Maya Angelou Tells Studs Terkel How She Learned to Count Cards & Hustle in a New Animated Video

Blank on Blank returns with anoth­er one of their visu­al­ly-dis­tinc­tive ani­mat­ed videos. This one lets us time trav­el back to 1970 when Studs Terkel, the great Amer­i­can author, his­to­ri­an, and radio broad­cast­er, sat down with acclaimed poet Maya Angelou. The inter­view took place short­ly after Angelou pub­lished her 1969 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and the con­ver­sa­tion turns, amus­ing­ly, to her child­hood years, when she learned how to hus­tle and count cards from her step father, Dad­dy Clidell. I bet Bukows­ki is applaud­ing wher­ev­er he is. Blank on Blank made this video in part­ner­ship with the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, which we fea­tured on our site late last year.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Maya Angelou Reads “Still I Rise” and “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing”

Studs Terkel Inter­views Bob Dylan, Shel Sil­ver­stein, Maya Angelou & More in New Audio Trove

Blank on Blank Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Watch Luis Buñuel’s Surreal Travel Documentary A Land Without Bread (1933)

You don’t get the warm fuzzies from a Luis Buñuel movie. The most famous moment from his first film — Un Chien andalou, co-direct­ed with Sal­vador Dalí — is a woman get­ting her eye slashed with a straight razor. While on clos­er inspec­tion the gut­ted eye is from a dead don­key, the image still has the pow­er to shock 85 years lat­er. Though the movie was a col­lab­o­ra­tion, you can dis­cern Buñuel’s vision in this ear­ly work — shots of ants com­ing out of bod­i­ly ori­fices is pure Dalí; the caus­tic satire against the cler­gy is pure Buñuel. Dalí’s images are strange and beau­ti­ful. Buñuel’s are sub­ver­sive.

Though Dalí and Buñuel worked togeth­er again on the scorch­ing­ly anti-Catholic L’Age d’or, their col­lab­o­ra­tion fell apart in pre-pro­duc­tion. Dalí just want­ed to tweak those in pow­er. Buñuel, a com­mit­ted left­ist, want­ed to under­mine the whole bour­geoisie.

Land With­out Bread (Las Hur­des: Tier­ra Sin Pan) is Buñuel’s first movie with­out Dalí. Though lack­ing many of the overt sur­re­al­ist flour­ish­es of his ear­li­er movies – no ocu­lar muti­la­tion here – this 1933 film is much more unset­tling. Osten­si­bly a doc­u­men­tary about the Las Hur­des region locat­ed in a remote cor­ner of Spain, the film is in fact a lac­er­at­ing par­o­dy of trav­el doc­u­men­taries. Nov­el­ist Gra­ham Greene, in a review of the movie for Night and Day mag­a­zine, called it “an hon­est and hideous pic­ture.” You can watch it above.

Las Hur­des is poor but not as com­i­cal­ly awful as Buñuel depicts it. He paints the pic­ture of unleav­ened wretched­ness. Dis­ease, depri­va­tion and grind­ing despair are in just about every frame of the movie. And if the images weren’t mis­er­able enough, Buñuel had no prob­lem with cre­at­ing a lit­tle of his own mis­ery. In one noto­ri­ous scene, a don­key is stung to death by a swarm of angry bees. Buñuel accom­plished this by hav­ing the doomed beast slathered with hon­ey and placed next to a cou­ple of downed hives. Anoth­er scene sought to illus­trate that the moun­tain pass­es in Las Hur­des were treach­er­ous by show­ing a moun­tain goat tum­bling off a crag­gy slope to cer­tain death. Only the goat wasn’t clum­sy, it was wound­ed. If you look close­ly at the low­er right of the frame in that scene, you can see a puff of smoke from a crewmember’s gun. Buñuel, obvi­ous­ly, was not a mem­ber of PETA.

He jux­ta­pos­es these grim images with a monot­o­ne voice over that heaps dis­dain and con­de­scen­sion onto its sub­ject. Yet the nar­ra­tion is so height­ened, so pre­pos­ter­ous, so cru­el that you find your­self ques­tion­ing its verac­i­ty. Below is a par­tic­u­lar­ly infa­mous pas­sage of the movie’s nar­ra­tion.

Dwarfs and morons are very com­mon in the upper Hur­danos moun­tains. Their fam­i­lies employ them as goat herders if they’re not too dan­ger­ous. The ter­ri­ble impov­er­ish­ment of this race is due to the lack of hygiene, under nour­ish­ment and con­stant inter­mar­riage. The small­est one of these crea­tures is 28 years old. Words can­not express the hor­ror of their mirth­less grins as they play a sort of hide and go seek.

All this places the view­er into a very uncom­fort­able posi­tion. Buñuel’s por­tray­al of the locals makes them seem so alien that empa­thy is all but impos­si­ble. All that you are left with is, aside from revul­sion, an abstract­ed form of pity. It’s not all that dif­fer­ent from the Oh Dearism you get from watch­ing a news report on a par­tic­u­lar­ly blight­ed cor­ner of the Third World. The dif­fer­ence is that Buñuel, unlike the news, makes you acute­ly, uncom­fort­ably aware of your priv­i­leged posi­tion in rela­tion to the movie’s sub­ject.

Land With­out Bread will be added to our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

Read Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel’s Recipe for the Per­fect Dry Mar­ti­ni, and Then See Him Make One

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Free: Stream Songs from Bob Dylan’s Upcoming Release, The Basement Tapes Complete

basement tapes

As his loy­al fans already know, Bob Dylan will release next week a six-CD col­lec­tion called The Base­ment Tapes Com­plete: The Boot­leg Series, Vol. 11, which fea­tures 139 songs record­ed dur­ing the late 1960s, when, Dylan, recov­er­ing from a motor­cy­cle acci­dent, holed him­self up in a base­ment in Sauger­ties, NY and began play­ing music casu­al­ly with The Band. The sto­ry behind the mak­ing of The Base­ment Tapes gets nice­ly told by Sasha Frere-Jones in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er, and over at NPR you can now stream a selec­tion of songs from the upcom­ing Base­ment Tapes release. Just thought you might want to know.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

The Fall of the House of Usher: Poe’s Classic Tale Turned Into 1928 Avant Garde Film, Scripted by e.e. cummings

Last week, in def­er­ence to the approach of Hal­loween, we fea­tured the com­plete works of Edgar Allan Poe as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books. If you give them a read, a lis­ten, or both, you’ll dis­cov­er that few cre­ators, using noth­ing more than the writ­ten word, can dis­turb quite so effec­tive­ly as Poe. But his writ­ten words have also pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion to fright­en­ing works in oth­er media, includ­ing the pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured 1953 British ani­ma­tion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” and, today, the short-film ver­sion of “The Fall of the House of Ush­er.” That 1839 sto­ry per­haps most per­fect­ly (and most vis­cer­al­ly) real­izes such pet themes of Poe’s as ill­ness, dread, and live bur­ial, and as such has served as mate­r­i­al to a great many film­mak­ers as defi­ant­ly low­brow as Roger Cor­man and as uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly idio­syn­crat­ic as Jan Švankma­jer. But here we offer you one of the most inter­est­ing cin­e­mat­ic “Usher“s ever made: James Sib­ley Wat­son and Melville Web­ber’s 13-minute avant-garde adap­ta­tion, script­ed in part by poet e.e. cum­mings.

“Despite their impor­tance as lead­ing fig­ures in the film world,” writes Tara Trav­isano, “Wat­son and Web­ber’s work is often over­looked and not giv­en suf­fi­cient cred­it.” Though they got their shoot­ing script from the mod­ernist-influ­enced cum­mings, the film­mak­ers, “not fans of mod­ernism,” “pre­ferred to have their films described as ama­teur.” Their Fall of the House of Ush­er, the best-known work they ever pro­duced, “hard­ly fol­lows a nar­ra­tive, but is val­ued for its cre­ative use of rep­e­ti­tion and vari­a­tion and for the film’s dra­mat­ic light­ing.” And don’t wor­ry if you haven’t read the orig­i­nal sto­ry in a while; accord­ing to Trav­isano, Wat­son and Web­ber chose to film it because they them­selves had­n’t read it in a while, and thus “would be free of its influ­ence.” But after expe­ri­enc­ing the brief but unset­tling cin­e­mat­ic dream they man­aged to make out of this half-remem­bered Poean mate­r­i­al, you may want to seek out its influ­ence by going back and read­ing it again — or lis­ten­ing to it, or try­ing to sleep and re-dream it for your­self.

You can find Fall of the House of Ush­er in our col­lec­tion, 285 Free Doc­u­men­taries Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Christo­pher Walken, Iggy Pop, Deb­bie Har­ry & Oth­er Celebs Read Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, 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.

David Lynch’s Photographs of Old Factories

lynch factory 1

David Lynch’s break out movie, Eraser­head, is the sort of movie that will seep into your uncon­scious and stay with you for days or weeks – like a par­tic­u­lar­ly unnerv­ing night­mare. Shot in inky black and white, the film achieves its uncan­ny pow­er in part because of its set­ting — a rot­ting indus­tri­al moon­scape bereft of nature. Much of the film’s sound­track is filled with the clank­ing of dis­tant machines and the hiss­ing of steam escap­ing pipes.

Lynch’s obses­sion with the rem­nants of the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion have punc­tu­at­ed much of his work since — from the grimy, claus­tro­pho­bic Vic­to­ri­an streets in The Ele­phant Man to the open­ing titles of Twin Peaks to his 1990 avant-garde mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­za Indus­tri­al Sym­pho­ny No. 1.

“Well…if you said to me, ‘Okay, we’re either going down to Dis­ney­land or we’re going to see this aban­doned fac­to­ry,’ there would be no choice,” said Lynch once in an inter­view. “I’d be down there at the fac­to­ry. I don’t real­ly know why. It just seems like such a great place to set a sto­ry.”

Ear­li­er this year, Lynch exhib­it­ed at a Lon­don gallery a series of pho­tographs he shot of, yes, rot­ting fac­to­ries around New York, Eng­land and par­tic­u­lar­ly Poland. The sub­jects of the pho­tos are pret­ty mun­dane – a door, a win­dow, a wall – but he imbues them with this odd tone of fore­bod­ing and men­ace. In oth­er words, Lynch makes them seem Lynchi­an.

“It’s an incred­i­ble mood,” Lynch told Dazed Mag­a­zine. “I feel like I’m in a place that’s just mag­i­cal, where nature is reclaim­ing these derelict fac­to­ries. It’s very dreamy. Every place you turn, there’s some­thing so sen­sa­tion­al and sur­pris­ing – it’s the Bea­t­les’ Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour. All the cities are look­ing more and more the same. The real trea­sures are going away; the mood they cre­ate is going away.”

See more pho­tos below and, if you’re so inclined, you can buy the book to the exhib­it here.

A door in Lodz, Poland
lynch factory 2.2

A win­dow and a real estate oppor­tu­ni­ty in Lodz

david lynch factory 3

A fac­to­ry. Lodz, Poland.

david lynch factory 4

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Young Stan­ley Kubrick’s Noirish Pic­tures of Chica­go, 1949

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. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

 

A Quick Introduction to Literary Theory: Watch Animated Videos from the Open University

Just what is an author? It might seem like a sil­ly ques­tion, and an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­sec­tion of the term may seem like a need­less­ly pedan­tic exer­cise. But the very vari­abil­i­ty of the con­cept means it isn’t a sta­ble, fixed idea at all, but a shift­ing set of asso­ci­a­tions we have with notions about cre­ativ­i­ty, the social role of art, and that elu­sive qual­i­ty known as “genius.” Ques­tions raised in the Open Uni­ver­si­ty video above—part of a series of very short ani­mat­ed entrées into lit­er­ary crit­i­cism called “Out­side the Book”—make it hard to ignore the prob­lems we encounter when we try to define author­ship in sim­ple, straight­for­ward ways. Most of the ques­tions relate to the work of French post­struc­tural­ist Michel Fou­cault, whose crit­i­cal essay “What is an Author?”—along with struc­tural­ist thinker Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author”—dis­turbed many a lit­er­ary critic’s com­fort­able assump­tions about the cre­ative locus behind any giv­en work.

In the 18th cen­tu­ry, at least in Europe, the author was a high­ly cel­e­brat­ed cul­tur­al fig­ure, a sta­tus epit­o­mized by Samuel Johnson’s rev­er­en­tial biog­ra­phy of John Dry­den and edi­tion of Shake­speare—and in turn Johnson’s own biog­ra­phy by his amanu­en­sis Boswell. The 19th cen­tu­ry began to see the author as a celebri­ty, with the hype and some­times tawdry spec­u­la­tion that accom­pa­nies that des­ig­na­tion. In the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, even as the idea of the film direc­tor as auteur—a sin­gu­lar cre­ative genius—gained ascen­dance, the inflat­ed role of the lit­er­ary author came in for a bruis­ing. With Fou­cault, Barthes, and oth­ers like W.K. Wim­satt and Mon­roe Beardsley—whose essay “The Inten­tion­al Fal­la­cy” more or less ruled out biog­ra­phy as a tool of the critic—the author reced­ed and the “text” gained pri­ma­cy as, in Foucault’s words, a “dis­cur­sive unit.”

This means that ques­tions of author­ship became insep­a­ra­ble from ques­tions of read­er­ship, inter­pre­ta­tion, and influ­ence; from ques­tions of his­tor­i­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tion and social con­struc­tion (i.e. how do we know any­thing about “Byron” except through biogra­phies, doc­u­men­taries, etc., them­selves cul­tur­al pro­duc­tions?); from ques­tions of trans­la­tion, pseude­pig­ra­phy, and pen names. Put in much plain­er terms, we once came to think of the author not sim­ply as the writer—a role pre­vi­ous­ly del­e­gat­ed to low­ly, usu­al­ly anony­mous “scribes” who sim­ply copied the words of gods, heroes, and prophets. Instead, the author became a god, a hero, and a prophet, a god­like cre­ator with a “lit­er­ary stamp of approval” that grants his or her every utter­ance on the page a spe­cial sta­tus; “that makes even the note on Shakespeare’s fridge a work of pro­found genius.” But that idea is any­thing but sim­ple, and the crit­i­cal dis­cus­sion around it any­thing but triv­ial.

Dit­to much of the above when it comes to that oth­er seem­ing­ly indi­vis­i­ble unit of lit­er­a­ture, the book. In the even short­er video guide above, Open Uni­ver­si­ty rapid­ly chal­lenges our com­mon­place ideas about book-hood and rais­es the now-com­mon­place ques­tion about the future of this “read­ing giz­mo.” For more “Out­side the Book,” see the remain­ing videos in the series: “Com­e­dy,” “Tragedy,” and “Two Styles of Love.” And for a much more sus­tained and seri­ous study of the art of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, delve into Pro­fes­sor Paul Fry’s Yale course below. It’s part of Open Cul­ture’s col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Intro­duc­tion to The­o­ry of Lit­er­a­ture – Free Online Video – Free iTunes Audio – Free iTunes Video – Course Mate­ri­als – Paul H. Fry, Yale

h/t Cather­ine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 55 Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es: From Dante and Mil­ton to Ker­ouac and Tolkien

Crash Course on Lit­er­a­ture: Watch John Green’s Fun Intro­duc­tions to Gats­by, Catch­er in the Rye & Oth­er Clas­sics

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

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

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

Behold the Blistering Bass Solos of Cream Bassist and Singer, Jack Bruce (1943–2014)

I’ve writ­ten before that every band Eric Clapton’s been involved with could right­ful­ly be called a super­group. But for my mon­ey, there’s only one wor­thy of the name, and that’s Cream. Since form­ing a deep attach­ment to the psy­che­del­ic pow­er trio from a young age, I’ve found it espe­cial­ly irk­some to see them some­times billed as “Eric Clap­ton and Cream.” Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er and bassist/singer Jack Bruce are at least as—if not more—talented and inter­est­ing as musi­cians. But though Bak­er has long been cel­e­brat­ed, though most­ly from a safe dis­tance, Bruce, in my opin­ion, is almost crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed. That may change as trib­utes and reap­praisals pour in after his pass­ing of liv­er dis­ease this past Sat­ur­day at age 71.

We’re like­ly to hear more Cream than usu­al, at least, which is nev­er a bad thing. What you may not hear casu­al­ly is Bruce’s play­ing in his lat­er years. Like many rock stars of his era, includ­ing his Cream band­mates, he nev­er real­ly stopped. But unlike some musi­cians from the 60s, he only got bet­ter with age, adapt­ing his jazz and blues chops to mod­ern takes on the psych rock he helped invent. Not a flashy play­er, Bruce’s style is char­ac­ter­ized by emo­tive pow­er and a near per­fect syn­the­sis of the rhyth­mic and the melod­ic. Key to his style is the walk­ing bassline like that on “White Room,” from Cream’s third record, 1968’s dou­ble album Wheels of Fire. He plays ‘em lit­er­al­ly walk­ing around, or rather strut­ting. In the video above, see Bruce pull out an amaz­ing solo dur­ing a per­for­mance of “White Room” at an event called Hip­pie Fest in 2008.

The fes­ti­val also fea­tured leg­ends Eric Bur­don and the Ani­mals and the Tur­tles but I can only imag­ine Bruce left the strongest impres­sion on audi­ence mem­bers who’d seen him in his prime and those who hadn’t. Watch him rip through anoth­er intense solo above in “Sun­shine of Your Love,” fol­lowed by a blues num­ber record­ed ear­li­er in the day at the same con­cert. Although most of Cream’s lyrics were writ­ten by poet and “unof­fi­cial fourth mem­ber” Pete Brown, the music was most­ly Bruce. His range of influ­ences was wide, and his will­ing­ness to fol­low them wher­ev­er they led, adven­tur­ous. David Fricke at Rolling Stone has a playlist of Bruce’s top ten “Deep Tracks,” includ­ing one from ear­ly 60s out­fit The Gra­ham Bond Organization—which also fea­tured Gin­ger Bak­er and vir­tu­oso jazz gui­tarist John McLaughlin—and sev­er­al of Bruce’s solo tunes. “If you only know Cream,” writes Fricke in appre­ci­a­tion of Bruce’s ver­sa­til­i­ty,” then stray far, every way you can—as he did.” It’s good advice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

100 Great Bass Riffs Played in One Epic Take: Cov­ers 60 Years of Rock, Jazz and R&B

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

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

David Bowie and Lou Reed Perform Live Together for the First and Last Time: 1972 and 1997

I dis­cov­ered one of my favorite pieces of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia—a full page ad for the 1983 album from David Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust con­cert film—at a flea mar­ket. It’s a nice lit­tle piece of his­to­ry, but a lit­tle bit mis­lead­ing to con­sumers at the time, since it says, “fea­tur­ing the sin­gle ‘White Light/White Heat.’” As every­one knows, “White Light/White Heat” is not a Bowie sin­gle, but a Lou Reed song, one of his many odes to hero­in as lead singer of the Vel­vet Under­ground.

But what­ev­er the admen had in mind in pro­mot­ing this track over Bowie’s many orig­i­nal hits, the star him­self has nev­er been shy about acknowl­edg­ing his debts. When it comes to Zig­gy, “the song­writer who most influ­enced” the glam rock alien is cer­tain­ly Reed, as Bowie him­self says in this 1977 inter­view.

Today, on the one-year anniver­sary of Reed’s death, we revis­it their cre­ative and per­son­al rela­tion­ship, a mutu­al admi­ra­tion that spanned more than four decades. Not only did Bowie cov­er Reed’s songs and pro­duce his 1972 solo album Trans­former, but he wrote 1971’s “Queen Bitch” as a trib­ute to Reed and the Vel­vets. In 1997, Bowie and Reed took the stage togeth­er to per­form the song. The occa­sion was Bowie’s 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at Madi­son Square Gar­den, and the all-star line­up that night includ­ed Frank Black, Dave Grohl, Son­ic Youth, Robert Smith, and Bil­ly Cor­gan (see the full setlist here). But Reed’s appear­ance was the most excit­ing, and in hind­sight, most poignant. At the top of the post, see the two old friends play “Queen Bitch,” just above, they do “White Light/White Heat,” and below, Reed’s clas­sic “Wait­ing for the Man” (they also played Reed’s 1989 “Dirty Boule­vard” togeth­er).

At the time, Bowie was at “some­what of a low point” in his career, writes Rolling Stone, though poised for a come­back with the upcom­ing sin­gle (and Trent Reznor-star­ring video) “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” which he played with Son­ic Youth that night. But the first time he and Reed shared the stage, in 1972, Bowie was rid­ing high in all his Zig­gy Star­dust glo­ry and reg­u­lar­ly cov­er­ing Vel­vet Under­ground songs on tour. That year, he brought Reed on stage in Lon­don for his “very, very first appear­ance on any stage in Eng­land.” Hear them do “White Light/White Heat” in some­what muf­fled live audio below. They also played “Wait­ing for the Man” and “Sweet Jane” togeth­er, which you can hear at the bot­tom of the post.

While Bowie seems to have tak­en every oppor­tu­ni­ty to lav­ish praise on his idol, Reed was a bit more under­stat­ed, though no less sin­cere, in his appre­ci­a­tion. In 2004, he told Rolling Stone, “We’re still friends after all these years. We go to the occa­sion­al art show and muse­um togeth­er, and I always like work­ing with him […] I saw him play here in New York on his last tour, and it was one of the great­est rock shows I’ve ever seen. At least as far as white peo­ple go. Seri­ous­ly.” Seri­ous­ly, Lou Reed, you are sore­ly missed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rock and Roll Heart, 1998 Doc­u­men­tary Retraces the Remark­able Career of Lou Reed

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

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

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.