How Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused, Boyhood) Tells Stories with Time: Six Video Essays

in Film | July 11th, 2017

The ever more crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed, ever more res­olute­ly Austin-based auteur Richard Lin­klater grounds each of his movies in a par­tic­u­lar place, but even more so in a par­tic­u­lar time. His sec­ond fea­ture Slack­er, which broke him into the world of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dent film in 1991, takes place not just in Austin, but in a sin­gle day in Austin. Its much big­ger-bud­get but also Austin-set fol­low-up Dazed and Con­fused takes place on May 28, 1976, the last day before grad­u­a­tion for its high-school-age char­ac­ters. 1995’s Before Sun­rise began a tril­o­gy of films released every nine years, each of which con­tin­ues the sto­ry of the cen­tral cou­ple by fol­low­ing them in near-real time around a dif­fer­ent place: first in Vien­na, then in Paris, then in Greece.

Lin­klater has main­tained his pen­chant for tem­po­ral speci­fici­ty, set­ting last year’s Every­body Wants Some!! in south­east Texas in 1980, specif­i­cal­ly on the day before the begin­ning of col­lege for its char­ac­ters. Before that, his low-key epic Boy­hood made cin­e­ma his­to­ry by hav­ing been shot over a peri­od of twelve years, demon­strat­ing defin­i­tive­ly that the direc­tor’s inter­est in time goes well beyond sim­ply evok­ing peri­ods or repli­cat­ing the real flow of events.

“It’s a big ele­ment, isn’t it, of our medi­um?” he asks in “On Cin­e­ma & Time,” the video essay made by “kog­o­na­da” for the British Film Insti­tute at the top of the post. “The manip­u­la­tion of time, the per­cep­tion of time, the con­trol of time — kind of the build­ing blocks of cin­e­ma.”

“What I’ll say is, like, ‘Carve out some­thing of real time,’ you know?” says Lin­klater, with his char­ac­ter­is­tic deliv­ery of artis­tic insight in a high­ly casu­al, Texas-inflect­ed locu­tion, in the Film Radar video essay “Richard Lin­klater and Time” (not view­able in all regions). “Some kind of hyper­re­al­i­ty, you know? Try­ing to make sense of the world in a movie way, of just how peo­ple live or think or inter­act.” But would his time-carv­ing, expert­ly though he does it, strike us as pow­er­ful­ly with­out he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors’ equal­ly high skill at craft­ing images (whether live-action or, occa­sion­al­ly, in ani­ma­tion, as in the roto­scop­ing of the philo­soph­i­cal dia­logue-dri­ven Wak­ing Life, or his Philip K. Dick adap­ta­tion A Scan­ner Dark­ly, exam­ined in Siob­han Cavanagh’s “Form and Func­tion”)?

You can see that skill on dis­play in the video essays “Cin­e­matog­ra­phy in the films of Richard Lin­klater” and “Silent Con­nec­tions” just above. In the lat­ter, fre­quent Lin­klater col­lab­o­ra­tor Ethan Hawke quotes the direc­tor: “I’ve nev­er been in a gun­fight. I’ve nev­er been involved in espi­onage. I’ve nev­er been involved in a heli­copter crash. And yet I feel like my life has been full of dra­ma, and the most dra­mat­ic thing that’s ever hap­pened to me is, real­ly, con­nect­ing with anoth­er human being. When you real­ly con­nect, you feel like your life is dif­fer­ent, and I want to make a movie about that con­nec­tion.” In a sense, Lin­klater has spent most of his career tak­ing dif­fer­ent approach­es to mak­ing that movie, always draw­ing on his vast breadth of film knowl­edge; the video essay “Real Time and New Wave Her­itage” just above looks at just a few of the par­al­lels between his work and that of his pre­de­ces­sors in cin­e­ma.

“It’s fun­ny, the way mem­o­ry works,” Lin­klater says in a ten-minute Inde­pen­dent Film Chan­nel fea­turette on the mak­ing of Boy­hood. “I’m kind of obsessed with that.” You can see a younger Lin­klater speak about his life as a film­mak­er, then only just begin­ning, in the 1991 Austin pub­lic-access tele­vi­sion clip just above. “I don’t get work,” he says. “For me, film­mak­ing’s not even a job, it’s not a career, it’s just some­thing I’m doing. For the first time it looks like I should be mak­ing mon­ey at it, but we’ll see.” Now we’ve seen what Lin­klater can do, though he’ll sure­ly sur­prise and impress us for decades to come with the ways he can dig, cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, into his obses­sions — and the obses­sions his films have let us share. To quote a 23-year-old Hawke in Before Sun­rise, quot­ing Dylan Thomas read­ing W.H. Auden: “ ‘All the clocks in the city began to whirr and chime. Oh, let not time deceive you; you can­not con­quer time. In headaches and in wor­ry, vague­ly life leaks away, and time will have its fan­cy tomor­row or today.’ Some­thin’ like that.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Great Mix­tapes Richard Lin­klater Cre­at­ed to Psych Up the Actors in Dazed and Con­fused and Every­body Wants Some!!

Scenes from Wak­ing Life, Richard Linklater’s Philo­soph­i­cal, Fea­ture-Length Ani­mat­ed Film (2001)

Watch Matthew McConaughey’s Audi­tion Tape for Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Con­fused, the Indie Com­e­dy That Made Him a Star

In Dark PSA, Direc­tor Richard Lin­klater Sug­gests Rad­i­cal Steps for Deal­ing with Tex­ters in Cin­e­mas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the Making of a Hand-Crafted Violin, from Start to Finish, in a Beautifully-Shot Documentary

in Music | July 11th, 2017

The his­to­ry of the vio­lin can be traced back to 1530, when a vio­lin-like instru­ment first appeared in Gau­den­zio Fer­rar­i’s paint­ing, “Madon­na of the Orange Tree.” By the 1550s, Andrea Amati and his descen­dants began to craft price­less vio­lins, in the form we know them today. And then fol­lowed oth­er fam­i­lies close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the gold­en age of these stringed instruments–the Bergonzi, the Guarneri, the Stradi­vari.

Today, luthiers like Dominique Nicosia con­tin­ue the same tra­di­tion. Above you can watch Nicosia hand-craft a vio­lin at the Musée de la lutherie et de l’archè­terie français­es in north­east­ern France.

Shot by Bap­tiste Buob, the word­less doc­u­men­tary walks you through the mak­ing of a vio­lin, from start to fin­ish. A process that takes a luthi­er 3–4 weeks, work­ing full-time, gets cov­ered in 33 ele­gant min­utes. Savor each and every one of them.

Bonus: Below, watch anoth­er film by Bap­tiste Buob–this one a 28-minute film detail­ing how French bow mak­er Roch Petit­de­mange prac­tices his craft, again from begin­ning to end. A per­fect com­ple­ment.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

What Does a $45 Mil­lion Vio­la Sound Like? Vio­list David Aaron Car­pen­ter Gives You a Pre­view

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Behold the “3Dvarius,” the World’s First 3‑D Print­ed Vio­lin

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Miles Davis Dishes Dirt on His Fellow Jazz Musicians: “The Trombone Player Should be Shot”; That Ornette is “F‑ing Up the Trumpet”

in Music | July 10th, 2017

Cre­ative Com­mons pho­to by Tom Palum­bo

The wan­der­ing bards of old dis­ap­peared when the print­ing press came to town. So too have the great band­lead­ers large­ly van­ished in the age of the super pro­duc­er and jet-set­ting DJ. But for a time in the jazz and rock worlds, Olympian fig­ures like Frank Zap­pa and Miles Davis played sev­er­al impor­tant roles: find­ing and men­tor­ing the best musi­cians; mas­ter­ing old forms and mak­ing them new again; serv­ing as cura­tors, arbiters, and con­trar­i­ans… issu­ing loud pro­nounce­ments on any­thing and every­thing as unspar­ing cul­tur­al crit­ics.

Do we need tongues as sharp as Zap­pa and Davis’s in con­tem­po­rary pop cul­ture? Maybe, maybe not. They didn’t seem to enjoy much of any­thing they weren’t direct­ly involved in cre­at­ing. But man, was it fun to watch them dis­pense with the niceties and speak their bru­tal truths. We’ve heard from Zap­pa on every­thing from his loathing of the Vel­vet Under­ground to the fas­cism of the PMRC to the mor­bid­i­ty of the entire music indus­try. Davis’ obser­va­tions  were equal­ly cut­ting. “His fas­ci­nat­ing auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” writes Kirk Hamil­ton at Kotaku, “is loaded with shit-talk­ing, dis­missals, and gen­er­al acer­bic jerk­i­ness. It is fan­tas­tic.”

But you needn’t pick up Miles’ book to get an ear­ful of his acid-tongued judg­ments. We need only revis­it the series of “blind­fold tests” he did for Down­beat mag­a­zine in the fifties and six­ties. These exper­i­ments had famous musi­cians lis­ten to new music, “try to pick out who is play­ing,” then offer their off-the-cuff takes. Davis’ first ses­sion, in 1955, began char­i­ta­bly enough, though not with­out some sweep­ing crit­i­cisms. He dis­missed all of the soloists on Clif­ford Brown’s “Falling in Love with Love,” for exam­ple, except for a Swedish pianist whose name escaped him. But he gave the record four stars all the same. “The arrange­ment was pret­ty good.”

In 1958, Davis sat for his sec­ond blind­fold test, with mixed results. He near­ly oblit­er­at­ed Tiny Grimes and Cole­man Hawkins’ “A Smooth One,” giv­ing it “half a star just because… Hawkins is on it.” But in an effu­sive moment, he gush­es over John Lewis’ “Wareme­land (Dear Old Stock­holm)” with a ten star rat­ing. “All the stars are for John,” he says. By 1964, lit­tle evi­dence of that rare enthu­si­asm remained in the third blind­fold test. Davis was at that moment, writes Richard Brody, “torn apart.” In a par­tic­u­lar­ly irri­ta­ble state of mind he “flung insults at Eric Dol­phy,” Son­ny Rollins, Cecil Tay­lor, and a few more greats. His com­men­tary “per­fect­ly cap­tures his gen­er­al dis­taste,” writes Hamil­ton, “for, well, every­thing.”

Of Dolphy’s “Miss Ann” (above), he says, “nobody else could sound that bad!” Of the Jazz Cru­saders’ “All Blues”: “What’s that sup­posed to be? That ain’t noth­in’.” Of Duke Elling­ton, Max Roach and Charles Min­gus’ “Car­a­van”: “What am I sup­posed to say to that? That’s ridicu­lous. You see the way they can fuck up music?” Like anoth­er infa­mous trash-talk­er who cur­rent­ly dom­i­nates every con­ver­sa­tion with his unbe­liev­able  ego­ma­nia, Davis toss­es out the con­de­scend­ing adjec­tive “sad” at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Clark Terry’s “Cieli­to Lin­do” is a “sad record.” Dol­phy is “a sad moth­er­fuck­er.” Cecil Taylor’s “Lena” is “some sad shit, man.”

It’s not all bad. Miles loves Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto’s “Desa­fi­nan­do,” giv­ing the record five stars and its two star play­ers the high­est of praise. Four years lat­er, his typ­i­cal mood had not improved. In 1968, Davis sat for his last blind­fold test. He tore into Ornette Cole­man, mis­tak­ing him for Archie Shepp on “Funer­al.” Of Fred­die Hubbard’s “On the Que-Tee,” he says, “I wouldn’t even put that shit on a record.” Sun Ra’s “Brainville” gets a seri­ous slam: “They must be joking—the Flori­da A&M band sounds bet­ter than that. They should record them, rather than this shit.” It ain’t all pure cat­ti­ness. Davis tends to like music that stays out of his musi­cal lane, like The Elec­tric Flag’s “Over Lovin’ You,”—a “nice record,” he says. “It’s a plea­sure to get a record like that.” Like­wise, the pro­logue from the Fifth Dimension’s Mag­ic Gar­den gets a thumbs up.

When Down­beat­’s Leonard Feath­er vis­it­ed the iras­ci­ble trum­pet play­er in his hotel room for the last test, the crit­ic “seemed shocked to find records by the Byrds, James Brown, Dionne War­wick, Aretha Franklin, Tony Ben­nett, and the Fifth Dimen­sion scat­tered around his room,” notes Davis biog­ra­ph­er John Szwed. “Miles seemed to have lost all inter­est in what was then con­sid­ered jazz.” No doubt about it, no musi­cian then or now would want to be on the receiv­ing end of his crit­i­cal barbs. Per­haps the only jazz play­er he nev­er put down was the “young savant drum­mer” Tony Williams. Oth­er­wise, “at some point or anoth­er,” writes Hamil­ton, “Davis lays low just about every oth­er lumi­nary in the his­to­ry of jazz.” But behind the vit­ri­ol lay true genius. No one was as competitive—or as demand­ing of him­self as he was of others—as Miles Davis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Opens for Neil Young and “That Sor­ry-Ass Cat” Steve Miller at The Fill­more East (1970)

Chuck Berry (RIP) Reviews Punk Songs by The Ramones, Sex Pis­tols, The Clash, Talk­ing Heads & More (1980)

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

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

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11,700 Free Photos from John Margolies’ Archive of Americana Architecture: Download, Use & Re-Mix

in Architecture, Comedy, History, Travel | July 10th, 2017

Many con­nois­seurs of archi­tec­ture are enthralled by the mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy of Le Cor­busier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I M Pei, who shared a belief that form fol­lows func­tion, or, as Wright had it, that form and func­tion are one.

Oth­ers of us delight in gas sta­tions shaped like teapots and restau­rants shaped like fish or dough­nuts. If there’s a phi­los­o­phy behind these insis­tent­ly play­ful visions, it like­ly has some­thing to do with joy…and pulling in tourists.

Art his­to­ri­an John Mar­golies (1940–2016), respond­ing to the beau­ty of such quirky visions, scram­bled to pre­serve the evi­dence, trans­form­ing into a respect­ed, self-taught pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the process. A Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion grant and the finan­cial sup­port of archi­tect Philip John­son allowed him to log over four decades worth of trips on America’s blue high­ways, hop­ing to cap­ture his quar­ry before it dis­ap­peared for good.

Despite Johnson’s patron­age, and his own stints as an Archi­tec­tur­al Record edi­tor and Archi­tec­tur­al League of New York pro­gram direc­tor, he seemed to wel­come the ruf­fled min­i­mal­ist feath­ers his enthu­si­asm for mini golf cours­es, theme motels, and eye-catch­ing road­side attrac­tions occa­sioned.

On the oth­er hand, he resent­ed when his pas­sions were labelled as “kitsch,” a point that came across in a 1987 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Globe and Mail:

Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have thought that what’s impor­tant are the large, unique archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments. They think Toronto’s City Hall is impor­tant, but not those won­der­ful gnome’s‑castle gas sta­tions in Toron­to, a Detroit influ­ence that crept across the bor­der and pol­lut­ed your won­der­ful­ly con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment.

As Mar­golies fore­saw, the type of com­mer­cial ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture he’d loved since boyhood–the type that screams, “Look at me! Look at me”–has become very near­ly extinct.

And that is a max­i­mal shame.

Your chil­dren may not be able to vis­it an orange juice stand shaped like an orange or the Lean­ing Tow­er of Piz­za, but thanks to the Library of Con­gress, these locales can be pit­stops on any vir­tu­al fam­i­ly vaca­tion you might under­take this July.

The library has select­ed the John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive as its July “free to use and reuse” col­lec­tion. So linger as long as you’d like and do with these 11,700+ images as you will–make post­cards, t‑shirts, sou­venir place­mats.

(Or eschew your com­put­er entirely–go on a real road trip, and con­tin­ue Mar­golies’ work!)

What­ev­er you decide to do with them, the archive’s home­page has tips for how to best search the 11,710 col­or slides con­tained there­in. Library staffers have sup­ple­ment­ed Mar­golies’ notes on each image with sub­ject and geo­graph­i­cal head­ings.

Begin your jour­ney through the Library of Con­gress’ John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive here.

We’d love to see your vaca­tion snaps upon your return.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stew­art Brand’s 6‑Part Series How Build­ings Learn, With Music by Bri­an Eno

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Are Stanley Kubrick Films Like Immersive Video Games? The Case of Eyes Wide Shut

in Film, Video Games | July 10th, 2017

Video games have long attempt­ed, to an ever more impres­sive degree of real­ism, to con­jure up their own vir­tu­al real­i­ties. But then, so have film­mak­ers, for a much longer peri­od of time and — at least so far — with more effec­tive results. The most respect­ed direc­tors ful­ly real­ize “vir­tu­al real­i­ty” with each film they make, and Stan­ley Kubrick stands as one of the best-known exam­ples. Dur­ing his almost fifty-year career, he immersed his audi­ence in such dis­tinc­tive cin­e­mat­ic worlds as those of Loli­ta, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clock­work Orange, and Full Met­al Jack­et, leav­ing us in 1999 with the final, much puz­zled-over fea­ture Eyes Wide Shut.

The atmos­pher­i­cal­ly uneasy sto­ry of a doc­tor who spends a night in New York City wan­der­ing into ever stranger and more erot­i­cal­ly charged sit­u­a­tions, Eyes Wide Shut both adapt­ed mate­r­i­al not well known in Amer­i­ca, the Aus­tri­an writer Arthur Schnit­zler’s 1926 novel­la “Dream Sto­ry,” and starred two of the biggest celebri­ties of the day, the then-mar­ried cou­ple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kid­man play­ing the mar­ried cou­ple Bill and and Alice Har­ford. Kubrick made use of these qual­i­ties and many oth­ers to deal with such tra­di­tion­al sub­jects as love, sex, infi­deli­ty, and secret cults while, in the words of Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the video essay­ist Nerd­writer, “mak­ing our engage­ment with these things one-of-a-kind.”

“Review­ers com­plained that the Har­fords were ciphers, uncom­pli­cat­ed and dull,” writes Tim Krei­der in “Intro­duc­ing Soci­ol­o­gy,” his much-cit­ed break­down of Eyes Wide Shut. “These reac­tions recall the befud­dle­ment of crit­ics who com­plained that the com­put­er in 2001 was more human than the astro­nauts, but could only attribute it (just four years after the unfor­get­table per­for­mances of Dr. Strangelove) to human error.” He argues that “to under­stand a film by this most thought­ful and painstak­ing of film­mak­ers, we should assume that this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is delib­er­ate — that their shal­low­ness and repres­sion is the point.”

Puschak’s video essay “Eyes Wide Shut: The Game” names those qual­i­ties, espe­cial­ly as they man­i­fest in Cruise’s pro­tag­o­nist, as among the tech­niques Kubrick uses to make the movie a kind of vir­tu­al real­i­ty expe­ri­ence for the view­er. “You’re expe­ri­enc­ing the night from the per­spec­tive of Bill, but not from a posi­tion of empa­thy — or even sym­pa­thy for that mat­ter. Instead, the view­er engages in what philoso­pher Alessan­dro Gio­van­nel­li calls ‘expe­ri­en­tial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion,’ in which the result of occu­py­ing Bil­l’s per­spec­tive while not empathiz­ing with him is that the per­spec­tive becomes your own.”

What Krei­der sees as ulti­mate­ly part of Eyes Wide Shut’s indict­ment of “the cap­i­tal of the glob­al Amer­i­can empire at the end of the Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry,” Puschak inter­prets as Kubrick­’s “sys­tem­at­ic effort to swap you in for the pro­tag­o­nist” in ser­vice of “an ode to the expe­ri­ence, to the raw impres­sion, of see­ing some­thing mar­velous.” But both view­ers would sure­ly agree that Kubrick, to a greater extent than per­haps any oth­er film­mak­er, made some­thing more than movies. One might say he craft­ed expe­ri­ences for his audi­ence, and in the truest sense of the word: like expe­ri­ences in real life, and unlike the expe­ri­ences of so many video games, they allow for an infini­tude of valid inter­pre­ta­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

How Stan­ley Kubrick Made His Mas­ter­pieces: An Intro­duc­tion to His Obses­sive Approach to Film­mak­ing

Steven Spiel­berg on the Genius of Stan­ley Kubrick

The Worlds of Hitch­cock & Kubrick Col­lide in a Sur­re­al Mashup, The Red Drum Get­away

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch 12-Year-Old Joe Bonamassa Shred the Blues as He Opens for B.B. King in 1989

in Music | July 7th, 2017

There are gui­tar play­ers, who can play a hand­ful of songs and pick out some pleas­ing riffs, and there are gui­tarists: play­ers who’ve mas­tered sev­er­al styles, have a back pock­et full of stan­dards, and tour and record for a liv­ing. And then there are gui­tar gods, god­dess­es, heroes, or what­ev­er… men and women like St. Vin­cent, Joe Satri­ani, Jeff Beck, Nan­cy Wil­son, Steve Vai, Ste­vie Ray Vaughn, Mer­le Travis, Jimi Hen­drix, and Joe Bona­mas­sa, elec­tric blues wun­derkind who, in a way, is a suc­ces­sor to some the past mas­ters. Many gui­tar heroes are child prodi­gies, and many of them had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from genius musi­cians in their youth. Bona­mas­sa is no excep­tion in either case, as you can see in the video up top, in which a 12-year-old “Smokin’ Joe Bona­mas­sa” opens for B.B. King.

Bona­mas­sa start­ed play­ing at 4 and stud­ied under the late, great Wash­ing­ton, DC gui­tarist Dan­ny Gat­ton at 11, per­haps the most unsung, most nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed gui­tarist of all time. In 1989, he had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to tour with King, play­ing over 20 shows, after he had already made a name for him­self in “places like Buf­fa­lo and Scran­ton, PA,” writes For­got­ten Gui­tar.

In the video above, you can see Bona­mas­sa, 12 years old, destroy on Gatton’s sig­na­ture but­ter­scotch Tele­cast­er. It takes him and the band a cou­ple min­utes to get going, and the skep­ti­cal audi­ence begins to shuf­fle their feet impa­tient­ly. Then he pro­ceeds to blow their minds, just as he blew the minds of tele­vi­sion audi­ences who saw the news seg­ment below on Bona­mas­sa that same year.

At thir­teen, Bona­mas­sa attract­ed the nation­al atten­tion of a pro­gram called Real Life, host­ed by Jane Pauley. In the clip below, we have the plea­sure of see­ing the awk­ward mid­dle school­er in his oth­er ele­ment, the lock­er-lined hall­ways and the libraries at his day job. But the live footage of Bona­mas­sa removes any doubt about how extra­or­di­nary his abil­i­ties are.

An ear­ly child­hood affin­i­ty for the instru­ment and parental urg­ing has had a lot to do with Bonamassa’s phe­nom­e­nal skill, but as he often acknowl­edges, so has his tute­lage under some of the great­est gui­tar heroes to ever live. (See him pay trib­ute to B.B. King below.) And as every­one who plays gui­tar will acknowl­edge, what often dis­tin­guish­es gui­tar play­ers from gui­tarists and gui­tar heroes is an awful lot of prac­tice. Read Bonamassa’s top 5 prac­tice tips for gui­tarists here.

via For­got­ten Gui­tar

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Plays the Acoustic Gui­tar in Rare Footage, Let­ting Us See His Gui­tar Vir­tu­os­i­ty in Its Purest Form

Hear Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Tracks From Some of Rock’s Great­est: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clap­ton & More

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

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Meet Clara Rockmore, the Pioneering Electronic Musician Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Early 1920s

in Music | July 7th, 2017

Fas­ci­na­tion with the theremin, the oth­er­world­ly elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ment devel­oped in the late 1910s and ear­ly 1920s out of Sovi­et research into prox­im­i­ty sen­sors, may nev­er cease. Some of that has to do with the unusu­al nature of its touch­less inter­face, con­sist­ing of twin anten­nas that the play­er moves their hands around in order to con­trol the tone. More of it has to do with what the few who have dared to mas­ter the theremin have achieved with it, and no dis­cus­sion of the mas­ters of the theremin can be com­plete with­out the name Clara Rock­more.

“Born in Rus­sia, March 9, 1911, Clara inher­it­ed the fam­i­ly trait of per­fect pitch and could pick out melodies on the piano at age two,” says the Nadia Reis­berg and Clara Rock­more Foun­da­tion’s biog­ra­phy. Accept­ed into the pres­ti­gious St. Peters­burg Impe­r­i­al Con­ser­va­to­ry as a vio­lin stu­dent at the unprece­dent­ed­ly young age of four, it seemed like she’d already found her path to musi­cal star­dom — until the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion got in the way.

The fam­i­ly fled to Amer­i­ca, with Clara and her pianist sis­ter Nadia giv­ing con­certs to make mon­ey through­out the ardu­ous jour­ney. They arrived in New York in Decem­ber 1921, but before Clara could con­tin­ue her stud­ies there, “she devel­oped an arthrit­ic prob­lem with her bow arm, and had to give up the vio­lin.”

But all was not lost: she met Leon Theremin, inven­tor and name­sake of the theremin (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here), and found her­self “fas­ci­nat­ed by the aes­thet­ic part of it, the visu­al beau­ty, the idea of play­ing in the air.” Soon devel­op­ing “her own fin­ger tech­nique, allow­ing her infi­nite­ly greater con­trol of pitch and phras­ing” and lat­er sug­gest­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the instru­ment to improve its range and sen­si­tiv­i­ty, she could with­in years play clas­si­cal pieces on the theremin, mak­ing sounds no clas­si­cal com­pos­er could have imag­ined. Her per­for­mances, some­times accom­pa­nied by Nadia and some­times as a part of an orches­tra, led to the release of her first album (record­ed by Robert Moog, whose name also echoes down the halls of elec­tron­ic music), The Art of the Theremin in 1977. (Stream it on Spo­ti­fy below.)

Rock­more passed away in 1998, hav­ing been brought back into the pub­lic eye a few years ear­li­er, at least to an extent, by Steve M. Mar­t­in’s doc­u­men­tary Theremin: an Elec­tron­ic Odyssey. Just last year, count­less many more of us learned not just the word theremin but the name Clara Rock­more when Google’s front-page “doo­dle” cel­e­brat­ed her 105 birth­day. Those who clicked on it could receive a brief, game-like theremin les­son from an ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Rock­more her­self, all while hear­ing sounds pre­cise­ly engi­neered to repli­cate her dis­tinc­tive play­ing style. You can see the real Rock­more play­ing Saint-Saëns’ “The Swan” at the top of the post. Any­one who’s heard the theremin knows that no oth­er instru­ment sounds quite like it — and any­one who’s heard Rock­more play­ing the theremin knows no oth­er theremin has ever sound­ed quite like hers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

See Japan­ese Musi­cians Play “Amaz­ing Grace” with 273 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls–Then Learn How They Per­form Their Mag­ic

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938–2014)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An 8‑Hour Marathon Reading of 500 Emily Dickinson Poems

in Books, Life, Literature, Poetry | July 7th, 2017

It’s unlike­ly that reclu­sive poet Emi­ly Dick­in­son would have want­ed much fuss made over her birth­day while still alive to cel­e­brate it.

But with the lady safe­ly ensconced in Amherst’s West Cemetery’s plot 53 for more than a cen­tu­ry, fans can observe the day in the man­ner they see fit.

The Library of Con­gress’ Poet­ry and Lit­er­a­ture Cen­ter threw in with the Fol­ger Library in cel­e­bra­tion of her 184th, invit­ing poet­ry lovers to the free marathon read­ing of her work, above (and below).

Poet Eleanor Hegin­both­am cit­ed Dickinson’s let­ter to her edi­tor, abo­li­tion­ist Thomas Went­worth Hig­gin­son–“Are you too deeply occu­pied to say if my verse is alive?”–before prim­ing the break­fast crowd on what they should expect from the 8 hour marathon:

We’re just going to have a day with no dis­cus­sion beyond… And it will be frus­trat­ing that we can’t ask ques­tions, we can’t stop and say, “Oh, my good­ness.  Let’s do that one over again.”  We’re just going to read and read and read.  And from this moment on, the voice of Emi­ly Dick­in­son, through those of you in this room, that’s the only voice we’re going to hear, and won’t that be fun?

Yes, though you may want to pack a nutri­tious snack to keep your ener­gy up. The read­ing slots were secured by means of an online sign up sheet, and while such egal­i­tar­i­an­ism is laud­able, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­fer per­for­mance chops on the inex­pe­ri­enced.

Nat­u­ral­ly, there are stand outs.

Mar­i­anne Noble, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Lit­er­a­ture at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, is a high­light with Poem 75, (2:36:40, above). Her Emi­ly Rocks t‑shirt is pret­ty rad too.

Pro­fes­sor Hegin­both­am is anoth­er sort of treat with Poem 416, 30 min­utes and 40 sec­onds into the sec­ond video, below.

All told, the vol­un­teer read­ers held the podi­um for 8 hours, mak­ing it through 500 poems, slight­ly less than a third of the poet’s out­put.

A tran­script of the event, with the read­ers’ names record­ed before their cho­sen vers­es can be found here.

Sin­gle tick­ets for the Fol­ger’s 2017 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Birth­day Trib­ute, co-host­ed by poet and  fem­i­nist lit­er­ary crit­ic, San­dra M. Gilbert, go on sale August 1.

This marathon read­ing of Dick­in­son’s poems will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

The Sec­ond Known Pho­to of Emi­ly Dick­in­son Emerges

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site: Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Dis­cuss Emi­ly Dick­in­son with her infor­mal­ly at Pete’s Mini Zine­fest in Brook­lyn this Sat­ur­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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