Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell Sings Haunting Acoustic Covers of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” & Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”

in Music | May 19th, 2017

I entered high school to the huge sounds of Soundgarden’s sec­ond album, Loud­er than Love, play­ing at home, in friends’ cars, on MTV’s 120 Min­utes late at night.… The band’s debut, and two pre­vi­ous EPs released on Seattle’s Sub Pop records, had not attract­ed much notice out­side of a fair­ly small scene. But Loud­er than Love—espe­cial­ly “Hands All Over”—was as hooky and alarm­ing as break­through sin­gles by oth­er emerg­ing bands on the oth­er side of the coun­try, while los­ing none of the propul­sive grit, groove, and raw, metal/hardcore pow­er of their ear­li­er work. Thou­sands of new lis­ten­ers start­ed pay­ing atten­tion.

But there’s anoth­er rea­son the songs on Loud­er than Love res­onat­ed so strong­ly (and scored them a major label deal). The album announced singer Chris Cor­nell as a vocal­ist to be reck­oned with—a singer with incred­i­ble pow­er, melod­ic instinct, and a four-octave range.

On songs like “Hands All Over” and “Loud Love,” he broke away from a fair­ly nar­row Ozzy Osbourne/Robert Plant style he’d cul­ti­vat­ed and intro­duced a sound that took both influ­ences in a direc­tion nei­ther had gone before, one full of anguish, urgency, and even men­ace.

Mil­lions more got to know Cornell’s voice after Supe­run­k­nown’s “Black Hole Sun,” but even then no one would have pre­dict­ed the direc­tion he would go in after leav­ing Soundgar­den. He inject­ed soul and sen­si­tiv­i­ty into songs like Audioslave’s “Orig­i­nal Fire” and “Be Your­self”—love ‘em or don’t—qualities we can hear in abun­dance in his cov­ers of sen­si­tive and soul­ful songs like Prince’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” and Michael Jackson’s “Bil­lie Jean.” In his unplugged ver­sion of Jack­son’s pop mas­ter­piece the song acquires the heav­i­ness and griev­ous beau­ty of a mur­der bal­lad. And I mean that entire­ly as a com­pli­ment. He brings “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” into “soul­ful new life,” as Slate writes, which is say­ing quite a lot, giv­en that Sinead O’Connor’s ver­sion is more or less per­fect.

Cor­nell took his own life at age 52 on Wednes­day night after play­ing with a reunit­ed Soundgar­den in Detroit, and after strug­gling with depres­sion for many years. It’s true he was nev­er laud­ed as a song­writer of a Prince/Michael Jack­son cal­iber. His lyrics were often tossed-off free asso­ci­a­tions rather than care­ful­ly craft­ed nar­ra­tives. One’s appre­ci­a­tion for them is a mat­ter of taste. But like the artists he cov­ers here, both of whom also died trag­i­cal­ly in their 50s, his music reflect­ed a deep con­cern for the state of the world. This comes through clear­ly in songs like “Hands All Over,” “Hunger Strike,” and in some point­ed com­ments he made dur­ing his final per­for­mance.

Rolling Stone has a few more acoustic Cor­nell cov­ers of Metal­li­ca, the Bea­t­les, Elvis Costel­lo, and more, and they’re all great. He did a pro­found­ly affect­ing, gospel-like take on Whit­ney Hous­ton’s bel­ter, “I Will Always Love You.” But for a true, and tru­ly heart­break­ing, exam­ple of how he could imbue a song with his “unfor­get­table vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” watch him play Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” at New York’s Bea­con The­ater in 2015 above, in an absolute­ly riv­et­ing duet with his daugh­ter, Toni. Cor­nell will be dear­ly missed by every­one who knew him, and by the mil­lions of peo­ple who were deeply moved by his voice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prince Plays Unplugged and Wraps the Crowd Around His Lit­tle Fin­ger (2004)

John­ny Cash & Joe Strum­mer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemp­tion Song” (2002)

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

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

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An Animated Alan Watts Waxes Philosophical About Time in The Fine Art of Goofing Off, the 1970s “Sesame Street for Grown-Ups”

in Animation, Life, Philosophy, Television | May 19th, 2017

Time is a mea­sure of ener­gy, a mea­sure of motion. And we have agreed inter­na­tion­al­ly on the speed of the clock. And I want you to think about clocks and watch­es for a moment. We are of course slaves to them. And you will notice that your watch is a cir­cle, and that it is cal­i­brat­ed, and that each minute, or sec­ond, is marked by a hair­line which is made as nar­row as pos­si­ble, as yet to be con­sis­tent with being vis­i­ble. 

— Alan Watts

How­ev­er true, that’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly stress-induc­ing obser­va­tion from one who was known for his Zen teach­ings…

The pres­sure is ame­lio­rat­ed some­what by Bob McClay’s trip­py time-based ani­ma­tion, above, nar­rat­ed by Watts. Putting Mick­ey Mouse on the face of Big Ben must’ve gone over well with the coun­ter­cul­tur­al youth who eager­ly embraced Watts’ East­ern phi­los­o­phy. And the tan­gi­ble evi­dence of real live mag­ic mark­ers will prove a ton­ic to those who came of age before ani­ma­tion’s dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion.

The short orig­i­nal­ly aired as part of the ear­ly 70’s series, The Fine Art of Goof­ing Off, described by one of its cre­ators, the humorist and sound artist, Hen­ry Jacobs, as “Sesame Street for grown-ups.”

Time pre­oc­cu­pied both men.

One of Jacobs’ fake com­mer­cials on The Fine Art of Goof­ing Off involved a pitch­man exhort­ing view­ers to stop wast­ing time at idle pas­times: Log a few extra gold­en hours at the old grind­stone.

A koan-like skit fea­tured a gramo­phone through which a dis­em­bod­ied voice end­less­ly asks a stuffed dog, “Can you hear me?” (Jacobs named that as a per­son­al favorite.)

Watts was less punch­line-ori­ent­ed than his friend and even­tu­al in-law, who main­tained an archival col­lec­tion of Watts’ lec­tures until his own death:

And when we think of a moment of time, when we think what we mean by the word “now”; we think of the short­est pos­si­ble instant that is here and gone, because that cor­re­sponds with the hair­line on the watch. And as a result of this fab­u­lous idea, we are a peo­ple who feel that we don’t have any present, because the present is instant­ly van­ish­ing — it goes so quick­ly. It is always becom­ing past. And we have the sen­sa­tion, there­fore, of our lives as some­thing that is con­stant­ly flow­ing away from us. We are con­stant­ly los­ing time. And so we have a sense of urgency. Time is not to be wast­ed. Time is mon­ey. And so, because of the tyran­ny of this thing, we feel that we have a past, and we know who we are in terms of our past. Nobody can ever tell you who they are, they can only tell you who they were. 

Watch a com­plete episode of The Fine Art of Goof­ing Off here. Your time will be well spent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wis­dom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Pro­vok­ing Ani­ma­tions

Take a Break from Your Fran­tic Day & Let Alan Watts Intro­duce You to the Calm­ing Ways of Zen

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

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

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Guillermo del Toro Creates a List of His 20 Favorite Art House/Criterion Films

in Film | May 18th, 2017

When it comes to films released by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, we’d all strug­gle to nar­row our favorites down to only ten, but we prob­a­bly would­n’t have quite as hard a time as Guiller­mo del Toro. The direc­tor of Mim­ic, Hell­boy, and Pan’s Labyrinth char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly takes it to anoth­er lev­el, bemoan­ing the “unfair, arbi­trary, and sadis­tic top ten prac­tice,” craft­ing instead a series of “thematic/authorial pair­ings” (and in first place, a tri­fec­ta) for his Cri­te­ri­on “top-ten” fea­ture. The list, whether he meant us to take it lin­ear­ly or not, runs as fol­lows:

  1. Aki­ra Kuro­sawa’s Throne of Blood, High and Low, and Ran, the Emper­or of Cin­e­ma’s “most oper­at­ic, pes­simistic, and visu­al­ly spec­tac­u­lar films.”
  2. Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal and Fan­ny and Alexan­der (the­atri­cal ver­sion), which “have the pri­mal pulse of a children’s fable told by an impos­si­bly old and wise nar­ra­tor, both “ripe with fan­tas­ti­cal imagery and a sharp sense of the uncan­ny.”
  3. Jean Cocteau’s Beau­ty and the Beast and Georges Fran­ju’s Eyes With­out a Face, both of which “depend on sub­lime, almost ethe­re­al, imagery to con­vey a sense of doom and loss: mad, frag­ile love cling­ing for dear life in a mael­strom of dark­ness.”
  4. David Lean’s Great Expec­ta­tions and Oliv­er Twist, two “epics of the spir­it [ … ] plagued by grand, utter­ly mag­i­cal moments and set­tings” and laced with pas­sages that “skate the fine line between poet­ry and hor­ror.”
  5. Ter­ry Gilliam’s Time Ban­dits and Brazil, the work of a “liv­ing trea­sure” who “under­stands that ‘bad taste’ is the ulti­mate dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence from the dis­creet charm of the bour­geoisie” and tells sto­ries in elab­o­rate worlds “made coher­ent only by his undy­ing faith in the tale he is telling.”
  6. Kane­to Shin­do’s Oni­ba­ba and Kuroneko, a “per­verse, sweaty dou­ble bill” fus­ing “hor­rors and desire, death and lust” that, when del Toro first saw them at age ten, “did some seri­ous dam­age to my psy­che.”
  7. Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus and Paths of Glo­ry, which “speak elo­quent­ly about the scale of a man against the tide of his­to­ry, and both raise the bar for every ‘his­tor­i­cal’ film to fol­low.”
  8. Pre­ston Sturges’ Sul­li­van’s Trav­els and Unfaith­ful­ly Yours, “mas­ter­ful films full of mad ener­gy and fire­works, but Sullivan’s Trav­els also man­ages to encap­su­late one of the most inti­mate reflec­tions about the role of the film­mak­er as enter­tain­er.”
  9. Carl Theodor Drey­er’s Vampyr and Ben­jamin Chris­tensen’s Häx­an, the for­mer “a memen­to mori, a stern reminder of death as the thresh­old of spir­i­tu­al lib­er­a­tion” and the lat­ter “the filmic equiv­a­lent of a hell­ish engrav­ing by Bruegel or a paint­ing by Bosch.”
  10. Vic­tor Erice’s The Spir­it of the Bee­hive and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, “the two supreme works of childhood/horror [ … ] lamen­ta­tions of worlds lost and the inno­cents trapped in them.”


Hav­ing already fea­tured a tour of del Toro’s man cave and a tour of his imag­i­na­tion by way of his sketch­es here on Open Cul­ture, it makes for a nat­ur­al fol­low-up to offer this tour of his dis­tinc­tive cin­e­mat­ic con­scious­ness. A direc­tor since his child­hood back in Mex­i­co (then equipped with his dad’s Super 8, his own action fig­ures, and a pota­to he once cast as a ser­i­al killer), he went on to study not film­mak­ing, strict­ly speak­ing, but make­up and spe­cial effects design. The resul­tant mas­tery of visu­al rich­ness, espe­cial­ly in ser­vice of the grotesque, shows up even in his ear­li­est avail­able works, such as the 1987 short Geome­tria we post­ed a few years ago.

Del Toro’s next fea­ture, a fan­ta­sy adven­ture set in Cold War Amer­i­ca called The Shape of Water and involv­ing a fish-man locked away in a secret gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty, will no doubt make even more use of all the tastes the direc­tor’s favorite Cri­te­ri­on films have instilled in him: for grand spec­ta­cle, for freak­ish­ness, for the uncan­ny, for “mad, frag­ile love,” and for sheer dis­tur­bance. May he con­tin­ue to do “seri­ous dam­age” to the psy­ches of his own audi­ences for decades to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Geome­tria: Watch Guiller­mo del Toro’s Very Ear­ly, Ghoul­ish Short Film (1987)

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

A Guid­ed Tour of Guiller­mo del Toro’s Cre­ativ­i­ty-Induc­ing Man Cave, “Bleak House”

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names His Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

120 Artists Pick Their Top 10 Films in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, 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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The Map of Chemistry: New Animation Summarizes the Entire Field of Chemistry in 12 Minutes

in Chemistry, Education, K-12, Science | May 18th, 2017

Philoso­phers, tech­nol­o­gists, and futur­ists spend a good deal of time obsess­ing about the nature of real­i­ty. Recent­ly, no small num­ber of such peo­ple have come togeth­er to endorse the so-called “sim­u­la­tion argu­ment,” the mind-bog­gling, sci-fi idea that every­thing we expe­ri­ence exists as a vir­tu­al per­for­mance inside a com­put­er sys­tem more sophis­ti­cat­ed than we could ever imag­ine. It’s a sce­nario right out of Philip K. Dick, and one Dick believed pos­si­ble. It’s also, per­haps, ter­mi­nal­ly the­o­ret­i­cal and impos­si­ble to ver­i­fy.

So… where might the per­plexed turn should they want to under­stand the world around them? Are we doomed to expe­ri­ence real­i­ty—as post­mod­ern the­o­rist Jean Bau­drillard thought—as noth­ing more than end­less sim­u­la­tion? It’s a lit­tle old-fash­ioned, but maybe we could ask a sci­en­tist? One like physi­cist, sci­ence writer, edu­ca­tor Dominic Wal­li­man, whose series of short videos offer to the layper­son “maps” of physics, math, and, just above, chem­istry.

Walliman’s inge­nious teach­ing tools excel in con­vey­ing a tremen­dous amount of com­plex infor­ma­tion in a com­pre­hen­sive and intel­li­gi­ble way. We not only get an overview of each field’s intel­lec­tu­al his­to­ry, but we see how the var­i­ous sub­dis­ci­plines inter­act.

One of the odd­i­ties of chem­istry is that it was once just as much, if not more, con­cerned with what isn’t. Many of the tools and tech­niques of mod­ern chem­istry were devel­oped by alchemists—magicians, essen­tial­ly, whom we would see as char­la­tans even though they includ­ed in their num­ber such tow­er­ing intel­lects as Isaac New­ton. Wal­li­man does not get into this strange sto­ry, inter­est­ing as it is. Instead, he begins with a pre­his­to­ry of sorts, point­ing out that since humans start­ed using fire, cook­ing, and work­ing with met­al we have been engag­ing in chem­istry.

Then we’re launched right into the basic build­ing blocks—the parts of the atom and the peri­od­ic table. If, like me, you passed high school chem­istry by writ­ing a song about the ele­ments as a final project, you may be unlike­ly to remem­ber the var­i­ous types of chem­i­cal bonds and may nev­er have heard of “Van der Waals bond­ing.” There’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to look some­thing up. And there’s noth­ing wrong with being a pri­mar­i­ly audi­to­ry or visu­al learn­er. Wal­li­man’s instruc­tion does a real ser­vice for those who are.

Wal­li­man moves through the basics briskly and into the dif­fer­ences between and uses of organ­ic and inor­gan­ic chem­istry. As the ani­ma­tion pulls back to reveal the full map, we see it is com­prised of two halves: “rules of chem­istry” and “areas of chem­istry.” We do not get expla­na­tions for the extreme end of the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry. Fields like “com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry” are left unex­plored, per­haps because they are too far out­side Wal­li­man’s exper­tise. One refresh­ing fea­ture of the videos on his “Domain of Sci­ence” chan­nel is their intel­lec­tu­al humil­i­ty.

If you’ve enjoyed the physics and math­e­mat­ics videos, for exam­ple, you should check back in with their Youtube pages, where Wal­li­man has post­ed lists of cor­rec­tions. He has a list as well on the chem­istry video page. “I endeav­our to be as accu­rate as pos­si­ble in my videos,” he writes here, “but I am human and def­i­nite­ly don’t know every­thing, so there are some­times mis­takes. Also, due to the nature of my videos, there are bound to be over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tions.” It’s an admis­sion that, from my per­spec­tive, should inspire more, not less, con­fi­dence in his instruc­tion. Ide­al­ly, sci­en­tists should be dri­ven by curios­i­ty, not van­i­ty, though that is also an all-too-human trait. (See many more maps, exper­i­ments, instruc­tion­al videos, and talks on Wal­li­man’s web­site.)

In the “Map of Physics,” you’ll note that we even­tu­al­ly reach a gap­ing “chasm of ignorance”—a place where no one has any idea what’s going on. Maybe this is where we reach the edges of the sim­u­la­tion. But most sci­en­tists, whether physi­cists, chemists, or math­e­mati­cians, would rather reserve judg­ment and keep build­ing on what they know with some degree of cer­tain­ty. You can see a full image of the “Map of Chem­istry” fur­ther up, and pur­chase a poster ver­sion here.

Find Free Chem­istry Cours­es in our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Map of Physics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Physics Fit Togeth­er

The Map of Math­e­mat­ics: Ani­ma­tion Shows How All the Dif­fer­ent Fields in Math Fit Togeth­er

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

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

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Learn Python with a Free Online Course from MIT

in Online Courses, Software | May 18th, 2017

The pro­gram­ming lan­guage Python takes its name from Mon­ty Python (true sto­ry!), and now cours­es that teach Python are in very high demand. Last Decem­ber, we fea­tured a free Python course cre­at­ed by Google. Today, it’s a free Python course from MIT.

Designed for stu­dents with lit­tle or no pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence, the course “aims to pro­vide stu­dents with an under­stand­ing of the role com­pu­ta­tion can play in solv­ing prob­lems. It also aims to help stu­dents, regard­less of their major, to feel jus­ti­fi­ably con­fi­dent of their abil­i­ty to write small pro­grams that allow them to accom­plish use­ful goals.” Beyond offer­ing a primer on Python, the course offers an intro­duc­tion to com­put­er sci­ence itself.

The 38 lec­tures above were pre­sent­ed by MIT’s John Gut­tag. On this MIT web­site, you can find relat­ed course mate­ri­als, includ­ing a syl­labus and soft­ware. And if you’re inter­est­ed in tak­ing this course as a MOOC (Mas­sive Open Online Course), you can sign up for the ver­sion that begins on May 27th over at edx.

The course will be added to our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

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:

Learn Python: A Free Online Course from Google

Learn How to Code for Free: A DIY Guide for Learn­ing HTML, Python, Javascript & More

Down­load 243 Free eBooks on Design, Data, Soft­ware, Web Devel­op­ment & Busi­ness from O’Reilly Media

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Everything Thing You Ever Wanted to Know About the Synthesizer: A Vintage Three-Hour Crash Course

in Music | May 18th, 2017

Recent­ly I’ve been div­ing back into mak­ing music on my lap­top. Just like the iPhone has done to bulky equip­ment like cam­eras and key­boards, the dig­i­tal work­sta­tion has shrunk tons of gear, from music to mas­ter­ing, down into soft­ware. There’s cer­tain­ly no way I’m going to lug a mini-Moog to a cof­fee shop. But I’m will­ing to dab­ble with synth soft­ware, turn those dials and knobs, and see what hap­pens.

So this upload of “Intro to Syn­the­sis,” an instruc­tion­al VHS from 1985, is per­fect for me, and maybe you too. The hair, the clothes, and the jokes might be dat­ed, but the info is not. In the above video, Dean Friedman–who if you close your eyes sounds like late night host Seth Meyers–lays out the build­ing blocks of sound (pitch, tim­bre, vol­ume), the five types of wave­forms, and the sev­en com­po­nents of a syn­the­siz­er, from oscil­la­tors to the LFO.

All of these fea­tures are still found on the synth inter­faces used today in some form or anoth­er, and Fried­man goes through every ele­ment at a method­i­cal but appre­ci­at­ed pace. The three videos are an hour each.

And it pays to study the con­trols of synths and learn what makes them tick. The Yama­ha DX‑7 con­tained many pre-sets which, unfid­dled with, sound dat­ed and appear on many an ‘80s pop hit. Mean­while, Bri­an Eno, one of the few to actu­al­ly read the man­u­al, made “The Shutov Assem­bly” and oth­er mid-era ambi­ent tracks with the very same machine and noth­ing sounds quite like it.
Hap­py twid­dling!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 10-Hour Playlist of Music Inspired by Robert Moog’s Icon­ic Syn­the­siz­er: Hear Elec­tron­ic Works by Kraftwerk, Devo, Ste­vie Won­der, Rick Wake­man & More

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

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

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Hear 2,000 Recordings of the Most Essential Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Education

in Music | May 17th, 2017

If you were to ask me “What is jazz?” I wouldn’t pre­sume to know the answer, and I’m not sure any sin­gle com­po­si­tion exists to which one could point to as an ide­al type. Maybe the only thing I’m cer­tain of when it comes to jazz is—to quote Wal­lace Stevens—“it must change.”

Of course, there’s an incred­i­bly rich his­to­ry of jazz, broad­ly known, espe­cial­ly to those who have seen Ken Burns’ expan­sive doc­u­men­tary. I’d also rec­om­mend the excel­lent jazz writ­ing of Amiri Bara­ka, Stan­ley Crouch, or Philip Larkin. For the young, we might con­sult Langston Hugh­es’ illus­trat­ed jazz his­to­ry. And maybe every­one should read Charles Min­gus’ Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?” in which the con­trar­i­an genius writes, “each jazz musi­cian is sup­posed to be a com­pos­er. Whether he is or not, I don’t know.”

Min­gus the icon­o­clast argued for tear­ing up the text even as he sought a clas­si­cal pedi­gree for jazz. His wish was part­ly grant­ed by the influ­ence of jazz on com­posers like Leonard Bern­stein, who sought to answer the ques­tion “What is Jazz?” in a 1956 spo­ken-word LP. The ten­sion between jazz as a com­po­si­tion­al or whol­ly impro­vi­sa­tion­al art seems to resound through­out the form, in all of its many guis­es and vari­a­tions. But one thing I think every jazz musi­cian knows is this: Stan­dards, a com­mon com­pendi­um of songs in the tra­di­tion.

You’ve got to know the rule­book (or the fake­book, at the least), before you can throw it out the win­dow. Even some of the most inno­v­a­tive jazz artists who more or less invent­ed their own scales, modes, and harmonies—like Cecil Tay­lor and Ornette Cole­man—either stud­ied at con­ser­va­to­ry or paid their dues as side­men play­ing oth­er people’s songs. Jazz—Coleman once told Jacques Der­ri­da—is “a con­ver­sa­tion with sounds.” Its under­ly­ing gram­mar comes from the Stan­dards.

Until fair­ly recent­ly, the only way one could get a prop­er edu­ca­tion in the stan­dards was on the job. Crit­ic, jazz his­to­ri­an, and pianist Ted Gioia writes as much in his com­pre­hen­sive 2012 ref­er­ence, The Jazz Stan­dards: A Guide to the Reper­toire. Gioia’s “edu­ca­tion in this music was hap­pen­stance and hard earned.” He writes, “aspir­ing musi­cians today can hard­ly imag­ine how opaque the art form was just a few decades ago—no school I attend­ed had a jazz pro­gram or even offered a sin­gle course on jazz.”

How times have changed. These days, if you can get in, you can take grad­u­ate-lev­el class­es taught by the greats, such as Her­bie Han­cock and Wayne Short­er at UCLA. Hun­dreds more less-famous jazz musi­cian pro­fes­sors stand at the ready in music depart­ments world­wide or at the renowned Berklee Col­lege of Music.

But for those auto­di­dacts out there, Gioia—who has served on the fac­ul­ty at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and been called “one of the out­stand­ing music his­to­ri­ans in America”—offers an excep­tion­al guide to the Stan­dards, one we can not only read, but also, thanks to Jim Hig­gins of the Jour­nal Sen­tinel, lis­ten to, in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware, down­load it here.) In a com­pan­ion essay, Hig­gins describes the process of com­pil­ing “as many of the per­for­mances [Gioia] rec­om­mend­ed” in his com­men­tary on 250 jazz stan­dards.

Gioia names over 2,000 dif­fer­ent per­for­mances of those 250 stan­dards, and the playlist con­tains near­ly all of them. You’ll find, for exam­ple, “sev­er­al dif­fer­ent record­ings of ‘In a Sen­ti­men­tal Mood’ by the com­pos­er (includ­ing one with John Coltrane), as well as ver­sions by Son­ny Rollins, Art Tatum, McCoy Tyn­er, Abdul­lah Ibrahim and Bud­dy Tate, and Chris Pot­ter.” While the playlist is “not a com­plete reflec­tion of Gioia’s rec­om­men­da­tions,” giv­en that cer­tain artists’ work can­not be streamed, “there’s a lot of music here”—a whole lot—“spanning a cen­tu­ry.”

The expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to this incred­i­ble library will not be com­plete with­out some con­text. Gioia’s book con­tains a “short his­tor­i­cal and musi­cal essay” on each of the 250 songs and he isn’t shy about offer­ing inci­sive crit­i­cal com­men­tary. Oth­er than going to music school or join­ing a tour­ing band, I can’t think of a bet­ter way to learn the Stan­dards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What is Jazz?: Leonard Bernstein’s Intro­duc­tion to the Great Amer­i­can Art Form (1956)

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Langston Hugh­es Presents the His­to­ry of Jazz in an Illus­trat­ed Children’s Book (1955)

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

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Noel Coward’s “Alice (Is At It Again)” Gets Reimagined as a Very Modern Fairy Tale: A Short Film Starring Sarah Snook

in Uncategorized | May 17th, 2017

Eng­lish play­wright, lyri­cist, actor and racon­teur Noel Cow­ard (1899 –1973) is still remem­bered for his plays such as the wife-after-death com­e­dy Blithe Spir­it and Pri­vate Lives; his playlet Still Life, which became the clas­sic David Lean film Brief Encounter, and his script­ing and co-direc­tion of the WW2 morale-boost­er In Which We Serve, also direct­ed by Lean, for which Cow­ard won an Hon­orary Acad­e­my Award. How­ev­er, he’s per­haps bet­ter known now more as an image of arche­typ­al mid-20th cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­ness, replete with dress­ing-gown and cig­a­rette-hold­er, and the hun­dreds of wit­ty songs and poems he wrote, such as Mad Dogs and Eng­lish­man and Mrs Wor­thing­ton, which he per­formed in cabaret in his dis­tinc­tive­ly clipped Eng­lish man­ner to much acclaim in Lon­don and, lat­ter­ly, in Las Vegas.

His 1946 song Alice (Is At It Again), writ­ten and then cut from his flop musi­cal Pacif­ic 1860, became a stan­dard of his cabaret act and, with its sug­ges­tive lyrics, risqué sub­ject mat­ter and sly wit, is typ­i­cal of his oeu­vre. It’s thus a sur­pris­ing choice per­haps by ris­ing Aus­tralian actress Sarah Snook for the sub­ject of her new short film Alice, co-devised with direc­tor Lau­ra Scrivano, and the sec­ond film of The Pas­sion, a new online series of per­formed poet­ry films com­ing out of Aus­tralia. The first film in the series, A Lovesong, star­ring Daniel Hen­shall (from AMC’s Turn: Wash­ing­ton Spies), fea­tured T.S. Eliot’s mod­ernist mas­ter­piece The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (watch it below), so Alice is a change both in style and tone for the series, but con­tin­ues the project’s exper­i­men­ta­tion in ren­der­ing poet­ry on film for a dig­i­tal audi­ence.

Sarah, who won crit­i­cal acclaim for her gen­der­switch­ing role in the 2015 sci­ence-fic­tion thriller Pre­des­ti­na­tion, found the Cow­ard text in a book­shop in San Fran­cis­co, while sourc­ing a text for her film for the series.

Says Sarah:

(Direc­tor) Lau­ra and I were inter­est­ed in the ideas of fem­i­nin­i­ty and how that is expressed, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sex­u­al or sen­su­al terms. When I read the poem, I was charmed by it and excit­ed by the poten­tial and chal­lenge of con­tem­po­riz­ing it for The Pas­sion. Coward’s themes are very much of the time and place of the orig­i­nal lyrics’ writ­ing, as is his take on them, while our adap­ta­tion is an updat­ing, an explo­ration of female sex­u­al­i­ty and empow­er­ment that Cow­ard plays with, and the wild­ness and free­dom of dis­cov­er­ing that. Our Alice, who I think nods to Coward’s, is break­ing out of the stric­tures of her back­ground, and being free and true to her­self.

Orig­i­nal­ly Alice, as read by Cow­ard, would have been per­formed with a pat­ter, a rhythm of its own, with a sense of irony and a lot of wit, and cer­tain­ly in his very par­tic­u­lar RP accent. It’s hard to escape that as it’s writ­ten so well and embed­ded so deeply into the lines, with a par­tic­u­lar scan­sion, but I want­ed to go against that some­what, while retain­ing and respect­ing Coward’s sparkle and play­ful­ness.

Alice is the sec­ond film of The Pas­sion series, in which actors select a text which has a per­son­al sig­nif­i­cance for them or strikes a par­tic­u­lar chord, and then work close­ly in col­lab­o­ra­tion with direc­tor Lau­ra Scrivano to devel­op it as a new per­for­mance piece for film. A third film is cur­rent­ly in devel­op­ment. More infor­ma­tion about the series can be found at this web­site.

Dan Prichard is an online film and web­series pro­duc­er, based in Syd­ney, whose work explores iden­ti­ty, place, and the space between film and per­for­mance in the dig­i­tal are­na. Vis­it his web­site and fol­low him on twit­ter ‪@georgekaplan81

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