Enjoy a Bluegrass Performance of Elton John’s 1972 Hit, “Rocket Man”

in Music | February 24th, 2014

Last fall, our read­ers loved watch­ing Iron Horse, a blue­grass band from Alaba­ma, per­form­ing a most unusu­al ver­sion of Metal­li­ca’s “Enter Sand­man.” The band’s take on Metal­li­ca’s anthem was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed on the 2003 album, Fade to Blue­grass: Trib­ute to Metal­li­ca, where Iron Horse — with Tony Robert­son on man­dolin, Vance Hen­ry on gui­tar, Ricky Rogers on bass, and Antho­ny Richard­son on ban­jo — played Metal­li­ca hits in blue­grass fash­ion — “or at least as blue­grass as it’s pos­si­ble for Metal­li­ca songs to be.”

This Jan­u­ary, the quar­tet released a new video, this time cov­er­ing “Rock­et Man.” Sung by Elton John in ’72, writ­ten by Bernie Taupin, and inspired by a Ray Brad­bury sto­ry, Rock­et Man has been covered/performed by Cold­play, Kate Bush, My Morn­ing Jack­et and many oth­ers. But, if you have a score­card, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly give Iron Horse top marks for cre­ativ­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty. Hope you enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Blue­grass Ver­sion of Metallica’s Heavy Met­al Hit, “Enter Sand­man”

Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss Sing Coun­try Ver­sions of Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” & “When the Lev­ee Breaks”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Crime Jazz: How Miles Davis, Count Basie & Duke Ellington Created Soundtracks for Noir Films & TV

in Film, Music, Television | February 23rd, 2014

When we think of film noir, we tend to think of a mood best set by a look: shad­ow and light (most­ly shad­ow), grim but visu­al­ly rich weath­er, near-depop­u­lat­ed urban streets. You’ll see plen­ty of that pulled off at the height of the craft in the movies that make up “noir­chae­ol­o­gist” Eddie Muller’s list of 25 noir pic­tures that will endure, which we fea­tured last week. But what will you hear? Though no one com­po­si­tion­al style dom­i­nat­ed the sound­tracks of films noirs, you’ll cer­tain­ly hear more than a few sol­id pieces of crime jazz. Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing, writ­ing about Rhi­no’s epony­mous com­pi­la­tion album, defines this musi­cal genre as “jazzy theme music from 1950s TV shows and movies in which very bad peo­ple do very bad things.” She links to PopCult’s col­lec­tion of clas­sic crime jazz sound­track album cov­ers, from The Third Man to Cha­rade (the best Hitch­cock film, of course, that Hitch­cock nev­er made), to The Man With the Gold­en Arm, all as evoca­tive as the music itself.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly, movie music meant sweep­ing orches­tral themes or tra­di­tion­al Broad­way-style musi­cals,” says PopCult. “But with the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of bebop and hard bop as the sound of urban cool, stu­dios began latch­ing onto the now beat as a way to make their movies seem grit­ty or ‘street.’ ”

At Jazz.com, Alan Kurtz writes about the spread of crime jazz from straight-up film noir to all sorts of pro­duc­tions hav­ing to do with life out­side the law: “In movies and TV, jazz accom­pa­nied the entire sor­did range of police-blot­ter behav­ior, from gam­bling, pros­ti­tu­tion and drug addic­tion to theft, assault, mur­der and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Get your­self in the spir­it of all those mid­cen­tu­ry degen­era­cies and more with the tracks fea­tured here, all of which will take you straight to an ear­li­er kind of mean street: the theme from The M Squad, “two min­utes of may­hem by Count Basie and his mob of heav­ies”; Miles Davis’ “Au Bar du Petit Bac,” impro­vised by Davis and his Parisian band against Louis Malle’s Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows; and Ray Antho­ny’s “Peter Gunn Theme,” a “quick­ie cov­er” that “beat Hen­ry Mancini’s orig­i­nal to the punch.”

And final­ly we have Duke Elling­ton’s score for Anato­my of a Mur­der, direct­ed by Otto Pre­minger in 1959.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Noir Films

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Harvard Presents Two Free Online Courses on the Old Testament

in Harvard, Religion, Yale | February 22nd, 2014

A quick note: Shaye J.D. Cohen, a pro­fes­sor of Hebrew Lit­er­a­ture and Phi­los­o­phy at Har­vard, has just released his sec­ond free course on iTunes. The first course was called The Hebrew Scrip­tures in Judaism & Chris­tian­i­ty. The new one, sim­ply titled The Hebrew Bible, “sur­veys the major books and ideas of the Hebrew Bible (also called the Old Tes­ta­ment) exam­in­ing the his­tor­i­cal con­text in which the texts emerged and were redact­ed. A major sub­text of the course is the dis­tinc­tion between how the Bible was read by ancient inter­preters (whose inter­pre­ta­tions became the basis for many icon­ic lit­er­ary and artis­tic works of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion) and how it is approached by mod­ern bible schol­ar­ship.” The new course, fea­tur­ing 25 sets of video lec­tures and lec­ture notes, has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Reli­gion Cours­es, a sub­sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 1,300 Free Online Cours­es. Oth­er relat­ed cours­es worth explor­ing are Intro­duc­tion to the Old Tes­ta­ment and Intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture, both from Yale.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

“Be All You Can Be. Read”: Peter Max’s 1969 Psychedelic Poster for National Library Week

in Art, Books | February 22nd, 2014

In 1969, Peter Max was cre­at­ing psy­che­del­ic illus­tra­tions that cap­tured the coun­ter­cul­tur­al spir­it of the 1960s. Bright, trip­py, and thought-pro­vok­ing, Max’s art­work fused togeth­er “east­ern yogi phi­los­o­phy, astron­o­my, com­ic books, stud­ies in col­or, and music.” And it cer­tain­ly found an audi­ence. By the late 60s, col­lege dorm rooms across the U.S. were plas­tered with Max’s posters. 72 cor­po­ra­tions — from Gen­er­al Elec­tric to Burling­ton Mills, a man­u­fac­tur­er of socks — licensed his art for com­mer­cial use. Mean­while, in ’69, Max appeared on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sul­li­van Show, and the cov­er of LIFE mag­a­zine (with main arti­cle titled “Peter Max: Por­trait of the artist as a very rich man”).

Even while the cor­po­rate gigs were rolling in, the Ger­man-born illus­tra­tor took on less com­mer­cial projects, like cre­at­ing this poster for Nation­al Library Week, an annu­al event orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion. Mea­sur­ing 36 x 24 inch­es, the 1969 poster, aes­thet­i­cal­ly speak­ing, is vin­tage Max. And it car­ries a mes­sage that sounds as good today as it did then: “Be All You Can Be. Read.” Now dare I steer you toward of our col­lec­tion of 500 Free eBooks? An easy way to make you, a bet­ter you.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Bib­liok­lept

The Art Assignment: Learn About Art & the Creative Process in a New Web Series by John & Sarah Green

in Art | February 21st, 2014

If you haven’t seen the works of John Green, whose “Crash Course” series on world his­to­ry and Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here, you’ve missed out on first-class exam­ples of the learn­ing expe­ri­ences video tech­nol­o­gy, the inter­net, and burn­ing curios­i­ty have now made pos­si­ble. (An antipa­thy to these sub­jects’ tra­di­tion­al class­room teach­ing meth­ods may also have some­thing to do with them.) PBS, how­ev­er, has not missed out, and in part­ner­ship with Green and his wife Sarah Urist Green, they’ve just come out with The Art Assign­ment, a week­ly web series that “cel­e­brates the cre­ative process” and intro­duces “today’s most inno­v­a­tive artis­tic minds.” An ambi­tious mis­sion, and one you can find out more about in the clip above. But the Greens don’t intend to put togeth­er a sim­ple primer on art. The Art Assign­ment, as Urist Green explains, has them “trav­el­ing around the coun­try, vis­it­ing artists and ask­ing them to give you an art assign­ment.”

The first episode has just become avail­able, and, in it, they pay a vis­it to the Flux Fac­to­ry in Queens, where artists Dou­glas Paul­son and Christo­pher Rob­bins tell the sto­ry of their first “col­lab­o­ra­tion,” which involved their meet­ing at high noon in a lake in the Czech Repub­lic, the exact geo­graph­i­cal mid­point between their then-homes in Copen­hagen and Ser­bia. Their assign­ment? “Find some­one. Draw a line between the two of you, meet exact­ly in the mid­dle. Once you’ve agreed on your meet­ing point, date, and time, you’re not allowed to speak to each oth­er by any means.” John then won­ders if that real­ly counts as art (“On some lev­el, to me, art is paint­ing”), which prompts Sarah to quote artist-the­o­rist Roy Ascott: “Stop think­ing about art works as objects, and start think­ing about them as trig­gers for expe­ri­ences.” The Art Assign­ment will doubt­less put the Greens and their fol­low­ers through some inter­est­ing expe­ri­ences indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The 55 Strangest, Great­est Films Nev­er Made (Cho­sen by John Green)

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 99 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Johnny Depp Reads an Infamous Scene from Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels

in Literature | February 21st, 2014

In 1966, Hunter S. Thomp­son launched his career with the pub­li­ca­tion of Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. The book was the result of Thomp­son liv­ing with the bik­ers for a year. He drank with them, hung out with them and wit­nessed both their com­radery and their bru­tal­i­ty. “I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hel­l’s Angels or being slow­ly absorbed by them,” he wrote. He was ulti­mate­ly seduced by their out­law mys­tique and par­tic­u­lar­ly by their pas­sion for motor­cy­cles.

In the video clip above, tak­en from the doc­u­men­tary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son, John­ny Depp reads excerpts from the famed Edge Speech in Hell’s Angels about the joys and ter­rors of rid­ing a bike reck­less­ly at night.

There was no hel­mets on those nights, no speed lim­it, and no cool­ing it down on the curves. The momen­tary free­dom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a waver­ing alco­holic off the wag­on.

Thompson’s flir­ta­tion with the Hell’s Angels end­ed abrupt­ly when he called out a bik­er named Junkie George for engag­ing in domes­tic abuse. “Only a punk beats his wife,” he quipped. Junkie took umbrage and pro­ceed­ed to beat him sense­less.

The book, when it came out, sim­i­lar­ly didn’t impress the Angels. In the clip below, which aired on Cana­di­an TV, an Angel con­fronts a sur­pris­ing­ly qui­et and twitchy Thomp­son before a stu­dio audi­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Inter­views Kei­th Richards

John­ny Depp Reads Let­ters from Hunter S. Thomp­son

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

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.

The Roving Typist: A Short Film About a New York Writer Who Types Short Stories for Strangers

in Creativity, Film, Writing | February 21st, 2014

C.D. Her­melin, a lit­er­ary agency asso­ciate with a degree in Cre­ative Writ­ing, is the self-pro­claimed Rov­ing Typ­ist. It’s an apt title for one who achieved fame and for­tune — okay, rent mon­ey — by appear­ing in var­i­ous pub­lic spaces around New York City, type­writer in lap. Direc­tor Mark Cer­sosi­mo’s short film, above, intro­duces him as a mild-man­nered, slight­ly awk­ward soul. Engag­ing with strangers lured by the sign taped to his type­writer case is where Her­melin comes into his own.

The sign promis­es “sto­ries while you wait,” a con­cept that recalls the “Poems on Demand” author and writ­ing guru, Natal­ie Gold­berg, who com­posed poems to raise funds for the Min­neso­ta Zen Cen­ter. (Her­melin got his idea — and per­mis­sion to imple­ment it — from a guy he saw doing some­thing sim­i­lar in San Fran­cis­co.)

He’s open to requests, and pay­ment is left to the dis­cre­tion of the recip­i­ent. He seems to take extra care when his cus­tomer is a child.

A harm­less enough pur­suit in an era where sub­way musi­cians and car­i­ca­tur­ists lin­ing the path to the Cen­tral Park Zoo hus­tle hard­er than ‘90s-era shell game artistes.

It’s rea­son­able to assume that inno­cent­ly blun­der­ing onto a cel­lo play­er’s turf is the worst trou­ble a guy like Her­melin’s like­ly to stir up.

Instead, he became the tar­get of a mass cyber­bul­ly­ing cam­paign, after a stranger post­ed a pho­to of him and his type­writer parked on the High Line on a swel­ter­ing day in 2012. Cue an avalanche of hip­ster-hat­ing Red­dit com­ments, in addi­tion to a meme at his expense.

Rather than suc­cumb to the vast neg­a­tive out­pour­ing, the Rov­ing Typ­ist con­front­ed the sit­u­a­tion head on, pub­lish­ing his side of the sto­ry in The Awl:

Orig­i­nal­ly, it felt sil­ly label­ing my ven­ture a “cause” while I defend­ed myself to an anony­mous horde—but now it feels any­thing but. The expe­ri­ence of being labeled and then cast aside made me real­ize that what many peo­ple call “hip­ster­ism” or, what they per­ceive as a slav­ish devo­tion to irony, are often in fact just forms of extreme, rad­i­cal sin­cer­i­ty. I think of Brook­lyn-based “hip­ster” brand Mast Broth­ers Choco­late, which uses an old-fash­ioned schooner to retrieve their cacao beans, because the ener­gy is clean­er, because they think that’s how it should be done. I think of the legions of Etsy-type hand­made artist shops, of peo­ple who couldn’t make mon­ey in their pro­fes­sion, so found a way to make mon­ey with their art.

Sub­ject a whim­si­cal project to the forge, and it just might become a voca­tion.

Be sure to check out the bonus out­take “I Was  A Hat­ed Hip­ster Meme” and don’t fret if your trav­els won’t take you near New York City any­time soon. Her­melin and his type­writer are spend­ing the win­ter indoors, ful­fill­ing the pub­lic’s on-demand sto­ries via mail order.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Rees Presents a Primer on the Arti­sanal Craft of Pen­cil Sharp­en­ing

Humans of New York: Street Pho­tog­ra­phy as a Cel­e­bra­tion of Life

What Hap­pens When Every­day Peo­ple Get a Chance to Con­duct a World-Class Orches­tra in NYC

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

Why is Ukraine in Crisis?: A Quick Primer For Those Too Embarrassed to Ask

in Current Affairs | February 21st, 2014

Why have Ukraini­ans been protest­ing since Novem­ber? It’s a ques­tion you might feel strange ask­ing in Feb­ru­ary. But not to wor­ry, The Wash­ing­ton Post has put togeth­er a help­ful video that explains the cri­sis in two min­utes (above), along with a relat­ed primer: 9 ques­tions about Ukraine you were too embar­rassed to ask. A deep­er analy­sis can be found in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

For the lat­est news on what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, you can get live video and social media updates at The New York Times.

Johnny Rotten Goes Before TV’s Judge Judy in 1997 … and Wins!

in Music, Television | February 20th, 2014

In the clip above, ex-Sex Pis­tols leader John Lydon (aka “John­ny Rot­ten”) goes before TV’s Judge Judy in a 1997 episode of the day­time show. How and why this came about I can­not begin to imag­ine. The case is straight­for­ward enough. Robert Williams, for­mer drum­mer of Lydon’s post-Pis­tols band Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed, brought suit against the punk icon for breach of con­tract and assault and bat­tery. Judy obvi­ous­ly doesn’t care much for Williams and calls him a “nud­nik.” She seems to like Lydon, though, despite hav­ing to shush his snide out­bursts numer­ous times. It’s also clear she has absolute­ly no idea who he is. “I don’t know from this band,” she says, “This last band I heard was Lawrence Welk… Jim­my Dorsey… Tom­my Dorsey… I don’t know. Those are bands!”

Judy ulti­mate­ly calls out Williams for expect­ing so much order amidst the chaos of the music busi­ness, and she dis­miss­es his suit. And as for John­ny Rotten’s odd fif­teen min­utes on day­time tele­vi­sion? “Per­haps this was the moment Lydon’s ambi­tion as a TV pre­sen­ter was born,” mus­es Dan­ger­ous Minds. Who knows? It’s a long way from the famous Bill Grundy inter­view, yet per­haps not so far from his tele­vised con­fronta­tions of the fol­low­ing few decades. But con­sid­er as evi­dence a much ear­li­er Lydon appear­ance on a 1979 TV court show, “Juke Box Jury” (above), where Lydon and a pan­el of celebri­ties pass ver­dicts on the cur­rent pop hits: “It ain’t the Don­na Sum­mers I know. I hate it. It was awful!”

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sex Pis­tols Front­man John­ny Rot­ten Weighs In On Lady Gaga, Paul McCart­ney, Madon­na & Katy Per­ry

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

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

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

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket

in Film | February 20th, 2014

Vivian Kubrick, daugh­ter of the late, great film­mak­er, shot a behind-the-scenes movie about the mak­ing of The Shin­ing (1980) at the ten­der age of 17. For Full Met­al Jack­et (1987) – Stan­ley Kubrick’s next movie — Vivian not only com­posed the score under the pseu­do­nym Abi­gail Mead but she also shot 18 hours of footage for anoth­er planned doc­u­men­tary. That movie nev­er came to pass and most like­ly nev­er will; Vivian broke off all con­tact with her fam­i­ly in the late ‘90s.

Yet frag­ments of the behind-the-scenes footage have found their way into a cou­ple of doc­u­men­taries – Stan­ley Kubrick: A Life in Pic­tures, direct­ed by Kubrick’s long time pro­duc­er and broth­er-in-law Jan Har­lan and in Jon Ronson’s Stan­ley Kubrick’s Box­es. (Ron­son actu­al­ly dis­cov­ered the footage in a sta­ble house on the Kubrick estate.)

Some­one has help­ful­ly strung togeth­er the footage into a sin­gle video. See above. One of the first things that strike you is just how weird the shoot was. Though the film cli­max­es dur­ing the bat­tle of Hue in trop­i­cal Viet­nam, Kubrick is seen on set bark­ing orders in a win­ter coat. That’s because the movie was shot in Eng­land. An aban­doned gas works fac­to­ry near Lon­don, of all places, served as the war torn city.

Kubrick’s famed per­fec­tion­ism shines through in the video. He labors to get just the right spac­ing between lime-cov­ered actors play­ing corpses in an open grave and he tells his actors just how many groin pulls to do dur­ing the famous “this is my rifle, this is my gun” sequence. “It should be three shakes. This is…my…gun. In time to the thing.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing (As Told by Those Who Helped Him Make It)

Room 237: New Doc­u­men­tary Explores Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing and Those It Obsess­es

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

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.