“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” a Quote Falsely Attributed to Edmund Burke

in History, Politics | March 13th, 2016

“The only thing nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil is for good men to do noth­ing.” It’s a quote rou­tine­ly attrib­uted to Edmund Burke. But it turns out false­ly so. Appar­ent­ly, he nev­er uttered these words. At best, the essence of the quote can be traced back to the util­i­tar­i­an philoso­pher John Stu­art Mill, who deliv­ered an 1867 inau­gur­al address at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews and stat­ed: “Let not any one paci­fy his con­science by the delu­sion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opin­ion. Bad men need noth­ing more to com­pass their ends, than that good men should look on and do noth­ing. He is not a good man who, with­out a protest, allows wrong to be com­mit­ted in his name, and with the means which he helps to sup­ply, because he will not trou­ble him­self to use his mind on the sub­ject.”

If you came to this page look­ing for Burke to help sup­port ideas of social upheaval, we’d sug­gest watch­ing the video below, or bet­ter yet read­ing Reflec­tions on the Rev­o­lu­tion in France, a fun­da­men­tal text in the canon of con­ser­v­a­tive lit­er­a­ture where Burke cau­tioned against abrupt or vio­lent social change.

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:

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

What Books Did Wun­derkind Philoso­pher J.S. Mill Read Between Ages 3 and 7?: Plato’s Apol­o­gy (in Ancient Greek), Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote & Much More

Jere­my Bentham’s Mum­mi­fied Body Is Still on Display–Much Like Oth­er Aging British Rock Stars

Download the Complete Archive of Oz, “the Most Controversial Magazine of the 60s,” Featuring R. Crumb, Germaine Greer & More

in Art, History, Magazines | March 11th, 2016

“If you remem­ber the six­ties,” goes the famous and var­i­ous­ly attrib­uted quo­ta­tion, “you weren’t real­ly there.” And, psy­cho­log­i­cal after-effects of first-hand expo­sure to that era aside, increas­ing­ly many of us weren’t born any­where near in time to take part.

Those of us from the wrong place or the wrong time have had to draw what under­stand­ing of the six­ties we could from that much-mythol­o­gized peri­od’s music and movies, as well as the cloudy reflec­tions of those who lived through it (or claimed to). But now we can get a much more direct sense through the com­plete dig­i­tal archives of Oz, some­times called the most con­tro­ver­sial mag­a­zine of the six­ties.

In The Guardian, Chi­tra Ramaswamy describes the Lon­don mag­a­zine as “the icon – and the enfant ter­ri­ble – of the under­ground press. Pro­duced in a base­ment flat off Not­ting Hill Gate, Oz was soon renowned for psy­che­del­ic cov­ers by pop artist Mar­tin Sharp, car­toons by Robert Crumb, rad­i­cal fem­i­nist man­i­festos by Ger­maine Greer, and any­thing else that would send the estab­lish­ment apoplec­tic. By August 1971, it had been the sub­ject of the longest obscen­i­ty tri­al in British his­to­ry. It doesn’t get more 60s than that.” Even its print run, which began in 1967 and end­ed in 1973, per­fect­ly brack­ets the peri­od peo­ple real­ly talk about when they talk about the six­ties.

The online archive has gone up at the web site of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wol­lon­gong, who two years ago put up a sim­i­lar dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of all the issues of Oz’s epony­mous satir­i­cal pre­de­ces­sor pro­duced in Syd­ney. “Please be advised,” notes the front page, “this col­lec­tion has been made avail­able due to its his­tor­i­cal and research impor­tance. It con­tains explic­it lan­guage and images that reflect atti­tudes of the era in which the mate­r­i­al was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished, and that some view­ers may find con­fronting.” And while Oz today would­n’t like­ly get into the kind of deep and high-pro­file legal trou­ble it did back then — in addi­tion to the famous 1971 tri­al for the Lon­don ver­sion, the Syd­ney one got hit with two obscen­i­ty charges dur­ing the pre­vi­ous decade — the sheer trans­gres­sive zeal on dis­play all over the mag­a­zine’s pages in its hey­day still impress­es.

“Fifty years lat­er, it’s impor­tant as a cap­sule of the times, but also as a work of art,” says Michael Organ, a library man­ag­er at the uni­ver­si­ty, in the Guardian arti­cle. “Oz is a record of the cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion. Many of the issues it raised, such as the envi­ron­ment, sex­u­al­i­ty and drug use, are no longer con­tentious. In fact, they have now become main­stream.”

All this goes for the delib­er­ate­ly provoca­tive edi­to­r­i­al con­tent — the stuff some view­ers may find “con­fronting” — as well as the inci­den­tal con­tent: ads for nov­els by Hen­ry Miller and Jean Genet, “dates com­put­er matched to your per­son­al­i­ty and tastes,” a machine promis­ing “a hot line to infinity/journey through the incred­i­ble land­scapes of your mind/kaleidoscopic mov­ing chang­ing image on which your mind projects its own changing/stun your­self & aston­ish friends,” and the “liq­uid lux­u­ry” of the Aquar­ius Water Bed. It does not, indeed, get more six­ties than that. Enter the Oz archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tonite Let’s All Make Love in Lon­don (1968): An Insider’s View of 60s Lon­don Coun­ter­cul­ture

R. Crumb Describes How He Dropped LSD in the 60s & Instant­ly Dis­cov­ered His Artis­tic Style

The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb: A Por­trait Script­ed by the Under­ground Comics Leg­end Him­self (1987)

62 Psy­che­del­ic Clas­sics: A Free Playlist Cre­at­ed by Sean Lennon

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.

Download 1800 Fin de Siècle French Posters & Prints: Iconic Works by Toulouse-Lautrec & Many More

in Art, History | March 11th, 2016

Théophile Stein­len’s poster for Le Chat Noir, Leonet­to Cap­piel­lo’s adver­tise­ment for Café Mar­tin, Hen­ri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s por­traits of the cabaret singer Aris­tide Bru­ant — through these and oth­er much-repro­duced and often-seen images, we’ve all gained some famil­iar­i­ty, how­ev­er uncon­scious, with the art of the fin de siè­cle French print.

But even so, most of us have seen only a small frac­tion of all the strik­ing works of art a late-nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Parisian would have encoun­tered on the streetscape every day. Until they invent a time machine to drop us straight into the cul­tur­al vibran­cy of that time and place, we’ve got the next best thing in the form of the Van Gogh Muse­um’s online French print col­lec­tion.

“In France, until the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the art of print­mak­ing had been used pri­mar­i­ly to repro­duce exist­ing works of art in print, such as paint­ings and sculp­tures, so that they could be avail­able for a broad pub­lic,” says the muse­um’s announce­ment of the online col­lec­tion, which opened in Feb­ru­ary.

But in the sec­ond half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, “as artists began to exper­i­ment with the medi­um as a fer­tile mode of cre­ative expres­sion, each print came to be con­sid­ered a work of art in its own right.” In the aes­thet­i­cal­ly explo­sive years between 1890 to 1905, “a new gen­er­a­tion of artists took up the art of print­mak­ing as a mod­ern medi­um,” dri­ven by a “fas­ci­na­tion for mod­ern life, includ­ing the scin­til­lat­ing Paris nightlife, Japan­ese wood­block prints, and the inti­mate domes­tic lifestyle of the well-to-do bour­geois.”

The online col­lec­tion offers not just high-res­o­lu­tion images of near­ly 1800 prints, posters, and books from this move­ment, but infor­ma­tion that “reveals and elab­o­rates on innu­mer­able artis­tic and his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions using inter­ac­tive tags and hyper­links,” shed­ding light on the “tight­ly knit com­mu­ni­ty” of the Parisian print world, whose “each indi­vid­ual print is con­nect­ed with count­less oth­er prints in many dif­fer­ent ways,” from shared influ­ences to sub­jects to artis­tic tech­niques to types of paper — and even to clients, who quick­ly real­ized the com­mer­cial val­ue of all the eye-catch­ing qual­i­ties pio­neered in this rev­o­lu­tion in repro­ducible visu­al art.

You can browse the col­lec­tion in a vari­ety of ways with its index: by artists like Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, or Paul Gau­guin; by tech­nique like wood­cut, aquatint, or pho­togravure; by theme like beau­ty, nightlife, or cap­i­tal­ism; and even by object type, from books to play­bills to all those still-eye-catch­ing adver­tise­ments. To Fran­cophiles, Paris has long stood as a place where even the busi­ness­men care about art. Pre­sum­ably the cof­fee com­pa­nies, eater­ies, bars, music halls, and pub­lish­ers who com­mis­sioned so many of these posters had at least a cer­tain regard for it, but if only they knew what a good bar­gain they were get­ting in pur­chas­ing the atten­tion of con­sumers for about 120 years and count­ing. Enter the com­plete online col­lec­tion of prints here, or click here to see some high­lights.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

René Magritte’s Ear­ly Art Deco Adver­tis­ing Posters, 1924–1927

Adver­tise­ments from Japan’s Gold­en Age of Art Deco

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

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.

Who the F*@% is Frank Zappa?: Kickstart the Making of the Definitive Frank Zappa Documentary

in Film, Music | March 11th, 2016

You may know Alex Win­ter best for his role as Bill S. Pre­ston, Esq. in the 1989 film Bill & Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture. But nowa­days, many years lat­er, he’s mak­ing films. And if we can help out, he’ll soon be mak­ing the defin­i­tive doc­u­men­tary of Frank Zap­pa’s life.

On Kick­starter this week, Win­ter announced:

Frank Zap­pa is one of the strangest, most amaz­ing and influ­en­tial fig­ures of our era, but his defin­i­tive sto­ry has nev­er been told.

Now, for the first time, the Zap­pas have giv­en us com­plete, unre­strict­ed access to the con­tents of Frank’s pri­vate vault, and their full bless­ing and sup­port, to tell his sto­ry.

But before we can fin­ish telling his sto­ry, we have to cat­a­log, save, dig­i­tize, and pre­serve a vast archive of unre­leased audio, video, images, doc­u­ments and more.

Togeth­er we can save Frank’s vault.

And when we do, we’ll have every­thing we need to answer the ques­tion:

Who the F*@% is Frank Zap­pa?

Just a few days into the Kick­starter cam­paign, Win­ter has already raised rough­ly half ($231,000) of the total amount ($500,000) need­ed to move for­ward with the project.

Through con­tri­bu­tions large or small, you can help with the oth­er half, and make sure that the defin­i­tive Zap­pa doc­u­men­tary sees the light of day. Con­tribute here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 82 Hours of Frank Zap­pa Music: Free Playlists of Songs He Com­posed & Per­formed

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Dick Clark Introduces Jefferson Airplane & the Sounds of Psychedelic San Francisco to America: Yes Parents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

in Music | March 10th, 2016

It must have been odd for “America’s Teenag­er” Dick Clark to watch the almost week­ly rev­o­lu­tions in rock and roll as he con­tin­ued to host Amer­i­can Band­stand through the ‘60s. By the time of the above clip, June 1967, Clark had relo­cat­ed his show from the East Coast to the West, and San Fran­cis­co was export­ing its first round of hip­pie rock bands, with Jef­fer­son Air­plane one of the biggest.

As you’ll see, Clark, dressed as usu­al in suit and tie, asks his young audi­ence if they’ve been to San Fran­cis­co and what they thought of it. “This is where it’s at, that’s where every­thing is hap­pen­ing,” he con­cludes and then gives the stage over to the young and rev­o­lu­tion­ary band.

They mime their way through their two singles–Jack Casady could care less about verisimil­i­tude and makes his way around a gui­tar cov­ered in cables and poor drum­mer Spencer Dry­den just kind of sits there. But Grace Slick, 28 years old or there­abouts, and look­ing like some mag­ick princess, calls the fol­low­ers to the ser­vice. Yeah, it’s good stuff.

That leaves Clark with less than two min­utes to inter­view the band. The Sum­mer of Love is about to kick into high gear a cou­ple of hun­dred miles away.

“Do par­ents have any­thing to wor­ry about?” Clark asks Paul Kant­ner.

“I think so,” he replies. “Their chil­dren are doing things that they didn’t do and they don’t under­stand.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Talk­ing Heads’ First TV Appear­ance Was on Amer­i­can Band­stand, and It Was Pret­ty Awk­ward (1979)

Rare Footage of the “Human Be-In,” the Land­mark Counter-Cul­ture Event Held in Gold­en Gate Park, 1967

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

Hear the Unique, Original Compositions of George Martin, Beloved Beatles Producer (RIP)

in Music | March 10th, 2016

Quin­cy Jones, Phil Spec­tor, Bri­an Wil­son… these are peo­ple who changed the sound of mod­ern music by tak­ing big risks in the stu­dio. But even if these three had not made the albums they’re best known for, they would still be known for their pop­u­lar work as musi­cians and pro­duc­ers. That may not have been the case with per­haps one of the most inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­ers of them all: George Mar­tin, who died this past Tues­day. Had Mar­tin not steered the Bea­t­les through their rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion from pop sen­sa­tions to psy­che­del­ic bards, we may not have heard his name out­side of the small worlds of clas­si­cal and film music and British com­e­dy records.

Was he the “fifth Bea­t­le” or more of a pater­nal fig­ure, as Paul McCart­ney wrote yes­ter­day? Is it hyper­bole to call him, as Mick Ron­son did in trib­ute, “the great­est British record pro­duc­er ever”? Maybe not. In any case, just as Mar­tin changed the Beatles—prompting them to recruit Ringo and bring com­plex orches­tra­tions into their arrangements—the Bea­t­les changed Mar­tin, from a rather con­ser­v­a­tive, cau­tious pro­duc­er and com­pos­er to an adven­tur­ous cre­ative force.

That’s not to say that Mar­tin didn’t have an eccen­tric streak before he signed the band that would secure his name in rock and roll his­to­ry. He spent a good bit of his ear­ly career pro­duc­ing nov­el­ty albums. “Time Beat” and “Waltz in Orbit”—his com­po­si­tions at the top of the post, cre­at­ed with Mad­dale­na Fagan­di­ni of the famed BBC Radio­phon­ic Workshop—show an eccen­tric, play­ful side of the but­toned-up pro­duc­er. It was per­haps a side Mar­tin pre­ferred to keep hid­den; he released the sin­gle under a pseu­do­nym, “Ray Cath­ode.”

Just a few months lat­er, Mar­tin audi­tioned the Bea­t­les and brought them into Abbey Road Stu­dios to record their first album. While the band’s ear­ly six­ties records are for­ev­er beloved for their song­writ­ing and per­for­mances, the pro­duc­tion itself didn’t stray far from the con­ven­tion­al. The ear­ly albums, writes Mike Brown at The Tele­graph, “evinced a youth­ful fresh­ness and exu­ber­ance that hint­ed at promise, but showed no great orig­i­nal­i­ty. Cer­tain­ly there was noth­ing that antic­i­pat­ed the flow­er­ing of genius to come.” Like­wise, Martin’s own releas­es at the time, such as the big band orches­tra­tions of Bea­t­les songs from 1964 (fur­ther up) and a lounge-jazz, bossano­va-tinged instru­men­tal ver­sion of Help! from the fol­low­ing year, show none of the wiz­ardry to come in Sgt. Pepper’s or Abbey Road.

After the Bea­t­les’ psy­che­del­ic break, so to speak, in 1966/67, Mar­tin him­self moved in an entire­ly new direc­tion as a com­pos­er, as you can hear in his very Beat­le­sesque “Theme One,” which served, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, as the “cer­e­mo­ni­al first song” every morn­ing for BBC Radio 1 when it launched in ’67 until the mid-70s. The thrilling­ly Baroque piece of cham­ber pop could eas­i­ly have been an extend­ed out­ro on Sgt. Pepper’s; it shows Mar­tin ful­ly embrac­ing the Bea­t­les’ sound. Hear both the robust orig­i­nal and a tin­nier, more Beatles‑y ver­sion above.

As skilled as he was at cre­at­ing instant­ly rec­og­niz­able exper­i­men­tal pop melodies, Mar­tin nev­er left his clas­si­cal roots far behind. In the video of “A Day in the Life,” above—shot on loca­tion dur­ing record­ing sessions—Martin con­ducts the orches­tra, Brown observes, “in white shirt and bow tie, hair neat­ly trimmed, stout­ly refus­ing to embrace the affec­ta­tions of droop­ing mus­tache and Nehru jack­et that afflict­ed oth­er record pro­duc­ers.” The famed pro­duc­er, “for­ev­er main­tained the calm, unruf­fled demeanour and the stiff-backed sar­to­r­i­al rec­ti­tude of the offi­cer class.”

Martin’s musi­cal dis­ci­pline reigned in and gave shape to the Bea­t­les’ wildest ideas, and gave their most ten­der and dra­mat­ic songs an immen­si­ty and lush­ness that still leaves us in awe. He com­bined con­ven­tion­al and avant-garde sen­si­bil­i­ties seam­less­ly. (As McCart­ney once remarked, Mar­tin was “quite exper­i­men­tal for who he was, a grown-up.”) Just above hear an exam­ple of that syn­the­sis, the sweep­ing, pow­er­ful “Pep­per­land Suite,” com­posed in 1968 for the Yel­low Sub­ma­rine film. It rep­re­sents some of the best orig­i­nal work from an incred­i­ble pro­duc­er who also became, we must remem­ber as we say our good­byes, an astound­ing­ly orig­i­nal com­pos­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Inside the Mak­ing of The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band, Rock’s Great Con­cept Album

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son, Dis­cov­ered by George Mar­tin

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

The History of Rock Told in a Whirlwind 15-Minute Video

in Music | March 10th, 2016

Based in Eng­land, Itha­ca Audio spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing music for film, TV, ani­ma­tions and games. And they also have a knack for remix­ing audio visu­als and pro­duc­ing mashups. Care to sam­ple their work? Watch the video above.

The His­to­ry of Rock takes you from Elvis to The White Stripes, trav­el­ing from 1957 to 2003, in the space of 15 min­utes. 348 rock­stars, 84 gui­tarists, 64 songs, 44 drum­mers — they’re all knit­ted into a nar­ra­tive using a device–the Face­book timeline–that came into exis­tence in 2004. It’s anachro­nis­tic but clever, and I’m will­ing to sus­pend dis­be­lief and take the ride. A big­ger com­plaint might be the one made by For­rest Wick­man over at Slate. “No Lit­tle Richard. No Ike Turn­er and Jack­ie Bren­ston. No Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe. No Bo Did­dley or Big Joe Turn­er,” he observes. The His­to­ry of Rock would have you believe that “rock was [orig­i­nal­ly] pio­neered exclu­sive­ly by white artists.” Give Kei­th Richards and Mick Jag­ger the chance–two icons who orig­i­nal­ly saw them­selves as just play­ing the Amer­i­can blues–and they might tell the ori­gin sto­ry of rock n roll a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly.

Below you can see a list of tracks used in the mashup. And if you head over to the Itha­ca Audio web­site, you can down­load the sound­track in full.

Elvis Pres­ley — Jail­house Rock
The Yard­birds — For your Love
The Rolling Stones — Honky Tonk Women
The Rolling Stones — (I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion
Cream — Sun­shine of your Love
Led Zep­pelin — Whole Lot­ta Love
Led Zep­pelin — Good Times, Bad Times
Led Zep­pelin — Immi­grant Song
Jimi Hen­drix — Hey Joe
Jimi Hen­drix — Pur­ple Haze
Fleet­wood Mac — Oh Well (Part 1)
The Kinks — You Real­ly Got Me
The Doors — Rid­ers on the Storm
Queen — Don’t Stop Me
Queen — Radio Ga Ga
Queen — Anoth­er One Bites the Dust
Queen — A Kind of Mag­ic
The Bea­t­les — Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band
The Who — Baba O’Ri­ley
The Who — Emi­nence Front
Black Sab­bath — Iron Man
Black Sab­bath — War Pigs
Deep Pur­ple — Woman From Tokyo
Deep Pur­ple — Smoke on the Water
Deep Pur­ple — Liv­ing Wreck
The Eagles — Life in the Fast Lane
Aero­smith — Walk this Way
Aero­smith — Dude Looks Like a Lady
Alice Coop­er — I’m Eigh­teen
The Clash — Train in Vain (Stand by Me)
The Police — Rox­anne
Jour­ney — Don’t Stop Believin’
Dire Straits — Sul­tans of Swing
Duran Duran — Girls on Film
Duran Duran — Wild Boys
Pink Floyd — Anoth­er Brick in the Wall
David Bowie — Let’s Dance
David Bowie & Queen — Under Pres­sure
Iron Maid­en — Run to the Hills
Def Lep­pard — Pour Some Sug­ar on Me
Guns N’ Ros­es — Mr Brown­stone
Guns N’ Ros­es — Sweet Child O’ Mine
AC/DC — Back in Black
Rage Against the Machine — Bomb­track
Rage Against the Machine — Guer­ril­la Radio
Rage Against the Machine — Killing in the Name
Metal­li­ca — Enter Sand­man
Nir­vana — Smells Like Teen Spir­it
Nir­vana — Heart Shaped Box
Oasis — Super­son­ic
Oasis — Live For­ev­er
Blur — Song 2
The Verve — Bit­ter­sweet Sym­pho­ny
Radio­head — High and Dry
Radio­head — Idioteque
Red Hot Chili Pep­pers — Can’t Stop
The Killers — All These Things That I’ve Done
Foo Fight­ers — All My Life
U2 — Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Linkin Park — One Step Clos­er
The White Stripes — Sev­en Nation Army
The Strokes — 12 51
Goril­laz — Clint East­wood
Kings of Leon — Sex on Fire

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:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus Picks 10 Unex­pect­ed Songs That Tell the Sto­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

New Order’s “Blue Monday” Played with Obsolete 1930s Instruments

in Music | March 9th, 2016

Released 33 years ago this week, New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” (hear the orig­i­nal EP ver­sion here) became, accord­ing to the BBC, “a cru­cial link between Sev­en­ties dis­co and the dance/house boom that took off at the end of the Eight­ies.” If you fre­quent­ed a dance club dur­ing the 1980s, you almost cer­tain­ly know the song.

The orig­i­nal “Blue Mon­day” nev­er quite won me over. I’m much more Rolling Stones than New Order. But I’m tak­en with the adap­ta­tion above. Cre­at­ed by the “Orkestra Obso­lete,” this ver­sion tries to imag­ine what the song would have sound­ed like in 1933, using only instru­ments avail­able at the time— for exam­ple, writes the BBC, the theremin, musi­cal saw, har­mo­ni­um and pre­pared piano. Quite a change from the Pow­ertron Sequencer, Moog Source syn­the­siz­er, and Ober­heim DMX drum machine used to record the song in the 80s. Enjoy this lit­tle thought exper­i­ment put in action.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

10 Must-Read Dystopian Novels: Our Readers’ Picks

in Literature | March 9th, 2016

While not all sci­ence fic­tion is dystopian—far from it—a ques­tion does arise when the sub­ject of that most pes­simistic of gen­res comes up: is all dystopi­an lit­er­a­ture sci­ence fic­tion? In a post a cou­ple days ago, we brought you five of Antho­ny Burgess’s favorite dystopi­an nov­els, a list that would seem to answer with a resound­ing No. For one thing, Burgess includes what we might count as his­tor­i­cal fic­tion on his list—Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Is Orwell’s 1984 sci­ence fic­tion? It makes more sense, per­haps, to call it polit­i­cal satire, or “spec­u­la­tive fic­tion,” the term dystopi­an nov­el­ist Mar­garet Atwood prefers.

In the intro­duc­tion to her essay col­lec­tion In Other Worlds, Atwood defines “spec­u­la­tive fic­tion” as “real­is­tic and plau­si­ble” where­as sci­ence fic­tion con­tains more fan­tas­tic ele­ments. Hair­split­ting maybe, but for Atwood it means that dystopias—at least her dystopias—are not sim­ply philo­soph­i­cal thought exper­i­ments divorced from lived real­i­ty, like much utopi­an fic­tion. They are pro­jec­tions, and at times imag­i­na­tive tran­scrip­tions, of the present, show­ing us what may already be hap­pen­ing right under our noses, or what might be right around the cor­ner.

As Burgess wrote of 1984, “It is pos­si­ble to say that the ghast­ly future Orwell fore­told has not come about sim­ply because he fore­told it: we were warned in time.” In oth­er words—the total­i­tar­i­an future Orwell fore­saw was entire­ly pos­si­ble in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, and need­less to say, already large­ly a real­i­ty in places like Stalin’s Sovi­et Union and cur­rent-day North Korea. In our Burgess post, we asked our read­ers to name their favorite dystopi­an nov­els (or films). How­ev­er we define dystopia—as dark futur­ist fan­ta­sy, sci-fi, or “spec­u­la­tive fic­tion” about nasty things on the verge of com­ing to pass, we’ll nev­er lack for exam­ples.

The list of nov­els below below offers a range of futur­is­tic tales, some more real­is­tic and plau­si­ble, some more fan­tas­tic. Like Burgess, read­ers had a broad def­i­n­i­tion of “dystopi­an” as a genre. I was sur­prised, how­ev­er, that no one men­tioned any of Atwood’s excel­lent nov­els, so I’ll throw in both Oryx and Crake and The Handmaid’s Tale as my picks.

• We, by Yevge­ny Zamy­atin
• Dahlgren, by Samuel R. Delany
• The Road, by Cor­mac McCarthy
• Mar­ket Forces, by Richard K. Mor­gan
• Nev­er Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishig­uro
• A Can­ti­cle for Lei­bowitz, by Wal­ter M. Miller Jr.
• In the Coun­try of Last Things, by Paul Auster
• The Iron Heel, by Jack Lon­don
• The Gate to Wom­en’s Coun­try, by Sher­ri S. Tep­per
• This Per­fect Day, by Ira Levin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

Hux­ley to Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

Hear Ray Bradbury’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry Fahren­heit 451 as a Radio Dra­ma

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

11 Essential Feminist Books: A Reading List by The New York Public Library

in Gender, History, Literature, Philosophy | March 9th, 2016

We now find our­selves about a third of the way through March, more inter­est­ing­ly known as Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month, a time filled with occa­sions to round up and learn more about the cre­ations and accom­plish­ments of women through the cen­turies. And “who bet­ter to hon­or this March than his­to­ry’s influ­en­tial fem­i­nists?” writes Lynn Lobash on the New York Pub­lic Library’s web­site.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured trea­sures from the New York Pub­lic Library, includ­ing art posters, maps, restau­rant menus, the­ater ephemera, and a host of dig­i­tized high-res­o­lu­tion images. Today it’s time to high­light one of the many rec­om­mend­ed read­ing lists that the NYPL’s librar­i­ans reg­u­lar­ly cre­ate for the read­ing pub­lic. “Know Your Fem­i­nisms”–a book list “essen­tial for under­stand­ing the his­to­ry of fem­i­nism and the wom­en’s rights movement”–could eas­i­ly be used in a Fem­i­nism 101 course. It runs chrono­log­i­cal­ly, begin­ning with these ten vol­umes (the quot­ed descrip­tions come from Lynn Lobash):

• A Room of One’s Own by Vir­ginia Woolf (1929). “This essay exam­ines the ques­tion of whether a woman is capa­ble of pro­duc­ing work on par with Shake­speare. Woolf asserts that ‘a woman must have mon­ey and a room of her own if she is to write fic­tion.’ ”
• The Sec­ond Sex by Simone de Beau­voir (1949). “A major work of fem­i­nist phi­los­o­phy, the book is a sur­vey of the treat­ment of women through­out his­to­ry.”
• The Fem­i­nine Mys­tique by Bet­ty Friedan (1963). “Friedan exam­ines what she calls ‘the prob­lem that has no name’ – the gen­er­al sense of malaise among women in the 1950s and 1960s.”
• Les Guéril­lères by Monique Wit­tig (1969). “An imag­in­ing of an actu­al war of the sex­es in which women war­riors are equipped with knives and guns.”
• The Female Eunuch by Ger­maine Greer (1970). “Greer makes the argu­ment that women have been cut off from their sex­u­al­i­ty through (a male con­ceived) con­sumer soci­ety-pro­duced notion of the ‘nor­mal’ woman.”
• Sex­u­al Pol­i­tics by Kate Mil­lett (1970). “Based on her PhD dis­ser­ta­tion, Millett’s book dis­cuss­es the role patri­archy (in the polit­i­cal sense) plays in sex­u­al rela­tions. To make her argu­ment, she (unfa­vor­ably) explores the work of D.H Lawrence, Hen­ry Miller, and Sig­mund Freud, among oth­ers.”
• Sis­ter Out­sider by Audre Lorde (1984). “In this col­lec­tion of essays and speech­es, Lorde address­es sex­ism, racism, black les­bians, and more.”
• The Beau­ty Myth by Nao­mi Wolf (1990). “Wolf explores “nor­ma­tive stan­dards of beau­ty” which under­mine women polit­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly and are prop­a­gat­ed by the fash­ion, beau­ty, and adver­tis­ing indus­tries.”
• Gen­der Trou­ble by Judith But­ler (1990). “Influ­en­tial in fem­i­nist and queer the­o­ry, this book intro­duces the con­cept of ‘gen­der per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty’ which essen­tial­ly means, your behav­ior cre­ates your gen­der.”
• Fem­i­nism is for every­body by bell hooks (2000). “Hooks focus­es on the inter­sec­tion of gen­der, race, and the sociopo­lit­i­cal.”

To see the very newest books the NYPL has put in this par­tic­u­lar canon, the lat­est of which came out just last year, take a look at the com­plete list on their site. There you’ll also find “Well Done, Sis­ter Suf­fragette!,” a short­er col­lec­tion of five books on his­to­ry’s fight­ers for wom­en’s rights: the slave-turned-ora­tor Sojourn­er Truth, activist Eliz­a­beth Cady Stan­ton, social reformer Susan B. Antho­ny, nine­teenth amend­ment-pro­mot­er Alice Paul, and rad­i­cal Catholic jour­nal­ist Dorothy Day.

Note: You can down­load Glo­ria Steinem’s recent auto­bi­og­ra­phy, My Life on the Road, as a free audio­book if you sign up for Audible.com’s free tri­al pro­gram. It’s nar­rat­ed by Debra Winger and Steinem her­self.  Learn more about Audible’s free tri­al pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

The First Fem­i­nist Film, Ger­maine Dulac’s The Smil­ing Madame Beudet (1922)

The Fem­i­nist The­o­ry of Simone de Beau­voir Explained with 8‑Bit Video Games (and More)

100,000+ Won­der­ful Pieces of The­ater Ephemera Dig­i­tized by The New York Pub­lic Library

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

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.