The Troggs Tapes: ‘Put a Little Bit of F***ing Fairy Dust Over the Bastard!’

in Comedy, Music | February 7th, 2013

Reg Pres­ley, lead singer of the Six­ties rock group The Trog­gs, died Mon­day at the age of 71. The Trog­gs (short for Troglodytes) are often men­tioned as a major influ­ence on the punk rock move­ment of the 1970s. They record­ed a string of hits between 1966 and 1968, most notably “Wild Thing.” The Trog­gs are also remembered—much to the band’s chagrin—for one of the most noto­ri­ous bootlegs ever: “The Trog­gs Tapes,” described by Uncut mag­a­zine as a “hilar­i­ous, 12-minute swearathon.”

The Trog­gs Tapes were record­ed in Lon­don in 1970. The band was work­ing on a song called “Tran­quil­i­ty,” but things weren’t going well, and the ses­sion degen­er­at­ed into a foul-mouthed orgy of acri­mo­ny and recrim­i­na­tion. A copy of the record­ing some­how made it onto the boot­leg mar­ket and became leg­endary. Sat­ur­day Night Live par­o­died the Trog­gs Tapes in a sketch with Bill Mur­ray, John Belushi and oth­ers play­ing a group of frus­trat­ed medieval musi­cians who say the word “flog­ging” over and over. The tapes are also par­o­died in This is Spinal Tap, dur­ing the record­ing scene at the “Rain­bow Trout Stu­dios.” In a piece this week pay­ing trib­ute to Reg Pres­ley, the Tele­graph music crit­ic Neil McCormick writes:

Before the inter­net, The Trog­gs Tapes were hard to find, yet every­one seemed to know about them, an elu­sive­ness that only added to their allure. I remem­ber get­ting my hands on a copy in a Dublin flea mar­ket, then sit­ting aroud late at night with friends laugh­ing our­selves sil­ly at the inani­ty and pal­pa­ble sense of frus­tra­tion as the musi­cians fail to find a way to artic­u­late and cap­ture some sound idea, beyond the reach of either their lan­guage or their tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties.… In truth, it is the kind of con­ver­sa­tion you can hear every day in record­ing stu­dios all around the world, but there was some­thing lib­er­at­ing and myth-bust­ing about the expe­ri­ence of eaves­drop­ping on these unguard­ed musi­cians at work.

You can lis­ten to an abridged ver­sion of The Trog­gs Tapes above. To learn more about Reg Pres­ley, you can read his fit­ting­ly uncon­ven­tion­al obit­u­ary in The Tele­graph. And to end things off on a pos­i­tive note, we offer a glimpse of The Trog­gs when things were going con­sid­er­ably more smooth­ly, with the band per­form­ing “Wild Thing” in 1966:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive, Explored by the New York­er

The Beauty of Namibian Nights in Timelapse Motion

in Photography | February 6th, 2013

It took Marsel van Oost­en two years and 16,000 images to cre­ate a time­lapse video that cap­tures the inef­fa­ble beau­ty of Namib­ian Nights. Shot with Nikon D3, D3s and D4 cam­eras, the film high­lights van Oost­en’s favorite sites in Namib­ia — “the fairy­tale-like quiv­ertrees and the eery, dead camelthorn trees in Dead­vlei.” For each sec­ond of video, 30 pho­tographs were tak­en. Namib­ian Nights won First Prize in the 2012 Trav­el Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of The Year Awards.

How to Build a Country From Scratch

in Current Affairs | February 6th, 2013

After half a cen­tu­ry of war, the peo­ple of south­ern Sudan vot­ed in ear­ly 2011 to break away from the Sudan and cre­ate their own inde­pen­dent state. The Repub­lic of South Sudan, formed in July of 2011, has its work cut out for it. South Sudan is one of the poor­est and least devel­oped nations in the world, with only a few paved roads in a ter­ri­to­ry the size of France. In most areas of the coun­try there is no for­mal legal sys­tem. And accord­ing to the Unit­ed Nations, more than half of its 9 mil­lion peo­ple live in a con­di­tion of food inse­cu­ri­ty.

In the year and a half since break­ing out on its own, South Sudan has man­aged to under­mine its rep­u­ta­tion as the “good guys” by arrest­ing jour­nal­ists, shoot­ing down a U.N. heli­copter, expelling a U.N. human rights offi­cer and using its mil­i­tary to seize an oil field in Sudanese ter­ri­to­ry. Mean­while, in a coun­try sat­u­rat­ed with weapons, fight­ing has bro­ken out among var­i­ous eth­nic groups.

So there is an ele­ment of irony in the title of this “Op-Doc” from the New York Times by inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers Flo­rence Mar­tin-Kessler and Anne Poiret. How to Build a Coun­try From Scratch (above) is a nine-minute excerpt from a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary that Mar­tin-Kessler and Poiret are work­ing on, called State Builders. The film­mak­ers made four trips to Juba, the largest city and pro­vi­sion­al cap­i­tal of South Sudan, to doc­u­ment the daunt­ing process of cre­at­ing a new nation. “Our mis­sion as film­mak­ers,” they wrote this week in the Times, “was to fol­low the ‘state builders’–those peo­ple in the South Sudanese gov­ern­ment and in the Unit­ed Nations who would be on the front line of imple­ment­ing, step by step, a road map for the world’s newest state.”

French Philosopher Jean Baudrillard Reads His Poetry, Backed By All-Star Arts Band (1996)

in Music, Philosophy, Poetry, Random | February 6th, 2013

Image by Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

French post-struc­tural­ist philosopher/sociologist Jean Bau­drillard—usu­al­ly iden­ti­fied with his post­mod­ern the­o­ries of sim­u­lacra—is a lit­tle bit of a fringe fig­ure in pop cul­ture. Known to hip aca­d­e­m­ic types and avant-garde-ists, he’s maybe the kind of thinker who gets name-dropped more than read (and he’s no easy read).

But in the audio clip above, Bau­drillard reads to us, from his poet­ry no less, while backed by the swirling abstract sounds of The Chance Band, an all art-star ensem­ble fea­tur­ing Tom Wat­son (of The Miss­ing­men), George Hur­ley (of The Min­ute­men and fIRE­HOSE), Lynn John­ston, Dave Muller, Amy Stoll, and guest vocal­ist, the­o­rist Alluc­quère Rosanne (“Sandy”) Stone. It’s an odd, one-time, assem­blage of artists and thinkers UbuWeb describes as “unbe­liev­able but true!”:

Record­ed live as part of the Chance Fes­ti­val at Whiskey Pete’s Casi­no in State­line Neva­da, 1996. You’ve nev­er heard Bau­drillard like this before! Music to read Niet­zsche to.

Indeed. The track above is num­ber two on a twelve-track album called Sui­cide Moi, released in 2002 by Com­pound Annex Records. You can buy the CD here or stream and down­load indi­vid­ual tracks for free on UbuWeb.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Avant-Garde Media: The UbuWeb Col­lec­tion

Der­ri­da: A 2002 Doc­u­men­tary on the Abstract Philoso­pher and the Every­day Man

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

Download Walter Kaufmann’s Lectures on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre & Modern Thought (1960)

in Philosophy | February 6th, 2013

Wal­ter Kauf­mann spent 33 years (1947–1980) teach­ing phi­los­o­phy at Prince­ton. And more than any­one else, Kauf­mann intro­duced Niet­zsche’s phi­los­o­phy to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world and made it pos­si­ble to take Niet­zsche seri­ous­ly as a thinker – some­thing there was­n’t always room to do in Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles.

With­out sim­pli­fy­ing things too much, Kauf­mann saw Niet­zsche as some­thing of an ear­ly exis­ten­tial­ist, which brings us to these vin­tage lec­tures record­ed in 1960 (right around the time that Kauf­mann, a Ger­man-born con­vert to Judaism, also became a nat­u­ral­ized Amer­i­can cit­i­zen). The three lec­tures offer a short primer on exis­ten­tial­ism and the mod­ern crises philoso­phers grap­pled with. Kierkegaard and the Cri­sis in Reli­gion begins the series, fol­lowed by Niet­zsche and the Cri­sis in Phi­los­o­phy and Sartre and the Cri­sis in Moral­i­ty.

Kauf­man­n’s talks are now list­ed in the Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es. There you will also find cours­es pre­sent­ed by more con­tem­po­rary philoso­phers, includ­ing John Sear­le, Hubert Drey­fus, and Michael Sandel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Cours­es from Famous Philoso­phers: From Bertrand Rus­sell to Michel Fou­cault

Phi­los­o­phy with a South­ern Drawl: Rick Rod­er­ick Teach­es Der­ri­da, Fou­cault, Sartre and Oth­ers

Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er (1971)

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

Monty Python’s Life of Brian: Religious Satire, Political Satire, or Blasphemy?

in Comedy, Film, Religion, Television | February 6th, 2013

Before I saw Mon­ty Python’s Life of Bri­an, I only knew that reli­gious peo­ple did­n’t like it, which intrigued me. Then I found out that some reli­gious peo­ple like it very much indeed, which real­ly intrigued me. Build­ing its sto­ry on a satir­i­cal par­al­lel of the life of Jesus Christ, Life of Bri­an could nev­er have helped draw­ing fire. But the Pythons knew how to use it: “So fun­ny it was banned in Nor­way!” read one of the film’s posters, and indeed, the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment put the kibosh on its screen­ings, as did Ire­land’s, as did a num­ber of town coun­cils in Eng­land. “As a satire on reli­gion, this film might well be con­sid­ered a rather slight pro­duc­tion,” writes Richard Web­ster in A Brief His­to­ry of Blas­phemy. “As blas­phe­my it was, even in its orig­i­nal ver­sion, extreme­ly mild. Yet the film was sur­round­ed from its incep­tion by intense anx­i­ety, in some quar­ters of the Estab­lish­ment, about the offence it might cause. As a result it gained a cer­tifi­cate for gen­er­al release only after some cuts had been made. Per­haps more impor­tant­ly still, the film was shunned by the BBC and ITV, who declined to show it for fear of offend­ing Chris­tians in this coun­try.”

All this con­tro­ver­sy came to a now-infa­mous 1979 tele­vi­sion debate: In one cor­ner, we have Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin. In the oth­er, we have con­trar­i­an satirist Mal­colm Mug­geridge and Bish­op of South­wark Mervyn Stock­wood. You can watch the whole broad­cast on Youtube (part one, part two, part three, part four). In the extract above, you can hear Cleese argue that the film does not, in fact, ridicule Jesus Christ, but instead indicts “closed sys­tems of thought” of the type drilled into his con­scious­ness dur­ing his board­ing school years. Palin takes pains to under­score its nature as not whol­ly a reli­gious satire, but more of a jab at mod­ern Eng­lish soci­ety and pol­i­tics trans­posed into the Bib­li­cal past. Mug­geridge and Stock­wood, while den­i­grat­ing Life of Bri­an’s cin­e­mat­ic mer­it all the while, nonethe­less see in it a dan­ger­ous poten­tial to cor­rupt the youth. But it turns out that they’d shown up at their screen­ing fif­teen min­utes late, miss­ing the scenes which would have told them that Jesus Christ and the hap­less Bri­an of the title are two dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Indeed, Bri­an is not the mes­si­ah. The les­son here: watch Life of Bri­an in full, as many times as it takes to get you draw­ing your own non-received con­clu­sions about reli­gion, soci­ety, and com­e­dy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python’s Away From it All: A Twist­ed Trav­el­ogue with John Cleese

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.

Google Street View Takes You on a Panoramic Tour of the Grand Canyon

in Google, Photography, Travel | February 5th, 2013

With Google’s Street View we can amble through New York City’s High Line Park, around the Nation­al Muse­um of Iraq in Bagh­dad, and down the cob­bled streets of Ouro Pre­to, Brazil. Now we can also take a vir­tu­al hike along the rim of the Grand Canyon, fol­low­ing Google’s cam­eras along the his­toric Bright Angel trail from its start at the south rim all the way down the Black Bridge over the Col­orado Riv­er and on to the Phan­tom Ranch camp­ing area.

It’s a per­fect way to check out the ter­rain before tak­ing off for an Ari­zona vaca­tion.

Unlike views in Google’s ear­li­er Street View maps, the Grand Canyon pho­tos are tak­en along rocky, nar­row trails where no car, snow mobile, or motor­bike could ever go. So how did Google col­lect all of the nec­es­sary images?

The Grand Canyon project is the first to uti­lize Trekker, a back­pack-mount­ed cam­era appa­ra­tus worn by a hik­er that takes a pic­ture every 2.5 sec­onds. Trekker weighs 40 pounds and is oper­at­ed by an Android phone held by the hik­er. It has 15 cam­eras point­ed in dif­fer­ent angles that can be com­bined to cre­ate panoram­ic views.

Fol­low the South Kaibab Trail to Skele­ton Point for majes­tic 360-degree views of the misty blue Canyon. It took three days to cap­ture the main trails of the Canyon’s south rim. Two teams hiked down the Bright Angel Trail, camped at Phan­tom Ranch and hiked out the next day along the South Kaibab Trail. Anoth­er team stayed at the top, col­lect­ing images from the rim and from Mete­or Crater out­side the park.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reef View: Google Gives Us Stun­ning Under­wa­ter Shots of Great Coral Reefs

Google Presents an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion of 100,000 Stars

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

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .

Anne Sexton, Confessional Poet, Reads “Wanting to Die” in Ominous 1966 Video

in Literature, Poetry | February 5th, 2013

Many a writer has said they write to save their lives. And many a writer has died by sui­cide. In few cas­es has the con­nec­tion been so direct as in that of the poet Anne Sex­ton. Encour­aged in 1957 by her ther­a­pist to write poet­ry to stave off her sui­ci­dal ideation, she even­tu­al­ly joined a group of mid-cen­tu­ry “con­fes­sion­al” poets based in Boston—including Robert Low­ell and Sylvia Plath—whose per­son­al pathos, fam­i­ly pain, and severe bouts of depres­sion pro­vid­ed much of the mate­r­i­al for their work. Despite Sexton’s tremen­dous career suc­cess at what began, more-or-less, as a hob­by, she became over­whelmed by her ill­ness and com­mit­ted sui­cide in 1974.

There are those who wish to debate whether so-called “con­fes­sion­al poets” were tru­ly tor­ment­ed indi­vid­u­als or navel-gaz­ing nar­cis­sists. This seems fair enough giv­en the will­ing self-expo­sure of poets like Plath, Low­ell, and Sex­ton, but it kind of miss­es the point; their loss­es and trans­gres­sions were as real, or not, as anyone’s, but we remem­ber them, or should, for their writ­ing. Instead I find it inter­est­ing to see their pub­lic selves as per­for­mances, what­ev­er the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal con­nec­tions in the work. A for­mer fash­ion mod­el, Anne Sex­ton was par­tic­u­lar­ly adept at self-pre­sen­ta­tion, and as her fame as a writer increased—she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1966 and a suc­ces­sion of grants and awards through­out the sixties—her poet­ry became less focused on the strict­ly per­son­al, more on the cul­tur­al (she has become well-known, for exam­ple, for a sar­don­ic, fem­i­nist per­spec­tive in such poems as “Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs”). A good deal of her work was pure inven­tion, despite the illu­sion of inti­ma­cy.

Nonethe­less, the short, 1966 film “Anne Sex­ton at Home” (top, with Span­ish sub­ti­tles, con­tin­ued below) lets us engage in some voyeurism. It begins with Sexton’s irri­ta­tion, as she’s inter­rupt­ed by the dog. Then the film cuts away, the scene has changed, and she frankly acknowl­edges the poet’s voice as a “per­sona” (from the Greek for mask); her poems are “mon­sters,” into which she has “pro­ject­ed her­self.” When we cut back again to the first scene, Sex­ton con­fi­dent­ly reads her “Men­stru­a­tion at Forty.” And we cut away again, and Sex­ton, her famil­iar cig­a­rette nev­er far away, riffs on “fam­i­ly & poet­ry” as her hus­band Alfred tries to avoid the cam­era. We see the poet with her daugh­ter, their inter­ac­tions play­ful (and also a lit­tle dis­turb­ing). Through­out it all Sex­ton per­forms, seem­ing­ly pleased and enjoy­ing the camera’s atten­tion.

In the last part of “Anne Sex­ton at Home” (above), the poet reads per­haps her most explic­it work about her many sui­cide attempts, “Want­i­ng to Die.” In a brief intro­duc­tion, she says, “I can explain sex in a minute, but death, I can’t explain.” But the play­ful­ness drains from her demeanor, as she comes to the final two stan­zas:

Bal­anced there, sui­cides some­times meet,
rag­ing at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leav­ing the bread they mis­took for a kiss,

leav­ing the page of the book care­less­ly open,
some­thing unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, what­ev­er it was, an infec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent

For Sylvia Plath’s 80th Birth­day, Hear Her Read ‘A Birth­day Present’

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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

in History, Podcasts | February 5th, 2013

For­ward-think­ing his­to­ri­ans almost come close to for­ward-think­ing come­di­ans in terms of their enthu­si­asm for pod­cast­ing. Per­haps it stands to rea­son, since excel­lence at either pur­suit, dif­fer­ent as they may seem, demands no small degree of mem­o­ry and artic­u­late­ness. We’ve cov­ered sev­er­al ster­ling exam­ples of the his­tor­i­cal pod­cast right here on Open Cul­ture, includ­ing The His­to­ry of Rome, The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium, and The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps. My own his­tor­i­cal­ly-mind­ed pod­cast explo­rations have led me to every­thing from A His­to­ry of the World in 100 Objects to My His­to­ry Can Beat Up Your Pol­i­tics. If you pre­fer to take your his­to­ry lessons through a pair of ear­buds, tech­no­log­i­cal­ly savvy his­to­ry pro­fes­sion­als and pas­sion­ate­ly fas­ci­nat­ed ama­teurs alike have stepped up to fill the need. Rob Mona­co, one of the newest entrants into the game, has tak­en on per­haps the most ambi­tious his­to­ry pod­cast chal­lenge of them all: to tell the entire Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World.

“The gen­e­sis of the show hap­pened late one night after quite a few Dog­fish Head Midas Touch brews were con­sumed with this pod­cast­er’s long­time good bud­dy,” writes Mona­co on the pod­cast’s about page. “As I was a fresh­ly unem­ployed social stud­ies teacher with a mas­ters degree and noth­ing to do, my ami­go sug­gest­ed that I take up the micro­phone and start mak­ing my own show.” Begin­ning with an episode on the ear­li­est cre­ation myths, embed­ded above, he goes on to dis­cuss the dawn of man, the third dynasty of Ur, the ancient Hebrews, King Solomon, and so on, show­ing no signs of slow­ing in his mis­sion to, even­tu­al­ly, get up to the present day. No need to rush him, though, since, like any his­to­ri­an worth his salt, ama­teur or pro­fes­sion­al, he under­stands that telling his­to­ry well means telling a sto­ry well. “Pod­cast­ing is a beau­ti­ful medi­um that gives some­one like me a chance to reach out and share my love and knowl­edge of his­to­ry and cul­ture to a huge audi­ence,” he writes, “an audi­ence that even ten years ago, I would not have been able to reach with­out the back­ing of tra­di­tion­al media. And that’s incred­i­ble.” If he suc­cess­ful­ly pod­casts the whole his­to­ry of our world, well, that’s even more so.

The Pod­cast His­to­ry of Our World is also avail­able on iTunes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Byzan­tium Pod­cast Picks Up Where The His­to­ry of Rome Left Off

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps – Peter Adamson’s Pod­cast Still Going Strong

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.

James Taylor Teaches You to Play “Carolina in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Other Classics on the Guitar

in Music, Online Courses | February 5th, 2013

Some days you’d think that Salman Khan was the only per­son who had the bright idea of putting tuto­ri­als on YouTube. But, if you’re an ama­teur gui­tarist, you know bet­ter. You know that gui­tarists have been post­ing free lessons on YouTube since Day 1, teach­ing new­bies how to buy an acoustic gui­tar, tune it by ear, strum it, and play chord pro­gres­sions. And, what’s more, you can find clips that will read­i­ly teach you how to play your favorite tunes, whether it’s Bob Dylan’s Love Minus Zero/No Lim­it or Led Zep­pelin’s Kash­mir.

Think you just hit pay dirt? Well, it gets even bet­ter.

You can take lessons straight from James Tay­lor, the singer-song­writer him­self. On his YouTube chan­nel/web site, Tay­lor demon­strates how to file your nails, tune your gui­tar, and then start play­ing his clas­sic songs. Fire and Rain? JT has that cov­ered. Car­oli­na in My Mind? That too. And also Enough To Be On Your Way, Sec­ond Wheel, Lit­tle Wheel, and Coun­try Road. Stick around for a while and you might get “Some­thing in the Way She Moves” next.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of “Kash­mir”

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Sound