Jimmy Page Tells the Story of “Kashmir”

in Music | September 30th, 2011

One of the most orig­i­nal and dis­tinc­tive songs Led Zep­pelin ever record­ed was the exot­ic, eight-and-a-half minute “Kash­mir,” from the 1975 album Phys­i­cal Graf­fi­ti. In this clip from Davis Guggen­heim’s film It Might Get Loud (2009), Jim­my Page explains the ori­gins of the song to fel­low gui­tarists Jack White and The Edge. Then Page demon­strates it by pick­ing up an old mod­i­fied Dan­elec­tro 59DC Dou­ble Cut­away Stan­dard gui­tar that he played the song with on some of Led Zep­pelin’s tours. (Watch Kash­mir live here.)

In 1973, Page had been exper­i­ment­ing with an alter­na­tive D modal, or DADGAD, tun­ing often used on stringed instru­ments in the Mid­dle East, when he hit upon the hyp­not­ic, ris­ing and falling riff. The song came togeth­er over a peri­od of a cou­ple of years. John Bon­ham added his dis­tinc­tive, over­pow­er­ing drums dur­ing a two-man record­ing ses­sion with Page at Headley Grange. Singer Robert Plant wrote the lyrics while he and Page were dri­ving through the Sahara Desert in South­ern Moroc­co. (Nei­ther Page nor Plant had ever vis­it­ed Kash­mir, in the Himalayas.) Bassist and key­board play­er John Paul Jones added the string and horn arrange­ments the fol­low­ing year. In a 1995 radio inter­view with Aus­tralian jour­nal­ist Richard Kingsmill, Plant recalled his expe­ri­ence with “Kash­mir”:

It was an amaz­ing piece of music to write to, and an incred­i­ble chal­lenge for me. Because of the time sig­na­ture, the whole deal of the song is…not grandiose, but pow­er­ful. It required some kind of epi­thet, or abstract lyri­cal set­ting about the whole idea of life being an adven­ture and being a series of illu­mi­nat­ed moments. But every­thing is not what you see. It was quite a task, because I could­n’t sing it. It was like the song was big­ger than me.

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:

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Thir­teen-Year-Old Jim­my Page Makes his BBC Tele­vi­sion Debut in 1957

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

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What Earth Will Look Like 100 Million Years from Now

in Science, Video - Science | September 30th, 2011

This is what you’d call effi­cient. In two min­utes, we watch our plan­et take form. 600 mil­lion years of geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry whizzes by in a snap. Then we see what the next 100 mil­lion years may have in store for us. If you don’t have the patience to watch 700 mil­lion years unfold in 180 sec­onds (seri­ous­ly?), then we’ll give you this spoil­er: Coastal real estate is not a long-term buy…

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!

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How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds

in Food & Drink | September 29th, 2011

Ran­dom? Yes. Handy? Dou­ble yes. The ulti­mate culi­nary life­hack from SAVEUR mag­a­zine’s Exec­u­tive Food Edi­tor, Todd Cole­man…

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!

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Steven Pinker on the History of Violence: A Happy Tale

in History, Psychology | September 29th, 2011

In July, the Edge.org held its annu­al “Mas­ter Class” in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia and brought togeth­er some influ­en­tial thinkers to talk about “The Sci­ence of Human Nature.” The high­lights includ­ed:

Prince­ton psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Kah­ne­man on the mar­vels and the flaws of intu­itive think­ing; Har­vard math­e­mat­i­cal biol­o­gist Mar­tin Nowak on the evo­lu­tion of coop­er­a­tion; Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Steven Pinker on the his­to­ry of vio­lence; UC-San­ta Bar­bara evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist Leda Cos­mides on the archi­tec­ture of moti­va­tion; UC-San­ta Bar­bara neu­ro­sci­en­tist Michael Gaz­zani­ga on neu­ro­science and the law; and Prince­ton reli­gious his­to­ri­an Elaine Pagels on The Book of Rev­e­la­tions.

The Edge.org has now start­ed mak­ing videos from the class avail­able online, includ­ing, this week, Steven Pinker’s talk on the his­to­ry of vio­lence. You can watch Pinker’s full 86 minute talk here (sor­ry, we could­n’t embed it on our site.) Or, if you want the quick gist of Pinker’s think­ing, then watch the short clip above. In five min­utes, Pinker tells you why vio­lence is steadi­ly trend­ing down, and why some things are actu­al­ly going right in our momentarily/monetarily trou­bled world.

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Salvador Dali Gets Surreal with Mike Wallace (1958)

in Art, Television | September 29th, 2011

Before he became a fix­ture on 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own short-lived TV show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957–58), which let Amer­i­cans get an up-close and per­son­al view of some leg­endary fig­ures — Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, Adlai Steven­son, Hen­ry Kissinger, and Glo­ria Swan­son.

Then let’s also add Sal­vador Dali to the list. In 1958, Wal­lace tried to demys­ti­fy “the enig­ma that is Sal­vador Dali,” and it did­n’t go ter­ri­bly well. It turns out that sur­re­al­ist painters give sur­re­al answers to con­ven­tion­al inter­view ques­tions too. Pret­ty quick­ly, Wal­lace capit­u­lates and says, “I must con­fess, you lost me halfway through.” Hap­pi­ly for us, the video makes for some good view­ing more than 50 years lat­er.

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 Sal­vador Dali Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Sal­vador Dali Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

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Six Ideas That Set the West Apart from the Rest (And Why It’s All Over Now Baby Blue)

in Current Affairs, Economics, History | September 28th, 2011

We’re tack­ling anoth­er big ques­tion today with the help of Har­vard eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son. And the ques­tion goes like this: Why has the West cre­at­ed so much pros­per­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty over the past sev­er­al cen­turies, when the rest of the world did not? For Fer­gu­son, the “great diver­gence” can be explained by six big ideas, or what he calls killer apps for the ben­e­fit of his technophile TED audi­ence:

1. Com­pe­ti­tion
2. The Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion
3. Prop­er­ty Rights
4. Mod­ern Med­i­cine
5. The Con­sumer Soci­ety
6. Work Eth­ic

These apps, it turns out, are open source. Any­one can down­load and use them. And that’s pre­cise­ly what Asia has done. The great diver­gence is over (baby blue)…

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Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Universe From Nothing’

in Physics | September 28th, 2011

In 2009, Richard Dawkins invit­ed Lawrence Krauss, an inter­na­tion­al­ly-known the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist and author of The Physics of Star Trek, to talk about some big enchi­la­da ques­tions. What is our cur­rent pic­ture of the uni­verse? When did the uni­verse begin? What came before it? How could some­thing come from noth­ing? And what will hap­pen to the uni­verse in the future?

Krauss takes us back to the foun­da­tion­al work of Ein­stein and Hub­ble, then moves us through impor­tant break­throughs in mod­ern the­o­ret­i­cal physics, ones that have helped us unrav­el some of these big ques­tions. Give Pro­fes­sor Krauss 53 min­utes, and he’ll give you the uni­verse … and a few jokes along the way.

This talk appears in our col­lec­tion of 125 Great Sci­ence Videos. And you can down­load many free Physics cours­es from our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es.

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Stephen King Reads from His Upcoming Sequel to The Shining

in Books | September 27th, 2011

Late last week, Stephen King treat­ed an audi­ence at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty to a 10-minute read­ing from his upcom­ing book Dr. Sleep . It’s not just any oth­er book. It’s the sequel to The Shin­ing, his 1977 thriller that Stan­ley Kubrick fam­mous­ly adapt­ed to film. (Don’t miss Mak­ing the Shin­ing here.)

King first start­ed talk­ing about a sequel in 2009, and now we’re get­ting our first taste of what’s to come. At long last, you will know what hap­pened to Dan­ny Tor­rance.

The read­ing appears above, and King talks some more about the unfin­ished sequel below.

via Gal­l­ey­cat

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.