Four Charles Bukowski Poems Animated

in Animation, Poetry | May 5th, 2014

The poet­ry of Charles Bukows­ki deeply inspires many of its read­ers. Some­times it just inspires them to lead the dis­solute lifestyle they think they see glo­ri­fied in it, but oth­er times it leads them to cre­ate some­thing com­pelling of their own. The qual­i­ty and vari­ety of the Bukows­ki-inspired ani­ma­tion now avail­able on the inter­net, for instance, has cer­tain­ly sur­prised me.

At the top of the post, we have Jonathan Hodg­son’s adap­ta­tion of “The Man with the Beau­ti­ful Eyes,” which puts vivid, col­or­ful imagery to Bukowski’s late poem that draws from his child­hood mem­o­ries of a mys­te­ri­ous, untamed young man in a run-down house whose very exis­tence remind­ed him “that nobody want­ed any­body to be strong and beau­ti­ful like that, that oth­ers would nev­er allow it.” Below, you can watch Moni­ka Umba’s even more uncon­ven­tion­al ani­ma­tion of “Blue­bird”:

With­out any words spo­ken on the sound­track and only the title seen onscreen — a chal­leng­ing cre­ative restric­tion for a poet­ry-based short — Umba depicts the nar­ra­tor’s “blue­bird in my heart that wants to get out.” But the nar­ra­tor, “too tough for him,” beats back the blue­bird’s escape with whiskey, cig­a­rettes, and a pol­i­cy of only let­ting him roam “at night some­times, when every­body’s asleep.”

You’ll find Bradley Bel­l’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Laugh­ing Heart,” a poem that advis­es its read­ers not to let their lives “be clubbed into dank sub­mis­sion,” to “be on the watch,” for “there are ways out.” “You can’t beat death,” Bukows­ki writes, “but you can beat death in life, some­times.” In Bel­l’s short, these words come from the mouth of the also famous­ly dis­so­lu­tion-chron­i­cling singer-song­writer Tom Waits, cer­tain­ly Bukowski’s most suit­able liv­ing read­er (and one who, all told, comes sec­ond only to the man him­self). Only fit­ting that one inspir­ing cre­ator deliv­ers the work of anoth­er — in the sort of labor of enthu­si­asm that, too, will inspire its audi­ence to cre­ate.

At the bot­tom the post, you will find “Roll the Dice,” an ani­ma­tion sug­gest­ed by one of our read­ers, Mark.

You can find read­ings of Bukows­ki poems in the poet­ry sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last (Faxed) Poem of Charles Bukows­ki

Lis­ten to Charles Bukows­ki Poems Being Read by Bukows­ki, Tom Waits and Bono

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Con­cise Phi­los­o­phy of Art and Life

Charles Bukows­ki Sets His Amus­ing Con­di­tions for Giv­ing a Poet­ry Read­ing (1971)

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

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.

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

in Film, History, Literature | May 5th, 2014

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“My life came to a stand­still,” wrote Leo Tol­stoy in his 1882 con­ver­sion mem­oir A Con­fes­sion, “I could not breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things.” So Tolstoy’s described his “arrest of life,” a peri­od of severe depres­sion that led to a very deep, per­son­al brand of faith in his late mid­dle age. The tow­er­ing Russ­ian nov­el­ist renounced world­ly desires and came to iden­ti­fy with the poor, the for­mer serfs of his aris­to­crat­ic class. Tolstoy’s rad­i­cal reli­gious anar­chism in his final years spread his fame far among the peas­antry just as his lit­er­ary achieve­ments had brought him world­wide renown among the read­ing pub­lic. So famous was Tol­stoy, William Nick­ell tells us, that Russ­ian crit­ic Vasi­ly Rozanov wrote that “to be a Russ­ian and not have [seen] Tol­stoy was like being Swiss and not hav­ing seen the Alps.”

Nick­ell describes the occa­sions that Tol­stoy appeared on film, the new medi­um that allowed the author’s mil­lions of ador­ing fans to get a glimpse of him. Just as his life was punc­tu­at­ed by a rad­i­cal depar­ture from his ear­li­er atti­tudes, his medi­um was in for a shock as film for­ev­er changed the way sto­ries were told.

In those ear­ly days, how­ev­er, it was very often sim­ply a means of record­ing his­to­ry, and we should be glad of that. It means we too can see Tol­stoy, at the top on his 80th birth­day. We see him vig­or­ous­ly saw­ing logs and pious­ly giv­ing alms to the poor. Also includ­ed in the ini­tial footage are Tolstoy’s wife Sofya, his daugh­ter Alek­san­dra, and aide and edi­tor Vladimir Chertkov. Then, at 1:04, the scene shifts to Tolstoy’s deathbed and scenes of his funer­al. The remain­ing 11 min­utes give us some uniden­ti­fied footage of the author. (If you’re able to read the title cards in Russ­ian, please let us know!).

Just above, see a more com­plete film of Tolstoy’s death and funer­al pro­ces­sion. The author died at age 82 after he abrupt­ly decid­ed to leave his wife, tak­ing only a few pos­ses­sions and his doc­tor. Read the dra­mat­ic sto­ry of Tolstoy’s last ten days in this trans­lat­ed excerpt from Pavel Basinsky’s award win­ning Leo Tol­stoy: Escape from Par­adise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Com­plete Works of Leo Tol­stoy Online: New Archive Will Present 90 Vol­umes for Free (in Russ­ian)

Study Finds That Read­ing Tol­stoy & Oth­er Great Nov­el­ists Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

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

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Performances of 1080 Bach Compositions Online

in Music | May 4th, 2014

Bach wrote 1080 com­po­si­tions dur­ing his life­time. And now thanks to the new and cer­tain­ly ambi­tious All of Bach web site, you can even­tu­al­ly watch the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety (found­ed in 1921) per­form each and every one of those com­po­si­tions. The site fea­tures 13 per­for­mances so far (see below), which means there’s only anoth­er 1067 to go. A new Bach record­ing will go live every Fri­day. So you mark your cal­en­dars and check in week­ly for the next 20 years. Thanks to Erik for send­ing this our way!

First record­ings:

• Nun Komm, der Hei­den Hei­land — Can­ta­ta, BWV 61
• Toc­ca­ta and Fugue in D minor — Organ work, BWV 565
• Herr Gott, Dich loben alle wir — Can­ta­ta, BWV 130
• Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Him­mel auf Herr Gott, nun schleuss den Him­mel auf Organ work — BWV 617
• Organ con­cer­to in A minor (after Vival­di) — BWV 593
• Ich habe genung — Can­ta­ta — BWV 82
• The Well-Tem­pered Clavier I Pre­lude and Fugue in F sharp major — BWV 858
• The Well-Tem­pered Clavier I no. 6 in D minor Key­board work — BWV 851
• The Well-Tem­pered Clavier I no. 12 in F minor Key­board work — BWV 857
• Fan­ta­sia and Fuge in G Minor — Organ Work BWV 542
• Schwingt freudig euch empor Schwingt freudig euch empor Can­ta­ta — BWV 36
• Wir müssen durch viel Trüb­sal in das Reich Gottes einge­hen Wir müssen durch viel Trüb­sal in das Reich Gottes einge­hen Can­ta­ta — BWV 146
• Vater unser im Him­mel­re­ich Vater unser im Him­mel­re­ich Organ work — BWV 682

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

Watch the Talking Heads Play a Vintage Concert in Syracuse (1978)

in Music | May 2nd, 2014

We’ve brought you Talk­ing Heads shows from New York’s CBGB in 1975, Dort­mund, Ger­many in 1980, and Rome that same year. Now we’ve got one more valu­able live find from that for­ma­tive, busy era for the David Byrne-led, Rhode Island School of Design-forged new-wave band: their Novem­ber 1978 per­for­mance in Syra­cuse. The exact venue? Per­haps some­where at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, per­haps not, though a col­lege per­for­mance space would make sense, giv­en how many insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion they played in 1978. The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert His­to­ry blog has a com­plete list, and the total num­ber of shows in that year alone comes in, aston­ish­ing­ly, at over 130, a fair few of them at schools like NYU, Brown, Berklee, Berke­ley, UCLA, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona. “It was real­ly an edu­ca­tion for us,” the page quotes drum­mer Chris Frantz as say­ing of the 1978 tour. “I’m afraid we bit off more than we could chew. We thought that we could play every night, and we found that after four months we were feel­ing pret­ty unin­spired.”

Yet this Syra­cuse gig, which came ten months in, sounds pret­ty inspired to me. It looks it, too, at least from what I can dis­cern from the lo-fi footage. What the image lacks in crisp­ness, though, it makes up for in tech­no­log­i­cal inter­est; it has the sig­na­ture look of the Sony Por­ta­pak, one of the very ear­ly portable con­sumer video record­ing sys­tems beloved of the 1970s’ video ama­teurs and video artists alike. Who­ev­er manned the Por­ta­pak for these 92 min­utes in Syra­cuse cap­tured a valu­able chap­ter in the Talk­ing Heads sto­ry, one the band spent work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble — which, of course, meant play­ing as hard, and as often, as pos­si­ble — and refin­ing their inim­itable sound and sen­si­bil­i­ty in con­cert spaces that, while often low-pro­file, nev­er­the­less pro­vid­ed them with excit­ed and appre­cia­tive audi­ences. Col­lege stu­dents and oth­er­wise, came eager to hear some­thing new — and giv­en that the 70s, that decade of slick dis­co and smooth rock, had almost come to a close, some­thing a bit askew. The Talk­ing Heads, as we see them here, could glad­ly deliv­er.

Set list:

1. The Big Coun­try
2. Warn­ing Sign
3. The Book I Read
4. Stay Hun­gry
5. Artists Only
6. The Girls Want to Be with the Girls
7. The Good Thing
8. Love Goes to Build­ings on Fire
9. Elec­tric­i­ty
10. Found a Job
11. Take Me to the Riv­er
12. I’m Not in Love
13. No Com­pas­sion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play Live in Dort­mund, Ger­many Dur­ing Their Hey­day (1980)

Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Live in Rome, 1980: The Talk­ing Heads Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

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.

Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968)

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | May 2nd, 2014

Exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cian and inven­tor Bruce Haack’s com­po­si­tions expand­ed many a young con­scious­ness, and taught kids to dance, move, med­i­tate, and to be end­less­ly curi­ous about the tech­nol­o­gy of sound. All of this makes him the per­fect guest for Fred Rogers, who despite his total­ly square demeanor loved bring­ing his audi­ence unusu­al artists of all kinds. In the clips above and below from the first, 1968 sea­son of Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood, Haack intro­duces Rogers and a group of young­sters to the “musi­cal com­put­er,” a home­made ana­log syn­the­siz­er of his own invention—one of many he cre­at­ed from house­hold items, most of which inte­grat­ed human touch and move­ment into their con­trols, as you’ll see above. In both clips, Haack and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Esther Nel­son sing and play charm­ing songs as Nel­son leads them in var­i­ous move­ment exer­cis­es. (The remain­der of the sec­ond video most­ly fea­tures Mr. Roger’s cat.)

Although he’s seen a revival among elec­tron­ic musi­cians and DJs, Haack became best known in his career as a com­pos­er of children’s music, and for good rea­son. His 1962 debut kid’s record Dance, Sing & Lis­ten is an absolute clas­sic of the genre, com­bin­ing a dizzy­ing range of musi­cal styles—country, clas­si­cal, pop, medieval, and exper­i­men­tal electronic—with far-out spo­ken word from Haack and Nel­son. They fol­lowed this up with two more iter­a­tions of Dance, Sing & Lis­ten, then The Way Out Record for Chil­dren, The Elec­tron­ic Record for Chil­dren, the amaz­ing Dance to the Music, and sev­er­al more, all them weird­er and more won­der­ful than maybe any­thing you’ve ever heard. (Don’t believe me? Take a lis­ten to “Soul Trans­porta­tion,” “EIO (New Mac­Don­ald),” or the absolute­ly enchant­i­ng “Saint Basil,” with its Doors‑y organ out­ro.)

A psy­che­del­ic genius, Haack also made grown-up acid rock in the form of 1970’s The Elec­tric Lucifer, which is a bit like if Andrew Lloyd Web­ber and Tim Rice had writ­ten Jesus Christ Super­star on heavy dos­es of LSD and banks of ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

While Haack­’s Mr. Rogers appear­ance may not have seemed like much at the time, in hind­sight this is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of an artist who’s been called “The King of Tech­no” for his for­ward-look­ing sounds meet­ing the cut­ting edge in children’s pro­gram­ming. It’s a tes­ta­ment to how much the coun­ter­cul­ture influ­enced ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion. Many of the pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ments of the six­ties have since become his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, replaced by insipid cor­po­rate mer­chan­dis­ing. What Haack and Nel­son’s musi­cal approach tells me is that we’d do well to revis­it the edu­ca­tion­al cli­mate of that day and take a few lessons from its freeform exper­i­men­ta­tion and open­ness. I’ll cer­tain­ly be play­ing these records for my daugh­ter.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

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

Albert Camus Wins the Nobel Prize & Sends a Letter of Gratitude to His Elementary School Teacher (1957)

in Letters, Literature | May 1st, 2014

Image by Unit­ed Press Inter­na­tion­al, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What would you do if you won a Nobel Prize? Who would you thank? We’ve all won­dered about it, per­haps not about the Nobel specif­i­cal­ly, but about some poten­tial­ly lega­cy-con­firm­ing prize or oth­er — maybe an Oscar, maybe a MacArthur Fel­low­ship. When Albert Camus, the short-lived French nov­el­ist-philoso­pher who wrote such endur­ing works as The Stranger and The Myth of Sisy­phus, won the Nobel for Lit­er­a­ture in 1957 “for his impor­tant lit­er­ary pro­duc­tion, which with clear-sight­ed earnest­ness illu­mi­nates the prob­lems of the human con­science in our times,” he thanked an ele­men­tary-school teacher. “One could argue that, in the his­to­ry of the field, few teacher-pupil rela­tion­ships have had more dra­mat­ic impact than that of Louis Ger­main on his young pupil Albert Camus,” says a Chica­go Tri­bune arti­cle pub­lished dur­ing an upswing in Amer­i­can inter­est in Camus’ work. That hap­pened soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of his unfin­ished auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el The First Man, a “clas­sic sto­ry of a poor boy who made good” whose appen­dix includes the author’s real-life cor­re­spon­dence with his for­mer teacher.

One of these let­ters Camus wrote to Ger­main not long after win­ning the Nobel. (You can hear his actu­al accep­tance speech here.) He no doubt saw the old­er man’s for­ma­tive influ­ence as essen­tial to the work that brought that pres­ti­gious prize his way, since, as Let­ters of Note puts it, “he was just 11-months-old when his father was killed in action dur­ing The Bat­tle of the Marne; his moth­er, par­tial­ly deaf and illit­er­ate, then raised her boys in extreme pover­ty with the help of his heavy-hand­ed grand­moth­er. It was in school that Camus shone, due in no small part to the encour­age­ment offered by his beloved teacher.” Though nev­er thrilled about pub­lic hon­ors of this type, Camus nonethe­less knew a chance to express long-felt grat­i­tude when he saw it, and to Ger­main he wrote these sen­tences as brief and as pow­er­ful as many in his books: 

19 Novem­ber 1957

Dear Mon­sieur Ger­main,

I let the com­mo­tion around me these days sub­side a bit before speak­ing to you from the bot­tom of my heart. I have just been giv­en far too great an hon­our, one I nei­ther sought nor solicit­ed.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my moth­er, was of you. With­out you, with­out the affec­tion­ate hand you extend­ed to the small poor child that I was, with­out your teach­ing and exam­ple, none of all this would have hap­pened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of hon­our. But at least it gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the gen­er­ous heart you put into it still live in one of your lit­tle school­boys who, despite the years, has nev­er stopped being your grate­ful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus

For more such mem­o­rable cor­re­spon­dence, do con­sid­er hav­ing a look at Let­ters of Note’s new­ly pub­lished book, Let­ters of Note: An Eclec­tic Col­lec­tion of Cor­re­spon­dence Deserv­ing of a Wider Audi­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

On His 100th Birth­day, Hear Albert Camus Deliv­er His Nobel Prize Accep­tance Speech (1957)

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

Albert Camus Talks About Adapt­ing Dos­toyevsky for the The­atre, 1959

The Fall by Albert Camus Ani­mat­ed

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.

Cigarette Commercials from David Lynch, the Coen Brothers and Jean Luc Godard

in Film | May 1st, 2014

Even the great­est film­mak­ers out there some­times need to pay the bills.

In the 1990s, Swiss tobac­co com­pa­ny F. J. Bur­rus hired name brand art house direc­tors to make com­mer­cials for their Parisi­enne brand of cig­a­rettes. The com­pa­ny gave free rein to the film­mak­ers both in terms of con­tent and approach. And the tal­ent they man­aged to attract is aston­ish­ing: David Lynch, the Coen Broth­ers, Emir Kus­turi­ca, Roman Polan­s­ki and, most puz­zling­ly, Jean-Luc Godard.

Wait a sec­ond, you might say. Wasn’t Godard an avowed Maoist at one point in his life? Wasn’t he one of the most con­sis­tent­ly anti-bour­geois, anti-cap­i­tal­ist fig­ures in film­dom? Yes. And he also did cig­a­rette com­mer­cials. He did a few for Nike too.

You can see his ad for Parisi­enne above. Typ­i­cal with late peri­od Godard, the com­mer­cial is both lit­er­ary, polit­i­cal and will­ful­ly dif­fi­cult. Cred­it­ed to both Godard and his long time cre­ative and roman­tic part­ner Anne-Marie Miéville, the com­mer­cial fea­tures a skate­board­er slalom­ing between large box­es of cig­a­rettes, some guy in bare feet shuf­fling through a floor lit­tered with Parisi­enne pack­ages and a well-to-do woman read­ing a nov­el called Parisi­enne Peo­ple. On the sound­track, Godard reads a quote from Racine. It’s prob­a­bly noth­ing that Don Drap­er would have been hap­py with, but Bur­rus was pleased.

Ads by oth­er film­mak­ers sim­i­lar­ly show off their quirks and obses­sions. The Coen broth­ers’ com­mer­cial, for instance, looks less like an advert than a scene from one of their movies. A dandy smok­ing a cig from a hold­er is deeply moved by a sweaty vaude­ville per­for­mance. When it ends, he whis­pers, “Again.” It’s a res­o­lu­tion that rais­es as many ques­tions as it answers. It’s a whole short sto­ry in 30 sec­onds.

Emir Kusturica’s ad is packed with magi­cians, acro­bats, Balkan pas­tiche and gor­geous ingénues in black. Just like his movies. Side note: Kus­turi­ca has a suc­cess­ful side career play­ing in a band called The No Smok­ing Orches­tra.

Roman Polanski’s com­mer­cial is a jokey tale about a vam­pire that has an unset­tling­ly under­cur­rent of men­ace and sex­u­al vio­lence. Just like his movies.

And David Lynch’s ad plays out like a night­mare from some­one who fell asleep read­ing a Wal­ter Mosley nov­el.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ing­mar Bergman’s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

Fellini’s Fan­tas­tic TV Com­mer­cials

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

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.

When Neil Young & Rick James Created the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

in Music | May 1st, 2014

The lega­cy of Rick James, who died in 2004, may be for­ev­er entwined with Dave Chappelle’s insane imper­son­ations and MC Hammer’s use of “Super Freak,” but there is anoth­er major star whose one­time asso­ci­a­tion with James has been obscured in music his­to­ry. I’m talk­ing about Neil Young, who once played gui­tar in a Toron­to R&B group called The Mynah Birds, the first most­ly white band signed to Motown Records in the mid-60s. The band’s lead singer? A young AWOL Amer­i­can sailor who went by the name of Ricky James Matthews, lat­er Rick James. Before James went full-on funk and Young invent­ed folk-rock, the two con­nect­ed in this pro­to-super­group that includ­ed, writes rock his­to­ri­an Nick War­bur­ton, “sev­er­al notable musi­cians who lat­er found fame with the likes of Buf­fa­lo Spring­field and Step­pen­wolf.” “It would be a gross over­sight,” writes War­bur­ton, “to view the group as mere­ly a foot­note to Rick James and Neil Young’s careers.”

It would also be a mis­take to con­sid­er The Mynah Birds a minor league out­fit. As you can hear above in “I’ve Got You In My Soul” (top), “It’s My Time” (above—co-written by Young and James), and “I’ll Wait For­ev­er” (below), this was seri­ous rock and roll, with a loose, garage-rock jan­gle and raw, soul­ful vocal melodies. The Mynah Birds were also, accord­ing to Jim­my McDo­nough, seri­ous show­men. McDo­nough describes their onstage pres­ence in his Neil Young biog­ra­phy Shakey:

The Mynah Birds—in black leather jack­ets, yel­low turtle­necks and boots—had quite a sur­re­al scene going…. Those lucky enough to see any of the band’s few gigs say they were elec­tri­fy­ing. ‘Neil would stop play­ing lead, do a harp solo, throw the har­mon­i­ca way up in the air and Ricky would catch it and con­tin­ue the solo.’

This is a far cry from the scruffy, earnest Young of Har­vest or CSNY or even the Les Paul-wield­ing jam-rock­er of Crazy Horse and his 90s grunge revival peri­od (and more recent Psy­che­del­ic Pill). But the folky leads in his gui­tar work with James’ band hint at his lat­er incar­na­tions.

Is it a stretch to imag­ine James fronting a band of white Cana­di­an rock­ers? Young remem­bers the dri­ven Amer­i­can singer—who crossed the bor­der to avoid his draft assignment—as “a lit­tle bit touchy, dominating—but a good guy.” He also told McDo­nough that James was drawn pri­mar­i­ly to the sound of the Rolling Stones, and brought the rest of the band around: “We got more and more into how cool the Stones were. How sim­ple they were and how cool it was.” James had them play “Get Off My Cloud” and “Satisfaction”—before the braids, cocaine, and sequins, Rick James “fan­cied him­self the next Mick Jag­ger.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the band, U.S. author­i­ties caught up with James, Motown shelved the tapes, and they were nev­er released. Discouraged—Young told MOJO Mag­a­zine in 1995—he “moved instead towards acoustic music and imme­di­ate­ly became very intro­spec­tive and musi­cal­ly-inward. That’s the begin­ning of that whole side to my music.” Young got in his hearse and head­ed for the States, James did his stint in the Navy, and the rest is, well, you know…. But the sound of The Mynah Birds lived on, per­haps, in at least one Neil Young song. His 1967 “Mr. Soul” with Buf­fa­lo Spring­field, below, is clas­sic six­ties rock and soul with a riff lift­ed right from the Stones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Sto­ry: How Neil Young Intro­duced His Clas­sic 1972 Album Har­vest to Gra­ham Nash

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

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

Peter Sellers Presents The Complete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

in Comedy, Film | April 30th, 2014

“There was no Peter Sell­ers,” author Bruce Jay Fried­man once wrote. “He was close to pan­ic as him­self and came alive only when he was imper­son­at­ing some­one else.”

While Sell­ers might have been a curi­ous­ly detached and deeply inse­cure per­son in real life, he was a strik­ing, mem­o­rable fig­ure on the sil­ver screen. His com­ic imag­i­na­tion and stun­ning ver­sa­til­i­ty made him the stand out in just about every movie he was in. In Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Sell­ers played three dif­fer­ent roles using three very dif­fer­ent accents – the upper crust plum­mi­ness of Capt. Man­drake, the Mid­west­ern flat­ness of the hap­less Pres­i­dent Muf­fley and the shriek­ing Teu­ton­ic lilt of Dr. Strangelove whose voice is a bit like how one might imag­ine Hen­ry Kissinger’s after fif­teen Red Bulls.

Sell­ers, of course, got his start in the radio and through­out his career, he con­tin­ued to make audio record­ings of his com­e­dy rou­tines. In his 1979 bit, The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles, Sell­ers shows just how good a mim­ic he real­ly is.

The piece is nar­rat­ed by Don Shul­man, an Amer­i­can pro­fes­sor of “accents and lan­guages” who likes lit­tle more than to go to Europe to “hear the music of the oth­er languages…Hearing French spoke, for exam­ple, is a sen­su­al expe­ri­ence.” And then what fol­lows is a minute or so of pitch-per­fect gib­ber­ish that does in fact sound a lot like French. He then moves on to the sound of oth­er lan­guages. “The music of the Ger­man lan­guage, on the oth­er hand, is excit­ing and slight­ly, well, slight­ly fright­en­ing. Like a show­er of cold beer.”

As you might guess from the title, Sell­ers then moves on to the British Isles. We’re treat­ed to a song about Argenti­na sung in a near­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble Cock­ney, a mean­der­ing mono­logue by a hotel own­er in a sim­i­lar­ly dense Sus­sex acci­dent. Shul­man then talks to peo­ple in Birm­ing­ham, York­shire, Glas­gow and Liv­er­pool among oth­ers. And the whole thing is all done by one spec­tac­u­lar­ly tal­ent­ed per­son. It’s like the audio equiv­a­lent of a per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed mag­ic trick or dance rou­tine. And, unlike Criss Angel, Sell­ers is (inten­tion­al­ly) fun­ny. Check out part one up top and part two below that.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief Tour of British Accents: 14 Ways to Speak Eng­lish in 84 Sec­onds

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ ‘She Loves You’ in Four Voic­es

Sir Patrick Stew­art Demon­strates How Cows Moo in Dif­fer­ent Eng­lish Accents

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.

Play “Space War!,” One of the Earliest Video Games, on Your Computer (1962)

in Video Games | April 30th, 2014

Archive.org con­tin­ues adding to its His­tor­i­cal Soft­ware col­lec­tion. Last year, they made avail­able Don­key Kong, Pac Man, Frog­ger & oth­er video games from the Gold­en Age, not to men­tion some clas­sic soft­ware pro­grams like Word­Star and Visi-Calc. Now, they present “Space War!”, a game that came out of MIT back in 1962.

This two-play­er space-bat­tle game — orig­i­nal­ly played off the cath­ode-ray tube of a Dig­i­tal Equip­ment PDP‑1 — was con­sid­ered a major advance­ment in com­put­er gam­ing. Today, only one work­ing PDP‑1 is known to exist, in the Com­put­er His­to­ry Muse­um in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia. But through the mir­a­cle of a JSMESS emu­la­tor, you can play “Space War!” right in your web brows­er. (A fair­ly pow­er­ful com­put­er and recent browser–ideally Firefox–is rec­om­mend­ed.) If you end up play­ing this grandad­dy of com­put­er games, let us know how it goes. You can get more info on Space War! here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load a Pro­to­type of Ever, Jane, a Video Game That Takes You Inside the Vir­tu­al World of Jane Austen

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

Free Fun: Play Don­key Kong, Pac Man, Frog­ger & Oth­er Gold­en Age Video Games In Your Web Brows­er