Muddy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

in Music, Television | January 7th, 2013

One of the most unique and inti­mate con­certs from the British blues revival of the 1960s was the “Blues and Gospel Train,” filmed in a sub­urb of Man­ches­ter, Eng­land. In 2011 we post­ed an excerpt fea­tur­ing Mud­dy Waters singing “You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Nev­er Had.” Today we’re pleased to bring the whole show–or at least most of it.

The “Blues and Gospel Train” was staged on May 7, 1964 by Grana­da TV. Fans who were lucky enough to get tickets–some 200 of them–were instruct­ed to meet at Man­ches­ter’s Cen­tral Sta­tion at 7:30 that evening for a short train ride to the aban­doned Wilbra­ham Road Sta­tion in Whal­ley Range.

When the train pulled in at Wilbra­ham Road, the audi­ence poured out and found seats on the plat­form, mak­ing their way past Mud­dy Waters, who was singing “Blow Wind Blow.” The oppo­site plat­form, dec­o­rat­ed to look like an old rail­way sta­tion in the Amer­i­can South, served as a stage for a line­up of now-leg­endary blues artists includ­ing Waters, Sis­ter Roset­ta Sharpe, Son­ny Ter­ry & Brown­ie McGhee, Cousin Joe, Otis Spann and Rev­erend Gary Davis.

The com­plete con­cert is avail­able on DVD as part of Amer­i­can Folk ‑Blues Fes­ti­val: The British Tours 1963–1966. The ver­sion above is not of the great­est qual­i­ty, but it’s still inter­est­ing to watch. Rev. Gary Davis’s con­tri­bu­tion appears to have been cut, but much of the show is intact. The tap­ing was inter­rupt­ed by a heavy down­pour. Fit­ting­ly, Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe begins her set with a per­for­mance of “Did­n’t It Rain.” Here’s the full list of per­for­mances, in order of appear­ance:

  1. Mud­dy Waters: “Blow Wind Blow”
  2. Cousin Joe: “Chick­en a la Blues”
  3. Cousin Joe: “Rail­road Porter Blues”
  4. Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: “Did­n’t It Rain”
  5. Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: “Trou­ble in Mind”
  6. Mud­dy Waters: “You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Nev­er Had”
  7. Son­ny Ter­ry & Brown­ie McGhee: “Talk­ing Har­mon­i­ca Blues”
  8. Son­ny Ter­ry & Brown­ie McGhee: “Ram­bler’s Blues” med­ley
  9. Son­ny Ter­ry & Brown­ie McGhee: “Walk On”
  10. Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe: “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”

Blues and Gospel Train
Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues

Robert John­son’s ‘Me and the Dev­il Blues,’ Ani­mat­ed

Lead Bel­ly: Only Known Footage of the Leg­endary Blues­man, 1935 and 1945

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Leonard Nimoy Narrates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voyage to the Origins of the Solar System

in Astronomy | January 7th, 2013

In 1996, sci­ence writer John Hor­gan pub­lished a book called The End of Sci­ence in which he claimed that we had learned all we could know about the nat­ur­al world. And in 2008, Wired mag­a­zine devot­ed an issue to, you guessed it, “The End of Sci­ence.” Snap­py, grandiose titles may sell copy, but it’s also the case that each time some­one or oth­er declares the end of some­thing massive—science, his­to­ry, war, and peri­od­i­cal­ly, the world–we can look back and be aston­ished at the hubris. It now seems that there are fron­tiers we are just begin­ning to explore, and they are the fron­tiers of our evo­lu­tion­ary begin­nings. While bio­physi­cists like Peter Hoff­mann chart the bound­aries between life and non­life at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el, NASA sci­en­tists explore the out­er reach­es to dis­cov­er what Leonard Nimoy, nar­ra­tor of the video above, calls “the very begin­ning of us.”

It’s a lit­tle wonky at times, but the short film above is nonethe­less a fas­ci­nat­ing overview of NASA’s Dawn mis­sion, a space­craft designed to col­lect data from the aster­oid belt. The ship itself is a mar­vel. Out­fit­ted with mas­sive solar pan­el wings that can pow­er it for years, Dawn con­verts xenon gas into plas­ma, which it pro­pels from its engine at speeds up to 78,000 miles per hour (or 21 miles per sec­ond) for max­i­mum accel­er­a­tion.

In fact, Dawn is the fastest ship NASA has ever launched. Even at top speeds, Dawn required four years to reach its first stop, the aster­oid Ves­ta, the bright­est aster­oid in the solar sys­tem and the only one vis­i­ble to the naked eye. Depart­ing Earth in 2007, the ship reached Ves­ta in July of 2011 and depart­ed last Sep­tem­ber for the aster­oid Ceres, which it will reach in Feb­ru­ary of 2015.

These two aster­oids are part of what is called the “pro­to­plan­e­tary disk,” a once-chaot­ic ring of dust and gas that began to coa­lesce into our solar sys­tem some 4.6 bil­lion years ago. One NASA sci­en­tist above describes the aster­oid belt as the “bone­yard” of deep space—remains from the ear­li­est epochs of time. Dawn’s mis­sion isn’t just a for­ay to unchart­ed space; it’s also a jour­ney bil­lions years into the past, into the ori­gins of our solar sys­tem.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Shat­ner Nar­rates Space Shut­tle Doc­u­men­tary

Star Trek Celebri­ties, William Shat­ner and Wil Wheaton, Nar­rate Mars Land­ing Videos for NASA

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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An Anti, Anti-Smoking Announcement from John Waters

in Comedy, Film | January 7th, 2013

The idea of smok­ing in a movie the­ater, or any­where one might go to have a good time, seems out­landish in 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca, far more fan­tas­ti­cal than most of what you’d actu­al­ly see pro­ject­ed onscreen. I don’t smoke, but it cer­tain­ly would­n’t occur to me to start while moviego­ing, a pur­suit that, here in Los Ange­les, takes up a con­sid­er­able chunk of my free time. Though I attend screen­ings at the Nuart The­atre on San­ta Mon­i­ca Boule­vard with some fre­quen­cy, I’ve sad­ly missed the hey­day of the pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment above. Bad-taste-is-good-taste film­mak­er John Waters shot the PSA for the Nuart The­atre decades ago in appre­ci­a­tion for their long-run­ning show­ings of his break­through fea­ture Pink Flamin­gos. “I’m sup­posed to announce that there’s no smok­ing in this the­ater,” Waters says to the cam­era, after tak­ing a drag on his cig­a­rette, “which is just one of the most ridicu­lous things I’ve heard of in my life.”

“How can any­one sit through the length of a film,” he con­tin­ues, “espe­cial­ly a Euro­pean film, and not have a cig­a­rette?” Indeed, the Nuart today remains a reli­able source for inter­est­ing pic­tures, often of Euro­pean ori­gin. So, I’ve heard, was Berke­ley’s UC The­ater, anoth­er fre­quent screen­er of Waters’ “no-smok­ing” PSA, before it closed its doors in 2001. When Land­mark The­atres own­er Gary Mey­er pur­chased both the Nuart and the UC in 1974, they became the first in that now-for­mi­da­ble chain of pop­u­lar-art house crossover venues. Revival cin­e­ma has seen some­thing of a resur­gence in recent years, giv­ing Land­mark more com­pe­ti­tion than it once faced, and though some the­aters have brought gourmet food and alco­hol into the expe­ri­ence, cig­a­rettes seem unlike­ly to make a return. What the moviego­ing world needs now is a clip from Waters denounc­ing cell­phone usage — but he’s got to do it seri­ous­ly. Or as seri­ous­ly as he can.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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F. Scott Fitzgerald in Drag (1916)

in Literature, Random | January 5th, 2013

F-SCOTT-FITZGERALD-in dragIt has been said that the dom­i­nant influ­ences on F. Scott Fitzger­ald were lit­er­a­ture, Zel­da, alco­hol, and Prince­ton. The pho­tos above were tak­en dur­ing the nov­el­ist’s Prince­ton days, where he played an active role in The Prince­ton Tri­an­gle Club, writ­ing scripts and lyrics for what’s now the old­est col­le­giate musi­cal-com­e­dy troupe in the US. After Fitzger­ald failed sev­er­al exams, he was barred from per­form­ing in the club’s 1916 musi­cal pro­duc­tion, The Evil Eye!. A shame, giv­en that he co-wrote the script. But F. Scott was­n’t going to be com­plete­ly denied. Yes, he posed in drag for a pub­lic­i­ty pho­to that appeared in The New York Times on Jan­u­ary 2, 1916. The news­pa­per called him “the most beau­ti­ful” girl in the show.

H/T Retro­naut

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Cre­ates a List of 22 Essen­tial Books, 1936

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads From Shakespeare’s Oth­el­lo and John Masefield’s “On Grow­ing Old” (c.1940)

Ernest Hem­ing­way to F. Scott Fitzger­ald: “Kiss My Ass”

Find major works by F. Scott Fitzger­ald in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions.

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Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Film Tribute to America’s Great Musical Tradition

in Music | January 4th, 2013

“I can’t imag­ine my life, or any­one else’s, with­out music,” says film­mak­er Mar­tin Scors­ese. “It’s like a light in the dark­ness that nev­er goes out.” So begins Feel Like Going Home, Scors­ese’s fas­ci­nat­ing and at times lyri­cal doc­u­men­tary on the ori­gin and evo­lu­tion of the blues.

Feel Like Going Home (shown above in its entire­ty) is the first of sev­en install­ments, by sev­en direc­tors, in the PBS series The Blues. It fol­lows musi­cian Corey Har­ris as he traces the roots of the Blues from the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta back to West Africa. The doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views and per­for­mances from con­tem­po­rary artists like Taj Mahal and Willie King, as well as archival footage of leg­ends like Son House, Mud­dy Waters and Lead Bel­ly.

“I’ve always felt an affin­i­ty for blues music,” Scors­ese told PBS. “The cul­ture of sto­ry­telling through music is incred­i­bly fas­ci­nat­ing and appeal­ing to me. The blues have great emo­tion­al res­o­nance and are the foun­da­tion for Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music.” Scors­ese served as exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the series, which includes episodes direct­ed by Clint East­wood (Piano Blues) and Wim Wen­ders (The Soul of a Man). The com­plete sev­en-part series is avail­able on DVD as Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues–A Musi­cal Jour­ney.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Fea­tures 17,000 Record­ings

Ani­mat­ed: Robert Johnson’s Clas­sic Blues Tune Me and the Dev­il Blues

Watch the Only Known Footage of the Leg­endary Blues­man Lead Bel­ly (1935 and 1945)

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Ken Kesey Talks About the Meaning of the Acid Tests

in Life, Literature | January 4th, 2013

For me, there have always been at least three Ken Keseys. First, there was the anti­au­thor­i­tar­i­an author of the mad­cap 1962 clas­sic One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Inspired by Kesey’s own work as an order­ly at a Men­lo Park men­tal hos­pi­tal, the author’s voice dis­ap­pears into that of the nar­ra­tor, Chief Brom­den, and the dia­logue of the most mem­o­rable ensem­ble of trou­bled per­son­al­i­ties in twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. Then there’s the Kesey of the 1964 Some­times a Great Notion, a Pacif­ic North­west epic and the work of a seri­ous nov­el­ist pulling Amer­i­can arche­types from rough-hewn Ore­gon log­ging coun­try. Final­ly, there’s Kesey the Mer­ry Prankster, the mad sci­en­tist who almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed six­ties drug cul­ture with his ‘64 psy­che­del­ic bus tour and acid test par­ties. It’s a lit­tle hard to put them all togeth­er some­times. Ken Kesey con­tained mul­ti­tudes.

The acid test par­ties began after Kesey’s expe­ri­ence with mind-alter­ing drugs as a vol­un­teer test sub­ject for Army exper­i­ments in 1960 (lat­er revealed to be part of the CIA’s mind con­trol exper­i­ment, Project MKUl­tra). Kesey stole LSD and invit­ed friends to try it with him. In 1965, after Hunter S. Thomp­son intro­duced Kesey to the Hell’s Angels, he expand­ed his test par­ties to real hap­pen­ings at larg­er venues, begin­ning at his home in La Hon­da, Cal­i­for­nia. Always present was the music of The Grate­ful Dead, who debuted under that name at one of Kesey’s par­ties after los­ing their orig­i­nal name, The War­locks. The cast of char­ac­ters also includ­ed Jack Kerouac’s trav­el­ing bud­dy Neal Cas­sady, Allen Gins­berg, and Dr. Tim­o­thy Leary. Out of what Hunter Thomp­son called “the world cap­i­tal of mad­ness,” the psy­che­del­ic counter-cul­ture of Haight-Ash­bury was born.

In the inter­view above, Kesey talks about the acid tests as much more than an excuse to trip for hours and hear The Dead play for a buck. No, he says, “there were peo­ple who passed and peo­ple who didn’t pass” the test. What it all meant per­haps only Kesey knew for sure. (He is quot­ed as say­ing that he and his band of com­pa­tri­ots, the Mer­ry Pranksters, were try­ing to “stop the com­ing end of the world”). In any case, it’s a strange story—stranger than any of Ken Kesey’s works of fic­tion: covert gov­ern­ment mind con­trol pro­gram turns on one of the generation’s most sub­ver­sive nov­el­ists, who then mas­ter­minds the hip­py move­ment.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

The Acid Test Reels: Ken Kesey & The Grate­ful Dead’s Sound­track for the 1960s Famous LSD Par­ties

Take a Trip to the LSD Muse­um, the Largest Col­lec­tion of “Blot­ter Art” in the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land­scape, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

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Lick the Star: Sofia Coppola’s Very First Film Follows a 7th-Grade Conspiracy (1998)

in Film | January 4th, 2013

Young women trapped in gild­ed cages: that’s the theme that comes to mind when think­ing about the films of Sofia Cop­po­la, so read­i­ly that her Wikipedia page uses the phrase almost ver­ba­tim. The Vir­gin Sui­cides starred five sub­ur­ban sis­ters under ever-tight­en­ing parental lock­down. Lost in Trans­la­tion found a rock pho­tog­ra­pher’s wife free yet adrift in a swank Tokyo hotel. Marie Antoinette made a sub­ject of, well, Marie Antoinette, and Some­where left its eleven-year-old daugh­ter of a dis­af­fect­ed movie star with no choice but turn up on on her dad’s Chateau Mar­mont doorstep. Even now, the film­mak­er com­pletes work on The Bling Ring, whose tit­u­lar clutch of teenagers find them­selves dri­ven to bur­gle the homes of Paris Hilton, Lind­say Lohan, and oth­er such lumi­nar­ies, sure­ly out of sheer ennui. But the most vicious expres­sion of the sig­na­ture Sofia Cop­po­la set­up came in her very first film, the 1998 short Lick the Star.

Set amid the aris­to­crat­ic court-lev­el intrigue of a mid­dle-class junior high school, the sto­ry traces the break­down of a con­spir­a­cy by the girls, led by sev­enth-grade queen bee Chloe, to grad­u­al­ly poi­son the boys with dos­es of arsenic. In what we by now will have come to think of as a Cop­polan turn, Chloe gets the idea from V.C. Andrews’ Flow­ers in the Attic, copies of which she pass­es around to the under­lings she pres­sures into help­ing her exe­cute the plan. Alas, what goes for the best-laid plans of mice and men goes also for those of spite­ful thir­teen-year-old girls. Shot on black-and-white 16-mil­lime­ter film, Lick the Star would at first seem to fit right in, aes­thet­i­cal­ly, with the oth­er quick-and-dirty debuts of the 1990s’ Amer­i­can indie boom, but a series of strik­ing styl­is­tic touch­es soon set it apart. More evi­dence for Cop­po­la’s defend­ers, who argue against the detrac­tors who accuse her of hav­ing got­ten by on nepo­tism. Then again, with­out the right con­nec­tions, could she have cast Peter Bog­danovich as the prin­ci­pal?

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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James Brown Gives You Dancing Lessons: From The Funky Chicken to The Boogaloo

in Life, Music | January 4th, 2013

Don’t go into this expect­ing Arthur Mur­ray-lev­el clar­i­ty of instruc­tion. This is Soul Train-era James Brown, shak­ing way more than any sim­ple foot­print pat­tern could con­vey. That’s not to say there isn’t con­crete infor­ma­tion to be gleaned here, espe­cial­ly if you nev­er real­ly knew which moves con­sti­tute The Funky Chick­en.  Dit­to The Booga­loo, The Camel Walk, and some­thing I swear sounds like The Mac Davis.

James proud­ly demon­strates them all, as uncon­cerned as a pea­cock would be when it comes to break­ing things down for the folks at home. (Trust me, your kneecaps will be grate­ful he’s not more explic­it.) Enjoy this lit­tle dance break any time you need a boost. Or what the hell, see how your Robot stacks up against James’. (Be fore­warned, he blows Shields and Yarnell out of the water.) If — as the song goes — You Don’t Give A Dog­gone About It, you’ll have a lot of fun. Leave the shades open, and your neigh­bors will too.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day has nev­er shied away from embar­rass­ing her­self off or on the dance floor. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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