Listen to the Beatles’ Christmas Records: Seven Vintage Recordings for Their Fans (1963 — 1969)

in Music | December 23rd, 2013

1963:

Every year from 1963 to 1969, the Bea­t­les record­ed a spe­cial Christ­mas greet­ing to their fans. It start­ed when “Beat­le­ma­nia” took off and the band found itself unable to answer all the fan mail.  “I’d love to reply per­son­al­ly to every­one,” says Lennon in the 1963 mes­sage, “but I just haven’t enough pens.” The first mes­sage was intend­ed to make their most loy­al fans feel appre­ci­at­ed. Like those that fol­lowed, the 1963 mes­sage was mailed as a paper-thin vinyl “flexi disc” to mem­bers of the Bea­t­les fan club. The record­ing fea­tures the Bea­t­les’ trade­mark wit and whim­sy, with a cho­rus of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ringo” and a ver­sion of “Good King Wences­las” that refers to Bet­ty Grable. It was made on Octo­ber 17, 1963 at Abbey Road Stu­dios, just after the band record­ed “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

1964:

The band record­ed their next hol­i­day greet­ing, Anoth­er Bea­t­les Christ­mas Record, on Octo­ber 26, 1964, the same day they record­ed the song “Hon­ey Don’t.” Lennon’s rebel­lious nature begins to show, as he pokes fun at the pre­pared script: “It’s some­body’s bad hand wrot­er.”

1965:

Record­ed on Novem­ber 8, 1965 dur­ing the Rub­ber Soul ses­sions at Abbey Road, the 1965 mes­sage fea­tures a re-work­ing of “Yes­ter­day,” with the refrain “Oh I believe on Christ­mas Day.” The band’s gift for free-asso­ci­a­tion­al role play­ing is becom­ing more appar­ent. One piece of dia­logue near the end was even­tu­al­ly re-used by pro­duc­er George Mar­tin and his son Giles at the end of the re-mixed ver­sion of “All You Need is Love” on the 2006 album Love: “All right put the lights off. This is John­ny Rhythm say­ing good night to you all and God Bless­es.”

1966:

You can sense the band’s cre­ative pow­ers grow­ing in the 1966 mes­sage, Pan­tomime: Every­where It’s Christ­mas. The record­ing was made at Abbey Road on Novem­ber 25, 1966, dur­ing a break from work­ing on “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” The Bea­t­les were just begin­ning work on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band. Instead of sim­ply thank­ing their fans and recount­ing the events of the year, the Bea­t­les use sound effects and dia­logue to cre­ate a vaude­ville play based around a song that goes, “Every­where it’s Christ­mas, at the end of every year.” Paul McCart­ney designed the cov­er.

1967:


This was the last Christ­mas mes­sage record­ed by the Bea­t­les all togeth­er in one place. Titled Christ­mas Time (Is Here Again), it reveals the group’s con­tin­u­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion with sound effects and sto­ry­telling. The sce­nario, writ­ten by the band ear­li­er on the day it was record­ed (Novem­ber 28, 1967), is about a group of peo­ple audi­tion­ing for a BBC radio play. Lennon and Ringo Starr designed the cov­er.

1968:

By the Christ­mas sea­son of 1968, rela­tions with­in the Bea­t­les were becom­ing strained. The hol­i­day mes­sage was pro­duced around the time the “White Album” was released, in Novem­ber of 1968. The four mem­bers’ voic­es were record­ed sep­a­rate­ly, in var­i­ous loca­tions. There’s plen­ty of self-mock­ery. Per­haps the most strik­ing moment comes when the Amer­i­can singer Tiny Tim (invit­ed by George Har­ri­son) strums a ukulele and sings “Nowhere Man” in a high falset­to.

1969:

The Bea­t­les were in the process of break­ing up when they record­ed (sep­a­rate­ly) their final Christ­mas mes­sage in Novem­ber and Decem­ber of 1969. A cou­ple of months ear­li­er, just before the release of Abbey Road, Lennon had announced to the oth­ers that he was leav­ing the group. Yoko Ono appears promi­nent­ly on the record­ing, singing and talk­ing with Lennon about peace. Fit­ting­ly, the 1969 mes­sage incor­po­rates a snip­pet from the Abbey Road record­ing of “The End.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

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The Rolling Stones “Shattered” Covered by Eddie Vedder & Julie Andrews (Ok, It’s Really Jeanne Tripplehorn)

in Music | December 23rd, 2013

Pearl Jam front­man Eddie Ved­der and actress Jeanne Trip­ple­horn (Basic Instinct, The Firm, Big Love) per­formed this delight­ful cov­er of The Rolling Stones’ 1978 hit “Shat­tered” at a recent fundrais­er for a non-prof­it called Heal EB. EB stands for Epi­der­mol­y­sis Bul­losa, a dis­ease that caus­es blis­ters (some­times poten­tial­ly fatal ones) to erupt on the skin after the mildest trau­ma. You can lis­ten to The Rolling Stones’ orig­i­nal record­ing here, and fol­low along with the lyrics here. Or, bet­ter yet, you can close your eyes and sim­ply imag­ine Julie Andrews singing these risqué‎ lines. Yeah, on sec­ond thought, do that. H/T Marc

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send cul­tur­al curiosi­ties your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: A High­light in Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

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

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How to Get Great Deals on Great Books Through Audible.com

in Audio Books | December 22nd, 2013

Open Cul­ture has had a rela­tion­ship with Audible.com for close to six years, and, here and there, we’ve told you about their 30-day free tri­al, which gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to down­load a free audio book, lis­ten to it, and then decide whether you want to become an Audi­ble sub­scriber or not. (You can keep the audio book regard­less of the deci­sion you make.) I per­son­al­ly became an Audi­ble sub­scriber a long time ago, and while I’ve always enjoyed lis­ten­ing to audio books, I’ve recent­ly real­ized that an Audi­ble sub­scrip­tion can be a real deal if you’re a fan of big audio books and great lec­tures. Let me break it down for you.

If you sign up for Audi­ble’s Gold plan, you pay $158 for 12 books over a year. (You get one book credit/download per month … and you’re billed in install­ments month­ly.) That trans­lates to $13.20 per book on aver­age. That’s not a bad price (giv­en that main­stream audio books often sell for $30). But here’s where the Audi­ble plan becomes a great deal. Ear­li­er this fall, I re-read Joyce’s Ulysses and want­ed to lis­ten to a pro­fes­sion­al­ly-read unabridged nar­ra­tion of the nov­el that runs 27 hours. For the cost of one book cred­it — $13.20 — I down­loaded the entire audio book. Nax­os, the pub­lish­er, sells it for  £85.00, or $134.00. Audi­ble sells it to non-mem­bers for $104.00.

Here’s anoth­er exam­ple. For the hol­i­days, I’m lis­ten­ing to Mark Lewisohn’s new Bea­t­les biog­ra­phy Tune In: The Bea­t­les: All These Years. The well-reviewed book runs 944 pages in print and 42 hours on audio. The audio usu­al­ly retails for some­where between $53 and $63 — much more than the $13.20 you can snag it for on the Audi­ble plan.

If this sounds like a good plan for you, you can sign up for Audi­ble’s Gold plan via this link. You could also try out their 30-day free tri­al. And, of course, there’s always our col­lec­tion: 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free. What­ev­er way you go, we wish you hap­py lis­ten­ing.

NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram.

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Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins Go Through Customs and Sign Immigration Form After the First Moon Landing (1969)

in Science | December 22nd, 2013

Apollo-11-Immigration-02

Click for larg­er image

I’m not say­ing Man of Steel depressed me, but I found myself pin­ing for Richard Donner’s sense of humor recent­ly as I watched Zack Snyder’s take on Super­man for the first time. I thought of a scene—Superman has to go through immi­gra­tion once he’s dis­cov­ered. They won’t let him in. He’s too high-mind­ed to resist, so he sleeps in an air­port wait­ing room for six months. Plen­ty of dra­mat­ic poten­tial there.

Less pre­pos­ter­ous but still absurd is the sto­ry around the doc­u­ment above, signed by Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins after they land­ed from the first manned trip to the moon. The three astro­nauts came down in the Pacif­ic Ocean and were tak­en to Hon­olu­lu on July 24, 1969, where they sup­pos­ed­ly signed the immi­gra­tion form, declar­ing a car­go of moon rocks and dust.

The form, NASA spokesper­son John Yem­brick told Space.com, is authen­tic. And, he says, it was a joke. He does not, how­ev­er, say exact­ly when the form was signed, either on the day the crew splashed down or some­time after­ward. They did not actu­al­ly arrive in Hon­olu­lu until the 26th. After their return,

The astro­nauts were trapped inside a NASA trail­er as part of a quar­an­tine effort just in case they brought back any germs or dis­ease from the moon. They even wore spe­cial bio­log­i­cal con­tain­ment suits when they walked out on the deck of the USS Hor­net after being retrieved. 

NASA trans­port­ed them to Hous­ton, quar­an­tine trail­er and all, and they emerged from iso­la­tion three weeks lat­er.

Astro­nauts these days most­ly just need a show­er when they touch down, although inter­net savvy Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion astro­naut Chris Had­field did recent­ly tell some cus­toms relat­ed sto­ries on a Red­dit AMA—maybe noth­ing so weird as the cur­rent space snor­kel­ing up there, but still a pret­ty great read.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Moon Hoax Not”: Short Film Explains Why It Was Impos­si­ble to Fake the Moon Land­ing

Michio Kaku Schools Takes on Moon Land­ing-Con­spir­a­cy Believ­er on His Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic Pod­cast

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

Find Astron­o­my Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 800 Free Cours­es Online

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

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Toni Morrisson: Forget Writing About What You Know; Write About What You Don’t Know

in Literature, Writing | December 22nd, 2013

On Decem­ber 12th, the New York Pub­lic Library host­ed a live pro­gram fea­tur­ing Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author Junot Díaz in con­ver­sa­tion with the writer who most deeply influ­enced his career, Toni Mor­ri­son, win­ner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture. The talk was orig­i­nal­ly streamed live on the web (includ­ing our site), and now you can watch a record­ed ver­sion below, plus some high­lights above. Intro­duc­tions by Paul Hold­en­gräber and friends begin at the 40:09 mark, and every­thing gets real­ly going at the 49:35 time­stamp in the video below. Despite some nerves, Díaz engages his now 82 year-old lit­er­ary idol in a con­ver­sa­tion that’s engag­ing, col­or­ful, some­times even amus­ing­ly off-col­or — like when he tells Mor­ri­son “you can out­write every motherf#cker on the plan­et sen­tence for sen­tence.” The inter­view touch­es on her for­ma­tive years as a writer and edi­tor, and then her years writ­ing her mas­ter­ful nov­els — Song of Solomon, Beloved and the rest. Com­men­tary on the craft of writ­ing is sprin­kled through­out. If you’d like to get Mor­rison’s writ­ing advice in a neat­ly-pack­aged for­mat, please see our pre­vi­ous posts: Toni Mor­ri­son Dis­pens­es Writ­ing Wis­dom in 1993 Paris Review Inter­view and Toni Mor­ri­son, Nora Ephron, and Dozens More Offer Advice in Free Cre­ative Writ­ing “Mas­ter Class”.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Writ­ing Tips by Hen­ry Miller, Elmore Leonard, Mar­garet Atwood, Neil Gaiman & George Orwell

Ray Brad­bury Gives 12 Pieces of Writ­ing Advice to Young Authors (2001)

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

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Download 100 Free Philosophy Courses and Start Living the Examined Life

in Online Courses, Philosophy | December 21st, 2013

rodin-thinker-philosophy-courses

The Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion of our big Free Online Cours­es col­lec­tion just went through anoth­er update, and it now fea­tures 100 cours­es. Enough to give you a soup-to-nuts intro­duc­tion to a time­less dis­ci­pline. You can start with one of sev­er­al intro­duc­to­ry cours­es.

Then, once you’ve found your foot­ing, you can head off in some amaz­ing direc­tions. As we men­tioned many moons ago, you can access cours­es and lec­tures by mod­ern day leg­ends – Michel Fou­cault, Bertrand Rus­sell, John Sear­le, Wal­ter Kauf­mann, Leo Strauss, Hubert Drey­fus and Michael Sandel. Then you can sit back and let them intro­duce you to the think­ing of Aris­to­tle, Socrates, Pla­to, Hobbes, Hegel, Hei­deg­ger, Kierkegaard, Kant, Niet­zsche, Sartre and the rest of the gang. The cours­es list­ed here are gen­er­al­ly avail­able via YouTube, iTunes, or the web.

Explore our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, to find top­ics in many oth­er dis­ci­plines — His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, Physics, Com­put­er Sci­ence and beyond. As we like to say, it’s the most valu­able sin­gle page on the web.

Don’t miss any­thing from Open Cul­ture. Sign up for our Dai­ly Email or RSS Feed. And we’ll send qual­i­ty cul­ture your way, every day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online

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Read 100 Entries From America’s Most Unique Dictionary, Now Available Online For The First Time

in English Language, History | December 21st, 2013

Ear­li­er this year, we wrote about the region­al dif­fer­ences in how Amer­i­cans refer to soft drinks. An explo­ration of the var­i­ous geo­graph­i­cal names for a car­bon­at­ed bev­er­age is all well and good, but it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that America’s lex­i­cal vari­a­tions are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more col­or­ful than “soda,” (East and West coasts), “coke,” (South), and “pop” (Mid­west and North­west).

For those inter­est­ed in expe­ri­enc­ing the full range of ver­bal Amer­i­cana, the Dic­tio­nary of Amer­i­can Region­al Eng­lish (DARE) has final­ly become avail­able online after 47 years of work. Unlike any oth­er dic­tio­nary, DARE attempts to doc­u­ment the region­al aspects of Amer­i­can Eng­lish, and sys­tem­atize the wide array of  geo­graph­i­cal­ly unique terms and expres­sions. As John McWhort­er notes in The New Repub­lic, this labor of lin­guis­tic love con­tains some 60,000 entries from 1,002 com­mu­ni­ties, col­lect­ed between 1965 and 1970. Of course, as McWhort­er points out, some of the terms indexed in DARE are dat­ed, hav­ing suc­cumbed to mass-media’s democ­ra­tiz­ing effects on lan­guage over the course of DARE’s lengthy prepa­ra­tion. Still, with entries like “rich rel­a­tives” (dust bun­nies) and “Cana­di­an per­jun­kety” (pim­ples), the dic­tio­nary pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse of the ver­bal curios, both old and new, that have sprung up around the coun­try.

Although DARE is a sub­scrip­tion-based ser­vice, its web­site pro­vides vis­i­tors with a list of 100 free and brows­able terms. We’ve includ­ed a selec­tion below:

  • “To acknowl­edge the corn – to admit to being drunk; by exten­sion, to admit to any mis­take, fault, or impro­pri­ety (for­mer­ly wide­spread, now chiefly Mid­land).”
  • “Flan­nel cake – pan­cake (chiefly Appalachi­an)”
  • “Flea in one’s ear – A hint, warn­ing, dis­qui­et­ing dis­clo­sure; a rebuke (chiefly North­east)”
  • “Lucy Bowles – loose bow­els, diar­rhea (scat­tered, but esp. Penn­syl­va­nia, New Jer­sey, south­east­ern New York)”
  • “Slick and a promise – A hasty or super­fi­cial per­for­mance of a task (chiefly New Jer­sey)”

Addi­tion­al­ly, a sam­ple of audio record­ings demon­strat­ing the breadth of accents and vocab­u­lar­ies in var­i­ous gen­er­a­tions, cities, and class­es dur­ing the ‘60s may be found on the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Madi­son DARE web­site.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

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David Lynch Presents the Interview Project: 121 Mini-Documentaries About Life in America

in Film | December 20th, 2013

What is the Inter­view Project? David Lynch describes it as “a 20,000-mile road trip over 70 days across and back the Unit­ed States” where “peo­ple have been found and inter­viewed,” and if you watch the videos this trip pro­duced, you’re “going to meet hun­dreds of peo­ple,” all dif­fer­ent, found “by dri­ving along the roads, going into bars, going into dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and there they were. The peo­ple told their sto­ry. It’s so fas­ci­nat­ing to look and lis­ten to peo­ple.” This all comes straight from the Inter­view Pro­jec­t’s Lynch-star­ring intro­duc­to­ry video above. As for its actu­al 121 video episodes, those come direct­ed by Lynch’s son Austin and his col­lab­o­ra­tor Jason S. And what ele­ments of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion have they curat­ed? Let’s just say you would­n’t hear these voic­es in the main­stream media — and prob­a­bly not even on This Amer­i­can Life. “Today we’re meet­ing Jere­mie,” Lynch père tells us in his open­er to the Inter­view Project episode below. “The team found Jere­mie in a restau­rant in Ham­mond, Louisiana.”

From the cor­ner of a hotel bed, young Jere­mie, who looks at first like a Mor­mon mis­sion­ary on casu­al day, describes his lit­tle-known town as “about 45 min­utes from Baton Rouge and about fif­teen hours from New Orleans.” He then recounts the impres­sive num­ber of lifestyles he’s lived so far: in the mil­i­tary, on the streets, “the drug scene,” “the nature scene.” He then gets into the rea­sons behind his taste for one-night stands and orgies. In the episode below, the team meets Traci, a motel man­ag­er in Mar­fa, Texas, who tells them under the moon­light of her vic­to­ry over alco­holism, her first encounter with her life­long best friend, and her once-recur­ring dreams of a face­less man with a goa­tee. At an auc­tion in Bel­lville, Wis­con­sin, they find Robin, who dis­cuss­es his attempts to start a mas­sage-and-heal­ing coop­er­a­tive, only to have them thwart­ed by the pre­vail­ing notion that “This is the Mid­west. It’s not going to hap­pen here.” The Inter­view Project has gath­ered small-town Amer­i­ca’s per­son­al sto­ries of tragedy, tri­umph, and all those rich expe­ri­ences in-between. “It’s some­thing that’s human,” to quote David Lynch again, “and you can’t stay away from it.” And at three or four min­utes apiece, you cer­tain­ly can’t watch just one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Talks About His 99 Favorite Pho­tographs at Paris Pho­to 2012

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

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

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