Friedrich Nietzsche & Existentialism Explained to Five-Year-Olds (in Comical Video by Reddit)

in Comedy, Philosophy | April 17th, 2013

Who’s ready for a les­son on “Eggsalent­lal­ism?” How about “Exa­ten­talum?” Sound like fun? Great! Pull up a tiny chair, grab a toy, and get ready to have Niet­zsche explained like you’re five with “Explain Like I’m Five: Exis­ten­tial­ism and Friederich Niet­zsche.” A web series inspired by a sub­red­dit, “Explain Like I’m Five” has explained oth­er com­pli­cat­ed sub­jects to five year-olds, includ­ing the cri­sis in Syr­ia and the volatil­i­ty of the stock mar­ket. In this episode, our two pre­sen­ters prime their stu­dents for a dis­cus­sion on slave moral­i­ty with the ques­tion “who here thinks they’re a good boy or a good girl?”

All the kids eager­ly raise their hands, and after some Socrat­ic dia­logue are told that Exis­ten­tial­ism means “there is no uni­ver­sal moral­i­ty that gov­erns all of us.” I’ll leave it to the philoso­phers out there to assess this def­i­n­i­tion. The kids don’t respond well. They hate Niet­zsche. One vocif­er­ous young crit­ic pro­pos­es toss­ing him on the street and step­ping on him. Like good 19th cen­tu­ry Ger­man burghers, they can’t imag­ine a world with­out rules. I imag­ine these kids’ par­ents would also like to toss Niet­zsche in the street when their angels come home para­phras­ing Beyond Good and Evil.

Some of the pop­u­lar respons­es to Niet­zsche among adults can also be over­ly emo­tion­al. First there is fear: of the sup­posed nihilist who pro­claimed the death of God and who—thanks to the machi­na­tions of his unscrupu­lous and anti-Semit­ic sis­ter—became erro­neous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy after his death. Then there’s the enthu­si­as­tic embrace of Nietzsche’s work by unso­phis­ti­cat­ed read­ers who see him only as an anti­estab­lish­ment roman­tic rebel, hell­bent on under­min­ing all author­i­ty. Some of these impres­sions are valid as far as they go, but they tend to stop with the style and leave out the sub­stance.

What peo­ple tend to miss are Nietzsche’s sus­tained defense of a prag­mat­ic nat­u­ral­ism and his trag­ic embrace of indi­vid­ual human free­dom, which is not won with­out great per­son­al cost. The unusu­al thing about Exis­ten­tial­ism is that it’s a phi­los­o­phy so broad, or so gen­er­ous, it can include the anti-Chris­t­ian Niet­zsche, rad­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian Kierkegaard, and the Marx­ist Sartre. A more seri­ous treat­ment of the subject—1999 three-part BBC doc­u­men­tary series “Human All Too Human”—also includes Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, who actu­al­ly did truck with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. The series, which pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger, and Sartre, begins with the Niet­zsche doc below (this one with Por­tuguese sub­ti­tles).

If you’re new to Niet­zsche, and not actu­al­ly a five-year-old, it’s worth an hour of your time. Then maybe head on over to our col­lec­tion of ven­er­a­ble Prince­ton pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Kaufmann’s lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. For addi­tion­al seri­ous resources, Dr. Gre­go­ry B. Sadler has an exten­sive YouTube lec­ture series on Niet­zsche, Exis­ten­tial­ism, and oth­er philo­soph­i­cal top­ics. And if all you want is anoth­er good chuck­le at Nietzsche’s expense, check out Ricky Ger­vais’ take on the woe­ful­ly mis­un­der­stood philoso­pher.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial­ism with Hubert Drey­fus: Four Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The Exis­ten­tial Star Wars: Sartre Meets Darth Vad­er

The Dead Authors Pod­cast: H.G. Wells Com­i­cal­ly Revives Lit­er­ary Greats with His Time Machine

Find Many Clas­sic Works by Niet­zsche in our Free eBooks Col­lec­tion

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

83 Years of Great Gatsby Book Cover Designs: A Photo Gallery

in Books, Literature | April 17th, 2013

Every­body is famil­iar with Fran­cis Cugat’s orig­i­nal cov­er art for The Great Gats­by. It famous­ly gives expres­sion to lines from Fitzger­ald’s clas­sic work — lines that talk about Daisy Buchanan as the “girl whose dis­em­bod­ied face float­ed along the dark cor­nices and blind­ing signs.” Accord­ing to Charles Scrib­n­er III, the orig­i­nal pub­lish­er, Cugat cre­at­ed the design while Fitzger­ald was still writ­ing the nov­el, and when Fitzger­ald saw the dis­em­bod­ied face, he could­n’t resist writ­ing the imagery into the book. Scrib­n­er quotes the author as say­ing, “For Christ’s sake, don’t give any­one that jack­et you’re sav­ing for me. I’ve writ­ten it into the book.”

Today, Cugat’s orig­i­nal book jack­et fetch­es more at auc­tion than a first edi­tion of the nov­el itself. And even though many oth­er artists have tak­en a crack at design­ing cov­ers for The Great Gats­by, none holds a can­dle to Cugat’s 1925 design. Just take a look at this pho­to gallery at The New York Times. (Click on each cov­er to see them in a larg­er for­mat.)

The Gats­by book cov­ers all cur­rent­ly reside at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, which hous­es oth­er items that Fitzger­ald held near and dear to him — like his copy of Joyce’s Ulysses, his leather brief­case, flask, and more. You can also find orig­i­nal dust jack­ets for Fitzger­ald’s oth­er nov­els on the SC web site, includ­ing Ten­der is the Night, This Side of Par­adise, and The Last Tycoon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adap­ta­tion of The Great Gats­by (Which F. Scott Fitzger­ald Hat­ed)

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road

Find The Great Gats­by in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Find the Yale Course “Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er” in our Col­lec­tion of 700 Free Online Cours­es

Learn How Richard Feynman Cracked the Safes with Atomic Secrets at Los Alamos

in Math, Physics, Technology | April 17th, 2013

The sto­ry has become part of physics lore: A young Richard Feyn­man, future Nobel win­ner, was bored with life in the remote New Mex­i­co desert while work­ing on the atom­ic bomb dur­ing World War II, so he amused him­self by learn­ing to pick the com­bi­na­tion locks in the sup­pos­ed­ly secure fil­ing cab­i­nets con­tain­ing Amer­i­ca’s nuclear secrets. As Feyn­man would lat­er write in his essay, “Safe­crack­er Meets Safe­crack­er”:

To demon­strate that the locks meant noth­ing, when­ev­er I want­ed some­body’s report and they weren’t around, I’d just go in their office, open the fil­ing cab­i­net, and take it out. When I was fin­ished I would give it back to the guy: “Thanks for your report.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Out of your fil­ing cab­i­net.”

“But I locked it!”

“I know you locked it. The locks are no good.”

So the offi­cials at Los Alam­os installed cab­i­nets with bet­ter locks. But Feyn­man stud­ied the new ones sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, and even­tu­al­ly, giv­en a lit­tle time, he could open any lock at will. As a joke, he left a note in one cab­i­net that said, “I bor­rowed doc­u­ment no. LA4312–Feynman the safe­crack­er.”

I opened the safes which con­tained all the secrets to the atom­ic bomb: the sched­ules for the pro­duc­tion of the plu­to­ni­um, the purifi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures, how much mate­r­i­al is need­ed, how the bomb works, how the neu­trons are gen­er­at­ed, what the design is, the dimensions–the entire infor­ma­tion that was known at Los Alam­os: the whole schmeer!

To learn a bit about how Feyn­man did it, watch this fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle video by jour­nal­ist Brady Haran of the YouTube-fund­ed Num­ber­phile. Haran inter­views Roger Bow­ley, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham, who explains sev­er­al of the inge­nious meth­ods used by Feyn­man to solve the prob­lem of crack­ing a lock with (sup­pos­ed­ly) a mil­lion pos­si­ble com­bi­na­tions. And to learn more about Feyn­man’s adven­ture as a safe­crack­er, be sure to read “Safe­crack­er Meets Safe­crack­er,” which is includ­ed in his book Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man! and can be read on PDF by click­ing here.

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:

Free: Richard Feynman’s Physics Course from Cor­nell (1964)

Richard Feynman’s Ode to a Flower: A Short Ani­ma­tion

Harvard Thinks Big 4 Offers TED-Style Talks on Stats, Milk, and Traffic-Directing Mimes

in Harvard | April 16th, 2013

Despite hav­ing no expe­ri­ence with schools of its stature beyond what I’ve gleaned from Take Ivy, I do know that Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty cul­ti­vates minds to dis­cuss the next big ideas. That, in fact, has pro­vid­ed the premise for Har­vard Thinks Big, a series that takes a hand­ful of Har­vard edu­ca­tors and the Har­vard-edu­cat­ed and has them talk about what’s next for human­i­ty. The fourth and most recent annu­al iter­a­tion of Har­vard Thinks Big brought sev­en speak­ers on stage, allow­ing each of them twelve min­utes to break down a top­ic of great impor­tance. Seem­ing­ly with an eye toward the widest intel­lec­tu­al vari­ety, Har­vard Thinks Big 4 fea­tures infor­ma­tion-dense mini-lec­tures from experts on sta­tis­tics, lit­er­a­ture, evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, law, clas­sics, Chi­nese his­to­ry, and jack­fruit. (That last one comes from Annemarie Ryu, cur­rent Har­vard junior and founder of Glob­al Vil­lage Fruits.) You can watch a col­lec­tion of Har­vard Thinks Big talks on Youtube or on iTunes. At either loca­tion, you’ll also find talks from past years includ­ing Jill Lep­ore on the mean­ing of life and, just below, Edward Glaeser on the ever-increas­ing impor­tance of cities.

There you can watch select­ed talks from Har­vard Thinks Big 4, to which the Crim­son offers a “tl;dr guide” here. “Accord­ing to Kant, art can com­mu­ni­cate that which does­n’t have a name yet,” writes the paper’s Lynn Miao, describ­ing pro­fes­sor Dor­ris Som­mer’s lec­ture, view­able at the top of this post. “That some­how involves the may­or of Bogo­ta replac­ing cops with pan­tomimes to direct traf­fic, which actu­al­ly cor­re­lat­ed with a decline in traf­fic acci­dents and homi­cide rates. Appar­ent­ly, the shock val­ue of clowns, and pub­lic art, reach­es across nations.” Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to hear why milk “can pre­vent obe­si­ty, save up to 1.5 mil­lion deaths from diar­rhea by con­tribut­ing healthy gut bac­te­ria, save pre­ma­ture babies — essen­tial­ly every­thing short of cur­dling when in con­tact with lemon,” for which check out pro­fes­sor Kather­ine J. Hin­de’s pre­sen­ta­tion below. It’s called “Why Mam­mals Suck.” We think of Har­vard as one of the most seri­ous places in Amer­i­ca, but clear­ly, at events like Har­vard Thinks Big, they know how to have a good time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Har­vard Thinks Big 2012: 8 All-Star Pro­fes­sors. 8 Big Ideas

Har­vard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Envi­ron­ment Profs

Har­vard and MIT Cre­ate EDX to Offer Free Online Cours­es World­wide

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

The Police Sing “Message in a Bottle” for the First Time Live (1979)

in Music | April 15th, 2013

The Police pulled off the most unlike­ly of musi­cal feats. While sev­er­al bands com­bined the rest­less, raw ener­gy of punk with the rhyth­mic, tune­ful urgency of reg­gae, these guys wrapped it all up in the accom­plished musi­cian­ship and off-kil­ter key changes and shift­ing time sig­na­tures of jazzy prog rock. This had nev­er been done before, and any­one who’s tried it since owes a tremen­dous debt to Sting, Andy Sum­mers, and Stew­art Copeland (no one comes to mind, though). The fact that they were able to retain rock cred­i­bil­i­ty while win­ning pop star­dom and a Gram­my for a rock instru­men­tal (1979’s krautrock-influ­enced “Regat­ta de Blanc”) are all fur­ther tes­ta­ments to the phe­nom­e­nal odd­i­ty that was this band. While I’ve nev­er been much of a fan of Sting’s solo work, The Police have always kind of aston­ished me with their brav­ery and vir­tu­os­i­ty.

And so we come to the act of brav­ery above: in a live appear­ance at Hat­field Poly­tech­nic (now the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hert­ford­shire) in Feb­ru­ary of 1979, the band decides to drop a new, untest­ed song on the enthu­si­as­tic crowd. The song? “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” from the ’79 album Regat­ta de Blanc, the same record that pro­duced that Gram­my-win­ning title-track instru­men­tal. What’s so brave about that, you ask? There’s often no bet­ter way to try out new mate­r­i­al than in front of an already appre­cia­tive audi­ence. Well, this gig was record­ed for a BBC series called “Rock Goes to Col­lege.” Although The Police were skirt­ing star­dom with the sin­gle “Rox­anne” from their first album, they hadn’t quite made it yet, and their first TV appear­ance was a risky venue for demo­ing a new tune. But they pull it off. The crowd bounces in time and the three Police, who seem on the edge of a mis­take or dropped note some­where, give the song a flaw­less turn.

You can watch the full “Rock Goes to Col­lege” con­cert below, which also includes ear­ly hits like “Can’t Stand Los­ing You” (the open­er) and “Rox­anne” (at 29:45).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

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

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

Free: Watch Jackie Robinson Star in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

in Film, Sports | April 14th, 2013

This week­end, the new Jack­ie Robin­son biopic, 42, opened up well in the box offices, bring­ing in $27.3 mil­lion in tick­et sales. That puts it at the top of the charts, which is a real rar­i­ty for a base­ball film.

This isn’t the first time Jack­ie Robin­son’s sto­ry has been told on film. And today we’re bring­ing you anoth­er note­wor­thy pro­duc­tion, The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry from 1950. As review­ers are quick to note, it’s not a work of art. It’s a sim­ple film with low pro­duc­tion val­ues. But, it has one thing that oth­er Jack­ie Robin­son films do not — Jack­ie Robin­son play­ing him­self, and quite well at that. Run­ning 76 minut­ers, the fast-paced film takes the audi­ence through the life and times of the great base­ball play­er and civ­il rights fig­ure. His youth, col­lege foot­ball days, mil­i­tary ser­vice, minor league career, amaz­ing 1949 sea­son with the Brook­lyn Dodgers — they all get cov­ered here.

The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry (which is now in the pub­lic domain) has been added to our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

Bill Murray’s Base­ball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Remembering Maria Tallchief, America’s Great Prima Ballerina

in Art, Theatre | April 14th, 2013

The bril­liant Native Amer­i­can bal­le­ri­na Maria Tallchief died Thurs­day at the age of 88. Tallchief is remem­bered as one of the great bal­let stars of the 20th cen­tu­ry. In her New York Times obit­u­ary, the dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Jacques d’Am­boise is quot­ed as com­par­ing Tallchief to the leg­endary dancers Gali­na Ulano­va of the Sovi­et Union and Mar­got Fonteyn of Britain: “When you thought of Russ­ian bal­let, it was Ulano­va. With Eng­lish bal­let, it was Fonteyn. For Amer­i­can bal­let, it was Tallchief. She was grand in the grand­est way.”

Tallchief was born on Jan­u­ary 24, 1925 in Fair­fax, Okla­homa. Her father was a full-blood­ed Osage Indi­an whose fam­i­ly became wealthy when oil was dis­cov­ered on their land. When she was eight years old her fam­i­ly moved to Los Ange­les, part­ly so that she and her younger sis­ter Mar­jorie could find bet­ter dance instruc­tion. Tallchief showed ear­ly promise and even­tu­al­ly became a stu­dent of the Russ­ian émi­gré dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bro­nisla­va Nijin­s­ka. In 1942 she joined the Bal­let Russe de Monte Car­lo in New York, where it was based dur­ing World War II. In New York, Tallchief quick­ly grew to promi­nence, attract­ing the atten­tion of the leg­endary chore­o­g­ra­ph­er George Bal­an­chine, who became the first of her three hus­bands.

The clip above, from the 1989 film Danc­ing for Mr. B: Six Bal­an­chine Bal­leri­nas, shows Tallchief rem­i­nisc­ing about Bal­an­chine and danc­ing the title role in his 1949 New York City Bal­let pro­duc­tion of Igor Stravin­sky’s Fire­bird. Bal­an­chine chore­o­graphed the bal­let espe­cial­ly for Tallchief, and it became her sig­na­ture role. The sets and cos­tumes of the 1949 pro­duc­tion were designed by Marc Cha­gall. “Maria Tallchief made an elec­tri­fy­ing appear­ance,” wrote the impres­sario Lin­coln Kirstein after the open­ing of Fire­bird, “emerg­ing as the near­est approx­i­ma­tion to a pri­ma bal­le­ri­na that we had yet enjoyed.”

For more of Tallchief’s danc­ing, see the film clip below of her and Rudolf Nureyev, in his Amer­i­can debut, danc­ing the pas de deux from the August Bouronville bal­let, The Flower Fes­ti­val in Gen­zano. The per­for­mance was broad­cast on the Bell Tele­phone Hour on Jan­u­ary 19, 1962, less than a year after Nureyev’s defec­tion to the West and four years before Tallchief’s retire­ment as a dancer.

Tom Lehrer’s Mathematically and Scientifically Inclined Singing and Songwriting, Animated

in Math, Music, Physics | April 12th, 2013

I went through child­hood lis­ten­ing to Tom Lehrer’s “New Math”. The 1965 song, per­formed in part like stan­dard spo­ken-word com­e­dy, made me laugh every time. “In the new approach,” the satirist says of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary math­e­mat­ics he pur­ports to teach us, “the impor­tant thing is to under­stand what you’re doing rather than to get the right answer.” Work­ing aloud through a sub­trac­tion prob­lem at the piano, Lehrer sings the oper­a­tions: “And so you’ve got thir­teen tens and you take away sev­en and that leaves five. Well, six, actu­al­ly, but the idea’s the impor­tant thing.” This struck me at the time as noth­ing more than an amus­ing­ly goofy numer­ic riff, and per­haps one with harsh impli­ca­tions for the flaky edu­ca­tion­al fads of the nineties my peers and I then endured. Only years lat­er did I find out that Cold War Amer­i­ca of the ear­ly six­ties actu­al­ly went through a New Math phase, shak­en hard enough by Sput­nik to des­per­ate­ly foist abstract, set the­o­ry-dri­ven math text­books upon its ele­men­tary school­ers.

Lehrer, who turned 85 on Tues­day, knows the sub­ject well: he holds degrees in math­e­mat­ics from Har­vard, has co-authored such papers as “Ran­dom walks with restrain­ing bar­ri­er as applied to the biased bina­ry counter” and “The dis­tri­b­u­tion of the num­ber of local­ly max­i­mal ele­ments in a ran­dom sam­ple”, and, after retir­ing from music in the ear­ly sev­en­ties, taught math class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Cruz. Leg­end has it that he would incor­po­rate rel­e­vant songs from his cat­a­log into lec­tures. But he nev­er sang only about math­e­mat­ics; he also sang about physics, as you can see in the ani­mat­ed ver­sion of his 1959 song “The Ele­ments” above, a trib­ute simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to the peri­od­ic table and The Pirates of Pen­zance. Nobody can deny the impor­tance of learn­ing how to sub­tract or how to tell one ele­ment from anoth­er, but we’d do well to keep Lehrer’s sharp human insights, present implic­it­ly in all his music and explic­it­ly in some of it, in mind. So put one of his records on the next time you have a birth­day of your own, tak­ing a brac­ing shot of his wit before you con­tin­ue, as he put it in “Bright Col­lege Days”, “slid­ing down the razor blade of life.”

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

Watch Werner Herzog Eat His Shoe, Cooked by Chef Alice Waters (1980)

in Film, Food & Drink | April 10th, 2013

Les Blank made qui­et, affec­tion­ate films about quirky sub­jects. Many of his films paid homage to the music and food he loved—The Blues Accordin’ to Light­nin Hop­kins and Yum Yum Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Cre­ole Cook­ing. Blank was a lover of many tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can musi­cal forms. Some of his movies are the only known filmed doc­u­ments of artists who are now gone.

Blank died April 7 at his home in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. He leaves behind a cat­a­log of films that seem small but in fact take on the biggest sub­jects: human­i­ty, love, com­mit­ment, joy and indi­vid­u­al­ism.

In Gap-Toothed Women, Blank cre­ates a sin­gu­lar love let­ter to women who shun ortho­don­tics and embrace their diastema (the gap between the two front teeth). The film explores the ori­gins of the belief that women with this fea­ture are unusu­al­ly lusty (think of Chaucer’s “gap-toothed wife of Bath”) and ends up cel­e­brat­ing uncon­ven­tion­al beau­ty.

One of his most inter­est­ing works devel­oped out of an inside joke. Blank was a friend of the direc­tor Wern­er Her­zog. Her­zog, in turn, had men­tored the young film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris, who was mak­ing his first film, Gates of Heav­en. In a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly dark attempt to be encour­ag­ing, Her­zog quipped that he would eat his shoe if Mor­ris com­plet­ed the film.

A man of his word, Her­zog lat­er ate the shoe in front of an audi­ence inside Berkeley’s U.C. The­ater. Food pio­neer Alice Waters cooked the shoe for five hours in gar­lic and wine. Blank filmed the event in 1980 and, true to his style, stepped back from the sub­ject and cre­at­ed a film about mak­ing hon­est art. You can watch it above.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site: .

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:

Wern­er Her­zog and Cor­mac McCarthy Talk Sci­ence and Cul­ture

Errol Mor­ris: Two Essen­tial Truths About Pho­tog­ra­phy

Por­trait Wern­er Her­zog: The Director’s Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Short Film from 1986

The Rolling Stones Live in Hyde Park, 1969

in Film, Music | April 9th, 2013

As the Rolling Stones gear up for their first full tour in five years, we take you back to a more inno­cent time, when the band was young and the tick­ets were not $500 each.

The year was 1969. The hip­pie coun­ter­cul­ture was still in bloom, and the Stones were at a moment of tran­si­tion. The band was in the process of fin­ish­ing its Let it Bleed album at Olympic Stu­dios in Lon­don with­out founder and mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist Bri­an Jones, who was asked to leave the group in ear­ly June because of his esca­lat­ing drug prob­lem and increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult per­son­al­i­ty. The Stones replaced Jones with the tal­ent­ed gui­tarist Mick Tay­lor. Eager to get rolling again, the group asked a pro­mot­er to orga­nize a free music fes­ti­val in Hyde Park, with the Stones at the top of the bill.

On July 5, 1969, a crowd of between 250,000 and 500,000 peo­ple gath­ered for the con­cert. Only three nights ear­li­er, Bri­an Jones was found dead at the bot­tom of his swim­ming pool. In his hon­or, Mick Jag­ger start­ed the Hyde Park con­cert by read­ing a pas­sage from Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley’s “Adon­ais: An Ele­gy on the Death of John Keats.”  The Stones then released thou­sands of white but­ter­flies and launched into a raw set that includ­ed both clas­sics and rar­i­ties:

1. “I’m Yours & I’m Hers”
2. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”
3. “Mer­cy Mer­cy”
4. “Down Home Girl”
5. “Stray Cat Blues”
6. “No Expec­ta­tions”
7. “I’m Free”
8. “Lov­ing Cup”
9. “Love in Vain”
10. “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion”
11. “Honky Tonk Women”
12. “Mid­night Ram­bler”
13. “Street Fight­ing Man”
14. “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”

The con­cert was doc­u­ment­ed by film­mak­ers Leslie Wood­head and Jo Dur­den-Smith for Grana­da Tele­vi­sion and was lat­er released on DVD as The Stones in the Park. You can watch the com­plete film above, although the songs will not appear in the same order as in the con­cert. It is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enjoy­able record of one of the most notable con­certs the Stones ever gave.

This com­ing July 6, exact­ly 44 years and a day after the 1969 con­cert, the Stones will return to Hyde Park for anoth­er con­cert. This time around it won’t be free. And oh yes: The con­cert will be spon­sored by Bar­clay­card, from the bank with the trusty slo­gan, “Flu­ent in Finance.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

The Rolling Stones Sing the Bea­t­les’ “Eight Days a Week” in a Hotel Room (1965)

The Rolling Stones First Played 50 Years Ago; Watch Them Explode Into Fame Short­ly There­after