The Music of Queen Re-Imagined by “Extraordinary” Classical Pianist, Natalia Posnova

in Music | September 3rd, 2013

Queen’s conjunction of the highly theatrical with the musically virtuoso set the bar for rock opera as high as it will go. Freddie Mercury and Brian May were such extraordinarily talented musicians that it seems impossible for anyone to do their compositions justice in cover versions, and I can’t think of anyone who has. Until now, perhaps. Because now, I have seen pianist Natalia Posnova cover Queen’s 1980 movie theme song “Flash,” written for the, shall we say, less-than-memorable Flash Gordon film of the same year. The original song is an almost ridiculously cool operatic rock anthem, featuring everything we love about the classic Queen song: John Deacon’s tense, thumping bassline, Roger Taylor’s explosive drum fills, Brian May’s guitar arpeggios, and, of course, vocal harmonies the likes of which the Mormon Tabernacle Choir might envy.

Natalia Posnova’s version features none of these things. Only a piano, and in the video, her shiny red Flash Gordon-themed outfit. Nevertheless, she manages to completely capture the drama of the original in her version, titled “Flash Fantasy.” She certainly convinced Brian May, who writes on his blog, “THIS WOMAN IS EXTRAORDINARY! I just ‘discovered’ Natalia Posnova. She is an amazing pianist and interpreter of songs. And I do not use this term lightly. This video clip is worth a million hits. I hope it gets them … I have seriously, in all these years, never seen or heard anything like this. To see this amount of beauty, talent, innovation and pure bravura in one shot is astounding.” He hopes to see her live someday. Above, she tackles another theatrical Queen song, “Who Wants to Live Forever,” this time in suitable evening wear for the hyperdramatic ballad. Posnova’s renditions bring to the foreground the classical harmonies embedded in these songs. For more on Posnova’s interpretations of Queen, see Freddie Mercury’s friend Peter Freestone and Posnova herself discuss her approach in the video below, and enjoy her take on another lovely ballad, “Don’t Try So Hard.”

HT to OC reader, Dirk, for sending this along.

Queen Documentary Pays Tribute to the Rock Band That Conquered the World

Listen to Freddie Mercury and David Bowie on the Isolated Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pressure,’ 1981

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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Author Rob Sheffield Picks Karaoke Songs for Famous Authors: Imagine Wallace Stevens Singing the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning”

in Literature, Music, Poetry | September 3rd, 2013

The poet Wallace Stevens‘ reclusiveness would have made him an unlikely candidate for karaoke, but death is a great leveler. One who’s shuffled off this mortal coil can no longer claim to be publicity shy or highly protective of his privacy. Nor can he object if a living author—Rob Sheffield, say—selects a song for him to hypothetically butcher.

This is how a quiet poet-accountant of Stevens’ stature finds himself holding the mic in a beyond-the grave karaoke suite, facing the scrolling lyrics of The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” (above).

The strange pairing is part of a publicity stunt in service of Sheffield’s new book, Turn Around Bright Eyes: the Rituals of Love and Karaoke. Visit Bookish to see his ultimate karaoke tracks for four other late authors, including Oscar Wilde and the agoraphobic Emily Dickinson.

It’s all in fun, naturally, but Sheffield, the music journalist and karaoke convert, is not just having an ironic laugh at his favorite poet’s expense. (Though no doubt Stevens’ poem, “Sunday Morning,” factored heavily into the decision-making process.)

Here’s how we know Sheffield is sincere. Karaoke became his unlikely emotional rescuer following the untimely death of his first wife, and helped forge bonds with a new romantic partner. Listen to his passionate description of its transformative effects in the video below. He could be a poet describing his muse. Even die hard karaoke resistors may be moved to give it a whirl after hearing him speak.

May we suggest “Sunday Morning” for your first outing? If you’re feeling nervous, dedicate it to Wallace Stevens. There in spirit, surely.

Wallace Stevens Reads His Own Poetry

A Symphony of Sound (1966): Velvet Underground Improvises, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Find Readings by Wallace Stevens in our collection of Free Audio Books

Ayun Halliday‘s favorite karaoke tune is the the Divinyls’ always-inappropriate “I Touch Myself.” Follow her @AyunHalliday

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Surviving Members of The Clash Recount the Making of “London Calling” & Discuss New Box Set

in Music | September 2nd, 2013

Some of the greatest rock and roll songs are also dire apocalyptic warnings. When rock stars pull their heads out of their hedonistic you-know-whats and look around, things can look pretty grim indeed. Think, for example, of The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” or CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising.” Neither is either band’s scariest song, but they’re both chock full of disaster, natural and otherwise, speaking to the sense of doom most everyone seemed to feel in 1969 when both tracks were released.

Fast forward ten years and rock and roll is mostly dead, punk has peaked, and The Clash are trying to make it all new, injecting their music with reggae and rockabilly and a lot of righteous outrage (tempered by a healthy sense of humor). In 1979, the band released their seminal double album London Calling, with its dire, apocalyptic title track (above), warning of an ice age, the sun’s end, and a “nuclear error.” (Read the lyrics here.) No longer are we just dealing with ho-hum war and murder or Biblical plagues. Joe Strummer and company took on the end of the world, initiating the late cold-war nuclear anxiety in 80s punk and new wave lyrics from The Dead Kennedys to The Smiths.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the three surviving members of the band, all nearing 60, looked back on the writing and recording of that anthemic song, dissecting the line about “phony Beatlemania” and recalling the ecological and economic crises that angered and frightened them into inspiration. Co-writer and guitarist Mick Jones discusses the influence of sixties rock on the song’s composition, saying, “As musicians, you take the past with you, don’t you? The Beatles, Stones, Kinks and Small Faces had done something new and different and I wanted us to do that, too.” Bassist Paul Simonon, whose iconic bass-smashing photo graced the cover of the album, talks about the band’s history and context:

In the ’70s, when we formed the band, there was a lot of tension in Britain, lots of strikes, and the country was an economic mess. There also was aggression toward anyone who looked different—especially the punks. So the name the Clash seemed appropriate for the band’s name.

Drummer Topper Headon talks technique, and all three members are open about their influences and inspirations for the song. The interview comes along just as the band prepares to release a 13-disc box set, Sound System that Mick Jones—in a Rolling Stone interview—promises will be the band’s final statement. “This is it for me,” says Jones, “and I say that with an exclamation mark.” Read about his intentions for the collection and more Clash history in that excellent short interview here.

“Joe Strummer’s London Calling”: All Eight Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

The Clash Live in Tokyo, 1982: Watch the Complete Concert

Mick Jones Plays Three Classics by The Clash at the Public Library

The Clash Star in 1980′s Gangster Parody Hell W10, a Film Directed by Joe Strummer

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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Lenny Kravitz Overhears High School Kids Playing His Music and Surprises Them by Joining In

in Music | September 2nd, 2013

One day Lenny Kravitz was sitting with some friends on a terrace in New Orleans when he heard a familiar sound. A group of high school students from a baptist church in Texas was performing his hit “Fly Away” on the steps across Decatur Street from Jackson Square in the French Quarter.

Kravitz decided he wanted to join in. One of his friends went down and asked the group’s director if that would be alright. He said yes, it would. So when the famous musician arrived, the group started playing the song again from the top. “It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced,” Kelvin Reed, director of the Voice of Praise choir from the First Baptist Church in Lewisville, Texas, told the Dallas Morning News afterward. “All of my students said, ‘Kelvin, did you plan that?’ That was just one of those unique experiences.”

The incident happened on June 25, 2010. Back then, Kravitz owned a Creole cottage in the French Quarter and lived in New Orleans part-time. “It was probably one of the most incredible things that’s ever happened to me,” choir member and lead guitarist Michael Smeaton told the Morning News. “This is a famous musician. He just comes down and wants to jam with us. It makes you realize as a musician you have this sense of kinship, and you all come from the same experiences.”

via That Eric Alper

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Read 113 Pages of Charles Bukowski’s FBI File From 1968

in History, Literature | September 2nd, 2013

Click image for a larger version

If certain well-known writers come off as a bit paranoid, they may have good cause. Then again, the Powers That Be conduct their surveillance in mysterious ways, never targeting quite whom you’d expect. William T. Vollmann, for instance, a novelist known less for his paranoia than his productivity, recently revealed in Harper’s that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on the lookout for Unabomber suspects, built up quite a file on him. “Individuals this bright are capable of most anything,” reads one of its starkly typewritten pages. “By all accounts, VOLLMANN is exceedingly intelligent and possessed with an enormous ego.” Perhaps writerly ego, albeit of an entirely different stripe, also got post office-working poet Charles Bukowski in trouble. “In 1968 various branches of the U.S. government performed an investigation into the background of civil servant Charles Bukowski,” according to bukowski.net. “Apparently the FBI and the Postal Service took offense to some of his writing (mainly the Notes From a Dirty Old Man column he wrote for the Los Angeles hippie tabloid Open City),” the page continues, “and had their ‘informants’ report Bukowski to higher-ups in the post office.”

Bukowski.net offers 113 pages of Bukowski’s FBI file, directly scanned. “He stated that BUKOWSKI is an excellent tenant who never associates with any of his neighbors,” one page reports, apparently from an interview with the landlord of Bukowski’s now-famous bungalow at 5124 De Longpre in Los Angeles. And from an interrogation of the writer himself: “He explained that these articles are ‘an inter-mixture of fiction and fact’ and are ‘highly romanticized in order to give the story juice.’ ” Released FBI files of this type tend to give an impression of fruitlessness and ineptitude, but at least Bukowski’s did make one discovery that may fascinate avid fans: “Bukowski claimed he was married to Jane Cooney,” says bukowski.net. “Every Bukowski biography written thus far names Barbara Frye as his first wife. However, in 1952 (three years before his marriage to Barbara Frye) Bukowski stated that he was married to Jane Cooney Baker — the ‘Jane’ of many of his most heartfelt works.” Once America puts its terrorism problems behind it, perhaps the FBI can devote its resources to more literary research — albeit of a non-invasive variety.

Charles Bukowski Sets His Amusing Conditions for Giving a Poetry Reading (1971)

“Don’t Try”: Charles Bukowski’s Concise Philosophy of Art and Life

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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Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

in Literature, Music | September 2nd, 2013

In 1942, John Cage composed a short piece of music adapted from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Titled “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” the piece was originally commissioned and performed by amateur soprano and socialite Justine Fairbank, and while we don’t have a recording of her performance, we do have Cage’s sheet music (see first page above, or view the entire book here). It is—as one might expect—an unusual piece. It sounds like song, yet isn’t. As the Library of Congress description of the piece has it:

This essentially rhythmic speech set against a patterned percussive accompaniment cannot be considered a song in the usual sense. Cage, however, is such an innovator that one often loses sight of the fact that if one does not expect conventional sounds, his music is often very well constructed. Here, for example, the composer weaves a hypnotically compelling pattern of rhythmic tension and relaxation, akin to certain non-Western music, which is very appropriate for Joyce’s moody prose.

Cage’s own instructions “for the singer” state: “sing without vibrato, as in folk-singing. Make any transposition necessary in order to employ a low and comfortable range.”

This flexible arrangement allows anyone to pick up the piece, and so we have, directly below, an unlikely interpreter of Cage’s experimental art, the late Ramones singer Joey Ramone. Ramone’s interpretation of the piece is enthralling simply as a piece of recorded music. But it’s also a fascinating piece of cultural history, representing a confluence of the foremost figures in early twentieth century modernist literature, mid-century avant-garde music, and late century punk rock.

The recording comes from a whole album of Cage interpretations by New York punk and new- and no-wave art-rockers, including David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Debbie Harry, and Lou Reed. The album, entitled Caged/Uncaged—A Rock/Experimental Homage to John Cage, was recorded in Italy in 1993 and produced by John Cale. You can listen to and download individual tracks at Ubuweb or hear the whole thing here.

It’s more than just a tribute record; it’s a serious engagement with the music of a composer whose work—like the fluid prose-poetry of Finnegans Wake—seems infinitely malleable and adaptable to the present. Forty years after composing the song Joey Ramone performs, Cage said, “we live, in a very deep sense, in the time of Finnegans Wake.” Perhaps we still live in the time of Joyce, and also of John Cage.

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plurabelle’ from Finnegans Wake

The Ramones in Their Heyday, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

Find Finnegans Wake in our collection of 450 Free eBooks

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

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Disco Saves Lives: Give CPR to the The Beat of Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive”

in Life, Music | September 2nd, 2013

What to do if someone one around you goes into cardiac arrest? The American Heart Association has two simple tips. Over at their web site, they write: “If you see a teen or adult suddenly collapse, call 9–1‑1 and push hard and fast in the center of the chest to the beat of the classic disco song ‘Stayin’ Alive.’ CPR can more than double a person’s chances of survival, and ‘Stayin’ Alive’ has the right beat for Hands-Only CPR.” The song also has the right title for the job at hand.

To help spread the word, the AHA produced a series of videos available on YouTube, including this one starring Ken Jeong, an actor and comedian who is also a licensed physician in California. You may well recognize him from Judd Apatow’s film Knocked Up, where, like here, he exhorts people to “focus, pay attention.”

Behind this schtick, there’s some real science. According to NPR:

A study by the University of Illinois College of Medicine has found that the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” has the utterly perfect beat for performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The 1977 disco hit contains 103 beats per minute. That’s close to the recommended chest compression rate of 100 beats every 60 seconds.

Below, you can find a very different version of the same campaign that aired in the UK. And thanks to this ad campaign, at least one life was actually saved.

Note: Another song to keep in mind in these life or death situations is Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.” It has the right beat. But not so much the right title.

Demos for Hands-Only CPR can be found at the AHA web site.

via Metafilter

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An Introduction to World Literature by a Cast Of Literary & Academic Stars (Free Course)

in Harvard, Literature, Online Courses | September 1st, 2013

Updated: Love and longing, hope and fear — these threads run throughout all literature, whether we’re talking about the great ancient epics, or contemporary novels written in the East or the West. That’s the main premise of Invitation to World Literature, a multimedia program organized by David Damrosch (Harvard University), and made with the backing of WGBH and Annenberg Media.

The program features 13 half-hour videos, which move from The Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2500 BCE) through García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). And, collectively, these videos highlight over 100+ writers, scholars, artists, and performers with a personal connection to world literature. Philip Glass, Francine Prose, Harold Ramis, Robert Thurman, Kwame Anthony Appiah — they all make an appearance.

Permanently housed in the Literature section of our collection of 1,300 Free Online Courses, Invitation to World Literature features the following lectures: