude fig­ure stud­ies that sig­nif­i­cant reli­gious and his­tor­i­cal scenes so often demand­ed.

(Chan­nel your inner Guer­ril­la Girl by per­form­ing an image search on Rape of the Sabine Women, and imag­in­ing the mod­els as aspi­rant artists them­selves, con­fined to such sub­ject mat­ter as vio­lets and laun­dry day.)

That’s not to say domes­tic sub­jects can’t prove divine.

Wit­ness 1751’s A Child Seat­ed, Blow­ing Bub­bles by Madame de Pom­padour, an ama­teur artist and fre­quent­ly paint­ed beau­ty, who, the Nation­al Gallery’s web­site informs us, was “groomed from child­hood to become a play­thing for the King.”

View the online brochure for New York Pub­lic Library’s Print­ing Women: Three Cen­turies of Female Print­mak­ers, 1570–1900 exhi­bi­tion here. The exhi­bi­tion at The New York Pub­lic Library ends May 27th, 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

The Women of the Avant-Garde: An Intro­duc­tion Fea­tur­ing Audio by Gertrude Stein, Kathy Ack­er, Pat­ti Smith & More

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

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

Patti Smith on Virginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dickens’ Pen & Other Cherished Literary Talismans

in Books, Life, Literature, Music, Poetry | April 1st, 2016

Oh to be eulo­gized by Pat­ti Smith, God­moth­er of Punk, poet, best-sell­ing author.

Her mem­oir, Just Kids, was born of a sacred deathbed vow to her first boyfriend, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe.

Its fol­low up, M Train, start­ed out as an exer­cise in writ­ing about “noth­ing at all,” only to wind up as an ele­gy to her late hus­band, gui­tarist Fred “Son­ic” Smith. (Their daugh­ter sug­gest­ed that her dad  “was prob­a­bly annoyed that Robert got so much atten­tion in the oth­er book.”)

She and hus­band Smith cel­e­brat­ed their first anniver­sary by col­lect­ing stones from the French Guiana penal colony, Saint-Lau­rent-du-Maroni, in an effort to feel clos­er to Jean Genet, one of her most revered authors.

She believes in the trans­mu­ta­tion of objects, unabashed­ly lob­by­ing to lib­er­ate the walk­ing stick that accom­pa­nied Vir­ginia Woolf to her death from the NYPL’s col­lec­tion in order to com­mune with it fur­ther. She may turn into a gib­ber­ing fan­girl in face to face meet­ings with the authors she admires, but inter­act­ing with relics of those who have gone before has a cen­ter­ing effect.

Need­less to say, her fame grants her access to items the rest of us are lucky to view though the walls of a vit­rine.

She has paged through Sylvia Plath’s child­hood note­books and gripped Charles Dick­ens’ sur­pris­ing­ly mod­est pen. She has ““per­pet­u­at­ed remem­brance” by com­ing into close con­tact with Bob­by Fis­ch­er’s chess table, Fri­da Kahlo’s leg braces, and a hotel room favored by Maria Callas. Her rec­ol­lec­tion of these events is both rev­er­en­tial and imp­ish, the stuff of a dozen anec­dotes.

“I would faint to use (sculp­tor Con­stan­tin) Brân­cuși’s tooth­brush,“ she quips. “I wouldn’t use it though.”

Where tan­gi­ble sou­venirs prove elu­sive, Smith takes pho­tographs.

Inter­view­er Hold­en­gräber is unique­ly equipped to share in Smith’s lit­er­ary pas­sions, egging her on with quotes recit­ed from mem­o­ry, includ­ing this beau­ty by Rain­er Maria Rilke:

Now loss, how­ev­er cru­el, is pow­er­less against pos­ses­sion, which it com­pletes, or even, affirms: loss is, in fact, noth­ing else than a sec­ond acquisition–but now com­plete­ly interiorized–and just as intense.

(The sen­ti­ment is so love­ly, who can blame him for invok­ing it in pre­vi­ous con­ver­sa­tion with NYPL guests, artist Edmund de Waal and pianist Van Cliburn.)

The top­ic can get heavy, but Smith is a con­sum­mate enter­tain­er whose clown­ish brinkman­ship leads her to cite Jimi Hen­drix: “Hooray, I wake from yes­ter­day.”

The com­plete tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion is avail­able for down­load here, as is an audio pod­cast.

Note: You can down­load Just Kids or M Train as free audio books if you join Audible.com’s 30-day free tri­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mas­ter Cura­tor Paul Hold­en­gräber Inter­views Hitchens, Her­zog, Goure­vitch & Oth­er Lead­ing Thinkers

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

Pat­ti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

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

Carol Kaye, 81-Year-Old Pioneer of Rock, Gives Kiss’ Gene Simmons a Bass Lesson

in Music | March 29th, 2016

If you asked me to name the best rep­re­sen­ta­tive of rock and roll as a boy’s club, KISS would be high on my list. Despite their com­mit­ment to a gen­der-bend­ing glam style, Front­men Gene Sim­mons and Paul Stanley’s chest hair rugs, wag­ging tongues, and stud­ded cod­pieces are exag­ger­at­ed exam­ples of sev­en­ties virility—a rock era known for pro­gres­sive music, but not pro­gres­sive gen­der pol­i­tics.

If you asked me to name a musi­cian who had chal­lenged and defied gen­der stereo­types in rock and roll, Car­ol Kaye— bassist and mem­ber of L.A.’s top flight ses­sion musi­cians the Wreck­ing Crew—would be high on my list. Kaye and her crew helped cre­ate the sound of Phil Spec­tor records, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, and so many oth­er clas­sic six­ties artists.

Kaye nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly saw her­self as a pio­neer or path­break­er, but her smooth, unpre­ten­tious pro­fes­sion­al­ism car­ried her through a career most musi­cians, male and female, would envy, even if she nev­er stood in the spot­light her­self. Her atti­tude, approach, and play­ing are pret­ty much the oppo­site of the bom­bas­tic, mer­ce­nary Sim­mons, who has on more than one occa­sion weath­ered charges of sex­ism in his pur­suit of big­ger, loud­er, dumb­er music and more tawdry real­i­ty TV.

In the short clip above, the two leg­ends meet, and Kaye sits Sim­mons down and shows him how it’s done.

She has taught hun­dreds of stu­dents to imi­tate, though nev­er dupli­cate, her chops, and earned the clout to take Sim­mons to school (though she seems sur­prised to be doing so); Kaye large­ly helped invent the sound of rock bass and ele­vat­ed the instru­ment from a sup­port­ing play­er to an indis­pens­able lead one as well.

The clip comes from an unfin­ished doc­u­men­tary that fea­tures over an hour of inter­view footage in which Kaye dis­cuss­es her start in music and long­time suc­cess, and demon­strates more of her phe­nom­e­nal, under­stat­ed play­ing.

via No Tre­ble

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

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

Google Makes Its $149 Photo Editing Software Now Completely Free to Download

in Photography, Software | March 25th, 2016

Google’s Nik Col­lec­tion, a pho­to edit­ing soft­ware pack­age designed for pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers, once retailed for $149. Today it’s absolute­ly free to down­load, for both Win­dows and Mac users.

Here you can read Google’s announce­ment, which includes more infor­ma­tion on the soft­ware pack­age and its capa­bil­i­ties.

Today we’re mak­ing the Nik Col­lec­tion avail­able to every­one, for free.

Pho­to enthu­si­asts all over the world use the Nik Col­lec­tion to get the best out of their images every day. As we con­tin­ue to focus our long-term invest­ments in build­ing incred­i­ble pho­to edit­ing tools for mobile, includ­ing Google Pho­tos and Snapseed, we’ve decid­ed to make the Nik Col­lec­tion desk­top suite avail­able for free, so that now any­one can use it.

The Nik Col­lec­tion is com­prised of sev­en desk­top plug-ins that pro­vide a pow­er­ful range of pho­to edit­ing capa­bil­i­ties — from fil­ter appli­ca­tions that improve col­or cor­rec­tion, to retouch­ing and cre­ative effects, to image sharp­en­ing that brings out all the hid­den details, to the abil­i­ty to make adjust­ments to the col­or and tonal­i­ty of images.

Start­ing March 24, 2016, the lat­est Nik Col­lec­tion will be freely avail­able to down­load: Ana­log Efex Pro, Col­or Efex Pro, Sil­ver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharp­en­er Pro and Dfine. If you pur­chased the Nik Col­lec­tion in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll auto­mat­i­cal­ly issue back to you in the com­ing days.

We’re excit­ed to bring the pow­er­ful pho­to edit­ing tools once only used by pro­fes­sion­als to even more peo­ple now.

Once you’ve down­loaded the soft­ware, head over to the Nik Col­lec­tion chan­nel on YouTube where you’ll find video tuto­ri­als, includ­ing the one below called “Intro­duc­tion to the Nik Com­plete Col­lec­tion.” It’s a good place to start.

PS: Some read­ers have asked whether this soft­ware can work as a stand­alone pro­gram, or whether it needs to run with a pro­gram like Pho­to­shop. Here’s what PC Mag­a­zine has to say about that:  “Though you can run the sev­en dif­fer­ent plu­g­ins in the col­lec­tion as stand­alone prod­ucts, they tend to work bet­ter when you inte­grate them into an exist­ing image edit­ing pro­gram, like Adobe’s Pho­to­Shop. ‘(On Win­dows) You can make short­cuts to the indi­vid­ual .exe files on your desk­top and then just drag stacks of images onto them,’ sug­gest­ed one Google+ user.” In short, you have some options.

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:

Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Launch­es Free Course on Look­ing at Pho­tographs as Art

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Down­load Free NASA Soft­ware and Help Pro­tect the Earth from Aster­oids!