Watch Tom Waits’ Classic Appearance on Australian TV, 1979

in Music, Television | August 8th, 2012

Here’s a rare gem from the video vault: Tom Waits on the Aus­tralian TV pro­gram, The Don Lane Show, in 1979.

Don Lane was an Amer­i­can night­club per­former who some­how man­aged to become the John­ny Car­son of Aus­tralia. The Don Lane Show ran from 1975 to 1983, and fea­tured com­e­dy, inter­views and musi­cal per­for­mances by a vari­ety of inter­na­tion­al stars who were tour­ing Aus­tralia, includ­ing Elton John, Ste­vie Won­der, Jer­ry Lee Lewis and, on more than one occa­sion, Tom Waits.

On his first appear­ance in 1979, the 29-year-old Waits gave a dis­joint­ed, com­ic inter­view (above), before going to the piano (below) to per­form “On the Nick­el,” which he wrote for the sound­track of the 1980 film of the same name. “The Nick­el” refers to the skid row area of Los Ange­les, along 5th Street. The song was includ­ed on Wait­s’s 1980 album, Heartat­tack and Vine. Aus­tralian TV view­ers appar­ent­ly did­n’t know what to think about the mum­bling, chain-smok­ing singer. When Waits returned in 1981, Lane said, “The last time Tom Waits appeared with us, his unusu­al style and sense of humor lit up our switch­board for about an hour after the show. And not all with com­pli­ments, either.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

Tom Waits and David Let­ter­man: An Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion Tra­di­tion

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Watch Astronaut Don Pettit Conduct Cool Experiments Aboard the International Space Station

in Physics, Video - Science | August 8th, 2012

Astro­naut Don Pet­tit is a chem­i­cal engi­neer by train­ing, and he is a man who loves his work. The video above, pro­duced as part of a series called “Sci­ence off the Sphere,” shows an exper­i­ment con­duct­ed aboard the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. In it, Pet­tit demon­strates the way a water bub­ble reacts to puffs of air in micro­grav­i­ty. The results are fas­ci­nat­ing to watch, made more so by Pettit’s total absorp­tion in the exper­i­ment.

Dur­ing his first six-month stay on the ISS in 2002–3, Pet­tit also exper­i­ment­ed on how flu­ids react in zero-grav­i­ty. He dubbed these ses­sions “Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Sci­ence.” Pet­tit returned to the ISS in Decem­ber of 2011 and is still there, orbit­ing over 240 miles above the earth, con­duct­ing exper­i­ments in his free time and pro­duc­ing “Sci­ence off the Sphere.” Episode 5 of the series (below) is mes­mer­iz­ing, and again, Pettit’s won­der as he nar­rates the exper­i­ment is pal­pa­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Great Cities at Night: Views from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

Drink­ing Cof­fee at Zero Grav­i­ty

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

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Bob Dylan & The Grateful Dead Rehearse Together in Summer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

in Music | August 8th, 2012

dylan and the dead

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In the mid 1980s, Bob Dylan found his career hit­ting an unmis­tak­able low point. In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, he recalls “Every­thing was smashed. My own songs had become strangers to me, I did­n’t have the skill to touch the right nerves, could­n’t pen­e­trate the sur­faces. It was­n’t my moment of his­to­ry any­more.”

For a while, Dylan toured with Tom Pet­ty and The Heart­break­ers, and it only led him to one con­clu­sion: “Tom was at the top of his game and I was at the bot­tom of mine.” It was time to pack things in, to exit music alto­geth­er.

Before he could retire, Dylan agreed to do some shows with The Grate­ful Dead. In the sum­mer of 1987, the singer-song­writer trav­eled to San Rafael, Cal­i­for­nia to rehearse with the band. But it turned out to be try­ing, more than he could have ever imag­ined. In Chron­i­cles, Vol­ume 1 he writes:

After an hour or so, it became clear to me that the band want­ed to rehearse more and dif­fer­ent songs than I had been used to doing with Pet­ty. They want­ed to run over all the songs, the ones they liked, the sel­dom seen ones. I found myself in a pecu­liar posi­tion and I could hear the brakes screech. If I had known this to begin with, I might not have tak­en the dates.… There were so many [songs] that I could­n’t tell which was which‑I might even get the words to some mixed up with oth­ers.

Dylan even­tu­al­ly excused him­self from the stu­dios, intend­ing nev­er to return. But an encounter with a local jazz band — call it a sim­ple twist of fate — brought him back. Dylan and The Dead start­ed play­ing through his big reper­toire. It was tough sled­ding at first. “But then mirac­u­lous­ly,” he adds,  “some­thing inter­nal came unhinged.” “I played these shows with The Dead and nev­er had to think twice about it. Maybe they just dropped some­thing in my drink, I can’t say, but any­thing they want­ed to do was fine with me.”

It’s a great lit­tle sto­ry. Even bet­ter, the rehearsal is record­ed for pos­ter­i­ty. Thanks to the Inter­net Archive, you can sit back and lis­ten to 74 tracks, which includes some clas­sics — “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” “Got­ta Serve Some­body,” “Mag­gie’s Farm,” “Tan­gled Up in Blue,” “Sim­ple Twist of Fate,” and more.

You can stream all of the tracks right below, from start to end. Or find indi­vid­ual record­ings here.

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The Story of Wish You Were Here: Documentary of the Classic 1975 Pink Floyd Album

in Film, Music | August 8th, 2012

Note: it looks like the film has gone offline. You can watch the trail­er above. In the mean­time, we have two oth­er great Pink Floyd videos for you: Rock Among the Ruins: Pink Floyd Live in Pom­peii (1972) and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Per­forms The Wall at the Berlin Wall (1990 and 2011).

When I was young, the first songs every aspir­ing rock star would learn on gui­tar were Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust” and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” I duti­ful­ly learned both baroque com­po­si­tions before stum­bling on to sludgy three-chord hard­core punk. “Wish You Were Here,” the song is, yes, a sta­ple of high-school tal­ent shows and every singer/songwriter in every cof­feeshop, but that’s only because it is an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful song from an incred­i­bly pow­er­ful record, also called Wish You Were Here (WYWH). The doc­u­men­tary above tells the sto­ry of that record’s mak­ing. It begins with the atmos­pher­ic blues of “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” and its trag­ic inspi­ra­tion, Floyd’s for­mer leader Syd Bar­ret—whose absence haunts the band as they dis­cuss the gen­e­sis of WYWH—then the film con­tin­ues on to the band’s col­lec­tive sense of ennui after the suc­cess of 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon. All along, we’re treat­ed to lengthy inter­views, impromp­tu solo per­for­mances from Roger Waters and David Gilmour (nev­er in the same room, of course), and fas­ci­nat­ing looks at the record­ing process at Abbey Road Stu­dios. An excerpt from the film descrip­tion cites more specifics:

Wish You Were Here, released in Sep­tem­ber 1975, was the fol­low up album to the glob­al­ly suc­cess­ful The Dark Side Of The Moon and is cit­ed by many fans, as well as band mem­bers Richard Wright and David Gilmour, as their favorite Pink Floyd album. On release it went straight to Num­ber One in both the UK and the US and topped the charts in many oth­er coun­tries around the world. This pro­gram tells the sto­ry of the mak­ing of this land­mark release through new inter­views with Roger Waters, David Gilmour and Nick Mason and archive inter­views with the late Richard Wright. Also fea­tured are sleeve design­er Storm Thorg­er­son, guest vocal­ist Roy Harp­er, front cov­er burn­ing man Ron­nie Ron­dell and oth­ers involved in the cre­ation of the album. In addi­tion, orig­i­nal record­ing engi­neer Bri­an Humphries revis­its the mas­ter tapes at Abbey Road Stu­dios to illus­trate aspects of the songs con­struc­tion.

Richard Met­zger at Dan­ger­ous Minds reviews the film here.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities”

in Education, Google, Philosophy, Technology | August 7th, 2012

Damon Horowitz, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and “ser­i­al entre­pre­neur,” recent­ly joined Google as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engi­neer­ing. Pri­or to his work at Google, Horowitz co-found­ed Aard­vark, Per­spec­ta, and a num­ber of oth­er tech com­pa­nies. In this talk at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s 2011 Bib­lioTech con­fer­ence on “Human Expe­ri­ence,”  Horowitz explains why he left a high­ly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, to pur­sue a Ph.D. in Phi­los­o­phy at Stan­ford (the text of the talk is avail­able here).

Horowitz offers fel­low techies a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge, but a worth­while one. In say­ing so, I must con­fess a bias: As a stu­dent and teacher of the human­i­ties, I have watched with some dis­may as the cul­ture becomes increas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed by tech­ni­cians who often ignore or dis­miss press­ing philo­soph­i­cal and eth­i­cal prob­lems in their quest to build a bet­ter world. It is grat­i­fy­ing to hear from some­one who rec­og­nized this issue by (tem­porar­i­ly) giv­ing up what he admits was a great deal of pow­er and soci­etal priv­i­lege and head­ed back to the class­room.

Horowitz describes his intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney from “tech­nol­o­gist” to philoso­pher with pas­sion and can­dor, and con­cludes that as a result of his aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry, he “no longer looks for machines to solve all of our prob­lems for us,” and no longer assumes that he knows what’s best for his users. This kind of humil­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al flex­i­bil­i­ty is, ide­al­ly, the out­come of a high­er degree in the human­i­ties, and Horowitz uses his own tri­als to make a case for bet­ter crit­i­cal think­ing, for a “human­is­tic per­spec­tive,” in the tech sec­tor and else­where. For exam­ples, see Horow­itz’s TED talks on a “moral oper­at­ing sys­tem” and “phi­los­o­phy in prison.” Com­pli­cat­ing Google’s well-known, unof­fi­cial slo­gan “don’t be evil,” Horowitz, draw­ing on Han­nah Arendt, believes that most of the evil in the world comes not from bad inten­tions but from “not think­ing.”

In a relat­ed Stan­ford talk (above) from the same sem­i­nar, Maris­sa May­er, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Con­sumer Prod­ucts at Google, dis­cuss­es how she incor­po­rat­ed the human­i­ties into prod­uct inno­va­tion at Google. The first female engi­neer at Google (and its youngest exec­u­tive at the time of this talk), she has made head­lines recent­ly, becom­ing the new CEO of Yahoo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Mark Hamill’s Star Wars Screen Test (Featuring Harrison Ford)

in Film | August 7th, 2012

Watch­ing now-famous actors audi­tion for now-clas­sic films, you can’t help but feel a lit­tle thrill of false pre­science, know­ing how the sto­ry turned out — the sto­ry the film tells, cer­tain­ly, but also the sto­ry of the film itself, and those of the actors’ sub­se­quent careers. Today, hun­dreds of clips of screen test footage, none ever meant for pub­lic view­ing, have found their way onto the inter­net. We’ve fea­tured Mar­lon Bran­do’s for Rebel With­out a Cause, John Belushi’s for Sat­ur­day Night Live, and Audrey Hep­burn’s for Roman Hol­i­day, among oth­ers, here on Open Cul­ture. (And don’t for­get Andy Warhol’s dis­tinc­tive spin on the process.) Few films have become as beloved as the first chap­ter of Star Wars, and few actors have become as famous as Har­ri­son Ford, the man who played Han Solo. Above you see not Ford’s screen test, but Ford assist­ing in that of Mark Hamill, the future Luke Sky­walk­er, and per­haps the man most famous specif­i­cal­ly for act­ing in Star Wars.

“It checks out again,” reads Ford. “There’s no mis­take.” “You can’t find Organa Major?” reads Hamill. “I found it,” reads Ford. “It just ain’t there.” Star Wars enthu­si­asts, a group of some vig­i­lance, will imme­di­ate­ly notice that these stars-to-be read dif­fer­ent lines than they deliv­er in the fin­ished film. A bit of research on Wook­ieepe­dia tells me that Organa Major, known in most ear­ly drafts of Star Wars’ script as Ogana Major, would, in lat­er revi­sions, take the name Alder­aan and become — in Wook­ieepe­di­a’s words — “the home of many famous heroes, includ­ing Leia Organa Solo, Bail Organa, and Ulic Qel-Dro­ma.” Issues of nomen­cla­ture aside, to watch Hamil­l’s screen test is to behold the hum­ble ori­gins of a film that would rise to unbe­liev­able heights of cul­tur­al rel­e­vance, claim­ing a prime spot in the mythol­o­gy of the late twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry West. Yet its gen­er­a­tion-cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mances begin with a cou­ple guys trad­ing lines on mud­dy gray Sony Por­ta­Pak video.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kurt Rus­sell Audi­tions for Star Wars

Star Wars as Silent Film

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Star Wars is a Remix

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Remembering Robert Hughes, the Art Critic Who Took No Prisoners

in Art | August 7th, 2012

“Some think that so much of today’s art mir­rors and thus crit­i­cizes deca­dence,” Robert Hugh­es once said; “not so. It’s just deca­dent, full stop. It serves no crit­i­cal func­tion. It is part of the prob­lem.”

Hugh­es died Mon­day at the age of 74. One of the tow­er­ing fig­ures of late 20th cen­tu­ry art crit­i­cism, the Aus­tralian writer is best known for The Shock of the New, his 1980 tele­vi­sion series on the rise and fall of mod­ernism, and the best­selling book of the same name. He wrote at least 15 oth­er wide-rang­ing books on art and his­to­ry. He was an elo­quent writer and a tough crit­ic. “It was decid­ed­ly not Mr. Hugh­es’s method to take pris­on­ers,” writes Randy Kennedy in the New York Times obit­u­ary. “He was as damn­ing about artists who fell short of his expec­ta­tions as he was ecsta­t­ic about those who met them, and his prose seemed to reach only lofti­er heights when he was angry.”

Per­haps noth­ing made Hugh­es more angry than the per­ni­cious influ­ence of mon­ey on art in the past few decades. In the scene above from the 2008 BBC doc­u­men­tary The Mona Lisa Curse, Hugh­es pays a vis­it to Alber­to Mugra­bi, whose wealthy fam­i­ly makes no secret of its efforts to manip­u­late the art mar­ket by buy­ing up large num­bers of works by cer­tain artists (often those whom Hugh­es despised, like Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst) and stor­ing them in ware­hous­es. What fol­lows is less of an inter­view than a brow­beat­ing. When it’s over and Hugh­es has left the room, Mugra­bi says, “He’s a tough cook­ie.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Robert Hugh­es, Famed Art Crit­ic, Demys­ti­fies Mod­ern Art

 

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Carl Sagan Presents Six Lectures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar System … For Kids (1977)

in Astronomy, Physics, Video - Science | August 7th, 2012

The Roy­al Insti­tu­tion Christ­mas Lec­tures for Chil­dren — it’s a tra­di­tion that began back in 1825 when the inven­tor Michael Fara­day orga­nized an annu­al lec­ture series for kids, hop­ing to instill in a younger gen­er­a­tion a love for sci­ence. Almost two cen­turies lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. Emi­nent fig­ures like Sir David Atten­bor­ough and Richard Dawkins (watch here) pre­sent­ed lec­tures to young­sters in 1973 and 1991 (respec­tive­ly). And the great astronomer Carl Sagan took his turn in 1977, offer­ing six lec­tures on our solar sys­tem. The first two talks offer a broad overview of the plan­e­tary sys­tem, set­ting the stage for three pre­sen­ta­tions (see below) ded­i­cat­ed to Mars, a top­ic that holds spe­cial inter­est this week. With NASA just hav­ing land­ed its rover Curios­i­ty on the sur­face of Mars, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to watch Sagan talk about the knowl­edge gained from ear­ly NASA orbiters, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Mariner and Viking mis­sions. In a rather time­ly way, Sagan’s lec­tures put the Curios­i­ty mis­sion in a grander his­tor­i­cal con­text, a deep­er his­to­ry of space explo­ration.

Sagan’s talks assume no spe­cial­ized knowl­edge and run rough­ly 60 min­utes each. You can find more Christ­mas lec­tures on the RI web­site here.

The Out­er Solar Sys­tem and Life

The His­to­ry of Mars

Mars Before Viking

Mars After Viking

Plan­e­tary Sys­tems Beyond The Sun

We’ll be adding this course to the Astron­o­my sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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