Thelonious Monk, Legendary Jazz Pianist, Revealed in 1968 Cinéma Vérité Film

in Film, Music | March 22nd, 2013

Thelo­nious Monk’s per­son­al­i­ty was as quirky and orig­i­nal as his piano play­ing. An elu­sive, insu­lar fig­ure, Monk was nev­er­the­less per­suad­ed in late 1967 to allow a cam­era crew to fol­low him around over an extend­ed peri­od of time for a West Ger­man tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary. The film, Monk (shown above in its entire­ty), is a fas­ci­nat­ing up-close look at one of the giants of Jazz.

The 55-minute movie was shot by the Amer­i­can film­mak­ers Michael and Chris­t­ian Black­wood for the net­works NDR (North Ger­man Broad­cast­ing) and WDR (West Ger­man Broad­cast­ing). The Black­wood broth­ers had unprece­dent­ed access to Monk over a six-month peri­od in late 1967 and ear­ly 1968, as he and his quar­tet per­formed and record­ed in New York, Atlanta and Europe. The quar­tet includes Char­lie Rouse on tenor sax­o­phone, Lar­ry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums. Although there are a few brief pas­sages of untrans­lat­ed Ger­man nar­ra­tion, the film is basi­cal­ly a ciné­ma vérité piece on Monk (who speaks Eng­lish) and his remark­able music.

The Black­wood broth­ers’ footage, which Stephen Hold­en of The New York Times called “some of the most valu­able jazz sequences ever shot,” lat­er became the nucle­us of a longer 1988 doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by Clint East­wood. You can watch that film and learn more about it in our 2011 post, “Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk in His Prime: Copen­hagen, 1966

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More

Blade Runner: The Pillar of Sci-Fi Cinema that Siskel, Ebert, and Studio Execs Originally Hated

in Film, Sci Fi | March 22nd, 2013

Grow­ing up, I did­n’t think about all the indi­vid­ual qual­i­ties that make a great movie. I just thought of Blade Run­ner. What­ev­er Rid­ley Scot­t’s 1982 adap­ta­tion of Philip K. Dick­’s Do Androids Dream of Elec­tric Sheep had, it made for high cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty indeed. As naive as it sounds, it does­n’t fall much short of mod­ern crit­i­cal and tar­get-audi­ence con­sen­sus. Visu­al­ly, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, and tech­ni­cal­ly, Blade Run­ner has endured the decades almost effort­less­ly; how many oth­er tales of humans real and arti­fi­cial in a dystopi­an future mega­lopo­lis can you say the same about, at least with a straight face? Yet back in the ear­ly eight­ies, you would have had to call the pic­ture, which opened to a week­end of only $6.15 mil­lion in tick­et sales against its $28 mil­lion bud­get, a flop. Nor could crit­ics come up with much praise: “A waste of time,” said Gene Siskel of Siskel & Ebert. (“I have nev­er quite embraced Blade Run­ner,” Ebert wrote 25 years lat­er, “but now it is time to cave in and admit it to the canon.”)

Have a look at the sheet of screen­ing notes above (or click here to view a larg­er image), and you’ll find that even the stu­dio exec­u­tives did­n’t like the movie. Some Blade Run­ner fans blame the poor ini­tial recep­tion on the cut that 1982’s crit­ics and audi­ences saw, which dif­fers con­sid­er­ably from the ver­sion so many of us revere today. They cite in par­tic­u­lar a series of dead­en­ing­ly explana­to­ry voice-overs per­formed after the fact by star Har­ri­son Ford, which sounds like a clas­sic demand by philis­tine “suits” in charge until you read the notes from one exec­u­tive referred to as J.P.: “Voice over dry and monot­o­ne,” “This voice over is ter­ri­ble,” “Why is this voice over track so ter­ri­ble.” And under “gen­er­al com­ments”: “Voice over is an insult.” But with the offend­ing track­’s removal, the replace­ment of cer­tain shots, tweaks in the plot, and the sim­ple full­ness of time, Blade Run­ner has gone from one of the least respect­ed sci­ence fic­tion films to one of the most. Yet part of me won­ders if some of those high­er-ups in the screen­ing ever made peace with it. A cer­tain A.L., for instance, makes the four­teenth point, and adamant­ly: “They have to put more tits into the Zho­ra dress­ing room scene.”

via Neatora­ma

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

Blade Run­ner: The Final, Final Cut of the Cult Clas­sic

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

What Should Have Entered the Public Domain in 2013?: Philip K. Dick, James Bond, Billie Holiday, Etc

in Law | March 21st, 2013

What entered the pub­lic domain in the US in 2013? It’s not a long answer, because the answer is .… noth­ing.

Now here’s a ques­tion that yields a longer answer. What books would have entered the pub­lic domain if we were still oper­at­ing under rea­son­able, pre-1978 copy­right laws? Here’s a lit­tle list that comes from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain:

• Win­ston Churchill, A His­to­ry of the Eng­lish-Speak­ing Peo­ples
• Philip K. Dick, Minor­i­ty Report
• Ian Flem­ing, Dia­monds are For­ev­er (a James Bond nov­el)
• Fred Gib­son, Old Yeller
• Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lady Sings the Blues
• Alan Lern­er, My Fair Lady
• Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Jour­ney into Night
• John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
• Dodie Smith, 101 Dal­ma­tians

You can also add films to the list, like:

• Hitch­cock­’s The Man Who Knew Too Much
• The Searchers (direct­ed by John Ford and star­ring John Wayne)
  • Note: We have cat­a­logued 21 Free John Wayne films on the web here.
• The Ten Com­mand­ments (1956 ver­sion by Cecil B. DeMille, who also direct­ed a sim­i­lar film in 1923)
• Around the World in 80 Days
• Godzil­la, King of the Mon­sters!
• The Best Things in Life are Free

And we should­n’t fail to men­tion that we could have had the first issue of MAD mag­a­zine, with Alfred E. Neu­man grac­ing the cov­er.

In the mean­time, if you’re won­der­ing what will hit the pub­lic domain in 2014, the answer is “noth­ing.” And you can keep repeat­ing that answer until 2019! That’s the next time some­thing new will enter Amer­i­ca’s cre­ative com­mons. Yet one more rea­son Con­gress’ approval rat­ing deserves to sit at 15%.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lawrence Lessig’s Last Speech on Free Cul­ture. Watch it Online.

Sup­port The Pub­lic Domain Review

Cre­ative Com­mons Announces “School of Open” with Cours­es to Focus on Dig­i­tal Open­ness

House of Earth: Hear Woody Guthrie’s Lost Novel, Published by Johnny Depp, as an Audio Book

in Audio Books, Literature | March 21st, 2013

Woody Guthrie may have writ­ten as many as 3,000 folk songs, but he did­n’t lim­it him­self there. He also man­aged to write a nov­el called House of Earth, which only last month saw the light of day. To whom do we owe the plea­sure of read­ing this pre­vi­ous­ly unknown adden­dum to the pro­lif­ic singer-song­writer’s career? Why, to his­to­ri­an Dou­glas Brink­ley, actor John­ny Depp, and Guthrie’s daugh­ter Nora. Research­ing a forth­com­ing biog­ra­phy of Bob Dylan, Brink­ley spot­ted a men­tion of House of Earth some­where deep in the files of famous folk-music recordist Alan Lomax. He traced the man­u­script to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa library, which had it in stor­age. Depp had recent­ly start­ed his own pub­lish­ing imprint, Infini­tum Nihil, and Brink­ley passed along this promis­ing piece of mate­r­i­al. (The two had known each oth­er for years, hav­ing ini­tial­ly met through that great lit­er­ary con­nec­tor, Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son.)

With House of Earth, Guthrie wrote a Dust Bowl nov­el, but one very much in tune with his own sen­si­bil­i­ties. Unlike John Stein­beck­’s The Grapes of Wrath, Guthrie’s sto­ry fol­lows not the farm fam­i­lies who fled west, but those who remained on the Texas plains. “Pitched some­where between rur­al real­ism and pro­le­tar­i­an protest,” write Brink­ley and Depp in a New York Times Book Review essay, “some­what sta­t­ic in terms of nar­ra­tive dri­ve, ‘House of Earth’ nonethe­less offers a sear­ing por­trait of the Pan­han­dle and its mar­gin­al­ized Great Depres­sion res­i­dents. Guthrie suc­cess­ful­ly mix­es Steinbeck’s nar­ra­tive verve with D. H. Lawrence’s open­ness to erot­ic explo­ration.” As of this week, you can read and also now hear the book, as read by Will Pat­ton, in an audio ver­sion released by Audible.com. (Find info on how to get it for free below.) At the top of this post, you’ll find a short clip of Pat­ton deliv­er­ing the singer’s prose. Though Guthrie will remain best known for his polit­i­cal­ly-charged songs, his nov­el, which launch­es broad­sides against big finance, big lum­ber, and big agri­cul­ture, should car­ry charge enough for any of his enthu­si­asts.

Note: Do you want to down­load House of Earth from Audi­ble for free? Here’s one way to do it. Just head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. You can down­load any audio book for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio book. The choice is yours. And, in full dis­clo­sure, let me tell you that we have a nice arrange­ment with Audi­ble. When­ev­er some­one signs up for a free tri­al, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture. That’s cool. But frankly, we work with them because I per­son­al­ly use the ser­vice noth­ing short of reli­gious­ly. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Guthrie at 100: Cel­e­brate His Amaz­ing Life with a BBC Film

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Let­ter To John Cage and Alan Hov­haness (1947)

375 Free eBooks: Down­load to Kin­dle, iPad/iPhone & Nook

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

Carnegie Hall MOOC Will Teach You How to Listen to Orchestras (Free)

in MOOCs, Music, Online Courses | March 20th, 2013

In advance of its May 2013 con­cert series, Carnegie Hall has cre­at­ed a Mas­sive Open Online Course (MOOC) that will teach stu­dents how to lis­ten to orches­tras. The course, S4MU — short for Spring 4 Music Uni­ver­si­ty — is premised on the idea that “lis­ten­ing is an art itself,” and that you won’t over­come a tin ear by study­ing music the­o­ry alone. Start­ing on April 1, the four-week course will be taught by Bal­ti­more Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra con­duc­tor Marin Alsop; Art­sJour­nal edi­tor Dou­glas McLen­nan (seen above); com­pos­er Jen­nifer Hig­don; vocal­ist Storm Large; and con­duc­tor Leonard Slatkin. Like all oth­er MOOCs, the course is free. You can reserve your spot in the class right here.

Spring 4 Music Uni­ver­si­ty has been added to our com­plete list of MOOCs, where you will find 45 cours­es start­ing in April.

Thanks goes to Max­ine for the heads up on this new offer­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

Bob­by McFer­rin Shows the Pow­er of the Pen­ta­ton­ic Scale

Yale’s Open Course “Lis­ten­ing to Music”

Ralph Ellison Reads from His Novel-in-Progress, Juneteenth, in Rare Video Footage (1966)

in Literature | March 20th, 2013

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Per­haps you haven’t giv­en Ralph Elli­son any thought since read­ing Invis­i­ble Man in high school. Watch the inter­view above, and you’ll have no choice but to con­sid­er his work and opin­ions again. Just past twen­ty min­utes into this short doc­u­men­tary called USA: The Nov­el, he reads an excerpt from a work of his that you may not have read: June­teenth, the book that would fol­low up Invis­i­ble Man — 47 years lat­er. It saw pub­li­ca­tion only in 1999, 33 years after this film on Ellison’s “work in progress,” and five years after his death. He’d writ­ten over 2000 pages, and even then claimed to have lost por­tions of the man­u­script in a fire. One of Ellison’s biog­ra­phers, John F. Calla­han, cut down and orga­nized the remain­ing mate­r­i­al. Anoth­er of his biog­ra­phers, Arnold Ram­per­sad, doubts that the fire destroyed much of the trou­bled nov­el at all.

Though Ellison’s work remains read­i­ly avail­able — even June­teenth reap­peared in 2012 in the 1101-page expan­sion Three Days Before the Shoot­ing… — the writer left behind few­er direct reflec­tions than his fans and schol­ars might like. That makes footage like this all the more valu­able, and, in it, he even address­es his ten­den­cy to not to speak pub­licly: “I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by how the inter­view­er’s mind works, and I’m also aware that, for all my shun­ning of a pub­lic role which is divorced from my iden­ti­ty as a writer, any kind of state­ment I make, any time my face appears, there are a lot of peo­ple who are going to be inter­pret­ing my face, my state­ments in terms of my racial iden­ti­ty rather than in terms of the qual­i­ty of what I have to say. Pow­er for the writer, it seems to me, lies in his abil­i­ty to reveal only a lit­tle bit more about the com­plex­i­ty of human­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Bald­win Bests William F. Buck­ley in 1965 Debate at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty

Robert Penn War­ren Archive Brings Ear­ly Civ­il Rights to Life

Don­ald Barthelme’s Syl­labus High­lights 81 Books Essen­tial for a Lit­er­ary Edu­ca­tion

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

LA County Museum (LACMA) Makes 20,000 Artistic Images Available for Free Download

in Art, Museums, Web/Tech | March 19th, 2013

The Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art hous­es the largest Amer­i­can col­lec­tion of art west of Chica­go. Devel­oped as an “ency­clo­pe­dic” museum—its col­lec­tions rep­re­sent near­ly every human civ­i­liza­tion since record­ed time—LACMA’s eclec­tic hold­ings span from art of the ancient world to video instal­la­tions. Like all great pub­lic col­lec­tions, LACMA sees its mis­sion as pro­vid­ing the great­est pos­si­ble access to the widest range of art.

Two years ago LACMA made a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of its image hold­ings avail­able for free down­load in an online library. From that begin­ning of 2,000 images, the muse­um recent­ly expand­ed its down­load­able col­lec­tion by ten-fold, mak­ing 20,000 images of art­work avail­able for free.

This rep­re­sents about a quar­ter of all the art rep­re­sent­ed on LACMA’s site. They’ve cho­sen images of art­works the muse­um believes to be in the pub­lic domain and devel­oped a robust dig­i­tal archive with a rich­er search func­tion than most muse­ums.

LACMA’s online col­lec­tion (80,000 images alto­geth­er, includ­ing restrict­ed use and unre­strict­ed) is sort­ed by the usu­al cura­to­r­i­al terms (“Amer­i­can Art,” “Art of the Pacif­ic” and so on) but that’s just one of many fil­ter­ing options.

A search for works relat­ed to the word “ros­es” can be done as a gen­er­al search of all objects, turn­ing up, among 268 oth­er items, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Mlle Mar­celle Lender. This item hap­pens to be avail­able for free down­load. (Note the bloom in the Madamoiselle’s cleav­age to see why the image turned up in this search.)

But the col­lec­tion can be searched more nar­row­ly by object type and cura­to­r­i­al area. There’s also a cool option to search by what’s on view now right now. This choice allows users to zero in on a spe­cif­ic build­ing or floor of the museum’s eight build­ings. The col­lec­tion can also be entered accord­ing to chrono­log­i­cal era, from 10,000 BCE to the present day.

This is impor­tant for the pub­lic, but even more so for stu­dents and edu­ca­tors. Nine years ago East­man Kodak stopped pro­duc­ing slide pro­jec­tors. Since then the task of assem­bling qual­i­ty images for the study of art his­to­ry has become hope­less­ly daunt­ing, with teach­ers and stu­dents search­ing a myr­i­ad web­sites to cre­ate dig­i­tal “carousels” for class or study.

For what­ev­er rea­son, in an age over-abun­dant with high res­o­lu­tion images of near­ly every­thing, pic­tures of art itself are scat­tered and expen­sive.

Insti­tu­tions like Google Art Projects, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and LACMA are among a few that offer exten­sive, free art images online.

Of course there are still copy­right issues that all insti­tu­tions must con­tend with. But it is to LACMA’s cred­it that they take their mis­sion of pub­lic access seri­ous­ly and put resources into mak­ing their won­der­ful col­lec­tion avail­able to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site, , to see more work.

Watch Brian Eno’s “Video Paintings,” Where 1980s TV Technology Meets Visual Art

in Art, Music | March 19th, 2013

Bri­an Eno, the well-known music pro­duc­er, res­i­dent intel­lec­tu­al of rock, “non-musi­cian” musi­cian, “drift­ing clar­i­fi­er,” and pop­u­lar­iz­er of ambi­ent records, went to art school. (The Colch­ester Insti­tute in Essex, specif­i­cal­ly.) Any­one famil­iar with Eno’s career knows that Eng­lish art school of the six­ties must have per­fect­ly suit­ed his inter­ests and incli­na­tions. But read up on his gen­er­a­tion of U.K. pop­u­lar musi­cians, and you’ll find art school not a whol­ly unusu­al rite of pas­sage. That back­ground unit­ed sev­er­al of the mem­bers of Roxy Music, the band in which Eno would hone his son­ic craft (and build his noto­ri­ety) in the ear­ly sev­en­ties. Though music would offer him his high­est peaks of fame and for­tune, Eno nev­er quite for­got that he’d orig­i­nal­ly entered art school with the inten­tion of paint­ing. Attend­ing an exhi­bi­tion of his 77 Mil­lion Paint­ings a few years back, I delight­ed in see­ing his inter­est in tech­nol­o­gy and com­po­si­tion inter­sect with his pen­chant for the visu­al arts.

Rewind, now, to the eight­ies, where we find anoth­er, equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of Eno con­tin­u­ing to “paint,” but in a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rethought man­ner. You can now watch his “video paint­ings” of that era on Youtube. Here you can see Thurs­day After­noon, his series on the female form (some of which, despite approach­ing abstrac­tion, could poten­tial­ly be con­sid­ered NSFW, though any main­stream gallery today would show them open­ly). Just above, you’ll find an excerpt from his series Mis­tak­en Mem­o­ries of Medieval Man­hat­tan. It may not look like much, and indeed, Eno’s ini­tial process involved lit­tle more than acci­den­tal­ly leav­ing his cam­corder record­ing on the win­dowsill. But bear in mind that the actu­al instal­la­tion involved screen­ing the piece right-side-up on a tele­vi­sion itself turned on its side — a sim­ple recon­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, but as those who saw the orig­i­nal have assured me, a strik­ing one. Rainy-day project: try repli­cat­ing that set­up at home. I think Eno would approve.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

Day of Light: A Crowd­sourced Film by Mul­ti­me­dia Genius Bri­an Eno

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

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

Big History: David Christian Covers 13.7 Billion Years of History in 18 Minutes

in Astronomy, History, TED Talks | March 19th, 2013

Per­haps you noticed? Dur­ing the past two years, the TED brand has mor­phed into some­thing new. Once known for stag­ing a cou­ple of high-priced annu­al con­fer­ences, TED has recent­ly launched a series of new prod­ucts: TEDx con­fer­ences for the mass­es, TED Books, TED Radio, TED ED and Ads Worth Spread­ing. In the wake of all of this, some have ques­tioned whether TED has grown too quick­ly, or to put it more col­lo­qui­al­ly, “jumped the shark.” There are days when TED feels like a vic­tim of its own suc­cess. But there are oth­er days — espe­cial­ly when it returns to its roots — where the orga­ni­za­tion can still be a vital force. That hap­pens when­ev­er TED wraps up its big annu­al con­fer­ence, as it did two weeks ago, and puts some note­wor­thy talks online. (See, for exam­ple, Stew­art Brand describ­ing how sci­en­tists will bring extinct species back from the dead.) Or it hap­pens when TED brings old­er talks from its archive to YouTube.

Which brings us to the talk above. Here we have David Chris­t­ian, a pro­fes­sor at Aus­trali­a’s Mac­quar­ie Uni­ver­si­ty, explain­ing the his­to­ry of the world in less than 18 min­utes, start­ing with the Big Bang and then cov­er­ing anoth­er 13.7 bil­lion years. For­mal­ly trained as a Russ­ian his­to­ri­an, Chris­t­ian began work­ing on Big His­to­ry in the 1980s, a meta dis­ci­pline that “exam­ines long time frames using a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach based on com­bin­ing numer­ous dis­ci­plines from sci­ence and the human­i­ties.” Chris­t­ian then pop­u­lar­ized his new­fan­gled way of telling his­to­ry when he pro­duced for the Teach­ing Com­pa­ny: Big His­to­ry: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Human­i­ty. It did­n’t hurt that Bill Gates stum­bled upon the lec­tures and gave back­ing to The Big His­to­ry Project, an online ini­tia­tive that exper­i­ments with bring­ing Big His­to­ry to high school stu­dents. The Big His­to­ry Project got its start at the 2011 TED con­fer­ence, with the talk pre­sent­ed above.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

A Crash Course in World His­to­ry

The Com­plete His­to­ry of the World (and Human Cre­ativ­i­ty) in 100 Objects

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

Adrian Belew Presents the Fine Art of Making Guitar Noise — Past, Present, and Future

in Music | March 18th, 2013

Since 1989, the Chica­go Human­i­ties Fes­ti­val has been “devot­ed to mak­ing the human­i­ties a vital and vibrant ingre­di­ent of dai­ly life.” A quick perusal of their site should con­vince you of their seri­ous­ness. The most recent line­up fea­tures a lec­ture on Josephine Bak­er and Eva Per­on, a his­to­ry of the ban­jo, and three Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois pro­fes­sors dis­cussing the first book-length aca­d­e­m­ic study of Mad Men.

But while the focus of CHF may be schol­ar­ly, the fes­ti­val is not all lec­ture-based. In the sum­mer of 2011, gui­tarist Adri­an Belew appeared on a pan­el enti­tled “The His­to­ry and Future of Gui­tar Noise.” Musi­cians out there will like­ly know Belew’s name, but for those who don’t, he was an inte­gral part of prog-rock giants King Crim­son, played with Frank Zap­pa, the Talk­ing Heads, David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, and has made a name for him­self as one of the most unique elec­tric play­ers of the past sev­er­al decades (ref­er­ence his solo below, for exam­ple, at 2:20, in a 1978 live per­for­mance of Bowie’s “Jean Genie”).

In the video at the top of the page, see Belew in con­ver­sa­tion with host Stu­art Flack and a live audi­ence. He talks the his­to­ry of Fend­er guitars—his instru­ments of choice until he start­ed play­ing the Park­er Fly he holds on stage. He dis­cuss­es his cur­rent effects set­up, and the influ­ence of effects pio­neer Jimi Hen­drix on his play­ing. But more than just gui­tar noise, Belew talks about, and demon­strates, the phys­i­cal­i­ty of his play­ing, and the ways that he adapt­ed the instru­ment as an exten­sion of his body.

Belew’s phys­i­cal own­er­ship of the gui­tar makes him a fas­ci­nat­ing play­er to watch, and lis­ten to. He respects the shred­ders who prac­tice six­teen hours a day in their bed­rooms, and yet Belew’s affec­tion lies with play­ers like Jeff Beck, “the guys who make it sound like a voice.” Whomev­er he’s played with, and what­ev­er tech he uses, Belew makes gui­tars sing, in weird elec­tric tones no voice could match. The con­ver­sa­tion above is a treat, but if you’re anx­ious to hear what Belew sounds like late­ly, watch his instru­men­tal per­for­mance of “Dri­ve” (below), a com­po­si­tion built of lay­ers upon lay­ers of looped “noise” and Belew’s indi­vid­ual chordal phras­ing, bends, fin­ger tap­ping, and vibra­to.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Phish Play the Entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light(1996)

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness