The Horrors of Bull Island, “the Worst Music Festival of All Time” (1972)

in Music | June 18th, 2021

It’s maybe a lit­tle unfair to com­pare 1972’s “Bull Island” Fes­ti­val to Fyre Fest, the music fes­ti­val scam so egre­gious it war­rant­ed duel­ing doc­u­men­taries on Hulu and Net­flix. But “Bull Island” — or what was orig­i­nal­ly called the Erie Canal Soda Pop Fes­ti­val — was an epic cat­a­stro­phe, maybe the worst in music fes­ti­val his­to­ry, and well deserv­ing of its own media fran­chise. Still, its orga­niz­ers had every inten­tion of fol­low­ing through on the event. What hap­pened wasn’t entire­ly their fault, but part­ly the result of a cam­paign to route thou­sands of hip­pies out of the state of Indi­ana.

Pro­mot­ers Tom Dun­can and Bob Alexan­der had pre­vi­ous­ly staged a suc­cess­ful fes­ti­val, the Bosse Field Free­dom Fest, in Evans­ville, an event fea­tur­ing Tina Turn­er, Edgar Win­ter, Dr. John, Howl­in’ Wolf, and John Lee Hook­er. Eager to top them­selves and bring a “bigger-than-Woodstock”-sized hap­pen­ing to the Mid­west, they booked “a block­buster col­lec­tion of artists” for their next event, writes Patrick Cham­ber­lain at Ever­fest, “includ­ing Black Sab­bath, The All­man Broth­ers, Fleet­wood Mac, Ravi Shankar, The Eagles, and even Cheech and Chong.”

Before secur­ing all the per­mits, they placed ads and start­ed sell­ing tick­ets. The two eager 20-some­thing orga­niz­ers both suf­fered from the trag­ic flaw of youth­ful over­con­fi­dence, which blind­ed them to the fact that there was no way their next fes­ti­val was going to hap­pen in Evans­ville, or any­where in Indi­ana, for that mat­ter. The error led to what may be, as Band­splain­ing explains above, the worst music fes­ti­val of all time. “The lack of pre­pared­ness, the law­less­ness, the des­per­a­tion of the crowd; it’s like the bad-acid trip ver­sion of Wood­stock where [spoil­er] every­thing burns down. [/spoiler].”

Although reports from locals most­ly char­ac­ter­ized the duo’s pre­vi­ous out­door fes­ti­val at Bosse Field as peace­ful, Evans­ville May­or Rus­sell Lloyd vowed it would nev­er hap­pen again. Yet Dun­can and Alexan­der plowed ahead with plan­ning the Eerie Canal Soda Pop Fes­ti­val, as Sean Mcde­vitt writes at the Couri­er & Press:

Con­tracts were signed, heli­copters were rent­ed, and holes were being dug for some 500 portable toi­lets. More than 30 rock groups were booked, and tick­ets went on sale in sev­er­al cities around the coun­try.

Obliv­i­ous to their fate, the orga­niz­ers sold almost 9,000 tick­ets. “Just eight days after its announce­ment, a restrain­ing order was issued against the event,” fol­lowed by a string of sim­i­lar ordi­nances in neigh­bor­ing coun­ties as oth­er locales got wind of the pro­ject­ed 50,000 to 60,000 atten­dees expect­ed to show up. Soon, those num­bers swelled to the hun­dreds of thou­sands. Alexan­der and Dun­can went on TV and begged author­i­ties to let the show pro­ceed to pre­vent mass civ­il unrest.

Forced to move the fes­ti­val out of state, they set­tled on a place called Bull Island, “not in fact an island, but rather a col­lec­tion of swampy fields,” Cham­ber­lain notes, “under the legal juris­dic­tion of the town of Car­mi, Illi­nois, but only acces­si­ble through Indi­ana.” When 200,000 hip­pies arrived on Labor Day week­end, it caused a traf­fic jam 30 miles long, and they were forced to aban­don their cars and hike for miles on foot, resem­bling “a defeat­ed army,” NBC Night­ly News reporter Edwin New­man put it.

Some of the acts — includ­ing Ravi Shankar, Ted Nugen­t’s Amboy Dukes, and Black Oak Arkansas — did make it, chop­per­ing in to play a set, then swift­ly leav­ing. “Cheech and Chong were heli­coptered in, per­formed for fif­teen min­utes in a del­uge of rain, cut their set short,” and got out, sure­ly sens­ing bad vibes every­where, caused by strych­nine-laced acid. Big acts like Rod Stew­art and Black Sab­bath had already can­celed, leav­ing long stretch­es of silence between sets.

For most fes­ti­val atten­dees, the open-air drug mar­kets stood out most in their mem­o­ries. “The dope dis­trict looked like dou­ble rows of fish stands at the coun­ty fair!” one remem­bers. “It was eas­i­er to buy drugs than it was to buy water,” recalled anoth­er attendee. The police, vast­ly out­num­bered, left well enough alone and stayed out­side the fence. Jemayel Khawa­ja at Ozy paints the scene:

Inside, chaos was already in full swing. The stage was half con­struct­ed, and the camp­grounds — crammed with over four times as many peo­ple as expect­ed — were lined with open drug mar­kets. Hawk­ers set up stalls sell­ing mar­i­jua­na, mesca­line, LSD and hero­in. “I nev­er saw so many drugs in my life,” attendee Ray Kessler recalled to local news­pa­per The Mount Ver­non Demo­c­rat. With only six out­hous­es and half-dug wells to serve as san­i­ta­tion, thou­sands instead took to reliev­ing them­selves en masse in what became known as “The Turd Fields” and bathing in the Wabash Riv­er.

What hap­pened was sure­ly inevitable. Price goug­ing caused atten­dees, rabid with hunger and thirst, to attack ven­dors. Some caught pneu­mo­nia in the tor­ren­tial rains on the third day. One attendee drowned in the Wabash, anoth­er was run over by a truck but sur­vived, many were beat­en and robbed, one over­dosed, one gave birth. By that evening, “the crowd had endured enough,” Cham­ber­lain writes. “The last­ing image many have of the fes­ti­val is the crowd set­ting the stage on fire. It was a fit­ting end­ing. By this point, the pop­u­lous turned to mass exo­dus, dur­ing which com­mon themes were intox­i­ca­tion, break­downs, theft, long dri­ves, and come­downs.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lis­ten Online to Every Minute of the Orig­i­nal Wood­stock Fes­ti­val

Leg­endary Protest Songs from Wood­stock: Hen­drix, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Coun­try Joe & More Per­form Protest Songs Dur­ing the Music Fes­ti­val That Launched 50 Years Ago This Week

Revis­it the Infa­mous Rolling Stones Free Fes­ti­val at Alta­mont: The Ill-Fat­ed Con­cert Took Place 50 Years Ago

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

Brian Eno Launches His Own Radio Station with Hundreds of Unreleased Tracks: Hear Two Programs

in Music | June 17th, 2021

Cre­ative Com­mons image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Back in 2013, Bri­an Eno gave a talk at the Red Bull Acad­e­my, the lec­ture series that has host­ed fel­low musi­cians like Tony Vis­con­ti, Deb­bie Har­ry, and Nile Rogers. Asked when he knew a piece of music was fin­ished, Eno let drop that he cur­rent­ly had 200,809 works of unre­leased music. (The actu­al answer though? “When there’s a dead­line”).

Usu­al­ly we have to wait for posthu­mous releas­es to hear such music, like what is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing now to Prince’s “vault” of music. Eno is not wait­ing. He got the dead­line.

Sonos Radio HD, the music divi­sion of the speak­er and audio sys­tem com­pa­ny, announced last week that Eno has curat­ed a radio sta­tion that will play noth­ing but unre­leased cuts from his five decades of mak­ing music. There’s so much mate­r­i­al, the chance of a lis­ten­er hear­ing a repeat is slim. (Still, the sta­tion promis­es hun­dreds of tracks, not hun­dreds of thou­sands.)

Now, this is not an adver­tise­ment for Sonos, but a heads up that in order to pro­mote “The Light­house,” as Eno has called the radio sta­tion, Sonos has dropped two Eno-led radio shows where he shares just a frac­tion of the unre­leased mate­r­i­al, with a promise of two more episodes to come. One fea­tures an inter­view­er, and the oth­er is just Eno talk­ing about the tracks. (And you *can* get one month free at Sonos if you sign up.)

“(A radio sta­tion) is some­thing I’ve been think­ing about for years and years and years,” says Eno. “And it’s part­ly because I have far too much music in my life. I have so much stuff.”

The tracks have been purged of titles and have been instead giv­en the util­i­tar­i­an monikers of “Light­house Num­ber (X)”. Any­way, titles sug­gest too much thought. “Some are pret­ty crap titles,” he says. “The prob­lem with work­ing on com­put­ers is that you have to give things titles before you’ve actu­al­ly made them…Sometimes the pieces often quick­ly out­grow the titles.”

If you’re expect­ing noth­ing but ambi­ent wash­es and gen­er­a­tive music, you might be sur­prised at the vari­ety. In the first Eno-host­ed show, he plays a funky jam (“Light­house Num­ber 002”) co-com­posed by Peter Chil­vers and stuffed with r’n’b sam­ples; and an almost-com­plet­ed song fea­tur­ing the Eury­th­mics’ Dave Stew­art on gui­tar, called “All the Bloody Fight­ers,” aka “Light­house Num­ber 106”.

Why call it “The Light­house”? “I like the idea of a sort of bea­con call­ing you, telling you some­thing, warn­ing you per­haps, announc­ing some­thing.” He also cred­its a friend who told him his unre­leased music is like ships lost at sea. The light­house “is call­ing in some of those lost ships.”

As a bonus, lis­ten below to Eno’s recent inter­view with Rick Rubin, where they talk about the Sonos project and much more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Expe­ri­ence a Video Paint­ing of Bri­an Eno’s Thurs­day After­noon That Has Soothed & Relaxed Mil­lions of Peo­ple

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Rarely-Heard Cov­er of the John­ny Cash Clas­sic, “Ring of Fire”

Dis­cov­er the Appre­hen­sion Engine: Bri­an Eno Called It “the Most Ter­ri­fy­ing Musi­cal Instru­ment of All Time”

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.

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Painting?: An Explanation in 15 Minutes

in Art, History | June 17th, 2021

The Mona Lisa may be on dis­play at the Lou­vre, but best of luck appre­ci­at­ing it there. The first obsta­cle, quite lit­er­al­ly, is the crowd that’s always massed around it (or, in the time before social-dis­tanc­ing poli­cies, was always massed around it). Even if you maneu­ver your way to the front of the cam­era-phoned throng, the paint­ing itself hangs with­in a thick glass case — can’t have a repeat of the 1911 theft — and has dimen­sions in any event much small­er than peo­ple tend to imag­ine. After all, we come to know Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s most famous paint­ing through cul­tur­al ref­er­ence and par­o­dy, but also through large-scale repro­duc­tion, the bet­ter to under­stand the painstak­ing and inno­v­a­tive artis­tic labor that makes the Mona Lisa worth flock­ing to in the first place.

Still, there are those who come away from the Mona Lisa — assum­ing they can man­age to get back out through the mass of human­i­ty — won­der­ing what all the fuss is about. It was for them, pre­sum­ably, that cura­tor James Payne chose that paint­ing as the first sub­ject of his Youtube series Great Art Explained.

As he would in his sub­se­quent episodes (such as his three-part series, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, about Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights), Payne casts off the accu­mu­lat­ed his­tor­i­cal spec­u­la­tion and oth­er var­i­ous forms of cul­tur­al bag­gage to find the work’s artis­tic core. In the case of the Mona Lisa, not just “the great­est psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait ever paint­ed” but “the end prod­uct of the great­est inquis­i­tive mind in his­to­ry,” that still leaves much to dis­cuss.

In under fif­teen min­utes, Payne explains a host of the tech­niques Leonar­do employed in paint­ing the Mona Lisa that no artist of his time and place had used before — and indeed, that in some cas­es no oth­er artists mas­tered until long there­after. These include work­ing on top of an under-lay­er of white paint that appears to be “light­ing Mona Lisa from with­in,” strip­ping his sub­ject of “all the usu­al high-sta­tus sym­bols” usu­al­ly seen in aris­to­crat­ic por­trai­ture, depict­ing her at three-quar­ters length rather than in full frame, mak­ing the back­ground fade into the dis­tance while also sug­gest­ing motion, and com­bin­ing the tech­niques of low-con­trast sfu­ma­to and high-con­trast chiaroscuro. And only a painter with Leonar­do’s anatom­i­cal knowl­edge could have exe­cut­ed that famous­ly sub­tle smile, which appears and van­ish­es again depend­ing on which part of the Mona Lisa we look at — no mat­ter whether we’re doing it at the Lou­vre or on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911)

Did Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint a First Mona Lisa Before The Mona Lisa?

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911)

Mark Twain Skew­ers Great Works of Art: The Mona Lisa (“a Smoked Had­dock!”), The Last Sup­per (“a Mourn­ful Wreck”) & More

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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.

Hear an Excerpt from the Newly-Released, First Unabridged Audiobook of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

in Audio Books, Literature | June 17th, 2021

Need one go so far in dig­ging out stra­ta of mean­ing? Only if one wish­es to; Finnegans Wake is a puz­zle, just as a dream is a puz­zle, but the puz­zle ele­ment is less impor­tant than the thrust of the nar­ra­tive and the shad­owy majesty of the char­ac­ters… and when our eyes grow bewil­dered with strange roots and incred­i­ble com­pounds, why, then we can switch on our ears. It is aston­ish­ing how much of the mean­ing is con­veyed through music: the art of dim-sight­ed Joyce is, like that of Mil­ton, main­ly audi­to­ry. — Antho­ny Burgess

Finnegans Wake is not typ­i­cal­ly one of those books peo­ple pre­tend they have read, and even when they have read James Joyce’s last nov­el, no one’s like­ly to bring it up at din­ner. It seems like mak­ing sense of Joyce’s poly­glot prose — full of pecu­liar coinages and port­man­teaus — takes spe­cial train­ing and the kind of ded­i­ca­tion and nat­ur­al poly­math­ic tal­ents few read­ers pos­sess. Crit­ic, com­pos­er, lin­guist, poet, screen­writer, play­wright, and nov­el­ist Antho­ny Burgess was one such read­er, spend­ing decades study­ing Joyce and pub­lish­ing his first book on the Irish writer, Here Comes Every­body, in 1965.

Burgess pub­lished two more Joyce books, edit­ed a short­er Finnegans Wake with his own crit­i­cal com­men­tary, and released doc­u­men­tary films about the nov­el, a book he made more approach­able with his plain-spo­ken sum­maries. From the start, in the intro­duc­tion to his first Joyce book — and against the evi­dence of most everyone’s expe­ri­ence with Finnegans Wake — Burgess insist­ed read­ing Joyce was not a rar­i­fied pur­suit. “If ever there was a writer for the peo­ple,” Burgess argued, “Joyce was that writer.”

What’s impor­tant to keep in mind, Burgess empha­sizes, even over and above con­sid­er­a­tions of mean­ing, is the music of Joyce’s lan­guage. One might go so far as to say, the book is noth­ing but lan­guage that must be read aloud, and, crit­i­cal­ly, sung. “[Joyce’s] writ­ing is not about some­thing,” wrote Samuel Beck­ett. “It is that some­thing itself… . When the sense is sleep, the words go to sleep… When the sense is danc­ing the words dance.”

That quote comes from the lin­er notes of the very first unabridged com­mer­cial audio­book record­ing of Finnegans Wake, read by Irish actor Bar­ry McGov­ern (hand­picked by the Joyce estate), with Mar­cel­la Rior­dan. You can hear an excerpt fur­ther up, the first five para­graphs of the book, open­ing with the famous sen­tence frag­ment, “river­run, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a com­mod­ius vicus of recir­cu­la­tion back to Howth Cas­tle and Envi­rons.” Rolling Stone writes:

As it pro­gress­es, McGov­ern expert­ly nav­i­gates seem­ing­ly unpro­nounce­able words like “bababadal­gharagh­takam­mi­nar­ronnkonnbron­nton­nerronntuon­nthun­ntrovar­rhounawn­skawn­toohooho­or­de­nen­thur­nuk” (which con­tains 100 char­ac­ters) and he enun­ci­ates every con­so­nant in Joyce’s unusu­al word inven­tions like “duskt.”

Yes, in print, it’s daunt­ing stuff, but we should remem­ber that for all Finnegans Wake’s lin­guis­tic com­plex­i­ty, its attempts to cap­ture all of human his­to­ry, its illus­tra­tions of the obscure the­o­ries of Giambat­tista Vico and Gior­dano Bruno and so forth, at its heart, wrote Burgess, is song, which gave the book its title.

“Finnegan’s Wake” is a New York Irish bal­lad which tells of the death of Tim Finnegan, a builder’s labour­er who, fond of the bot­tle, falls drunk from his lad­der… This bal­lad may be tak­en as demot­ic res­ur­rec­tion myth and one can see why, with its core of pro­fun­di­ty wrapped round with the lan­guage of ordi­nary peo­ple, it appealed so much to Joyce. 

Joyce, the singer and lover of song, heard it every­where he went, and it’s in every bewil­der­ing sen­tence and para­graph of Finnegans Wake. Hear the entire book, read unabridged for the first time, in the new record­ing, released on June 16th, Blooms­day, by Nax­os Audio­books. Free alter­na­tive ver­sions can be found below…

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Gets Turned into an Inter­ac­tive Web Film, the Medi­um It Was Des­tined For

Hear a Read­ing of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Set to Music: Fea­tures 100+ Musi­cians and Read­ers from Across the World

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Dif­fer­ent Artists

Hear All of Finnegans Wake Read Aloud: A 35 Hour Read­ing

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

Download Great Works of Art from 40+ Museums Worldwide: Explore Artvee, the New Art Search Engine

in Art, Technology | June 16th, 2021

Dil­bert cre­ator Scott Adams once wrote of his ear­ly expe­ri­ences intro­duc­ing the World Wide Web to oth­ers. “In 1993, there were only a hand­ful of Web sites you could access, such as the Smith­so­ni­an’s exhib­it of gems. Those pages were slow to load and crashed as often as they worked.” But those who wit­nessed this tech­nol­o­gy in action would invari­ably “get out of their chairs their eyes like saucers, and they would approach the key­board. They had to touch it them­selves. There was some­thing about the inter­net that was like cat­nip.” In the inter­ven­ing decades, the tech­nol­o­gy pow­er­ing the inter­net has only improved, and we’ve all felt how great­ly that cat­nip-like effect has inten­si­fied. And the Smith­son­ian, as we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, is still there — now with much more online than gems.

Today, the Smith­so­ni­an’s impres­sive online col­lec­tions are acces­si­ble through Artvee, a new search engine for down­load­able high-res­o­lu­tion, pub­lic domain art­works. So are the col­lec­tions of more than 40 oth­er inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions, from the New York Pub­lic Library and the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go to the Rijksmu­se­um and Paris Musées, many of which had lit­tle or no online pres­ence back in the ear­ly 1990s.

In recent years, they’ve got­ten quite seri­ous indeed about dig­i­tiz­ing their hold­ings and mak­ing those dig­i­ti­za­tions freely avail­able to the world, upload­ing them by the thou­sand, even by the mil­lion. With so many art­works and arti­facts already up, and sure­ly much more to come, the ques­tion becomes how best to nav­i­gate not just one of these col­lec­tions, but all of them.

Artvee con­sti­tutes one answer to this ques­tion. Using its search engine, writes Denise Tem­pone at Domesti­ka, “you can fil­ter cat­e­gories such as abstract art, land­scape, mythol­o­gy, draw­ings, illus­tra­tions, botany, fash­ion, fig­u­ra­tive art, reli­gion, ani­mal, desserts, his­to­ry, Japan­ese art, and still life. The site also gives you the option to search by artist. You will find works by Rem­brandt van Rijn, Claude Mon­et, Raphael, and San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li in this amaz­ing gallery.” Oth­er col­lec­tions, cre­at­ed by Artvee itself as well as by its users, include “illus­tra­tions from fairy tales; cov­ers of pop­u­lar Amer­i­can songs; and some even more pecu­liar ones, such as adverts sell­ing bicy­cles that are over a hun­dred years old.”

The vari­ety of artists brows­able on Artvee also includes Alphonse Mucha, Edvard Munch, and Hilma af Kint; oth­er col­lec­tions offer the won­ders of polit­i­cal illus­tra­tions, book pro­mo posters, and NASA’s visions of the future. All of the items with­in, it bears repeat­ing, are in the pub­lic domain or dis­trib­uted under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, mean­ing you can use them not just as sources of inspi­ra­tion but as ingre­di­ents in your own work as well, a pos­si­bil­i­ty few us could have imag­ined at the dawn of the Web. Back then, you’ll recall, we all used a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent tools and por­tals to nav­i­gate the inter­net, accord­ing to per­son­al pref­er­ence. The emerg­ing field of art search engines, which includes not just Artvee but oth­er options like Museo, may remind us of those days — and how far the inter­net has come since.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Search Engine for Find­ing Free, Pub­lic Domain Images from World-Class Muse­ums

Vis­it 2+ Mil­lion Free Works of Art from 20 World-Class Muse­ums Free Online

The Smith­son­ian Puts 2.8 Mil­lion High-Res Images Online and Into the Pub­lic Domain

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Cre­ative Com­mons Offi­cial­ly Launch­es a Search Engine That Index­es 300+ Mil­lion Pub­lic Domain Images

Flim: a New AI-Pow­ered Movie-Screen­shot Search Engine

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.

Watch Franz Liszt’s “Un Sospiro” Played with the Mesmerizing “Three-Hand Technique”

in Music | June 16th, 2021

“Piano edu­ca­tion is impor­tant for teach­ing polypho­ny, improv­ing sight-read­ing, con­sol­i­dat­ing the knowl­edge of har­mo­ny and gain­ing much more musi­cal abil­i­ties,” write Turk­ish researchers in the behav­ioral sci­ences jour­nal Pro­ce­dia. The stu­dent of the piano can advance solo or with anoth­er play­er in duets, play­ing what are called “four-hand pieces.” But learn­ing “to gain the atti­tudes of duet play­ing” pos­es a chal­lenge. Researchers Izzet Yuce­tok­er and Kok­sal Apay­din­li sug­gest a pos­si­ble inter­ven­tion — over­com­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties of play­ing four-hand pieces by learn­ing to play what are called “three-hand pieces.”

How, you might won­der, does one play the piano with three hands? It does not take an extra limb or a part­ner with one hand tied behind their back. Three-hand tech­nique is a dex­trous sleight-of-hand devel­oped in the 1830s, most promi­nent­ly by pianist Sigis­mond Thal­berg, a rival of Franz Liszt who could “appar­ent­ly not only counter Liszt’s leg­endary fire and thun­der with sub­tle­ty,” Bryce Mor­ri­son writes at Gramo­phone, “but who played as if with three hands. Three hands were heard, two were vis­i­ble!” Might this some­how be eas­i­er than play­ing duets?

One con­tem­po­rary review­er of Thalberg’s play­ing described it as “myr­i­ads of notes sound­ing from one extrem­i­ty of the instru­ment to the oth­er with­out dis­turb­ing the sub­ject, in which the three dis­tinct fea­tures of this com­bi­na­tion are clear­ly brought out by his exquis­ite touch.” The Pol­ish pianist and stu­dent of Liszt Moriz Rosen­thal claimed Thal­berg adopt­ed the tech­nique from the harp. “Such leg­erde­main quick­ly had nov­el­ty-con­scious Paris by the ears,” Mor­ri­son writes, “and an ele­gant white kid-glove rather than than a mere gaunt­let was thrown down before Liszt.”

Liszt would have none of it, derid­ing three-hand tech­nique as a trick unfit for his vir­tu­os­i­ty. Nonethe­less, “in 1837, Liszt, arguably the most charis­mat­ic vir­tu­oso of all time, was chal­lenged for suprema­cy by Sigis­mond Thal­berg…. Stung and infu­ri­at­ed by what he saw as Thalberg’s aris­to­crat­ic pre­ten­sions… Liszt replied with cor­r­us­cat­ing scorn.” He agreed to meet Thal­berg, not in a duet but a duel, at “the home of Count­ess Cristi­na Bel­gio­joso — lover of Lafayette, Heine and Liszt,” notes Georg Prodota at Inter­lude.

The Count­ess “gave a char­i­ty event for the refugees of the Ital­ian war of inde­pen­dence, and the con­tem­po­rary press com­pared the con­cert to the bat­tle between Rome and Carthage.” Count­ess Bel­gio­joso her­self (as did the press) pro­nounced the out­come a draw:

Nev­er was Liszt more con­trolled, more thought­ful, more ener­getic, more pas­sion­ate; nev­er has Thal­berg played with greater verve and ten­der­ness. Each of them pru­dent­ly stayed with­in his har­mon­ic domain, but each used every one of his resources. It was an admirable joust. The most pro­found silence fell over that noble are­na. And final­ly Liszt and Thal­berg were both pro­claimed vic­tors by this glit­ter­ing and intel­li­gent assem­bly. Thus two vic­tors and no van­quished …

His­to­ry was not so kind. Liszt is now cel­e­brat­ed as “the most charis­mat­ic vir­tu­oso of all time,” while Thal­berg is hard­ly remem­bered. And some of the most cel­e­brat­ed exam­ples of pieces played with three-hand tech­nique come not from Thal­berg but from Liszt, such as “Un Sospiro” (“A Sigh”), the last of his Three Con­cert Études, com­posed between 1845 and 1849, not only as per­for­mance pieces, but — as it so hap­pens — for the gen­er­al improve­ment of a pianist’s tech­nique. Hear pianist Paul Bar­ton play three ver­sions of “Un Sospiro” above and down­load the sheet music for the piece here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Piano Played with 16 Increas­ing Lev­els of Com­plex­i­ty: From Easy to Very Com­plex

12-Year-Old Piano Prodi­gy Takes Four Notes Ran­dom­ly Picked from a Hat and Instant­ly Uses Them to Impro­vise a Sonata

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

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

A History of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the University of Reading

in Music, Online Courses | June 15th, 2021

From Matthew Wor­ley, pro­fes­sor of mod­ern his­to­ry at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing, comes the free online course Anar­chy in the UK: A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78. (Wor­ley is also the author of the book, No Future: Punk, Pol­i­tics and British Youth Cul­ture.) The course cov­ers the fol­low­ing ground:

In the late 1970s, a new youth sub­cul­ture emerged in the UK. This, of course, was punk, and a cul­tur­al revolt was under­way.

In this course, you will learn about the emer­gence of punk and its diverse range of mean­ings. You’ll use that lens to explore how youth cul­tures pro­vid­ed space for peo­ple to reimag­ine, dis­cov­er and chal­lenge the soci­ety and com­mu­ni­ties in which they were com­ing of age.

You’ll explore punk as a tool of expres­sion for young peo­ple, and how it relat­ed to pol­i­tics and events. You’ll con­sid­er punk’s rela­tion­ship with gen­der, class, race, sex­u­al­i­ty and protest, draw­ing com­par­isons with the youth cul­ture of today…

This his­to­ry course also has an empha­sis on the cre­ative side of punk. You’ll explore DIY punk design and writ­ing, epit­o­mised by fanzines. You’ll learn how to cre­ate a real-life fanzine of your own, all the way to pub­lish­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. This will help strength­en your com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and encour­age inde­pen­dent thought and cre­ativ­i­ty.

Among oth­er things, the course will cov­er:

• The diverse mean­ings of ‘punk’, its roots and its effects on British cul­ture.
• The orig­i­na­tors and defin­ing events that led to punk’s spread across the UK and beyond.
• The music: how the Sex Pis­tols opened the way for a wide range of sounds and bands.
• Why fanzines became the per­fect medi­um for punk.
• Punk’s influ­ence on pub­lish­ing, fash­ion, art and design.
• Punk’s impact on issues of gen­der, class, race, sex­u­al­i­ty and protest.
• Punk’s lega­cy and con­tin­u­ing influ­ence on soci­ety.

Anar­chy in the UK: A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78 can be tak­en for free on the Future­Learn plat­form. The course will be added to our list: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Clash Embraced New York’s Hip Hop Scene and Released the Dance Track, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Dance” (1981)

The Sex Pis­tols Riotous 1978 Tour Through the U.S. South: Watch/Hear Con­certs in Dal­las, Mem­phis, Tul­sa & More

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

The Rashomon Effect: The Phenomenon, Named After Akira Kurosawa’s Classic Film, Where Each of Us Remembers the Same Event Differently

in Film, Literature, Psychology | June 15th, 2021

Toward the end of The Simp­sons’ gold­en age, one episode sent the tit­u­lar fam­i­ly off to Japan, not with­out resis­tance from its famous­ly lazy patri­arch. “Come on, Homer,” Marge insists, “Japan will be fun! You liked Rashomon.” To which Homer nat­u­ral­ly replies, “That’s not how I remem­ber it!” This joke must have writ­ten itself, not as a high-mid­dle­brow cul­tur­al ref­er­ence (as, say, Frasi­er would lat­er name-check Tam­popo) but as a play on a uni­ver­sal­ly under­stood byword for the nature of human mem­o­ry. Even those of us who’ve nev­er seen Rashomon, the peri­od crime dra­ma that made its direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa a house­hold name in the West, know what its title rep­re­sents: the ten­den­cy of each human being to remem­ber the same event in his own way.

“A samu­rai is found dead in a qui­et bam­boo grove,” says the nar­ra­tor of the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above. “One by one, the crime’s only known wit­ness­es recount their ver­sion of the events that tran­spired. But as they each tell their tale, it becomes clear that every tes­ti­mo­ny is plau­si­ble, yet dif­fer­ent, and each wit­ness impli­cates them­selves.”

So goes “In a Grove,” a sto­ry by cel­e­brat­ed ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry writer Ryūno­suke Aku­ta­gawa. An avid read­er, Kuro­sawa com­bined that lit­er­ary work with anoth­er of Aku­ta­gawa’s to cre­ate the script for Rashomon. Both Aku­ta­gawa and Kuro­sawa “use the tools of their media to give each char­ac­ter’s tes­ti­mo­ny equal weight, trans­form­ing each wit­ness into an unre­li­able nar­ra­tor.” Nei­ther read­er nor view­er can trust any­one — nor, ulti­mate­ly, can they arrive at a defen­si­ble con­clu­sion as to the iden­ti­ty of the killer.

Such con­flicts of mem­o­ry and per­cep­tion occur every­where in human affairs: this TED-Ed les­son finds exam­ples in biol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, pol­i­tics, and media. Suf­fi­cient­ly many psy­cho­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na con­verge to give rise to the Rashomon effect that it seems almost overde­ter­mined; it may be more illu­mi­nat­ing to ask under what con­di­tions does­n’t it occur. But it also makes us ask even tougher ques­tions: “What is truth, any­way? Are there sit­u­a­tions when an objec­tive truth does­n’t exist? What can dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the same event tell us about the time, place, and peo­ple involved? And how can we make group deci­sions if we’re all work­ing with dif­fer­ent infor­ma­tion, back­grounds, and bias­es?” We seem to be no clos­er to defin­i­tive answers than we were when Rashomon came out more than 70 years ago — only one of the rea­sons the film holds up so well still today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Time Seems to Fly By As You Get Old­er, and How to Slow It Down: A Sci­en­tif­ic Expla­na­tion by Neu­ro­sci­en­tist David Eagle­man

How to Improve Your Mem­o­ry: Four TED Talks Explain the Tech­niques to Remem­ber Any­thing

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

What Is Déjà Vu? Michio Kaku Won­ders If It’s Trig­gered by Par­al­lel Uni­vers­es

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 Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”

in Music | June 15th, 2021

Over the years, we’ve fea­tured The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain per­form­ing cov­ers of var­i­ous rock classics–from the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion” and Bowie’s “Heroes,” to Nir­vana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” and Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer.” Record­ed in Lon­don back in 2005, this clip fea­tures the Orches­tra per­form­ing The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go.’  The per­for­mance is an out­take from the DVD, Anar­chy in the Ukulele, which is avail­able in dig­i­tal for­mat. 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!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Seri­ous­ly Awe­some Ukulele Cov­ers of “Sul­tans of Swing,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Thun­der­struck,” and “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Hear The Velvet Underground’s “Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes,” Which Showcases the Brilliance & Innovation of Lou Reed’s Guitar Playing (1969)

in Music | June 15th, 2021

What was the Vel­vet Under­ground? A Kim Fow­ly-like art project that out­lived its impre­sar­i­o’s inter­est? A main vehi­cle for Lou Reed, rock’s ego­ma­ni­ac under­dog (who was no one’s ingénue)? Was it three bands? 1. The Vel­vet Under­ground and Nico; 2. The Vel­vet Under­ground with John Cale; and 3. The Vel­vet Under­ground with Doug Yule after Cale’s depar­ture. (Let’s pass by, for the moment, whether VU with­out Reed war­rants a men­tion…)

Each iter­a­tion pio­neered essen­tial under­ground sounds — dirgy Euro-folk rock, strung-out New York garage rock, junkie bal­lads, psy­che­del­ic drone, exper­i­men­tal noise — near­ly all of them chan­neled through Reed’s under­rat­ed gui­tar play­ing, which was, per­haps the most impor­tant mem­ber of the band all along. Who­ev­er taped the Vel­vets (in their sec­ond incar­na­tion) on March 15, 1969, on the last night of a three-show engage­ment at The Boston Tea Par­ty in Boston, MA, seemed to think so. “The entire set was record­ed by a fan direct­ly from Lou Reed’s gui­tar ampli­fi­er,” MetaFil­ter points out.

The mic jammed in the back of Reed’s amp, a Head Her­itage review­er writes, pro­duced “a mighty elec­tron­ic roar that reveals the depth and lay­ers of Reed’s play­ing. Over and under­tones, feed­back, string buzz, the scratch of fin­gers on frets and the crack­le and hum of tube amps com­bine to cre­ate a mono­lith­ic blast of met­al machine music.” Known as the “leg­endary gui­tar amp tape” and long sought by col­lec­tors and fans, the boot­leg, which you can hear above, “serves as a tes­ta­ment to the bril­liance and inno­va­tion of Reed’s gui­tar-play­ing — both qual­i­ties that are often under­rat­ed, if not over­looked entire­ly, by crit­ics of his work,” as Richie Unter­berg­er writes.

It should be evi­dent thus far that these record­ings are hard­ly a com­pre­hen­sive doc­u­ment of the Vel­vet Under­ground in ear­ly 1969. Except for Mo Tuck­er’s glo­ri­ous, but muf­fled thump­ing and some of Ster­ling Mor­rison’s excel­lent gui­tar inter­play, the rest of the band is hard­ly audi­ble. Songs like “Can­dy Says” and “Jesus” — on which Reed does not cre­ate sub­lime swirls of noise and feed­back — chug along monot­o­nous­ly with­out their melodies. “It is frus­trat­ing,” Unter­berg­er admits, “to hear such a one-dimen­sion­al audio-snap­shot of what is clear­ly a good — if not great — night for the band” (who were far more than one of their parts). On the oth­er hand, nowhere else can we hear the nuance, feroc­i­ty, and out­right insan­i­ty of Reed’s play­ing so amply demon­strat­ed on the major­i­ty of this doc­u­ment.

The tape cir­cu­lat­ed for years as a Japan­ese boot­leg, an inter­est­ing fact, notes a Rate Your Music com­menter, “con­sid­er­ing this bears more sim­i­lar­i­ty to record­ings from the likes of [leg­endary Japan­ese psych rock band] Les Ral­lizes Dénudés than most of the Vel­vet Under­ground’s oth­er mate­r­i­al.” The record­ings may have well paved the way for the explo­sion of Japan­ese psy­che­del­ic rock to come. They also demon­strate the influ­ence of Ornette Cole­man in Reed’s play­ing, and the lib­er­at­ing phi­los­o­phy Cole­man would come to call Har­molod­ics.

“Alla that boo-ha about whether Reed real­ly was influ­enced by free jazz,” writes one review­er quot­ed on MetaFil­ter, “can be put to rest here as he pulls the kind of wail­ing hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry shapes from the gui­tar that it would take the god­dam Blue Humans to decode a cou­ple of decades lat­er.” It may well over­state the case to claim that “Lou Reed sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed under­ground music,” but we can hear in these record­ings the seeds of every­thing from Tele­vi­sion to Son­ic Youth to Pave­ment to Roy­al Trux and so much more. See the full track­list below, a “clas­sic setlist,” notes MetaFil­ter, “from around the time of their 3rd LP.”

I Can’t Stand It
Can­dy Says
I’m Wait­ing For The Man
Fer­ry­boat Bill
I’m Set Free
What Goes On
White Light White Heat
Begin­ning To See The Light
Jesus
Hero­in / Sis­ter Ray
Move Right In
Run Run Run
Fog­gy Notion

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

The Vel­vet Under­ground Cap­tured in Col­or Con­cert Footage by Andy Warhol (1967)

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