What We Heard on the Night John Lennon Was Shot: Radio & TV Broadcasts (December 8, 1980)

in Music, Radio, Television | December 8th, 2014

On Decem­ber 8, 1980, the New Eng­land Patri­ots-Mia­mi Dol­phins game was wind­ing down, the end of anoth­er Mon­day Night Foot­ball game. Then, Howard Cosell, America’s leg­endary sports­cast­er, broke the news to unsus­pect­ing view­ers: “An unspeak­able tragedy con­firmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, out­side of his apart­ment build­ing on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, per­haps, of all of The Bea­t­les, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal, dead on arrival.” Soon enough, more for­mal news reports fol­lowed on the BBC and ABC’s Night­line, and you can still hear what New York­ers heard on the radio that night (below). The sound file was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed by WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, and like Howard says, it puts a lot of things in per­spec­tive for us.

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:

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

Hear John Lennon Sing Home Demo Ver­sions of “She Said, She Said,” “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” and “Don’t Let Me Down”

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

Jeff Bridges Narrates a Brief History of Bob Dylan’s and The Band’s Basement Tapes

in Music | December 4th, 2014

It’s not hard to guess what Bob Dylan will fans will be putting on their Christ­mas lists this year — either the new hard­cov­er book, The Lyrics: Since 1962, the 14-pound, 960-page book con­tain­ing all the lyrics Dylan wrote, record­ed, and per­formed through­out the years. Or the defin­i­tive edi­tion of The Base­ment Tapes, the new col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing 6‑discs and 138 tracks.

Above, actor Jeff Bridges (you know him as “The Dude” in The Big Lebows­ki) nar­rates the sto­ry behind The Base­ment Tapes, trac­ing Dylan’s jour­ney from Green­wich Vil­lage to the base­ment of “Big Pink,” the unas­sum­ing home in West Sauger­ties, New York where Dylan and The Band record­ed those famous tapes. We don’t need to rehearse the sto­ry. Bridges does a fine job of doing that. Below, you can watch him show off some of his musi­cal tal­ents, play­ing a cov­er of a Dylan song, “Ring Them Bells,” at the El Rey The­atre in LA in April 2013. He’s obvi­ous­ly a fan.

H/T Mike

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rockers” (1994)

in Music | December 3rd, 2014

Chrissie Hyn­de knows a few things about being a female rock­er. When at the ten­der age of 14 she saw Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels play at a fair­ground in her home­town of Akron, Ohio, the band got into a fist­fight with each oth­er dur­ing the per­for­mance. She was hooked. “I thought,” she said to The Guardian ‘That’s got to be the life!’ ”

Not long after col­lege at Kent State, where she was in a band with Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh, she end­ed up in Lon­don. There she worked at Mal­colm McLaren’s noto­ri­ous store SEX along­side the future mem­bers of The Sex Pis­tols. She even asked Sid Vicious and John­ny Rot­ten to mar­ry her for the work visa. She tried to start a band with Mick Jones of The Clash, but that didn’t take. She was kicked out of the band Mas­ters of the Back­side before they changed their name to The Damned and became famous. Then in 1978, she formed the band The Pre­tenders and quick­ly became a rock icon with hit tunes like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “Mes­sage of Love.”

In short, Hyn­de has been rock­ing for over 40 years now and she has some advice for aspir­ing lady rock­ers, which was orig­i­nal­ly print­ed as a pro­mo for her 1994 release “Night in my Veins.”

1. Don’t moan about being a chick, refer to fem­i­nism or com­plain about sex­ist dis­crim­i­na­tion. We’ve all been thrown down the stairs, and f—ed about, but no one wants to hear a whin­ing female. Write a loose­ly dis­guised song about it instead and clean up. ($)

2. Nev­er pre­tend to know more than you do. If you don’t know chord names, refer to the dots. Don’t go near the desk unless you plan on becom­ing an engi­neer.

3. Make the oth­er band mem­bers look and sound good. Bring out the best in them; that’s your job. Oh, and you bet­ter sound good too.

4. Do not insist in [sic] work­ing with “females.” That’s just more b.s. Get the best man for the job. If it hap­pens to a woman, great – you’ll have some­one to go to depart­ment stores with on tour instead of mak­ing one of the road crew go with you.

5. Try not to have a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with the band. It always ends in tears.

6. Don’t think that stick­ing your boobs out and try­ing to look f—able will help. Remem­ber you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not “f—me,” it’s “f—you”!

7. Don’t try to com­pete with the guys; it won’t impress any­body. Remem­ber, one of the rea­sons they like you is because you don’t offer yet more com­pe­ti­tion to the already exist­ing male egos.

8. If you sing, don’t “belt” or “screech.” No one wants to hear that sh–; it sounds “hys­ter­i­cal.”

9. Shave your legs, for chris­sakes!

10. Don’t take advice from peo­ple like me. Do your own thing always.

A lot of this is just sound advice for get­ting along at the work­place – don’t act like you know more than you do, don’t com­plain, make your work­mates look good but don’t doink them. But prob­a­bly the key points for Hyn­de is num­ber one and num­ber sev­en.

In that inter­view with the Guardian, she indeed proved to be reluc­tant to “moan” about sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion in the rock­dom. “There’s always been women doing this, just not that many,” she said. “I don’t know what the fem­i­nists have to say about it. Over the years, you’d hear, ‘We weren’t encour­aged.’ Well, I don’t think Jeff Beck­’s moth­er was say­ing, ‘Jef­frey! What are you doing up in your room? Are you rehears­ing up there?’ No one was ever encour­aged to play gui­tar in a band. But I nev­er found it hard­er because I’m a woman. If any­thing I’ve been treat­ed bet­ter. Guys will car­ry my gui­tars and stuff – who’s going to say no? Guys always tune my gui­tars, too.”

Check out the video for “Night in my Veins” below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

The Art of Punk Presents a New Doc­u­men­tary on The Dead Kennedys and Their Grit­ty Aes­thet­ics

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

George Harrison’s Mystical, Fisheye Self-Portraits Taken in India (1966)

in Music, Photography, Religion | December 1st, 2014

The Bea­t­les’ sojourn in India can seem like a bit of a stunt, as much a rock n’ roll cliché as Led Zeppelin’s trashed hotel rooms or Fleet­wood Mac’s coke binges. Eas­i­ly par­o­died in, for exam­ple, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Sto­ry, the band’s turn East­ward looks in hind­sight like fad­dish spir­i­tu­al tourism. That impres­sion may not be so far off. As one writer puts it:

By the late 1960s, The Bea­t­les had engi­neered anoth­er pop cul­ture rev­o­lu­tion (at least in Europe and North Amer­i­ca) by wear­ing Indi­an-style cloth­ing, spout­ing reli­gious and philo­soph­i­cal apho­risms that seemed to bor­row from ‘East­ern’ thought, and lat­er even vis­it­ing India for a high­ly-pub­li­cized train­ing ses­sion to learn Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion with the fraud­u­lent ‘mys­tic’ Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi.

But while for John, Paul, and Ringo, “inter­est in Indian/Hindu cul­ture was rather fleet­ing and tem­po­ral […] for George, India com­plete­ly over­hauled and changed his life per­ma­nent­ly.” As Har­ri­son him­self would lat­er recount of his first jour­ney in 1966, “it was the first feel­ing I’d ever had of being lib­er­at­ed from being a Bea­t­le or a num­ber.” The rest of the band wouldn’t make the trip until two years lat­er.

Har­ri­son had prin­ci­pal­ly embarked to study sitar under Ravi Shankar and learn yoga, but this was also a peri­od of self-dis­cov­ery and escape from, as he says, the “mania.” Trav­el­ing, as he always did, with a cam­era, he doc­u­ment­ed his jour­ney. His pic­tures are far from ordi­nary tourist images.

While he describes in writ­ing the “mix­ture of unbe­liev­able things” he saw, he just as often turned the cam­era on him­self, his pho­to­graph­ic intro­spec­tion made even more pro­nounced by his use of a fish­eye lens.

Inter­est­ing­ly, in his rec­ol­lec­tion of the trip, Har­ri­son ref­er­ences the sur­re­al cult, sci-fi show The Pris­on­er as a prime illus­tra­tion of life as “a num­ber.” One of the show’s most mem­o­rable devices involves a huge, mys­te­ri­ous white bub­ble that cap­tures or kills any­one try­ing to escape the sin­is­ter orga­ni­za­tion that holds the main char­ac­ter cap­tive. In Harrison’s pho­tos, the bub­ble becomes a para­dox­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his way out of fame’s fish­bowl, of the prison of Beat­le­ma­nia and an iden­ti­ty that felt con­trived and alien­at­ing.

Behind his steady, seri­ous gaze open up vis­tas that presage the breadth and depth of his immer­sion in Indi­an spir­i­tu­al prac­tices. What­ev­er one thinks of his con­ver­sion, there’s no doubt it was sin­cere, and life­long. Not long after this first trip, at the age of 24, he wrote to his moth­er, “I want to be self-real­ized. I want to find God. I’m not inter­est­ed in mate­r­i­al things, this world, fame.” Har­ri­son expressed the very same mys­ti­cal aspi­ra­tions in his final, 1997 inter­view, still play­ing and singing with his men­tor Ravi Shankar.

via Shoot­ing Film/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ravi Shankar Gives George Har­ri­son a Sitar Les­son … and Oth­er Vin­tage Footage

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

Phil Spector’s Gen­tle Pro­duc­tion Notes to George Har­ri­son Dur­ing the Record­ing of All Things Must Pass

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

All of Lionel Messi’s 253 Record-Setting Goals in La Liga, Shown in One Video

in Sports | November 30th, 2014

Ear­li­er this month, when Lionel Mes­si scored a hat-trick against Sevil­la, he reached a mile­stone. He had scored his 253rd goal in La Liga, mak­ing him the all-time top scor­er in the elite Span­ish soc­cer league. His first goal came on May 1, 2005, and it took him just 289 match­es to break the record pre­vi­ous­ly held by Tel­mo Zarra. If you’re late to appre­ci­at­ing the artistry of Mes­si, not to wor­ry. Above, we have a video that runs 31 min­utes and brings togeth­er footage of every Mes­si goal in La Liga — all 253 in a row. To see the goals pre­sent­ed in anoth­er fash­ion, check out this info­graph­ic.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Neil Gaiman Reads Bad, Fake Neil Gaiman Stories

in Comedy, Radio | November 28th, 2014

The Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media show, “Wits,” asked its lis­ten­ers to write their “poor­est imi­ta­tions of Neil Gaiman’s writ­ing.” And then they got Gaiman him­self to read the best/worst sub­mis­sions. You can watch the results above, and hear the com­plete radio show here.

To watch/listen to Gaiman read­ing sto­ries that he actu­al­ly wrote, see this col­lec­tion where Neil reads eight works, includ­ing the entire­ty of The Grave­yard Book.

via @Electric Lit­er­a­ture

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:

Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Sto­ries

Neil Gaiman Gives Grad­u­ates 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts

Where Do Great Ideas Come From? Neil Gaiman Explains

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Criterion Collection

in Film | November 27th, 2014

Some of us get our edu­ca­tion at film school. More of us get it from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, that for­mi­da­bly cinephilic restor­er, cura­tor, and pack­ager of clas­sic motion pic­tures from every era. In addi­tion to their ele­gant, sup­ple­men­tary mate­r­i­al-rich home video releas­es — they’ve put them out on Laserdisc, on DVD, on Blu-ray, stream­ing over the inter­net, and will pre­sum­ably con­tin­ue to do so on whichev­er for­mats come next — they also do intrigu­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with the var­i­ous cul­tur­al fig­ures with whom they’ve worked, such as ask­ing them to name their ten favorite Cri­te­ri­on releas­es. You may recall that, back in June, we fea­tured actor, direc­tor, and 1990s “Indiewood” icon Steve Buscemi’s Cri­te­ri­on top ten list, which includ­ed such choice pieces of film his­to­ry as Gus Van San­t’s My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, Fran­co-Dutch hor­ror clas­sic The Van­ish­ing, and long-unre­leased “faux-doc­u­men­tary” Sym­biopsy­chotax­i­plasm.

Of the many more lists criterion.com offers, you can find this sur­pris­ing­ly clas­sic-ori­ent­ed one from Richard Lin­klater, mak­er of films like Slack­er, the Before Sun­rise/Before Sun­set/Before Mid­night tril­o­gy, and this year’s Boy­hood (and anoth­er archi­tect of Indiewood):

1. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)
2. Au hasard Balt­haz­ar (Robert Bres­son)
3. The Flow­ers of St. Fran­cis (Rober­to Rosselli­ni)
4. Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Drey­er)
5. Tokyo Sto­ry (Yasu­jiro Ozu)
6. The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ (Mar­tin Scors­ese)
7. Unfaith­ful­ly Yours (Pre­ston Sturges)
8. Fan­ny and Alexan­der — The Tele­vi­sion Ver­sion (Ing­mar Bergman)
9. Pick­pock­et (Robert Bres­son)
10. I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Pow­ell and Emer­ic Press­burg­er)

Or this one by four mem­bers of the New York no-wave rock band Son­ic Youth, who turned the whole top-ten list con­cept up to twelve, giv­ing their props to Ozu like Linkater and The Van­ish­ing like Busce­mi (“It gets veeer­rry weird,” adds gui­tarist Thurston Moore):

1. Float­ing Weeds (Yasu­jiro Ozu)
2. Jeanne Diel­man, 23, quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles (Chan­tal Aker­man)
3. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainier Wern­er Fass­binder)
4. Mas­culin féminin (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. Dou­ble Sui­cide (Masahi­ro Shin­o­da)
6. The Van­ish­ing (George Sluiz­er)
7. Mam­ma Roma (Pier Pao­lo Pasoli­ni)
8. Black Orpheus (Mar­cel Camus)
9. Ace in the Hole (Bil­ly Wilder)
10. Night on Earth (Jim Jar­musch)
11. Fat Girl (Cather­ine Breil­lat)
12. Days of Heav­en (Ter­rence Mal­ick)

Or lists from vital cre­ators who have more recent­ly arrived on the scene, such as this one from Tiny Fur­ni­ture direc­tor and Girls cre­ator Lena Dun­ham, an invet­er­ate fan of Agnès Var­da (who “man­ages to be both deeply emo­tion­al and utter­ly in con­trol of the tech­ni­cal ele­ments of film­mak­ing [ … ] that had seemed to me to be an impos­si­ble line to strad­dle, and she does it so beau­ti­ful­ly”). She also makes room for Mal­ick­’s Days of Heav­en, (also a pick of Son­ic Youth’s Kim Gor­don), two from Fass­binder (also a direc­tor of choice for Son­ic Youth’s Lee Ranal­do), and one from Bergman (who should make every­one’s favorite-films lists, but also made Lin­klater’s):

1. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold)
2. Days of Heav­en (Ter­rence Mal­ick)
3. Broad­cast News (James L. Brooks)
4. Week­end (Andrew Haigh)
5. La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, Le bon­heur, and Vagabond (Agnès Var­da)
6. The Mar­riage of Maria Braun and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainier Wern­er Fass­binder)
7. Pic­nic at Hang­ing Rock (Peter Weir)
8. Straw Dogs (Sam Peck­in­pah) and Dead Ringers (David Cro­nen­berg)
9. Through a Glass Dark­ly (Ing­mar Bergman)
10. The War Room (Chris Hege­dus and D. A. Pen­nebak­er)

D.A. Pen­nebak­er, by the way, has his own Cri­te­ri­on top ten list, as do oth­er film­mak­ers named here, like Andrew Haigh and Mar­tin Scors­ese. But this leaves me with one burn­ing ques­tion: if direc­tors like Ozu and Fass­binder had lived to see The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, which vol­umes would they have put on their own DVD shelves?

Enter the com­plete col­lec­tion of Cri­te­ri­on Top Tens here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Buscemi’s Top 10 Film Picks (from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

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

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Bob Dylan’s Thanksgiving Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delectable Songs

in Music | November 26th, 2014

Image by Row­land Scher­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’re look­ing for a sound­track for Thanks­giv­ing, you could do worse than to let Bob Dylan cre­ate it for you.

From May 2006 until April 2009, Dylan host­ed the Theme Time Radio Hour, a week­ly radio show on XM Satel­lite Radio. Each show revolved around a dif­fer­ent theme (e.g., “Weath­er,” “Drink­ing” or “Base­ball”). But the episodes all had one thing in com­mon — they pre­sent­ed lis­ten­ers with an eclec­tic mix of music, every­thing from LL Cool J and Chuck Berry, to They Might Be Giants, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, and John­ny Cash. Try­ing to describe the radio show, the­ater crit­ic Ter­ry Tea­chout wrote in The Wall Street Jour­nal: “To lis­ten to Theme Time Radio Hour is to redis­cov­er the sense of musi­cal adven­ture that old-fash­ioned disc jock­eys with strong­ly indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties offered in the days before big-mon­ey sta­tions pinned their fis­cal hopes to the rigid Top 40-style playlists that took the fun out of radio.”

Today we bring you Episode 30 of Sea­son 1, “Thanks­giv­ing Left­overs,” which orig­i­nal­ly aired on Novem­ber 22, 2006. The show fea­tures 18 songs, select­ed and intro­duced by Dylan. The songs (find a list below) aren’t dish­es cooked fresh. No, they’re “left­overs” — tunes that Dylan had hoped to squeeze into pre­vi­ous radio shows but nev­er quite man­aged to do. Yet, togeth­er, they make for a pret­ty good meal. You can stream them all above. And if you like what you hear, head over to the Theme Time Radio Hour Archive, where they’ve appar­ent­ly archived all 100 episodes, audio includ­ed.

1. “Turkey In The Straw” — Lib­er­ace (1952)
2. “Hal­lelu­jah, I’m A Bum” — Har­ry McClin­tock (1926)
3. “Let Me Play With Your Poo­dle” — Tam­pa Red & Big Maceo (1942)
4. “Yard Dog” — Al Fer­ri­er (1972)
5. “The Turkey Hop” — The Robins with John­ny Otis Orches­tra (1950)
6. “Hon­ey­suck­le Rose” — Fats Waller (1934)
7. “Twelve Red Ros­es” — Bet­ty Har­ris (1966)
8. “Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes” — Skeets McDon­ald (1952)
9. “Them There Eyes” — Bil­lie Hol­i­day (1939)
10. “Angel Eyes” — Jesse Belvin (1959)
11. “Gun­slingers” — Mighty Spar­row (1963)
12. “Let’s Be Friends” — Bil­ly Wright (1955)
13. “Whiskey Is The Dev­il (In Liq­uid Form)” — The Bailes Broth­ers (1947)
14. “Teach Me Tonight” — Dinah Wash­ing­ton (1954)
15. “Teacher Teacher” — Rock­pile (1980)
16. “Iodine In My Cof­fee” — Mud­dy Waters (1952)
17. “You Eat Too Much” — Harold Bur­rage (1956)
18. “Pie In The Sky” — Cis­co Hous­ton (1960)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The Digital Nietzsche: Download Nietzsche’s Major Works as Free eBooks

in Philosophy | November 25th, 2014

In times of deep dis­tress I’ve often found the bru­tal, unspar­ing can­dor of Friedrich Niet­zsche a strange com­fort. While whol­ly enam­ored of the aris­to­crat­ic, Hel­lenis­tic past of lit­er­ary inven­tion, the often bil­ious Ger­man philoso­pher nonethe­less had no illu­sions about the nature of pow­er, which does as it will and is not held in check by what we take for com­mon val­ues. In Niet­zsche’s diag­no­sis, no set of values—or what he calls in The Geneal­o­gy of Morals “moral prejudices”—is ever dis­in­ter­est­ed, tran­scen­dent or “dis­con­nect­ed.” Instead, wrote Niet­zsche, the lan­guage of tra­di­tion­al moral­i­ty is gen­er­al­ly syn­ony­mous with the lan­guage of pow­er, thus:

The master’s right of giv­ing names goes so far that it is per­mis­si­ble to look upon lan­guage itself as the expres­sion of the pow­er of the mas­ters: they say “this is that, and that,” they seal final­ly every object and every event with a sound, and there­by at the same time take pos­ses­sion of it.

It is “because of this ori­gin,” writes the con­trar­i­an Niet­zsche, “that the word ‘good’ is far from hav­ing any nec­es­sary con­nec­tion with altru­is­tic acts, in accor­dance with the super­sti­tious belief of these moral philoso­phers.” Niet­zsche described Chris­tian­i­ty as “hos­tile to life” and called for a “reval­u­a­tion of all val­ues,” exco­ri­at­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian beliefs as “slave moral­i­ty.” The rad­i­cal icon­o­clasm expressed in works like The Geneal­o­gy of Morals sits side by side with what can seem like the most reac­tionary val­oriza­tions of “nobil­i­ty” and hier­ar­chy. Niet­zsche may have had noth­ing but con­tempt for lib­er­al, bour­geois soci­ety, but he did not seek to replace it with egal­i­tar­i­an social­ism or any­thing of the kind. It is this some­times jar­ring con­trast between his seem­ing­ly right­ist pol­i­tics and his unsys­tem­at­ic dis­man­tling of the ide­o­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms by which state pow­er jus­ti­fies itself that make Niet­zsche such a con­fus­ing philoso­pher, one so eas­i­ly mis­in­ter­pret­ed and mis­read.

The most famous mis­read­ing of Niet­zsche was a delib­er­ate one, orches­trat­ed by his anti-Semit­ic sis­ter Elis­a­beth, friend and admir­er of Hitler, who cor­rupt­ed her broth­er’s late work and adapt­ed it to Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. And yet, despite Niet­zsche’s seem­ing dis­dain for what he vague­ly termed, among oth­er things, an “under race” of com­mon peo­ple, he also loathed anti-Semi­tism and nation­al­ism and would have been infu­ri­at­ed to see his work used as it was by Ger­man and Ital­ian fas­cists. Lat­er read­ings of Niet­zsche, like those of the late Wal­ter Kauf­mann or Niet­zsche schol­ar and philoso­pher Babette Babich, place him in dia­logue with Hegel, Kant, and Aris­to­tle, and with the Exis­ten­tial­ists. Niet­zsche has been called an exis­ten­tial­ist thinker him­self, as well as a prag­ma­tist, nat­u­ral­ist, and pre-postmodernist—all des­ig­na­tions that get at impor­tant aspects of his thought, e.g. his stress on con­tin­gency, on the phys­i­cal basis of thought, and on the rel­a­tive, per­spec­ti­val nature of truth.

This very broad overview doesn’t pre­tend to do jus­tice to the depth and vari­ety of Niet­zschean thought. If you wish to under­stand his work, you should, of course, read it for your­self. And so you can, near­ly all of it, online. Below, find links to almost all of the philoso­pher’s major works, in Kin­dle, PDF, HTML, ePub, and oth­er for­mats. For some excel­lent guides through Nietzsche’s think­ing, con­sid­er lis­ten­ing to Wal­ter Kaufmann’s 1960 lec­tures and watch­ing the Niet­zsche seg­ment in Human, All Too Human, a 3‑part doc­u­men­tary series that also pro­files Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger and Jean-Paul Sartre. Pro­fes­sor Babich’s site has links to many of her arti­cles online and the site Niet­zsche Cir­cle has a large links sec­tion with many help­ful resources. But of course, there’s no sub­sti­tute for the orig­i­nal. Below, in chrono­log­i­cal order, find most of the com­plete works of Friedrich Niet­zsche. Iron­ic, pes­simistic, joy­ous, cre­ative, and scathing, they make for intrigu­ing, frus­trat­ing, enlight­en­ing, and ulti­mate­ly life-affirm­ing read­ing.

• • The Birth of Tragedy (1872) — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now
  • Human, All Too Human (1878) — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online Now
  • The Dawn of Day (1881) — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now
  • The Gay Sci­ence (1882) — Read Online Now
  • Thus Spake Zarathus­tra (1883) — iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
  • Beyond Good and Evil (1886) — iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats – Read Online Now
  • On the Geneal­o­gy of Morals (1887) — Read Online Now
  • The Case of Wagner/Nietzsche Con­tra Wagner/Selected Apho­risms (1888) — iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
  • Twi­light of the Idols (1888) — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now
  • The Anti Christ (1888) — iPad/iPhone – Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats
  • Ecce Homo (1888) — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now

All of these texts appear in our col­lec­tion of Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks as well as in our larg­er col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Mod­ern Thought (1960)

Human, All Too Human: 3‑Part Doc­u­men­tary Pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger & Sartre

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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

David Lynch Takes Aspiring Filmmakers Inside the Art & Craft of Making Indie Films

in Film | November 21st, 2014

As a cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions of film stu­dents have shown us, you should­n’t try to imi­tate David Lynch. You should, how­ev­er, learn from David Lynch. At his best, the direc­tor of Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, and Mul­hol­land Dri­ve has man­aged, in the words of David Fos­ter Wal­lace, to “sin­gle-hand­ed­ly bro­ker a new mar­riage between art and com­merce in U.S. movies, open­ing for­mu­la-frozen Hol­ly­wood to some of the eccen­tric­i­ty and vig­or of art film.” How has Lynch brought his endur­ing­ly strange and rich­ly evoca­tive visions to the screen, and to a sur­pris­ing extent into the main­stream, with­out much appar­ent com­pro­mise?

You can get an idea of his method in Room to Dream: David Lynch and the Inde­pen­dent Film­mak­er, the twen­ty-minute doc­u­men­tary above. Since Lynch has­n’t released a fea­ture film since 2006’s Inland Empire — an espe­cial­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing work, admit­ted­ly — some fans have won­dered whether he’s put the movies, per se, behind him.

But Room to Dream shows the direc­tor in recent years, very much engaged in both the the­o­ry and process of film­mak­ing — or rather, his dis­tinc­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of the the­o­ry and process of film­mak­ing.

This touch­es on his child­hood obses­sion with draw­ing weapons, his dis­cov­ery of “mov­ing paint­ings,” his endorse­ment of learn­ing by doing, how he uses dig­i­tal video, his enjoy­ment of 40-minute takes, why peo­ple fear the “very dark,” con­vey­ing mean­ing with­out explain­ing mean­ing (espe­cial­ly to actors), the process of “rehears­ing-and-talk­ing, rehears­ing-and-talk­ing,” how Avid (the short­’s spon­sor, as it would hap­pen) facil­i­tates the  “heavy lift­ing” of edit­ing his footage, how he finess­es “hap­py acci­dents,” how he com­pos­es dif­fer­ent­ly for dif­fer­ent screens, and the way that “some­times things take strange routes that end up being cor­rect.” Take Lynch’s words to heart, and you, too, can enjoy his expe­ri­ence of craft­ing what he calls “sound and pic­ture mov­ing along in time” — with or with­out an Avid of your own.

Room to Dream will be added to our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

via NoFilm­School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s 80-Minute Mas­ter Class on Mak­ing “Beau­ti­ful Movies” (2000)

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.