The Police Sing “Message in a Bottle” for the First Time Live (1979)

in Music | April 15th, 2013

The Police pulled off the most unlike­ly of musi­cal feats. While sev­er­al bands com­bined the rest­less, raw ener­gy of punk with the rhyth­mic, tune­ful urgency of reg­gae, these guys wrapped it all up in the accom­plished musi­cian­ship and off-kil­ter key changes and shift­ing time sig­na­tures of jazzy prog rock. This had nev­er been done before, and any­one who’s tried it since owes a tremen­dous debt to Sting, Andy Sum­mers, and Stew­art Copeland (no one comes to mind, though). The fact that they were able to retain rock cred­i­bil­i­ty while win­ning pop star­dom and a Gram­my for a rock instru­men­tal (1979’s krautrock-influ­enced “Regat­ta de Blanc”) are all fur­ther tes­ta­ments to the phe­nom­e­nal odd­i­ty that was this band. While I’ve nev­er been much of a fan of Sting’s solo work, The Police have always kind of aston­ished me with their brav­ery and vir­tu­os­i­ty.

And so we come to the act of brav­ery above: in a live appear­ance at Hat­field Poly­tech­nic (now the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hert­ford­shire) in Feb­ru­ary of 1979, the band decides to drop a new, untest­ed song on the enthu­si­as­tic crowd. The song? “Mes­sage in a Bot­tle” from the ’79 album Regat­ta de Blanc, the same record that pro­duced that Gram­my-win­ning title-track instru­men­tal. What’s so brave about that, you ask? There’s often no bet­ter way to try out new mate­r­i­al than in front of an already appre­cia­tive audi­ence. Well, this gig was record­ed for a BBC series called “Rock Goes to Col­lege.” Although The Police were skirt­ing star­dom with the sin­gle “Rox­anne” from their first album, they hadn’t quite made it yet, and their first TV appear­ance was a risky venue for demo­ing a new tune. But they pull it off. The crowd bounces in time and the three Police, who seem on the edge of a mis­take or dropped note some­where, give the song a flaw­less turn.

You can watch the full “Rock Goes to Col­lege” con­cert below, which also includes ear­ly hits like “Can’t Stand Los­ing You” (the open­er) and “Rox­anne” (at 29:45).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

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Bitcoin, the New Decentralized Digital Currency, Demystified in a Three Minute Video

in Business, Economics, Web/Tech | April 15th, 2013

They sound like some­thing out of sci­ence fic­tion, but Bit­coins are get­ting just a lit­tle bit more real every day. They’re intan­gi­ble and invis­i­ble, but bit­coins recent­ly attract­ed some real invest­ment cap­i­tal from the Win­klevoss twins, who first dreamed up the idea for Face­book — or so their law­suit argued.

A bit of back­ground: Bit­coins are a vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy sys­tem. They were pro­grammed by an anony­mous programmer(s?) in 2009. There are a lim­it­ed num­ber of pos­si­ble bit­coins that can ever be traded—21 million—and the “coins” become avail­able incre­men­tal­ly. That process is crowd­sourced (any­body can mint bit­coins) but it requires solv­ing com­plex encryp­tion prob­lems. Most bit­coin min­ers have an army of com­put­er hard­ware to do the work for them.

What can a bit­coin buy? It depends. The currency’s val­ue has been gyrat­ing wild­ly in recent weeks, from a val­ue of just a few dol­lars up to $266 and then back down to about $100. So far bit­coins are accept­ed as cur­ren­cy by some­what shady elec­tron­ics web­sites that claim to be send­ing a mes­sage to big retail­ers: start accept­ing the vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy or miss out on a big mar­ket share (that hasn’t devel­oped yet).

Last week came the announce­ment that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—former rivals to Mark Zuckerberg—own one per­cent of all the bit­coins in cir­cu­la­tion, the biggest stake so far. That news inspired debate over what, exact­ly, bit­coins are and whether they’re impor­tant.

They aren’t the first vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy and they aren’t being used wide­ly in com­merce. Some econ­o­mists have weighed in to say that unless peo­ple stop hord­ing bit­coins as an invest­ment and start spend­ing them, they are mean­ing­less. The bit­coin exper­i­ment may show the way to a dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy of the future. But, until it pans out, we rec­om­mend that you hang onto your dol­lars. And if you’re still try­ing to get your arms around the whole con­cept of the bit­coin, we sug­gest spend­ing a few min­utes with the video primer above.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site: .

 

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The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Podcast

in Film, Podcasts | April 15th, 2013

With 1994’s Clerks, Kevin Smith opened up the flood­gates for inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced, micro-bud­get, dia­logue-inten­sive, curs­ing-inten­sive movies by, for, and about a cer­tain stripe of feck­less Generation‑X twen­tysome­thing. These pic­tures show­cased more aggres­sive­ly foul­mouthed (but, in their way, more ener­getic) ver­sions of the over­grown kids and/or stalled adults whose mean­der­ing lives Richard Lin­klater had dra­ma­tized in Slack­er three years before. (Watch Slack­er online here.) Clerks hit when I had­n’t yet grown out of com­ic book-read­ing pre-ado­les­cence, though I do remem­ber becom­ing aware of Smith’s work from an ad on the back of, yes, a com­ic book. The page adver­tised Mall­rats, Smith’s big-bud­get Clerks fol­lowup; in its cor­ner posed a pair of smirk­ing young long­hairs. “Snootchie bootchies,” read an inex­plic­a­ble voice bub­ble ema­nat­ing from the thin­ner of the two. I had to know: who were those guys? The zeit­geist now rec­og­nizes Jay and Silent Bob, the out­ward­ly dumb but star­tling­ly wise drug deal­ers played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith him­self, as hav­ing stolen Clerks’ show. (You can watch one of their fin­er moments in Mall­rats above.)

Smith used the char­ac­ters in Mall­rats as well, and went on to write them into sub­se­quent movies like Chas­ing Amy, Dog­ma, and of course Clerks II and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, their pres­ence uni­fy­ing all these sto­ries into one coher­ent real­i­ty. Cinephiles argue over whether Smith has deliv­ered on his promise as a direc­tor, but some fans think the man has found his true voice as a pod­cast­er. Today, on his own pod­cast net­work, he hosts a stag­ger­ing array of shows, includ­ing SMod­cast, SMoviemak­ers, Hol­ly­wood Bab­ble-On, and Fat Man on Bat­man. Jay and Silent Bob Get Old (Web — iTunes — RSS feed) reunites the 42-year-old Smith and the 38-year-old Mewes for reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions about adult­hood, fame, and strug­gles with sobri­ety (in Mewes’ case) and weight (in Smith’s), always fea­tur­ing the most vul­gar jokes imag­in­able. If you haven’t caught up with these guys since the nineties, have a lis­ten to their pod­cast’s so-very-Not-Safe-for-Work first episode above. They’ve even got back into char­ac­ter for Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Car­toon Movie, which begins its road­show across North Amer­i­ca on April 20.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Very Young Marianne Faithfull Sings Her First Hit, ‘As Tears Go By’ (1965)

in Music, Television | April 15th, 2013

On Fri­day we fea­tured a 1973 video of Mar­i­anne Faith­full and David Bowie dressed as a nun and a trans­ves­tite, mak­ing a bur­lesque of Son­ny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” Today we thought we’d roll back the clock a bit fur­ther, to when Faith­full was a bright-eyed 18-year-old singing her debut sin­gle, “As Tears Go By.”

The per­for­mance was broad­cast on Jan­u­ary 19, 1965 on the NBC pro­gram Hul­la­baloo, an Amer­i­can musi­cal vari­ety show that aired in 1965 and 1966. Each week­ly episode was host­ed by a guest artist who would at some point ask for the cam­eras to be switched over to Lon­don, where the Bea­t­les’ man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein would intro­duce an artist from Eng­land. On this occa­sion Faith­full appeared ner­vous as she sang “As Tears Go By,” which had been released the pre­vi­ous sum­mer in Eng­land but more recent­ly in Amer­i­ca.

Faith­ful­l’s record­ing of the song peaked at num­ber nine on the British charts and num­ber 22 on the Bill­board Hot 100 in the Unit­ed States. It was one of the first songs writ­ten by Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards of the Rolling Stones, along with their man­ag­er Andrew Loog Old­ham. The Stones them­selves did­n’t release a record­ing of it until Decem­ber 1965, a year and a half after Faith­ful­l’s ver­sion came out. In a brief inter­view at the end of the Hul­la­baloo seg­ment, Epstein asks Faith­full how she came to record the song:

“I met Andrew Old­ham at a par­ty,” she says, “and he asked me if I’d like to make a record, because he thought I had a face that could sell.”

“And what did you think?” says Epstein.

“I thought, ‘This is fine. Per­haps I have. Let’s sell it.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

The Rolling Stones Live in Hyde Park, 1969: The Com­plete Film

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

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Patti Smith Shares William S. Burroughs’ Advice for Writers and Artists

in Life, Literature, Music | April 15th, 2013

Would you take advice from William S Bur­roughs? What if it were fil­tered through the human­is­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties of Pat­ti Smith? Address­ing the crowd at last sum­mer’s Louisiana Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val at the Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, the punk poet­ess shared some good coun­sel laid on her in her youth by the Beat­’s high­est priest. Build a good name, he told her, and make sure every­thing you cre­ate stays true to it, until even­tu­al­ly that name becomes its own cur­ren­cy.

It cer­tain­ly worked out well for her, though Smith is quick to give solace to those toil­ing in obscu­ri­ty.  It’s con­ceiv­able that one as relent­less­ly cre­ative as she would occa­sion­al­ly feel the sting of indif­fer­ence. It’s also wel­come when some­one in her posi­tion acknowl­edges how fan­tas­tic it is to have one’s work embraced by the peo­ple. (And she’s got a choice snarl for the knee jerks who equate pop­u­lar­i­ty with sell­ing out.)

An old soul from the out­set, the sea­soned Smith has teen spir­it to spare when it comes to the democ­ra­tiz­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Inter­net. It’s here, she pre­dicts, that those with the met­tle to keep at their cre­ative work will find the recog­ni­tion their good names deserve.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day does­n’t brush her hair much either. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Charles Bukows­ki: Depres­sion and Three Days in Bed Can Restore Your Cre­ative Juices (NSFW)

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Free: Watch Jackie Robinson Star in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

in Film, Sports | April 14th, 2013

This week­end, the new Jack­ie Robin­son biopic, 42, opened up well in the box offices, bring­ing in $27.3 mil­lion in tick­et sales. That puts it at the top of the charts, which is a real rar­i­ty for a base­ball film.

This isn’t the first time Jack­ie Robin­son’s sto­ry has been told on film. And today we’re bring­ing you anoth­er note­wor­thy pro­duc­tion, The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry from 1950. As review­ers are quick to note, it’s not a work of art. It’s a sim­ple film with low pro­duc­tion val­ues. But, it has one thing that oth­er Jack­ie Robin­son films do not — Jack­ie Robin­son play­ing him­self, and quite well at that. Run­ning 76 minut­ers, the fast-paced film takes the audi­ence through the life and times of the great base­ball play­er and civ­il rights fig­ure. His youth, col­lege foot­ball days, mil­i­tary ser­vice, minor league career, amaz­ing 1949 sea­son with the Brook­lyn Dodgers — they all get cov­ered here.

The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry (which is now in the pub­lic domain) has been added to our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

Bill Murray’s Base­ball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

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Remembering Maria Tallchief, America’s Great Prima Ballerina

in Art, Theatre | April 14th, 2013

The bril­liant Native Amer­i­can bal­le­ri­na Maria Tallchief died Thurs­day at the age of 88. Tallchief is remem­bered as one of the great bal­let stars of the 20th cen­tu­ry. In her New York Times obit­u­ary, the dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Jacques d’Am­boise is quot­ed as com­par­ing Tallchief to the leg­endary dancers Gali­na Ulano­va of the Sovi­et Union and Mar­got Fonteyn of Britain: “When you thought of Russ­ian bal­let, it was Ulano­va. With Eng­lish bal­let, it was Fonteyn. For Amer­i­can bal­let, it was Tallchief. She was grand in the grand­est way.”

Tallchief was born on Jan­u­ary 24, 1925 in Fair­fax, Okla­homa. Her father was a full-blood­ed Osage Indi­an whose fam­i­ly became wealthy when oil was dis­cov­ered on their land. When she was eight years old her fam­i­ly moved to Los Ange­les, part­ly so that she and her younger sis­ter Mar­jorie could find bet­ter dance instruc­tion. Tallchief showed ear­ly promise and even­tu­al­ly became a stu­dent of the Russ­ian émi­gré dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Bro­nisla­va Nijin­s­ka. In 1942 she joined the Bal­let Russe de Monte Car­lo in New York, where it was based dur­ing World War II. In New York, Tallchief quick­ly grew to promi­nence, attract­ing the atten­tion of the leg­endary chore­o­g­ra­ph­er George Bal­an­chine, who became the first of her three hus­bands.

The clip above, from the 1989 film Danc­ing for Mr. B: Six Bal­an­chine Bal­leri­nas, shows Tallchief rem­i­nisc­ing about Bal­an­chine and danc­ing the title role in his 1949 New York City Bal­let pro­duc­tion of Igor Stravin­sky’s Fire­bird. Bal­an­chine chore­o­graphed the bal­let espe­cial­ly for Tallchief, and it became her sig­na­ture role. The sets and cos­tumes of the 1949 pro­duc­tion were designed by Marc Cha­gall. “Maria Tallchief made an elec­tri­fy­ing appear­ance,” wrote the impres­sario Lin­coln Kirstein after the open­ing of Fire­bird, “emerg­ing as the near­est approx­i­ma­tion to a pri­ma bal­le­ri­na that we had yet enjoyed.”

For more of Tallchief’s danc­ing, see the film clip below of her and Rudolf Nureyev, in his Amer­i­can debut, danc­ing the pas de deux from the August Bouronville bal­let, The Flower Fes­ti­val in Gen­zano. The per­for­mance was broad­cast on the Bell Tele­phone Hour on Jan­u­ary 19, 1962, less than a year after Nureyev’s defec­tion to the West and four years before Tallchief’s retire­ment as a dancer.

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Watch Live Stream of Coachella Music Festival on YouTube This Weekend

in Music | April 14th, 2013

A quick fyi: Through­out the week­end, you can watch a live stream of the Coachel­la music fes­ti­val that’s tak­ing place in the desert of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Tonight’s line­up includes Moby, New Order, and more. Get the full line­up for the fes­ti­val here, and the stream from dif­fer­ent stages on YouTube right here. Or just watch it above. The three-day extrav­a­gan­za will con­tin­ue through Sun­day night, end­ing with a per­for­mance by The Red Hot Chili Pep­pers.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends!

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