Novelist Michael Chabon Sang in a Punk Band During the ’80s: Newly Released Audio Gives Proof

in Literature, Music | September 22nd, 2014

The bio on Michael Chabon’s web­site is one of the most punk rock author bios I’ve ever seen. Clear­ly, the task of writ­ing it was not left to chance or some pub­li­cist.

Where oth­er authors might lim­it them­selves to the strict­ly pro­fes­sion­al, Chabon spices things up with details on his bar mitz­vah, his failed first mar­riage, and the births of his chil­dren.

Where oth­ers’ time­lines grow weighty with evi­dence of increas­ing fame, his reads more like a diary, writ­ten in the third per­son.

Break­ing of Hank Aaron’s pure record of 755 home runs amid the now-com­mon­place Amer­i­can con­geries of hypocrisy, excess, bad faith, racism and lies final­ly proves too much, and the wrong kind, of base­ball sad­ness; turns his back on the game (8/07)

Pen­e­trates to the secret night­time heart of Dis­ney­land (9/11)

Giv­en his zest for per­son­al mile­stones, it’s sur­pris­ing he didn’t see fit to share that he was once the lead singer in a Pitts­burgh punk band. It would have fit nice­ly between the pho­to in which he and nov­el­ist Jon Arm­strong are garbed as strolling Renais­sance Fes­ti­val play­ers and the moment he enters an Oak­land crawl­space to begin work on The Mys­ter­ies of Pitts­burgh.

He might rethink this omis­sion, now that Mind­cure Records has released the four-track demo that is his band, the Bats’ only stu­dio record­ing. Also pre­served on vinyl is the author’s sole live out­ing with the band, a 21st birth­day gig at the Elec­tric Banana, short­ly before he grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh and dis­ap­peared into that crawl­space. The label describes his vocals as “snot­ty.” It’s a com­pli­ment in con­text.

Mean­while in the Pitts­burgh Post Gazette, Chabon recalled the Bats as “a fine lit­tle band, a unique assem­blage of diverse strengths and quirks, anchored by one of the most rock-sol­id drum­mers ever to grace the Pitts­burgh scene, and ham­pered only by the weak­ness of their goof­ball front­man.”

Thanks to Mind­cure Records, Open Cul­ture read­ers can sam­ple the self-effac­ing Pulitzer Prize winner’s vin­tage vocal stylings, above. In the clip away, we have him singing “Jet Away.” Chabon may think he sounds “awful,” but I don’t hear any cause for shame.  You can pick up your own copy of The Bats’ album, ‘Demo 5:26:84,′ with Chabon on vocals, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Allen Gins­berg & The Clash Per­form the Punk Poem “Cap­i­tal Air,” Live Onstage in Times Square (1981)

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

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s bio is also a bit out­side the mold. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Listen to the Long-Lost Freddie Mercury & Michael Jackson Duet

in Music | September 19th, 2014

Some 33 years ago, Queen start­ed work on a track called “There Must Be More to Life Than This,” which fea­tured vocals by Fred­die Mer­cury and Michael Jack­son. Writ­ten dur­ing the Hot Space ses­sions (cir­ca 1981), the song was even­tu­al­ly aban­doned and put on a shelf until Fred­die Mer­cury released his own ver­sion on a 1985 solo album. Now, with the upcom­ing release of a Queen com­pi­la­tion called Queen For­ev­er, you can hear the orig­i­nal. No longer do you have to won­der what a Mer­cury-Jack­son duet might sound like. In fact, you only have to click play above and the sus­pense will be over.

I should note that the Hot Space ses­sions also pro­duced per­haps our favorite rock duet ever — Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie singing “Under Pres­sure.” Don’t miss hear­ing their vocals on this amaz­ing iso­lat­ed track.

How about sign­ing up for our dai­ly email? Once a day, we bun­dle all of our dai­ly posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read for­mat. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

The Guggenheim Puts 109 Free Modern Art Books Online

in Art, Books | September 19th, 2014

Back in Jan­u­ary, 2012, we men­tioned that the Guggen­heim (the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed mod­ern art muse­um in NYC) had put 65 art cat­a­logues on the web, all free of charge.

We’re hap­py to report that, between then and now, the num­ber of free texts has grown to 109. Pub­lished between 1937 and 1999, the art books/catalogues offer an intel­lec­tu­al and visu­al intro­duc­tion to the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, Fer­nand Léger, and Kandin­sky. Plus there are oth­er texts (e.g., Mas­ter­pieces of Mod­ern Art and Abstract Expres­sion­ists Imag­ists) that tack­le meta move­ments and themes.

Any­one inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of the Guggen­heim will want to spend time with a col­lec­tion called “The Syl­labus.” It con­tains five books by Hilla Rebay, the muse­um’s first direc­tor and cura­tor. Togeth­er, they let you take a close look at the art orig­i­nal­ly housed in the Guggen­heim when the muse­um first opened its doors in 1939.

To read any of these 109 free art books, you will just need to fol­low these sim­ple instruc­tions. 1.) Select a text from the col­lec­tion. 2.) Click the “Read Cat­a­logue Online” but­ton. 3.) Start read­ing the book in the pop-up brows­er, and use the con­trols at the very bot­tom of the pop-up brows­er to move through the book. 4.) If you have any prob­lems access­ing these texts, you can find alter­nate ver­sions on Archive.org.

You can find many more free art books from the Get­ty and the Met below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Over 250 Free Art Books From the Get­ty Muse­um

Down­load 397 Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

Leonard Cohen’s New Album, Popular Problems, Is Now Streaming Free for a Limited Time

in Music | September 18th, 2014

Just thought you’d like to know: NPR’s First Lis­ten site is now stream­ing Leonard Cohen’s new album Pop­u­lar Prob­lems. But it will only be avail­able for a lim­it­ed time. So don’t waste time get­ting your lis­ten­ing par­ty start­ed.

In its review of the album, The Guardian notes that “finan­cial wor­ries may be dri­ving his come­back, but Leonard Cohen’s songs of despair have nev­er sound­ed so full of life.” Lis­ten to the free stream at NPR and see what they mean. (Also find a free stream at The Guardian.) Or pre-order your own copy on Ama­zon or iTunes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

Photos of Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir Hanging with Che Guevara in Cuba (1960)

in History, Photography | September 18th, 2014

In 1960, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir ven­tured to Cuba dur­ing, as he wrote, the “hon­ey­moon of the rev­o­lu­tion.” Mil­i­tary strong­man Ful­gen­cio Batista’s regime had fall­en to Fidel Cas­tro’s gueril­la army and the whole coun­try was alight with rev­o­lu­tion­ary zeal. As Beau­voir wrote, “after Paris, the gai­ety of the place explod­ed like a mir­a­cle under the blue sky.”

At the time, Sartre and de Beau­voir were inter­na­tion­al­ly renown, the intel­lec­tu­al pow­er cou­ple of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Beauvoir’s book, The Sec­ond Sex (1949), laid the ground­work for the fem­i­nism move­ment, and her book The Man­darins won France’s high­est lit­er­ary award in 1954. Sartre’s name had become a house­hold word. The phi­los­o­phy he cham­pi­oned – Exis­ten­tial­ism – was being read and debat­ed around the world. And his polit­i­cal activism — loud­ly con­demn­ing France’s war in Alge­ria, for instance — had giv­en him real moral author­i­ty. When Sartre was arrest­ed in 1968 for civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, Charles de Gaulle par­doned him, not­ing, “You don’t arrest Voltaire.” As Deirdre Bair notes in her biog­ra­phy of Beau­voir, “Sartre became the one intel­lec­tu­al whose pres­ence and com­men­tary emerg­ing gov­ern­ments clam­ored for, as if he alone could val­i­date their rev­o­lu­tions.” So it’s not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing that Fidel Cas­tro wined and dined the two dur­ing their month in Cuba.

Cuban pho­tog­ra­ph­er Alber­to Kor­da cap­tured the cou­ple as they met with Cas­tro, Che Gue­vara and oth­er lead­ers of the rev­o­lu­tion. One pic­ture (above) is of Gue­vara in his com­bat boots and trade­mark beret, light­ing a cig­ar for the French philoso­pher. Sartre looks small and unhealthy com­pared to the strap­ping, mag­net­ic rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Sartre was appar­ent­ly impressed by the time he spent with the gueril­la leader. When Che died in Bolivia sev­en years lat­er, Sartre famous­ly wrote that Gue­vara was “not only an intel­lec­tu­al but also the most com­plete human being of our age.”

Lat­er, Kor­da caught them as they were guid­ed through the streets of Havana. And as you can see (below), that icon­ic image of Gue­vara, lat­er plas­tered on T‑shirts and Rage Against the Machine album cov­ers, is on that same role of film.

When the cou­ple returned to Paris, Sartre wrote arti­cle after arti­cle extolling the rev­o­lu­tion. Beau­voir, who was equal­ly impressed, wrote, “For the first time in our lives, we were wit­ness­ing hap­pi­ness that had been attained by vio­lence.”

Yet their enthu­si­asm for the regime cooled when they returned to Cuba a year lat­er. The streets of Havana had lit­tle of the joy as the pre­vi­ous year. When they talked to fac­to­ry work­ers, they heard lit­tle but par­rot­ing of the offi­cial par­ty line. Beau­voir and Sartre ulti­mate­ly denounced Cas­tro (along with a bunch of oth­er intel­lec­tu­al lumi­nar­ies like Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez and Octavio Paz) in an open let­ter that crit­i­cized him for the arrest of Cuban poet Her­ber­to Padil­lo.

You can read more about the life and pho­tog­ra­phy of Alber­to Kor­da in the 2006 book, Cuba: by Kor­da.

Pho­tos above by Alber­to Kor­da.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Philosophy’s Pow­er Cou­ple, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beau­voir, Fea­tured in 1967 TV Inter­view

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Clas­sic Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Allen Ginsberg Talks About Coming Out to His Family & Fellow Poets on 1978 Radio Show (NSFW)

in Life, Poetry, Politics | September 18th, 2014

Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Recent MacArthur Fel­low and poet Ter­rence Hayes appeared on NPR yes­ter­day to read and dis­cuss his work; he was asked if he found “being defined as an African-Amer­i­can poet” to be lim­it­ing in some way. Hayes replied,

I think it’s a bonus. It’s a thing that makes me addi­tion­al­ly inter­est­ing, is what I would say. So, black poet, South­ern poet, male poet — many of those iden­ti­ties I try to fold into the poems and hope that they enrich them.

It seemed to me an odd ques­tion to ask a MacArthur-win­ning Amer­i­can poet. Issues of both per­son­al and nation­al iden­ti­ty have been cen­tral to Amer­i­can poet­ry at least since Walt Whit­man or Langston Hugh­es, but espe­cial­ly since the 1950s with the emer­gence of con­fes­sion­al and beat poets like Allen Gins­berg. With­out the cel­e­bra­tion of per­son­al iden­ti­ty, one might say that it’s hard to imag­ine Amer­i­can poet­ry.

Like Hayes, Gins­berg enfold­ed his var­i­ous identities—Jew, Bud­dhist, gay man—into his poet­ry in enrich­ing ways. Thir­ty-six years ago, he gave a radio inter­view to “Stonewall Nation,” one of a hand­ful of specif­i­cal­ly gay radio pro­grams broad­cast in 1970s West­ern New York. In an occa­sion­al­ly NSFW con­ver­sa­tion, he dis­cussed the expe­ri­ence of com­ing out to his fel­low Beats and to his fam­i­ly.

1. Intro­duc­tion (5:21): MP3
2. On being clos­et­ed (2:09): MP3
3. Excerpts from “Don’t Grow Old” (2:32): MP3
4. On com­ing out to his fam­i­ly (3:01): MP3
5. On desire and com­pas­sion (1:41): MP3
6. On the Brig­gs amend­ment (8:54): MP3
7. On the Beats and nature (3:24): MP3
8. On Rocky Flats (2:19): MP3
9. Gins­berg sings “Every­body Sing” (2:37): MP3

Dur­ing the inter­view Gins­berg talks about being clos­et­ed and hav­ing a crush on Jack Ker­ouac, who was “very tol­er­ant, friend­ly,” after Gins­berg con­fessed it. Above he tells a fun­ny sto­ry about com­ing out to his father, then reads a mov­ing unti­tled poem about his father’s even­tu­al accep­tance after their mutu­al “timid­i­ty and fear.” He also recalls how the rest of his fam­i­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly his broth­er, react­ed.

The inter­view moves to broad­er top­ics. Gins­berg dis­cuss­es his views on desire and com­pas­sion, defin­ing the lat­ter as “benev­o­lent and indif­fer­ent atten­tive­ness,” rather than “heart-love.” Bud­dhism per­vades Gins­berg’s con­ver­sa­tion as does a rogu­ish vaude­vil­lian sen­si­bil­i­ty mixed with sober reflec­tion. He opens with a long, boozy sing-along whose first four lines con­cise­ly sum up core Bud­dhist doc­trines; he ends with a fun­ny, bawdy song that then becomes a dark explo­ration of homo­pho­bic and misog­y­nis­tic vio­lence.

Gins­berg and host also dis­cuss the Brig­gs Ini­tia­tive (above) a piece of leg­is­la­tion that would have been an effec­tive purge in the Cal­i­for­nia school sys­tem of gay teach­ers, their sup­port­ers, even those who might “take a neu­tral atti­tude which could be inter­pret­ed as approval.” This would pre­clude even the teach­ing of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (or one par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of it), which, Gins­berg says, “would make the teacher liable for encour­ag­ing homo­sex­u­al activ­i­ty.” The amendment—one that, appar­ent­ly, for­mer gov­er­nor Ronald Rea­gan strong­ly opposed—failed to pass. These days such pro­pos­als tar­get Ginsberg’s poet­ry as well, and we still have con­ver­sa­tions about the val­ue of things like “benev­o­lent and indif­fer­ent atten­tive­ness” in the class­room, or whether poets should feel lim­it­ed by being who they are.

In the pho­to above, tak­en by Her­bert Rusche in 1978, you can see Gins­berg (left) with his long-time part­ner, the poet Peter Orlovsky (right).

via PennSound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Record­ing of Allen Gins­berg Read­ing “Howl” (1956)

Jack Ker­ouac, Allen Gins­berg & Mar­garet Mead Explain the Mean­ing of “Beat” in Rare 1950s Audio Clips

“Expan­sive Poet­ics” by Allen Gins­berg: A Free Course from 1981

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

A Crash Course on Psychology: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

in Psychology | September 18th, 2014

Nov­el­ist, edu­ca­tor, and vlog­ger John Green has drawn a lot of press late­ly, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to a New York­er pro­file by Mar­garet Tal­bot, in the wake of the film ver­sion of his pop­u­lar young-adult nov­el The Fault in Our Stars. But we here at Open Cul­ture can say we fea­tured him before that mag­a­zine of cul­tur­al record did: in 2012 we post­ed his Crash Course in World His­to­ry, and last Octo­ber, his Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture. If you keep up with this site, you prob­a­bly know Green less as a com­ing-of-age-tragedy-writ­ing “teen whis­per­er” (in the words of the New York­er) than as the mile-a-minute, con­stant­ly wise­crack­ing, but nev­er­the­less whole­some teacher you nev­er had. You may not know that he has an equal­ly edu­ca­tion­al broth­er named Hank, who first came to inter­net promi­nence in a back-and-forth video series of John’s devis­ing called Vlog­broth­ers, which Tal­bot describes as “less a con­ver­sa­tion than an extend­ed form of par­al­lel play.”

Now you can find Hank, pos­sessed of a sim­i­lar­ly fast and fun­ny deliv­ery style, pre­pared to inform you on a whole range of oth­er sub­jects, teach­ing crash cours­es just like John does. At the top of the post, we have his 30-part Crash Course in Psy­chol­o­gy, in which he cov­ers every­thing about the study of the human mind from sen­sa­tion and per­cep­tion to the the­o­ry of the homuncu­lus to remem­ber­ing and for­get­ting to lan­guage to depres­sion. (You can watch the series from start to fin­ish above.) Psy­chol­o­gy has long ranked among the most pop­u­lar under­grad­u­ate majors in Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties, and giv­en human­i­ty’s ever-increas­ing curios­i­ty (and grad­u­al­ly accu­mu­lat­ing knowl­edge) about the work­ings of its brains, that should­n’t come as a sur­prise. But those of us who felt com­pelled to pick a more “prac­ti­cal” course of study back in col­lege, can now turn to Hank Green, who offers us a sur­pris­ing­ly thor­ough psy­cho­log­i­cal ground­ing with only about five hours of “lec­tur­ing” — much less than the major would have tak­en us, and with many more corny jokes. Per­haps the course will help you under­stand why we laugh at them any­way.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

How To Think Like a Psy­chol­o­gist: A Free Online Course from Stan­ford

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.

The Last Saturday: A New Graphic Novel by Chris Ware Now Being Serialized at The Guardian (Free)

in Comics/Cartoons | September 17th, 2014

Thought you might like a heads up that The Guardian has start­ed pub­lish­ing on its web site The Last Sat­ur­day, “a brand new graph­ic novel­la by the award-win­ning car­toon­ist Chris Ware, trac­ing the lives of six indi­vid­u­als from Sandy Port, Michi­gan.” It will be pub­lished in week­ly episodes, with a new install­ment appear­ing on this page every Sat­ur­day.  The inno­v­a­tive com­ic book artist, known for his graph­ic nov­els Jim­my Cor­ri­g­an, the Smartest Kid on Earth and Build­ing Sto­ries, will be get­ting some good sup­port from the Guardian Inter­ac­tive team, which should make it quite the visu­al expe­ri­ence.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Ulysses Seen, A Graph­ic Nov­el Adap­ta­tion of James Joyce’s Clas­sic

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Ili­ad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Draw­ings

The His­to­ry of Eco­nom­ics & Eco­nom­ic The­o­ry Explained with Comics, Start­ing with Adam Smith

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

Hear Bob Dylan’s Unedited & Bewildering Interview With Nat Hentoff for Playboy Magazine (1965)

in Music | September 17th, 2014

In the fall of 1965, six months after Bob Dylan freaked out the folkies at New­port, he sat down with Vil­lage Voice music crit­ic and colum­nist Nat Hentoff for an inter­view for Play­boy. Like Dylan him­self, the result­ing con­ver­sa­tion, as pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary, 1966, is by turns illu­mi­nat­ing and com­plete­ly con­found­ing. Top­ics shift abrupt­ly, words take on unfa­mil­iar mean­ings, and for all of the many strong opin­ions Dylan seems to express, it’s remark­able how lit­tle he actu­al­ly seems to say, since he takes back almost every­thing as soon as he says it.

The ver­bal tan­gles of his answers take many philo­soph­i­cal turns. Dylan defines the con­tem­po­rary art scene, say­ing “Art, if there is such a thing, is in the bath­rooms; every­body knows that. […] I spend a lot of time in the bath­room. I think muse­ums are vul­gar. They’re all against sex.” Asked “why rock ‘n’ roll has become such an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non,” Dylan wax­es onto­log­i­cal: “I can’t real­ly think that there is any rock ’n’ roll. Actu­al­ly, when you think about it, any­thing that has no real exis­tence is bound to become an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non.”

The bizarre nature of the pub­lished exchange is clas­sic, com­i­cal­ly aloof, mid-six­ties Dylan—so much in char­ac­ter we can imag­ine Cate Blanchett’s ser­pen­tine Dylan in I’m Not There say­ing the lines. But the print ver­sion of the con­ver­sa­tion is stream­lined and lucid com­pared to the unedit­ed, taped con­ver­sa­tion Dylan and Hentoff had the year pri­or before an edi­tor pared it down. As music site All Dylan has it, “to call them ver­sions ignores the fact that they are total­ly dif­fer­ent inter­views.”

The orig­i­nal take, which you can hear above in two parts, was much messier, and stranger.  Dylan often sounds like he’s not answer­ing ques­tions so much as putting words togeth­er in sen­tence-like forms. His speech takes on the qual­i­ties of abstract expressionism—recursive, and point­ed­ly vague. We might assume he’s real­ly stoned, except for a long-wind­ed speech about how passé it is to smoke pot.

Well, I nev­er felt as if there’s an answer through pot. I don’t want to make this, kind of, a drug inter­view or any­thing, like. LSD like… once you take LSD a few times… I mean, LSD is a med­i­cine. You know, you take it and you know… you don’t real­ly have to keep tak­ing it all the time. It’s noth­ing like that. It’s not that kind of thing, you know, where­as pot, you know, nobody’s got any answers through pot. Pot’s, you know, not that kind of thing. I’m sure that the peo­ple that say that the peo­ple who fig­ure they got their answers through pot, first of all, those peo­ple who say that, they’re just invent­ing some­thing. And the peo­ple that real­ly actu­al­ly think that they got their answers through pot, prob­a­bly nev­er even smoked pot, you know. I mean, it’s like… pot is, you know…who smokes pot any more, you know, any­way? 

Ever non­com­mit­tal, Dylan deflects a ques­tion about his rela­tion­ship with John­ny Cash, say­ing “I can’t real­ly talk about it too much,” but assur­ing Hentoff that he likes Cash “a lot. I like every­thing he does real­ly.” If Dylan gives as much as he takes away in the pub­lished inter­view, he does so dou­bly in this unedit­ed ver­sion, and it’s odd­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, even—and especially—when he decides to stop mak­ing words make sense. The taped inter­view was, in fact, the sec­ond inter­view Hentoff con­duct­ed with Dylan. After see­ing an edit­ed tran­script of the first attempt, Dylan insist­ed that Hentoff inter­view him again over the phone. Hentoff turned on his tape recorder and imme­di­ate­ly “real­ized I was going to be the straight guy,” he tells John White­head, “Dylan was impro­vis­ing sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly and very fun­ny.”

Vul­ture ranks the Play­boy inter­view at num­ber one in their list of “The 10 Most Incom­pre­hen­si­ble Bob Dylan Inter­views of All Time.” It must have been a tough call. At num­ber 10, they have the Time mag­a­zine inter­view from that same year, which you can see in the clip above from 1967’s Don’t Look Back. Dylan is con­fronta­tion­al, almost the­atri­cal­ly angry, but he is most­ly clear on the details. He ends the inter­view with a cryp­tic joke, com­par­ing him­self to opera singer Enri­co Caru­so: “I hap­pen to be just as good as him—a good singer. You have to lis­ten close­ly, but I hit all those notes.”

via All Dylan

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Bob Dylan Final­ly Makes a Video for His 1965 Hit, “Like a Rolling Stone”

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

Drunk Shakespeare: The Trendy Way to Stage the Bard’s Plays in the US & the UK

in Food & Drink, Theatre | September 17th, 2014

You might be famil­iar with Drunk His­to­ry, the web series turned Com­e­dy Cen­tral show that reen­acts the ram­blings of ine­bri­at­ed hip­sters try­ing to recount events like the Water­gate scan­dal or the Burr-Hamil­ton duel. Well, appar­ent­ly, a grow­ing num­ber of the­ater troupes have decid­ed that the best way to stage Shake­speare in this age of social media and short­en­ing atten­tion spans is to get every­one involved drunk. The audi­ence and the actors. One such group is called, apt­ly, Drunk Shake­speare, which describes itself as “a com­pa­ny of pro­fes­sion­al drinkers with a seri­ous Shake­speare prob­lem.” Each audi­ence mem­ber is giv­en a shot of whiskey at the begin­ning of each per­for­mance. The actors report­ed­ly drink much more and actu­al­ly have to get breath­a­lyzed before the show. You wouldn’t want Hen­ry V to pass out before the Bat­tle of Agin­court, would you? The Wall Street Jour­nal did a short video piece about the group. You can watch it above.

Anoth­er group, the New York Shake­speare Exchange, dis­pens­es with the stage alto­geth­er. Instead, they host a reg­u­lar pub crawl/ the­atri­cal per­for­mance called Shakes­BEER. In one of the many drink­ing estab­lish­ments in New York, actors in con­tem­po­rary dress do scenes from Ham­let and Oth­el­lo amid patrons clutch­ing pints of lager. You can watch some of their shows above.

Anoth­er exam­ple is The Inis Nua Com­pa­ny, which took the basic idea of Drunk His­to­ry and swapped out the his­to­ry with Romeo and Juli­et. Check out below. Or, maybe if you’re across the pond, you will want to check out Sh*t- Faced Shake­speare at the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val Fringe. It fea­tures “An entire­ly seri­ous Shake­speare play… with an entire­ly shit-faced actor.”

But the real ques­tion is where will all this crazed mix­ing of high cul­ture and mind alter­ing sub­stances end? Will some­one do Ine­bri­at­ed Ibsen? Stoned Chekhov? Moliere on Mol­ly? Trip­ping balls Beck­ett? It’s a slip­pery slope.

via The Wall Street Jour­nal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

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

What Shake­speare Sound­ed Like to Shake­speare: Recon­struct­ing the Bard’s Orig­i­nal Pro­nun­ci­a­tion

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre

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 one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.