The Cure Performed the Entire “Disintegration” Album on the 30th Anniversary of Its Release: Watch The Complete Concert Online

in Music | May 31st, 2019

30 years after its orig­i­nal release, The Cure per­formed the entire­ty of their 1989 album Dis­in­te­gra­tion at a con­cert held this past Thurs­day at The Syd­ney Opera House. Dis­in­te­gra­tion remains the band’s best-sell­ing album to date, and it now ranks #326 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Great­est Albums of All Time.” You can watch the show, from start to fin­ish, above. Find a setlist, with time­stamps, below.

17:15 Deliri­ous Night

23:44 Fear of Ghosts

30:45 No Heart

34:20 Esten

38:17 2 Late

41:10 Out of Mind

44:46 Bab­ble

54:42 Plain­song

59:25 Pic­tures of You

1:06:44 Close­down

1:11:00 Lovesong

1:14:40 Last Dance

1:19:52 Lul­la­by

1:24:46 Fas­ci­na­tion Street

1:29:47 Prayers for Rain

1:35:34 The Same Deep Water as You

1:44:47 Dis­in­te­gra­tion

1:53:11 Home­sick

2:00:16 Unti­tled

2:10:55 Burn @​

2:17:52 Three Imag­i­nary Boys

2:21:30 Pirate Ships

via Laugh­ing Squid

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

The First Museum Dedicated to Japanese Folklore Monsters Is Now Open

in History | May 31st, 2019

As any enthu­si­ast of Godzil­la movies knows, nobody does mon­sters quite like the Japan­ese. The cul­tur­al tra­di­tion of giant crea­tures lay­ing waste to cities is known as kai­jū, a com­bi­na­tion of kai (怪), “strange,” and jū (獣), “beast.” The well of kai­jū goes deep, but the well of Japan­ese mon­ster­hood itself goes much deep­er. Take yōkai, the cat­e­go­ry of mon­sters, spir­its, and demons whose his­to­ry goes all the way back to the first cen­tu­ry. But it was­n’t until the medieval era that depic­tions of yōkai —whose name com­bines the char­ac­ters yō (妖), with its con­no­ta­tions of attrac­tion, bewitch­ment, and calami­ty, and kai (怪), which can indi­cate some­thing sus­pi­cious, a mys­tery, or an appari­tion — turned into pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment.

Most yōkai pos­sess super­nat­ur­al pow­ers, some­times used for good but often not so much. Some look human, while oth­ers, such as the tur­tle-like kap­pa and the intel­li­gent if dis­solute rac­coons called tanu­ki (stars of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li ani­ma­tor Isao Taka­ha­ta’s Pom Poko), resem­ble ani­mals. But the wide world of yōkai also includes shapeshifters as well as only seem­ing­ly inan­i­mate objects. You can famil­iar­ize your­self with all of them — from the gong-bang­ing bake ichō no sei who hang around under gingko trees to the cloth drag­on shi­ro uneri born of a dishrag to the “tem­ple-peck­er” ter­at­sut­su­ki who lives among Bud­dhist priests and on a diet of rage — at the Eng­lish-lan­guage data­base Yokai.com.

Demand for yōkai sto­ries increased dur­ing the ear­ly 17th to the mid-18th cen­tu­ry Edo peri­od, which saw the intro­duc­tion of the print­ing press to Japan. One pop­u­lar tale of that era, Ino Mononoke Roku, tells of a young boy who must under­go 30 days of con­fronta­tions with var­i­ous yōkai in the city of Miyoshi. It’s no coin­ci­dence that the very first muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to yōkai has just opened in that same place. “The Miyoshi Mononoke Muse­um, or for­mal­ly the Yumo­to Koichi Memo­r­i­al Japan Yokai Muse­um, opened in the city of Miyoshi after Koichi Yumo­to, a 68-year-old eth­nol­o­gist and yokai researcher in Tokyo, donat­ed some 5,000 items from his col­lec­tion in 2016,” says the Japan Times. “The muse­um dis­plays about 160 items from Yumoto’s col­lec­tion, which includes a scroll paint­ing of the famous folk­tale and crafts.”

Locat­ed in Hiroshi­ma Pre­fec­ture (also home to the Onomichi Muse­um of Art and its famous cats Ken-chan and Go-chan), the Miyoshi Mononoke Muse­um fea­tures “about 160 items from Yumoto’s col­lec­tion, which includes a scroll paint­ing of the famous folk­tale and crafts,” an “inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal pic­ture book of yōkai” as well as oppor­tu­ni­ties to “take pho­tos with the mon­sters using a spe­cial cam­era set up at the site.” You’ll find a suit­ably odd ani­mat­ed pro­mo­tion­al video for the muse­um, which turns into a yōkai dance par­ty, at the top of the post. Whether or not you believe that these attrac­tive, bewitch­ing, calami­tous, sus­pi­cious, mys­te­ri­ous appari­tions real­ly inhab­it the world today, you have to acknowl­edge their knack for inhab­it­ing every form of media that has arisen over the cen­turies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bam­bi Meets Godzil­la: #38 on the List of The 50 Great­est Car­toons of All Time

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe & Elvis Pres­ley Star in an Action-Packed Pop Art Japan­ese Mon­ster Movie

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Watch “The Mid­night Par­a­sites,” a Sur­re­al Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Set in the World of Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights (1972)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Metallica, REM, Led Zeppelin & Queen Sung in the Style of Gregorian Chant

in Music | May 31st, 2019

Gre­go­ri­an chants became a thing very briefly in the ear­ly 1990s, when Ger­man elec­tron­ic group Enig­ma com­bined them with the Soul II Soul “Keep On Movin’” drum loop and that ever­p­re­sent shakuhachi sam­ple for “Sad­ness Part One”. And then that song was *every­where* for the first half of the 90s, giv­ing rise to chill­out music like the Orb and The Future Sound of Lon­don.

Gre­go­ri­an music fad­ed away as a trend in dance music, but it’s nev­er real­ly gone away. Bol­stered by some claims that the sooth­ing voic­es help increase alpha waves in the brain, groups like Gre­go­ri­an (cre­at­ed by Enigma’s Frank Peter­son) set about arrang­ing pop songs in the Gre­go­ri­an style, start­ing in 1999.

Oth­ers have fol­lowed suit, or should I say fol­lowed cowl (such as Aus­cul­tate, which cre­at­ed the Queen cov­er below).

But Gre­go­ri­an (the group) is the king of them all, and Petersen’s project has gone on to sell over 5.5 mil­lion albums.

Corny or not, the project is immense­ly pop­u­lar world­wide, and has pro­duced ten “Mas­ters of Chant” albums, along with Christ­mas CDs and such. And while our cur­rent pop stars have to get into ath­let­ic con­di­tion for their Vegas-like shows, there’s some­thing to be said for a group of blokes just stand­ing around on stage singing in uni­son like they’re in a crypt. Looks like a decent gig. Here’s a full con­cert:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

The His­to­ry of Clas­si­cal Music in 1200 Tracks: From Gre­go­ri­an Chant to Górec­ki (100 Hours of Audio)

Expe­ri­ence the Mys­ti­cal Music of Hilde­gard Von Bin­gen: The First Known Com­pos­er in His­to­ry (1098 – 1179)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Take a Visual Journey Through 181 Years of Street Photography (1838–2019)

in History, Photography | May 30th, 2019

All of us here in the 2010s have, at one time or anoth­er, been street pho­tog­ra­phers. But up until 1838, nobody had ever been a street pho­tog­ra­ph­er. In that year when cam­era phones were well beyond even the ken of sci­ence fic­tion, Louis Daguerre, the inven­tor of the daguerreo­type process and one of the fathers of pho­tog­ra­phy itself, took the first pho­to of a human being. In so doing he also became the first street pho­tog­ra­ph­er, cap­tur­ing as his pic­ture did not just a human being but the urban envi­ron­ment inhab­it­ed by that human being, in this case Paris’ Boule­vard du Tem­ple. Daguer­re’s pic­ture begins the his­tor­i­cal jour­ney through 181 years of street pho­tog­ra­phy, one street pho­to per year all sound­tracked with peri­od-appro­pri­ate songs, in the video above.

From the dawn of the prac­tice, street pho­tog­ra­phy (unlike smile-free ear­ly pho­to­graph­ic por­trai­ture) has shown life as it’s actu­al­ly lived. Like the lone Parisian who hap­pened to be stand­ing still long enough for Daguer­re’s cam­era to cap­ture, the peo­ple pop­u­lat­ing these images go about their busi­ness with no con­cern for, or even aware­ness of, being pho­tographed.

The ear­li­est street pho­tographs come most­ly from Europe — Lon­don’s Trafal­gar Square, Copen­hagen’s for­mer Ulfeldts Plads (now Gråbrø­dretorv), Rome’s Via di Ripet­ta — but as pho­tog­ra­phy spread, so spread street pho­tog­ra­phy. Rapid­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing cities in Amer­i­ca and else­where in the for­mer British Empire soon get in on the action, and a few decades lat­er scenes from the cities of Asia, Africa, and the Mid­dle East begin to appear.

Each of these 181 street pho­tographs was tak­en for a rea­son, though most of those rea­sons are now unknown to us. But some pic­tures make it obvi­ous, espe­cial­ly in the case of the star­tling­ly com­mon sub­genre of post-dis­as­ter street pho­tog­ra­phy: we see the after­math of an 1858 brew­ery fire in Mon­tre­al, an 1866 explo­sion in Syd­ney, an 1874 flood in Pitts­burgh, a 1906 earth­quake in San Fran­cis­co, and a 1920 bomb­ing in New York. Each of these pic­tures tells a sto­ry of a moment in the life of a par­tic­u­lar city, but togeth­er they tell the sto­ry of the city itself, as it has over the past two cen­turies grown out­ward, upward, and in every oth­er way nec­es­sary to accom­mo­date grow­ing pop­u­la­tions; trans­porta­tion tech­nolo­gies like bicy­cles, street­cars, auto­mo­biles; spaces like squares, cin­e­mas, and cafés; and above all, the ever-diver­si­fy­ing forms of human life lived with­in them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Humans of New York: Street Pho­tog­ra­phy as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Life

19-Year-Old Stu­dent Uses Ear­ly Spy Cam­era to Take Can­did Street Pho­tos (Cir­ca 1895)

Vivian Maier, Street Pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Dis­cov­ered

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Story of Pure Hell, the “First Black Punk Band” That Emerged in the 70s, Then Disappeared for Decades

in Music | May 29th, 2019

In the mid-sev­en­ties, many peo­ple felt exclud­ed from and dis­dained by the main­stream of rock and roll, which had large­ly come to rep­re­sent itself as a straight white boys and girls club full of super­rich rock stars. The nar­row image fos­tered atti­tudes of implic­it racism and homo­pho­bia that explod­ed in the 1979 “Dis­co Sucks” back­lash. This despite the fact that rock and roll began as inter­ra­cial music built on the flam­boy­ant­ly ambigu­ous sex­u­al­i­ty of Lit­tle Richard, the racy short sto­ries of Chuck Berry, the grooves of Chub­by Check­er, the edgy beats of Bo Did­dley, and a great many unsung black female per­form­ers.

Now we tend to remem­ber 70s rock dif­fer­ent­ly, not so much as the era of KISS or the Eagles, but as the trans­gres­sive time of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Fred­die Mer­cury, of the huge com­mer­cial and cre­ative tri­umphs of women-led bands like Fleet­wood Mac and Heart, of punk and new wave out­siders set­ting the tem­plate for four decades of alter­na­tive rock: The Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, the Sex Pis­tols, Blondie, The Clash, Joy Divi­sion, Talk­ing Heads, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk…. We remem­ber it, still, as a time when rock was most­ly white, and when black artists most­ly record­ed dis­co, funk, soul, and R&B.

The record indus­try and radio mar­kets had seg­re­gat­ed, and it would stay that way into the 80s, though jazz artists like Miles Davis made seri­ous inroads into rock exper­i­men­ta­tion, bands like Parliament/Funkadelic released hard rock psy­che­delia, Prince chan­neled both Lit­tle Richard and Chuck Berry, and ear­ly punks like Detroit’s Death and Philadelphia’s Pure Hell made ground­break­ing punk and met­al. The for­mer escaped crit­i­cal notice, but the lat­ter became famous, then dis­ap­peared from rock his­to­ry for decades.

Death, the vision­ary trio of broth­ers who were recent­ly redis­cov­ered and cel­e­brat­ed, nev­er real­ly made it in their time out­side of a small cir­cle. Pure Hell, on the oth­er hand, were an inte­gral part of the New York punk scene and stars in Europe, and have been for­got­ten by most offi­cial punk his­to­ries. They “lived with the New York Dolls and played with Sid Vicious,” writes Cas­sidy George at Dazed, “but they’ve been large­ly writ­ten out of cul­tur­al his­to­ry.” They are some­times writ­ten back in, just as, to their dis­may, they were pro­mot­ed: as the “first black punk band.” But there’s far more to their his­to­ry than that.

“I don’t want to be remem­bered just because we were black,” says singer Ken­ny “Stinker” Gor­don. “I want to be remem­bered for being a part of the first tier of punk in the 70s.” He is not exag­ger­at­ing. New York Dolls gui­tarist John­ny Thun­ders pro­mot­ed the band, lead­ing to gigs as Max’s Kansas City and a fea­ture in Andy Warhol’s Inter­view mag­a­zine, “mark­ing their ‘place’ in a scene of cul­tur­al influ­encers.” They appeared in a 1978 issue of Melody Mak­er dur­ing their UK tour, in a pho­to with Sid Vicious, who wears his swasti­ka t‑shirt and pad­lock and chain. (Gor­don also wore a swasti­ka t‑shirt onstage.) Just one of many sec­ond-page write-ups in Melody Mak­er, NME, and the Euro­pean press.

All of the hype sur­round­ing the band is part of the his­tor­i­cal record, for those who look through back­pages and archives, but their music has most­ly gone unheard for over a gen­er­a­tion, large­ly because their album Noise Addic­tion only came out in 2006. After they released their first sin­gle in ‘78, then refused to change their sound for a record deal, their man­ag­er Cur­tis Knight abscond­ed with the mas­ter tapes and refused to release them. Lis­ten to their debut sin­gle, a cov­er of “These Boots Are Made for Walk­ing,” above. Melody Mak­er called it, with a wink, “the for­mer Nan­cy Sina­tra hit.” The song reached num­ber four on the UK alter­na­tive charts.

Pure Hell describe their jour­ney through the mid-sev­en­ties New York punk scene in the mon­tage of inter­view clips at the top, scored by wicked, riff-laden record­ings of their songs. The sto­ry began with four friends from a tough neigh­bor­hood in West Philadel­phia. “We dressed in drag and wore wigs, basi­cal­ly dar­ing peo­ple to both­er us. Peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood would say, ‘Don’t go into hous­es with those guys, you may not come out!’” They were pres­sured to join a gang, says bassist Lenny “Steel” Boles, but refused. They packed up a U‑Haul and moved into the Chelsea Hotel, then played their first show across the street at Mother’s.

Leg­endary sto­ries about the band abound. (They played Sid Vicious’ last appear­ance onstage and were caught up in the media cir­cus sur­round­ing Nan­cy Spungen’s death). What’s most inter­est­ing about them is the music and their last­ing influ­ence, despite what Boles describes as being “snubbed” by record labels unless they agreed to “do this Motown thing, say­ing like, ‘You guys are black so you’ve got­ta do some­thing that’s dance­able.” After los­ing their man­ag­er and their mas­ters, they set­tled in L.A., where they played with the Germs and the Cramps but “lost their momen­tum,” writes George.

“It was total­ly over by 1980,” says Gor­don. All the same, their heavy pro­to-met­al sound, draw­ing from reg­gae and Hen­drix as much as from Bowie and Nan­cy Sina­tra, sparked the admi­ra­tion of many emerg­ing punk bands, includ­ing Wash­ing­ton, DC leg­ends Bad Brains, who acknowl­edge the debt their furi­ous reggae/metal thrash owes to Pure Hell. Bad Brains broke col­or bar­ri­ers in New York a few years lat­er, and got most of the cred­it for it, large­ly because Pure Hell left behind noth­ing but a mys­te­ri­ous sin­gle and a “rumor,” says Hen­ry Rollins, “that they had made an album and that it was sit­ting in a clos­et.”

After the tapes resur­faced, near­ly every­one who heard the record became an instant fan, includ­ing Rollins. “If the album had come out when they made it, that would have been a game chang­er,” he says. “I believe [it] would have had a tremen­dous impact. It’s one of those missed oppor­tu­ni­ty sto­ries.” But it is also a found oppor­tu­ni­ty sto­ry. They are now get­ting recog­ni­tion for their music and his­tor­i­cal role. In 2012 they reformed to play their first show since 1979, with Ran­cid, Buz­zcocks, Pub­lic Image Ltd, and Social Dis­tor­tion. Pure Hell will find their way back into the sto­ry of New York punk, and it will be a more inter­est­ing sto­ry for their redis­cov­ery.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

New Doc­u­men­tary Brings You Inside Africa’s Lit­tle-Known Punk Rock Scene

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

How Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” Recreates the Epic Hero’s Journey Described by Joseph Campbell

in Music | May 29th, 2019

Wayne’s World kind of ruined “Stair­way to Heav­en” for me. Yes, it’s been 27 years, but I still can’t help but think of Wayne turn­ing to the cam­era with his ston­er grin, say­ing “Denied!” when the gui­tar store clerk points out a “No Stair­way to Heav­en” sign. It was not a song I took par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous­ly, but I respect­ed the fact that it took itself so seri­ous­ly… and thread­ed my way out of the room if some­one picked up a gui­tar, earnest­ly cocked an ear, and played those gen­tle open­ing notes.

Now I gig­gle even when I hear the mag­is­te­r­i­al orig­i­nal intro. This is not the fault of Zep­pelin but of the many who approach the Zep­pelin tem­ple of rock grandios­i­ty unpre­pared, attempt­ing riffs that only Jim­my Page could pull off with author­i­ty. At least the joke gave us a way to talk about the phe­nom­e­non: in less­er hands than Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way” can sound… well, a bit ridicu­lous (with apolo­gies to Dol­ly Par­ton.) Although accused (and acquit­ted) of rip­ping off the open­ing notes to Spirit’s instru­men­tal “Tau­rus,” the song is all Zep­pelin in every pos­si­ble way.

“Stair­way” is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pler pack of the band’s sig­na­ture moves: mix­ing folk rock and heavy met­al with a Delta blues heart; explod­ing in thun­der­heads of John Bon­ham drum fills and a world-famous Page solo; Plant scream­ing cryp­tic lyrics that vague­ly ref­er­ence Tarot, Tolkien, Eng­lish folk tra­di­tions and “a bus­tle in your hedgerow”; John Paul Jones’ wild­ly under­rat­ed mul­ti-instru­men­tal genius; bizarre charges of Satan­ic mes­sages encod­ed back­wards in the record…. (bring­ing to mind anoth­er Wayne’s World actor’s char­ac­ter.)

“Stair­way… crys­tal­lized the essence of the band,” said Page lat­er. “It had every­thing there and showed us at our best. It was a mile­stone.” It set a very high bar for big, emo­tion­al rock songs. “All epic anthems must mea­sure them­selves against ‘Stair­way to Heav­en,’” writes Rolling Stone. It is “epic in every sense of the word,” says the Poly­phon­ic video at the top, includ­ing the lit­er­ary sense. It can “make you feel like you’re part of a dif­fer­ent time, part of a dif­fer­ent world. It can make you feel like you’re part of a sto­ry.”

That sto­ry? “One of the great­est nar­ra­tive struc­tures in human his­to­ry,” the Hero’s Jour­ney, as so famous­ly elab­o­rat­ed by Joseph Camp­bell in The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces—an arche­typ­al mytho­log­i­cal arc that has “per­me­at­ed sto­ries for as long as humans have told them.” Not only do Robert Plant’s mys­ti­cal lyrics reflect this ancient nar­ra­tive, but the song’s com­po­si­tion also enacts it, build­ing stage by stage, from ques­tion­ing to quest­ing to bat­tling to return­ing with the wis­dom of how “to be a rock and not to roll.”

The song’s almost clas­si­cal struc­ture is, of course, no acci­dent, but it is also no indi­vid­ual achieve­ment. Hear the sto­ry of its com­po­si­tion, and why it has been so influ­en­tial, despite the jokes at the expense of those it influ­enced, in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top and straight from Jim­my Page him­self in the inter­view above.

Out of all of Zeppelin’s many epic jour­neys, “Stair­way” best rep­re­sents “the rea­son,” as cul­tur­al crit­ic Steven Hyden writes, “why that band endures… the mythol­o­gy, that Joseph Camp­bell idea of an epic jour­ney into the wild that Zeppelin’s music rep­re­sents, the sense that when you lis­ten to this band, you feel like you’re plug­ging into some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than a band.” Or that the band is open­ing a door­way to some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

48 Hours of Joseph Camp­bell Lec­tures Free Online: The Pow­er of Myth & Sto­ry­telling

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

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

McDonald’s Opens a Tiny Restaurant — and It’s Only for Bees

in Food & Drink, Nature | May 29th, 2019

How are the world’s hon­ey bees doing? Just a few years ago, word spread that they were on the verge of a mys­te­ri­ous extinc­tion. Look for updates on their sit­u­a­tion now and you get con­tra­dic­to­ry results, all of them fair­ly recent, from “Bees Are Still Dying” to “Bees Are Bounc­ing Back From Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der” to “Yes, the Bees Are Still in Trou­ble” to “The Bee Apoc­a­lypse Was Nev­er Real.” But whether they’re in exis­ten­tial dan­ger or not, bees at least now have their very own McDon­ald’s — bees in cer­tain parts of Swe­den, any­way.

“McDonald’s has cre­at­ed a tiny repli­ca of one of its restau­rants, too small for any human to eat there,” writes Emi­ly Chudy in the Inde­pen­dent. “The repli­ca, dubbed the ‘McHive,’ is a ful­ly-func­tion­ing bee­hive designed to look like a McDonald’s restau­rant and fea­tures seat­ing, a dri­ve-through and an entrance. The brain­child of set design­er Nick­las Nils­son, the hive is part of an ini­tia­tive which has seen bee­hives placed on cer­tain Swedish branch­es of the fran­chise.” This project seems to be the first insect-scale restau­rant for Nils­son, whose past work includes cos­tume design on the video for David Bowie’s “Black­star.”

You can see footage of the McHive’s design and assem­bly process, as well as an assem­bled McHive full of its “thou­sands of impor­tant guests,” in the video at the top of the post. There are more pho­tos at design­boom, which quotes the pro­jec­t’s adver­tis­ing agency NORD DDB as say­ing that “the ini­tia­tive start­ed out local­ly but is now grow­ing.” In addi­tion to installing bee­hives on their rooftops, more Swedish McDon­ald’s fran­chisees “have also start­ed replac­ing the grass around their restau­rants with flow­ers and plants that are impor­tant for the well­be­ing of wild bees.”

Why so much con­cern about hon­ey bees in the first place? Chudy quotes a Green­peace esti­mate that they “per­form about 80% of all pol­li­na­tion and a sin­gle bee colony can pol­li­nate 300 mil­lion flow­ers each day.” Bees do the hard work of keep­ing a sur­pris­ing­ly large part of the nat­ur­al world work­ing as we’ve always known it to, and to the extent that bees die out, much else may die out as well, with poten­tial knock-on effects many would pre­fer not to think about. But then, the taste for pre­dic­tions of eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter on the inter­net seems only to have grown since we first noticed the prob­lem with bees: if you real­ly want to feel moti­vat­ed to peti­tion your local McDon­ald’s to put up a McHive, try Googling the phrase “cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of nature.”

via design­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing Time­lapse Film Cap­tures the Won­der of Bees Being Born

The Bil­lion-Bug High­way You Can’t See

A Shaz­am for Nature: A New Free App Helps You Iden­ti­fy Plants, Ani­mals & Oth­er Denizens of the Nat­ur­al World

The Muse­um of Fail­ure: A New Swedish Muse­um Show­cas­es Harley-David­son Per­fume, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Google Glass & Oth­er Failed Prod­ucts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Download 91,000 Historic Maps from the Massive David Rumsey Map Collection

in History, Maps | May 28th, 2019

Three years ago, we high­light­ed one of the most com­pre­hen­sive map col­lec­tions in exis­tence, the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion, then new­ly moved to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. The Rum­sey Col­lec­tion, we wrote then, “con­tains a seem­ing­ly inex­haustible sup­ply of car­to­graph­ic images”—justifiable hyper­bole, con­sid­er­ing the amount of time it would take any one per­son to absorb the over 150,000 phys­i­cal arti­facts Rum­sey has amassed in one place.

By 2016, Rum­sey had made almost half the collection—over 67,000 images—freely avail­able in a dig­i­tal archive that has been grow­ing since 1996. Each entry fea­tures high-res­o­lu­tion scans for spe­cial­ists (you can down­load them for free) and more man­age­able image sizes for enthu­si­asts; a wealth of data about prove­nance and his­tor­i­cal con­text; and dig­i­tal, user-friend­ly tools that use crowd-sourc­ing to mea­sure the accu­ra­cy of anti­quat­ed maps against GPS ren­der­ings.

A completist’s dream, the archive “includes rare 16th through 21st cen­tu­ry maps of Amer­i­ca, North Amer­i­ca, South Amer­i­ca, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacif­ic, Arc­tic, Antarc­tic, and the World.” Among the seem­ing­ly innu­mer­able exam­ples of car­to­graph­ic inge­nu­ity we find ear­ly data visu­al­iza­tions, util­i­tar­i­an primers, pho­to­graph­ic sur­veys, intri­cate topogra­phies, abstract objets d’art, and his­tor­i­cal cor­ner­stones of Euro­pean map-mak­ing like Abra­ham Ortellus’s 1570 map of “Flan­dria” at the top.

The Ortel­lus “The­atrum” holds “a unique posi­tion in the his­to­ry of car­tog­ra­phy,” notes the Rum­sey Col­lec­tion, as “’the world’s first reg­u­lar­ly pro­duced atlas.’” It was also the first exam­ple of a “The­atre of the World,” a style that would become ubiq­ui­tous in the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry, and it was “the first under­tak­ing of its kind to reduce the best avail­able maps to a uni­form for­mat.”

To make this doc­u­ment even more com­pelling, it con­tains its own bib­li­og­ra­phy. Ortel­lus “men­tioned the names of the authors of the orig­i­nal maps” he drew from “and added a great many names of oth­er car­tog­ra­phers and geo­g­ra­phers.” Not all of the 91,000 and count­ing maps in the Rum­sey dig­i­tal col­lec­tion com­bine this degree of styl­is­tic mas­tery, his­tor­i­cal import, and schol­ar­ly rig­or. But a sur­vey of the Collection’s cat­e­gories will pro­duce few that dis­ap­point in any one of these areas.

The “impor­tant and rare” 1806 map of the U.S. and West Indies by Charles Piquet; the Tolkien-like Ver­gle­ichen­des Tableau der bedeu­tend­sten Hoe­hen der Erde, from 1855, a “dec­o­ra­tive chart… show­ing com­par­a­tive tables of the great­est moun­tains and vol­ca­noes of the world”; the almost-expres­sion­ist map of Chel­tenham from 1899 by the Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey of Great Britain and Ire­land; the fan­ci­ful­ly-illus­trat­ed star-shaped star chart made by Ignace Gas­ton Par­dies in 1693; Mike Cressy’s 1988 “Lit­er­ary Map of Latin Amer­i­ca”…..

This briefest overview of the Collection’s high­lights already feels exhaus­tive. No mat­ter your lev­el of inter­est in maps, from the casu­al to the life­long obses­sive, The David Rum­sey col­lec­tion will deliv­er mul­ti­ple points of entry to maps you nev­er knew exist­ed, and with them, new ways of see­ing cities, regions, nations, ter­ri­to­ries, con­ti­nents, plan­ets, and beyond. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, “the Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever Under­tak­en,” Is Free Online

View and Down­load Near­ly 60,000 Maps from the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey (USGS)

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

Bill Gates Recommends Five Books to Read This Summer

in Books | May 28th, 2019

It’s becom­ing an annu­al rit­u­al. Every sum­mer Bill Gates offers us a read­ing list–5‑books to take on vaca­tion. As you’ll see, his list assumes that even if you’re phys­i­cal­ly on vaca­tion, your mind isn’t. The curi­ous mind takes no breaks. Bill writes:

Upheaval, by Jared Dia­mond. I’m a big fan of every­thing Jared has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. The book explores how soci­eties react dur­ing moments of cri­sis. He uses a series of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies to show how nations man­aged exis­ten­tial chal­lenges like civ­il war, for­eign threats, and gen­er­al malaise. It sounds a bit depress­ing, but I fin­ished the book even more opti­mistic about our abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems than I start­ed. More here.

Nine Pints, by Rose George. If you get grossed out by blood, this one prob­a­bly isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fas­ci­nat­ing, you’ll enjoy this book by a British jour­nal­ist with an espe­cial­ly per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sub­ject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one spe­cif­ic top­ic, so Nine Pints (the title refers to the vol­ume of blood in the aver­age adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-inter­est­ing facts that will leave you with a new appre­ci­a­tion for blood. More here.

A Gen­tle­man in Moscow, by Amor Towles. It seems like every­one I know has read this book. I final­ly joined the club after my broth­er-in-law sent me a copy, and I’m glad I did. Towles’s nov­el about a count sen­tenced to life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel is fun, clever, and sur­pris­ing­ly upbeat. Even if you don’t enjoy read­ing about Rus­sia as much as I do (I’ve read every book by Dos­toyevsky), A Gen­tle­man in Moscow is an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one can enjoy. More here.

Pres­i­dents of War, by Michael Beschloss. My inter­est in all aspects of the Viet­nam War is the main rea­son I decid­ed to pick up this book. By the time I fin­ished it, I learned a lot not only about Viet­nam but about the eight oth­er major con­flicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw impor­tant cross-cut­ting lessons about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. More here.

The Future of Cap­i­tal­ism, by Paul Col­lier. Collier’s lat­est book is a thought-pro­vok­ing look at a top­ic that’s top of mind for a lot of peo­ple right now. Although I don’t agree with him about everything—I think his analy­sis of the prob­lem is bet­ter than his pro­posed solutions—his back­ground as a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist gives him a smart per­spec­tive on where cap­i­tal­ism is head­ed.

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:

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer (2018)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

Hear the Song That Two Teenage Musicians, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, Recorded Together in 1958

in Music | May 28th, 2019

Rock and roll needs its out­siders, its prodi­gious weirdos, trick­sters and pas­tiche artists to rein­vig­o­rate mori­bund gen­res and put things togeth­er no one thought would go. No two peo­ple fit the descrip­tion bet­ter than Frank Zap­pa and Cap­tain Beef­heart (Don Van Vli­et), some­time col­lab­o­ra­tors, fren­e­mies, and par­al­lel evil genius­es with crack teams of musi­cal hench­men at the ready—Zappa the genre-hop­ping vir­tu­oso and music busi­ness supervil­lain; Beef­heart the mad blues­man with a Beat poet’s heart and Mer­ry Prankster’s sense of humor….

Their intense on-again-off-again musi­cal rela­tion­ship threat­ened to come apart for good dur­ing the record­ing of Beefheart’s Zap­pa-pro­duced weirdo mas­ter­piece Trout Mask Repli­ca. These trou­bled stages of their asso­ci­a­tion are what we often talk about when we talk about Zappa/Beefheart, when they dis­cov­ered, writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “that their cre­ative process­es and work habits—Zappa was dis­ci­plined and exact­ing, while Beef­heart pre­ferred to be spon­ta­neous and freeform—couldn’t have been more at odds.”

A lit­tle over a decade ear­li­er, before either of them had musi­cal careers neces­si­tat­ing work habits, the two began record­ing togeth­er in “either late 1958 or ear­ly 1959,” notes Dan­ger­ous Minds. They had known each oth­er since high school in Lan­cast­er, Cal­i­for­nia, where their shared sen­si­bil­i­ties brought them togeth­er: “The two found they had a sim­i­lar taste in music, and quick­ly bond­ed over a shared love of blues, doo-wop, and R&B records.”

Pre­sag­ing all of the ways they would go on to warp, can­ni­bal­ize, and mash up these gen­res, “Lost in a Whirlpool,” with music by Zap­pa and lyrics by Van Vli­et, was one of sev­er­al songs they had begun writ­ing while still teenagers. Zap­pa tells the sto­ry of the record­ing in a 1989 inter­view:

“Lost in a Whirlpool” was taped on one of those tape recorders that you have in a school in the audio/visual depart­ment. We went into this room, this emp­ty room at the junior col­lege in Lan­cast­er, after school, and got this tape record­ed, and just turned it on. The gui­tars are me and my broth­er (Bob­by Zap­pa) and the vocal is Don Vli­et.

The sto­ry of “Lost in a Whirlpool” goes back even far­ther. When I was in high school in San Diego in ‘55, there was a guy who grew up to be a sports writer named Lar­ry Lit­tle­field. He, and anoth­er guy named Jeff Har­ris, and I used to hang out, and we used to make up sto­ries, lit­tle skits and stuff, you know, dumb lit­tle teenage things. One of the plots that we cooked up was about a per­son who was skindiving—San Diego’s a surfer kind of an area—skindiving in the San Diego sew­er sys­tem [laugh­ter], and talk­ing about encoun­ter­ing brown, blind fish. [laugh­ter] It was kind of like the Cousteau expe­di­tion of its era. [laugh­ter] So, when I moved to Lan­cast­er from San Diego, I had dis­cussed this sce­nario with Vli­et, and that’s where the lyrics come from. It’s like a musi­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of this oth­er skin­div­ing sce­nario.

Scat­o­log­i­cal skin­div­ing seems like such a per­fect con­cep­tu­al sum­ma­ry of the shared Zappa/Beefheart ethos it’s a won­der they didn’t use the title them­selves. Despite their grow­ing cre­ative dif­fer­ences and incom­pat­i­ble tem­pera­ments, they col­lab­o­rat­ed into the mid-70s.

In 1975, twen­ty years after cook­ing up the sto­ry of skin­div­ing in the San Diego sew­ers, they “regaled their fans with the amus­ing­ly titled (most­ly) live album, Bon­go Fury,” Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock writes, “a his­toric cease­fire in their oth­er­wise tur­bu­lent rela­tion­ship that would sad­ly prove all too fleet­ing.” The record is the result of an “inten­sive, 30-date tour” in which “Beef­heart con­tributed har­mon­i­ca, occa­sion­al sax, and numer­ous dis­plays of his eccen­tric poet­ry and one-of-a-kind vocals to the [Zap­pa] ensemble’s reper­toire.” Above, hear Bon­go Fury’s “Advance Romance,” as clas­sic a slice of Zappa/Beefheart odd­ball blues as their very first record­ings from the late 50s.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Why Cap­tain Beefheart’s Awful Sound­ing Album, Trout Mask Repli­ca, Is a True Mas­ter­piece

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

Hear a Rare Poet­ry Read­ing by Cap­tain Beef­heart (1993)

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