Springsteen Plays Lorde’s “Royals” & AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” in Down Under Concerts

in Music | March 4th, 2014

Bruce Spring­steen played in Auck­land, New Zealand this past week­end and gave a big nod to Lorde, the coun­try’s 17-year-old star. Above you can watch him per­form a Spring­steen­ian ver­sion of her mega hit, Roy­als. Then, in a lit­tle bit of a con­trast, we have the Boss pay­ing trib­ute to anoth­er great local act, AC/DC and their rock anthem “High­way to Hell.” That was at a show in Perth, Aus­tralia. And, if you want a lit­tle more con­trast, don’t miss the Bris­bane per­for­mance of the Bee Gee’s Stayin’ Alive. No joke. Stay tuned for some Men at Work.…

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Springsteen’s Per­son­al Jour­ney Through Rock ‘n’ Roll (Slight­ly NSFW But Sim­ply Great)

Watch Bruce Spring­steen Per­form “Growin’ Up” as an Open­ing Act for Dave Van Ronk (1972)

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

 

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Twelve Years a Slave: Free eBook and Audio Book of the Memoir Behind the Film (1853)

in e-books | March 3rd, 2014

twelve years a slave ebook

On Sun­day night, 12 Years a Slave was named best pic­ture at the 86th Acad­e­my Awards. And John Rid­ley, the film’s screen­writer, won the Oscar for best adapt­ed screen­play. Rid­ley’s screen­play was based, of course, on Twelve Years a Slave, the 1853 mem­oir by Solomon Northup. Pub­lished not long after Har­ri­et Beech­er Stowe wrote her famous nov­el about slav­ery, Uncle Tom’s Cab­in, Northup’s book became some­thing of a best­seller, sell­ing around 30,000 copies, before falling into rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty for the next cen­tu­ry and a half. The 2013 film obvi­ous­ly put the mem­oir back into the spot­light, and it inspired some­one (we’re not sure exact­ly who) to put the book on the web in a hand­some, read­able for­mat. You can head over to 12years.org to read Northup’s dra­mat­ic per­son­al account, free online. Or find some­what less attrac­tive (though still ser­vice­able and down­load­able) ver­sions at Archive.org. For any­one inter­est­ed in down­load­ing Twelve Years a Slave as a free audio book, Lib­rivox has you cov­ered here: Free on iTunes — Free MP3 Stream/Download. Also, if you care to sign up for Audible.com’s 30-Day Free Tri­al you can down­load a ver­sion pro­fes­sion­al­ly nar­rat­ed by Louis Gos­sett Jr. at no cost. Find more details on Audi­ble’s Free Tri­al pro­gram here.

H/T @brainpicker

Relat­ed Con­tent:

550 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

600 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

635 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

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100 Books to Read in a Lifetime

in Books | March 3rd, 2014

100-books_amazon Ama­zon’s Books edi­tors set out to com­pile a list of 100 Books to Read in a Life­time, with a few goals in mind:

We want­ed the list to cov­er all stages of a life (which is why you’ll find chil­dren’s books in here), and we did­n’t want the list to feel like home­work. Of course, no such list can be com­pre­hen­sive – our lives, we hope, are long and var­ied – but we talked and argued and sift­ed and argued some more and came up with a list, our list, of favorites. What do you think? How did we do?

Over­all pret­ty well. That’s how I’d answer the edi­tors’ rhetor­i­cal ques­tion. The list does­n’t pan­der to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor of read­ing tastes. It fea­tures sub­stan­tive works by Albert Camus, Alice Munro (see our col­lec­tion of free Munro sto­ries), Ralph Elli­son, Robert A. Caro, Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Rebec­ca Skloot and many oth­ers. It’s a hearty list, so far as these lists go, offer­ing plen­ty of good selec­tions for some­one seek­ing a new read. But let me add this one caveat. If the Ama­zon edi­tors did­n’t sell out, they did intend to sell. Or so it seems to skep­ti­cal me. Of the 100 books on the list, only a hand­ful are old­er works in the pub­lic domain and thus free. Maybe the Ama­zon edi­tors would claim that read­ing books writ­ten a cen­tu­ry ago is tan­ta­mount to home­work. But that seems fair­ly short-sight­ed. All of this reminds me of a post we wrote last year called The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors. Here we looked back at a 2007 book called The Top Ten: Writ­ers Pick Their Favorite Books where edi­tor J. Ped­er Zane asked 125 top writ­ers to name their favorite books — writ­ers like Nor­man Mail­er, Annie Proulx, Stephen King, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Mes­sud, and Michael Chabon. The lists were all com­piled in an edit­ed col­lec­tion, and then pref­aced by one uber list, “The Top Top Ten.” All but one book in the top 10 was writ­ten before 1931 (which means they’re almost entire­ly free and avail­able in our Free eBooks and Free Audio Books col­lec­tions). It just goes to show, I sup­pose, that one per­son­’s home­work is anoth­er per­son­’s read of a life­time. Feel free to sift through both lists (here & here) and see which texts belong on your per­son­al buck­et list.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

Nabokov Reads Loli­ta, Names the Great Books of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

18 (Free) Books Ernest Hem­ing­way Wished He Could Read Again for the First Time

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

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

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Sketches by Guillermo del Toro Take You Inside the Director’s Wildly Creative Imagination

in Art, Film | March 3rd, 2014

Guiller­mo del Toro is per­haps the most visu­al­ly imag­i­na­tive direc­tor alive today. Unlike Paul Thomas Ander­son, with his infu­ri­at­ing­ly per­fect sense of visu­al bal­ance, or Alfon­so Cuarón, whose Oscar-sweep­ing Grav­i­ty required the inven­tion of a nov­el, hyper-real­istic film­ing method, del Toro doesn’t deal with real life. His domain is the fan­tas­ti­cal. There’s a chance you may not have liked Pan’s Labyrinth, and even the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that you’ve for­got­ten what­ev­er it is that hap­pens in Hell­boy, (some­thing about mon­sters? Sav­ing the world?), but I’d wager that its menagerie of hell­ish demons has been seared into your mem­o­ry.

Late in 2013, del Toro released a volu­mi­nous book, enti­tled Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: My Note­books, Col­lec­tions, and Oth­er Obses­sions. As he explains in the video above, the 256-page hard­cov­er is a selec­tion from his note­books, where the direc­tor devel­oped many of the mon­strosi­ties we’ve seen on screen.
The Guardian Sket notes that there’s some­thing of da Vinci’s note­books in del Toro’s records:  the small, neat script, mixed in with the won­der­ful­ly detailed sketch­es, com­bine to give the impres­sion of del Toro doing his best to record the tor­rent of his imag­i­na­tion before the thoughts dis­ap­pear. In this post, we include a num­ber of these images. The first three sketch­es, includ­ing the one above, depict del Toro’s draw­ings for Pan’s Labyrinth. The fourth is a page from his work on Hell­boy, and the fifth is art for his most recent film, Pacif­ic Rim.

From Pan’s Labyrinth

From Pacif­ic Rim

For those inter­est­ed in view­ing more of del Toro’s won­der­ful­ly bizarre sketch­es, a some­what larg­er gallery is avail­able here. The com­plete Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: My Note­books, Col­lec­tions, and Oth­er Obses­sions is avail­able at Amazon.com.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi 

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary) 

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

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The First Episode of The Johnny Cash Show, Featuring Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

in Music, Television | March 3rd, 2014

Whether you hate-watched, love-watched, or ignored last night’s Acad­e­my Awards, you may be tired today of Oscar talk. Take a break, unplug your­self from Face­book and Twit­ter, and trav­el with me back in TV time. It’s June 7th, 1969, and The John­ny Cash Show makes its debut on ABC, recorded—where else?—at the Grand Ole Opry (“I wouldn’t do it any­where but here”). Fea­tur­ing Cash ensem­ble reg­u­lars June Carter, the Carter fam­i­ly, Carl Perkins, the Statler Broth­ers, and the Ten­nessee Three, the musi­cal vari­ety show has a def­i­nite show­biz feel. Even the open­ing cred­its give this impres­sion, with a decid­ed­ly kitschy big band ren­di­tion of “Fol­som Prison Blues.” This seems a far cry from the defi­ant John­ny Cash who gave the world the fin­ger in a pho­to tak­en that same year dur­ing his San Quentin gig (where inmate Mer­le Hag­gard sat in atten­dance).

But show­biz John­ny Cash is still every inch the man in black, with his rough edges and refined musi­cal tastes (in fact, Cash debuted the song “Man in Black” on a lat­er episode). As daugh­ter Rosanne showed us, Cash was a musi­col­o­gist of essen­tial Amer­i­cana. His choice of musi­cal guests for his debut program—Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Cajun fid­dler Doug Ker­shaw—makes plain Cash’s love for folk songcraft. The appear­ance on the Cash show was Kershaw’s big break (two months lat­er his “Louisiana Man” became the first song broad­cast from the moon by the Apol­lo 12 astro­nauts). Mitchell, who plays “Both Sides Now” from her cel­e­brat­ed sec­ond album Clouds, was already a ris­ing star. And Dylan was, well, Dylan. Even if all you know of John­ny Cash comes from the 2005 film Walk the Line, you’ll know he was a huge Dylan admir­er. In the year The John­ny Cash Show debuted, the pair record­ed over a dozen songs togeth­er, one of which, “Girl from the North Coun­try,” appeared on Dylan’s coun­try album Nashville Sky­line. They play the song togeth­er, and Dylan plays that album’s “I Threw it All Away,” one of my all-time favorites.

Ini­tial­ly billed as “a live­ly new way to enjoy the sum­mer!” The John­ny Cash Show had a some­what rocky two-year run, occa­sion­al­ly run­ning afoul of ner­vous net­work exec­u­tives when, for exam­ple, Cash refused to cen­sor the word “stoned” from Kris Kristofferson’s “Sun­day Morn­ing Com­ing Down” and brought on Pete Seeger, despite the furor his anti-war views caused else­where. Ever the icon­o­clast, Cash was also ever the con­sum­mate enter­tain­er. After watch­ing the first episode of his show, you might agree that Cash and friends could have car­ried the hour even with­out his famous guests. Cash opens with a spir­it­ed “Ring of Fire” and also plays “Fol­som Prison Blues,” “The Wall,” and “Grey­stone Chapel.” And above, watch John­ny and June sing a sweet duet of Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

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

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Read The Coming of Jap Herron, the Novel Mark Twain “Wrote” Through a Ouija Board After His Death (1917)

in Books, Literature | March 3rd, 2014

“You’re mov­ing it!” “No I’m not; you’re mov­ing it!” Thus spake the excit­ed­ly anx­ious pre­teen voic­es of an-ear­ly 1990s Park­er Broth­ers Oui­ja board com­mer­cial I must have seen a hun­dred times in child­hood. Though by then such devices had scant import out­side the realm of  sleep­over par­ties, peo­ple took them more seri­ous­ly in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, espe­cial­ly around the time of the First World War. While some must, alas, have regard­ed them as func­tion­al chan­nels to the great beyond, oth­ers saw in them the poten­tial to gin up major pub­lish­ing events. Here we have one of the most curi­ous, 1917’s small-town Mis­souri bil­dungsro­man The Com­ing of Jap Her­ron, alleged­ly writ­ten Mark Twain, at that point sev­en years dead. A mis­placed man­u­script the execu­tors of Twain’s estate found amid his papers, per­haps? Noth­ing of the sort: he began writ­ing the book in 1915, as a dis­em­bod­ied spir­it, through a Oui­ja board. So claimed, at least, one Emi­ly Grant Hutch­ings, who brought Jap Her­ron to pub­li­ca­tion, pre­sent­ing her­self as a mere scribe tak­ing dic­ta­tion from the deceased icon of Amer­i­can lit­er­ary humor.

She’d even had some con­tact, albeit through the mail, with the liv­ing one: “In their exchange of let­ters he had giv­en her advice and, inter­est­ing­ly, also marked one of her let­ters with the words: ‘Idiot! Must pre­serve.’ ” That price­less find comes from The Pub­lic Domain Review’s post on Jap Her­ron, where you can read the short book in full, a much eas­i­er option than strug­gling to find a copy that sur­vived the ceas­ing of pub­li­ca­tion and sub­se­quent pulp­ing ordered by Twain’s daugh­ter. (You can also access it by click­ing on the image above.)  And how does this “final work,” whether com­posed as a pas­tiche or para­nor­mal­ly, hold up? “The humor impress­es as a fee­ble attempt at imi­ta­tion,” said a con­tem­po­rary New York Times review, “and while there is now and then a strong sure touch of pathos or a swift and true rev­e­la­tion of human nature, the ‘sob stuff’ that oozes through many of the scenes, and the over­drawn emo­tions are too much for creduli­ty. If this is the best that ‘Mark Twain’ can do by reach­ing across the bar­ri­er, the army of admir­ers that his works have won for him will all hope that he will here­after respect that bound­ary.”

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Plays With Elec­tric­i­ty in Niko­la Tesla’s Lab (Pho­to, 1894)

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Find Major Works by Twain in our Col­lec­tion of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

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

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Watch Oscar-Winning Films Free Online

in Film | March 2nd, 2014

free oscar films

To warm you up for tonight’s Oscars, we “pinned” our col­lec­tion of 34 Free Oscar Win­ning Films to the top of our home­page ear­li­er today. If you did­n’t get a chance to peruse the list, you can always find it here: 34 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web. Or vis­it our meta col­lec­tion of 635 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, etc.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Niv­en Presents an Oscar and Gets Inter­rupt­ed by a Streak­er (1974)

Hat­tie McDaniel, Star of Gone with the Wind, Gives a Mov­ing Acad­e­my Award Accep­tance Speech (1940)

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

80 Years of Acad­e­my Award Win­ning Films in Posters

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David Niven Presents an Oscar and Gets Interrupted by a Streaker (1974)

in Film, Television | March 2nd, 2014

While Acad­e­my Awards will no doubt have its share of dra­ma and sur­pris­es tonight, there will like­ly be few inci­dents of pub­lic nudi­ty. That wasn’t always the case with the Oscars.

Back in 1974, co-host David Niv­en was about to intro­duce Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor when a long-haired, mus­tached nude man sprint­ed out on stage and flashed a peace sign (among oth­er things) before a shocked audi­ence. He jogged from one side of the stage to the oth­er before slip­ping off into the wings, as Hen­ry Manci­ni cued his orches­tra to start play­ing music.

After he regained his com­po­sure, Niv­en quipped, “Well, ladies and gen­tle­men, that was almost bound to hap­pen… But isn’t it fas­ci­nat­ing to think that prob­a­bly the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by strip­ping off and show­ing his short­com­ings?”

Right from the begin­ning, how­ev­er, some won­dered if the inci­dent wasn’t in fact planned by pro­duc­ers hop­ing to give the audi­ence a jolt. Instead of arrest­ing the streak­er (and cart­ing him direct­ly to a Super Max prison, as would hap­pen today), he was giv­en a press con­fer­ence.

At the press con­fer­ence, he said that his name was Robert Opel and false­ly described him­self as an “adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive” dur­ing the press con­fer­ence. When asked why he did the deed, Opel respond­ed, “You know, peo­ple should­n’t be ashamed of being nude in pub­lic. Besides — it is a hell of a way to launch a career.”

The inci­dent did turn Opel briefly into a celebri­ty. He appeared (clothed) on the Mike Dou­glas Show and he was even hired to repeat the stunt at a par­ty for Rudolph Nureyev and Mar­vin Ham­lisch.

Though he was des­tined to go down in his­to­ry as the naked Oscar guy, he was also an avant-garde artist and a leader in the nascent gay rights move­ment. After his brush with fame, Opel moved to the Bay Area where he found­ed Fey-Wey Stu­dios, which was one of the first art gal­leries to show­case artists like Robert Map­plethor­pe and Tom of Fin­land. He also staged an Ani­ta Bryant look-alike con­test at the height of the for­mer beau­ty queen’s anti-gay pub­lic cam­paign. He was mur­dered in his gallery in 1979 dur­ing a bun­gled rob­bery.

Bay Area artist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er BIRON, who was friends with Opel dur­ing his San Fran­cis­co days, remem­bered him fond­ly. “Uncom­pro­mis­ing and unapolo­getic, he blurred the lines between art and life as he trav­eled beyond the con­fines of accept­ed behav­ior. Har­vey Milk and then Robert Opel both killed with­in a few months.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

33 Free Oscar Win­ning Films Avail­able on the Web

80 Years of Acad­e­my Award Win­ning Films in Posters

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

 

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