Woody Allen Tells a Classic Joke About Hemingway, Fitzgerald & Gertrude Stein in 1965: A Precursor to Midnight in Paris

in Comedy, Film | September 3rd, 2015

The char­ac­ter we know as “Woody Allen,” the per­sona we see in his films, the stam­mer­ing neu­rot­ic weighed down by exis­ten­tial angst and a des­per­ate horni­ness laced with intel­lec­tu­al­i­ty, was cre­at­ed not in his movies, but in his stand-up, record­ings of which have been in and out of cir­cu­la­tion since 1964. (They’re now avail­able here.)

The direc­tor is report­ed­ly even more embar­rassed of these record­ings than his films–and any­one who has seen his sit-down with crit­ic Mark Cousins can attest, he can’t even stand to watch his films–but maybe that’s about the per­for­mance itself, and not the mate­r­i­al.

I say that because in the clip above, a rou­tine that Allen loved enough that he often used it to end his sets in the 60s, we can see the nascent idea for his Oscar-win­ning 2011 film Mid­night in Paris.

Riff­ing on The Lost Gen­er­a­tion, he imag­ines him­self back in time, carous­ing with Hem­ing­way, Gertrude Stein, Picas­so, F. Scott and Zel­da Fitzger­ald, and famed Span­ish bull­fight­er Manolete. It’s a one-two-three-and punch­line joke we won’t ruin, but it’s inter­est­ing that con­scious­ly or sub­con­scious­ly, this idea returned some five decades lat­er to be fleshed out into one of Allen’s best late-peri­od films. Was he always think­ing of this rou­tine as a some­day film? In inter­views from the time of the film’s release, he nev­er men­tions the stand-up bit.

Cre­at­ing art is often like com­post­ing, and one nev­er knows what might float to the top after years of influ­ences and absorp­tion. Lis­ten­ing to his stand-up, one can find the joke that he recy­cled for Annie Hall (“I was thrown out of NYU my fresh­man year, I cheat­ed on my meta­physics final in col­lege, I looked with­in the soul of the boy sit­ting next to me.”).

There’s also this rou­tine about a scary sub­way ride:

The scene was lat­er recre­at­ed in Bananas with a young Sylvester Stal­lone.

Allen’s pre-film career, when he was writ­ing for tele­vi­sion and his own stand-up, when his goals were to “write for Bob Hope and host the Oscars” makes for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing, and we’ll leave you with this his­to­ry from WMFU. Nerdist has more thoughts on the rela­tion­ship between The Lost Gen­er­a­tion joke and Mid­night in Paris here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Woody Allen’s Type­writer, Scis­sors and Sta­pler: The Great Film­mak­er Shows Us How He Writes

Watch an Exu­ber­ant, Young Woody Allen Do Live Stand Up on British TV (1965)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

Back to Bed: A New Video Game Inspired by the Surreal Artwork of Escher, Dali & Magritte

in Art, Video Games | September 2nd, 2015

If you’ve ever looked at a mind­bend­ing, impos­si­ble piece of archi­tec­ture designed by M.C. Esch­er and thought, well, I would love to play that, then you just might love Back to Bed, a video game for Win­dows, Mac, Google Play and Playsta­tion.

Sim­i­lar to last year’s aes­thet­i­cal­ly beau­ti­ful archi­tec­ture puz­zle game Mon­u­ment Val­ley, play­ers make their way through 30 lev­els of increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult land­scapes. You play a dog-like com­pan­ion that tries to stop his sleep-walk­ing own­er Bob from falling off into space by plac­ing objects in his path. But, as with these games, you must use log­ic to access some of the objects and think­ing sev­er­al moves ahead stretch­es the brain.

The giant, green apples recall Rene Magritte, melt­ed watch­es are out of Dalí, and the voice that says “The stairs are not what they seem”? We have anoth­er Lynch fan in Bed­time Time Dig­i­tal Games’ crew. And the whole nar­colep­sy theme has a bit of the ol’ Cali­gari going for it.

The small com­pa­ny con­sists of for­mer stu­dents who cre­at­ed the game “in a freez­ing old ware­house on the har­bor in Aal­borg, Den­mark,” accord­ing to their bio. They forged ahead with the game after a Kick­starter cam­paign and what sounds like many years lat­er, they won the stu­dent show­case at San Francisco’s Inde­pen­dent Games Fes­ti­val. That attract­ed investors and with actu­al fund­ing, they’ve rewrit­ten the game to make it real­ly shine on HDTVs.

Despite the sus­pense­ful game­play, there’s much that’s relax­ing in the worlds of Back to Bed, from its chil­dren book graph­ic design—everything looks airbrushed—to its hyp­not­ic, hyp­n­a­gog­ic sound, includ­ing a very Bri­an Eno-esque ambi­ent sound­track.

“Back to Bed, the game says out loud in a drone, half-awake voice when you fin­ish a lev­el. But this addic­tive game might just keep you up lat­er than usu­al.

via Vice’s Cre­ator’s Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meta­mor­phose: 1999 Doc­u­men­tary Reveals the Life and Work of Artist M.C. Esch­er

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

The Inter­net Arcade Lets You Play 900 Vin­tage Video Games in Your Web Brows­er (Free)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

30 Minutes of Harry Potter Sung in an Avant-Garde Fashion by UbuWeb’s Kenneth Goldsmith

in Books, Music | September 2nd, 2015

Last month, we fea­tured poet, pro­fes­sor, and WFMU radio host Ken­neth Gold­smith singing the the­o­ry of Theodor Adorno, Sig­mund Freud, and Lud­wig Wittgen­stein — heavy read­ing, to be sure, but there­in lay the appeal. How dif­fer­ent­ly do we approach these for­mi­da­ble the­o­ret­i­cal texts, Gold­smith’s project implic­it­ly asks, if we receive them not just aural­ly rather than tex­tu­al­ly, but also in a light — not to say goofy — musi­cal arrange­ment? But if it should drain you to think about ques­tions like that, even as you absorb the thought of the likes of Adorno, Freud, and Wittgen­stein, might we sug­gest Ken­neth Gold­smith singing Har­ry Pot­ter?

Per­haps the best-known mod­ern exem­plar of “light read­ing” we have, J.K. Rowl­ing’s Har­ry Pot­ter books present them­selves as ripe for adap­ta­tion, most notably in the form of those eight big-bud­get films released between 2001 and 2011. On the oth­er end of the spec­trum, with evi­dent­ly no bud­get at all, comes Gold­smith’s 30-minute adap­ta­tion, which you can hear just above, or along with his var­i­ous oth­er sung texts at Pennsound. Here he sings, with ever-shift­ing musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment and through some oth­er­world­ly voice pro­cess­ing, what sounds like the final nov­el in the Har­ry Pot­ter series, Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows.

“She tells a good sto­ry” — thus has every adult Har­ry Pot­ter-read­er I know explained the appeal of Rowl­ing’s chil­dren’s nov­els even out­side of the chil­dren’s demo­graph­ic, espe­cial­ly as they await­ed Death­ly Hal­lows’ release in 2007. Hav­ing nev­er dipped into the well myself, I could­n’t say for sure, but to my mind, if she tells a good enough sto­ry, that sto­ry will sur­vive no mat­ter the form into which you trans­pose it. The Pot­ter faith­ful hold a vari­ety of opin­ions about the degree of jus­tice each movie does to their favorite nov­els, and even about the voice that reads them aloud in audio­book form, but what on Earth will they think of Gold­smith’s idio­syn­crat­ic ren­di­tion?

Update: Ken­neth shot us an email a few min­utes ago and filled out the back­sto­ry on this record­ing. Turns out the sto­ry is even more col­or­ful than we first thought. He writes: “I was a DJ on WFMU from 1995–2010. In 2007, J.K. Rowl­ing released the sev­enth and final Har­ry Pot­ter and the Death­ly Hal­lows. Pri­or to the book’s release the day I went on the air at WFMU, some­one had leaked a copy to the inter­net, enrag­ing Scholas­tic Books, who threat­ened any­body dis­trib­ut­ing it with a heavy law­suit. I print­ed out and sang in my hor­ri­ble voice the very last chap­ter of the book on the air, there­by spoil­ing the finale of the series for any­one lis­ten­ing. Dur­ing my show, the sta­tion received an angry call from Scholas­tic Books. It appears that their whole office was lis­ten­ing to WFMU that after­noon. Noth­ing ever came of it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Two Har­ry Pot­ter Audio Books for Free (and Get the Rest of the Series for Cheap)

The The­o­ry of Wal­ter Ben­jamin, Lud­wig Wittgen­stein & Sig­mund Freud Sung by Ken­neth Gold­smith

Read Online J.K. Rowling’s New Har­ry Pot­ter Sto­ry: The First Glimpse of Har­ry as an Adult

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Music, Politics | September 2nd, 2015

Sooo…. Let’s talk Bernie Sanders. No, I don’t want to talk about Bernie vs. Hillary, or vs. an increas­ing­ly wor­ri­some grand­stand­ing dem­a­gogue whose name I need not men­tion. I don’t want to talk Bernie vs. a younger civ­il rights activist groundswell… No!

Let’s talk about Bernie Sanders the record­ing artist.

Yeah, that’s right, Bernie made a record in 1987, a spo­ken-word album of clas­sic hip­py folk songs like “This Land is Your Land,” “Where Have All the Flow­ers Gone,” and—fittingly giv­en his roots as a civ­il rights campaigner—“We Shall Over­come,” also the title of the album. Sanders, a pas­sion­ate demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist and stal­wart advo­cate for eco­nom­ic jus­tice, was also so pas­sion­ate about this music that he want­ed to add his voice to the choir. “Appar­ent­ly,” writes Dan Joseph at MRCTV, “every­one in Sanders’ inner cir­cle thought the record­ing was a pret­ty good idea. That was until they real­ized that Sanders had no musi­cal tal­ent, what­so­ev­er.”

This is no exag­ger­a­tion. Gawk­er quotes Todd Lock­wood, a Burling­ton musi­cian who helped pro­duce the record: “As tal­ent­ed of a guy as he is, he has absolute­ly not one musi­cal bone in his body, and that became painful­ly obvi­ous from the get-go.” Hell, it nev­er stopped William Shat­ner, and Shat­ner is the go-to com­par­i­son for the Sanders’ awk­ward “singing.” (It’s “pos­i­tive­ly Shat­neresque,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds.) Hear for your­self above in the Sander-iza­tion of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”

Bernie earnest­ly reads the lyrics in his native Brook­lyn accent over a back­ing track that sounds like an out­take from the frus­trat­ing­ly great/terrible Leonard Cohen/Phil Spec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion Death of a Ladies Man. The con­trast between the over­pro­duced music and Sanders’ heart­felt and com­plete­ly unmu­si­cal deliv­ery is pret­ty weird, to say the least. Hear sev­er­al more sam­ples above, from Todd Lockwood’s Sound­cloud. And if for some rea­son you want to lis­ten to the whole album, and pay for the plea­sure, buy Sanders’ We Shall Over­come at Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Neil Young’s New Album, The Mon­san­to Years, Now Stream­ing Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

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

Haruki Murakami Publishes His Answers to 3,700 Questions from Fans in a New Japanese eBook

in Life, Literature | September 1st, 2015

A quick fol­low up: Back in Jan­u­ary, Col­in Mar­shall took you inside Haru­ki Murakami’s unex­pect­ed stint as an agony uncle, writ­ing an online advice col­umn called Mr. Murakami’s Place. Accord­ing to his pub­lish­er, read­ers sent the Japan­ese nov­el­ist 37,465 ques­tions (see a few in trans­la­tion here), and he penned respons­es to 3,716 of them — answer­ing ques­tions like: “30 is right around the cor­ner for me, but there isn’t a sin­gle thing that I feel like I’ve accom­plished.… What should I do with myself?” Or, “My wife quite fre­quent­ly belch­es right near the back of my head when she pass­es behind me… Is there some­thing I can do to stop my wife’s belch­ing?”

Luck­i­ly, at least for Japan­ese read­ers, Muraka­mi has now pub­lished his respons­es (all of them) as an ebook in Japan. And it’s been climb­ing Japan’s Kin­dle best­seller list. Cur­rent­ly, there are no plans to release Mr. Murakami’s Place — The Com­plete Edi­tion – in Eng­lish. The task of trans­lat­ing what amounts to an 8‑volume set of books would be for­mi­da­ble. And yet some­how — like most things Muraka­mi has writ­ten — I sus­pect the col­lec­tion will even­tu­al­ly see the light of day in Eng­lish-speak­ing mar­kets.

Thanks to @justinmegahan and @hyloupa for help­ing us track down this book.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Advice Col­umn (“Mr. Murakami’s Place”) Is Now Online: Read Eng­lish Trans­la­tions

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

The Films of Quentin Tarantino: Watch Video Essays on Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill & More

in Film | September 1st, 2015

In the ten years between Reser­voir Dogs (1992) and Kill Bill (2003), Quentin Taran­ti­no was all some film fans could talk about, and who many up-and-com­ing direc­tors idol­ized and copied. But it would take anoth­er ten years for his films to be intel­li­gent­ly dis­cussed, and it’s a sign of these times that the best essays are not in print but in video for­mat.

Matt Zoller Seitz and his col­leagues over at Indiewire’s Press Play blog led the charge with a series of 10 ‑12 minute video essays (col­lec­tive­ly called “On the Q.T.”) that explore indi­vid­ual Taran­ti­no films and his approach to film­mak­ing.

The video above is part two of the series and probes what it means to be cool in Pulp Fic­tion, how char­ac­ters cre­ate their own mytholo­gies and what hap­pens when real­i­ty con­fronts them.

If that video makes you look at Pulp Fic­tion in a deep­er way, then you’ll enjoy the first in the series, on Reser­voir Dogs. Seitz claims the film is both a col­lage of film quotes and ref­er­ences, from City on Fire to The Killing, but there’s a human heart beat­ing beneath all of it. And that’s a les­son lost on all the imi­ta­tors that came in Tarantino’s ‘90s wake, he says.

You might also want to check out this two part essay (Part 1 — Part 2) on Jack­ie Brown – this one craft­ed by Press Play’s Odie Henderson–which exam­ines what Taran­ti­no took from Elmore Leonard in his only adap­ta­tion to date, and what is pure QT. (Hint: It’s the cast­ing of Pam Gri­er).

The final video in the series looks at the Female Arche­type vs. the God­dess in Kill Bill. Cre­at­ed by Nel­son Car­va­jal, who uses cap­tions instead of nar­ra­tion, it’s the weak­est in the series, being long on clips and short on ideas.

But with The Hate­ful Eight on the hori­zon, the entire series will get you ready for inter­pret­ing the lat­est in his oeu­vre.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

The Groundbreaking Silhouette Animations of Lotte Reiniger: Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and More

in Animation | September 1st, 2015

You can’t talk about the ori­gin of the mod­ern ani­mat­ed film with­out talk­ing about the work of Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981), the Ger­man cre­ator of some 40 ani­mat­ed films between the 1910s and the 70s. And you can hard­ly talk about Reiniger’s work with­out talk­ing about the enchant­i­ng art of shad­ow pup­petry, which we most­ly asso­ciate with tra­di­tion­al cul­tures like that of Indone­sia, but which also inspired her ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions in ani­ma­tion.

This may sound quite obscure, espe­cial­ly when put up against the Dis­ney and Pixar extrav­a­gan­zas in the­aters today, but all these forms of enter­tain­ment draw, in a sense, from a com­mon well: the fairy tale.

The cre­ators of today’s mega-bud­get ani­mat­ed films know full well the endur­ing val­ue of fairy tales, and so con­tin­ue to adapt their basic sto­ry mate­r­i­al, lay­er­ing on both the lat­est visu­al effects and smirk­ing gags with up-to-the-minute ref­er­ences in order to keep the obvi­ous enter­tain­ment val­ue high. But Indone­sian shad­ow pup­pet the­ater has been doing the same thing for cen­turies and cen­turies, con­vert­ing ancient folk­tales into an evening’s (albeit often a long evening’s) musi­cal enter­tain­ment for audi­ences of era after new era. And Reiniger, in her day, revived the old­est Euro­pean sto­ries with tech­nol­o­gy once as strik­ing and cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly cut­ting-edge as today’s most advanced CGI.

You can watch Reiniger’s 1922 adap­ta­tion of Cin­derel­la at the top of the post. “Nobody else has defined a form of ani­ma­tion as author­i­ta­tive­ly as she did,” writes Dan North of Spec­tac­u­lar Attrac­tions, “and the open­ing sec­tion, where scis­sors make the first cuts into the main char­ac­ter, con­jur­ing her out of sim­ple raw mate­ri­als, dis­plays the means by which the sto­ry is fab­ri­cat­ed and marks it out as a prod­uct of her labour.” Below that, we have a lat­er work, 1955’s Hansel and Gre­tel, an exam­ple of her fur­ther devel­oped tech­nique, and just above you’ll find that same year’s Däumelinchen, also known as Thum­be­li­na.

To get a clear­er sense of exact­ly what went into these shorts (or into 1926’s The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, her only fea­ture-length film, and first ful­ly ani­mat­ed fea­ture in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma), watch the sev­en­teen-minute doc­u­men­tary “The Art of Lotte Reiniger” just above. “No one else has tak­en a spe­cif­ic ani­ma­tion tech­nique and made it so utter­ly her own,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Philip Kemp, “to date she has no rivals, and for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es the his­to­ry of sil­hou­ette ani­ma­tion begins and ends with Reiniger” — but the way she breathed life into her mate­r­i­al lives on.

You can find Reiniger’s films added to our list of Free Ani­mat­ed Films, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale, “The False Grand­moth­er”

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Oscar Wilde’s Play Salome Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley in a Striking Modern Aesthetic (1894)

in Art, Literature | September 1st, 2015

In William Faulkner’s 1936 Absa­lom, Absa­lom!, one of the novel’s most eru­dite char­ac­ters paints a pic­ture of a Goth­ic scene by com­par­ing it to an Aubrey Beard­s­ley draw­ing. Ref­er­ences to Beard­s­ley also appear in oth­er Faulkn­er nov­els, and the Eng­lish artist of the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry also influ­enced the Amer­i­can nov­el­ist’s visu­al art. Like Faulkn­er, Beard­s­ley was irre­sistibly drawn to “the grotesque and the erot­ic,” as The Paris Review writes, and his work was high­ly favored among French and British poets of his day. The mod­ernist’s appre­ci­a­tion of Beard­s­ley was about more than Faulkner’s own youth­ful romance with French Sym­bol­ist art and mor­bid roman­tic verse, how­ev­er. Beard­s­ley cre­at­ed a mod­ern Goth­ic aes­thet­ic that came to rep­re­sent both Art Nou­veau and deca­dent, trans­gres­sive lit­er­a­ture for decades to come, pre­sent­ing a seduc­tive visu­al chal­lenge to the repres­sion of Vic­to­ri­an respectabil­i­ty.

Beard­s­ley was a young aes­thete with a lit­er­ary imag­i­na­tion. In his short career—he died at the age of 25—he illus­trat­ed many of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, fore­fa­ther of the Amer­i­can Goth­ic.

Beard­s­ley also famous­ly illus­trat­ed Oscar Wilde’s scan­dalous dra­ma, Salome in 1893, to the sur­prise of its author, who lat­er inscribed an illus­trat­ed copy with the words, “For the only artist who, besides myself, knows what the Dance of the Sev­en Veils is, and can see that invis­i­ble dance.” Beard­s­ley’s draw­ings first appeared in an art mag­a­zine called The Stu­dio, then the fol­low­ing year in an Eng­lish pub­li­ca­tion of the text.

Beard­s­ley and Wilde’s joint cre­ation embraced the macabre and flaunt­ed Vic­to­ri­an sex­u­al norms. After an abrupt can­cel­la­tion of Salome’s planned open­ing in Eng­land, the illus­trat­ed edi­tion intro­duced British read­ers to the play’s unset­tling themes. The British Library quotes crit­ic Peter Raby, who argues, “Beard­s­ley gave the text its first true pub­lic and mod­ern per­for­mance, plac­ing it firm­ly with­in the 1890s – a dis­turb­ing frame­work for the dark ele­ments of cru­el­ty and eroti­cism, and of the delib­er­ate ambi­gu­i­ty and blur­ring of gen­der, which he released from Wilde’s play as though he were open­ing Pandora’s box.”

Wilde’s play was osten­si­bly banned for its por­tray­al of Bib­li­cal char­ac­ters, pro­hib­it­ed on stage at the time. Fur­ther­more, it “struck a nerve,” writes Yele­na Pri­morac at Vic­to­ri­an Web, with its “por­tray­al of woman in extreme oppo­si­tion to the tra­di­tion­al notion of vir­tu­ous, pure, clean and asex­u­al wom­an­hood the Vic­to­ri­ans felt com­fort­able liv­ing with.” Wilde was at first con­cerned that the illus­tra­tions, with their sug­ges­tive­ly posed fig­ures and frankly sex­u­al and vio­lent images, would “reduce the text to the role of ‘illus­trat­ing Aubrey’s illus­tra­tions.’” (You can see some of the more sug­ges­tive images here.)

Indeed, it is hard to think of Wilde’s text and Beardsley’s images as exist­ing inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er, so close­ly have they been iden­ti­fied for over a hun­dred years. And yet the draw­ings don’t always cor­re­spond to the nar­ra­tive. Instead they present a kind of par­al­lel text, itself dense­ly woven with visu­al and lit­er­ary allu­sions, many of them drawn from Sym­bol­ist preoccupations—with women’s hair, for exam­ple, as an allur­ing and threat­en­ing emblem of unre­strained female sex­u­al­i­ty. Pub­lished in full in 1894, in an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of Wilde’s orig­i­nal French text, the Beard­s­ley-illus­trat­ed Salome con­tained 16 plates, some of them tamed or cen­sored by the pub­lish­ers. Read the full text, with draw­ings, here, and see a gallery of Beardsley’s orig­i­nal uncen­sored illus­tra­tions at the British Library.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of William Faulkn­er: Draw­ings from 1916–1925

Stephen Fry Reads Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince”

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Alber­to Martini’s Haunt­ing Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1901–1944)

Pablo Picasso’s Ten­der Illus­tra­tions For Aristo­phanes’ Lysis­tra­ta (1934)

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

How Drums & Bass Make the Song: Isolated Tracks from Led Zeppelin, Rush, The Pixies, The Beatles to Royal Blood

in Music | August 31st, 2015

There may be no more crit­i­cal inter­play between two musi­cians in mod­ern music than that between bassists and drum­mers. As jazz bassist Chris­t­ian McBride put it in a recent NPR inter­view, “the bass and drums should work as one instru­ment. It deter­mines whether it’s funk or jazz or coun­try or rock ‘n’ roll. It all depends on what rhythms are com­ing from the bass and the drums that make a par­tic­u­lar music what it is.” In funk and jazz, these rhythm play­ers tend to get a lot more cred­it. Most people—even die hard fans—would be hard pressed to name one coun­try bassist or drum­mer. In rock and roll, we’re used to laud­ing lead singers and gui­tarists. And cer­tain­ly clas­sic duos from Jag­ger and Richards, to Page and Plant, Roth and Van Halen, Mor­ris­sey and Marr and a lengthy list of oth­ers each have earned their vaunt­ed places in music his­to­ry.

Yet as a fan, I’ve always been drawn to unsung bass and drum combos—like The Smiths’ Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, Jane’s Addiction’s Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins, and many oth­ers in bands whose flam­boy­ant lead­ers tend­ed to over­shad­ow their rock sol­id sup­ports. This is not the case in many oth­er groups of super­stars. McBride gives us the exam­ples of Boot­sy Collins and John Starks in James Brown’s band, and bassist Sam Jones and drum­mer Louis Hayes from Can­non­ball Adderley’s ensem­ble. Today we look specif­i­cal­ly at some famed rock rhythm duos, and lis­ten in on iso­lat­ed tracks from some of their bands’ most well-known tunes. We begin with the absolute­ly clas­sic pow­er­house rhythm sec­tion of John Paul Jones (top) and John Bon­ham, whose grooves anchored the riff machine that was Led Zep­pelin. Just above, hear their push and pull on “Ram­ble On.”

As it turns out, Zep­pelin were big James Brown fans, and Jones has specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the funk influ­ence on his play­ing. Jones and Bon­ham, in turn, have influ­enced thou­sands of rhythm play­ers, includ­ing per­haps one of the most famous of bass and drum duos, Rush’s Ged­dy Lee and Neil Peart. Just above, hear Lee’s fuzzed-out bass work in tan­dem with Peart’s expert time changes and break­downs in iso­lat­ed tracks from “Vital Signs,” a song from their ear­ly-eight­ies new wave-inspired album Mov­ing Pic­tures. Rush is cer­tain­ly not everyone’s cup of tea, but more rock and roll drum­mers than not prob­a­bly cite them as an influ­ence at some point in their careers. Though it wasn’t appar­ent to me in their hey­day, even such a min­i­mal­ist band as the Pix­ies had a Rush influ­ence, specif­i­cal­ly by way of drum­mer David Lover­ing. His locked grooves with bassist Kim Deal more or less defined the sound of the 90s through their influ­ence on Nir­vana, Weez­er, Radio­head, Smash­ing Pump­kins and count­less oth­ers. Hear their iso­lat­ed rhythm tracks from Doolit­tle’s “Wave of Muti­la­tion” below.

It’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to point out that per­haps the most famed rhythm sec­tion in rock his­to­ry comes from its most cel­e­brat­ed band. But Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr often get remem­bered more for their song­writ­ing and per­son­al­i­ties than for their rhythm play­ing. Ringo’s tak­en his share of unde­served flak for his no-frills style. I’ve always found him to be an espe­cial­ly taste­ful play­er who knows when to add the per­fect fill or accent, when to lay back and let the song dom­i­nate, and when to get out of the way entire­ly. Starr’s thought­ful drum­ming per­fect­ly com­ple­ments McCartney’s high­ly melod­ic walk­ing basslines—captured as well on the George Har­ri­son-penned “Some­thing,” below, as on any­thing else the band record­ed.

Again, it’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to cite the num­ber of bands influ­enced by the Bea­t­les, though it’s hard­er to name rhythm sec­tions direct­ly inspired by McCart­ney and Starr’s dynam­ic. Nonethe­less, their DNA runs through decades of pop music in all its forms. The oth­er three duos above have direct­ly inspired a more spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non of bands made up sole­ly of bass and drums. One such band, the UK’s Roy­al Blood, has won numer­ous awards (and praise from Jim­my Page). See them per­form a live ver­sion of “Fig­ure It Out” below.

Oth­er bands like Death From Above 1979 and Om have huge­ly devot­ed fol­low­ings. (See a dis­cus­sion of more bass-and-drum-only com­bos here.) With the suc­cess of these bands—along with the rise of elec­tron­ic dance music as a dom­i­nant form—it’s safe to say that killer rhythm sec­tions, so often over­shad­owed in rock and pop his­to­ry, have pushed past tra­di­tion­al lead play­ers and, in many cas­es, tak­en their place. I’d say it’s about time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCart­ney, Sting, Dea­con, Jones & Lee

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

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

Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn & Twain Himself Meet Satan in the Zany 1985 Claymation The Adventures of Mark Twain

in Animation, K-12, Literature | August 31st, 2015

“But who prays for Satan?” Mark Twain asked in the auto­bi­og­ra­phy left behind as he exit­ed this mor­tal coil on the tail of Halley’s comet, whose 1835 appear­ance coin­cid­ed with his birth.

It’s a good ques­tion.

Had he instead asked who clay­mates Satan, the answer would have been clearcut.

1985 saw the release of The Adven­tures of Mark Twain, the world’s first all clay­ma­tion fea­ture film, in which Satan starred along­side Tom Sawyer, Huck­le­ber­ry Finn, Becky Thatch­er, and Twain him­self.

Direc­tor Will Vin­ton, father of the Cal­i­for­nia Raisins and Domi­no Pizza’s ill-fat­ed mas­cot, The Noid, drew on some of Twain’s best known work, cob­bling togeth­er a sto­ry in which the fic­tion­al kids stow­away aboard an air­ship Twain plans to pilot into the comet.

The Satan sec­tion above comes cour­tesy of the author’s final, unfin­ished nov­el, The Mys­te­ri­ous Stranger. The ani­ma­tion is top notch, but hoo boy, it’s hard to imag­ine a vision this apoc­a­lyp­tic get­ting a G‑rating today.

Vin­ton him­self resist­ed the rat­ing, not want­i­ng to be lumped in with more reg­u­lar kid­die fare. It per­formed dis­ap­point­ing­ly at the box office despite great crit­i­cal response from such lofty realms as The New Repub­lic.

Is it real­ly so sur­pris­ing that fam­i­lies flock­ing to the Care Bears Movie steered clear of one fea­tur­ing a shape-shift­ing, free-float­ing mask, who ter­ror­izes the chil­dren in the film (and pre­sum­ably, the audi­ence) by con­jur­ing an enchant­i­ng lit­tle clay king­dom only to rain mis­for­tune upon it. We’re talk­ing smashed coffins, grief-strick­en clay moth­ers wail­ing over the bod­ies of their young, help­less vic­tims being swal­lowed up by cracks that appear in the earth.

Where’s the Hap­py Meal tie-in there!?

It’s reas­sur­ing to know that the exis­ten­tial hor­ror was indeed delib­er­ate. As Vin­ton told James Gartler in an inter­view with Ani­ma­tion World Net­work:

“… it was just such a bizarre char­ac­ter, to start with.  In fact, I haven’t seen a char­ac­ter quite like that in almost any­thing else – some­one who has this pow­er but no feel­ing one way or anoth­er and just sort-of tells it like it is regard­ing the future of human­i­ty.  We want­ed it to be about meta­mor­pho­sis, visu­al­ly, and make that a big part of sequence.  He trans­forms and grows up and down from the earth and appears out of noth­ing­ness. The design of the char­ac­ter came from an ear­ly draw­ing that Bar­ry Bruce did, where a jester was hold­ing his face on a stick.  I thought it was a real­ly inter­est­ing way to play it.  I end­ed up doing the voice of the Stranger with a female per­former.  We want­ed it to be almost androg­y­nous, so she and I did it togeth­er and made a point of not try­ing to hide it, even.”

I’m not sure the per­son or per­sons respon­si­ble for the the­atri­cal trail­er, below, got the memo…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nor­man Rock­well Illus­trates Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer & Huck­le­ber­ry Finn (1936–1940)

Mark Twain Pre­dicts the Inter­net in 1898: Read His Sci-Fi Crime Sto­ry, “From The ‘Lon­don Times’ in 1904”

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

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