“Joe Strummer’s London Calling”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

in Music, Radio | January 14th, 2013

Icon­ic Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer passed away a lit­tle over ten years ago on Decem­ber 22nd, 2002. He was 50 years old, and died too soon, leav­ing his fam­i­ly, friends, and fans reel­ing with shock and sad­ness. Strum­mer was the kind of rock star who could renounce fame and mean it, who escaped the Lon­don punk scene with integri­ty and health intact, and who was a larg­er-than-life human­i­tar­i­an, yet also an approach­able every­man.  It’s all these qual­i­ties and, of course, the song­writ­ing, the dis­tinc­tive mum­ble and growl, the indeli­ble image, and the writ­ing and act­ing cred that have endeared him to a few gen­er­a­tions of loy­al admir­ers. In addi­tion to all of the above, Joe Strum­mer was also a free-form radio DJ, play­ing an eclec­tic mix of clas­sic punk, reg­gae, folk, jazz, afrobeat, and about a dozen oth­er gen­res, all sequenced per­fect­ly and intro­duced in his dis­tinc­tive, asphalt bari­tone.

Strum­mer host­ed his UK radio show, “Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing,” through 1998, then again in 2000–2001 (excerpt above). He played his share of Clash songs, as well as—in the lat­er episodes—the occa­sion­al track from his last project, Joe Strum­mer & The Mescaleros.

But aside from the expect­ed punk and reg­gae, there was no telling what he might cue up next; from the Balkan Folk of Emir Kus­turi­ca and The No Smok­ing Orches­tra to the new wave rhum­ba of Zaire’s Thu-Zahi­na, Strum­mer had one hell of an eclec­tic col­lec­tion, which should sur­prise no one who knows his work, but it’s still a joy to hear him spin his roller­coast­er playlists.

And now, you can lis­ten to him spin for eight hours straight if you like. All eight, one hour episodes of Strummer’s radio show are stream­ing free from PRX online radio. You can also down­load all eight episodes as pod­casts, in two-parters, free on iTunes. And if it weren’t already your lucky day: a help­ful gent named Zed has done the inter­net a favor and com­piled playlists for each show, com­plete with links for every artist, from the most notable to most obscure. I would per­son­al­ly rec­om­mend tak­ing a full day off and lis­ten­ing to every show straight through to the end. It may be the per­fect way to hon­or the man who did his lev­el best to bridge music and peo­ple from around the world with his work­ing-class hero per­sona.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing The Clash’s Front­man Joe Strum­mer on His 60th Birth­day

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Com­plete Con­cert

Mick Jones Plays Three Favorite Songs by The Clash at the Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly fin­ished a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

Woody Allen’s Typewriter, Scissors and Stapler: The Great Filmmaker Shows Us How He Writes

in Film, Writing | January 12th, 2013

Here’s a fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle win­dow into the work­ing habits of one our most bril­liant and pro­lif­ic artists. It’s from Robert B. Wei­de’s 2011 PBS film Woody Allen: A Doc­u­men­tary. In the scene above, Allen shows us the machine he has used for six­ty years, the only type­writer he has ever owned: an ear­ly fifties man­u­al Olympia SM‑3. “I bought this when I was six­teen,” Allen says. “It still works like a tank.”

Every com­e­dy sketch, every screen­play, every essay ever writ­ten by Allen was com­posed on the one type­writer. When Wei­de asks Allen how he man­ages with­out the “cut-and-paste” func­tions of a word proces­sor, he pulls out a pair of scis­sors and an old Swing­line sta­pler. “It’s very prim­i­tive, I know,” says Allen, “but it works very well for me.”

“Allen’s per­sis­tence in using the one and only type­writer of his life, and in prac­tic­ing cut-and-sta­ple edit­ing are cer­tain­ly curi­ous, quaint, idio­syn­crat­ic, even endear­ing,” writes Richard Brody in the Front Row blog at The New York­er; “but they’re also proof on the wing of two of Allen’s life­long qualities–untimeliness and hermeticism–as well as of the endur­ing strug­gle in his films between writ­ing and expe­ri­ence.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions

Woody Allen Box­es a Kan­ga­roo, 1967

Woody Allen Talks With the Reverand Bil­ly Gra­ham

‘Stairway to Heaven’: Watch a Moving Tribute to Led Zeppelin at The Kennedy Center

in Music | January 11th, 2013

Last month the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Led Zep­pelin went to Wash­ing­ton to receive lau­rels from the pow­er­ful at the 35th Annu­al Kennedy Cen­ter Hon­ors. The most mem­o­rable moment, by far, came at the end of the event, when drum­mer Jason Bon­ham, son of the late Led Zep­pelin drum­mer John Bon­ham, put on a bowler hat like the one his father used to wear and joined Ann and Nan­cy Wil­son of Heart for a beau­ti­ful­ly arranged and very mov­ing ren­di­tion of “Stair­way to Heav­en.”

It was the grand finale of an evening of enter­tain­ment. Jim­my Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones sat watch­ing from the bal­cony (along­side the oth­er hon­orees and Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and his wife Michelle) as a series of per­form­ers paid trib­ute to the leg­endary rock band. The full 20-minute seg­ment includ­ed an intro­duc­tion by comedic actor Jack Black (who called Led Zep­pelin “the best band ever”) fol­lowed by trib­ute per­for­mances from the Foo Fight­ers, Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz. But the scene that real­ly brought down the house came at the end, when the young Bon­ham joined the Wil­son sis­ters to per­form Led Zep­pelin’s sig­na­ture song.

Ann Wilson’s singing was right on the mark. Under the most intim­i­dat­ing con­di­tions, she gave a beau­ti­ful and fault­less per­for­mance. “It was our hon­or to be asked to do it before an audi­ence like that,” Wil­son wrote after­ward on the Heart Web site. “My main goal though was to please Jim­my Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones…especially Plant, since all these many years he has taught me so much about singing from the soul and has giv­en me such a plea­sure in his lyrics. What a high that night was. Nev­er to be for­got­ten!”

Gui­tarist Shane Fontayne did an admirable job recre­at­ing Page’s famous solo at the cli­max of “Stair­way to Heav­en.”  But the most stir­ring moment came when a heav­en­ly choir–all wear­ing bowler hats to invoke the pres­ence of the depart­ed Bonham–joined Wil­son in singing the final lines of the song. Look­ing down from the bal­cony, the sur­viv­ing band mem­bers were vis­i­bly moved. Tears welled up in Plan­t’s eyes. It was a fit­ting trib­ute to a great band, and proof that rock and roll actu­al­ly can–in some hands, anyway–age grace­ful­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Pays Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of Kash­mir

Jim­my Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exot­ic Mar­rakesh, 1994

Author Gary Shteyngart Reveals Why He Willingly Blurbs His Brains Out

in Books, Comedy, Writing | January 11th, 2013

If you’re an author of lit­er­ary fic­tion, you’d do well to shoot fel­low author Gary Shteyn­gart an advance copy of that soon-to-be-pub­lished mas­ter­piece you’ve got in the pipeline. He won’t just love the book, he’ll blurb it, thus telegraph­ing your insid­er sta­tus to the estab­lish­ment and read­ers in the know. It’s a far from an exclu­sive club. As author Levi Ash­er notes in the video above, Shteyn­gart’s the sort of men­sch who will­ing­ly blurbs his friends. Also friends of friends. Dit­to strangers. (For­mer stranger Karen Rus­sell won­ders if per­haps some agent-deployed fruit bas­ket was respon­si­ble for gar­ner­ing her some of  Shteyn­gart’s “swa­mi mag­ic”.)

The insou­ciant qual­i­ty of the typ­i­cal Shteyn­gart endorse­ment is not intend­ed to tele­graph any insin­cer­i­ty on his part. His mis­sion is secur­ing read­ers for the sort of titles indie book­stores hold dear, and in order for that mis­sion to suc­ceed, he has to gen­er­ate blurbs by the bushel. He may not get to the end of every vol­ume he cham­pi­ons, but he makes it deep enough to get a gen­er­al sense that such a thing might be plea­sur­able.

His high­ly pub­lic will­ing­ness to clam­or aboard oth­er authors’ band­wag­ons has been described as both promis­cu­ity and per­for­mance art. It has inspired a tum­blr, and now the tongue-in-cheek mini-doc­u­men­tary above. Nar­rat­ed by Jonathan Ames, it fea­tures a cav­al­cade of grate­ful New York City-based lit stars, game­ly striv­ing to exude the sort of dev­il-may-care buoy­an­cy at which their hero excels.

Thanks to Edward C. for send­ing this along.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Book Trail­er as Self-Par­o­dy: Stars Gary Shteyn­gart with James Fran­co Cameo

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s best known book was blurbed by Stephen Col­bert.

Previously Unreleased Jimi Hendrix Recording, “Somewhere,” with Buddy Miles and Stephen Stills

in Music | January 11th, 2013

Because it’s Fri­day, we have a treat for you: a recent­ly unearthed take of Jimi Hen­drix rip­ping through a song called “Some­where,” with Band of Gyp­sies drum­mer Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills (of CSNY) on bass. Released last Novem­ber to mark the 70th anniver­sary of Hendrix’s birth, this track will be includ­ed on a 12-song album of pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased Hen­drix record­ings from 1968–69 called Peo­ple, Hell & Angels, com­ing in ear­ly March.

“Some­where” has appeared before, on the 2000 box-set mon­ey­mak­er The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence and a hit-and-miss 2003 dou­ble-disc of cuts called Axis Out­takes (culled from the Axis: Bold as Love Ses­sions). The pre­vi­ous release, how­ev­er, was a dif­fer­ent take, a blues-rock demo made pri­or to Elec­tric Lady­land. Record­ed ear­ly in 1968, with Mitch Mitchell adding drums in ’71, two years after Hendrix’s death, the oth­er ver­sion is noth­ing to write home about, frankly, with a def­i­nite demo feel—exploratory, but some­what unin­spir­ing pro­duc­tion, although the ideas are there (lis­ten to it here).

The ver­sion above is anoth­er ani­mal: it bursts out of the gate in full break­down, then the drums recede, Hen­drix rides the descend­ing rhythm line in a long, expec­tant pause, and when the rhythm kicks back in, he wails and wahs his way into a tight verse, punc­tu­at­ed with bursts of his blues fills and Miles’s con­fi­dent snare cracks. Stephen Stills’ bass play­ing holds up to any­thing Noel Red­ding or Bil­ly Cox con­tributed to Hendrix’s ensem­bles. Between each verse, Hen­drix explodes into the wild solo runs he’s known for. It’s a real gem, and the lyri­cal con­tent per­fect­ly cap­tures the street-lev­el, and South­east Asia-ground-lev­el, hos­til­i­ty, fear, and frus­tra­tion of the late six­ties:

Oh uh,
I see fin­gers, hands and shades of faces,
Reachin up and not quite touch­in the promised land,
I hear pleas and prayers and a des­per­ate whis­per sayin,
 Whoa Lord, please give us a helpin hand,
Yeah yeah

Way down in the back­ground,
I can see frus­trat­ed souls of cities burnin,
And all across the water vapor,
I see weapons barkin out the stamp of death,
And up in the clouds I can imag­ine UFO’s jumpin them­selves,
Laugh­in they sayin,
Those peo­ple so uptight, they sure know how to make a mess

Back in the saloon my tears mix and mildew with my drink,
I can’t real­ly tell my feet from the stones on the floor,
But as far as I know, they may even try to wrap me up in cel­lo­phane and sell me
Broth­ers help me, and dont wor­ry about lookin at the storm
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Hen­drix was right. They did wrap him up and sell him.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

Tim Burton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

in Film, Music | January 11th, 2013

Nobody could ever accuse Tim Bur­ton of under­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The past decade has seen him not only direct sev­en fea­ture films but step into the music video game as well. Most direc­tors inclined to do music videos begin there in order to tran­si­tion to full-fledged movies, but Bur­ton has, to put it mild­ly, nev­er hewn to tra­di­tion. At the top of this post, you can watch his very first music video, pro­duced in 2006 for the song “Bones” by post-punk revival­ists The Killers. Fea­tur­ing mod­el Devon Aoki and 90210 star Michael Ste­ger, the video shows off Bur­ton’s sen­si­bil­i­ties both by plun­der­ing the his­to­ry of ick­i­ly thrilling and sly­ly trans­gres­sive cin­e­ma — pieces of Loli­ta, Crea­ture from the Black Lagoon, and Jason and the Arg­onauts appear — and by mak­ing much the­mat­ic and aes­thet­ic use of the human skele­ton. Most of its action takes place in an ear­ly-six­ties desert dri­ve-in the­ater gone to seed, which seems to me the ide­al venue in which to screen Bur­ton’s fea­tures.

The imag­i­na­tive auteur’s sec­ond and most recent music video came out just this past Sep­tem­ber. Work­ing again in the ser­vice of The Killers, Bur­ton dreamed up anoth­er piece of haunt­ed whim­sy for their song “Here With Me”. In it, a black-clad, seri­ous-eyed ado­les­cent boy — a Bur­ton­ian arche­type if ever there was one — steals and makes a com­pan­ion of a wax man­nequin mod­eled after his favorite B‑movie actress. Fans can thrill to the fact that, to fill the role of this B‑movie actress, in comes Winona Ryder, star of the beloved Bur­ton col­lab­o­ra­tions Beetle­juice and Edward Scis­sorhands. Ryder has led a career filled with its share of both B- and A‑movies, but to which of those lev­els do Bur­ton’s rise? Nei­ther, it would seem, or per­haps both at once, or, even more like­ly, to the lim­i­nal state in between — a hard-to-define psy­cho­log­i­cal space, both Bur­ton’s boost­ers and detrac­tors would agree, of his very own.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton: A Look Inside His Visu­al Imag­i­na­tion

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Making of The Blues Brothers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mission for Comedy & Music

in Comedy, Film, Music | January 11th, 2013

Before you close out the week, you’ll want to spend some time with Ned Zeman’s piece in Van­i­ty Fair, “Soul Men: The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers.” It brings us back to the 1970s, when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd labored to bring their char­ac­ters, Jake and Elwood Blues, onto the nation­al stage. Despite being the stars of Sat­ur­day Night Live, Belushi and Aykroyd had to cajole the show’s pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels into let­ting them per­form as The Blues Broth­ers on late night TV. First, Michaels let them warm up SNL audi­ences before shows. Then, in 1976, Michaels let the Blues Broth­ers make their first live appear­ance. But there was a rub. They had to dress as Killer Bees and not as “John Lee Hook­er gone Hasidic.” Only in April, 1978, did Jake and Elwood make their true SNL debut as a musi­cal act (see below).

Zeman’s piece focus­es most­ly on the next chap­ter in the his­to­ry of The Blues Broth­ers — the mak­ing of the now leg­endary film. That had its own set of dif­fi­cul­ties. Big bud­gets, big ambi­tions and big coke addic­tions, all threat­en­ing to derail the project. Down to the very last moment, the film looked like a guar­an­teed finan­cial bust, to the tune of $27 mil­lion. But, of course, that’s not how things turned out.

Above, you can watch The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers, a 2005 doc­u­men­tary that came out with the 25th anniver­sary re-release of the com­ic mas­ter­piece. Below, watch their SNL debut.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Louis Armstrong and His All Stars Live in Belgium, 1959: The Full Show

in Music | January 10th, 2013

Duke Elling­ton once said of Louis Arm­strong, “He was born poor, died rich, and nev­er hurt any­one on the way.”

The grand­son of slaves, Arm­strong grew up in the poor­est neigh­bor­hood of New Orleans. As a child he was fas­ci­nat­ed with the march­ing bands that played in funer­al pro­ces­sions. At the age of sev­en he went to work for a junk deal­er. He would ride on the junk wag­on and, as he recalled lat­er, toot an old tin horn “as a call for old rags, bones, bot­tles or any­thing that the peo­ple and the kids had to sell.” When the young boy saw an old cor­net in the win­dow of a pawn shop, he asked his boss to loan him the five dol­lars to buy it. He learned to play the instru­ment in the Home for Col­ored Waifs, where he was sent for delin­quen­cy. The gift­ed young­ster soon caught the atten­tion of the pio­neer­ing jazz cor­netist Joe “King” Oliv­er, who became his men­tor. In 1922 Arm­strong joined Oliv­er in Chica­go to play in his famous Cre­ole Jazz Band. He was 21 years old. Before long Arm­strong set out on his own, and in 1925 began record­ing his leg­endary “Hot Five” ses­sions that estab­lished him as a vir­tu­oso and changed the course of jazz his­to­ry. Arm­strong’s horn play­ing and singing made an enor­mous impact on 20th cen­tu­ry music. In 2006, Wyn­ton Marsalis wrote:

Louis Arm­strong’s sound tran­scends time and style. He’s the most mod­ern trum­pet play­er we’ve ever heard and the most ancient…at the same time. He has light in his sound. It’s big and open with a deep spir­i­tu­al essence–a sound clos­est to the Angel Gabriel. You Can’t prac­tice to get Louis Arm­strong’s sound. It’s some­thing with­in him that just came out. Rhyth­mi­cal­ly, he’s the most sophis­ti­cat­ed play­er we’ve ever pro­duced. He places notes unpre­dictably with such great timing–always swing­ing, always coordinated–with over­whelm­ing tran­scen­dent pow­er.

Marsal­is’s com­ments are from the fore­ward to the Jazz Icons DVD Louis Arm­strong: Live in ’59. The con­cert, see Part 1 above, was filmed in March of 1959 in Antwerp, Bel­gium. (Here are the remain­ing parts: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.) It may be the only full Arm­strong con­cert cap­tured on film. By the time it was made, Arm­strong was firm­ly estab­lished as a cul­tur­al icon. He was tour­ing Europe with the All Stars, a group he formed in 1947. The line­up at Antwerp fea­tured Arm­strong on trum­pet and vocals, Michael “Peanuts” Hucko on clar­inet, Trum­my Young on trom­bone, Bil­ly Kyle on piano, Mort Her­bert on bass, Dan­ny Barcelona on drums and Vel­ma Mid­dle­ton on vocals for “St. Louis Blues” and “Ko Ko Mo.” Here’s the com­plete set list:

1. When it’s Sleepy Time Down South
2. (Back Home Again in) Indi­ana
3. Basin Street Blues
4. Tiger Rag
5. Now You Has Jazz
6. Love is Just Around the Cor­ner
7. C’est si bon
8. Mack the Knife
9. Stompin’ at the Savoy
10. St. Louis Blues
11. Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)
12. When the Saints Go March­ing In
13. La Vie en rose

“By the time of the All-Stars per­for­mance in Bel­gium,” writes Rob Bow­man in the lin­er notes, “they were a well-oiled machine, per­form­ing sim­i­lar sets night after night.” But three months lat­er, Arm­strong suf­fered a heart attack in Spo­le­to, Italy, and his pace slowed down. The Antwerp film cap­tures Arm­strong when he was still going strong. It show­cas­es the craft of a con­sum­mate enter­tain­er from the old school, who strove always to please peo­ple. As Bow­man writes:

Com­ing of age as a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian at the dawn of jazz record­ing, musi­cians of Arm­strong’s gen­er­a­tion thought of them­selves, first and fore­most, as enter­tain­ers. Great art might occur in the process, but at the end of the day it was their abil­i­ty to enter­tain that guar­an­teed them an audi­ence and a liv­ing year after year. The roots of such enter­tain­ment for African Amer­i­can musi­cians of Arm­strong’s gen­er­a­tion were min­strel­sy and vaude­ville. To that end, Arm­strong comes across as a larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter, clown­ing, grin­ning from ear to ear, rolling his eyes and mug­ging for the audi­ence through­out the show. That meant shtick like Arm­strong and Young’s parad­ing at the end of “Tiger Rag,” the corn­ball humor of “Now You Has Jazz” and the con­stant guf­faw­ing and drawn out cries of “Ahh” heard at the end of tunes were an inte­gral part of his show. While some con­tem­po­rary crit­ics accused Arm­strong of being an Uncle Tom, they sim­ply did­n’t get it. This was a per­for­mance aes­thet­ic from an ear­li­er point in time, and Arm­strong was a mas­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Trains and the Brits Who Love Them: Monty Python’s Michael Palin on Great Railway Journeys

in Television, Travel | January 10th, 2013

What is it with Britons and trains, any­way? Hard­ly just the title of col­lec­tion of Irvine Welsh’s sto­ries of hero­in and degra­da­tion, the term “trainspot­ting” actu­al­ly refers to a real, and fer­vent­ly pur­sued hob­by; trainspot­ters exist, just as do bird­watch­ers and sports fans. In terms of obses­sion with the design and oper­a­tional minu­ti­ae of their own trains, Britain falls sec­ond only to the even more dense­ly rail-laden Japan. But we Amer­i­cans, pos­sessed of a train sys­tem few would call robust, can’t quite bring our­selves to believe it. Per­haps we just need to hear it from the mouth of Michael Palin, writer, come­di­an, tele­vi­sion host, Python — and avowed trainspot­ter. Most of Pal­in’s fans know him first through his char­ac­ters in the Fly­ing Cir­cus: the shop­keep­er, Lui­gi Ver­cot­ti, Ken Shab­by, and the most mem­o­rable Gum­bys, to name but a few. But some of us know him best as the cen­tral trav­el­er of the globe-span­ning tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries in which he’s starred since 1989. Around the World in Eighty Days, Pole to Pole, Full Cir­cle, Michael Pal­in’s Hem­ing­way Adven­ture, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe, and now Brazil with Michael Palin. Here we have a man who knows how best to get from point A to point Z, and all in between.

But before all of those shows came Pal­in’s first episode of the BBC’s Great Rail­way Jour­neys, a long-run­ning series whose very exis­tence speaks to the vital­i­ty of Britain’s train-relat­ed enthu­si­asm. 1980’s “Con­fes­sions of a Trainspot­ter”, view­able at the top of this post, fol­lows Palin as he makes his glee­ful way from Lon­don to Kyle of Lochalsh in north­west­ern Scot­land on a series of trains fast and slow, long and short, old and new. This estab­lished him as a tele­vi­sion trav­el­er; four­teen years lat­er, he returned to the pro­gram for “Der­ry to Ker­ry”, where he traced his roots along “that best-kept of all trans­port secrets, the Irish rail­way line.” “Is it just us who are like this?” Palin asks. “The British, I mean. Are there any trainspot­ters in Sici­ly? Do Bel­gians go misty-eyed with the thought of see­ing the 12:16 to Antwerp? Do Swedes save up all year for a Has­sel­blad to pho­to­graph a Stock­holm to Gothen­burg coal train crest­ing a 1‑in-57 gra­di­ent?” Per­haps the most defin­i­tive answer comes from a fel­low rail fan he meets mere min­utes lat­er. Palin asks the man if he has always loved trains. “Very near­ly,” he replies. “There was a short peri­od when I became inter­est­ed in girls. Even­tu­al­ly, I got mar­ried and went back to rail­ways.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Amer­i­ca Needs More Palin … Michael Palin, That Is

An Epic Jour­ney on the Trans-Siber­ian Rail­road

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Jack Kerouac’s 30 Beliefs and Techniques For Writing Modern Prose

in Literature, Writing | January 10th, 2013

Image by Tom Palum­bo, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Jack Ker­ouac is the patron saint of every star­ry-eyed, born-too-late, wan­der­lusty hip­ster scribe who falls in love with the poet­ry and vision­ary pow­er of their own inner voice. I may be old and crusty now, but I once fell under Kerouac’s spell and spilled my guts unedit­ed into long ram­bling prose-poems on exis­ten­tial bliss and tantric Bud­dhist bebop. Then lat­er I real­ized some­thing: Kerouac’s Ker­ouac was very good. My Ker­ouac? Not so much. You got­ta do your own thing. I grew out of Kerouac’s influ­ence and didn’t take much of him with me. Then I real­ized that he wasn’t always good. That he’d made the mis­take of every self-pro­claimed genius and stopped let­ting peo­ple tell him “no.” He said so him­self, in a 1968 Paris Review inter­view with Ted Berri­g­an in which he admit­ted that all his edi­tors since the great Mal­colm Cow­ley, “had instruc­tions to leave my prose exact­ly as I wrote it.” Now I know this was part of his method, but some­times the lat­er Ker­ouac need­ed a good edi­tor.

It is a del­i­cate dance, between the inner voice and out­er editor—whether that taskmas­ter is one­self or some­one else—and the great attrac­tion to Ker­ouac is his damn-it-all atti­tude toward tasks and mas­ters. His impro­vi­sa­tion­al prose is the point (I’m sure some­one will tell me I missed it).

Ker­ouac doesn’t just write about free­dom, he writes free­dom, and for most of us tight-assed wor­ry­warts, his voice is heal­ing balm for our writer’s inner exco­ri­a­tions. 1957’s On the Road is an incred­i­ble exper­i­ment in process as prod­uct (it’s not only a nov­el, it’s an art object)–a three-week burst of non-stop, unin­hib­it­ed cre­ativ­i­ty, so leg­end has it, and unequaled in his life­time. And yet despite his aver­sion to tidi­ness, Ker­ouac, like almost every writer, made lists; one in par­tic­u­lar is thir­ty guide­lines he called “Belief & Tech­nique for Mod­ern Prose.” I’ve excerpt­ed what I think are ten high­lights below, either because they seem pro­found­ly beau­ti­ful or pro­found­ly sil­ly, but in a way that only Ker­ouac the holy fool could get away with. This is not “advice for writ­ers.” It’s a cat­a­log of states of being.

1. Scrib­bled secret note­books, and wild type­writ­ten pages, for yr own joy
2. Sub­mis­sive to every­thing, open, lis­ten­ing
3. Try nev­er get drunk out­side yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Some­thing that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumb­saint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bot­tom­less from bot­tom of the mind
9. The unspeak­able visions of the indi­vid­ual
10. No time for poet­ry but exact­ly what is
11. Vision­ary tics shiv­er­ing in the chest
12. In tranced fix­a­tion dream­ing upon object before you
13. Remove lit­er­ary, gram­mat­i­cal and syn­tac­ti­cal inhi­bi­tion
14. Like Proust be an old tea­head of time
15. Telling the true sto­ry of the world in inte­ri­or monolog
16. The jew­el cen­ter of inter­est is the eye with­in the eye
17. Write in rec­ol­lec­tion and amaze­ment for your­self
18. Work from pithy mid­dle eye out, swim­ming in lan­guage sea
19. Accept loss for­ev­er
20. Believe in the holy con­tour of life
21. Strug­gle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see pic­ture bet­ter
23. Keep track of every day the date embla­zoned in yr morn­ing
24. No fear or shame in the dig­ni­ty of yr expe­ri­ence, lan­guage & knowl­edge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pic­tures of it
26. Book­movie is the movie in words, the visu­al Amer­i­can form
27. In praise of Char­ac­ter in the Bleak inhu­man Lone­li­ness
28. Com­pos­ing wild, undis­ci­plined, pure, com­ing in from under, cra­zier the bet­ter
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Direc­tor of Earth­ly movies Spon­sored & Angeled in Heav­en

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Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spo­ken-World Albums: A Sub­lime Union of Beat Lit­er­a­ture and 1950s Jazz

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Jack Kerouac’s Poet­ry & Prose Read/Performed by 20 Icons: Hunter S. Thomp­son, Pat­ti Smith, William S. Bur­roughs, John­ny Depp & More