Jack Kerouac Reads from On the Road: The Only Known Footage of the Beat Icon Reading His Work (1959)

in History, Literature, Television | March 17th, 2022

The video above shows us Jack Ker­ouac giv­ing a read­ing, accom­pa­nied by the jazz piano stylings of evening tele­vi­sion vari­ety-show host Steve Allen. In oth­er words, if you’ve been look­ing for the most late-nine­teen-fifties clip in exis­tence, your jour­ney may have come to an end. Ear­li­er in that decade, Allen says (sprin­kling his mono­logue with a few notes here and there), “the nation rec­og­nized in its midst a social move­ment called the Beat Gen­er­a­tion. A nov­el titled On the Road became a best­seller, and its author, Jack Ker­ouac, became a celebri­ty: part­ly because he’d writ­ten a pow­er­ful and suc­cess­ful book, but part­ly because he seemed to be the embod­i­ment of this new gen­er­a­tion.”

As the nov­el­ists and poets of the Beat Gen­er­a­tion were grad­u­al­ly gain­ing renown, Allen was fast becom­ing a nation­al celebri­ty. In 1954, his co-cre­ation The Tonight Show made him the first late-night tele­vi­sion talk show host, and con­se­quent­ly applied pres­sure to stay atop the cul­tur­al cur­rents of the day. Not only did he know of the Beats, he joined them, at least for one col­lab­o­ra­tion: “Jack and I made an album togeth­er a few months back in which I played back­ground piano for his poet­ry read­ing.” That was Poet­ry for the Beat Gen­er­a­tion, the first of Ker­ouac’s tril­o­gy of spo­ken-word albums that we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture back in 2015.

“At that time I made a note to book him on this show,” Allen says, “because I thought you would enjoy meet­ing him.” After answer­ing a few “square ques­tions” by way of intro­duc­tion — it took him three weeks to write On the Road, he spent sev­en years on the road itself, he did indeed type on a con­tin­u­ous “scroll’ of paper, and he would define “Beat” as “sym­pa­thet­ic” — Ker­ouac reads from the nov­el that made his name, accom­pa­nied by Allen’s piano. “A lot of peo­ple have asked me, why did I write that book, or any book,” he begins. “All the sto­ries I wrote were true, because I believed in what I saw.” This is, of course, not poet­ry but prose, and prac­ti­cal­ly essay­is­tic prose at that, but here it sounds like a lit­er­ary form all its own.

If you’d like to hear the music of Ker­ouac’s prose with­out actu­al musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, have a lis­ten to his acetate record­ing of a half-hour selec­tion from On the Road that we post­ed last week­end. The occa­sion was the 100th anniver­sary of his birth, which else­where brought forth all man­ner of trib­utes and re-eval­u­a­tions of his work and lega­cy. 65 years after On the Road’s pub­li­ca­tion, how much resem­blance does today’s Amer­i­ca bear to the one criss­crossed by Sal Par­adise and Dean Mori­ar­ty? It’s worth con­sid­er­ing why the coun­try no longer inspires writ­ers quite like Jack Ker­ouac — or for that mat­ter, giv­en the pas­sage of his own lit­tle-not­ed cen­te­nary last Decem­ber, tele­vi­sion hosts like Steve Allen.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitch­hik­ing Trip Nar­rat­ed in On the Road

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spo­ken-World Albums: A Sub­lime Union of Beat Lit­er­a­ture and 1950s Jazz

Jack Ker­ouac Reads Amer­i­can Haikus, Backed by Jazz Sax­o­phon­ists Al Cohn & Zoot Sims (1958)

Free: Hours of Jack Ker­ouac Read­ing Beat Poems & Verse

Jack Kerouac’s Poet­ry & Prose Read/Performed by 20 Icons: Hunter S. Thomp­son, Pat­ti Smith, William S. Bur­roughs, John­ny Depp & More

Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steven Allen Show (1963)

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.

Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never Be Drawn; and Vladimir Nabokov Draws It Anyway

in Literature | March 17th, 2022

If you’ve read Franz Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis in Eng­lish, it’s like­ly that your trans­la­tion referred to the trans­formed Gre­gor Sam­sa as a “cock­roach,” “bee­tle,” or, more gen­er­al­ly, a “gigan­tic insect.” These ren­der­ings of the author’s orig­i­nal Ger­man don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly miss the mark—Gregor scut­tles, waves mul­ti­ple legs about, and has some kind of an exoskele­ton. His char­woman calls him a “dung bee­tle”… the evi­dence abounds. But the Ger­man words used in the first sen­tence of the sto­ry to describe Gregor’s new incar­na­tion are much more mys­te­ri­ous, and per­haps strange­ly laden with meta­phys­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

Trans­la­tor Susan Bernof­sky writes, “both the adjec­tive unge­heuer (mean­ing “mon­strous” or “huge”) and the noun Ungeziefer are negations—virtual nonentities—prefixed by un.” Ungeziefer, a term from Mid­dle High Ger­man, describes some­thing like “an unclean ani­mal unfit for sac­ri­fice,” belong­ing to “the class of nasty creepy-crawly things.” It sug­gests many types of vermin—insects, yes, but also rodents. “Kaf­ka,” writes Bernof­sky, “want­ed us to see Gregor’s new body and con­di­tion with the same hazy focus with which Gre­gor him­self dis­cov­ers them.”

It’s like­ly for that very rea­son that Kaf­ka pro­hib­it­ed images of Gre­gor. In a 1915 let­ter to his pub­lish­er, he stip­u­lat­ed, “the insect is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a dis­tance.” The slim book’s orig­i­nal cov­er, above, instead fea­tures a per­fect­ly nor­mal-look­ing man, dis­traught as though he might be imag­in­ing a ter­ri­ble trans­for­ma­tion, but not actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly expe­ri­enc­ing one.

Yet it seems obvi­ous that Kaf­ka meant Gre­gor to have become some kind of insect. Kafka’s let­ter uses the Ger­man Insekt, and when casu­al­ly refer­ring to the sto­ry-in-progress, Kaf­ka used the word Wanze, or “bug.” Mak­ing this too clear in the prose dilutes the grotesque body hor­ror Gre­gor suf­fers, and the sto­ry is told from his point of view—one that “mutates as the sto­ry pro­ceeds.” So writes Dutch read­er Fred­die Oomkins, who fur­ther observes, “at the phys­i­cal lev­el Gre­gor, at dif­fer­ent points in the sto­ry, starts to talk with a squeak­ing, ani­mal-like voice, los­es con­trol of his legs, hangs from the ceil­ing, starts to lose his eye­sight, and wants to bite his sister—not real­ly help­ful in deter­min­ing his tax­on­o­my.”

Dif­fi­cul­ties of trans­la­tion and clas­si­fi­ca­tion aside, Russ­ian lit­er­ary mas­ter­mind and lep­i­dopter­ist Vladimir Nabokov decid­ed that he knew exact­ly what Gre­gor Sam­sa had turned into. And, against the author’s wish­es, Nabokov even drew a pic­ture in his teach­ing copy of the novel­la. Nabokov also heav­i­ly edit­ed his edi­tion, as you can see in the many cor­rec­tions and revi­sions above. In a lec­ture on The Meta­mor­pho­sis, he con­cludes that Gre­gor is “mere­ly a big bee­tle” (notice he strikes the word “gigan­tic” from the text above and writes at the top “just over 3 feet long”), and fur­ther­more one who is capa­ble of flight, which would explain how he ends up on the ceil­ing.

All of this may seem high­ly dis­re­spect­ful of The Meta­mor­pho­sis’ author. Cer­tain­ly Nabokov has nev­er been a respecter of lit­er­ary per­sons, refer­ring to Faulkner’s work, for exam­ple, as “corn­cob­by chron­i­cles,” and Joyce’s Finnegans Wake as a “pet­ri­fied super­pun.” Yet in his lec­ture Nabokov calls Kaf­ka “the great­est Ger­man writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such nov­el­ists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plas­tic saints in com­par­i­son with him.” Though a saint he may be, Kaf­ka is “first of all an artist,” and Nabokov does not believe that “any reli­gious impli­ca­tions can be read into Kafka’s genius.” (“I am inter­est­ed here in bugs, not hum­bugs,” he says dis­mis­sive­ly.)

Reject­ing Kafka’s ten­den­cies toward mys­ti­cism runs against most inter­pre­ta­tions of his fic­tion. One might sus­pect Nabokov of see­ing too much of him­self in the author when he com­pares Kaf­ka to Flaubert and asserts, “Kaf­ka liked to draw his terms from the lan­guage of law and sci­ence, giv­ing them a kind of iron­ic pre­ci­sion, with no intru­sion of the author’s pri­vate sen­ti­ments.” Unge­heueres Ungeziefer, how­ev­er, is not a sci­en­tif­ic term, and its Mid­dle Ger­man lit­er­ary origins—which Kaf­ka would have been famil­iar with from his stud­ies—clear­ly con­note reli­gious ideas of impu­ri­ty and sac­ri­fice.

With due respect to Nabokov’s for­mi­da­ble eru­di­tion, it seems in this instance at least that Kaf­ka ful­ly intend­ed impre­ci­sion, what Bernof­sky calls “blurred per­cep­tions of bewil­der­ment,” in lan­guage “care­ful­ly cho­sen to avoid speci­fici­ty.” Kafka’s art con­sists of this abil­i­ty to exploit the ancient strat­i­fi­ca­tions of lan­guage. His almost Kab­bal­is­tic treat­ment of signs and his aver­sion to graven images may con­ster­nate and bedev­il trans­la­tors and cer­tain nov­el­ists, but it is also the great source of his uncan­ny genius.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

The Art of Franz Kaf­ka: Draw­ings from 1907–1917

How Insom­nia Shaped Franz Kafka’s Cre­ative Process and the Writ­ing of The Meta­mor­pho­sis: A New Study Pub­lished in The Lancet

The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Mr. Sam­sa: A Won­der­ful Sand Ani­ma­tion of the Clas­sic Kaf­ka Sto­ry (1977)

Vladimir Nabokov (Chan­nelled by Christo­pher Plum­mer) Teach­es Kaf­ka at Cor­nell

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

When Oliver Stone & Vladimir Putin Chillingly Watched Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove Together

in Current Affairs, Film, Television | March 16th, 2022

Hav­ing by now seen Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb (1964) more times than I can remem­ber, it sur­pris­es me to meet some­one who’s nev­er seen it at all. When I do, my first impulse is always to sug­gest a screen­ing right then and there. This would seem to put me in com­pa­ny with Oliv­er Stone, who in recent years has been doc­u­ment­ed engag­ing in at least one instance of high-pro­file Strangelove evan­ge­lism. As for the new inductee into the Strangelove view­er­ship, he went more than 60 years with­out hav­ing seen the film, but for the last cou­ple of decades had the cred­i­ble excuse of busy­ness: it isn’t just a part-time gig, after all, being the pres­i­dent of Rus­sia.

Stone seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch Dr. Strangelove with Vladimir Putin in the course of film­ing The Putin Inter­views, a four-part doc­u­men­tary series broad­cast on Show­time in 2017. This was­n’t the first time Stone had made a sub­ject of his own inter­ac­tions with a head of state whom many Amer­i­cans con­sid­er malev­o­lent: in 2008’s South of the Bor­der, for exam­ple, he attempt­ed a human­iz­ing cin­e­mat­ic por­trait of Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez. At Show­time’s Youtube chan­nel, you can watch a vari­ety of clips from The Putin Inter­views, includ­ing Putin giv­ing Stone a tour of his offices, Putin’s reac­tion to the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump, and Putin check­ing in with Stone before skat­ing out onto the ice for a game of hock­ey.

The view­ing of Dr. Strangelove comes at the series’ very end, which is pre­sum­ably an effort on Stone’s part to save the “best” for last — and as Cold War Amer­i­can cin­e­ma goes, one could hard­ly hope for a bet­ter selec­tion. Based on Peter George’s Red Alert, a straight­for­ward thriller nov­el about Amer­i­can and Sovi­et pro­to­cols of nuclear-defense man­age­ment gone dis­as­trous­ly wrong, the film only took shape when Kubrick real­ized it had to be a com­e­dy. As he lat­er recalled, “I found that in try­ing to put meat on the bones and to imag­ine the scenes ful­ly, one had to keep leav­ing out of it things which were either absurd or para­dox­i­cal, in order to keep it from being fun­ny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in ques­tion.”

As Joseph Heller real­ized while writ­ing Catch-22, cer­tain ridicu­lous truths about war sim­ply can’t be por­trayed non-comed­ical­ly. As real­ized through the painstak­ing­ly exact film­mak­ing of Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, Dr. Strangelove is the black­est of black come­dies. “There are cer­tain things in this film that indeed make us think,” Putin says to Stone after the clos­ing mon­tage of mush­room clouds. He even cred­its Kubrick with tech­ni­cal fore­sight: “Mod­ern weapon sys­tems have become more sophis­ti­cat­ed, more com­plex. But this idea of a retal­ia­to­ry weapon and the inabil­i­ty to con­trol such weapon sys­tems still hold true today.” Not much has changed since the days of Dr. Strangelove, he admits, and now that he’s under­gone his own bout of geopo­lit­i­cal brazen­ness, let’s hope that he remem­bers how the movie ends.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Inside the Mak­ing of Dr. Strangelove: Doc­u­men­tary Reveals How a Cold War Sto­ry Became a Kubrick Clas­sic

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Title Sequences and Trail­ers Cre­at­ed by Pablo Fer­ro: Dr. Strangelove, A Clock­work Orange, Stop Mak­ing Sense, Bul­litt & Oth­er Films

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego

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.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain Performs The Ramones “I Wanna Be Sedated”

in Music | March 15th, 2022

You have seen The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain (UOGB)  pay trib­ute to The Clash, Nir­vana and Bowie. Now, it’s time for The Ramones and their 1978 clas­sic, “I Wan­na Be Sedat­ed.” The UOGB took shape in 1985, and they’ve been per­form­ing cre­ative cov­ers of pop­u­lar songs and musi­cal pieces ever since. Enjoy this one, and find a long playlist of their oth­er cov­ers 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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s Head­bang­ing Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Ukulele Orches­tra Per­forms Ennio Morricone’s Icon­ic West­ern Theme Song, “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” And It’s Pret­ty Bril­liant.

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion”

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.