How Do They Get Caffeine Out of Coffee Beans?

in Food & Drink | September 10th, 2014

It’s one of those ques­tions I’ve always won­dered about. And maybe you have too. Just how do they extract caf­feine from cof­fee beans? In the first episode of a new Men­tal Floss series, “Big Ques­tions,” a guy named Craig, rock­ing a tight t shirt, gives us some answers. If I’m guess­ing right, the video relies fair­ly heav­i­ly on this Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can arti­cle from 1999. It helps demys­ti­fy the process a lit­tle more.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The (Beau­ti­ful) Physics of Adding Cream to Your Cof­fee

Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Georges Bataille: An Introduction to The Radical Philosopher’s Life & Thought Through Film and eTexts

in Film, Literature, Philosophy | September 10th, 2014

Charles Baudelaire’s deca­dent visions pushed the Vic­to­ri­an cult of beau­ty toward mod­ernism, Hen­ry Miller’s lurid epics pushed a then staid mod­ernism toward anar­chic beat writ­ing, and Georges Bataille and the sur­re­al­ists of his arts jour­nal Doc­u­ments gave us much of the cul­ture we have today, call it what you will if post­mod­ern is too passé. Obsessed with tor­ture, pornog­ra­phy, hor­ror, and bod­i­ly flu­ids, Bataille “want­ed to bring art down to the base lev­el of oth­er phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na,” says sur­re­al­ist schol­ar Dawn Ades. Where oth­er trans­gres­sive fig­ures of the past have most­ly been tamed, Bataille, I sub­mit, is still quite dan­ger­ous. The Bataille quote that opens the film above, A perte de vue (“As far as the eye can see”), won’t go down eas­i­ly with almost any­one: “The world,” reads nar­ra­tor Jean-Claude Dauphin, “is only inhab­it­able on the con­di­tion that noth­ing in it is respect­ed.” This, the doc­u­men­tary sug­gests, is Bataille’s phi­los­o­phy, one he defines as “a need for sen­si­bil­i­ty to call up dis­tur­bance.”

Bataille, a failed priest and some­time librar­i­an, found­ed sur­re­al­ist flag­ship Doc­u­ments in 1929, pub­lished 15 issues, then went on to write nov­els, poems, and essays for the next thir­ty years. But his most famous work has remained his first, The Sto­ry of the Eye, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished under the pseu­do­nym Lord Auch in 1928. It’s a book that even today can seem like “social anthrax,” as nov­el­ist John Wray put it, in a way that oth­er once taboo-break­ing works like Joyce’s Ulysses, for exam­ple, cer­tain­ly do not. It’s an apt com­par­i­son, not on lit­er­ary grounds, but giv­en that both writ­ers were haunt­ed by once fer­vent Catholi­cism turned to fer­vent rejec­tion. Writes Mark Hud­son in The Guardian, “he did believe in his own trans­gres­sive philoso­phies in a qua­si-reli­gious sense.” Like Joyce, “there’s a pow­er­ful dual­ism in his thought, a pro­found reli­gious impulse.” Unlike Joyce—or Bataille’s fel­low sur­re­al­ists for that mat­ter, who “excom­mu­ni­cat­ed” him from the movement—“there is still much in his work that is dif­fi­cult to redeem and far from being accom­mo­dat­ed by the mainstream—if indeed it ever can be.”

You can read four of Bataille’s chal­leng­ing pieces at Supervert’s eli­brary: The Sto­ry of the Eye and three essays, “The Use Val­ue of D.A.F. de Sade,” “The Big Toe,” and “The Cru­el Prac­tice of Art.” Bataille’s phi­los­o­phy, writes Super­vert, “appar­ent­ly lay in per­son­al experience—in par­tic­u­lar his child­hood with a sui­ci­dal moth­er and a blind, syphilitic father.” This kind of psy­chol­o­giz­ing may seem super­flu­ous, yet Bataille intro­duces him­self to us, in his own words—through audio inter­views in the first few min­utes of A pert de vue—as the prod­uct of “a sad place to be.” Per­son­al ori­gins aside, Bataille’s phi­los­o­phy has res­onat­ed wide­ly and “helped pave the way to con­tem­po­rary crit­i­cal the­o­ry.” By embrac­ing every­thing reject­ed, feared, or held in con­tempt, Bataille reclaimed every­day parts of human existence—those we euphem­ize or seek to contain—for lit­er­a­ture, phi­los­o­phy… and well, the inter­net. If some of Bataille’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tions are irre­deemable for main­stream tastes, you may find as you watch the film above and read Bataille’s writ­ing that this is for good rea­son.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Michel Fou­cault – Beyond Good and Evil: 1993 Doc­u­men­tary Explores the Theorist’s Con­tro­ver­sial Life and Phi­los­o­phy

Human, All Too Human: 3‑Part Doc­u­men­tary Pro­files Niet­zsche, Hei­deg­ger & Sartre

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

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

The Beatles Saturday Morning Cartoon Show (1965–1969)

in Comics/Cartoons, Music, Television | September 10th, 2014

We’ve become so accus­tomed to think­ing of the Bea­t­les as Seri­ous Artists™ that it’s easy to forget—at least for those of us who weren’t there—how high­ly com­mer­cial a fran­chise they were in the mid-six­ties. It’s no won­der Joe Strummer’s line about “pho­ny Beat­le­ma­nia” in the Clash’s “Lon­don Call­ing” res­onat­ed so strong­ly for those dis­af­fect­ed with the reign of the Fab Four. The real thing was over­whelm­ing enough, but the slew of offi­cial, unof­fi­cial, and boot­leg mer­chan­dis­ing that fol­lowed it, much of it aimed at chil­dren, makes the band’s dom­i­nance seem, well, kin­da juve­nile. Before they escaped pop star­dom and retreat­ed to the stu­dio to record their psy­che­del­ic mas­ter­pieces, the Bea­t­les received every pos­si­ble com­mer­cial treat­ment, from lunch­box­es and cere­al bowls to jig­saw puz­zles, lamp­shades, and a Ringo Starr bub­ble bath. Perus­ing an online auc­tion of Bea­t­les merch is a bit like tour­ing Grace­land.

There’s one arti­fact from the height of Beat­le­ma­nia that you won’t find, how­ev­er. Instead, you can watch it for free on Youtube. I refer to The Bea­t­les, a half-hour Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon show that ran on ABC from Sep­tem­ber, 1965 to Sep­tem­ber 1969 and pro­duced a total of 39 episodes. The band them­selves had almost noth­ing to do with the show, oth­er than appear­ing in an odd pro­mo­tion. Trad­ing entire­ly in broad slap­stick com­e­dy of the Scoo­by-Doo vari­ety, the show saw the four mates tum­ble into one goofy sit­u­a­tion after anoth­er, some super­nat­ur­al, some musi­cal, some the­atri­cal. Although all nat­ur­al per­form­ers them­selves, no Bea­t­le ever voiced his char­ac­ter on the show. Instead, Amer­i­can actor Paul Frees, as John and George, and British actor Lance Per­ci­val, as Paul and Ringo, imi­tat­ed them, very bad­ly. The Bea­t­les car­toon show aired at a time when the kids TV land­scape was just begin­ning to resem­ble the one we have today, with ABC com­peti­tor CBS run­ning super­hero shows like Space Ghost, Super­man, and Mighty Mouse, but the sur­re­al plots and musi­cal num­bers on The Bea­t­les were an attempt to reach adults as well. Watch clips from Sea­son 1 above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

The Bea­t­les Per­form a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (1964)

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Voice

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

U2’s Album Songs of Innocence Released for Free on iTunes Today

in Apple, Music | September 9th, 2014

Apple had lots of big announce­ments today — a new watch, a new iPhone, and pay­ment sys­tem. But wait, there’s more! On its big day, Apple also announced that any­one with an iTunes account can down­load for free Songs of Inno­cence, U2’s first album in 5 years. The album will remain free on iTunes until Octo­ber 13, 2014, after which time it will be released on CD and maybe vinyl. You can access the album in sev­er­al ways.

1.) On your iOS device, go to the Music app and select the Albums tab. Select Songs of Inno­cence. Tap a track to lis­ten or tap the iCloud icon to down­load.

2.) On your Mac or PC, open iTunes, then select the Albums tab. Select Songs of Inno­cence. Select a track to lis­ten or click the iCloud icon to down­load.

3.) On any of your devices, go to Fea­tured Sta­tions and select Songs of Inno­cence to lis­ten. Start­ing Sep­tem­ber 10.

If you have any issues find­ing the free down­load, you might want to look through some of the trou­bleshoot­ing sug­ges­tions found on this page.

The First Color Portrait of Leo Tolstoy, and Other Amazing Color Photos of Czarist Russia (1908)

in Literature, Photography | September 9th, 2014

A good few peo­ple object­ed to a recent project that col­orized old pho­tos of Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, and oth­er his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters. Leave them alone! they grumped. The past, they want­ed left in black and white. But this is not so eas­i­ly done when some photos—whether of august per­son­ages like Leo Tol­stoy above, or of ordi­nary anony­mous peas­ants below—were always processed in col­or. The Tol­stoy image dates from 1908, two years before his death, but the process is much old­er, and suc­cess­ful col­or pho­tographs, not sim­ply hand-paint­ed col­oriza­tions, go back at least to the Lumiere Broth­ers’ Autochromes from the late 19th cen­tu­ry.

The method that gave us Tol­stoy in col­or involved tak­ing three photographs—with a red, a green, and a blue filter—then pro­ject­ing the result­ing prints through fil­ters of the same col­or. It’s a pro­ce­dure that dates to Scot­tish sci­en­tist James Clerk Maxwell’s 1861 exper­i­ments, which put to the test sev­er­al ear­li­er the­o­ries. The pho­tographs you see here are the work of sci­en­tist and inven­tor Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, who had per­fect­ed the pro­jec­tion method to such a degree that—as he wrote in a let­ter to Tol­stoy ask­ing him to pose—he only need­ed “from 1 to 3 sec­onds to take the pho­to­graph.” Thus it would not be “over­ly tire­some” for the soon-to-be eighty-year-old nov­el­ist.

Tol­stoy, of course, was a nation­al insti­tu­tion, and had war­rant­ed an ear­li­er attempt at a col­or por­trait by an anony­mous ama­teur to whom Prokudin-Gorsky refers in his let­ter of request. The first attempt, the inven­tor implies, was a botched job. Billing him­self as a spe­cial­ist in “pho­tog­ra­phy ‘in nat­ur­al col­ors,’” the self-con­fi­dent entre­pre­neur assured the writer he could pro­duce “excel­lent results” with “accu­rate col­ors.” “My col­ored pro­jec­tions,” he wrote, “are known in both Europe and in Rus­sia.” Prokudin-Gorsky was received and giv­en two days to take sev­er­al col­or pho­tographs, though whether the oth­ers have sur­vived, I do not know. We do know that the por­trait appeared in the August, 1908 issue of The Pro­ceed­ings of the Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal Soci­ety as “the first Russ­ian col­or pho­to­por­trait.” The jour­nal offered the image in trib­ute to Tolstoy’s upcom­ing 80th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, writ­ing:

Our peri­od­i­cal, as a pure­ly tech­ni­cal one, can­not hon­or this ven­er­a­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Russ­ian thought and word with spe­cial arti­cles. Desir­ing, how­ev­er, to take part in the gen­er­al fes­tiv­i­ties, the edi­to­r­i­al staff […] decid­ed to pub­lish in this, its August issue, the newest por­trait of Tol­stoy, which is the dernier mot in pho­to­graph­ic tech­nol­o­gy. The por­trait was tak­en on loca­tion and in nat­ur­al col­ors, achieved through tech­ni­cal meth­ods alone, with­out any use of the artist’s brush or tool.

Prokudin-Gorsky expressed his grat­i­tude to the nov­el­ist by mail­ing him a pho­to­graph­ic peri­od­i­cal con­tain­ing “many pic­tures pro­duced in my work­shops from my pho­tographs.” Per­haps the oth­er pho­tos we see here were con­tained in that jour­nal. Prokudin-Gorsky had every rea­son to be proud of his work, and the Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal Soci­ety every rea­son to endorse it. The pic­tures are stun­ning.

Some of the pho­tographs, like the Tol­stoy por­trait, have a painter­ly, almost impres­sion­is­tic qual­i­ty. Oth­ers, like the 1911 vil­lage scene with the Niko­laevskii Cathe­dral in the dis­tance, have almost the depth of field and fine-grained clar­i­ty of 35mm film. And some, like that of the already car­toon­ish struc­ture below, have an almost hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry CGI qual­i­ty. The method wasn’t perfect—even with such short expo­sures, sub­jects had to remain absolute­ly still. If they moved, the result was an eerie dou­ble expo­sure effect you see in the mid­dle dis­tance of the field work­ers pho­tographed above. But over­all, these pho­tographs sim­ply aston­ish in their crisp­ness and fideli­ty.

You can see many more of Prokudin-Gorsky’s images at this online gallery, which includes over a dozen ear­ly-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry pho­tos of Russ­ian labor­ers, land­scapes, and self por­traits. Prokudin-Gorsky’s work also pre­serves images of var­i­ous East­ern Euro­pean peo­ples in tra­di­tion­al dress—like the final Emir of Bukhara, now Uzbek­istan, below in 1910. Many of these groups were on the verge of cul­tur­al extinc­tion in the com­ing years of Sovi­et impe­ri­al­ism. Unwit­ting­ly, Prokudin-Gorsky man­aged to beau­ti­ful­ly cap­ture the very end of tsarist Rus­sia, most poignant­ly sym­bol­ized for so many Rus­sians by their aged lit­er­ary hero, whose birth­day we cel­e­brate again today. Google decid­ed to do so in full col­or as well, with fan­cy doo­dles of his major works. You may accuse them of tam­per­ing with the past, but those who find these col­or pho­tographs too mod­ern may need to expand their def­i­n­i­tion of moder­ni­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Col­orized Pho­tos Bring Walt Whit­man, Char­lie Chap­lin, Helen Keller & Mark Twain Back to Life

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

Vin­tage Footage of Leo Tol­stoy: Video Cap­tures the Great Nov­el­ist Dur­ing His Final Days

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

Watch Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, the First Animated Movie (1906)

in Animation, Film | September 9th, 2014

August and Louis Lumière might have made the first film – a sim­ple, sta­t­ic shot of work­ers leav­ing their fac­to­ry for the day – but George Méliès invent­ed the art form of cin­e­ma. Through his exper­i­ments, Méliès dis­cov­ered that mag­ic hap­pened when he turned the cam­era off and on. Peo­ple sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared into thin air. Objects appeared out of nowhere. A famed magi­cian, Méliès knew he was on to some­thing. His dis­cov­ery plant­ed the seeds for just about every cin­e­mat­ic tech­nique in the book — includ­ing ani­ma­tion. You can watch six of Méliès’ films here, includ­ing his land­mark 1902 short A Trip to the Moon.

The per­son cred­it­ed with mak­ing the first film-based ani­ma­tion, how­ev­er, is James Stu­art Black­ton with his film Humor­ous Phas­es of Fun­ny Faces (1906). You can watch it above. The short starts with the artist’s hand draw­ing on a chalk­board. Soon, how­ev­er, the draw­ing starts to move on its own. The film is as prim­i­tive as it is fun. A man in a top hat blows cig­ar smoke into a woman’s face. A clown dances. Imag­ine the shock and awe of an audi­ence not weaned on Pixar and Mick­ey Mouse watch­ing a pic­ture come to life for the first time.

Black­ton start­ed his career as a jour­nal­ist and a vaude­ville car­toon­ist. In 1896, he was assigned to cov­er Thomas Edi­son’s brand new inven­tion – the Vitas­cope, an ear­ly film pro­jec­tor. Edi­son proved to be such a good sales­man that Black­ton end­ed up buy­ing one. Soon he, along with his vaude­ville part­ner Albert Smith, found­ed one of the first ever movie stu­dios — the Amer­i­can Vita­graph Com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny even­tu­al­ly became known for cre­at­ing some of the first movie adap­ta­tions of Shake­speare and Charles Dick­ens, but before that, they made short “trick” movies — flashy shorts to be shown dur­ing vaude­ville shows. One of those movies, The Enchant­ed Draw­ing (1900) is essen­tial­ly a filmic ver­sion of Blackton’s act with some cin­e­mat­ic sleight-of-hand thrown in. And as you can see below, it points the way to Black­ton’s break­through with Humor­ous Phas­es.

In 1911, Black­ton, along with his co-direc­tor, the spec­tac­u­lar­ly tal­ent­ed Win­sor McCay, made Lit­tle Nemo, a movie that hints at the true poten­tial of ani­ma­tion. Sure, their movie has way too much half-heart­ed live action slap stick, which pads out the run­ning time to an over-stuffed 10 min­utes, but the actu­al ani­ma­tion, which starts around 8:30, is utter­ly gor­geous. Watch it below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions and a Google Doo­dle

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons are Made

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. 

William Gibson Reads Neuromancer, His Cyberpunk-Defining Novel

in Audio Books, Books, Sci Fi | September 9th, 2014

With 1984’s Neu­ro­mancer, William Gib­son may not have invent­ed cyber­punk, but he cer­tain­ly crys­tal­lized it. The nov­el exem­pli­fies the tra­di­tion’s man­date to bring togeth­er “high tech and low life,” or, in the words of Gib­son him­self, to explore what “any giv­en sci­ence-fic­tion favorite would look like if we could crank up the res­o­lu­tion.”

It may have its direct pre­de­ces­sors, but Gib­son’s tale of hack­ers, street samu­rai, con­spir­acists, and shad­owy arti­fi­cial intel­li­gences against vir­tu­al real­i­ty, dystopi­an urban Japan, and a vari­ety of oth­er inter­na­tion­al and tech­no­log­i­cal back­drops remains not just arche­typ­al but, unusu­al­ly for old­er tech­nol­o­gy-ori­ent­ed fic­tion, excit­ing.

Now you can not only read Gib­son’s cyber­punk-defin­ing words, but hear them in Gib­son’s voice: a 1994 abridged edi­tion, released only on cas­sette tapes and now long out of print, resides in MP3 form online here .

You can get a taste of this par­tic­u­lar Neu­ro­mancer audio­book and its pro­duc­tion in the clip above. I always appre­ci­ate hear­ing authors read their own work, but peo­ple will sure­ly dis­agree about whether the laid-back tones of a man who often describes him­self as thor­ough­ly un-cut­ting-edge ide­al­ly suit the mate­r­i­al. If you think it does­n’t, or if you don’t like the abridged-ness of this edi­tion, you suf­fer no lack of alter­na­tives: Arthur Addi­son read an unabridged one for Books on Tape in 1997, in 2011 Robert­son Dean read anoth­er one for Pen­guin Audio­books, and in 2012 Jeff Hard­ing did yet anoth­er. (Note: You can down­load the Dean edi­tion for free via Audi­ble if you enroll in their 30 Day Free Tri­al. We have more details on that here.) Those who have found them­selves hooked on the inter­net, in any of its mod­ern forms, will cer­tain­ly hear a lot of pre­science in Gib­son’s con­cep­tion of tech­nol­o­gy as addic­tive drug. But in my expe­ri­ence, cyber­punk sto­ries, too, can prove fierce­ly habit form­ing. Rather than the first cyber­punk nov­el, or the most impor­tant one, or the gen­re’s blue­print, let’s just call Neu­ro­mancer the gate­way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cyber­punk: 1990 Doc­u­men­tary Fea­tur­ing William Gib­son & Tim­o­thy Leary Intro­duces the Cyber­punk Cul­ture

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond Life

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.

178,000 Images Documenting the History of the Car Now Available on a New Stanford Web Site

in Archives, Stanford | September 9th, 2014

The Revs Pro­gram at Stan­ford, ded­i­cat­ed to pro­duc­ing schol­ar­ship about the past, present and future of the auto­mo­bile, recent­ly advanced its cause by launch­ing a new web­site fea­tur­ing 178,000 images of cars. Divid­ed into 12 col­lec­tions, the Revs Dig­i­tal Library fea­tures lots of race cars, and then some more race cars. But there are some more every­day mod­els too — like the Bee­tle, Cit­roën, Corvette, Mini and even the Grem­lin. You won’t find, how­ev­er, any trace of the much-maligned Edsel.

The images came to Stan­ford as a gift from the Revs Insti­tute for Auto­mo­tive Research, locat­ed in Naples, Flori­da. If you’d like a quick primer on find­ing and gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion about vin­tage cars in the archive, watch the intro­duc­to­ry video below. It’ll teach you how to sift through the dig­i­tal library in rapid fash­ion.

The images above come from the Revs Dig­i­tal Library.

via Stan­ford News/Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale Launch­es an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

UC San­ta Cruz Opens a Deadhead’s Delight: The Grate­ful Dead Archive is Now Online

Young Robert De Niro Appears in 1969 AMC Car Com­mer­cial

The History of Rock n Roll in 10 Songs: A List Created by Legendary Rock Critic Greil Marcus

in Music | September 8th, 2014

Rock crit­ic and schol­ar Greil Mar­cus has just released a book with Yale Press called The His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, and it appears to be an unusu­al take on a very hack­neyed sub­ject, as Mar­cus admits in the video trail­er above: “Every­body knows the his­to­ry of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says, “What if it was just about a few songs?” “Unlike all pre­vi­ous ver­sions of rock ‘n’ roll,” writes Yale, “this book omits almost every icon­ic per­former and ignores the sto­ried events and turn­ing points that every­one knows.” This is not entire­ly true—you’ve got your Bea­t­les, you’ve got your Bud­dy Hol­ly, but you’ve also got… Joy Divi­sion. And a num­ber of oth­er sur­pris­ing, off­beat choic­es that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sound like rock ‘n’ roll his­to­ry, but cer­tain­ly tell it their var­i­ous ways. “At any giv­en moment,” Mar­cus says above, any of these songs “could con­tain the whole his­to­ry […] the whole DNA of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Some of the choic­es seem like per­son­al quirks. Noth­ing to get too bent out of shape about, if that’s your ten­den­cy, but odd nonethe­less. The Flam­ing Groovies would not be a band I’d choose as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of garage rock, if that’s what they rep­re­sent. Their song “Shake Some Action” above may be bet­ter known for some from Cracker’s work­man­like cov­er on the Clue­less sound­track than as a gen­uine hit in its own right. But the sin­gle sure had a cool cov­er.

It also has some excel­lent gui­tar work and a per­fect­ly dis­tinc­tive tone that Mar­cus can’t for­get. Its lyrics are by turns vapid and creepy, which, now that I think of it, per­haps makes this a per­fect track to define much of rock ‘n’ roll his­to­ry.

No one best­ed post-punk dar­lings Joy Divi­sion when it came to boy­ish good looks and relent­less despair. In an oblique rock his­to­ry sense, they were piv­otal, tak­ing the obscu­ran­tist min­i­mal­ist exper­i­ments of bands like Wire and mak­ing them viable options for an entire genre of music. Mar­cus choos­es “Trans­mis­sion” instead of the much more pop­u­lar “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which has become almost a musi­cal rite of pas­sage for cer­tain bands to cov­er. This was the last sin­gle the band released before singer Ian Cur­tis killed him­self. “It’s sort of fit­ting then,” writes Con­se­quence of Sound, “that this would be both one of the band’s most pop­u­lar songs and also pave the way for New Order, specif­i­cal­ly in terms of its sound and direc­tion.” Lit­tle live footage of the band exists. See them above in 1979 on UK retro tele­vi­sion pro­gram The Wedge (orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast on Some­thing Else with the Jam).

Mar­cus’ third choice is not real­ly what we think of as rock and roll, but it’s a close cousin, and with­out doo wop, we’d have had no Lou Reed. 1956’s “In the Still of the Night,” writ­ten by Fred Par­ris and record­ed by his Five Satins in a Catholic school base­ment, was a hit in the 90s for Boyz II Men on the R&B and Adult Con­tem­po­rary charts and reli­ably appears in films about the fifties. Mar­cus also refers to a ver­sion record­ed by the Slades, a white vocal group. The pair­ing illus­trates the famil­iar fifties prac­tice of white groups record­ing black artists—and often out­selling them, though cer­tain­ly not in this case—for pre­sum­ably seg­re­gat­ed audi­ences.

Etta James’ 1960 soar­ing lament “All I Could Do Was Cry” again seems a world away from rock and roll, with its lush stu­dio string sec­tion and spa­cious, spare pro­duc­tion. The song lacks the bite and growl of “At Last!” from the same album, but Mar­cus makes a weighty allu­sion in refer­ring to two dif­fer­ent ver­sions. By includ­ing Beyoncé’s take on the song, the list hauls in the his­to­ry of Chicago’s Chess records and Knowles’ out­stand­ing per­for­mance as James in 2008’s Cadil­lac Records, a film that takes us from Mud­dy Water­s’s elec­tric blues to Chuck Berry’s hybrid crossover sound.

Yes, we have Bud­dy Hol­ly, but we don’t have “Peg­gy Sue” or “Not Fade Away.” Instead Mar­cus gives us the B‑side to the posthu­mous­ly released “Peg­gy Sue Got Mar­ried,” a song called “Cry­ing, Wait­ing, Hop­ing.” Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed by Hol­ly alone in a Man­hat­tan apart­ment and mixed with stu­dio back­ing tracks by pro­duc­er Jack Hansen in 1959, the song had noth­ing to do with Holly’s fame in life—hence the bad vocal sync in the video above. The band’s play­ing an entire­ly dif­fer­ent song. Mar­cus chose this as sym­bol­ic of the Hol­ly mythos after his death, which spread across the ocean to Mersey­beat bands like the Bea­t­les, who often cov­ered this song and record­ed it live on the BBC. Like the musi­cians who played on the first record, they aren’t just cov­er­ing Hol­ly, writes Mar­cus, “they’re con­duct­ing a kind of séance with him.”

Speak­ing of the Bea­t­les: every­one knows their “Mon­ey (That’s What I Want),” but did you know that the song, per­formed in 1959 by Bar­rett Strong (above), was the first hit for Berry Gordy’s Motown records (then Tam­la)? A direct link between Amer­i­can R&B and the UK vari­ety, “Mon­ey” was a sta­ple for British inva­sion bands in the ear­ly 60s.

I had nev­er heard of The Brains before read­ing Mar­cus’ list. That’s not say­ing a whole lot, but I had also nev­er heard Cyn­di Lauper’s 1983 hit cov­er of their minor hit “Mon­ey Changes Every­thing,” or even the rare Smiths’ instru­men­tal ver­sion, ardent fan though I am. So chalk that up to a musi­cal blind spot, if you will, or take it as evi­dence of the song’s out­lier sta­tus. Hear the 1978 orig­i­nal above. Mar­cus has said else­where of its raw, cyn­i­cal hon­esty that “there’s no oth­er way the decade could end.”

“This Mag­ic Moment,” the 1960 hit by Ben E. King and the Drifters, sounds like the per­fect choice of song for nos­tal­gic boomers, not so much for jad­ed rock writ­ers telling a new sto­ry of rock ‘n’ roll, but there you have it. Mar­cus also refers to a ver­sion by “Ben E. King with Lou Reed.” As far as I can tell, no such record­ing exists, but we do have a ver­sion by Reed alone. Hear it above.

The only way per­haps to dis­cuss this ninth “song” in any rock ‘n’ roll con­text is by way of Lou Reed, it so hap­pens. Reed’s “thor­ough­ly alien­at­ing” Met­al Machine Music con­sists of 64 min­utes of feed­back and dis­tor­tion caused, some leg­ends have it, by Reed record­ing the sound of his gui­tar lean­ing against a cranked-up amp. Artist Chris­t­ian Mar­clay does him one bet­ter. “Gui­tar Drag” is exact­ly what it adver­tis­es, the sound—and video, above—of a gui­tar dragged behind a truck. Rep­re­sent­ing the pure noise of Met­al Machine Music and the gen­er­al destruc­tive­ness of rock ‘n’ roll, it also re-enacts the absolute­ly hor­ri­fy­ing 1998 drag­ging death of James Byrd, Jr, one of the low­est moments in Amer­i­can racial his­to­ry. Does this dis­turb­ing piece of sound/video art aes­theti­ciz­ing a racist mur­der, chill­ing and grue­some beyond words, belong on any list about rock ’n’ roll his­to­ry? Greil Mar­cus thinks it does.

We return to famil­iar, if cloy­ing ter­ri­to­ry with “To Know Is to Love Him,” an ear­ly hit for Phil Spec­tor and his Ted­dy Bears in 1958 (above)—written not about a crush but about Spector’s deceased father after the words on his head­stone. Next to the quaint­ness of this record­ing, Mar­cus also lists Amy Winehouse’s 2007 cov­er (below). Maybe he hears them at once, both songs haunt­ing each oth­er. Writ­ing on the song in The Guardian after Winehouse’s death, Mar­cus says “it took 48 years to find its voice.” It’s a sto­ry of two incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed, and trag­i­cal­ly dis­turbed, rock ‘n’ roll char­ac­ters, and one of the pain and loss that lie behind even the most bub­blegum of hits. See Yale Press’s web­site for more on Mar­cus’ The His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute: From Gospel to Grunge

Revis­it The Life & Music of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: ‘The God­moth­er of Rock and Roll’

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

How Languages Evolve: Explained in a Winning TED-Ed Animation

in Animation, Science, TED Talks, Video - Politics/Society | September 8th, 2014

Lan­guage. It’s as adapt­able as Darwin’s finch­es.

It’d be inter­est­ing to know how the Inter­net changes the game. Seems like it would go a long way toward democ­ra­tiz­ing the process by which lin­go gets min­gled.

Alex Gendler’s TED-Ed les­son, win­ning­ly ani­mat­ed by Igor Coric, rolls back the clock to a time when com­mu­nal groups would sub­di­vide and strike out on their own, usu­al­ly in order to beef up the food sup­ply.

This sort of geo­graph­ic and tem­po­ral sep­a­ra­tion was bound to take a toll, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly. Evo­lu­tion is need-based. Vocab­u­lary and pro­nun­ci­a­tion even­tu­al­ly betray the specifics of the speak­er’s sur­round­ings, their cir­cum­stances and needs.

It takes some foren­sics to fig­ure out how, or, even if, var­i­ous lan­guages relate to each oth­er. A cun­ning lin­guist (for­give me) will also have the pow­er to fill in his­tor­i­cal gaps, by iden­ti­fy­ing words that have been bor­rowed from neigh­bor­ing cul­tures, as well as more tran­sient acquain­tances.

As a lit­tle exper­i­ment, look at the way you talk! Those of us with­out roy­al blood or a stick up our heinies tend to speak a mon­grel patois cus­tom tai­lored by our own expe­ri­ence. A lit­tle bit of region­al­ism, some pro­fes­sion­al jar­gon, a few col­or­ful words gleaned from life’s char­ac­ters, lines from long ago enter­tain­ments deployed as if the ref­er­ences were fresh.

I’ll bet a lin­guist would have a field day with you, Bub.

Even if you’re the most straight­for­ward con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist on the plan­et, the peo­ple who can’t under­stand a word you say would great­ly out­num­ber those who can.

Maybe we  should all “speak Man­darin,” as per the bill­boards I saw in Sin­ga­pore on a post-col­le­giate trip. (As a West­ern back­pack­er in Birken­stocks and a wrap-around hip­pie skirt, I was exempt, leav­ing me plen­ty of time to wor­ry about being caned for spit­ting gum on the side­walk, a thing I’d nev­er do, by the way.)

Back to the ani­mat­ed les­son, above. While I agree that polit­i­cal and nation­al inter­ests can be huge­ly influ­en­tial with regard to lan­guage devel­op­ment, I’m not sure a pig is the wis­est choice when depict­ing this lin­guis­tic phe­nom­e­non as an ani­mal’s worth of re-zoned pri­mal cuts, labelled a la the for­mer Yugoslavia.

Pork is haraam, and treif, and  ‘pig,’ in and of itself, is hard­ly a flat­ter­ing epi­thet, a sit­u­a­tion that’s sort of insult­ing to a nat­u­ral­ly intel­li­gent and fas­tid­i­ous beast.

I digress.

As does lan­guage, which explains why there could be as many as 8000 of them in use. A more con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate puts the num­ber at 3000. Not to alarm you, but if the num­ber of peo­ple who speak your lan­guage is what the food­ie hip­sters of Brook­lyn would refer to as “small batch,” there are lin­guists who would down­grade your tongue to mere dialect.

In which case, this list of obscene ges­tures from around the world might well come in handy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ali G and Noam Chom­sky Talk Lin­guis­tics

The Ideas of Noam Chom­sky: An Intro­duc­tion to His The­o­ries on Lan­guage & Knowl­edge (1977)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic approach to lan­guage can be stud­ied in sev­en books, a num­ber of antholo­gies, and her long suf­fer­ing zine, the East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday