The Online Knitting Reference Library: Download 300 Knitting Books Published From 1849 to 2012

in Art, Books, Creativity, Design, Internet Archive, Magazines | April 11th, 2016

No need to scram­ble to the fall­out shel­ter, friends.

That mas­sive boom you just heard is mere­ly the sound of thou­sands of crafters’ minds being blown en masse by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­hamp­ton’s Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library, an exten­sive resource of books, cat­a­logues, pat­terns, jour­nals and magazines—over sev­en­teen decades worth.

Viva la Hand­made Rev­o­lu­tion!

The basics of the form—knit­ting, purl­ing, increas­ing, decreas­ing, cast­ing on and off—have remained remark­ably con­sis­tent through­out the gen­er­a­tions. No won­der there’s an endur­ing tra­di­tion of learn­ing to knit at grandma’s knee…

What has evolved is the nature of the fin­ished prod­ucts.

Miss Lam­bert’s “Baby Quilt in Stripes of Alter­nate Col­ors” from her 1847 Knit­ting Book could still hold its own against any oth­er hand­craft­ed show­er gift, but even the most hard­core mod­ern crafter would find it chal­leng­ing to find tak­ers for her “Car­riage Sock,” which is meant to be worn over the shoe.

Dit­to the “Woolen Hel­mets” in Help­ing the Trawlers, a 32-page pam­phlet pub­lished by the Roy­al Nation­al Mis­sion to Deep Sea Fish­er­men. The hope was that civic-mind­ed knit­ters might be moved to donate hand­made socks, mit­tens, and oth­er items to com­bat the chill faced by poor work­ing men fac­ing the ele­ments on freez­ing decks.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the eager vol­un­teer knit­ting force grav­i­tat­ed toward the pamphlet’s most baroque item, putting the pub­lish­er in a del­i­cate posi­tion:

Owing, per­haps, to their nov­el­ty, a great many friends com­mence work­ing for the Soci­ety by mak­ing these arti­cles and the Uhlan caps, and we are apt, on this account, to get rather more of them than we require for our North Sea work. The Labrador fish­er­men val­ue the hel­mets equal­ly with their North Sea breathren, and thus there is an ample out­put for them, but we shall be glad if friends will bear the hint in mind, and make some of the oth­er things in pref­er­ence to the hel­mets and Uhlan caps.

All of the books in the Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library are open access, though many of the pat­terns and mag­a­zines are depen­dent on copy­right clear­ance. Give a prowl, and you’ll find that a few of the old­er pat­terns are avail­able as down­load­able, print­able PDFs , such as this hand­some gent’s cable knit pullover or the tricky 50’s bison cardi­gan, below.

Even with­out step-by-step instruc­tions, the pat­tern envelopes’ cov­er images can still pro­vide inspiration…and no small degree of amuse­ment. Some enter­pris­ing librar­i­an should get crack­ing on a sub-col­lec­tion, Fash­ion Crimes Against Male Knitwear Mod­els, 1960–1980:

There’s even some­thing for the lat­ter day Labrador trawler...

The entire col­lec­tion can be viewed here. For view­ing and print­ing pat­terns, we rec­om­mend select­ing “PDF” from the list of down­load options.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Dr. Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

See Pen­guins Wear­ing Tiny “Pen­guin Books” Sweaters, Knit­ted by the Old­est Man in Aus­tralia

The Whole Earth Cat­a­log Online: Stew­art Brand’s “Bible” of the 60s Gen­er­a­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Lolita Book Covers: 200+ Designs From 40 Countries Since 1955, Including Nabokov’s Favorite Design

in Art, Books | April 11th, 2016

How to mar­ket a book like Loli­ta, which, upon its pub­li­ca­tion in 1955, prompt­ly found itself banned in France, Britain, New Zealand, Argenti­na and oth­er coun­tries? Care­ful­ly. At least at first.

Over at Cov­er­ing Loli­ta, you can see an archive of the designs that have adorned the cov­er of the famous­ly con­tro­ver­sial book. It all starts with the orig­i­nal 1955 edi­tion, which was the most vanil­la cov­er imag­in­able. Loli­ta and Hum­bert Hum­bert — they were nowhere to be seen.

By the 1960s, pub­lish­ers got a lit­tle less gun shy, and the cov­ers, more risqué. See this 1964 Turk­ish ver­sion as an exam­ple. Or the sec­ond image above, a Dan­ish cov­er from 1963.

So what cov­er did Nabokov per­son­al­ly favor? Glad you asked. Long ago, we showed you some footage of Nabokov mar­veling over dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” cov­er designs. And, in it, he points to his favorite: a French sketch from 1963, which appears up top.

This just a small sam­pling of what you will find in the Cov­er­ing Loli­ta Archive, a gallery that cur­rent­ly con­tains 210 book and media cov­ers from 40 coun­tries, span­ning 58 years.

The archive brings you right up to 2014. (2015 and 2016 will like­ly be account­ed for pret­ty soon.) If you have a favorite design, please let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a 30-Day Free Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram 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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov Names the Great­est (and Most Over­rat­ed) Nov­els of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

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

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

The Note­cards on Which Vladimir Nabokov Wrote Loli­ta: A Look Inside the Author’s Cre­ative Process

Hear 22-Year-Old Orson Welles Star in The Shadow, the Iconic 1930s Super Crimefighter Radio Show

in Radio | April 11th, 2016

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Every fan of old-time radio, the fruit of a “gold­en age” on the Amer­i­can air­waves which last­ed from the 1920s until tele­vi­sion took hold, can tell you the answer: The Shad­ow knows. Though he’s appeared in pulp-era mag­a­zines and nov­els as well as comics, movies, and even video games, the mys­te­ri­ous crime­fight­er, known by day as “wealthy young man about town” Lam­ont Cranston, made his biggest mark on the good old wire­less, around which lis­ten­ers gath­ered to hear him dis­pense his own brand of psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly deliv­ered jus­tice from 1937 to 1954.

The Shad­ow became, in many ways, the pro­to­type of the super­hero, espe­cial­ly Bat­man and oth­ers who do their job not with fan­tas­ti­cal super­pow­ers but with their wits, their wealth, and the host of advanced devices and obscure tech­niques at their dis­pos­al. (Assum­ing, of course, you don’t con­sid­er the Shad­ow’s nev­er-ful­ly-explained abil­i­ty to “cloud men’s minds” fan­tas­ti­cal.) This also makes him some­thing of a pro­to-James Bond, the tech­ni­cal­ly human but seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble British Secret Ser­vice agent who debuted on the page the year before The Shad­ow end­ed his run on the radio. Like James Bond, The Shad­ow exists inde­pen­dent­ly of the many actors who have por­trayed him, but just as most acknowl­edge Sean Con­nery as the defin­i­tive Bond, Orson Welles stands as The Shad­ow to beat.

In fact, the New York­er’s Alex Ross titled his pro­file of Welles’ career, look­ing back from the 100th anniver­sary of the radio-the­ater-film auteur’s birth, “The Shad­ow,” acknowl­edg­ing aspects of the man’s cre­ative per­sona as well as the pro­gram on which he, at the ten­der age of 22, “achieved radio star­dom as a hyp­no­sis-induc­ing vig­i­lante” — and also found a source of mon­ey to fun­nel straight into his own high­er-brow and more social­ly con­scious pro­duc­tions under the New Deal’s Fed­er­al The­atre Project. (Ross quotes Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt jok­ing­ly call­ing Welles the “only oper­a­tor in his­to­ry who ever ille­gal­ly siphoned mon­ey into a Wash­ing­ton project.”)

Now you can lis­ten to more than 30 Welles-star­ring episodes of The Shad­ow free at the Inter­net Archive. When the show made its debut, it ran for 26 episodes spon­sored by Blue Coal, a name fans will know as well as they know Lam­ont Cranston’s. Then came a sum­mer series spon­sored by Goodrich Safe­ty Sil­ver-Town Tires. “For many years it was believed that the syn­di­cat­ed Goodrich series had run for 15 episodes,” say the accom­pa­ny­ing notes, “until a com­plete col­lec­tion of record­ings sur­faced in the estate of a for­mer Goodrich exec­u­tive and it was real­ized that the sum­mer sea­son had been a full 26 episodes — and that 11 full episodes star­ring Welles had been dis­cov­ered that had not been heard since they orig­i­nal­ly aired 70 years ago.” A sud­den, dra­mat­ic appear­ance by The Shad­ow just when we least expect­ed it — how very like him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The War of the Worlds: Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Dra­ma That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Orson Welles Turns Heart of Dark­ness Into a Radio Dra­ma, and Almost His First Great Film

Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles and Lionel Bar­ry­more (1939)

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Question: Where Can You Watch 65 Charlie Chaplin Films Free Online?

in Comedy, Film | April 8th, 2016

Answer: Why, in our col­lec­tion 65 Char­lie Chap­lin Films Free Online. Just did­n’t want you to for­get :)

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!

Watch the First Episode of Vinyl: Mick Jagger & Martin Scorsese’s Series on the 1970s Music Scene

in Music, Television | April 8th, 2016

A quick note: HBO recent­ly pre­miered Vinyl, which takes a Good­fel­las-style look at the seedy 1970s rock music and record-mak­ing scene. Here’s a quick snap­shot of what the show’s all about:

Cre­at­ed by Mick Jag­ger & Mar­tin Scors­ese & Rich Cohen and Ter­ence Win­ter, this new dra­ma series is set in 1970s New York. A ride through the sex- and drug-addled music busi­ness at the dawn of punk, dis­co, and hip-hop, the show is seen through the eyes of a record label pres­i­dent, Richie Fines­tra, played by Bob­by Can­navale, who is try­ing to save his com­pa­ny and his soul with­out destroy­ing every­one in his path. Addi­tion­al series reg­u­lars include Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano, Ato Essan­doh, Max Casel­la, P.J. Byrne, J.C. MacKen­zie, Bir­gitte Hjort Sørensen, Juno Tem­ple, Jack Quaid, James Jag­ger and Paul Ben-Vic­tor. Scors­ese, Jag­ger and Win­ter exec­u­tive pro­duce along with Vic­to­ria Pear­man, Rick Yorn, Emma Till­inger Koskoff, John Melfi, Allen Coul­ter and George Mas­tras. Win­ter serves as showrun­ner. The 10-episode first sea­son debuts Feb­ru­ary 14th.

The first pilot episode–directly by Scors­ese himself–is cur­rent­ly stream­ing free on HBO’s web­site. It runs two good hours. And if you want to watch the remain­ing episodes on the cheap, you can start a month­long free tri­al of HBO NOW. Just look for the “Start Your Free Month” but­ton at the top of HBO’s site.

Note: The video up top is only a trail­er for Episode 1. To watch the com­plete episode, click 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!

30 Days of Shakespeare: One Reading of the Bard Per Day, by The New York Public Library, on the 400th Anniversary of His Death

in Literature, Poetry, Theatre | April 8th, 2016

April 23 is the 400th anniver­sary of Shakespeare’s death, an event so far in the past that it can be cel­e­brat­ed as a sec­ond birth­day of sorts.

The New York Pub­lic Library’s con­tri­bu­tion to the fes­tiv­i­ties has an endear­ing­ly home­made qual­i­ty.

This august insti­tu­tion boasts over 500 audio record­ings of the Bard’s work, not to men­tion 40 years’ worth of the New York Shake­speare Fes­ti­val’s records. But rather than draw­ing on the col­lec­tion to high­light the work of such supreme inter­preters as John Giel­gud, John Bar­ry­more, or Edwin Booth, the library has invit­ed thir­ty of its staffers to recite their favorite Shake­speare­an speech, mono­logue, or son­net.

Sean Fer­gu­son, of Chinatown’s Chatham Square branch, tack­les the open­ing of Richard III from a dig­ni­fied remove.

Grand Central’s man­ag­ing librar­i­an, Gen­oveve Stow­ell, goes for it with a lusty ren­di­tion of King Lear’s third act rage against the storm.

Liz Den­linger, who helms the main branch’s Carl H. Pforzheimer Col­lec­tion of Shel­ley and His Cir­cle went with Shakespeare’s tem­po­ral­ly-obsessed 12th sonnet.

Make no mis­take these are librar­i­ans, not trained actors, but their ama­teur­ish­ness is part of the fun.

The library plans to release one record­ing dai­ly through­out the month of April, adding to the playlist until the tracks num­ber thir­ty.

We are hop­ing that the pro­jec­t’s archi­tects will define “staff” to include sup­port­ing depart­ments. We would love to hear a mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty or main­te­nance team take a stab—pardon the pun—at Oth­el­lo or Juli­et.

For more Shake­speare read­ings, see our post: A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Late, Great Alan Rick­man Reads Shake­speare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

Watch Very First Film Adap­ta­tions of Shakespeare’s Plays: King John, The Tem­pest, Richard III & More (1899–1936)

Read All of Shakespeare’s Plays Free Online, Cour­tesy of the Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her 15-year-old son will be play­ing Puck lat­er this month in the world pre­miere of Mark York’s musi­cal stag­ing of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream. Mean­while, his moth­er dreams of being cast as the Nurse. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

40,000 Film Posters in a Wonderfully Eclectic Archive: Italian Tarkovsky Posters, Japanese Orson Welles, Czech Woody Allen & Much More

in Art, Film | April 8th, 2016

Here we have a poster for a film many of you will have heard of, and some of you will have watched right here on Open Cul­ture: Stalk­er, wide­ly con­sid­ered the most mas­ter­ful of Sovi­et auteur Andrei Tarkovsky’s career full of mas­ter­pieces. Need­less to say, the film has inspired no small amount of cinephile enthu­si­asm in the 37 years since its release, and if it has inspired the same in you, what bet­ter way to express it than to hang its poster on your wall? And why not take it to the next lev­el by hang­ing a Stalk­er poster from anoth­er coun­try, such as the Ital­ian one here?

We found it on Pos­ter­i­tati, a New York movie poster gallery whose online store also func­tions as a dig­i­tal archive of over 40,000 of these com­mer­cial-cin­e­mat­ic works of art, all con­ve­nient­ly sort­ed into cat­e­gories: not just Tarkovsky posters, but posters from the for­mer East Ger­many and Iran, posters from the Czech New Wave, and posters designed by the Japan­ese artist Tadanori Yokoo (whose works, said no less an observ­er of the human con­di­tion than Yukio Mishi­ma, “reveal all of the unbear­able things which we Japan­ese have inside our­selves”). And that’s just a small sam­pling of what Pos­ter­i­tati has to offer. If you dig deep enough, you can even find posters from Poland and the Czech Repub­lic with cats in them.

Avid Open Cul­ture read­ers might find Pos­ter­i­tati’s phi­los­o­phy sec­tion espe­cial­ly worth­while, con­tain­ing as it does posters for movies we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured and movies about thinkers we like to write about, like Der­ri­da, Exam­ined Life, Wittgen­stein, and of course the Slavoj Žižek-star­ring The Per­vert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy and Žižek! 

They also sell posters at the site, though even the ones not in stock remain avail­able to view as images: just tog­gle the “IN STOCK ONLY” switch to the OFF posi­tion, and you can then see all of the posters in the col­lec­tion.  No mat­ter what your cin­e­mat­ic, intel­lec­tu­al, or aes­thet­ic inter­ests, you’ll find at least a few posters that pique your inter­est. The Japan­ese poster for Orson Welles’ F for Fake just above, for instance, rep­re­sents a near-per­fect inter­sec­tion of most of my own inter­ests. Just as well Pos­ter­i­tati does­n’t have it in stock — I’d prob­a­bly pay any­thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Film Posters From Poland: From The Empire Strikes Back to Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Strange and Won­der­ful Movie Posters from Ghana: The Matrix, Alien & More

Japan­ese Movie Posters of 10 David Lynch Films

Down­load Vin­tage Film Posters in High-Res: From The Philadel­phia Sto­ry to Attack of the Crab Mon­sters

A Look Inside Mar­tin Scorsese’s Vin­tage Movie Poster Col­lec­tion

100 Great­est Posters of Film Noir

Strik­ing French, Russ­ian & Pol­ish Posters for the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Monty Python’s John Cleese Worries That Political Correctness Will Lead Us into a Humorless World, Reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984

in Comedy, Politics | April 8th, 2016

As with all of our polit­i­cal debates, those over “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” have become even more polar­ized, vit­ri­olic, and out­sized than when I was in col­lege at the height of the first cul­ture wars, when it often seemed to me like just new eti­quette for increas­ing­ly plu­ral­ist cam­pus­es and work­places. Now, peo­ple use the phrase to refer to any call for basic human decen­cy and intel­lec­tu­al honesty—and use it to dis­miss such calls out of hand. On the oth­er hand, many efforts at curb­ing or crit­i­ciz­ing cer­tain kinds of speech can seem gen­uine­ly, unnec­es­sar­i­ly, repres­sive. Whether it’s an illib­er­al col­lege group pres­sur­ing their uni­ver­si­ty to dis­in­vite enter­tain­ers or shut down debates, or fanat­i­cal gun­men threat­en­ing, and tak­ing, the lives of jour­nal­ists or blog­gers, the stakes over what can and can’t be said have grown expo­nen­tial­ly.

Have we reached a cri­sis of “Orwellian” pro­por­tions in the U.S.? I’d hes­i­tate to say so, giv­en the overuse and abuse of Orwell’s name and ideas as a catch-all for soci­etal dys­func­tion. We have ral­lies in which tens of thou­sands gath­er to cheer for the demo­niza­tion and slan­der of entire peo­ple groups. It hard­ly seems to me that anyone’s los­ing their free­dom of speech any time soon. But John Cleese in the Big Think video above makes an argu­ment about a par­tic­u­lar kind of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness that he defines as “the idea that you have to be pro­tect­ed from any kind of uncom­fort­able emo­tion.” Describ­ing this kind of speech polic­ing as patho­log­i­cal, Cleese refers to a the­o­ry of a psy­chi­a­trist friend, Robin Skin­ner, that peo­ple who can’t con­trol their own emo­tions “have to start to con­trol oth­er people’s behav­ior.”

Cleese does­n’t blan­ket­ly impugn the motives of all activists for polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect speech. He notes a sim­i­lar tra­jec­to­ry as I have when it comes to col­lege cam­pus­es. “Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness,” he says, “has been tak­en from being a good idea, which is ‘let’s not be mean, and par­tic­u­lar­ly to peo­ple who are not able to look after them­selves very well,’ to the point where any kind of crit­i­cism of any indi­vid­ual or group can be labeled cru­el.” Per­haps he’s right. (And Cleese is by no means the first com­ic to say so—and to swear off col­lege cam­pus­es.) In any case, his obser­va­tions about the nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship of com­e­dy to crit­i­cism or offense are dead on, as well as his con­clu­sion that once the humor’s gone, so “goes a sense of pro­por­tion, and… you’re liv­ing in 1984.” I can’t think of a book, or a soci­ety, with less humor in it.

One point of inter­est: Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness means a great many things to a great many peo­ple. For some it is about agency and self-deter­mi­na­tion, and right­ing his­tor­i­cal wrongs so as not to per­pet­u­ate them in the present. For oth­ers, it tends more toward a patron­iz­ing activist cru­sade on behalf, as Cleese says in his def­i­n­i­tion of the term, of “peo­ple who are not able to look after them­selves.” While he calls a lit­tle of this lat­ter atti­tude a good thing, George Car­lin saw it as con­de­scend­ing and disin­gen­u­ous. By no means a respecter of any par­ty ide­ol­o­gy, Car­lin described even seem­ing­ly innocu­ous forms of polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect lan­guage as fas­cism mas­querad­ing as man­ners.

In my expe­ri­ence, few peo­ple can make argu­ments against polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect lan­guage with­out occa­sion­al­ly falling into the trap of prov­ing its point. But Car­lin and Cleese make thought­ful cas­es, espe­cial­ly when they use humor—as Car­lin did over an entire career of rail­ing against the speech police. In his bit above on the increas­ing insis­tence on ungain­ly euphemisms and puffed-up jar­gon, he demon­strates what Cleese calls the effec­tive anti­dote to a polit­i­cal move­ment run riot: a sense of proportion—as well as a sense of com­pas­sion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Calls Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness a Form of “Mod­ern Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

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

Spike Lee Interviews Bernie Sanders: Two Guys from Brooklyn Talk About Education, Inequality & More

in Current Affairs | April 7th, 2016

With the New York pri­ma­ry com­ing up, Spike Lee and Bernie Sanders–the film­mak­er and the politician–sat down and talked about pol­i­tics and the state of our nation. At the 15 minute mark, the two Brook­lyn natives turned to edu­ca­tion (some­thing that undoubt­ed­ly con­cerns many read­ers here) and the impor­tance of mak­ing our pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties actu­al­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic. Such a rad­i­cal thought? You can read a tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion over at The Hol­ly­wood Reporter.

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:

Bernie Sanders: I Will Be an Arts Pres­i­dent

Spike Lee’s List of 95 Essen­tial Movies – Now with Women Film­mak­ers

Bernie Sanders Sings “This Land is Your Land” on the Endear­ing­ly Bad Spo­ken Word Album, We Shall Over­come

Allen Ginsberg’s Hand­writ­ten Poem For Bernie Sanders, “Burling­ton Snow” (1986)

Pink Floyd Performs on US Television for the First Time: American Bandstand, 1967

in Music | April 7th, 2016

You may have noticed we’ve been in the midst of a mini-six­ties revival for the past decade or so—what with the retro soul of Alaba­ma Shakes or the late Amy Wine­house, the garage rock of Ty Segall, and the Cal­i­for­nia psych of Aus­trali­a’s Tame Impala. That’s to name but just a few stu­dents of six­ties’ sounds; many hun­dreds more pop­u­late events like the Psych Fests of Austin and Liv­er­pool. And before these bands, late eighties/early nineties brought us a British re-inva­sion of six­ties garage rock and pop like the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Chameleons, the Stone Ros­es, Oasis, and many oth­er jan­g­ly, fuzzy, dreamy bands.

All of that is to say it’s near­ly impos­si­ble to hear any­thing six­ties rock with fresh ears. Not only has the inces­sant nos­tal­gia dimmed our sens­es, but we’ve seen the ideas of the six­ties evolve into myr­i­ad sub­cul­tures var­i­ous­ly indebt­ed to the decade, but no longer even in need of direct ref­er­ence. What would it mean, how­ev­er, to hear the far-out sounds of a band like Pink Floyd for the first time, a band who may at times sound dat­ed now, but much of whose more obscure cat­a­log remains shock­ing. And it’s easy to for­get that when Pink Floyd—or “The Pink Floyd” as they tend­ed to be called—got their start with orig­i­nal singer and song­writer Syd Bar­rett, they made a much dif­fer­ent sound than those we’re famil­iar with from The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon.

If you haven’t heard the sound of the band cir­ca 1967, when they record­ed their first album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, then you may nod along with Dick Clark’s ambiva­lent intro­duc­tion of them to U.S. audi­ences in the ’67 Amer­i­can Band­stand appear­ance above—their first vis­it to the States and first time of TV. They do indeed make “very inter­est­ing sounds”: specif­i­cal­ly, “Apples and Oranges,” the third sin­gle and the final song Bar­rett wrote for the band before he suf­fered a psy­chot­ic break onstage and was replaced by David Gilmour. There isn’t much in the way of per­for­mance. (But stick around for the inter­views around 3:25.) As pret­ty much every­one did at the time, Bar­rett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright mime to a pre­re­cord­ed track. And Bar­rett looks par­tic­u­lar­ly out of it. He was close by this point to the crip­pling men­tal health cri­sis that would even­tu­al­ly end his career.

But Syd Bar­rett did not dis­ap­pear from music right away. The unre­leased “Scream Thy Last Scream,” slat­ed to be the next sin­gle released after Piper at the Gates of Dawn, gave much indi­ca­tion of the musi­cal direc­tion he took in two 1970 solo albums, The Mad­cap Laughs and Bar­rett. Like lat­er Bar­rett, ear­ly Pink Floyd is not music for every­one. Instead of the famil­iar stomp­ing funk of “The Wall” or the soar­ing blues of “Com­fort­ably Numb,” the songs mean­der, twist, turn, and wob­ble, often indi­cat­ing the state of Barrett’s trou­bled soul, but just as often show­cas­ing his bril­liant com­po­si­tion­al mind. Bar­rett is gone, as is key­boardist Richard Wright, and Pink Floyd is no more. But their lega­cy is secure. And we still have mad genius­es like Austin psych leg­end Roky Erick­son to kick around, as well as all the many thou­sands of musi­cians he and Bar­rett inspired.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

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