Fan Faithfully Reconstructs Cream’s Final Concert: Watch a New Version of the Show with the Correct Song Order and Run-Time (1968)

in Music | March 15th, 2022

The orig­i­nal rock super­group, Cream, last­ed two years, changed the course of rock music, bare­ly held togeth­er because of ran­cor between mem­bers and said good­bye in 1968. Their farewell con­cert at the Roy­al Albert Hall in Lon­don was one for the ages. Maybe not their best per­for­mance, but one of their most ener­getic. And inside the cav­ernous Hall, the three men laid down a wall of unde­ni­able sound.

Too bad that it wasn’t prop­er­ly doc­u­ment­ed, despite a series of cam­eras there that evening. A Youtube denizen called Mike Left­on has tried to rec­ti­fy the his­to­ry by assem­bling a cut of the 70-minute con­cert that plays in real time. It’s the kind of fan project for which YouTube is designed—something not pro­fes­sion­al enough for offi­cial release, but vital­ly impor­tant for the fans.

Go on to the Bezos­Borg site (you know, it rhymes with Glama­zon), and you can find a con­cert film offered on Blu-Ray. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Cream fans will tell you. Instead of let­ting the band play, the offi­cial Farewell Con­cert leaves off sev­er­al songs, and includes a “total­ly square voiceover by Patrick Allen (who refers to the band as “The Cream” through­out),” accord­ing to the moviesteve.com web­site, while anoth­er review­er notes this could be the gen­e­sis of Spinal Tap’s inten­tion­al­ly bad inter­views. (But let’s be fair, the 1960s in gen­er­al were filled with non-rock jour­nal­ists inter­view­ing musi­cians as if they were alien life forms. D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back is a com­pendi­um of such cringey moments.)

On top of that, direc­tor Allen real­ly over­did the zoom lens, which was every­where those days. It’s fun­ny to see how it was used to “spice up” rock band footage, where real­ly you could just hold the cam­era on Gin­ger Bak­er play­ing drums.

This edit cuts Allen’s footage togeth­er with black and white footage from the BBC, and gen­er­al­ly does a fair job fill­ing in the gaps, let­ting the con­cert stand on its own mer­its. It had plenty—the afore­men­tioned Gin­ger Baker’s drum solo on “The Toad.” The rep­e­ti­tion of footage is easy to spot—Jack Bruce tunes his gui­tar quite a lot, Eric Clap­ton looks off­stage, and Bak­er smokes the final half-inch of a rol­lie over the hour—but Mike Left­on made this one for the fans, which is more than you can say for Allen, who made it for fright­ened BBC view­ers still unsure about what all this “rock and roll” music was about. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Afrobeat Leg­end Fela Kuti Col­lab­o­rat­ed with Cream Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er

Behold the Blis­ter­ing Bass Solos of Cream Bassist and Singer, Jack Bruce (1943–2014)

Jimi Hen­drix Arrives in Lon­don in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clap­ton Away: “You Nev­er Told Me He Was That F‑ing Good”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Real Footage of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance: Watch Clips from the First Documentary Feature Film Ever Made (1919)

in Film, History | March 14th, 2022

Last week we fea­tured the recent dis­cov­ery of Ernest Shack­le­ton’s ship Endurance, which has spent more than a cen­tu­ry at the bot­tom of the Wed­dell Sea off Antarc­ti­ca. It sank there in 1915, after hav­ing been entrapped and slow­ly crushed by pack ice for the most of a year. That marked the end of what had start­ed as the 1914–1917 Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion, but it cer­tain­ly was­n’t the end of the sto­ry. When it had become clear that there was no hope for Endurance, writes Rain Noe at Core77, “Shack­le­ton and five of the crew then sailed 800 miles in a lifeboat to Strom­ness, an inhab­it­ed island and whal­ing sta­tion in the South Atlantic, where they were able to orga­nize a res­cue par­ty. Shack­le­ton locat­ed and res­cued his crew four months lat­er.”

Today we can watch the Endurance’s demise on film, as shot by expe­di­tion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Hur­ley. “How is it pos­si­ble that the film footage sur­vived this ordeal?” Noe writes. “After the crew aban­doned ship, food was the main thing to be car­ried away by the men, and Hur­ley had to decide which pho­to neg­a­tives and film reels to sal­vage.” Hur­ley him­self lat­er described this ago­niz­ing process, at the end of which “about 400 plates were jet­ti­soned and 120 retained. Lat­er I had to pre­serve them almost with my life; for a time came when we had to choose between heav­ing them over­board or throw­ing away our sur­plus food — and the food went over!”

Even rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly in the era of cin­e­ma, Hur­ley must have under­stood the pow­er of the image — as, it seems, did his cap­tain. The footage Hur­ley could sal­vage retained a strik­ing clar­i­ty, and it went into 1919’s South, which is now con­sid­ered to be the very first doc­u­men­tary fea­ture. “South was first exhib­it­ed by Ernest Shack­le­ton in 1919 to accom­pa­ny his lec­tures,” writes Ann Ogi­di at the BFI’s Screenon­line, “and it has some of the qual­i­ty of a lec­ture. Excerpts of the jour­ney are inter­spersed with sci­en­tif­ic and bio­log­i­cal obser­va­tions.” And “just when the dra­mat­ic ten­sion reach­es its height, there are almost 20 inex­plic­a­ble min­utes of nature footage, show­ing sea lions gam­bol­ing, pen­guins and oth­er birds.”

Crisply restored in the 1990s, South “is best thought of as that mul­ti-media doc­u­men­tary lec­ture that Shack­le­ton would have pre­sent­ed with stills, paint­ings, film and music woven togeth­er to spin the yarn, and for Hurley’s exquis­ite pho­tog­ra­phy that keeps alive the sto­ry of that group of extra­or­di­nary men.” So writes BFI cura­tor Bry­ony Dixon in a recent piece on the mirac­u­lous sur­vival of not just Shack­le­ton and his men, but of Hur­ley’s hand­i­work. And it was Hur­ley who then went right back out to the island of South Geor­gia to “take wildlife footage that the news­pa­per edi­tor Ernest Per­ris, who spon­sored the film, was con­vinced was need­ed to make the film inter­est­ing to the pub­lic.” Per­ris was dar­ing enough to fund the first doc­u­men­tary fea­ture, but also pre­scient in his con­cep­tion of the form — a con­cep­tion proven defin­i­tive­ly right, more than eighty years lat­er, by the box-office per­for­mance of March of the Pen­guins.

via Core77

Relat­ed con­tent:

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Give Yourself a 3000-Year-Old Hairstyle Using Iron Age Tools

in Fashion, History, Life, Video - Arts & Culture | March 14th, 2022

There was a peri­od in the late 20th-cen­tu­ry when hav­ing hair long enough to sit on was con­sid­ered some­thing of an accom­plish­ment.

Judg­ing by the long hair pins unearthed from Austria’s Hall­statt bur­ial site, extreme length was an ear­ly Iron Age hair goal, too, pos­si­bly because a coro­net of thick braids made it eas­i­er to bal­ance a bas­ket on your head or keep your veil secure­ly fas­tened.

Mor­gan Don­ner, whose YouTube chan­nel doc­u­ments her attempts to recre­ate his­tor­i­cal gar­ments and hair­styles, com­mit­ted to try­ing var­i­ous Hall­statt looks after read­ing arche­ol­o­gogist Kari­na Grömer’s 2005 arti­cle Exper­i­mente zur Haar- und Schleier­tra­cht in der Hall­stattzeit (Exper­i­ments on hair­styles and veils in the Hall­statt peri­od.)

Gromer, the vice-head of the Vien­na Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um’s Depart­ment of Pre­his­to­ry, pub­lished pre­cise dia­grams show­ing the posi­tion of the hair orna­ments in rela­tion to the occu­pants of var­i­ous graves.

For exam­ple, the skele­ton in grave 45, below, was dis­cov­ered with “10 bronze nee­dles to the left of and below the skull, (and) parts of a bronze spi­ral roll in the neck area.”

Although no hair fibers sur­vive, researchers cross-ref­er­enc­ing the pins’ posi­tion against fig­ur­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions from peri­od arti­facts, have made a pret­ty edu­cat­ed guess as to the sort of hair do this indi­vid­ual may have sport­ed in life, or more accu­rate­ly, giv­en the con­text, death.

As to the “bronze spi­ral roll” — which Don­ner per­sists in refer­ring to as a spi­ral “doobly doo” — it func­tioned much like a mod­ern day elas­tic band, pre­vent­ing the braid from unrav­el­ling.

Don­ner twists hers from wire, after arrang­ing to have repli­ca hair­pins cus­tom made to his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate dimen­sions. (The man­u­fac­tur­er, per­haps mis­un­der­stand­ing her inter­est in his­to­ry, coat­ed them with an antiquing agent that had to be removed with “brass clean­er and a bit of rub­bing.”

Most of the styles are vari­ants on a bun. All with­stand the “shake test” and would look right at home in a bridal mag­a­zine.

Star Wars fans will be grat­i­fied to find not one, but two icon­ic Princess Leia looks.

Our favorites were the braid­ed loops and dou­ble buns meant to be sport­ed beneath a veil.

“The braids do kind of act nice­ly as an anchor point for the veil to sit on,” Don­ner reports, “Not a lot of mod­ern appli­ca­tion per se for this par­tic­u­lar style but it’s cute. It’s fun.”

Either would give you some seri­ous Medieval Fes­ti­val street cred, even if you have to resort to exten­sions.

Donner’s video gets a lot of love in the com­ments from a num­ber of archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing a funer­ary archae­ol­o­gist who prais­es the way she deals with the “inher­ent issues of preser­va­tion bias.”

The final nine min­utes con­tain a DIY tuto­r­i­al for those who’d like to make their own hair­pins, as well as the spi­ral “doobly doo”.

If you’re of a less crafty bent, a jew­el­ry design­er in Fin­land is sell­ing repli­cas based on the grave finds of Hall­statt cul­ture on Etsy.

Watch a playlist of Donner’s his­tor­i­cal hair exper­i­ments and tuto­ri­als, though a peek at her Insta­gram reveals that she got a buz­z­cut last fall, cur­rent­ly grown out to pix­ie-ish length.

Down­load Grömer’s illus­trat­ed arti­cle on Hall­statt peri­od hair­styles and veils for free (in Ger­man) here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Ukrainian Violinists Play in Solidarity with 94 Other Violinists from 29 Countries

in Life, Music | March 12th, 2022

Vio­lin­ist Keren­za Pea­cock writes: “I befriend­ed some young vio­lin­ists in Ukraine via Insta­gram and dis­cov­ered some were in base­ment shel­ters but had their vio­lins. So I asked col­leagues across the world to accom­pa­ny them in har­mo­ny. And I got sent videos from 94 vio­lin­ists in 29 coun­tries in 48 hours!! An aston­ish­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion form­ing an inter­na­tion­al vio­lin choir of sup­port for Ukraine. Illia Bon­darenko had to film this between explo­sions, because he could not hear him­self play.

We play an old Ukrain­ian folk song called Ver­bo­vaya Doschech­ka. Nine oth­er young vio­lin­ists shel­ter­ing in Ukraine join in uni­son, and are accom­pa­nied in har­mo­ny by play­ers from Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, Tokyo Sym­pho­ny, Oslo Phil­har­mon­ic, the Hol­ly­wood Stu­dios, and top vio­lin­ists from all over the world includ­ing Ire­land, the Nether­lands, New Zealand, Bel­gium, Geor­gia, Poland, South Korea, South Africa, Moldo­va, Den­mark, India, and the entire vio­lin sec­tion of the Munich Cham­ber Orches­tra!”

Learn more about the col­lab­o­ra­tion here, and donate to sup­port Ukraini­ans in dis­tress here.

Hear Jack Kerouac Read from On The Road on the 100th Anniversary of His Birth

in Literature | March 12th, 2022

Jack Ker­ouac was born 100 years ago today (March 12, 1922). And to mark the occa­sion, you can hear him read from his 1957 Beat clas­sic, On the Road. This 28-minute recita­tion was appar­ent­ly record­ed on an acetate disc in the 1950s but thought lost for decades. It re-sur­faced dur­ing the late 1990s. Enjoy.

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

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Turned Into an Illus­trat­ed Scroll: One Draw­ing for Every Page of the Nov­el

Jack Kerouac’s 30 Beliefs and Tech­niques For Writ­ing Mod­ern Prose

Four Inter­ac­tive Maps Immor­tal­ize the Road Trips That Inspired Jack Kerouac’s On the Road

The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945: A Free Yale Course on Nov­els by Nabokov, Ker­ouac, Mor­ri­son, Pyn­chon & More

Heart’s Nancy Wilson Teaches You How to Play the Notoriously Difficult Opening to “Crazy On You”

in History, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | March 11th, 2022

You can slide up, pull off and ham­mer like a beast, but be fore­warned. It’s unlike­ly you’ll be able to keep pace with Heart’s Nan­cy Wil­son, as she demon­strates how to play the intro­duc­tion to 1975’s “Crazy On You,” one of the great­est — and trick­i­est — open­ing gui­tar solos in rock his­to­ry.

“I real­ly want­ed peo­ple to know right up front what I could do,” Wil­son revealed in a 1999 inter­view with Acoustic Gui­tar:

It was the same thing as sit­ting in the Band­wag­on music store and play­ing (Paul Simon’s) Anji. It was like, “Check me out, I know some stuff.”

As hard rock­ing female musi­cians in the 70s and 80s, Wil­son and her bandmate/sister, lead vocal­ist- and song­writer, Ann found them­selves hav­ing to prove them­selves con­stant­ly.

As Ann recent­ly explained to The Guardian: 

Back then, espe­cial­ly in the 70s, there was no fil­ter on how women were sex­u­al­ized – hyper-sex­u­al­ized – in order to sell their images. Now at least it looks like women have con­trol over their own fil­ters. Back then, they didn’t. It was just like: “Hey, here’s a sexy chick. We know how we can sell her.”

Let’s all observe Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month by insist­ing that every bone­head who ever dis­missed these pio­neer­ing women as a ‘chick band’ pay close atten­tion to Nancy’s intri­cate “hybrid pick­ing”.

“Crazy On You” finds her pick­ing a rhythm on the A‑string while using her bare fin­gers to pull off notes on the B and G strings.

And by her own admis­sion, she tends nev­er to play it the same way twice (“which makes it real easy, right?”)

While we’re at it, how about we cel­e­brate Heart’s 50th anniver­sary by intro­duc­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to “Crazy On You”?

The times have changed in sig­nif­i­cant ways, but the emo­tions that inspired the song will strike close to home for many young peo­ple, as per Ann’s descrip­tion on the Pro­fes­sor of Rock’s YouTube chan­nel:

I wrote the words about the state of the world, and the stress effect it was hav­ing on me. Back then, we thought the world was real­ly messed up, right? Because the Viet­nam War was going on and we were choos­ing to, but stay­ing out of our own country…we were home­sick. Crime was ris­ing, gas was expen­sive, gas short­age, all this hor­ri­ble stuff. We had no idea what was going to hap­pen in lat­er years so it seemed to be, at that time, y’know, this is the end of the world. This close to the apoc­a­lypse. It’s very very stress­ful when you’re in your 20’s and you don’t see a good future.

If you’re com­mit­ted to learn­ing Nan­cy Wilson’s gui­tar intro to “Crazy On You,” we rec­om­mend Shut­up & Play’s video tuto­r­i­al and tabs.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

John May­er Teach­es Gui­tarists How to Play the Blues in a 45-Minute Mas­ter­class

James Tay­lor Gives Gui­tar Lessons, Teach­ing You How to Play Clas­sic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Coun­try Road” & “Car­oli­na in My Mind”

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer Demon­strates the Cor­rect & Offi­cial Way to Play “Kick Out the Jams” on the Gui­tar

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online: 1,000+ Librarians Digitally Preserve Artifacts of Ukrainian Civilization Before Russia Can Destroy Them

in Current Affairs, Technology | March 11th, 2022

Before becom­ing a film­mak­er, Jean-Pierre Grum­bach par­tic­i­pat­ed in the French Resis­tance dur­ing World War II. It was then that he took the nom de guerre of Jean-Pierre Melville, under which he would lat­er inspire the French New Wave. Just as he nev­er made a film under anoth­er name, his work nev­er quite aban­doned the themes pro­vid­ed by his wartime expe­ri­ence in Nazi-occu­pied France, which comes through most clear­ly in his fea­ture debut Le Silence de la mer. Released just four years after V‑E Day, it tells the sto­ry of a Ger­man lieu­tenant bil­let­ed in a French house­hold, an admir­er of French cul­ture who holds forth night­ly of his antic­i­pa­tion of the “mar­riage” of the Ger­man and French civ­i­liza­tions.

The day comes for the Ger­man to make a much-antic­i­pat­ed trip to Paris. After wor­ship­ful­ly tak­ing in the sights of the cap­i­tal — the Arc de Tri­om­phe, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Mon­u­ment à Jeanne d’Arc — he meets with his Nazi supe­ri­ors. And so he dis­cov­ers, to his great shock, that what the occu­piers have planned is not a mar­riage but a demo­li­tion. “Do you think we’re so stu­pid as to allow France ever to rise again?” asks one of the oth­er offi­cers. “We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to destroy France and we will do so,” says anoth­er. “Not only its might, but also its spir­it,” which requires the com­plete extir­pa­tion of all “works of cul­ture” — for “to con­quer, vio­lence is suf­fi­cient, but not to rule.”

81 years lat­er, the events of Le Silence de la mer have returned to mind. “Russia’s war on Ukraine has been an all-round dis­as­ter,” writes the Guardian’s Luke Hard­ing and Har­ri­et Sher­wood. “Its army has shelled dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed cities, killing hun­dreds. More than 2 mil­lion refugees have fled abroad in Europe’s biggest exo­dus since the sec­ond world war.” Ukrain­ian cities have set about hid­ing what pieces they can of their cul­tur­al her­itage: in Lviv, for exam­ple, these includ­ed “a pre­cious wood­en alter-piece show­ing Jesus, Mary and Mary Mag­da­lene. It was removed from Lviv’s 14th cen­tu­ry Armen­ian church and trans­port­ed to a bunker. The sculp­ture was last removed from its court­yard spot short­ly before the Nazis swept into the city in 1941.”

Such efforts are tak­ing place in not just the phys­i­cal realm, but the dig­i­tal one as well. Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online (SUCHO) describe them­selves as “a group of cul­tur­al her­itage pro­fes­sion­als – librar­i­ans, archivists, researchers, pro­gram­mers – work­ing togeth­er to iden­ti­fy and archive at-risk sites, dig­i­tal con­tent, and data in Ukrain­ian cul­tur­al her­itage insti­tu­tions while the coun­try is under attack.” This project involves “a com­bi­na­tion of tech­nolo­gies to crawl and archive sites and con­tent, includ­ing the Inter­net Archive’s Way­back Machine, the Browser­trix crawler and the ArchiveWeb.page brows­er exten­sion and app of the Webrecorder project,” and now has the help of more than a thou­sand vol­un­teers.

If you’re read­ing this, you may pos­sess the skill SUCHO needs. Though “we are cur­rent­ly at capac­i­ty for peo­ple to help with Way­back Machine / Inter­net Archive tasks or man­u­al Webrecorder tasks,” says their site, “you can still help by sub­mit­ting URLs” of sites con­tain­ing Ukrain­ian cul­tur­al con­tent. “If you can read Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian, or if you can run the Browser­trix crawler (check out our Browser­trix doc­u­men­ta­tion to see if it’s some­thing you’d be up for try­ing), fill out the vol­un­teer form.” (Even if not, have a look at their doc­u­men­ta­tion of their work­flow and ori­en­ta­tion for new vol­un­teers.) At some point, the vio­lence of the inva­sion of Ukraine will come to an end. When it does, the more of the coun­try’s cul­ture sur­vives, the less its invaders can rule.

Vis­it the Sav­ing Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Her­itage Online project here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ukraini­ans Play­ing Vio­lin in Bunkers as Rus­sians Bomb Them from the Sky

Pianist Plays “What a Won­der­ful World” for Ukrain­ian Refugees at Lviv Sta­tion

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

See the Well-Preserved Wreckage of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarctica

in History | March 10th, 2022

110 years after its first and last voy­age, we remem­ber the RMS Titan­ic and its tout­ed “unsink­a­bil­i­ty” as one of the resound­ing ironies of mar­itime his­to­ry. But 1912 also saw the launch of anoth­er new­ly built yet ill-fat­ed ship whose name proved all too apt: Endurance, as it was rechris­tened by Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton when he pur­chased it to use on his Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion of 1914. In Jan­u­ary of the fol­low­ing year, Endurance got stuck in the ice of the Wed­dell Sea off Antarc­ti­ca, and over the fol­low­ing ten months that ice slow­ly crushed and ulti­mate­ly sank the ship. But her whole crew sur­vived, thanks to Shack­le­ton’s lead­ing them more than 800 miles over the open ocean to safe­ty.

Shack­le­ton and his men have been cel­e­brat­ed for their endurance; as for Endurance her­self, it has spent more than a cen­tu­ry unseen at the bot­tom of the ocean — unseen, that is, until now. “A team of adven­tur­ers, marine archae­ol­o­gists and tech­ni­cians locat­ed the wreck at the bot­tom of the Wed­dell Sea, east of the Antarc­tic Penin­su­la, using under­sea drones,” writes the New York Times’ Hen­ry Foun­tain. “Bat­tling sea ice and freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, the team had been search­ing for more than two weeks in a 150-square-mile area around where the ship went down in 1915.”

Time turns out to have been kind to Shack­le­ton’s ship: “Endurance’s rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine appear­ance was not unex­pect­ed, giv­en the cold water and the lack of wood-eat­ing marine organ­isms in the Wed­dell Sea that have rav­aged ship­wrecks else­where.” You can glimpse Endurance in her watery grave in the Marine Tech­nol­o­gy TV video at the top of the post. But you’ll also see a lot more of anoth­er impres­sive ship: Agul­has II, the South African ice­break­er used by Endurance22, as the $10 mil­lion research expe­di­tion was called. What­ev­er the chal­lenges posed by final­ly track­ing down Endurance, their brunt was­n’t borne by that mighty ves­sel.

“Aside from a few tech­ni­cal glitch­es involv­ing the two sub­mersibles, and part of a day spent ice­bound when oper­a­tions were sus­pend­ed, the search pro­ceed­ed rel­a­tive­ly smooth­ly,” reports Foun­tain. The nature of this expe­di­tion, espe­cial­ly in its use of sub­mersibles to observe the wreck­age with­out dis­turb­ing it, may bring back to mind (for those of us of a cer­tain age) the 1992 doc­u­men­tary Titan­i­ca, which aston­ished us with the first up-close, IMAX-sized views of the sunken Titan­ic. Con­sid­er­ing the advance­ments in explorato­ry and pho­to­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy in the three decades since — and the con­di­tion of Endurance itself — the film that even­tu­al­ly results from Endurance22 should aston­ish us all over again.

For any­one inter­est­ed in Shack­le­ton’s remark­able adven­ture, we rec­om­mend the book The Endurance: Shack­le­ton’s Leg­endary Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Brian Eno Creates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civilization

in Books | March 10th, 2022

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Artist and music pro­duc­er Bri­an Eno wrote one of my very favorite books: A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, which takes the form of his per­son­al diary of the year 1995 with essay­is­tic chap­ters (the “swollen appen­dices”) on top­ics like “edge cul­ture,” gen­er­a­tive music, new ways of , pre­ten­sion, CD-ROMs (a rel­e­vant top­ic back then), and pay­ment struc­tures for record­ing artists (a rel­e­vant top­ic again today). It also includes a fair bit of Eno’s cor­re­spon­dence with Stew­art Brand, once edi­tor of the Whole Earth Cat­a­log and now pres­i­dent of the Long Now Foun­da­tion, “a coun­ter­point to today’s accel­er­at­ing cul­ture” meant to “help make long-term think­ing more com­mon” and “cre­ative­ly fos­ter respon­si­bil­i­ty in the frame­work of the next 10,000 years.”

It so hap­pens that Eno now sits on the Long Now Foundation’s board and has had a hand in some of its projects. Nat­u­ral­ly, he con­tributed sug­gest­ed read­ing mate­r­i­al to the foun­da­tion’s Man­u­al of Civ­i­liza­tion, a col­lec­tion of books human­i­ty could use to rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, should it need rebuild­ing. Eno’s full list, which spans his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, phi­los­o­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, design, nature, and lit­er­a­ture, runs as fol­lows:

• See­ing Like a State by James C Scott
• The Mind in the Cave: Con­scious­ness and the Ori­gins of Art by David Lewis-Williams
• Crowds and Pow­er by Elias Canet­ti
• The Wheels of Com­merce by Fer­nand Braudel
• Keep­ing Togeth­er in Time by William McNeill
• Danc­ing in the Streets by Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich
• Roll Jor­dan Roll by Eugene Gen­ovese
• A Pat­tern Lan­guage by Christo­pher Alexan­der et al
• The Face of Bat­tle by John Kee­gan
• A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects by  Neil Mac­Gre­gor
• Con­tin­gency, Irony and Sol­i­dar­i­ty by Richard Rorty
• The Note­books by Leonar­do da Vin­ci
• The Con­fi­dence Trap by David Runci­man
• The Dis­cov­er­ers by Daniel Boorstein
• Moth­er Nature: A His­to­ry of Moth­ers, Infants, and Nat­ur­al Selec­tion by Sarah Hrdy
• War and Peace by Leo Tol­stoy
• The Cam­bridge World His­to­ry of Food (2‑Volume Set) by Ken­neth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas
• The Illus­trat­ed Flo­ra of Britain and North­ern Europe by Mar­jorie Blamey & Christo­pher Grey Wil­son
• Print­ing and the Mind of Man by John Carter & Per­cy Muir
• Peter the Great: His Life and World by Richard Massie

If you’d like to know more books that have shaped Eno’s think­ing, do pick up a copy of A Year with Swollen Appen­dices. Like all the best diarists, Eno makes plen­ty of ref­er­ences to his day-to-day read­ing mate­r­i­al, and at the very end — beyond the last swollen appen­dix — he includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy (below), on which you’ll find more from Christo­pher Alexan­der, a reap­pear­ance of Rorty’s Con­tin­gency, Irony and Sol­i­dar­i­ty, and even Stew­ard Brand’s own How Build­ings Learn (on a tele­vi­sion ver­sion of which the two would col­lab­o­rate). You can find other writ­ers and thinker­s’s con­tri­bu­tions to the Man­u­al of Civ­i­liza­tion here.

• Best Ideas: A Com­pendi­um of Social Inno­va­tion edit­ed by Nicholas Albery
• A Fore­shad­ow­ing of the 21st Cen­tu­ry Art: The Col­or and Geom­e­try of Very Ear­ly Turk­ish Car­pets by Christo­pher Alexan­der
• Bridge Over the Dri­na by Ivo Andric
• Jihad vs. McWorld by Ben­jamin Bar­ber
• The Art­ful Uni­verse by John Bar­row
• Brain of the Firm by Stafford Beer
• Mid­night in the Gar­den of Good and Evil by John Berendt
• The Cre­ators by Daniel Boorstin
• Lay My Bur­den Down: A Folk His­to­ry of Slav­ery edit­ed by B.A. Botkin
• How Build­ings Learn by Stew­art Brand
• Civ­i­liza­tion and Cap­i­tal­ism by Fer­nand Braudel
• The Trans­for­ma­tion of War by Mar­tin van Crev­eld
• The Trans­fig­u­ra­tion of the Com­mon­place by Arthur Dan­to
• Riv­er Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins
• Dar­win’s Dan­ger­ous Idea by Daniel Den­nett
• Defence Pol­i­cy Mak­ing edit­ed by G.M. Dil­lon
• Women En Large: Image of Fat Nudes by Lau­rie Toby Edi­son and Deb­bie Notkin
• Bird­song by Sebas­t­ian Faulks
• Trust by Fran­cis Fukuya­ma
• Edge City by Joel Gar­reau
• Ecce Homo by George Grosz
• Beyond Cul­ture by Edward T. Hall
• Man­ag­ing the Com­mons by Gar­rett Hardin and John Baden
• The Mid­dle Ages by Friedrich Herr
• Going Bugs by James Hill­man
• Cul­ture of Com­plaint by Robert Hugh­es
• The Wan­ing of the Mid­dle Ages by Johann Huizin­ga
• The State We’re In by Will Hut­ton
• Out of Con­trol: The Rise of Neo-Bio­log­i­cal Civ­i­liza­tion by Kevin Kel­ly
• Wild Blue Yon­der by Nick Krotz
• Fetish Girls by Eric Kroll
• The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampe­dusa
• Arti­fi­cial Life by Steven Levy
• Plan­e­tary Over­load by A.J. McMichael
• Being Dig­i­tal by Nicholas Negro­ponte
• Erot­i­ca Uni­ver­salis by Gilles Neret
• Liv­ing With­out a Goal by Jay Ogilvy
• Bil­ly the Kid by Michael Ondaat­je
• Evo­lu­tion of Con­scious­ness by Robert E. Orn­stein
• Art and Pornog­ra­phy and Man’s Rage for Chaos by Morse Peck­ham
• Works and Texts by Tom Phillips
• The Lan­guage Instinct by Stephen Pinker
• In Search of a Bet­ter World by Karl Pop­per
• Pris­on­er’s Dilem­ma by William Pound­stone
• Post­cards by Annie Proulx
• Con­se­quences of Prag­ma­tism and Con­tin­gency, Irony, and Sol­i­dar­i­ty by Richard Rorty
• The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
• Eng­land’s Dream­ing by Jon Sav­age
• Lords of the Rim by Ster­ling Sea­grave
• Art and Physics by Leonard Shlain
• I am That: Con­ver­sa­tions with Sri Nis­ara­ga­dat­ta Maharaj
• Face of the Gods and Flash of the Spir­it by Robert Far­ris Thomp­son
• Ocean of Sound by David Toop
• The Sev­en Cul­tures of Cap­i­tal­ism by Charles Ham­p­den Turn­er
• Black Lamb and Grey Fal­con by Rebec­ca West
• Art and Anar­chy by Edgar Wind

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

What Books Could Be Used to Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion?: Lists by Bri­an Eno, Stew­art Brand, Kevin Kel­ly & Oth­er For­ward-Think­ing Minds

What Books Should Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Read?: Tell Us Your Picks; We’ll Tell You Ours

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Failed Logistics of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

in Current Affairs | March 9th, 2022

If there’s a small sil­ver lin­ing in Putin’s assault on Ukraine, it’s that we’ve dis­cov­ered the medi­oc­rity of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary. Rus­sia expect­ed a short and deci­sive war. Two weeks lat­er, the inva­sion grinds on.

Already, Rus­sia has lost 4,000 sol­diers (the US lost 2,400 dur­ing its 20-year cam­paign in Afghanistan), while Ukraine still retains con­trol of its major cities. Above, Wen­dover Pro­duc­tions breaks down a major fac­tor behind Rus­si­a’s stum­ble–the fail­ure of its logis­tics.

For more on this ques­tion, it’s worth lis­ten­ing to this inter­view with Retired Lt. Gen­er­al Mark Hertling, the for­mer com­mand­ing gen­er­al of U.S. Army Europe and 7th Army.  Draw­ing on his own mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence, he elab­o­rates on the major gaps in Rus­si­a’s strate­gic plan­ning.

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 

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

West Point Expert Gives Ukraini­ans Advice on Con­duct­ing Effec­tive Urban War­fare Against Russ­ian Troops

Why Rus­sia Invad­ed Ukraine: A Use­ful Primer