Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essential Movies — Now with Women Filmmakers

in Film | November 19th, 2014

Image by José Cruz/ABr CC-BY-SA‑3.0

Last year, inde­pen­dent film icon and NYU pro­fes­sor Spike Lee turned to the crowd­sourc­ing site Kick­starter to raise $1.25 mil­lion dol­lars for his lat­est film. To drum up pub­lic­i­ty, he pub­lished his list of 87 “essen­tial” movies that he hands out in his grad­u­ate film class­es. And it is a very idio­syn­crat­ic list. Some great, over­looked movies like Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and Steve James’s Hoop Dreams make the cut while oth­er inclu­sions are more puz­zling — Mel Gibson’s Apoc­a­lyp­to, for instance. Or Abel Ferrera’s Bad Lieu­tenant. The list’s exclu­sions, how­ev­er, raised eye­brows. Cit­i­zen Kane (?!) some­how didn’t get a men­tion. Nei­ther did Sev­en Samu­rai. Stan­ley Kubrick’s Spar­ta­cus some­how won out over 2001: A Space Odyssey. And such canon­i­cal direc­tors as Yasu­jiro Ozu, Ing­mar Bergman, Fritz Lang, John Ford and Char­lie Chap­lin were left out entire­ly.

But the inter­net real­ly took Lee to task for the list’s most glar­ing omis­sion – there are no women. To that last issue, Lee made amends. In his updat­ed blog entry – “Thank You For That Coat Pulling” – Lee revamped the list to include eight movies by five female direc­tors, bring­ing the total to 95.

• The Piano- Jane Cam­pi­on (1993)

• Daugh­ters of the Dust- Julie Dash (1991)

• The Hurt Lock­er- Kathryn Bigelow (2008)

• Sug­ar Cane Alley - Euzhan Pal­cy (1983)

• The Seduc­tion of Mimi- Lina Wert­muller (1972)

• Love and Anar­chy - Lina Wert­muller (1973)

• Swept Away - Lina Wert­muller (1974)

• Sev­en Beau­ties — Lina Wert­muller (1975)

Three of the four women ever to be nom­i­nat­ed for a Best Direc­tor Oscar wound up on the list – Wert­muller, Cam­pi­on, Bigelow. I guess Lee isn’t a fan of Sophia Cop­po­la.

Lina Wert­muller man­aged to get four films on the new list – a feat not shared by any of her male coun­ter­parts. That’s right, she best­ed Kuro­sawa, Kubrick and Hitch­cock. In her hey­day, Wert­muller court­ed con­tro­ver­sy by com­bin­ing sex and left wing pol­i­tics, which sounds right up Lee’s alley. Fair­ly or not, Wertmuller’s rep­u­ta­tion hasn’t aged well, most­ly because fem­i­nist crit­ics pil­lo­ried her movie for being misog­y­nous. And Guy Ritchie’s unfor­tu­nate remake of her 1974 movie Swept Away, star­ring Madon­na, did lit­tle to bur­nish her pres­tige.

Also on the list is Julie Dash’s Daugh­ter of the Dust, a lyri­cal land­mark of indie cin­e­ma about Gul­lah women liv­ing on one of South Carolina’s bar­ri­er islands, and French direc­tor Euzhan Palcy’s lit­tle seen Sug­ar Cane Alley is about blacks toil­ing in the sug­ar cane fields of rur­al Mar­tinique.

Indiewire notes that Lee’s addi­tions bump the gen­der dis­par­i­ty up from 0% to about 8.7%. That’s not a lot, but accord­ing to Cel­lu­loid Ceil­ing’s 2013 report, it’s bet­ter than it is cur­rent­ly in Hol­ly­wood. Of the top 250 earn­ing movies last year, only 6 were direct­ed by women.

You can see Lee’s orig­i­nal list below:

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films for a Young Film­mak­er

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

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

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Wittgenstein Day-by-Day: Facebook Page Tracks the Philosopher’s Wartime Experience 100 Years Ago

in History, Philosophy | November 18th, 2014

Last week we told you about an ambi­tious video series — The Great War — that will doc­u­ment how World War I unfold­ed, week-by-week, over a four-year peri­od, from 1914 to 1918. A new video will be released every Thurs­day, and it will reflect on what hap­pened dur­ing the same week 100 years pri­or. When com­plete, there should be close to 300 videos in the series.

Today, we’re stay­ing in the same time peri­od, but get­ting even more micro. Wittgen­stein Day-by-Day is a Face­book page that “tracks [Lud­wig] Wittgen­stein’s diary entries as they were writ­ten 100 years ago,” writes Levi Ash­er on his blog Lit­er­ary Kicks. Dur­ing World War I, Wittgen­stein served on the front­lines in a how­itzer reg­i­ment in Gali­cia and was dec­o­rat­ed sev­er­al times for his courage (more on that here). While fight­ing, he con­tin­ued writ­ing phi­los­o­phy — texts that would be gath­ered in Note­books, 1914–1916 – while also record­ing his expe­ri­ences in his diaries. Today’s entry on Wittgen­stein Day-by-Day reads:

Wednes­day 18th Novem­ber, 1914: In his pri­vate diary, LW reports hear­ing more thun­der from the front-line, as well as machine-gun fire and heavy artillery fire. He records feel­ing pleased that their com­man­der is again being replaced by their Lieu­tenant. He notes that he has done quite a lot of (philo­soph­i­cal) work, and is in a good mood. How­ev­er, he also notes that in his work there has been at a stand­still, as he needs a major inci­dent to move for­ward (GT2, S.22).

Con­tin­u­ing his thought from yes­ter­day, LW tells him­self that it is all sim­ply a mat­ter of the exis­tence of the log­i­cal place. ‘But what the dev­il is this “log­i­cal place”?’, he then asks him­self (NB, p.31).

You can like and fol­low Wittgen­stein Day-by-Day on Face­book. And, while you’re at it, do the same with Open Cul­ture’s FB page here.

via Lit­er­ary Kicks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

Bertrand Rus­sell on His Stu­dent Lud­wig Wittgen­stein: Man of Genius or Mere­ly an Eccen­tric?

Pho­tog­ra­phy of Lud­wig Wittgen­stein Released by Archives at Cam­bridge

Down­load 110 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks: From Aris­to­tle to Niet­zsche & Wittgen­stein

Charles Dickens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Second Life as a Letter Opener

in History, Letters, Literature | November 17th, 2014

Image via New York Pub­lic Library

Increas­ing­ly Face­book seems a vir­tu­al pet ceme­tery, with images of recent­ly depart­ed cats and dogs but­tressed with words of heart­break and con­so­la­tion. It feels hard-heart­ed to scroll past with­out lay­ing a com­ment at each fresh­ly dug cyber-mound, even when one has no per­son­al rela­tion­ship with the deceased, or, to large degree, the own­er. The lazy man may “like” news of a beloved Airedale’s demise, but acknowl­edg­ment can­not always be said to equal respect.

And what, pray tell, is the pro­to­col after? How many min­utes should elapse before it is accept­able to post Throw­back Thurs­day shots of one’s younger, big-haired self? What if one acci­den­tal­ly sends a Far­mville noti­fi­ca­tion to the bereaved?

If only we had a Vic­to­ri­an we could ask.

Prefer­ably, Charles Dick­ens.

He went to his reward eleven years before “Poor Cher­ry,” the first dog plant­ed in Hyde Park’s small pet ceme­tery, but he was a keen observ­er of mourn­ing cus­toms.

He was also an ani­mal lover, as his daugh­ter, Mamie not­ed in My Father as I Recall Him:

On account of our birds, cats were not allowed in the house; but from a friend in Lon­don I received a present of a white kit­ten — Williami­na — and she and her numer­ous off­spring had a hap­py home at “Gad’s Hill.” … As the kit­tens grow old­er they became more and more frol­ic­some, swarm­ing up the cur­tains, play­ing about on the writ­ing table and scam­per­ing behind the book­shelves. But they were nev­er com­plained of and lived hap­pi­ly in the study until the time came for find­ing them oth­er homes. One of these kit­tens was kept, who, as he was quite deaf, was left unnamed, and became known by ser­vants as “the mas­ter’s cat,” because of his devo­tion to my father. He was always with him, and used to fol­low him about the gar­den like a dog, and sit with him while he wrote. One evening we were all, except father, going to a ball, and when we start­ed, left “the mas­ter” and his cat in the draw­ing-room togeth­er. “The mas­ter” was read­ing at a small table, on which a light­ed can­dle was placed. Sud­den­ly the can­dle went out. My father, who was much inter­est­ed in his book, relight­ed the can­dle, stroked the cat, who was look­ing at him pathet­i­cal­ly he noticed, and con­tin­ued his read­ing. A few min­utes lat­er, as the light became dim, he looked up just in time to see puss delib­er­ate­ly put out the can­dle with his paw, and then look appeal­ing­ly towards him. This sec­ond and unmis­tak­able hint was not dis­re­gard­ed, and puss was giv­en the pet­ting he craved. Father was full of this anec­dote when all met at break­fast the next morn­ing.

One anec­dote Mamie chose not to include is that when Dick­ens’ Bob, the deaf kit­ten men­tioned above, left this earth­ly plane, the mas­ter turned him into a let­ter open­er.

Well, not the whole cat, actu­al­ly. Just a sin­gle paw, which the author had stuffed and attached to an ivory blade. The blade is engraved “C.D. In Mem­o­ry of Bob 1862” which is more grave mark­er than most pussy­cats can hope for.

Should any­one ever pub­lish a His­to­ry of Charles Dick­ens in 100 Objects, count on this object to make the cut.

Still, it’s an odd­i­ty most con­tem­po­rary West­ern­ers would view with dis­taste. (But not all. The Mor­bid Anato­my Museum’s fre­quent small mam­mal taxi­dermy work­shops draw might­i­ly from the ranks of Brook­lyn hip­sters.)

I cer­tain­ly felt the need to hus­tle my then 12-year-old son past this unusu­al sou­venir when it was dis­played as part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s cozy exhib­it, Charles Dick­ens: The Key to Char­ac­ter. The kid’s an ani­mal lover who was in Oliv­er!  at the time. I feared he’d respond with Tale of Two Cities-lev­el peas­ant rage, which is accept­able, except when there’s a show that must go on.

Pre­served!, a British taxi­dermy blog spon­sored by the Arts and Human­i­ties Research Coun­cil offers a ten­der take on Dick­ens’ moti­va­tion. Over the years, he had sev­er­al ani­mals, includ­ing a pet raven, stuffed, but his close­ness with Bob called for a spe­cial approach. 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture schol­ar Jen­ny Pyke writes that “the taxi­der­mied cat paw stands out in its tac­tile soft­ness and emo­tion­al ten­der­ness. Most often, as pop­u­lar as it was in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, taxi­dermy was con­sumed visu­al­ly only, dis­played in glass cas­es or crowd­ed cab­i­nets. With Bob’s paw, Dick­ens cre­at­ed an object meant to be held dai­ly.”

It’s not for the squea­mish, but I can see how this can­ni­ly orches­trat­ed hand-hold­ing could bring ongo­ing com­fort. More than the fleet­ing con­do­lences pro­lif­er­at­ing on Face­book, any­way.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

T.S. Eliot Reads Old Possum’s Book of Prac­ti­cal Cats & Oth­er Clas­sic Poems (75 Min­utes, 1955)

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

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

Download 135 Free Philosophy eBooks: From Aristotle to Nietzsche & Wittgenstein

in e-books, Philosophy | November 14th, 2014

Just want­ed to give you a quick heads up that we’ve recent­ly spun out a col­lec­tion of Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks (from our larg­er, more diverse col­lec­tion of 600 Free eBooks). Right now, you will find 110 clas­sic works on the new list — foun­da­tion­al texts writ­ten by Aris­to­tle, Descartes, Hegel and Kant, not to men­tion Kierkegaard, Wittgen­stein and Niet­zsche, too. The list will keep grow­ing at a steady clip. But if you see any cru­cial texts miss­ing, please let us know, and we will try to get them added ASAP. Of course, we’re look­ing for works in the pub­lic domain.

You can gen­er­al­ly down­load the Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks to your Kin­dle, iPad, iPhone and oth­er devices. (Kin­dle users can use these instruc­tions to get .mobi files onto their devices.) Or, in most cas­es, we give you the option to read the books in your web brows­er. Take your pick.

As a quick last note, you might want to com­ple­ment the Phi­los­o­phy eBooks with our big list of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es. The two col­lec­tions go hand in hand.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

The Epis­te­mol­o­gy of Dr. Seuss & More Phi­los­o­phy Lessons from Great Children’s Sto­ries

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free, Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

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

in Literature | November 13th, 2014

In “Epic Pooh,” a lengthy, can­tan­ker­ous essay on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that sav­ages the trilogy’s nos­tal­gic, mid­dle-class ide­ol­o­gy, fan­ta­sy maven Michael Moor­cock takes a long quo­ta­tion from a 1969 review by Clyde S. Kil­by as his epi­graph. Artic­u­lat­ing just the view Moor­cock rails against, Kil­by writes,

For a cen­tu­ry at least the world has been increas­ing­ly demythol­o­gized. But such a con­di­tion is appar­ent­ly alien to the real nature of men. Now comes a writer such as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and, as remythol­o­giz­er, strange­ly warms our souls.

We may uncrit­i­cal­ly enjoy Tolkien as “redo­lent of time­less­ness,” as does Kil­by, or see in his work—as does the skep­ti­cal Moorcock—a reac­tionary sen­ti­men­tal­ism, “the prose of the nurs­ery-room… meant to soothe and con­sole….”

In either case, the effect is achieved: what­ev­er else we make of The Lord of the Rings—Ortho­dox alle­go­ry, anti-mod­ern polemic, envi­ron­men­tal­ist fable, etc.—it is also, with­out a doubt, pos­sessed of a strange pow­er to soothe, to envel­op, to trans­port read­ers to a plane where all human action (or hob­bit, elf, or dwarf) is ampli­fied a hun­dred­fold and giv­en immea­sur­able sig­nif­i­cance. In this respect, his work may be com­pared to the ancient epics that inspired it, though some may think it hereti­cal to say so.

Tolkien fans couldn’t care less. As his biog­ra­ph­er at the Tolkien Soci­ety observes, “he has reg­u­lar­ly been con­demned by the Eng. Lit. estab­lish­ment, with hon­ourable excep­tions, but loved by lit­er­al­ly mil­lions of read­ers world­wide.” While hard­ly a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the “estab­lish­ment,” Moor­cock echoes their crit­i­cal judg­ments. I am sym­pa­thet­ic to some of them. But then I pick up the books, or watch the sweep­ing Peter Jack­son adap­ta­tions, and my sus­pi­cions drop away. I can become again the thir­teen-year-old read­er who spent hours ful­ly immersed in the grandeur, hero­ism, humor and dread of Mid­dle Earth. This respite from the fre­quent, har­ried con­fu­sion and fatigue of adult­hood is most wel­come, even if, in the end, it is found in what Moor­cock calls “com­fort­ing lies.” But per­haps that’s what we want from epic fan­ta­sy, after all, Moorcock’s high lit­er­ary seri­ous­ness notwith­stand­ing.

And as for myself, at least, the full immer­sion in Tolkien’s world goes dou­ble when I hear the author him­self read his work. We’ve fea­tured many selec­tions of Tolkien read­ing in the past—from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring (in Elvish!), The Two Tow­ers, and Rings pre­cur­sor The Hob­bit. Above, you can hear many of these read­ings and much more, com­piled by Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh researcher Sean Williams for his pod­cast Voice on Record (Part 1 at the top, Part 2 above). Along the way, Williams offers much help­ful con­text and reads the lin­er notes from the orig­i­nal LPs from which these record­ings come. And yes, Tolkien does, indeed, lapse into nurs­ery rhyme, in “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon” (or “There is an Inn,” at 10:30 in Part 1), a poem from The Hob­bit. In his voice, it is delight­ful to hear.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read a Lengthy Excerpt from The Hob­bit (1952)

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

Read an Excerpt of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1926 Trans­la­tion of Beowulf Before It’s Final­ly Pub­lished Next Month

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

Learn The History of Philosophy in 247 Podcasts (With More to Come)

in Philosophy, Podcasts | November 12th, 2014

Yes­ter­day we took a look at, or rather a lis­ten to, the “pod­cast­ing renais­sance,” high­light­ing a few of the new wave of shows and rec­om­mend­ing some of the pre-exist­ing ones you may have missed. Many Open Cul­ture read­ers will remem­ber our addic­tion to phi­los­o­phy pod­casts — The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life, Phi­los­o­phy Bites, and Phi­los­o­phize This!, to name but three of our favorites — and some may won­der if The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps (iTunes – RSS Feed – Web Site), which we fea­tured back in 2011 and again in 2012, sur­vived the dark ages into which pod­cast­ing had appar­ent­ly fall­en. Could its host Peter Adam­son, pro­fes­sor at Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and King’s Col­lege Lon­don, have suc­cumbed to the dread­ed pod­fade some­where between Plot­nius on the soul and Chris­t­ian asceti­cism?

Wor­ry not, stu­dents of thought, for Adam­son has con­tin­ued these past few years, still reg­u­lar­ly and gap­less­ly, to pro­vide “the ideas and lives of the major philoso­phers as well as the less­er-known fig­ures of the tra­di­tion.” Just this past week­end, he put up a twen­ty-minute episode on the Car­olin­gian Renais­sance. If you haven’t kept up with the show since we last post­ed about it, you’ve got a great deal of intel­lec­tu­al­ly rich catch­ing up to do. You will find more than 100 new pod­casts, fea­tur­ing short talks on Latin Pla­ton­ism, Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy’s “Bagh­dad school,” phi­los­o­phy’s reign in Spain, Illu­mi­na­tion­ism, and women schol­ars and Islam. If you’ve want­ed to learn the entire his­to­ry phi­los­o­phy in the most con­ve­nient pos­si­ble man­ner, now’s the time to jump aboard. If you planned on wait­ing until Adam­son gets to, say, Der­ri­da, I fear you’ll have a bit of a daunt­ing back­log on your hands — not to men­tion your ears and brain.

Note: This arti­cle was first pub­lished in Novem­ber, 2014. As of Feb­ru­ary, 2016, there are 247 episodes in this series. The title of the post has been updat­ed to reflect that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: A Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: Pod­cast­ing Ideas From Pla­to to Sin­gu­lar­i­ty Since 2007

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

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.

8‑Bit Philosophy: Plato, Sartre, Derrida & Other Thinkers Explained With Vintage Video Games

in Philosophy, Video Games | November 12th, 2014

You thought video games were a waste of time? Well, think again. These 8‑bit video games can teach you phi­los­o­phy. Pla­to, Descartes, Niet­zsche, Der­ri­da and the rest. Cre­at­ed by Nap­kin Note Pro­duc­tions, 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy attempts to “com­mu­ni­cate even the most com­plex of philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts in a fun, easy-to-under­stand way.”

Launched in April, the series now fea­tures 15 episodes. The very first one used the 1986 Nin­ten­do game Zel­da to unpack Pla­to’s con­cept of the Real. Lat­er episodes grap­pled with Hegel’s con­cept of his­to­ry; Sartre’s notion of free­dom (above); and Niet­zsche’s thoughts on the lim­its of sci­ence (also above).

The most recent episode explores the phi­los­o­phy of Jacques Der­ri­da using scenes from the 1987 beat’ em up video game, Dou­ble Drag­on. Does that game ring a bell? It did­n’t for me either. Until I googled it and sud­den­ly remem­bered wast­ing count­less hours and quar­ters on it, almost three decades ago. It’s all com­ing back to me now.

You can watch all 15 episodes of 8‑Bit Phi­los­o­phy on YouTube. To play real vin­tage arcade games, see our post from last week: The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free). And to get more immersed in phi­los­o­phy, see our col­lec­tion: 125 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alain de Botton’s School of Life Presents Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions to Hei­deg­ger, The Sto­ics & Epi­cu­rus

Watch The Idea, the First Ani­mat­ed Film to Deal with Big, Philo­soph­i­cal Ideas (1932)

The Red Hot Chili Orchestra

in Music | November 9th, 2014

Chili Klaus, a Dan­ish entertainer/chili enthu­si­ast, asked some mem­bers of the Dan­ish Nation­al Cham­ber Orches­tra to per­form Tan­go Jalousie … but with a twist. Mid­way through their per­for­mance, they ate “the world’s hottest chili pep­pers” and then con­tin­ued on with the show. Over two mil­lion peo­ple have enjoyed what hap­pens next.

The orches­tra, cre­at­ed in Copen­hagen in 1937, is unfor­tu­nate­ly going to be shut down at the end of the year by its cash-strapped par­ent com­pa­ny, the Dan­ish Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (DBC). The video above seems to be just a fun­ny final act. Too bad it was­n’t used as part of a cam­paign to get the DBC to recon­sid­er its deci­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

Har­ry Partch’s Kooky Orches­tra of DIY Musi­cal Instru­ments

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

135 Free Philosophy eBooks

in | November 7th, 2014

This page fea­tures a grow­ing list of Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks, pre­sent­ing essen­tial works by Aris­to­tle, Hegel, Kant, Niet­zsche, Wittgen­stein and many oth­er philoso­phers. You can gen­er­al­ly read these texts on your Kin­dle, iPad & iPhone, or web brows­er. For those inter­est­ed in phi­los­o­phy, you won’t want to miss our col­lec­tion of Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es.

• Aquinas, Thomas — Sum­ma The­olo­giae
  • iPad/iPhone: Part 1 — Part 2 — Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats: Part 1 — Part 2 — Part 3 — Read Online Now
• Aris­to­tle — Col­lect­ed Works
  • Read Online Now
• Aris­to­tle — Nico­machean Ethics
  • Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats — Read Online Now
• Aris­to­tle — Physics
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Gen­er­al Resources

• 80 Phi­los­o­phy ebooks from UC Press
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Hear The Clash’s Vanilla Tapes, Demos of Nearly Every Song From London Calling

in Music | November 6th, 2014

Every cre­ative work begins with a draft—or two, or three, or four. Great Amer­i­can nov­el, icon­ic paint­ing, gen­er­a­tion-defin­ing poem, album of the decade… each rep­re­sents a palimpsest of sketch­es, blind alleys, dead ends, demos, and out­takes. So it’s no great sur­prise to learn that Lon­don Call­ing, the Clash’s dou­ble-album mas­ter­piece, exists as an ear­li­er ver­sion, record­ed by the band them­selves on four-track tape machines at their rehearsal space in cen­tral Lon­don. What is maybe sur­pris­ing is how good these ear­ly record­ings are, and that they exist at all. Called The Vanil­la Tapes, after the name of their stu­dio, the tapes—though cer­tain­ly rough—represent what The Guardian calls “a col­lec­tion of demos and rehearsals that still man­age to sound more focused, intel­li­gent and rel­e­vant than most of today’s young pre­tenders.” No need to name names; it’s not much of a stretch to say that no rock and roll band today sounds as inter­est­ing as the Clash did in their prac­tices 35 years ago.

Record­ed in 1979, then lost, it seemed, for­ev­er, the tapes lived only in rumors and sly hints dropped by Joe Strum­mer of a self-record­ed LP. That is until March of 2004, when Mick Jones dis­cov­ered them in a box and “rec­og­nized them instant­ly for what they were.” The tapes, he said, “hadn’t been heard since before the record was made. It was pret­ty amaz­ing.” These ver­sions, writes Pat Gilbert at Mojo, are “clean, bright record­ings that reveal a group who are evi­dent­ly enjoy­ing cre­at­ing some­thing organ­ic and musi­cal.”

Paul’s bass walks, hops and lopes as he feels him­self into jazz, funk and dis­co. Mick plays eco­nom­i­cal­ly, expert­ly and flu­id­ly – intel­li­gent licks and chops. Joe’s rhythm gui­tar cuts through like a man who learned his craft from old Bo Did­dley, Buk­ka White and Chuck Berry records. Top­per is mag­nif­i­cent – light, pre­cise and clever. It’s Lon­don Call­ing stripped bare for com­bo play­ing: no horns, Ham­mond, piano, whistling.

At the top of the post, hear a rough take of “Lon­don Call­ing.” Aside from some hes­i­tan­cy in Strummer’s deliv­ery and a some­what plod­ding open­ing, the record­ing captures—perhaps even more than the stu­dio take—the apoc­a­lyp­tic dread of the song’s lyri­cal imagery. Some of the lines are different—London calls to the “the fools and the clowns” and “the mods on the run.” But this ear­ly ver­sion does have Strummer’s were­wolf howl and can­ny sum­ma­tion of the turn-of-the decade zeit­geist. Above, we have the Vanil­la Tapes ver­sion of “Rudie Can’t Fail” in all its funky ska imme­di­a­cy. (Notice the descend­ing melody in the chorus—which I almost like bet­ter than the album ver­sion’s ascend­ing chorus—and the toast­ing inter­jec­tions.) Just below, hear “Heart and Mind,” one of “five com­plete­ly unknown Clash songs” that appears on the tapes, “a rock­er,” writes Gilbert, “pitched some­where between ‘The Pris­on­er’ and ‘Death or Glo­ry.’”

Why this didn’t make the album, we’ll maybe nev­er know, but the cho­rus is great—“You’ve got a heart / You’ve got a mind / But you can’t / Keep them in time.” The oth­er four unearthed out­takes are “Where You Gonna Go (Sowe­to),” a rock­a­bil­ly tune called “Lone­some Me,” “bluesy instru­men­tal “Walk­ing the Side­walk,” and a reg­gae ver­sion of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me.” The tapes “includ­ed 37 tracks in total… pared down” for release “to the 21 best ver­sions.” Miss­ing from The Vanil­la Tapes are Lon­don Call­ing tracks “Span­ish Bombs,” “The Card Cheat,” “Wrong ‘Em Boyo,” and “Train in Vain,” con­firm­ing “the received wis­dom that (except “Wrong ‘Em Boyo”), these were writ­ten when The Clash were in Wes­sex record­ing the album prop­er.”

“Mud­dy, raw, and insis­tent­ly vague,” writes Pitch­fork, the tapes see the band “work­ing hard, but also grasp­ing for a muse.” They found a guid­ing cre­ative force in pro­duc­er Guy Stevens, who craft­ed their demos into the more pol­ished, but still rough enough for punk, stu­dio ver­sions we know well. But even with­out the ben­e­fit of com­par­i­son with the bril­liant real­iza­tions on the record, these ear­ly ver­sions stand up on their own as the sound of a band with more rangy cre­ative ener­gy than most groups can muster over their entire careers. The tapes were includ­ed in the 25th anniver­sary lega­cy edi­tion of Lon­don Call­ing, but you can hear them all on Youtube (lis­ten to “Lost in the Super­mar­ket” above). Like some com­menters, you might be sur­prised to find you like some of these raw demos even bet­ter than their cel­e­brat­ed stu­dio ver­sions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sur­viv­ing Mem­bers of The Clash Recount the Mak­ing of “Lon­don Call­ing” & Dis­cuss New Box Set

Watch Audio Ammu­ni­tion: Google’s New Doc­u­men­tary Series on The Clash and Their Five Clas­sic Albums

Doc­u­men­tary Viva Joe Strum­mer: The Sto­ry of the Clash Sur­veys the Career of Rock’s Beloved Front­man

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