David Foster Wallace’s Syllabus for His 2008 Creative Nonfiction Course: Includes Reading List & Footnotes

in Literature, Writing | November 13th, 2014

Pho­to cour­tesy of Clau­dia Sher­man.

The term “cre­ative non­fic­tion” has picked up a great deal of trac­tion over the past decade — per­haps too much, depend­ing upon how valid or invalid you find it. Mean­ing­ful or not, the label has come into its cur­rent pop­u­lar­i­ty in part thanks to the essays of nov­el­ist David Fos­ter Wal­lace: whether writ­ing non­fic­tion­al­ly about the Illi­nois State Fair, David Lynch, pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis, or a sev­en-night Caribbean cruise, he did it in a way unlike any oth­er man or woman of let­ters. While nobody can learn to write quite like him — this we’ve seen when Wal­lace-imi­ta­tors write pas­tich­es of their own — he did spend time teach­ing the art of cre­ative non­fic­tion as he saw it,

a broad cat­e­go­ry of prose works such as per­son­al essays and mem­oirs, pro­files, nature and trav­el writ­ing, nar­ra­tive essays, obser­va­tion­al or descrip­tive essays, gen­er­al-inter­est tech­ni­cal writ­ing, argu­men­ta­tive or idea-based essays, gen­er­al-inter­est crit­i­cism, lit­er­ary jour­nal­ism, and so on. The term’s con­stituent words sug­gest a con­cep­tu­al axis on which these sorts of prose works lie. As non­fic­tion, the works are con­nect­ed to actu­al states of affairs in the world, are “true” to some reli­able extent. If, for exam­ple, a cer­tain event is alleged to have occurred, it must real­ly have occurred; if a propo­si­tion is assert­ed, the read­er expects some proof of (or argu­ment for) its accu­ra­cy. At the same time, the adjec­tive cre­ative sig­ni­fies that some goal(s) oth­er than sheer truth­ful­ness moti­vates the writer and informs her work. This cre­ative goal, broad­ly stat­ed, may be to inter­est read­ers, or to instruct them, or to enter­tain them, to move or per­suade, to edi­fy, to redeem, to amuse, to get read­ers to look more close­ly at or think more deeply about some­thing that’s worth their atten­tion… or some combination(s) of these.

This comes straight from the syl­labus of Eng­lish 183D, a work­shop Wal­lace taught at Pomona Col­lege in the spring of 2008, which you can read in its entire­ty at Salon (reprint­ed from The David Fos­ter Wal­lace Read­er). As you may remem­ber from the pre­vi­ous Wal­lace syl­labus we fea­tured, from a 1994 semes­ter of Eng­lish 102 — Lit­er­ary Analy­sis I: Prose Fic­tion at Illi­nois State Uni­ver­si­ty, the man could real­ly assem­ble a read­ing list. For his cre­ative non­fic­tion course, he had stu­dents read Jo Ann Beard’s “Wern­er,” Stephen Elliott’s “Where I Slept,” George Orwell’s clas­sic “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage,” Don­na Steiner’s “Cold,” David Gessner’s “Learn­ing to Surf,” Kathryn Harrison’s “The For­est of Mem­o­ry,” Hes­ter Kaplan’s “The Pri­vate Life of Skin,” and George Saunders’s “The Brain­dead Mega­phone.”

In some ways, Wal­lace syl­labi them­selves count as pieces of cre­ative non­fic­tion. What oth­er pro­fes­sor ever had the prose chops to make you actu­al­ly want to read any­thing under the “Class Rules & Pro­ce­dures” head­ing? In the ninth of its thir­teen points, he lays out the work­shop’s oper­a­tive belief:

that you’ll improve as a writer not just by writ­ing a lot and receiv­ing detailed crit­i­cism but also by becom­ing a more sophis­ti­cat­ed and artic­u­late crit­ic of oth­er writ­ers’ work. You are thus required to read each of your col­leagues’ essays at least twice, mak­ing help­ful and spe­cif­ic com­ments on the man­u­script copy wher­ev­er appro­pri­ate. You will then com­pose a one-to-three-page let­ter to the essay’s author, com­mu­ni­cat­ing your sense of the draft’s strengths and weak­ness­es and mak­ing clear, spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tions for revi­sion.

But what­ev­er the rig­ors of Eng­lish 183D, Wal­lace would have suc­ceed­ed, to my mind, if he’d instilled noth­ing more than this in the minds of his depart­ing stu­dents:

In the grown-up world, cre­ative non­fic­tion is not expres­sive writ­ing but rather com­mu­nica­tive writ­ing. And an axiom of com­mu­nica­tive writ­ing is that the read­er does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly care about you (the writer), nor does she find you fas­ci­nat­ing as a per­son, nor does she feel a deep nat­ur­al inter­est in the same things that inter­est you.

True to form, DFW’s syl­labus comes com­plete with foot­notes.

1 (A good dic­tio­nary and usage dic­tio­nary are strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed. You’re insane if you don’t own these already.)

You can read the Cre­ative Non­fic­tion syl­labus in full here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Read David Fos­ter Wallace’s Notes From a Tax Account­ing Class, Tak­en to Help Him Write The Pale King

David Fos­ter Wal­lace Breaks Down Five Com­mon Word Usage Mis­takes in Eng­lish

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Photos of a Very Young Frida Kahlo, Taken by Her Dad

in Art, Photography | November 13th, 2014

Ay que lin­da! 

Long before the tumul­tuous mar­riage to Diego Rivera and the mor­ti­fi­ca­tions of the flesh occa­sioned by a hor­rif­ic bus acci­dent, and longer still before the avalanche of Fri­da-cen­tric kitsch and tchotchkes and the Julie Tay­mor biopic star­ring Salma Hayek, there was a cheru­bic lit­tle girl named Mag­dale­na Car­men Frie­da Kahlo y Calderón.

Wit­ness these pho­tos of young Mag­dale­na Car­men Frie­da, tak­en by her Hun­gar­i­an Jew­ish father, Guiller­mo, over a peri­od of twen­ty years.

The 2‑year-old Fri­da is mer­ry, chub­by, and bare­ly rec­og­niz­able.

The pierc­ing gaze starts com­ing into focus around age 5.  Kid looks like an artist already!

The famous eye­brows have filled in by 12, when she faces the cam­era in a sailor suit and giant hair bow.

The 18-year-old pre-med stu­dent adopt­ing an unsmil­ing pose in 1926—the year of the accident—is unapolo­getic, intense, and unmis­tak­ably Fri­da Kahlo.

Vis­it Vin­tage Every­day for more of Guiller­mo Kahlo’s images of his sec­ond-to-last daugh­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fri­da Kahlo Writes a Per­son­al Let­ter to Geor­gia O’Keeffe After O’Keeffe’s Ner­vous Break­down (1933)

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

A Quick Ani­ma­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Famous Self Por­trait

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

Charles & Ray Eames’ A Communications Primer Explains the Key to Clear Communication in the Modern Age (1953)

in Design, Film, Technology | November 13th, 2014

You might think that a movie about infor­ma­tion from 1953 couldn’t pos­si­bly be rel­e­vant in the age of iPhone apps and the Inter­net but you’d be wrong. A Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Primer, direct­ed by that pow­er cou­ple of design Charles and Ray Eames, might refer to some hope­less­ly quaint tech­nol­o­gy – com­put­er punch cards, for instance – but the under­ly­ing ideas are as cur­rent as any­thing you’re like­ly to see at a TED talk. You can watch it above.

In fact, the film made for IBM was the result of the first ever mul­ti-media pre­sen­ta­tions that Charles Eames devel­oped for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia and UCLA. Using slides, music, nar­ra­tion and film, Eames broke down some ele­men­tal aspects of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the audi­ence. Cen­tral to the film is an input/output dia­gram that was laid out by Claude Shan­non, the father of infor­ma­tion the­o­ry, in his 1949 book, The Math­e­mat­i­cal The­o­ry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As the per­haps over­ly sooth­ing nar­ra­tor intones, any mes­sage is trans­mit­ted by a sig­nal through a chan­nel to its receiv­er. While in the chan­nel, the sig­nal is altered and degrad­ed by noise. The key to effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is to reduce “noise” (con­strued broad­ly) that inter­feres with the mes­sage and to gen­er­al­ly sim­pli­fy things.

The issue of sig­nal vs noise is prob­a­bly more rel­e­vant now in this age of per­pet­u­al dis­trac­tion than it was dur­ing the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion. Every email, text mes­sage or Buz­zfeed arti­cle seen indi­vid­u­al­ly is clear­ly a sig­nal. Yet for some­one try­ing to work, say on an arti­cle about a short film by Charles and Ray Eames, they are def­i­nite­ly noise.

The Eames use the terms “sig­nal,” “noise,” and “com­mu­ni­ca­tion” quite broad­ly. Not only do they use these terms to describe, say, a radio broad­cast or a mes­sage being relayed by Morse code but also the cre­ation of archi­tec­ture, design and even visu­al art.

The source of a paint­ing is the mind and expe­ri­ence of the painter. Mes­sage? His con­cept of a par­tic­u­lar paint­ing. Trans­mit­ter? His tal­ent and tech­nique. Sig­nal? The paint­ing itself. Receiv­er? All the eyes and ner­vous sys­tems and pre­vi­ous con­di­tion­ing of those who see the paint­ing. Des­ti­na­tion? Their minds, their emo­tions, their expe­ri­ence. Now in this case, the noise that tends to dis­rupt the sig­nal can take many forms. It can be the qual­i­ty of the light. The col­or of the light. The prej­u­dices of the view­er. The idio­syn­crasies of the painter.

Of course, a paint­ing — or a poem, or a film by Andrei Tarkovsky — is a dif­fer­ent kind of sig­nal than an email. It’s mes­sage is mul­ti­lay­ered and mul­ti­va­lent. And while a gen­er­a­tion of cul­tur­al the­o­rists would no doubt chafe at Eames’s reduc­tive, Mod­ernist view of art, it is still inter­est­ing to think of a paint­ing in the same man­ner as smoke sig­nals.

The film’s nar­ra­tor con­tin­ues:

But besides noise, there are oth­er fac­tors that can keep infor­ma­tion from reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion in tact. The back­ground and con­di­tion­ing of the receiv­ing appa­ra­tus may so dif­fer from that of the trans­mit­ter that it may be impos­si­ble for the receiv­er to pick up the sig­nal with­out dis­tor­tion.

That’s about as good a descrip­tion of cable new pun­dits as I’ve ever seen.

A Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Primer will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Charles and Ray Eames’ Pow­ers of Ten: The Clas­sic Film Re-Imag­ined By 40 Artists

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Download Bryan Cranston’s Reading of You Have to F–king Eat as a Free Audio Book (NSFW)

in Audio Books, Comedy | November 12th, 2014

Back in 2011, Adam Mans­bach and Ricar­do Cortés pub­lished the mock chil­dren’s book, Go the F**k to Sleep. And it gained nation­al atten­tion when pirat­ed PDF copies cir­cu­lat­ed on the inter­net, and a read­ing by Wern­er Her­zog made the rounds on YouTube, both of which turned the book into a #1 best­seller on Ama­zon. Now, three years lat­er, Mans­bach is back with a sequel, You Have to F–king Eat. The print edi­tion went on sale today, and, even bet­ter, the audio edi­tion, nar­rat­ed by Break­ing Bad star Bryan Cranston, can be down­loaded for free over at Audible.com. The irrev­er­ent, 4‑minute NSFW read­ing will remain free through 12/12/14.  You can hear a sam­ple above.

If you’re a Cranston fan, you won’t want to miss his more seri­ous read­ing fea­tured on OC last year: Bryan Cranston Reads Shelley’s Son­net “Ozy­man­dias”.

And if you love audio books, you might be inter­est­ed to know that you can down­load anoth­er free audio book of your choice through Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al pro­gram. We have details on that here. More free audio books can be found in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal Audi­tion Tapes for Break­ing Bad Before the Final Sea­son Debuts

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

Watch “The Fountain of Youth,” Orson Welles’ 1958 Pilot That Almost Reinvented TV

in Film, Television | November 12th, 2014

Amer­i­cans say that they love cre­ativ­i­ty but in fact they don’t. As Jes­si­ca Olien notes in Slate, think­ing out­side the box tends to freak peo­ple out. Stud­ies show that teach­ers favor dull but duti­ful stu­dents over cre­ative ones. In the cor­po­rate world, sug­ges­tions made by cre­ative work­ers rou­tine­ly get ignored by their supe­ri­ors. As art crit­ic Dave Hick­ey suc­cinct­ly notes, “Every­body hates it when something’s real­ly great.”

This is prob­a­bly as good a way as any to under­stand Orson Welles’s stunt­ed career. Here was a man of such genius that he rad­i­cal­ly trans­formed just about every cre­ative medi­um he touched. His 1937 pro­duc­tion of Julius Cae­sar, set in con­tem­po­rary Fas­cist Italy, was the toast of Broad­way. His noto­ri­ous radio adap­ta­tion of War of the Worlds was so effec­tive in cre­at­ing a sense of unfold­ing calami­ty that it caused an actu­al pub­lic pan­ic. And his mas­ter­piece Cit­i­zen Kane was so orig­i­nal that it per­plexed audi­ences when it came out. Now, of course, Kane is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the best movies ever made. In spite of Welles’s ter­rif­ic nat­ur­al tal­ents – he made Kane at age 25 – he con­sis­tent­ly found him­self shut down by the pow­ers that be. The stu­dio butchered Welles’s fol­low up movie The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons, and he strug­gled with stu­dios and financiers for artis­tic con­trol of just about every movie since.

In the 1950s, Welles tried to trans­form anoth­er medi­um – tele­vi­sion. As Dan­ger­ous Minds recent­ly unearthed, Welles made a pilot for The Orson Welles Show in 1956, an anthol­o­gy series backed by Lucille Ball’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Desilu. The series was nev­er picked up osten­si­bly because it was (and still is) noth­ing like what you’ve ever seen on TV. Welles incor­po­rat­ed noirish light­ing, rear pro­jec­tion, pho­to stills, in-cam­era set changes and a host of oth­er tech­niques bor­rowed from radio and the stage. Though the net­work dashed all hope of a series, NBC ulti­mate­ly did air the pilot episode — “The Foun­tain of Youth” — on its Col­gate The­ater in 1958.

The sto­ry itself is a deli­cious­ly iron­ic fable adapt­ed from a short sto­ry by John Col­lier. Dressed in a tuxe­do and with a per­pet­u­al wry smirk on his face, Welles nar­rates. (Welles also wrote, direct­ed, set designed the show along with arrang­ing its music.) The less said about the sto­ry, the bet­ter, but it involves a self-obsessed actress, an equal­ly nar­cis­sis­tic ten­nis star and an embit­tered sci­en­tist who claims to have dis­cov­ered the secret to eter­nal youth. Watch it above and think about the fas­ci­nat­ing road TV could have trav­eled.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Hear The Ramones’ Raw Demo Recordings For Their Debut Album (1975)

in Music | November 12th, 2014

Try to imag­ine a world with­out The Ramones. Just close your eyes and try…. Okay, maybe you can do it, but I can’t. Poof! Sev­er­al dozen scuzzy punk bands that played the sound­track to my ado­les­cence sud­den­ly van­ish. The Queens, NY band’s brat­ty take on 50s girl group pop and doo wop—played at dou­ble and triple speeds, har­monies chant­ed more than sung—saved rock and roll from its bloat­ed, delu­sion­al self. They made dumb music for smart peo­ple, and if they tend­ed toward self-par­o­dy in their lat­er years, includ­ing the sad spec­ta­cle of Dee Dee’s abortive rap career, they can and should be for­giv­en.

In a dis­dain­ful swipe at sev­en­ties pro­gres­sive rock, crit­ic Robert Christ­gau once attrib­uted to Chuck Berry the words “beware of mid­dle­brows bear­ing elec­tric gui­tars.” Cat­ty, but it’s true that when bud­gets swelled and the music busi­ness boomed, rock went full-on MOR; The Ramones pro­vid­ed the per­fect anti­dote. With songs like “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue” and “I Don’t Wan­na Be Learned/I Don’t Wan­na Be Tamed” they pro­claimed them­selves defi­ant low­brows and proud of it. Both tunes show up on their first demo record, above (at 10:40 and 18:22), a glo­ri­ous­ly fuzzy, lo-fi affair fea­tur­ing a few cuts that didn’t appear on their self-titled 1976 debut.

Record­ed in 1975—and some per­haps as ear­ly as ’74—these record­ings cap­ture the band at their most raw and unmedi­at­ed. The blog Ramones: Hum­ming a Sick­en­ing Tune has an excel­lent break­down of each demo song, and sums up this pre­cious arti­fact nice­ly: “[The ear­ly demo record­ings] offer a fas­ci­nat­ing alter­na­tive insight into how the even­tu­al debut album might have oth­er­wise sound­ed. Their dense, pri­mal sound reveals the sur­pris­ing amount of dilu­tion that the first record’s some­what con­cep­tu­al mix wrought upon the quar­tet’s fun­da­men­tal pow­er.”

The increas­ing pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of the Ramones, and their grad­ual tran­si­tion to almost-pop, has served to obscure the tru­ly hyp­not­ic, pound­ing, buz­z­saw drone they made as com­plete ama­teur unknowns. Dare I say I like their ear­ly work bet­ter? If only because they made a sound every lo-fi DIY band from my youth, includ­ing my own high school garage out­fit, strove might­i­ly to emu­late, whether they could actu­al­ly play their instru­ments or not. None of this praise is meant to dimin­ish the bril­liance of Ramones, which can­not be called a tra­di­tion­al stu­dio rock record by any stretch. Record­ed for Sire Records in sev­en days on a $6,400 bud­get, the band’s first album is as lean and scrap­py as major label prod­uct gets. But the demos above show us that they could do just as well, maybe bet­ter, with almost noth­ing but their instru­ments and sui gener­is genius. Or as blog­ger Bun­combeShi­no­la puts it: “crunchy and charged, these record­ings make the six grand spent on The Ramones seem like a dubi­ous extrav­a­gance.” Indeed.

Songs you can hear above include:

1. 53rd & 3rd Demo
2. I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend Demo
3. Judy Is A Punk Demo
4. Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue Demo
5. I Can’t Be Demo
6. I Don’t Wan­na Be Learned I Don’t Wan­na Be Tamed Demo
7. You Should Nev­er Open That Door Demo

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

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

Jump Into the “Podcasting Renaissance” with These Intelligent Shows (and Tell Us Your Favorites)

in Podcasts | November 11th, 2014

You may have heard that pod­cast­ing has a renais­sance going on. As a pod­cast­er since the begin­ning stages of the medi­um — and one slight­ly sur­prised to find that the medi­um has now reached ten years of age — I can only wel­come the news, though I nev­er knew pod­cast­ing had gone into a dark age. New York Mag­a­zine’s Kevin Roose tells the sto­ry of the appear­ance of Apple’s iPod, fol­lowed by a flow­er­ing of “pod­casts about pol­i­tics, sports, lit­er­a­ture, com­e­dy,” “pod­casts that sound­ed like NPR, and ones that sound­ed like Rush Lim­baugh,” some that “lacked pol­ish,” but most pos­sessed of “a kind of ener­gy to them that suit­ed their audi­ences well.” But then, “some­time around 2009 or 2010, the pod­cast scene seemed to with­er. The stal­warts (This Amer­i­can Life, Radi­o­lab) stayed around at the top of the iTunes charts, but there was­n’t much else hap­pen­ing. Down­load num­bers fell. Inter­est waned.” But ah, in this year of our Pod 2014, things have changed: “Today, a very dif­fer­ent prob­lem exists: There are too many great pod­casts to keep up with.”

Roose, and hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of oth­er peo­ple on the inter­net, rec­om­mends first and fore­most Ser­i­al (iTunes — RSS — Sound­cloud), “the true-crime dra­ma host­ed by This Amer­i­can Life pro­duc­er Sarah Koenig,” a show some­times cred­it­ed with reviv­ing pod­cast­ing itself. The New York­er’s Sarah Lar­son calls it “the pod­cast we’ve been wait­ing for” in a piece giv­ing a look into the rea­sons behind its suc­cess. Roos also gives spe­cial men­tion to anoth­er new show involv­ing a name you might rec­og­nize from the This Amer­i­can Life orbit: Alex Blum­berg’s Start­Up (iTunes — RSS), a run­ning doc­u­ment of the cre­ator’s attempt to launch a pod­cast­ing busi­ness, the kind of ven­ture that sounds less quixot­ic all the time. And Roose also names a per­son­al favorite of mine, the well-known pod­cast about archi­tec­ture and design — but Real­ly, About Life Itself — 99% Invis­i­ble (iTunes — RSS).

If you feel like get­ting into this pod­cast renais­sance, or if you’ve spent years as a pod­cast lis­ten­er and just need some new mate­r­i­al in your rota­tion, you could do much worse than start­ing with the three shows above. To add to that list, I can sug­gest no pod­cast more suit­ed to the inter­ests of Open Cul­ture read­ers than In Our Time (iTunes — RSS), the long-run­ning BBC Radio 4 pro­gram about the his­to­ry of ideas where­in vet­er­an broad­cast­er Melvyn Bragg inter­views groups of Oxbridge experts on sub­jects like nuclear fusion, the Hait­ian rev­o­lu­tion, Rud­yard Kipling, the Bat­tle of Talas, and the female pharaoh Hat­shep­sut — just in the past month. Per­son­al­ly, I so enjoy In Our Time that I went to inter­view Melvyn Bragg on my own pod­cast Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture ear­li­er this year.

Inter­views and com­e­dy have proven two of the most durable forms of con­tent in pod­cast­ing, and any­one who has­n’t dipped into come­di­an Marc Maron’s in-depth and intro­spec­tive inter­view show WTF (iTunes — RSS) — not that many haven’t at this point — has missed out on a ster­ling exam­ple of the kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences pod­cast­ing, and only pod­cast­ing, has made pos­si­ble. (You might con­sid­er also lis­ten­ing to my inter­view with Maron on The Los Ange­les Review of Books pod­cast.) And while not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­e­dy, I can’t imag­ine Open Cul­ture read­ers not get­ting a laugh, and all oth­er kinds of intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion besides, out of the pod­cast­ing of Ben­ja­men Walk­er. Walk­er, for­mer­ly the host of Too Much Infor­ma­tion on the beloved inde­pen­dent radio sta­tion WFMU, recent­ly launched a new show called Ben­ja­men Walk­er’s The­o­ry of Every­thing (iTunes — Sound­cloud), a show of per­son­al sto­ries that explores all things to which those sto­ries con­nect.

True, one com­plaint about pod­cast­ing in its ear­ly years held that the shows pod­cast­ers made went too per­son­al — the old charge of “two or three guys sit­ting in base­ment talk­ing about noth­ing” — but now that this decade-old medi­um has found more mature forms, the per­son­al has become its art and its craft. I nev­er hes­i­tate to pro­mote XO (iTunes — RSS), a show by Kei­th McNal­ly, a pod­cast auteur whom I believe has done more to mas­ter the cre­ative per­son­al-sto­ry pod­cast than almost any­body, and he began doing it ear­li­er. (As with Bragg, I went to his home­town of Toron­to to inter­view him too.) But enough about my favorite pod­casts; which ones do you tire­less­ly cham­pi­on? Make your rec­om­men­da­tions, and we’ll round them up in a post soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World Will Take You From Cre­ation Myths to (Even­tu­al­ly) the Present Day

Shakespeare’s Rest­less World: A Por­trait of the Bard’s Era in 20 Pod­casts

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Peter Gabriel’s First Solo Concert, Post-Genesis: Hear the Complete Audio Recording (1977)

in Music | November 11th, 2014

After retir­ing for per­son­al rea­sons from prog-rock giants Gen­e­sis, Peter Gabriel went on to record a total of four solo records enti­tled Peter Gabriel, dis­tin­guished from each oth­er by ref­er­ences to their cov­er art (“Car,” “Scratch,” “Melt”) and an alter­nate title insist­ed upon by his label (“Secu­ri­ty”). This inten­sive focus on the epony­mous per­haps bespeaks of ego, per­haps humil­i­ty. It also maybe sig­ni­fies the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward pre­sen­ta­tion Gabriel would offer the world—shorn of the make­up and cos­tumes of his Gen­e­sis days, he might appear to have become anoth­er earnest, bal­ladeer­ing singer/songwriter. (See our post on clas­sic Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis from yes­ter­day.) Yet that first, 1977, solo out­ing was as imag­i­na­tive, baroque, and glee­ful­ly exper­i­men­tal as his pre­vi­ous work. His expan­sive musi­cal vocab­u­lary gave the first Peter Gabriel what Stere­ogum calls “a pur­pose­ful­ly eclec­tic, any­thing-flies approach to songcraft” that some­times worked, some­times didn’t.

Some of the uneven­ness of the first solo album is due to what Gabriel him­self felt was over­pro­duc­tion on the part of Bob Ezrin, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the song “Here Comes the Flood.” He would there­after per­form this song solo on piano—re-record­ing it thus in 1990. At the top of the post, you can hear him play it as the open­er for his first ever solo show at the Capi­tol The­atre in Pas­sa­ic, New Jer­sey.

The March 5, 1977 con­cert kicked off the tour for the first Peter Gabriel, for which he assem­bled an all-star band, some of whom had fea­tured on the album, includ­ing King Crim­son gui­tarist Robert Fripp (appear­ing under the name “Dusty Rhodes” and appar­ent­ly play­ing off­stage behind the cur­tain). After “Here Comes the Flood” is “On the Air,” and just above, hear the weird, wob­bly “Mori­bund the Burg­er­meis­ter” from that night. Below, in four parts, hear the remain­ing songs in the set (see the full setlist here). Over the audio in each Youtube clip, see mon­tages of still images—some pre­sum­ably from the tour, some of album and pro­mo art­work.

While Gabriel may have ditched the flam­boy­ant onstage per­son­ae, he nev­er aban­doned his visu­al flair, as we know from those ground­break­ing music videos. Wit­ness the artis­tic pedi­gree on dis­play in the cov­er art of Peter Gabriel (Car)—a pho­to­graph by Throb­bing Gris­tle mem­ber and artist Peter “Sleazy” Christo­pher­son of Gabriel slumped in a car owned by famed album cov­er design­er Storm Thorg­er­son.

But the new Peter Gabriel, the solo artist, had—as he put it in the first album’s big sin­gle “Sols­bury Hill”—“walked right out of the machin­ery” of Gen­e­sis’ exces­sive pre­sen­ta­tion. That song, still one of his most mem­o­rable, has been cov­ered by every­one from Lou Reed to Era­sure. Speak­ing to his strength as a song­writer, the tune with per­haps the broad­est appeal is also one of his most personal—purportedly about his deci­sion to leave Gen­e­sis. Hear it live in Part 5 below.

Though he may have left behind the band that made him famous, he still pays trib­ute to them in his first solo concert’s finale. At the close of the set, below, he ends with a Gen­e­sis song, “Back in N.Y.C.,” from the last, dou­ble con­cept album he record­ed with them. It doesn’t feel out of place at all, prov­ing per­haps that, even with­out the makeup—as All­mu­sic writes—Peter Gabriel was “unde­ni­ably the work of the same man behind The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Gen­e­sis (from the Peter Gabriel-Era) Per­form in a Glo­ri­ous, 1973 Restored Con­cert Film

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

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

Watch Genesis (from the Peter Gabriel Era) Perform in a Glorious, 1973 Restored Concert Film

in Music | November 10th, 2014

If you’re of a cer­tain vintage—let’s just say old enough to bore mil­len­ni­als to death with nos­tal­gic rants about how MTV used to play music videos, man—then you will remem­ber Peter Gabriel’s visu­al­ly stun­ning “Sledge­ham­mer” video from his award-win­ning 1986 album So. You will have had your heart­strings tugged by his “In Your Eyes” and its pitch-per­fect appro­pri­a­tion in Cameron Crowe’s Say Any­thing. And you will know—though maybe not as well as Patrick Bate­man—the sounds and images of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” This music may not have aged as well as those of us who grew up hear­ing it (or vice ver­sa), but it left an indeli­ble impres­sion on a gen­er­a­tion and defined 80s pop cul­ture as much as Michael Jack­son or The Ban­gles.

But if you are of a slight­ly ear­li­er vin­tage, you will remem­ber these fine musi­cians for an entire­ly dif­fer­ent rea­son. Before the catchy dance-pop silli­ness of “Sus­su­dio” and “Big Time,” there was the arty, high-seri­ous­ness of Gen­e­sis, as front­ed in its hey­day by Gabriel, with Collins pound­ing the drums. Though the band per­sist­ed well into the 80s and 90s after Gabriel’s 1975 depar­ture, meld­ing funk, soul, and pop in inno­v­a­tive ways as Collins took the lead, die-hard Gen­e­sis fans swear by its clas­sic con­fig­u­ra­tion, with its sur­re­al con­cept albums and stage shows rival­ing Wall-era Pink Floyd or Bowie’s Star­dust phase. If you’re none too keen on lat­er Gen­e­sis, the slick synth-rock hit machine, and if the afore­men­tioned flam­boy­ant pro­duc­tions are your cup of Eng­lish prog-rock tea, then we have a treat for you.

Just above is a ful­ly restored con­cert film of a 1973 per­for­mance at England’s Shep­per­ton Stu­dios, “per­haps,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “the sin­gle best rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Peter Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis on film.” Though the con­cert pre­cedes the band’s Gabriel-era swan song—double con­cept album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way—it does show­case the strongest mate­r­i­al from their two pre­vi­ous records, Fox­trot and the tru­ly excel­lent Sell­ing Eng­land by the Pound. Promi­nent­ly on dis­play are the eccen­tric­i­ties that sharply divid­ed crit­ics and enam­ored fans: the odd time-sig­na­tures and abrupt tem­po changes, vir­tu­osic musi­cian­ship, lit­er­ate, eso­teric lyrics, and Gabriel’s the­atri­cal make­up and cos­tum­ing. The effect of it all is some­times a bit like Rush in a pro­duc­tion of God­spell, and while This is Spinal Tap took a lot of the air out of this sort of thing three decades ago, the film remains an impres­sive doc­u­ment even if the per­for­mances are hard to take entire­ly seri­ous­ly at times. See below for a full track­list:

“Watch­er of the Skies” (8:04)
“Danc­ing with the Moon­lit Knight” (9:02)
“I Know What I Like” (5:46)
“The Musi­cal Box” (11:39)
“Sup­per’s Ready” (23:59)

The sto­ry of the film’s restora­tion is intrigu­ing in its own right. The Shep­per­ton footage was res­cued by a small group who pooled resources to buy it in a New York estate sale. Since then, Youtube uploader King Lerch and his con­fr­eres have upgrad­ed the orig­i­nal restora­tion to the HD ver­sion you see above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

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

Turkish Musician Shows How to Play the Yaybahar, His Mesmerizing, Newly-Invented Instrument

in Creativity, Music, Travel | November 10th, 2014

Once upon a time, a hand­some man was trapped in a tow­er over­look­ing the sea. To amuse him­self, he built a mag­i­cal instru­ment. It was con­struct­ed of wood and met­al, but sound­ed like some­thing one might hear over loud­speak­ers at the Tate, or per­haps an avant-garde sound instal­la­tion in Bush­wick. The instru­ment was love­ly, but so cum­ber­some, it was impos­si­ble to imag­ine pack­ing it into a taxi. And so the man gigged alone in the tow­er over­look­ing the sea.

Wait. This is no fairy tale. The musi­cian, Görkem Şen, is real, as is his instru­ment, the Yay­ba­har. (Its name remains a mys­tery to your non-Turk­ish-speak­ing cor­re­spon­dent. Google Trans­late was no help. Per­haps Şen explains the name in the pat­ter pre­ced­ing his recent TEDxRe­set per­for­mance…music is the only uni­ver­sal here.)

The Yay­ba­har looks like min­i­mal­ist sculp­ture, or a piece of vin­tage play­ground equip­ment. It has fret­ted strings, coiled springs and drum skins. Şen plays it with a bow, or a wrapped mal­let, nim­bly switch­ing between spaced out explo­rations, folk music and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.

After many years, a pass­ing prince or princess was bewitched by the beau­ti­ful music that reached his or her ears from the tow­er. He or she braved the bram­bles to free Şen and his instru­ment. 

It’s also pos­si­ble that Şen enlist­ed a cou­ple of pals to help him mus­cle the Yay­ba­har down the steps, cry­ing out when they bumped the pre­cious instru­ment into the walls, strug­gling to get a decent grip. No good deed goes unre­ward­ed.

At last, they left the con­fines of the tow­er. Görkem Şen lift­ed his face toward the Turk­ish sun­shine. The Yay­ba­har stood in the sand. A noble­woman whom an evil sor­cer­ess had turned into a dog hung out for a while before los­ing inter­est. The instru­ment rever­ber­at­ed as pas­sion­ate­ly as ever. The spell was both bro­ken and not.

You can hear more sound clips of Şen play­ing the Yay­ba­har below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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