Bob Dylan Reads “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” On His Holiday Radio Show (2006)

in Music | December 24th, 2024

Allow me to name just a few of the peo­ple I want to hear host­ing and curat­ing radio shows—former Sex Pis­tols’ singer John Lydon, for­mer Clash front­man Joe Strum­mer, for­mer Woody Guthrie imper­son­ator Bob Dylan.…

Luck­i­ly for me, this ain’t just fan­ta­sy base­ball; at var­i­ous times, and with vary­ing lev­els of com­mit­ment, each of these tastemak­ers has host­ed a pro­gram show­cas­ing their own favorite artists. In Dylan’s case, the com­mit­ment was pret­ty sub­stan­tial. His show, Theme Time Radio Hour, ran for almost three years—once a week from 2006 to 2009—on satel­lite radio.

Each episode cen­tered on a gen­er­al theme, hence the title, but the selec­tions were all over the place—more or less what you’d expect from Dylan: an eclec­tic col­lec­tion of folk, blues, gospel, soul, coun­try, mod­ern pop, and rock ‘n’ roll mixed with old-time radio jin­gles, nov­el­ties, and pro­mos, and the host’s odd­ball com­men­tary and hokey humor. Record­ed while Dylan was on the road, then edit­ed togeth­er with pho­ny “lis­ten­er calls” and emails, Theme Time Radio Hour aimed, Dylan said, “to expand the musi­cal taste” of his lis­ten­ers. That it did, even in its most tra­di­tion­al episode, name­ly the hol­i­day spe­cial on Christ­mas and New Year’s, or as Dylan calls it, “a Yule­tide extrav­a­gan­za.”

In his 2006 Christ­mas broad­cast, above, Dylan bounces from Bob Seger to the Sta­ples Singers to Lord Nel­son, “uncrowned king of Soca,” and Mabel Mafuya, who plays “a Mara­bi style, sort of like South African rag­time.” The wide vari­ety of well- and less­er-known artists—all play­ing Christ­mas music—combined with Dylan’s wry inter­jec­tions, makes for delight­ful­ly weird lis­ten­ing. But when it comes time for his own con­tri­bu­tion, he goes for the obvi­ous and recites Clement Clarke Moore’s “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas.” You may not have thought much of this the first time you heard it, much less the mil­lionth. But in Dylan’s read­ing, the stock­ings sound like they were hung with care in some dim, smoky beat­nik cof­fee­house and the sug­ar plums dance to the fin­ger-snap­ping bop rhythms of jazz poet­ry while a harp­si­chord plays “O Tan­nen­baum” in the back­ground.

It’s a very cool ren­di­tion, in oth­er words, of a very corny piece of writ­ing. Through­out the spe­cial, Dylan dis­plays a real knack for suss­ing new sounds and angles from old, tired hol­i­day clich­es. His exten­sive knowl­edge of hol­i­day tunes may place him in the com­pa­ny of John Waters and the many oth­er “men who love Christ­mas music” pro­filed in the doc­u­men­tary Jin­gle Bell Rocks! Whether he is a col­lec­tor or just an avid lis­ten­er, I do not know, but by the time you’ve fin­ished lis­ten­ing to his 2006 Theme Time Radio Hour Christ­mas spe­cial, you will find your appre­ci­a­tion for the hol­i­day genre thor­ough­ly expand­ed.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan’s Thanks­giv­ing Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delec­table Songs

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

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

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How A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Its Beloved Soundtrack Album, Almost Never Happened

in Music, Television | December 24th, 2024

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas uses a cast of ama­teur child voice actors, deals with the theme of sea­son­al depres­sion, and cul­mi­nates in the recita­tion of a Bible verse, all to a jazz score. It was not, safe to say, the spe­cial that CBS had expect­ed, to say noth­ing of its spon­sor, the Coca-Cola Com­pa­ny. In all like­li­hood, it would have been can­celed, but see­ing as it had already been announced and pro­mot­ed (and in any case, was com­plet­ed only a few days before it was sched­uled to air), the show went on. In the event, not only did it please the view­ers of Amer­i­ca, it went on to become one of the most beloved pieces of Christ­mas ani­ma­tion — and that jazz score went on to become one of the most beloved Christ­mas albums.

In the new Dig­ging the Greats video above, bassist Bran­don Shaw breaks down some of the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Vince Guaral­di’s score, with help from drum­mer Ryan Shaw (not just Bran­don’s broth­er, but also a musi­cian with his own direct con­nec­tion to Peanuts pro­duc­tions) and pianist Jon­té Moore.

“There’s beau­ty, because of the major 9 sound­ing, but there’s, like, this ten­sion,” Moore explains while play­ing the imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able chords of “Christ­mas­time Is Here.” “Some­thing’s maybe miss­ing: it could be peo­ple who have lost a loved one, or are maybe just tired of the hol­i­day sea­son, so they have this weight that they car­ry.” We’re a long way indeed from the insipid cheer of many a hol­i­day pro­duc­tion.

“Christ­mas­time Is Here” may be the sin­gle most influ­en­tial piece of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas’ musi­cal lega­cy. But it’s best heard in the con­text of the whole sound­track, where it sounds of a piece with the “jazz arrange­ments of Christ­mas clas­sics,” as Shaw puts it, as well as with “Linus and Lucy,” the Peanuts theme song Guaral­di had pre­vi­ous­ly com­posed. This coher­ent aes­thet­ic and sen­si­bil­i­ty — the com­poser’s, of course, but also that of the world Charles Schulz cre­at­ed — goes a long way toward mak­ing the project not just a col­lec­tion of Christ­mas songs, but an endur­ing Christ­mas album: one that, over the next cou­ple of days, even those of us with­out enthu­si­asm for Christ­mas music in gen­er­al will be spin­ning as many times as we can get away with.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Enjoy Clas­sic Songs from A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas, Per­formed by Vince Guaral­di Trio Drum­mer Jer­ry Granel­li

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

Charles Schulz Draws Char­lie Brown in 45 Sec­onds and Exor­cis­es His Demons

The Endur­ing Appeal of Schulz’s Peanuts — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #116

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Leonardo da Vinci Painted The Last Supper: A Deep Dive Into a Masterpiece

in Art, History | December 23rd, 2024

When Leonar­do da Vin­ci was 42 years old, he had­n’t yet com­plet­ed any major pub­licly view­able work. Not that he’d been idle: in that same era, while work­ing for the Duke of Milan, Ludovi­co Sforza, he “devel­oped, orga­nized, and direct­ed pro­duc­tions for fes­ti­val pageants, tri­umphal pro­ces­sions, masks, joust­ing tour­na­ments, and plays, for which he chore­o­graphed per­for­mances, engi­neered and dec­o­rat­ed stage sets and props, and even designed cos­tumes.” So explains gal­lerist and YouTu­ber James Payne in the new Great Art Explained video above, by way of estab­lish­ing the con­text in which Leonar­do would go on to paint The Last Sup­per.

For the defin­i­tive Renais­sance man, “the­atre was a nat­ur­al are­na to blend art, mechan­ics and design.” He under­stood “not only how per­spec­tive worked on a three-dimen­sion­al stage, but how it worked from dif­fer­ent van­tage points,” and this knowl­edge led to “what would be the great­est the­atri­cal stag­ing of his life”: his paint­ing of Jesus Christ telling the Twelve Apos­tles that one of them will betray him.

This view of The Last Sup­per makes more sense if you see it not as a decon­tex­tu­al­ized image — the way most of us do — but as the mur­al Leonar­do actu­al­ly paint­ed on one wall of Milan’s Con­vent of San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, whose space it extends (and where it makes more sense for every­one to be seat­ed on one side of the table).

Payne goes in-depth on not just the visu­al tech­niques Leonar­do used to make The Last Sup­per’s com­po­si­tion so pow­er­ful, but also the untest­ed paint­ing tech­niques that end­ed up has­ten­ing its dete­ri­o­ra­tion. If you do go to San­ta Maria delle Gra­zie, bear in mind that at best a quar­ter of the mural’s paint was applied by Leonar­do him­self. The rest is the result of a long restora­tion process, made pos­si­ble by the exis­tence of sev­er­al copies made after the work’s com­ple­tion. And indeed, it’s only thanks to one of those copies, whose mak­er includ­ed labels, that we know which Apos­tle is which. Unlike many of the cre­ators of reli­gious art before him, Leonar­do did­n’t make any­thing too obvi­ous; rather, he expressed his for­mi­da­ble skill through the kind of sub­tle­ty acces­si­ble only to those who take their time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

An Immac­u­late Copy of Leonardo’s The Last Sup­per Dig­i­tized by Google: View It in High Res­o­lu­tion Online

Is the Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ing “Sal­va­tor Mun­di” (Which Sold for $450 Mil­lion in 2017) Actu­al­ly Authen­tic?: Michael Lewis Explores the Ques­tion in His New Pod­cast

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

How Did the Mona Lisa Become the World’s Most Famous Paint­ing?: It’s Not What You Think

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Read J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Letter From Father Christmas” To His Young Children (1925)

in Letters, Literature | December 22nd, 2024

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for the sweep­ing fan­ta­sy land­scapes of Lord of The Rings and The Hob­bit. Apart from being a cel­e­brat­ed author, the Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Anglo-Sax­on was also a devot­ed father who dot­ed on his chil­dren.

In 1920, a few short years after Tolkien returned from World War I, he began an endear­ing fam­i­ly Christ­mas tra­di­tion that would con­tin­ue for the next 23 years. After the birth of his first­born son, John, Tolkien began to write his four chil­dren let­ters from Father Christ­mas. These North Pole tales chiefly con­cern Father Christ­mas’ strug­gles against the north’s bat-rid­ing gob­lins, as well as the mis­chie­vous hijinks of his helper, North Polar Bear. An adept illus­tra­tor whose orig­i­nal draw­ings accom­pa­nied many of his writ­ings (see his book cov­er designs for Lord of the Rings), Tolkien includ­ed with many of his Christ­mas let­ters a set of charm­ing pic­tures.

The many let­ters were even­tu­al­ly col­lect­ed in a beau­ti­ful vol­ume called Let­ters From Father Christ­mas. Thanks to the good work of Let­ters of Note, we bring to you a sam­ple let­ter from 1925:

Cliff House

Top of the World

Near the North Pole

Xmas 1925

My dear boys,

I am dread­ful­ly busy this year — it makes my hand more shaky than ever when I think of it — and not very rich. In fact, awful things have been hap­pen­ing, and some of the presents have got spoilt and I haven’t got the North Polar Bear to help me and I have had to move house just before Christ­mas, so you can imag­ine what a state every­thing is in, and you will see why I have a new address, and why I can only write one let­ter between you both. It all hap­pened like this: one very windy day last Novem­ber my hood blew off and went and stuck on the top of the North Pole. I told him not to, but the N.P.Bear climbed up to the thin top to get it down — and he did. The pole broke in the mid­dle and fell on the roof of my house, and the N.P.Bear fell through the hole it made into the din­ing room with my hood over his nose, and all the snow fell off the roof into the house and melt­ed and put out all the fires and ran down into the cel­lars where I was col­lect­ing this year’s presents, and the N.P.Bear’s leg got bro­ken. He is well again now, but I was so cross with him that he says he won’t try to help me again. I expect his tem­per is hurt, and will be mend­ed by next Christ­mas. I send you a pic­ture of the acci­dent, and of my new house on the cliffs above the N.P. (with beau­ti­ful cel­lars in the cliffs). If John can’t read my old shaky writ­ing (1925 years old) he must get his father to. When is Michael going to learn to read, and write his own let­ters to me? Lots of love to you both and Christo­pher, whose name is rather like mine.

That’s all. Good­bye.

Father Christ­mas

via The Paris Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Explore Rarely-Seen Art by J. R. R. Tolkien in a New Web Site Cre­at­ed by the Tolkien Estate

Dis­cov­er J.R.R. Tolkien’s Per­son­al Book Cov­er Designs for The Lord of the Rings Tril­o­gy

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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The Story Behind the Making of the Iconic Surrealist Photograph, Dalí Atomicus (1948)

in History, Photography | December 20th, 2024

With his cane, his famous waxed mus­tache, and his habit of tak­ing unusu­al ani­mals for walks, Sal­vador Dalí would appear to have cul­ti­vat­ed his own pho­tographa­bil­i­ty. But tak­ing a pic­ture of the man who stood as a liv­ing def­i­n­i­tion of pop­u­lar sur­re­al­ism was­n’t a task to be approached casu­al­ly — espe­cial­ly not for Philippe Hals­man, who did it more than any­one else. Orig­i­nal­ly from what’s now Latvia, he led a tur­bu­lent life that even­tu­al­ly (after a cou­ple of inter­ven­tions by none oth­er than Albert Ein­stein, of whom Hals­man lat­er made a famous por­trait) brought him to the Unit­ed States. It was in New York, in 1941, that he met Dalí, hav­ing been assigned to pho­to­graph one of his exhi­bi­tions in the city.

Hals­man had more oppor­tu­ni­ties to pho­to­graph Dalí, and these jobs turned into decades of col­lab­o­ra­tion. Its many fruits include a book con­tain­ing 36 views of the artist’s mus­tache alone, but also the more ambi­tious — and much more sur­re­al — image Dalí Atom­i­cus, from 1948. Inspired by the work-in-progress that would become Leda Atom­i­ca, a por­trait of Dalí’s wife Gala influ­enced by both mythol­o­gy and sci­ence, the pho­to­graph includes not just that paint­ing, but also an arc of water and three fly­ing cats. Or at least they look like they’re fly­ing; in real­i­ty, they were thrown into the frame by a team of assis­tants includ­ing Hals­man­’s wife and his young daugh­ter Irene.

Irene Hals­man recalls the expe­ri­ence in the BBC Time Frame video above, includ­ing the now-wide­ly known detail that Dalí’s own ini­tial con­cept for the pho­to involved blow­ing up a duck with fire­crack­ers. “Oh, no, no, you can’t do that,” she recalls her father respond­ing. “You’re in Amer­i­ca now. You don’t want to be put in jail for ani­mal cru­el­ty.” So fly­ing cats it was, to be visu­al­ly cap­tured in mid-air along with the con­tents of a buck­et of water. Leda Atom­i­ca and a chair were also made to appear as if lev­i­tat­ing, and Dalí him­self was instruct­ed to jump, in an instance of the pho­to­graph­ic prac­tice Hals­man called “jumpol­o­gy” (whose oth­er sub­jects includ­ed Audrey Hep­burn, J. Robert Oppen­heimer, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, and Richard Nixon).

Image via Library of Con­gress

Dalí Atom­i­cus was pub­lished in Life mag­a­zine, to which Hals­man was a pro­lif­ic con­trib­u­tor. The same issue includ­ed a few out­takes, which revealed some of what went into the five-to-six-hour-long process of nail­ing the shot. You can see a few such prints at Art­sy, whose labeled faults include “water splash­es Dalí instead of cat,” “Dalí jumps too late,” and “sec­re­tary gets into pic­ture.” But it was­n’t all just about tim­ing: the pic­ture also required a degree of pre-Pho­to­shop edit­ing to per­fect, and the emp­ty can­vas behind the jump­ing Dalí had to be filled in by the rush of the man him­self, who opt­ed to fill the non-exis­tent paint­ing with motifs drawn from the limbs of the cats. Now there was an artist who knew how to seize inspi­ra­tion when it float­ed by.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound: “No, You Can’t Pour Live Ants All Over Ingrid Bergman!

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

Sal­vador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Con­tributed “Noth­ing” to Art (1986)

Sal­vador Dalí Takes His Anteater for a Stroll in Paris, 1969

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Junky’s Christmas: William S. Burrough’s Dark Claymation Christmas Film Produced by Francis Ford Coppola (1993)

in Film | December 19th, 2024

Back in 1993, the Beat writer William S. Bur­roughs wrote and nar­rat­ed a 21-minute clay­ma­tion Christ­mas film odd­ly pro­duced by Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. And, as you can well imag­ine, it’s not your nor­mal hap­py Christ­mas flick. Nope, this film – The Junky’s Christ­mas – is all about Dan­ny the Car­wiper, a junkie, who spends Christ­mas Day try­ing to score a fix. Even­tu­al­ly he finds the Christ­mas spir­it when he shares some mor­phine with a young man suf­fer­ing from kid­ney stones, giv­ing him the “immac­u­late fix.” There you have it. Hap­py hol­i­days.…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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 

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

 

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Richard Feynman Enthusiastically Explains How to Think Like a Physicist in His Series Fun to Imagine (1983)

in Science, Television | December 19th, 2024

“It’s inter­est­ing that some peo­ple find sci­ence so easy, and oth­ers find it kind of dull and dif­fi­cult,” says Richard Feyn­man at the begin­ning of his 1983 BBC series Fun to Imag­ine. “One of the things that makes it very dif­fi­cult is that it takes a lot of imag­i­na­tion. It’s very hard to imag­ine all the crazy things that things real­ly are like.” A true sci­en­tist accepts that noth­ing is as it seems, in that noth­ing, when you zoom in close enough or zoom out far enough, behaves in a way that accords with our every­day expe­ri­ence. Even the nec­es­sary scales — in which, for exam­ple, an atom is to an apple as an apple is to Earth itself — are dif­fi­cult to con­ceive.

Despite his much-cel­e­brat­ed bril­liance as a physi­cist, Feyn­man also admit­ted to find­ing the quan­ti­ties with which he had to work unfath­omable, at least when exam­ined out­side their par­tic­u­lar con­texts. At the atom­ic lev­el, he explains, “you’re just think­ing of small balls, but you don’t try to think of exact­ly how small they are too often, or you get kind of a bit nut­ty.”

In astron­o­my, “you have the same thing in reverse, because the dis­tance to these stars is so enor­mous.” We all have an idea of what the term “light year” means — assum­ing we don’t mis­un­der­stand it as a unit of time — but who among us can real­ly envi­sion a galaxy 100,000 light years away, let alone a mil­lion?

Feyn­man dis­cuss­es these mat­ters with char­ac­ter­is­tic under­stand­ing and humor across Fun to Imag­ine’s nine seg­ments, which cov­er phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na from fire and mag­nets to rub­ber bands and train wheels. Those who know their physics will appre­ci­ate the vivid­ness and con­ci­sion with which he explains this mate­r­i­al, appar­ent­ly right off the top of his head, and any­one can sense the delight he feels in mere­ly putting his mind to the behav­ior of mat­ter and ener­gy and their rela­tion­ship to the world as we know it. And how­ev­er much plea­sure he derived from under­stand­ing, he also got a kick out of how much mys­tery remains: “Nature’s imag­i­na­tion is so much greater than man’s,” he says toward the end. “She’s nev­er going to let us relax.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Life & Work of Richard Feyn­man Explored in a Three-Part Freako­nom­ics Radio Minis­eries

What Made Richard Feyn­man One of the Most Admired Edu­ca­tors in the World

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

Watch a New Ani­ma­tion of Richard Feynman’s Ode to the Won­der of Life, with Music by Yo-Yo Ma

“The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law”: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music

in Jazz, Math, Music | December 18th, 2024

Physi­cist and sax­o­phon­ist Stephon Alexan­der has argued in his many pub­lic lec­tures and his book The Jazz of Physics that Albert Ein­stein and John Coltrane had quite a lot in com­mon. Alexan­der in par­tic­u­lar draws our atten­tion to the so-called “Coltrane cir­cle,” which resem­bles what any musi­cian will rec­og­nize as the “Cir­cle of Fifths,” but incor­po­rates Coltrane’s own inno­va­tions. Coltrane gave the draw­ing to sax­o­phon­ist and pro­fes­sor Yusef Lateef in 1967, who includ­ed it in his sem­i­nal text, Repos­i­to­ry of Scales and Melod­ic Pat­terns. Where Lateef, as he writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, sees Coltrane’s music as a “spir­i­tu­al jour­ney” that “embraced the con­cerns of a rich tra­di­tion of auto­phys­iopsy­chic music,” Alexan­der sees “the same geo­met­ric prin­ci­ple that moti­vat­ed Einstein’s” quan­tum the­o­ry.

Nei­ther descrip­tion seems out of place. Musi­cian and blog­ger Roel Hol­lan­der notes, “Thelo­nious Monk once said ‘All musi­cians are sub­con­scious­ly math­e­mati­cians.’ Musi­cians like John Coltrane though have been very much aware of the math­e­mat­ics of music and con­scious­ly applied it to his works.”

Coltrane was also very much aware of Einstein’s work and liked to talk about it fre­quent­ly. Musi­cian David Amram remem­bers the Giant Steps genius telling him he “was try­ing to do some­thing like that in music.”

Hol­lan­der care­ful­ly dis­sects Coltrane’s math­e­mat­ics in two the­o­ry-heavy essays, one gen­er­al­ly on Coltrane’s “Music & Geom­e­try” and one specif­i­cal­ly on his “Tone Cir­cle.” Coltrane him­self had lit­tle to say pub­licly about the inten­sive the­o­ret­i­cal work behind his most famous com­po­si­tions, prob­a­bly because he’d rather they speak for them­selves. He pre­ferred to express him­self philo­soph­i­cal­ly and mys­ti­cal­ly, draw­ing equal­ly on his fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence and with spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions of all kinds. Coltrane’s poet­ic way of speak­ing has left his musi­cal inter­preters with a wide vari­ety of ways to look at his Cir­cle, as jazz musi­cian Corey Mwam­ba dis­cov­ered when he infor­mal­ly polled sev­er­al oth­er play­ers on Face­book. Clar­inetist Arun Ghosh, for exam­ple, saw in Coltrane’s “math­e­mat­i­cal prin­ci­ples” a “musi­cal sys­tem that con­nect­ed with The Divine.” It’s a sys­tem, he opined, that “feels quite Islam­ic to me.”

Lateef agreed, and there may be few who under­stood Coltrane’s method bet­ter than he did. He stud­ied close­ly with Coltrane for years, and has been remem­bered since his death in 2013 as a peer and even a men­tor, espe­cial­ly in his ecu­meni­cal embrace of the­o­ry and music from around the world. Lateef even argued that Coltrane’s late-in-life mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme might have been titled “Allah Supreme” were it not for fear of “polit­i­cal back­lash.” Some may find the claim ten­den­tious, but what we see in the wide range of respons­es to Coltrane’s musi­cal the­o­ry, so well encap­su­lat­ed in the draw­ing above, is that his recog­ni­tion, as Lateef writes, of the “struc­tures of music” was as much for him about sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery as it was a reli­gious expe­ri­ence. Both for him were intu­itive process­es that “came into exis­tence,” writes Lateef, “in the mind of the musi­cian through abstrac­tion from expe­ri­ence.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Saint John Coltrane: The San Fran­cis­co Church Built On A Love Supreme

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

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

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Hear Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast from 1938: The Original Tale of Mysterious Objects Flying Over New Jersey

in Current Affairs, History, Radio | December 18th, 2024

A month ago, drones were spot­ted near Mor­ris Coun­ty, New Jer­sey. Since then, reports of fur­ther sight­ings in var­i­ous loca­tions in the region have been lodged on a dai­ly basis, and anx­i­eties about the ori­gin and pur­pose of these uniden­ti­fied fly­ing objects have grown apace. “We have no evi­dence at this time that the report­ed drone sight­ings pose a nation­al secu­ri­ty or pub­lic safe­ty threat or have a for­eign nexus,” declared the FBI and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty in a joint state­ment. But the very lack of fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the mat­ter has stoked the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion; one New Jer­sey con­gress­man spoke of the drones hav­ing come from an Iran­ian “moth­er­ship” off the coast.

If this real-life news sto­ry sounds famil­iar, con­sid­er the fact that Mor­ris Coun­ty lies only about an hour up the road from Grovers Mill, the famous site of the fic­tion­al Mar­t­ian inva­sion dra­ma­tized in Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adap­ta­tion of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Pre­sent­ed like a gen­uine emer­gency broad­cast, it “fooled many who tuned in late and believed the events were real­ly hap­pen­ing,” writes Space.com’s Eliz­a­beth Fer­nan­dez.

The unset­tled nature of Amer­i­can life in the late nine­teen-thir­ties sure­ly played a part, giv­en that, “wedged between two World Wars, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depres­sion and mass unem­ploy­ment.” Some lis­ten­ers assumed that the Mar­tians were in fact Nazis, or that “the crash land­ing was tied to some oth­er envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe.”

In the 86 years since The War of the Worlds aired, the sto­ry of the nation­wide pan­ic it caused has come in for revi­sion: not that many peo­ple were lis­ten­ing in the first place, many few­er took it as real­i­ty, and even then, dras­tic respons­es were uncom­mon. But as Welles him­self recounts in the video above, he heard for decades there­after from lis­ten­ers recount­ing their own pan­ic at the sud­den­ly believ­able prospect of Mars attack­ing Earth.“In fact, we weren’t as inno­cent as we meant to be when we did the Mar­t­ian broad­cast,” he admits. “We were fed up with the way in which every­thing that came over this new, mag­ic box — the radio — was being swal­lowed,” and thus inclined to make “an assault on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of that machine.” What a relief that we here in the 21st cen­tu­ry are, of course, far too sophis­ti­cat­ed to accept every­thing new tech­nol­o­gy con­veys to us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Orson Welles Met H. G. Wells in 1940: Hear the Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Edward Gorey Illus­trates H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in His Inim­itable Goth­ic Style (1960)

Hear Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays (1936–1944)

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

The CIA Has Declas­si­fied 2,780 Pages of UFO-Relat­ed Doc­u­ments, and They’re Now Free to Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the Sex Pistols’ Christmas Party for Kids–Which Happened to Be Their Final Gig in the UK (1977)

in Music | December 17th, 2024

I’m not sure the Sex Pis­tols had “avail­able for children’s par­ties” on their press release, but on a cold and grim Christ­mas in 1977, that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. While many Britons were set­tling in for a warm yule­tide, the Pis­tols decid­ed to host a party/benefit for the chil­dren of strik­ing fire­men and min­ers at a venue called Ivanhoe’s in Hud­der­s­field, UK.

It turned out that this after­noon gig, along with an evening con­cert with full-grown punks in the audi­ence, would be the Pis­tols’ final UK appear­ance. In a few weeks the band would fly to Amer­i­ca for a set of ill-fat­ed gigs and then break up. Soon after that Sid Vicious would be dead.

At the children’s con­cert John Lydon hand­ed out t‑shirts, but­tons, records, and posters. There was a pogo danc­ing com­pe­ti­tion with a skate­board as a prize, dis­co music on the sound sys­tem, and a gigan­tic cake with “Sex Pis­tols” writ­ten on it. (A food fight not only broke out, but was encour­aged.)

Under­stand that by Decem­ber 1977, the Pis­tols were pret­ty much banned from play­ing any­where in Britain, so the announce­ment of this ben­e­fit show was a big deal, and what we would now call “com­mu­ni­ty out­reach” was the oppo­site of the mon­strous image that the British gut­ter press had whipped up against the band.

But Lydon knew they weren’t mon­sters or any threat at all, except towards the estab­lish­ment. And his mem­o­ry of the day is noth­ing but sweet.

Fan­tas­tic. The ulti­mate reward. One of my all-time favourite gigs. Young kids, and we’re doing Bod­ies and they’re burst­ing out with laugh­ter on the ‘f*ck this f*ck that’ verse. The cor­rect response: not the shock hor­ror ‘How dare you?’ Adults bring their own filthy minds into a thing. They don’t quite per­ceive it as a child does. Oh, Johnny’s used a naughty word. ‘Bod­ies’ was from two dif­fer­ent points of view. You’ll find that theme runs through a lot of things I write like ‘Rise’ – “I could be wrong, I could be right”. I’m con­sid­er­ing both sides of the argu­ment, always.

Film direc­tor Julian Tem­ple caught the entire gig on a “big old crap­py U‑matic low-band cam­era” and while clips from the footage have been used in var­i­ous docs before­hand, it was only in 2013 that the entire footage was shown on British tele­vi­sion, along with rem­i­nis­cences from the adults who were chil­dren at the time of the gig.

In the Guardian inter­view with Tem­ple, he looked back at the footage and com­ment­ed on the strange­ness of a UK Christ­mas in 1977:

“In a way, the Pis­tols seem the only thing that’s con­nect­ed with today. Every­thing else seems halfway into the Vic­to­ri­an peri­od, where­as the Pis­tols seem very mod­ern and aware of what’s going to hap­pen. Hope­ful­ly, there’s res­o­nance in the fuel bills and fire­men’s strikes of today. Even though it’s a dif­fer­ent plan­et, peo­ple face the same prob­lems.
“The sound with just one cam­era is raw and sear­ing. I hope kids watch­ing it today will go: ‘Fuck me, bands like that just don’t exist.’ ”

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Riotous 1978 Tour Through the U.S. South: Watch/Hear Con­certs in Dal­las, Mem­phis, Tul­sa & More

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

When the Sex Pis­tols Played at the Chelms­ford Top Secu­ri­ty Prison: Hear Vin­tage Tracks from the 1976 Gig

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Ingenious Engineering of Leonardo da Vinci’s Self-Supporting Bridge, Explained with Animation

in History, Technology | December 17th, 2024

The video above from Sabins Civ­il Engi­neer­ing promis­es to reveal “the MAGIC behind Da Vinci’s Self Sup­port­ing Bridge.” That sounds like a typ­i­cal exam­ple of YouTube hyper­bole, though on first glance, it isn’t at all obvi­ous how the frag­ile-look­ing struc­ture can stay up, much less sup­port the weight of a cross­ing army. Not only does the design use no per­ma­nent joints, says the nar­ra­tor, “the more weight on the bridge, the stronger it becomes.” The key is the dis­tinc­tive man­ner in which the pieces inter­lock, and how it directs force to cre­ate a “fric­tion lock” that ensures sta­bil­i­ty.

Remove just one piece of the bridge, how­ev­er, and it all comes crash­ing down, which is more fea­ture than bug: designed to facil­i­tate troop move­ments, the struc­ture could be dis­man­tled to pre­vent use by the ene­my even more eas­i­ly than it was put up in the first place.

Just one of the var­i­ous tools of war Leonar­do came up with, this bridge was con­ceived under the patron­age of the famous states­man Cesare Bor­gia (a chief inspi­ra­tion for Nic­colò Machi­avel­li’s The Prince), who employed him as an archi­tect and mil­i­tary engi­neer in the ear­ly fif­teen-hun­dreds.

Though Leonar­do’s bridge designs have proven influ­en­tial in the half-mil­len­ni­um since his death — think of him next time you cross the Gala­ta Bridge in Istan­bul — no evi­dence remains that he ever built one in his life­time. But unlike most of his inven­tions, real­ized or the­o­ret­i­cal, you can build it your­self today with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. The video presents an exam­ple large enough to walk across, which may make it feel rather less sta­ble than it actu­al­ly is. Luck­i­ly for stu­dents look­ing to under­stand the self-sup­port­ing bridge in a hands-on man­ner, the same engi­neer­ing prin­ci­ples apply just as well on the more man­age­able scale of pop­si­cle sticks — a mod­ern build­ing mate­r­i­al at which Leonar­do him­self would sure­ly have mar­veled.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Build Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inge­nious Self-Sup­port­ing Bridge: Renais­sance Inno­va­tions You Can Still Enjoy Today

MIT Researchers 3D Print a Bridge Imag­ined by Leonar­do da Vin­ci in 1502— and Prove That It Actu­al­ly Works

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

The Inge­nious Inven­tions of Leonar­do da Vin­ci Recre­at­ed with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

Built to Last: How Ancient Roman Bridges Can Still With­stand the Weight of Mod­ern Cars & Trucks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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