The Rolling Stones at 50: Mick, Keith, Charlie & Ronnie Revisit Their Favorite Songs

in Music, Radio | November 19th, 2012

The Rolling Stones are cel­e­brat­ing their 50th anniver­sary this year, and like every­thing with the Stones, they’re doing it big. The band has sched­uled a series of five spe­cial con­certs on both sides of the Atlantic, begin­ning next Sun­day in Lon­don and con­tin­u­ing in Newark, New Jer­sey, and Brook­lyn, New York, in Decem­ber.

And like every­thing with the Stones, it’s expen­sive. Tick­ets for the Lon­don shows, for exam­ple, range in price from about $150 to $1,500, which has prompt­ed more than a few com­plaints. The band has defend­ed the prices, say­ing that they’re doing a large-scale show with only five audi­ences to cov­er the pro­duc­tion costs. “We’ve already spent a mil­lion on rehears­ing in Paris,” gui­tarist Ron­nie Wood told The Tele­graph recent­ly. “And the stage is going to be anoth­er few mil­lion. And the lights. We feel no bad thing about tick­et prices. We’ve got to make some­thing.”

The rock ’n’ roll busi­ness­men also expect to make some­thing from a pay-per-view broad­cast of the sold-out Decem­ber 15 show in Newark, along with sales of a new illus­trat­ed auto­bi­og­ra­phy called The Rolling Stones: 50 and a ret­ro­spec­tive album called GRRR!, which comes in sev­er­al edi­tions rang­ing from the three-disc basic CD ver­sion to a five-disc vinyl boxed set. While pro­mot­ing the album, all four mem­bers of the Stones agreed to be inter­viewed by Melis­sa Block of the NPR pro­gram All Things Con­sid­ered. Block asked each of the Stones to pick one song from their exten­sive cat­a­log to dis­cuss. It’s an inter­est­ing series of con­ver­sa­tions, and you can hear each one by fol­low­ing these links:

• Kei­th Richards: ‘These Riffs Were Built to Last a Life­time’
• Char­lie Watts on What Makes ‘Sat­is­fac­tion’ So Sat­is­fy­ing
• Ron­nie Wood’s Funky Con­tri­bu­tion to the Stones’ Canon
• Mick Jag­ger on the Apoc­a­lyp­tic ‘Gimme Shel­ter’

Along with the expect­ed clas­sics, GRRR! includes two new songs, includ­ing the first sin­gle released by the Stones in six years, “Doom and Gloom.” (See the video below.) It’s a blus­tery tune, lack­ing the rhyth­mic sophis­ti­ca­tion and inven­tive­ness of the band’s ear­li­er work, but it amply demon­strates that even after 50 years, the Stones still know how to rock.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters, 1981

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 Ten Best American Essays Since 1950, According to Robert Atwan

in Books, Literature | November 15th, 2012

Robert Atwan’s favorite lit­er­ary genre is the essay. As edi­tor and founder of The Best Amer­i­can Essays series, Atwan has read thou­sands of exam­ples of the remark­ably flex­i­ble form.

“Essays can be lots of things, maybe too many things,” writes Atwan in his fore­ward to the 2012 install­ment in the Best Amer­i­can series, “but at the core of the genre is an unmis­tak­able recep­tiv­i­ty to the ever-shift­ing process­es of our minds and moods. If there is any essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic we can attribute to the essay, it may be this: that the truest exam­ples of the form enact that ever-shift­ing process, and in that enact­ment we can find the basis for the essay’s qual­i­fi­ca­tion to be regard­ed seri­ous­ly as imag­i­na­tive lit­er­a­ture and the essay­ist’s claim to be tak­en seri­ous­ly as a cre­ative writer.”

In 2001 Atwan and Joyce Car­ol Oates took on the daunt­ing task of trac­ing that ever-shift­ing process through the pre­vi­ous 100 years for The Best Amer­i­can Essays of the Cen­tu­ry. Recent­ly Atwan returned with a more focused selec­tion for Pub­lish­ers Week­ly: “The Top 10 Essays Since 1950.” To pare it all down to such a small num­ber, Atwan decid­ed to reserve the “New Jour­nal­ism” cat­e­go­ry, with its many mem­o­rable works by Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Michael Herr and oth­ers, for some future list. He also made a point of select­ing the best essays, as opposed to exam­ples from the best essay­ists. “A list of the top ten essay­ists since 1950 would fea­ture some dif­fer­ent writ­ers.”

We were inter­est­ed to see that six of the ten best essays are avail­able for free read­ing online. Here is Atwan’s list, along with links to those essays that are on the Web:

• James Bald­win, “Notes of a Native Son,” 1955 (Read it here.)
• Nor­man Mail­er, “The White Negro,” 1957 (Read it here.)
• Susan Son­tag, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” 1964 (Read it here.)
• John McPhee, “The Search for Mar­vin Gar­dens,” 1972 (Read it here with a sub­scrip­tion.)
• Joan Did­ion, “The White Album,” 1979
• Annie Dil­lard, “Total Eclipse,” 1982
• Phillip Lopate, “Against Joie de Vivre,” 1986 (Read it here.)
• Edward Hoagland, “Heav­en and Nature,” 1988
• Jo Ann Beard, “The Fourth State of Mat­ter,” 1996 (Read it here.)
• David Fos­ter Wal­lace, “Con­sid­er the Lob­ster,” 2004 (Read it here in a ver­sion dif­fer­ent from the one pub­lished in his 2005 book of the same name.)

“To my mind,” writes Atwan in his arti­cle, “the best essays are deeply per­son­al (that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal) and deeply engaged with issues and ideas. And the best essays show that the name of the genre is also a verb, so they demon­strate a mind in process–reflecting, try­ing-out, essay­ing.”

To read more of Atwan’s com­men­tary, see his arti­cle in Pub­lish­ers Week­ly.

The pho­to above of Susan Son­tag was tak­en by Peter Hujar in 1966.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

The History of Film — 2000 Movies Across 100 Years — Presented in One Big Zoomable Graphic

in Film | November 15th, 2012

Hats off to Lar­ry Gorm­ley, who spent the bet­ter part of five years cre­at­ing a zoomable graph­ic that “chron­i­cles the his­to­ry of fea­ture films from the ori­gins in the 1910s until the present day.” 2000 films, across 20 gen­res and 100 years, all pre­sent­ed in one art­ful dis­play. Nice­ly done.

You can pur­chase a print copy, or sim­ply enjoy the visu­al dis­play online. Enjoy.

via @coudal

Harry Taylor Brings 150-Year-Old Craft of Tintype Photography into the Modern Day

in Art, Photography | November 14th, 2012

Award-win­ning film­mak­er Matt Mor­ris appre­ci­ates craft, hard work and peo­ple who just show up for each oth­er.

His Emmy-nom­i­nat­ed film Pickin’ and Trim­min’ fol­lows the men who cut hair and play blue­grass music togeth­er at Drexel’s bar­ber­shop in North Car­oli­na. In Mr. Hap­py Man, an 88-year-old man talks about the hours he spends every morn­ing greet­ing Bermuda’s com­muters as they endure traf­fic.

The sub­ject of his most recent work came to him in a round-about way, but fea­tures the same care­ful, affec­tion­ate film­mak­ing of his oth­er films. Amer­i­can Tin­type chron­i­cles the process of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Har­ry Tay­lor, who dis­cov­ered a pas­sion for the Civ­il War-era “wet plate” pho­tog­ra­phy.

Tay­lor, based in Wilm­ing­ton, North Car­oli­na, spe­cial­izes in tin­types and ambrotypes. He makes them with the same big cam­eras and messy chem­i­cals used dur­ing the late 1800s. At that time, the process pro­duced a whole new lay­er of detail than ear­li­er tech­niques had done, and allowed for an infi­nite num­ber of prints to be made.

Time con­sum­ing, labo­ri­ous and unpre­dictable, the process requires the pho­tog­ra­ph­er to use a portable dark room when shoot­ing out­side of the stu­dio. Tin pho­to­graph­ic plates are coat­ed with col­lo­di­on emul­sion. (The tech­nique is also called col­lo­di­on process. There’s a nice tuto­r­i­al here.) The plate must be coat­ed, exposed and devel­oped with­in fif­teen min­utes, before the col­lo­di­on los­es its sen­si­tiv­i­ty. It’s an incon­ve­nient sys­tem, espe­cial­ly by today’s stan­dards, but it pleas­es Tay­lor immense­ly as it forces both him and his sub­jects to slow down. You can view some of Tay­lor’s images here.

Mor­ris allows Tay­lor to speak for him­self in the four-minute doc­u­men­tary, let­ting the cam­era linger on Taylor’s wood and met­al equip­ment, the dreami­ness of his images and on Taylor’s own obser­va­tions about how long-expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy reveals more of the subject’s thoughts. Even the flaws are inter­est­ing.

Make a point to notice the music. Mor­ris approached com­pos­er Hanan Town­shend, known for the scores he com­posed for direc­tor Ter­rence Mal­ick. Mor­ris blogs about the process of record­ing Amer­i­can Tin­type’s sound­track at Marin County’s Sky­walk­er Sound—a fun lit­tle peek behind the scenes.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

Watch Night of the Living Dead, the Seminal Zombie Movie, Free Online

in Film | November 12th, 2012

Hal­loween has long since passed, grant­ed. But giv­en the over­abun­dance of Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions even now aris­ing all around us, a brac­ing splash of hor­ror won’t go amiss. This goes dou­ble when the splash comes from George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead, urtext of the mod­ern zom­bie movie. It goes triple when you can watch it free online. (It’s been uploaded in high-def­i­n­i­tion video, no less, an absolute essen­tial for lo-fi, low-bud­get gorefests.) Though only released in 1968, the movie appears on the inter­net legal­ly due to its dis­trib­u­tor not indi­cat­ing their copy­right on the film prints. They removed the orig­i­nal title cards, which dis­played the con­sid­er­ably less catchy orig­i­nal title Night of the Flesh Eaters, but for­got to put the copy­right state­ment back in with the new ones.

If Night of the Liv­ing Dead strikes you as some­what déclassé for a site like Open Cul­ture, ask your­self whether you’ve actu­al­ly seen the movie. If you haven’t, then it seems you suf­fer from a vast gap — a vast, zom­bie filled gap — in your aware­ness of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma cul­ture. The film has even won insti­tu­tion­al val­i­da­tion. Just read the titles of these real arti­cles: “Rewrit­ing the Dead: The Ten­sion between Nos­tal­gia and Per­ver­sion in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Inner-City Exhi­bi­tion and the Genre Film: Dis­trib­ut­ing Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Greek Gifts: Vision and Revi­sion in Two Ver­sions of Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “A Mod­ern Med­i­ta­tion on Death: Iden­ti­fy­ing Bud­dhist Teach­ings in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead.” If you’re look­ing for a PhD. the­sis top­ic, you may have turned up too late to this par­tic­u­lar movie. But it’ll cer­tain­ly take your mind off gift shop­ping.

You can always find Night of the Liv­ing Dead in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Look in the Noir, Thriller, Hor­ror and Hitch­cock sec­tion.

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:

Watch the Quin­tes­sen­tial Vam­pire Film Nos­fer­atu Free Online as Hal­loween Approach­es

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

The First Unin­tend­ed Hor­ror Film (1895)?

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch Phish Play the Entirety of the Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (1996)

in Music | November 9th, 2012

When I encoun­tered the above video of Phish play­ing the entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light as the sec­ond set of a 1996 Hal­loween show, let’s just say I was skep­ti­cal. How was the ulti­mate jam band going to approx­i­mate the tight­ly wound funk and weird angu­lar­i­ty of the Heads? Or would they turn these songs into mean­der­ing fif­teen-minute improv ses­sions with end­less digres­sions and break­downs? Then again, this all makes a cer­tain amount of sense. The 1980 Bri­an Eno-pro­duced Remain in Light saw the Talk­ing Heads sprawl out in ways they nev­er had before. They took on sev­er­al addi­tion­al musi­cians for the record­ing process, includ­ing one of the gods of prog-rock, King Crim­son gui­tarist Adri­an Belew. They exper­i­ment­ed with African polyrhythms blend­ed with New Wave sounds (decades before Vam­pire Week­end); they worked in a horn sec­tion, and let the art-funk over­pow­er the nerd-punk of their first two records. The songs stretched out in length. On tour, they took on five addi­tion­al play­ers, includ­ing Belew, to form a nine-piece band.

But at the heart of it all was still the incom­pa­ra­ble hus­band-and-wife team of drum­mer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Wey­mouth, the most unlike­ly funk/soul rhythm sec­tion imag­in­able but one that could hang with almost any Stax or Motown crew. And then there’s David Byrne’s para­noid alto bark. So can Phish real­ly bring enough white soul and weird­ness to the table? Well, no; they aren’t the Talk­ing Heads. The per­for­mances are loose and rangy, the rhythms often indis­tinct, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the open­er, “Born Under Punch­es,” a song that needs max­i­mum punch. But they do hit the cho­rus­es of “Crosseyed and Pain­less” and “The Great Curve” nice­ly, even if the album’s big hit “Once in a Life­time” is far too clut­tered. Over­all, even reined in by the tight­ly-arranged com­po­si­tions of Remain, they’re still Phish, not a Talk­ing Heads trib­ute band, but their love for these bril­liant songs comes through in even the nood­liest, tie-dye-frac­tal moments.

For the sake of con­trast, take some time and check out the Heads them­selves below, live in Rome with Adri­an Belew on lead gui­tar. They do two Remain in Light songs: “Born Under Punch­es” and “Hous­es in Motion.” And Belew’s solos blow the roof off.

via Boing Boing

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

Rare Footage of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald From the 1920s

in Books, Literature | November 7th, 2012

The writer F. Scott Fitzger­ald and his flam­boy­ant wife Zel­da are often remem­bered as the embod­i­ment of the boom and bust that con­vulsed Amer­i­ca in the peri­od between the two world wars.

Like char­ac­ters in The Great Gats­by, Scott and Zel­da lived lives of wild aban­don in the Roar­ing Twen­ties, rid­ing on top of taxi cabs and splash­ing in the Plaza Hotel foun­tain. Scott was inspired and prod­ded along in his dis­si­pa­tion by the noto­ri­ous­ly eccen­tric Zel­da. As Ring Lard­ner once put it, “Mr. Fitzger­ald is a nov­el­ist and Mrs. Fitzger­ald is a nov­el­ty.”

But by the time the stock mar­ket crashed in 1929, so too had the Fitzger­alds. Scot­t’s drink­ing caught up with him, and Zel­da’s eccen­tric­i­ty evolved into schiz­o­phre­nia. Their sad down­fall is cap­tured in Fitzger­ald’s 1930 sto­ry, “Baby­lon Revis­it­ed.” Zel­da would live the rest of her life in men­tal insti­tu­tions while Scott spent his final years in Hol­ly­wood, strug­gling to pay for her treat­ment and try­ing to recap­ture his lost glo­ry. Their daugh­ter, Scot­tie, was raised by oth­er peo­ple.

In this video we catch a few glimpses of the Fitzger­alds in their hey­day, before the par­ty came to an end. The film clips are fun to watch but the YouTube video on which they are col­lect­ed should per­haps be tak­en with a grain of salt. We’re not sure, for exam­ple, that the clip pur­port­ing to show Zel­da being “very live­ly in a street” is actu­al­ly of her. It appears to show some­one else. And one of the cap­tions claims that Fitzger­ald is pic­tured writ­ing The Great Gats­by, but accord­ing to the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na’s Fitzger­ald Web site, the sen­tence he is writ­ing on paper is: “Every­body has been pre­dict­ing a bad end for the flap­per, but I don’t think there is any­thing to wor­ry about.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Win­ter Dreams: F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Life Remem­bered in a Fine Film

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Recites From Shake­speare’s Oth­el­lo and John Mase­field­’s ‘On Grow­ing Old’

Find F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s works in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

A Celebration of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cassettes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

in Media, Music, Technology | November 7th, 2012

In going dig­i­tal, we’ve gained some con­ve­nience. That’s unde­ni­able. But we’ve lost much when it comes to aes­thet­ics and qual­i­ty too. (Neil Young makes that point again and again.) Increas­ing­ly, we’re real­iz­ing what we’ve left behind, and there’s a move­ment afoot to recov­er old school media — things you can see, touch and feel and mar­vel over. Vinyl records. Tape cas­settes. VHS tapes. 8mm Film. Polaroid Pho­tos. All of that good stuff gets revis­it­ed in the lat­est short film pro­duced in the PBS Off Book series. Pre­vi­ous install­ments have cov­ered:

Art in the Era of the Inter­net

The Art of Film and TV Title Design

The Art of Glitch

The Cre­ativ­i­ty of Indie Video Games 

Japanese Cartoons from the 1920s and 30s Reveal the Stylistic Roots of Anime

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | November 5th, 2012

Those who have become inter­est­ed in Japan in the past twen­ty years have done so, like­ly as not, because of Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, best known by the Japan­ese term “ani­me.” And why not? Japan’s take on the car­toon has at this point evolved so high and so dis­tant from its west­ern coun­ter­parts that you some­times can’t help star­ing, trans­fixed. Even the word “car­toon” now seems too friv­o­lous to apply. Roll the clock back eighty or nine­ty years, and Japan­ese ani­ma­tion looks decid­ed­ly more… car­toon­ish. But even then, you can eas­i­ly see an excit­ing­ly dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic in play. First behold the short above, which since its 1933 pro­duc­tion has become a sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar watch on Youtube. Seem­ing­ly influ­enced by the Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion of the time, this fable of fox ver­sus rac­coon still gar­ners acclaim with its craft. Acclaim from com­menters, any­way: “Much smoother than the cur­rent ani­mes,” writes one. “Not only the qual­i­ty. Sto­ry is also fun­ny and peace­ful.”

Go back a few years fur­ther, to 1929, and you find a strik­ing­ly more for­eign view­ing expe­ri­ence in The Stolen Lump. Tak­ing the form of a stan­dard live-action silent pic­ture, with inter­ti­tles and every­thing, the film adapts a fairy tale about an old man who hap­pens upon a pack of ten­gu. He asks these super­nat­ur­al crea­tures to remove what looks like a goi­ter from his face, but when they do, he inspires jeal­ousy in his vil­lage. Final­ly, for an offer­ing that will seem mod­ern by com­par­i­son, watch Pri­vate Norakuro, from 1935, below. It orig­i­nal­ly appeared as just one sto­ry, in one medi­um of sev­er­al, of the prat­fall-heavy mil­i­tary adven­tures of the tit­u­lar anthro­po­mor­phic pup­py. Cre­ator  Sui­hō Tagawa drew the humor from his own time in the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army, to the delight of Japan­ese read­ers and view­ers. The delight last­ed up until World War II, any­way, when the coun­try stopped look­ing so kind­ly on mil­i­tary satire. But Norakuro would soon emerge from retire­ment, going on to star in major ani­mat­ed films and serve as a mas­cot of the Japan Self Defense Force.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ear­ly Days of Ani­ma­tion Pre­served in UCLA’s Video Archive

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Lots of Free Ani­mat­ed Films in our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Richard Feynman Talks Physics with Fred Hoyle in Take the World From Another Point of View, 1973

in Physics, Science | November 5th, 2012

The famous Amer­i­can physi­cist Richard Feyn­man used to take hol­i­days in Eng­land. His third wife, Gweneth Howarth, was a native of West York­shire, so every year the Feyn­man fam­i­ly would vis­it her home­town of Rip­pon­den or the near­by ham­let of Mill Bank.

In 1973 York­shire pub­lic tele­vi­sion made a short film of the Nobel lau­re­ate while he was there. The result­ing film, Take the World From Anoth­er Point of View, was broad­cast in Amer­i­ca as part of the PBS Nova series. The doc­u­men­tary fea­tures a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view, but what sets it apart from oth­er films on Feyn­man is the inclu­sion of a live­ly con­ver­sa­tion he had with the emi­nent British astro­physi­cist Fred Hoyle.

A native York­shire­man, Hoyle did ground­break­ing the­o­ret­i­cal work on the syn­the­sis of ele­ments in stars and was a lead­ing pro­po­nent of the Steady State the­o­ry of cos­mol­o­gy. In the film, the British astro­physi­cist and the Amer­i­can par­ti­cle physi­cist walk down to the local pub, Rip­pon­den’s his­toric Old Bridge Inn, for a live­ly con­ver­sa­tion on physics and the nature of sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery. You can read along with a tran­script of the film at the Cal­tech Web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Feyn­man Presents Quan­tum Elec­tro­dy­nam­ics for the Non­Sci­en­tist

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feyn­man’s Leg­endary Lec­ture Series at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feyn­man Enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly Explains How to Think Like a Physi­cist in His Series Fun to Imag­ine (1983)