Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exotic Marrakesh, 1994

in Music | October 11th, 2012

Wah Wah:

In 1994 Jim­my Page and Robert Plant col­lab­o­rat­ed on a new musi­cal project for the first time since the death 14 years ear­li­er of Led Zep­pelin’s drum­mer, John Bon­ham. The reunion result­ed from an invi­ta­tion to appear on MTV’s hit series Unplugged. But Page and Plant want­ed to steer clear of nos­tal­gia, so they exclud­ed for­mer Zep­pelin bassist John Paul Jones from the project and named it Unled­ded.

The result­ing album and DVD fea­ture an assort­ment of Zep­pelin songs that were rein­ter­pret­ed with the help of an Egypt­ian ensem­ble, an Indi­an vocal­ist and the Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan Orches­tra, but per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of the project was a trio of new songs record­ed with local musi­cians in Mar­rakesh, Moroc­co. Those per­for­mances, shown here, were the result of a col­lab­o­ra­tion with tra­di­tion­al musi­cians of the Gnawa minor­i­ty, whose sub-Saha­ran ances­tors were brought to Moroc­co many cen­turies ago as slaves.

“We’d nev­er met the Gnawa when we went there,” said Plant in a 1994 inter­view, “but they were very patient, and smil­ing is a great cur­ren­cy.” Gnawa music is tra­di­tion­al­ly per­formed for prayer and heal­ing, and dif­fers from oth­er North African music. “They play a kind of music which is much more akin to the music of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta than it is to do with Arab music,” Plant said in anoth­er inter­view. “It’s haunt­ing, seduc­tive, and quite allur­ing.”

City Don’t Cry:

The Truth Explodes (Yal­lah):

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of ‘Kash­mir’

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Comedian Tig Notaro’s “Truly Great” Cancer Stand-up Set Now Available on Louis C.K.‘s Website

in Comedy, Life | October 11th, 2012

Until a cou­ple months ago, it was kind of an open secret that Tig Notaro is one of the smartest, fun­ni­est female comics work­ing today. Notaro had a fierce­ly loy­al fan­base, a No. 1 pod­cast with writ­ing part­ner Kyle Dun­ni­gan (Pro­fes­sor Blastoff) and made reg­u­lar appear­ances on some of the usu­al com­e­dy cir­cuits, live and tele­vised (Com­e­dy Cen­tral Presents, The Sarah Sil­ver­man Pro­gram). She was doing pret­ty well, but had nowhere near the pro­file of, say, Louis C.K. Then some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pened. First, her life fell apart, and then her career blast­ed off: What changed? She got can­cer. Just the lat­est twist, a brush with death, in the life of a “mas­ter of the art of coun­ter­in­tu­itive com­e­dy.”

The can­cer, of course, was bad. But the four months lead­ing up to her diag­no­sis includ­ed a series of improb­a­bly awful events that could send the aver­age per­son into a depres­sive coma: she con­tract­ed pneu­mo­nia, then a near-fatal bac­te­r­i­al infec­tion, then her moth­er died sud­den­ly, then she went through an emo­tion­al breakup. All fol­lowed by… can­cer. So what’s the upside? Well, she is can­cer free now and appar­ent­ly doing well after a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my. But what made an impact pro­fes­sion­al­ly was the way she han­dled the com­pound­ing of per­son­al crises: she kept show­ing up, mak­ing great com­e­dy. And last August, instead of can­cel­ing an appear­ance at the L.A. club Largo, Notaro went onstage on the day she was diag­nosed with stage 2 breast can­cer, and deliv­ered a poignant, dead­pan mono­logue: “Hel­lo, I have can­cer. How are you?”

Louis C.K., who was there that night, tweet­ed that Notaro’s act was among the “tru­ly great, mas­ter­ful standup sets” he had seen in his 27 years in the busi­ness. Lat­er on his web­site C.K. wrote:

I was cry­ing and laugh­ing and lis­ten­ing like nev­er in my life. Here was this small woman stand­ing alone against death and sim­ply report­ing where her mind had been and what had hap­pened and employ­ing her gor­geous­ly acute stand-up voice to her own death.

C.K.’s noto­ri­ety sent Notaro trend­ing all over the inter­net, but the per­for­mance wasn’t made pub­lic, which only increased inter­est. Now, the uncut record­ing of that night has been released as her sec­ond com­e­dy album, Live, and it’s avail­able on C.K.’s web­site for the small price of $5.00. You can hear a short pre­view of the set above.

These days, Notaro’s first album Good One is No. 2 (in com­e­dy) on iTunes, she has a book deal, and is begin­ning a reg­u­lar gig on Com­e­dy Cen­tral. Reporters come call­ing fre­quent­ly. Notaro spoke to NPR’s Fresh Air a cou­ple days ago and told her sto­ry of that night. C.K. fol­lowed up in the same pro­gram with his ver­sion of events. Notaro’s inter­view is clas­sic her—she’s a nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed sto­ry­teller who seems to rise above mis­for­tune with envi­able poise and wit.

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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Watch a Water Droplet Bounce (That’s Right, Bounce) in Super Slow Motion

in Random | October 11th, 2012

Which wise sage said “Life moves pret­ty fast. If you don’t slow down and look around, you might miss it”? I can’t quite recall. It does­n’t mat­ter. But the Phan­tom v7.3 Dig­i­tal High Speed Cam­era sug­gests that there’s some­thing to that adage. The cam­era shoots up to 6688 frames-per-sec­ond, and lets you look at every­day phe­nom­e­na in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. We’ve shown you pret­ty cool footage of what a vibrat­ing cym­bal looks like while cap­tured in super slow mo. Now we give you a glimpse of some­thing you don’t see very often — water bounc­ing.

via @Wired

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Thelonious Monk, Live in Oslo and Copenhagen (1966)

in Music | October 10th, 2012

A lit­tle present for what would be Thelo­nius Monk’s 95th birth­day today — 100 grand min­utes of Monk per­form­ing live in Oslo and Copen­hagen in 1966. In the spring of that year, Monk brought his leg­endary quar­tet (tenor sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie Rouse, bassist Lar­ry Gales, and drum­mer Ben Riley) to Scan­di­navia to per­form two tele­vised shows. The record­ing, saved for pos­ter­i­ty thanks to YouTube, fea­tures some Monk clas­sics: Blue Monk, Epistro­phy, Round Mid­night and oth­ers. Sit back and enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

The Uni­ver­sal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learn­ing to Play Jazz & The Cre­ative Process

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Braque in Bulk: Costco Gets Back into the Fine Art Market

in Art, Business | October 10th, 2012

In 2006, Louis Knicker­bock­er, a meat dis­trib­u­tor from New­port Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, bought a Picas­so draw­ing online. The price looked too good to be true, $39,999.99. But why have con­cerns when the piece was being sold by the rep­utable art deal­er, Cost­co. That’s right, I said, Cost­co! Said Knicker­bock­er: “They just sell the top qual­i­ty — what­ev­er you buy at Cost­co, whether it’s a wash­ing machine or a vac­u­um clean­er.”

The Picas­so draw­ing end­ed up falling under sus­pi­cion, and Cost­co exit­ed the fine art mar­ket. But now, six years lat­er, they’re back. Accord­ing to The New York Times, Cost­co recent­ly opened a Fine Art sec­tion on its web site and start­ed sell­ing lith­o­graphs by Braque, Matisse, and Warhol, most­ly in the $1,500 range. Per­haps because of The New York Times pub­lic­i­ty, these objets d’art are now all sold out.

The next time you’re fill­ing your cart with 10 pounds of cof­fee and 1728 bot­tles of water (you need to hydrate after all of that caf­feine, you know?), pay anoth­er vis­it to the Fine Art sec­tion. They may have the deal of the cen­tu­ry wait­ing for you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vin­tage Footage of Picas­so and Jack­son Pol­lock Paint­ing … Through Glass

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

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Leonard Cohen Plays a Spellbinding Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival

in Film, Music | October 10th, 2012

Jimi Hen­drix was a tough act to fol­low under the best of cir­cum­stances. But to fol­low him onstage after mid­night in front of a crowd of more than half a mil­lion peo­ple that had been set­ting fires and throw­ing bot­tles at the stage seemed like an impos­si­ble task for a poet with an acoustic gui­tar and a gen­tle band of back­ing musi­cians. Yet Leonard Cohen turned the volatile sit­u­a­tion at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val into one of the most mag­i­cal per­for­mances of his career.

A lit­tle piece of land four miles off the south­ern coast of Eng­land, the Isle of Wight was host to three great music fes­ti­vals from 1968 to 1970. The last of these was some­thing of a cross between Wood­stock and Alta­mont: flower pow­er with an under­cur­rent of men­ace. Like the Wood­stock fes­ti­val the year before, the 1970 Isle of Wight fes­ti­val was crashed by thou­sands of unpay­ing fans.

Head­lin­ers for the five-day fes­ti­val includ­ed Hen­drix, Miles Davis, the Who and the Doors. By the time Cohen appeared–near the very end of the rainy final night–the atmos­phere had become dan­ger­ous. Dur­ing the Hen­dix per­for­mance, some­one threw a flare onto the top of the stage and set it on fire. Jour­nal­ist Sylvie Sim­mons describes the scene in her new book, I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen:

Ten­sion had been ris­ing at the fes­ti­val for days. The pro­mot­ers had expect­ed a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand peo­ple but half a mil­lion more turned up, many with no inten­tion of pay­ing. Even after the pro­mot­ers were forced to declare it a free fes­ti­val, ill will remained. Dur­ing a set by Kris Kristof­fer­son, bot­tles were thrown and he was booed off­stage. “They were boo­ing every­body,” says Kristof­fer­son. “Except Leonard Cohen.”

As Cohen and his pro­duc­er and key­board play­er Bob John­ston stood watch­ing the may­hem dur­ing Hen­drix’s per­for­mance, Cohen stayed calm. “Leonard was­n’t wor­ried,” John­ston told Sim­mons. “Hen­drix did­n’t care and nei­ther did we. Leonard was always com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to any­thing like that. The only thing that upset him was when they told him that they did­n’t have a piano or an organ–I don’t know, some­one had set them on fire and pushed them off the stage–so I could­n’t play with him. Leonard said, ‘I’ll be in the trail­er tak­ing a nap; come and get me when you’ve found a piano and an organ.’ ”

Accord­ing to most accounts it was a lit­tle after two o’clock in the morn­ing when Cohen took the stage. His back­up band, or “Army,” includ­ed John­ston on key­boards, Char­lie Daniels on fid­dle and bass, Ron Cor­nelius on lead gui­tar and Elkin “Bub­ba” Fowler on ban­jo and bass, along with back­up singers Cor­lynn Han­ney, Susan Mus­man­no and Don­na Wash­burn. Cohen had a glazed-over look in his eyes through­out the per­for­mance, the result of his tak­ing the seda­tive Man­drax. “He was calm because of the Man­drax,” John­ston told Sim­mons. “That’s what saved the show and saved the fes­ti­val. It was the mid­dle of the night, all those peo­ple had been sit­ting out there in the rain, after they’d set fire to Hen­drix’s stage, and nobody had slept for days.”

The his­toric per­for­mance was cap­tured on film by Mur­ray Lern­er, who released it in 2009 as Leonard Cohen: Live at the Isle of Wight 1970. The film (above) includes the fol­low­ing songs from the show:

  1. Dia­monds in the Mine
  2. Famous Blue Rain­coat
  3. Bird on the Wire
  4. One of us Can­not be Wrong
  5. The Stranger Song
  6. Tonight Will be Fine
  7. Hey, That’s No Way to Say Good­bye
  8. Sing Anoth­er Song Boys
  9. Suzanne
  10. The Par­ti­san
  11. Seems So Long Ago, Nan­cy
  12. So Long, Mar­i­anne (dur­ing clos­ing cred­its)

Per­haps the most mov­ing moment in the film comes at the begin­ning, when Cohen brings the mas­sive crowd togeth­er by ask­ing a favor: “Can I ask each of you to light a match,” Cohen says, “so I can see where you all are?” As Sim­mons puts it, “Leonard talked to the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple he could not see as if they were sit­ting togeth­er in a small dark room.” Or as film­mak­er Lern­er lat­er said, “He mes­mer­ized them. And I got mes­mer­ized also.” Sum­ming up the con­cert and the film, Sim­mons writes: “It was a bril­liant per­for­mance. Lern­er’s cam­eras cap­tured Cohen’s com­mand­ing pres­ence, hyp­no­tist’s charm, and an inti­ma­cy that would seem unfea­si­ble in such a vast, inhos­pitable space.”

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Hear Paul Auster Read the Entirety of The Red Notebook, an Early Collection of Stories

in Audio Books, Books, Literature | October 10th, 2012

Nov­el­ist, screen­writer, poet, and trans­la­tor Paul Auster has carved out a place for him­self over the past sev­er­al decades as a decid­ed­ly writer’s writer, a Brook­lyn Borges of a sort, whose metafic­tion­al tales are often intri­cate­ly con­struct­ed sto­ries with­in sto­ries (with­in sto­ries). Auster is also known for writ­ing and co-direct­ing (with Wayne Wang) 1995 sleep­er indie hit Smoke, a film about the denizens of a Brook­lyn cig­ar shop. As with much of Auster’s fic­tion, a cen­tral char­ac­ter in Smoke is a bro­ken-heart­ed, soli­tary writer (played by William Hurt). Auster’s 2002 nov­el The Book of Illu­sions is cen­tered around a sim­i­lar char­ac­ter, a writer deep in mourn­ing. On April 11, 2001, Auster stopped by the Kel­ly Writ­ers House at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia to give a read­ing from The Book of Illu­sions. Below, you can hear him read the first two pages of the nov­el:

The com­plete UPenn event, includ­ing intro­duc­tion and a lengthy read­ing from the sec­ond chap­ter is avail­able here.

Penn Sound, which hosts the above read­ing, also has audio of Auster read­ing the entire­ly of an ear­ly col­lec­tion of sto­ries, The Red Note­book: True Sto­ries, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo in April of 1995. Auster has argued that fic­tion is “mag­nif­i­cent­ly use­less,” but valu­able nonethe­less for the joy it brings both writ­ers and read­ers. In The Red Note­book he nar­rates what he claims are true events from his life. The col­lec­tion is divid­ed into four short sec­tions: “The Red Note­book,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Acci­dent Report,” and, the final nar­ra­tive, “Why Write?” His answers to this final question–whether they’re real­ly “true” or just mag­nif­i­cent­ly use­less inventions–show us sur­pris­ing coin­ci­dences and odd pat­terns in the seem­ing­ly ran­dom busi­ness of dai­ly life. Lis­ten to the first install­ment below. You can find the com­plete audio, with intro­duc­tion by Robert Cree­ley, here.

Penn Sound is a “cen­ter for pro­grams in con­tem­po­rary writ­ing” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and fea­tures a large archive of record­ed audio and video read­ings and dis­cus­sions on con­tem­po­rary poet­ry, fic­tion, and more.

The read­ing of The Red Note­book appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

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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Samuel Beckett Directs His Absurdist Play Waiting for Godot (1985)

in Literature, Theatre | October 10th, 2012

Samuel Beck­et­t’s absur­dist play, Wait­ing for Godot, pre­miered in Paris in 1953, at the Théâtre de Baby­lone, under the direc­tion of French actor, Roger Blin. Many oth­er direc­tors staged the play in the years to come, each time inter­pret­ing it in their own way. All the while, Beck­ett com­plained that the play was being sub­ject­ed to “end­less mis­un­der­stand­ing.” How­ev­er, when an actor, Peter Woodthrope, once asked him to explain what Godot is all about, Beck­ett answered quixot­i­cal­ly: “It’s all sym­bio­sis, Peter; it’s sym­bio­sis.” Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion, Sam.

Beck­ett nev­er gave a clear expla­na­tion. But per­haps he offered up some­thing bet­ter. In 1985, Beck­ett direct­ed three of his plays — Wait­ing for Godot, Krap­p’s Last Tape and Endgame — as part of a pro­duc­tion called “Beck­ett Directs Beck­ett.” The plays per­formed by the San Quentin Play­ers toured Europe and Asia with much fan­fare, and with Beck­ett exert­ing direc­to­r­i­al con­trol. And do keep this in mind. Beck­ett paces things slow­ly. So you won’t hear your first sound until the 2:00 mark.

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