Joni Mitchell Sings “Both Sides Now” at the Newport Folk Festival: Watch Clips from Her First Full Concert Since 2002

in Music | July 25th, 2022

This week­end, the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val made head­lines when it brought out of retire­ment two music leg­ends. Paul Simon returned to the stage and per­formed “Grace­land,” “The Box­er” and “oth­er clas­sics.” But Joni Mitchell stole the show when she per­formed (with a lit­tle help from Bran­di Carlile) “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yel­low Taxi,” “Just Like This Train” and 10 oth­er songs. Mitchell suf­fered a brain aneurysm in 2015, and had­n’t per­formed a full con­cert since 2002. Hence why the show was a big deal.

Get the full back­sto­ry on the New­port per­for­mance over at NPR.

Just Like This Train

Sum­mer­time

Cir­cle Game

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Joni Mitchell Pub­lish­es a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paint­ings & Poet­ry

Joni Mitchell Sings an Aching­ly Pret­ty Ver­sion of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

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When Erik Satie Took a Picture of Debussy & Stravinsky (June 1910)

in History, Music, Photography | July 25th, 2022

Erik Satie knew his way around not just the piano but the cam­era as well. This is evi­denced by the image above, a 1911 por­trait of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravin­sky. Described by Christie’s as “an out­stand­ing pho­to­graph of the two com­posers in the library at Debussy’s home,” it was tak­en by Satie at the time when Serge Diaghilev’s Bal­lets Russ­es were per­form­ing Debussy’s Jeux and Stravin­sky’s The Rite of Spring. In the back­ground appears what looks like Kat­sushi­ka Hoku­sai’s The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa, a work of art “used by Debussy on the front cov­er of the first edi­tion of his sym­phon­ic sketch­es La mer.”

Just above appears anoth­er pic­ture cap­tured in Debussy’s home, this one of Debussy and Satie. “The pho­to was tak­en by Stravin­sky, if my mem­o­ry did­n’t go wrong,” says one com­menter on the r/classicalmusic sub­red­dit. Anoth­er express­es con­fu­sion about the sub­jects them­selves: “I thought they did­n’t like each oth­er?”

One respon­der explains that “they were friends at first, for quite some time, but lat­er their rela­tion­ship got worse.” Debussy’s orches­tra­tion of Satie’s Gymno­pe­dies brought those pieces to promi­nence, but, Satie ulti­mate­ly came to feel that Debussy had been stingy with the fruits of his great suc­cess.

Or so, at any rate, goes one inter­pre­ta­tion of the dis­so­lu­tion of Debussy and Satie’s friend­ship. Dif­fer­ent Red­di­tors con­tribute dif­fer­ent details: one that “every time they met, Satie would praise Rav­el’s music to annoy Debussy,” anoth­er that “Debussy kept a bot­tle of the cheap­est table wine for Satie for when he came over.” It can hard­ly have been easy, even in the best of times, for two of the strongest inno­va­tors in ear­ly-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry music to occu­py the same social space for long stretch­es of time, let alone in com­pa­ny that includ­ed the likes of Rav­el and Stravin­sky. More than a cen­tu­ry lat­er, their artis­tic lega­cies could hard­ly be more assured — as, one faint­ly sens­es when look­ing at these pho­tos, they knew would be the case.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear Debussy Play Debussy’s Most Famous Piece, “Clair de lune” (1913)

Hear the Very First Pieces of Ambi­ent Music, Erik Satie’s Fur­ni­ture Music (Cir­ca 1917)

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa by Hoku­sai: An Intro­duc­tion to the Icon­ic Japan­ese Wood­block Print in 17 Min­utes

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Behold a Book of Color Shades Depicted with Feathers (Circa 1915)

in Design, Fashion, History, Museums, Science | July 25th, 2022

Per­haps the 143 col­ors show­cased in The Bay­er Company’s ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry sam­ple book, Shades on Feath­ers, could be col­lect­ed in the field, but it would involve a lot of trav­el and patience, and the stalk­ing of sev­er­al endan­gered if not down­right extinct avian species.

Far eas­i­er, and much less expen­sive, for milliners, design­ers and dec­o­ra­tors to dye plain white feath­ers  exot­ic shades, fol­low­ing the instruc­tions in the sam­ple book.

Such arti­fi­cial­ly obtained rain­bows owe a lot to William Hen­ry Perkin, a teenage stu­dent of Ger­man chemist August Wil­helm von Hof­mann, who spent East­er vaca­tion of 1856 exper­i­ment­ing with ani­line, an organ­ic base his teacher had ear­li­er dis­cov­ered in coal tar.  Hop­ing to hit on a syn­thet­ic form of qui­nine, he acci­den­tal­ly hit on a solu­tion that col­ored silk a love­ly pur­ple shade — an inad­ver­tent eure­ka moment that ranks right up there with peni­cillin and the pret­zel.

A Sci­ence Muse­um Group pro­file details what hap­pened next:

Perkin named the colour mauve and the dye mau­veine. He decid­ed to try to mar­ket his dis­cov­ery instead of return­ing to col­lege.

On 26 August 1856, the Patent Office grant­ed Perkin a patent for ‘a new colour­ing mat­ter for dye­ing with a lilac or pur­ple colour stuffs of silk, cot­ton, wool, or oth­er mate­ri­als’.

Perk­in’s next step was to inter­est cloth dyers and print­ers in his dis­cov­ery. He had no expe­ri­ence of the tex­tile trade and lit­tle knowl­edge of large-scale chem­i­cal man­u­fac­ture. He cor­re­spond­ed with Robert and John Pullar in Glas­gow, who offered him sup­port. Perk­in’s luck changed towards the end of 1857 when the Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, decid­ed that mauve was the colour to wear. In Jan­u­ary 1858, Queen Vic­to­ria fol­lowed suit, wear­ing mauve to her daughter’s wed­ding.

Cue an explo­sion of dye man­u­fac­tur­ers across Great Britain and Europe, includ­ing Bay­er, pro­duc­er of the feath­er sam­ple book. The sur­vival of this arti­fact is some­what mirac­u­lous giv­en how vul­ner­a­ble antique feath­ers are to envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, pests, and improp­er stor­age.

(The sam­ple book rec­om­mends clean­ing the feath­ers pri­or to dying in a luke­warm solu­tion of small amounts of olive oil soap and ammo­nia.)

The Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute, own­er of this unusu­al object, esti­mates that the undat­ed book was pro­duced between 1913 and 1918, the year the Migra­to­ry Bird Act Treaty out­lawed the hunt­ing of birds whose feath­ers humans deemed par­tic­u­lar­ly fash­ion­able.

Peruse the Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute of Philadel­phi­a’s dig­i­tized copy of the Shades on Feath­ers sam­ple book here.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

The Bird­song Project Fea­tures 220 Musi­cians, Actors, Artists & Writ­ers Pay­ing Trib­ute to Birds: Watch Per­for­mances by Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costel­lo and Beck

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Restored Video of the Smashing Pumpkins’ First Televised Performance (1988)

in Music | July 24th, 2022

For Gen X’ers who spent their twen­ties scout­ing the cities young peo­ple go to retire, and Mil­len­ni­als who spent their youth danc­ing to N’Sync, TLC, and the Spice Girls, nos­tal­gia for sim­pler times just makes psy­cho­log­i­cal sense. The 1990s was the last decade in which we had a shared set of ref­er­ences, “before the inter­net splin­tered mass cul­ture,” Sadie Dingfelder writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post. “In the 90s, every­one lis­tened to the same one or two radio sta­tions in their city that played all the Top 40 hits, span­ning all kinds of gen­res,” says DJ Matt Bail­er.

This means that every­one who heard “No Scrubs” enough times to sing each note also heard the Smash­ing Pump­kins’ biggest hits, and learned to love them equal­ly. It means that we could love the music of Bil­ly Cor­gan with­out being sub­ject­ed to the ter­ri­ble opin­ions of Bil­ly Cor­gan. As the baby-faced singer/songwriter aged, he has become, in his own words, a “bit­ter con­trar­i­an,” “car­ni­val bark­er,” and “class‑A heel,” he says, ref­er­enc­ing his lat­er career in pro­fes­sion­al wrestling.

The assess­ment may seem mild con­sid­er­ing Cor­gan’s appear­ances on Alex Jones’ Infowars and his embrace of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Behav­ior he calls schtick has actu­al con­se­quences in the world. Has it hurt his career? “If I kept my mouth shut,” he admits in dis­cussing the band’s 2018 reunion, “we’d be play­ing a lot big­ger venues and we would be a lot more suc­cess­ful, and we’d be in some­body’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.” Love or hate Cor­gan, Smash­ing Pump­kins as a unit earned their place in rock and roll his­to­ry.

The Pump­kins exud­ed mys­tery from the start, with their sub­lime, fuzzed-out psy­che­del­ic melodies and huge, dis­tort­ed cho­rus­es. Lat­er came the dream­like videos and opaque, impas­sive rock star egos. They did­n’t just make it big in the 90s, they were essen­tial to its sound, one they invent­ed even before the decade dawned. See a young, cheru­bic Cor­gan and band debut above on The Pulse, a Chica­go pub­lic access music show, in 1988, in a video and audio upscal­ing and remas­ter.

It was their first tele­vised appear­ance, drum­mer Jim­my Cham­ber­lain had just joined, and they were booked for a seg­ment for local bands called “The Base­ment Jam” after send­ing in their demo tape. The show’s pro­duc­er Lou Hinkhouse intro­duces the TV gig, sum­ming up his feel­ings at that time: “None of us that day real­ly knew for sure, but we knew they were on to some­thing.… they’re about to define a new sound for a new gen­er­a­tion.” How right he was. See the track­list for the most­ly-unfa­mil­iar songs in the set just below.

1. There lt Goes 1:54 2. She-7:37 3. Under Your Spell -11:47 4. My Eter­ni­ty -17:06 5. Bleed 26:44 6. Noth­ing And Every­thing — 32:10 7. Jen­nifer Ever 42:14 8. Death Of A Mind (Sun) — 49:03 9. Spite­face — 55:44

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Nir­vana Per­form as an Open­ing Band, Two Years Before Their Break­out Album Nev­er­mind (1989)

Bil­ly Cor­gan Per­forms an 8+ Hour Ambi­ent Inter­pre­ta­tion of Her­man Hesse’s Sid­dhartha

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

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

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Is There Life After Death?: Michio Kaku, Bill Nye, Sam Harris & More Explore One of Life’s Biggest Questions

in Life, Religion, Science | July 22nd, 2022

We should prob­a­bly not look to sci­ence to have cher­ished beliefs con­firmed. As sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing of the world has pro­gressed over the cen­turies, it has brought on a loss of humans’ sta­tus as priv­i­leged beings at the cen­ter of the uni­verse whose task is to sub­due and con­quer nature. (The stub­born per­sis­tence of those atti­tudes among the pow­er­ful has not served the species well.) We are not spe­cial, but we are still respon­si­ble, we have learned — maybe total­ly respon­si­ble for our lives on this plan­et. The meth­ods of sci­ence do not lend them­selves to sooth­ing exis­ten­tial anx­i­ety.

But what about the most cher­ished, and like­ly ancient, of human beliefs: faith in an after­life?  Ideas of an under­world, or heav­en, or hell have ani­mat­ed human cul­ture since its ear­li­est ori­gins. There is no soci­ety in the world where we will not find some belief in an after­life exist­ing com­fort­ably along­side life’s most mun­dane events. Is it a harm­ful idea? Is there any real evi­dence to sup­port it? And which ver­sion of an after­life — if such a thing exist­ed — should we believe?

Such ques­tions stack up. Answers in forms sci­ence can rec­on­cile seem dimin­ish­ing­ly few. Nonethe­less, as we see in the Big Think video above, sci­en­tists, sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors, and sci­ence enthu­si­asts are will­ing to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty, or impos­si­bil­i­ty, of con­tin­u­ing after death. We begin with NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller, who ref­er­ences Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of the uni­verse as ful­ly com­plete, “so every point in the past and every point in the future are just as real as the point of time you feel your­self in right now.” Time spreads out in a land­scape, each moment already mapped and sur­veyed.

When a close friend died, Ein­stein wrote a let­ter to his friend’s wife explain­ing, “Your hus­band, my friend, is just over the next hill. He’s still there” — in a the­o­ret­i­cal sense. It may not have been the com­fort she was look­ing for. The hope of an after­life is that we’ll see our loved ones again, some­thing Ein­stein’s solu­tion does not allow. Sam Har­ris — who has leaned into the mys­ti­cal prac­tice of med­i­ta­tion while pulling it from its reli­gious con­text — admits that death is a “dark mys­tery.” When peo­ple die, “there’s just the sheer not know­ing what hap­pened to them. And into this void, reli­gion comes rush­ing with a very con­sol­ing sto­ry, say­ing noth­ing hap­pened them; they’re in a bet­ter place and you’re going to meet up with them after.”

The sto­ry isn’t always so con­sol­ing, depend­ing on how puni­tive the reli­gion, but it does offer an expla­na­tion and sense of cer­tain­ty in the face of “sheer not know­ing.” The human mind does not tol­er­ate uncer­tain­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Death feels like the great­est unknown of all. (Har­ris’ argu­ment par­al­lels that of anthro­pol­o­gist Pas­cal Boy­er on the ori­gin of all reli­gions.) But the phe­nom­e­non of death is not unknown to us. We are sur­round­ed by it dai­ly, from the plants and ani­mals we con­sume to the pets we sad­ly let go when their lifes­pans end. Do we keep our­selves up won­der­ing what hap­pened to these beings? Maybe our spir­i­tu­al or reli­gious beliefs aren’t always about death.…

“In the Old Tes­ta­ment there isn’t real­ly any sort of view of the after­life,” says Rob Bell, a spir­i­tu­al teacher (and the only talk­ing head here not aligned with a sci­en­tif­ic insti­tu­tion or ratio­nal­ist move­ment). “This idea that the whole thing is about when you die is not real­ly the way that lots of peo­ple have thought about it.” For many reli­gious prac­ti­tion­ers, the idea of eter­nal life means “liv­ing in har­mo­ny with the divine right now.” For many, this “right now” — this very moment and each one we expe­ri­ence after it — is eter­nal. See more views of the after­life above from sci­ence edu­ca­tors like Bill Nye and sci­en­tists like Michio Kaku, who says the kind of after­lives we’ve only seen in sci­ence fic­tion — “dig­i­tal and genet­ic immor­tal­i­ty” — “are with­in reach.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Nick Cave’s Beau­ti­ful Let­ter About Grief

Richard Feyn­man on Reli­gion, Sci­ence, the Search for Truth & Our Will­ing­ness to Live with Doubt

Michio Kaku & Bri­an Green Explain String The­o­ry in a Nut­shell: Ele­gant Expla­na­tions of an Ele­gant The­o­ry

Philoso­pher Sam Har­ris Leads You Through a 26-Minute Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion

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

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Free Documentaries from Spain Let You Watch the Traditional Making of Wine, Cheese, Churros, Honey & More

in Film, History | July 22nd, 2022

The Span­ish film­mak­er Euge­nio Mon­es­ma has ded­i­cat­ed his life to cap­tur­ing the tra­di­tions of his home­land and its sur­round­ing areas. He began his career by first tak­ing up a Super‑8 cam­era at age 25 back in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, and in the decades since, his mis­sion has tak­en him to the fur­thest cor­ners of Spain and beyond in search of ever-old­er ways to pre­serve in detail. This places his work in the tra­di­tion of the anthro­po­log­i­cal or ethno­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary. But in a still-uncon­ven­tion­al move in his field, he’s unit­ed the old with the new by cre­at­ing his own Youtube chan­nel on which to make his doc­u­men­taries free to watch around the world.

Launched in 2020, Mon­es­ma’s chan­nel has become a sur­pris­ing hit. At the top of the post you can watch its most pop­u­lar video, his short 1997 doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of combs from ani­mal horns — which, as of this writ­ing, has racked up near­ly 8.5 mil­lion views. This hap­pens to be one of the pro­duc­tions that took him beyond Spain’s bor­ders, if only just: to the French vil­lage of Lespar­rou, specif­i­cal­ly, which main­tained its small horn comb fac­to­ries until the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Their process is nar­rat­ed in the immac­u­late Span­ish dic­tion of Mon­es­ma him­self, but you can also take your pick of sub­ti­tles in more than a dozen oth­er lan­guages. Oth­er of his doc­u­men­taries that have become pop­u­lar on Youtube include doc­u­men­taries on the tra­di­tion­al mak­ing of cheese, silk, wine, pot­tery, hon­ey and wax, knives, and leather.

Many of these videos run under twen­ty min­utes; some reach near­ly fea­ture length. All of them sat­is­fy a desire, which now seems wide­ly felt among view­ers of Youtube, to wit­ness thor­ough­ly ana­log process­es that have been in use, chang­ing and evolv­ing only grad­u­al­ly, for long stretch­es of his­to­ry.

And the fact that the things made so often look deli­cious cer­tain­ly does­n’t make Mon­es­ma’s work less com­pelling: take, for exam­ple, the arti­sanal chur­ros of Pam­plon­a’s Chur­rería de la Mañue­ta, whose appeal is sure­ly uni­ver­sal. In Korea, where I live, the past decade has a fad for chur­ros elab­o­rate­ly coat­ed and topped with col­ors and fla­vors unknown to tra­di­tion, and I’d be lying if I said I was­n’t curi­ous what Mon­es­ma would have to say about it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

How Kore­an Things Are Made: Watch Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos Show­ing the Mak­ing of Tra­di­tion­al Clothes, Teapots, Bud­dhist Instru­ments & More

A 13th-Cen­tu­ry Cook­book Fea­tur­ing 475 Recipes from Moor­ish Spain Gets Pub­lished in a New Trans­lat­ed Edi­tion

The Roman Roads of Spain & Por­tu­gal Visu­al­ized as a Sub­way Map: Ancient His­to­ry Meets Mod­ern Graph­ic Design

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Give Duke Ellington the Pulitzer Prize He Was Denied in 1965

in History, Music | July 21st, 2022

Image by Louis Panas­sié, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Duke Elling­ton has been com­mem­o­rat­ed in a vari­ety of forms: stat­ues, murals, schools, and even Unit­ed States com­mem­o­ra­tive stamps and coins. In his life­time he received a star on the Hol­ly­wood Walk of Fame, a Gram­my Life­time Achieve­ment, a Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom, and a Légion d’hon­neur. His posthu­mous hon­ors even include a Spe­cial Pulitzer Prize award­ed in 1999, the cen­ten­ni­al year of his birth. 34 years ear­li­er, in 1965, he’d been named for–but ulti­mate­ly denied–a reg­u­lar Pulitzer Prize for Music, a deci­sion his appre­ci­a­tors are now try­ing to reverse.

“The jury that judged the entrants that year decid­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent,” writes jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia. “They rec­om­mend­ed giv­ing the hon­or to Duke Elling­ton for the ‘vital­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty of his total pro­duc­tiv­i­ty’ over the course of more than forty years.” This broke from tra­di­tion in that the Pulitzer Prize for Music usu­al­ly hon­ors a sin­gle work: in 1945 it went to Aaron Cop­land for his bal­let Appalachi­an Spring; in 1958 it went to Samuel Bar­ber for his opera Vanes­sa; in 1960 it went to Elliott Carter for his Sec­ond String Quar­tet.

Alas, “the Pulitzer Board refused to accept the deci­sion of the jury, and decid­ed it would be bet­ter to give out no award, rather than hon­or Duke Elling­ton. Two mem­bers of the three-per­son judg­ing pan­el, Winthrop Sargeant and Robert Eyer, resigned in the after­math.” Elling­ton, for his part, react­ed to this unfor­tu­nate devel­op­ment with char­ac­ter­is­tic equa­nim­i­ty: “Fate is being kind to me,” he told the press. “Fate doesn’t want me to be famous too young” — to which Gioia adds that “he was 66 years old at the time, and in the final decade of his life.”

In an effort to retroac­tive­ly award Elling­ton his Pulitzer Prize for Music, Gioia has has launched an online peti­tion. If you sign it, you’ll join the likes of John Adams, Michael Dir­da, Steve Reich, and Gene Wein­garten, all Pulitzer win­ners them­selves, as well as oth­er lumi­nar­ies and enthu­si­asts who’ve voiced their sup­port — near­ly 9,000 of them as of this writ­ing. “We assume that Pulitzers are award­ed to work that qual­i­fies as for the ages, that push­es the enve­lope, that sug­gests not just clev­er­ness but genius,” writes the New York Times’ John McWhort­er. “There can be no doubt that Ellington’s cor­pus fits that def­i­n­i­tion.”

Revers­ing the com­mit­tee deci­sion of 1965, Gioia writes, would enhance “the pres­tige and legit­i­ma­cy of the Pulitzer — and every award needs that nowa­days, when many have grown skep­ti­cal about our lead­ing prizes.” What’s more, “it’s the prop­er thing for the music — because every time gen­uine artistry is rec­og­nized it sets an exam­ple for the present gen­er­a­tion, and lays a foun­da­tion for the future.” In recent decades, the aes­thet­ic range of Pulitzer-hon­ored music has widened con­sid­er­ably: McWhort­er points as an exam­ple to 2018’s win­ner, Kendrick Lamar’s album Damn. It could be that, as far as Elling­ton is con­cerned, it’s tak­en the rest of us 57 years to catch up with him. Sign the peti­tion here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Such Sweet Thun­der: Duke Elling­ton & Bil­ly Strayhorn’s Musi­cal Trib­ute to Shake­speare (1957)

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day in Her First Filmed Per­for­mance

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

How Old School Records Were Made, From Start to Fin­ish: A 1937 Video Fea­tur­ing Duke Elling­ton

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The First Surviving Photograph of the Moon (1840)

in Astronomy, Photography | July 21st, 2022

Every­one has been agog over the first pho­tos from the James Webb tele­scope, and for good rea­son. “These images,” Riv­ka Galchin writes at The New York­er, “car­ry news about the ear­ly uni­verse, the birth and death of stars, the col­li­sion of galax­ies, and the atmos­phere of exo­plan­ets.” They’re also “very, very pret­ty,” she writes, com­par­ing them to Ver­meer.

The clar­i­ty and lev­els of detailed infor­ma­tion about the ear­li­est galax­ies have even aston­ished astronomers, whose work has advanced rapid­ly along­side the growth of the pho­to­graph­ic medi­um. It was an astronomer, in fact – Johann Hein­rich von Madler – who first coined the word “pho­tog­ra­phy” in 1839. “Astronomers quick­ly embraced the use of pho­to­graph­ic plates because of their good res­o­lu­tion and the abil­i­ty to make much larg­er images,” APS Physics News notes.

Astropho­tog­ra­phy prop­er­ly began in 1840, when John William Drap­er, a British-born chemist and doc­tor, took the image above from the roof of the New York Uni­ver­si­ty obser­va­to­ry, cred­it­ed as the first daguerreo­type of the Moon. Daguerre him­self might have tak­en an 1839 image, but it was like­ly destroyed in a fire, as were Draper’s attempts of the pre­vi­ous year, which burned up in a NYU blaze in 1865.

By all accounts, how­ev­er, these ear­li­er attempts at Moon pho­tog­ra­phy were blur­ry and unfo­cused, show­ing lit­tle detail of the Earth’s satel­lite. Draper’s lunar “por­trait,” from 1840, at the top, is large­ly con­sid­ered “the world’s first true astropho­to,” writes Jason Major at Lights in the Dark, for its lev­els of detail and high con­trast, com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing. As Scott Walk­er writes:

Drap­er set out to try and improve on Daguerre’s break­through by increas­ing plate sen­si­tiv­i­ty and reduc­ing expo­sure times.… His advance­ment in the tech­nique allowed visu­al­iza­tion of craters, moun­tains and val­leys on the moon’s sur­face which pre­vi­ous­ly couldn’t be cap­tured.

Splotched, spot­ted, and heav­i­ly degrad­ed, the image may not look like much now, but a con­tem­po­rary of Drap­er described it then as “the first time that any­thing like a dis­tinct rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the moon’s sur­face has been obtained.”

The achieve­ment was inspi­ra­tional, and many bet­ter attempts soon fol­lowed in rapid suc­ces­sion as the medi­um evolved. In 1851, pho­tog­ra­ph­er John Whip­ple and father-and-son astronomers William and George Bond improved on Drap­er’s process and made the Moon daguerreo­type fur­ther up through the Great Refrac­tor Equa­to­r­i­al Mount Tele­scope at the Har­vard Col­lege Obser­va­to­ry. (The year pre­vi­ous, Drap­er him­self col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bond père to make an image of the star Vega). The image caused a “ver­i­ta­ble furor,” Smart His­to­ry notes, at the Great Exhi­bi­tion of 1851.

Between 1857 and 1862, astropho­tog­ra­ph­er and ama­teur astronomer War­ren De La Rue made a series of stereo­scop­ic Moon images (lov­ing­ly pre­served online by astro­physi­cist and Queen gui­tarist Bri­an May), one of which you can see fur­ther up. De La Rue had seen Whip­ple’s daguerreo­type at the Great Exhi­bi­tion and began inno­vat­ing his own process for cre­at­ing stereo­scop­ic astropho­tographs. At the same time, Drap­er’s son, Hen­ry, “an accom­plished astropho­tog­ra­ph­er and one of the most famous Amer­i­can astronomers of his day,” Kiona Smith writes at Forbes, had tak­en over his father’s Moon pho­tog­ra­phy project. See an 1863 image tak­en by the younger Drap­er just above.

“Before the inven­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy,” notes APS News, “astronomers had to sketch what they saw in their tele­scopes by hand, often miss­ing cru­cial details.” Daguerre and Drap­er’s inno­va­tions, and those that came soon after­ward, “showed them a far supe­ri­or method was pos­si­ble.” It is aston­ish­ing that these results could be achieved only a few decades after the first pho­to­graph, tak­en in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce. It is maybe even more aston­ish­ing that only a cen­tu­ry and a half  or so lat­er — a mean­ing­less drop in the cos­mic timescale — astropho­tog­ra­phy would look beyond the moon to the very ori­gins of the uni­verse itself.

via Smart His­to­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

The Full Rota­tion of the Moon: A Beau­ti­ful, High Res­o­lu­tion Time Lapse Film

The First Pho­tographs Tak­en by the Webb Tele­scope: See Far­away Galax­ies & Neb­u­lae in Unprece­dent­ed Detail

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

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The Birdsong Project Features 220 Musicians, Actors, Artists & Writers Paying Tribute to Birds: Watch Performances by Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costello and Beck

in Music, Nature | July 20th, 2022

Birds are the orig­i­nal musi­cians. This, at least, is a premise of the Audubon Soci­ety’s Bird­song Project, “a move­ment inspir­ing bird con­ser­va­tion through art.” There could thus be no more nat­ur­al art form in which to cel­e­brate our fine feath­ered (and in many cas­es, now endan­gered) friends than music, which the Bird­song Project has com­mis­sioned for its first release, and in no small quan­ti­ty. They’ve so far put out the first two vol­umes of For the Birds, which in its total­i­ty will involve “more than 220 music artists, actors, lit­er­ary fig­ures, and visu­al artists, all com­ing togeth­er to cel­e­brate the joy birds bring to our lives” — and remind us of “the envi­ron­men­tal threats we all face.”

Those con­trib­u­tors include Yo‑Yo Ma, Elvis Costel­lo, and Beck, whose work on For the Birds you can hear in the videos in this post. And in the case of Yo-Yo Ma, who per­forms a piece called “In the Gale” (by com­pos­er Anna Clyne), you can see him play not in a con­cert hall but out in the midst of gen­uine nature.

This under­scores what’s heard bright­ly and clear­ly on the record­ing: that Ma and Clyne were just two of many col­lab­o­ra­tors on the track, the oth­ers being what sound like a for­est full of birds. Oth­er artists take dif­fer­ent approach­es: Beck­’s “Archangel” is a lush stu­dio sound­scape, and Costel­lo com­bines his own “The Birds Will Still Be Singing” with “And Your Bird Can Sing,” the most appro­pri­ate Bea­t­les cov­er imag­in­able (apart from “Black­bird,” at least).

Orga­nized by Ran­dall Poster, by day a music super­vi­sor for film­mak­ers like Wes Ander­son and Mar­tin Scors­ese, For the Birds also fea­tures music from, Jarvis Cock­er, The Flam­ing Lips, Kaoru Watan­abe, Stephin Mer­ritt, and Seu Jorge. And those are just the con­trib­u­tors known pri­mar­i­ly for their music: oth­ers involved in the project include Jeff Gold­blum, Til­da Swin­ton, and Jonathan Franzen. You can now stream the first two vol­umes on most major ser­vices, and pre-order the full 20-LP box set that will con­tain the mate­r­i­al musi­cal and lit­er­ary from all five vol­umes, the last of which is sched­uled to come out this Sep­tem­ber. Give it a lis­ten, and after­ward you’ll per­haps find your­self that much more able to appre­ci­ate the avian sym­pho­ny con­duct­ed all around us.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Sound Of Endan­gered Birds Get Turned Into Elec­tron­ic Music

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Bird­Cast: You Can Now Fore­cast the Migra­tion of Birds Across the U.S. Just Like the Weath­er

Google Uses Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Map Thou­sands of Bird Sounds Into an Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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A Virtual Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japanese Masterpiece, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo

in Architecture, History | July 20th, 2022

Tokyo once had a hotel by Frank Lloyd Wright. Such an archi­tec­tur­al asset, one might assume, would be pre­served at all costs, yet this one was demol­ished in 1967. But the fact that Wright’s Impe­r­i­al Hotel stood for only 45 years won’t sur­prise any­one famil­iar with Japan­ese build­ing cul­ture, nor will the fact that it was only one of a series of Impe­r­i­al Hotels that have occu­pied the same site. As evi­denced by the Ise Grand Shrine, which has been demol­ished and rebuilt every twen­ty years since the eighth cen­tu­ry, a struc­ture’s val­ue in Japan has noth­ing to do with its longevi­ty. Still, this expla­na­tion may not sat­is­fy Wright enthu­si­asts, the great major­i­ty of whom have only been able to see the mas­ter’s most famous Japan­ese build­ing in pho­tographs, dia­grams, and post­cards.

Just this year, the Frank Lloyd Trust has giv­en us a way to expe­ri­ence it as nobody could in its hey­day: a vir­tu­al tour video “shot” from the per­spec­tive of a fly­ing drone. (Watch above.) It comes as an entry in Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Works, which “brings Wright’s demol­ished and unre­al­ized struc­tures to life through immer­sive dig­i­tal ani­ma­tions recon­struct­ed from Wright’s orig­i­nal plans and draw­ings, along with archival pho­tographs.”

Here we have Wright’s East-meets-West mas­ter­piece recon­struct­ed just as it must have looked when it opened on Sep­tem­ber 1st, 1923 — the same day, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, as the Great Kan­tō earth­quake that dev­as­tat­ed Tokyo. The Impe­r­i­al Hotel took some dam­age, but came through intact.

A less­er earth­quake had already struck the pre­vi­ous year, but it left the hotel unharmed despite its still being under con­struc­tion. (The same can’t be said of the frag­ile remains of the orig­i­nal Impe­r­i­al Hotel, built in 1890 and gut­ted by fire in 1922, that Wright had been com­mis­sioned to replace.) But over sub­se­quent decades, time took its toll in oth­er ways: “the Wright-designed Impe­r­i­al would even­tu­al­ly be con­sid­ered by the post-war trav­el­er to be dark and musty,” writes Steve Sund­berg at Old Tokyo, “and its un-air-con­di­tioned rooms too small. The hotel’s foun­da­tion, too, had by then set­tled uneven­ly into the soft sub­soil; its long hall­ways and cor­ri­dors came to have a wavy, rub­bery appear­ance about them.”

Even when new, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel had its dis­com­forts: Sund­berg quotes a 1925 Far East­ern Review arti­cle call­ing it “a hun­dred years ahead of the age in its archi­tec­tur­al fea­tures and fifty years behind in many things which make for the com­fort of its patrons.” Wright “sac­ri­ficed every­thing to his art, rais­ing a mon­u­ment to his genius and bequeath­ing to the Japan­ese the dif­fi­cult task of mak­ing it a finan­cial suc­cess.” It was finan­cial exi­gen­cies, in part, that moti­vat­ed its demo­li­tion and replace­ment with a third, high-rise Impe­r­i­al Hotel in 1967 — whose own impend­ing demo­li­tion and replace­ment was announced just last year. France-based Japan­ese archi­tect Tsuyoshi Tane has pro­duced a design for the fourth Impe­r­i­al Hotel; what trib­ute, if any, it pays Wright’s lega­cy we’ll only find out when it opens in 2036.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tour of Tal­iesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Per­son­al Home & Stu­dio

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – A Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

Build Wood­en Mod­els of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Build­ing: The Guggen­heim, Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters & More

Why Japan Has the Old­est Busi­ness­es in the World? Hōshi, a 1300-Year-Old Hotel, Offers Clues

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Hear a 19-Year-Old Prince Crushing It on Every Instrument in an Early Jam Session (1977)

in Music | July 19th, 2022

It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate musi­cian­ship in words, though there are rare, suc­cess­ful lit­er­ary attempts by greats like James Bald­win, Jack Ker­ouac, and jazz crit­ic Ira Gitler, whose phrase “sheets of sound” so well cap­tured the expe­ri­ence of Coltrane’s impro­vi­sa­tion­al style in the late 50s. Maybe the free move­ments of jazz are eas­i­er to write about than oth­er forms.…

When it comes to recent­ly depart­ed funk/pop/rock/R&B great Prince, it feels like there’s enough writ­ten about his prodi­gious tal­ent that it begins to sound like over­praise. The most inter­est­ing trib­utes come from fel­low musi­cians. Yet even their com­ments seem exag­ger­at­ed.

Prince “played every­thing,” said Ste­vie Won­der soon after the Pur­ple One’s sud­den death – every style, every instru­ment – which seems like an impos­si­ble feat until you read the notes for his debut album and real­ize that, yes, he did play every­thing, before he hit 20… and lis­ten to the full range of his out­put to see that, yes, he “could play clas­si­cal music if he want­ed to,” as Won­der said. “He could play jazz if he want­ed to….”

Prince’s drum­mer Han­nah Wel­ton, who joined him in 2012, had sim­i­lar­ly overblow-sound­ing praise, say­ing in a recent drum instruc­tion video, “I don’t know that I ever heard an off note.” Every­one has an off day some­time, right? Too lit­tle sleep, a head cold, too much to drink… or what­ev­er…. No musi­cian could always be a hun­dred per­cent on, could they?

Lis­ten­ing to the funk/jazz jam ses­sions above record­ed in 1977, when Prince was only 19 and on the thresh­old of releas­ing his first stu­dio album, I’m inclined to cast off any remain­ing doubt that he was as untouch­ably dis­ci­plined and tal­ent­ed a musi­cian as they say all of the time, even in behind-the-scenes rehearsals and jam ses­sions when, as Wel­ton jokes, he seemed more inter­est­ed in play­ing ping pong. If any­one embod­ied genius…

But there is a prob­lem with that word (a word leg­endary music teacher Nadia Boulanger and one­time Quin­cy Jones men­tor dis­liked). Prince might agree. Musi­cal greats come out of great musi­cal com­mu­ni­ties. Prince may have been the most pro­fi­cient mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist of his time, but he con­sis­tent­ly played with those who had no trou­ble keep­ing up with him, includ­ing ear­ly bass play­er André Cymone and long­time Rev­o­lu­tion drum­mer Bob­by Z.

Cymone and Z joined Prince in the Lor­ing Park rehearsal room of Owen Hus­ney, Prince’s first man­ag­er, to record these impromp­tu ses­sions. They are indeed “a must-lis­ten for any fan!,” as Live for Live Music writes, and any­one else. “These eight instru­men­tal tracks sound more like well-craft­ed com­po­si­tions rather than the impro­vised jams that they are.” Prince, of course, switch­es up instru­ments, play­ing keys, gui­tar and bass and drums at times.

That it’s hard to tell when he’s play­ing what speaks not only to his own prowess but to that of his fel­low musi­cians. As Bob­by Z says in an inter­view for the Gram­mys, the biggest mis­un­der­stand­ing about Prince is “that he wasn’t human. That he was this myth­i­cal, immor­tal char­ac­ter. In the ear­ly days, he was a band mem­ber. He was the leader, of course, but he had to be in a band.” He was vocal in inter­views about how play­ing with the hottest musi­cians in Min­neapo­lis as a teenag­er gave him his ear­ly train­ing.

Prince learned as much from oth­ers as they learned from him, says Z, soak­ing up every­thing he heard. “He was a fan. He loved being impressed by songs. He loved music. He loved oth­er people’s tal­ent.” But at the same time, he was still Prince, a rare tal­ent with­out real equal. The Lor­ing Park ses­sions may fea­ture “instru­men­tals only,” notes Okay­play­er, glanc­ing at Prince’s com­po­si­tion­al bril­liance and show­ing off none of his vocal chops. Nonethe­less, “it’s an inti­mate and ter­ri­bly funky lens into P’s pro­fi­cien­cy on damn-near every instru­ment,” before he’d even begun “his path to bonafide star­dom.”

via Live for Live Music

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blis­ter­ing “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” Gui­tar Solo (2004)

The Lit­tle Prince: Footage Gets Unearthed Of the Pop Star at Age 11

What’s It Like Drum­ming For Prince?: Drum­mer Han­nah Wel­ton Describes the Genius of His Musi­cian­ship

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

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