The “Weird Objects” in the New York Public Library’s Collections: Virginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dickens’ Letter Opener, Walt Whitman’s Hair & More

On March 28, 1941, Vir­ginia Woolf took her final walk, into the Riv­er Ouse near her home in Sus­sex. She did it with her trusty cane in hand, the very cane you can see laid out along­side oth­er Woolf-relat­ed arti­facts in the New York­er video above. Its five min­utes pro­vide a short intro­duc­tion to the “weird objects” of the New York Pub­lic Library’s Berg Col­lec­tion, an archive con­tain­ing, in the words of the New York­er’s Gareth Smit, “rough­ly two thou­sand lin­ear feet of man­u­scripts and archival mate­ri­als” donat­ed in 1940 by the broth­ers Hen­ry W. and Albert A. Berg, doc­tors who were also “avid col­lec­tors of Eng­lish and Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture — and of lit­er­ary para­pher­na­lia.”

The NYPL labels as “realia” such non-paper items as  Woolf’s cane as well as “Char­lotte Brontë’s writ­ing desk, with a lock of her hair inside; trin­kets belong­ing to Jack Ker­ouac, includ­ing his har­mon­i­cas, and a card upon which he wrote ‘blood’ in his own blood; type­writ­ers belong­ing to S. J. Perel­man and Paul Met­calf; Mark Twain’s pen and wire-rimmed glass­es; Vladimir Nabokov’s but­ter­fly draw­ings; and the death masks of the poets James Mer­rill and E. E. Cum­mings.” We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Nabokov-drawn but­ter­flies here on Open Cul­ture, as well the let­ter open­er seen in the video that Charles Dick­ens had made from the foot of his beloved cat Bob.

All this may sound on the grim side, but these objects bring their behold­ers that much clos­er to the long-passed lit­er­ary fig­ures who once pos­sessed them. “If you are look­ing at, say, Jack Ker­ouac’s lighter or his boots, you’re see­ing the man, in a sense,” the NYPL’s direc­tor of exhi­bi­tions Declan Kiely says in the video. “What you’re try­ing to get clos­est to is the cre­ative spir­it at work, and I think that’s why these objects are so evoca­tive.” Though vis­i­tors to the Berg Col­lec­tion can only do so by appoint­ment, the library, as Kiely told Smit, “does intend to have an exhi­bi­tion to present these and oth­er trea­sures in the Gottes­man Hall by 2020.” Some­thing to look for­ward to for any­one who yearns to approach the cre­ative spir­it — and who among us does­n’t?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Charles Dick­ens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Sec­ond Life as a Let­ter Open­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Frank Zappa’s 1980s Appearances on The David Letterman Show

I’ve nev­er been a huge fan of Frank Zappa’s music and grav­i­tat­ed more toward the bizarre yet bluesy son­ic world of his some­time col­lab­o­ra­tor and life­long fren­e­my Cap­tain Beef­heart. But I get the appeal of Zappa’s wild­ly vir­tu­oso cat­a­log and his sar­don­ic, even caus­tic, per­son­al­i­ty. The phrase may have devolved into cliché, but it’s still worth say­ing of Zap­pa: he was a real orig­i­nal, a tru­ly inde­pen­dent musi­cian who insist­ed on doing things his way. Most admirably, he had the tal­ent, vision, and strength of will to do so for decades in a busi­ness that leg­en­dar­i­ly chews up and spits out artists with even the tough­est of con­sti­tu­tions.

Zap­pa, notes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its pro­file, “was rock and roll’s sharpest musi­cal mind and most astute social crit­ic… the most pro­lif­ic com­pos­er of his age,” who “bridged genres—rock, jazz, clas­si­cal, avant-garde and even nov­el­ty music—with mas­ter­ful ease.” Record­ing “over six­ty albums’ worth of mate­r­i­al in his fifty-two years,” he famous­ly dis­cov­ered, nur­tured, and col­lab­o­rat­ed with some of the most tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient and accom­plished of play­ers. He was indie before indie, and “con­front­ed the cor­rupt pol­i­tics of the rul­ing class” with fero­cious wit and unspar­ing satire, hold­ing “the banal and deca­dent lifestyles of his coun­try­men to unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny.”

Need­less to say, Zap­pa him­self was not prone to banal­i­ty or deca­dence. He stood apart from his con­tem­po­raries with both his utter hatred of trends and his com­mit­ment to sobri­ety, which meant that he was nev­er less than total­ly lucid, if nev­er total­ly clear, in inter­views and TV appear­ances. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, David Let­ter­man, cham­pi­on of oth­er fierce­ly tal­ent­ed musi­cal odd­balls like War­ren Zevon, was a Zap­pa fan. Between 1982 and 83, Zap­pa came on Let­ter­man three times, the first, in August of 82, with his daugh­ter Moon (or “Moon Unit,” who almost end­ed up with the name “Motor­head,” he says).

The younger Zap­pa inher­it­ed her father’s dead­pan. “When I was lit­tle,” she says, “I want­ed to change my name to Beau­ty Heart. Or Mary.” But Zap­pa, the “musi­cal and a soci­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non,” as Let­ter­man calls him, gets to talk about more than his kids’ weird names. In his June, 83 appear­ance, fur­ther up, he pro­motes his Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra album. As he explains, the expe­ri­ence of work­ing with cranky clas­si­cal musi­cians on a very tight sched­ule test­ed his per­fec­tion­is­tic (some might say con­trol­ling) tem­pera­ment. The album gave rise, writes Eduar­do Riva­davia at All­mu­sic, “to his well-doc­u­ment­ed love/hate (most­ly hate) rela­tion­ship with sym­pho­ny orches­tras there­after.”

But no mat­ter how well or bad­ly a project went, Zap­pa always moved right along to the next thing. He was nev­er with­out an ambi­tious new album to pro­mote. (In his final Let­ter­man appear­ance, on Hal­loween, above, he had a musi­cal, which turned into album, the triple-LP Thing-Fish.) Since he nev­er stopped work­ing for a moment, one set of ideas gen­er­at­ing the next—he told Rolling Stone in answer to a ques­tion about how he looked back on his many records—“It’s all one album.” See a super­cut below of all of Zappa’s 80s vis­its to the Let­ter­man set, with slight­ly bet­ter video qual­i­ty than the indi­vid­ual clips above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Hunter S. Thompson’s Many Strange, Unpre­dictable Appear­ances on The David Let­ter­man Show

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

A Modern Drummer Plays a Rock Gong, a Percussion Instrument from Prehistoric Times

Rock Gong. It sounds like a B‑52s song. But a rock gong is not a New Wave surf-rock par­ty groove. It’s not a neo-syn­th­pop act, hip hop group, or indie band (not yet). It’s a pre­his­toric instrument—as far away in time as one can get from syn­the­siz­ers and elec­tric gui­tars. Rock gongs are ancient, maybe as old as humankind. But they’re still groovy, in their way. As they say, the groove is in the play­er, not the instru­ment.

Rock gongs, or “litho­phones,” if you want to get tech­ni­cal, have been found all over the African con­ti­nent, in South Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia, Azer­bai­jan, Eng­land, Hawaii, Ice­land, India, and every­where else pre­his­toric peo­ple lived. Not the cul­tur­al prop­er­ty of any one group, the rock gong came, rather, from a uni­ver­sal human insight into the nat­ur­al son­ic prop­er­ties of stone. (One the­o­ry even spec­u­lates that Stone­henge might have been a mas­sive col­lec­tion of rock gongs.)

Though some schol­ars have sug­gest­ed that the term “rock gong” should be reserved for sta­tion­ary, rather than portable, rocks that were used as instru­ments, the British Muse­um seems untrou­bled by the dis­tinc­tion. In the video above, archae­ol­o­gist Cor­nelia Kleinitz explains the prin­ci­ples of rock gongs found in Sudan to mod­ern rock drum­mer Liam Williamson of the band Cats on the Beach.

You can hear one of those Nubian rock gongs in its nat­ur­al habi­tat, before it was moved to the British Muse­um, in the clip just above. The rock, the nar­ra­tor tells us, has been “worn smooth by the action of peo­ple play­ing it more than 7,000 years ago. Long before the Romans, long before the Pharaohs.” Ear­ly humans would have searched long and hard for rocks that res­onat­ed at par­tic­u­lar fre­quen­cies, for ring­ing rocks that could be com­bined into scales for ear­ly xylo­phones or pro­duce a vari­ety of tones like a steel drum.

Despite their antiq­ui­ty, the study of rock gongs is a rather recent phe­nom­e­non, part of the emerg­ing field of archaeoa­coustics. “Method­olog­i­cal­ly,” write the authors of a 2016 paper on the sub­ject, “this field of research is still  in its infan­cy,” and there is much researchers do not know about the uses and vari­eties of rock gongs around the world. As Kleinitz explains to Williamson in the video at the top, archae­ol­o­gists are try­ing to under­stand the con­text in which the Nubian gongs at the British Muse­um would have been played, whether as instru­ments for rit­u­als, sig­nal­ing, fun, or all of the above.

As for the tech­niques involved in rock gong play­ing, we can only guess, but Williamson does his best to adapt his drum chops to the ancient stone kit. One crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between our mod­ern human musi­cal instru­ments and this ancient kind, Kleinitz notes, is that the lat­ter were inte­grat­ed into the land­scape; their dis­tinc­tive sound depend­ed not only on the rock itself, but on its inter­ac­tion with the wild and unpre­dictable envi­ron­ment around it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 9,000 Year Old Flute—the World’s Old­est Playable Instrument—Get Played Again

What Did Ancient Greek Music Sound Like?: Lis­ten to a Recon­struc­tion That’s ‘100% Accu­rate’

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

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

A Visionary 115-Year-Old Color Theory Manual Returns to Print: Emily Noyes Vanderpoel’s Color Problems

Nobody can doubt that we can live in an age of screen-read­ing, nor that it has brought a few prob­lems along with its con­sid­er­able con­ve­niences. To name just one of those prob­lems, each of us reads on our own screen, and each screen repro­duces the infor­ma­tion fed into it to dis­play dif­fer­ent­ly. A col­or, for instance, might well not look quite the same to any giv­en read­er of an e‑book as it did to the design­er who orig­i­nal­ly chose it. This imbues with a new rel­e­vance the old dorm-room philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion of whether what I call “blue” real­ly looks the same as what you call “blue,” and at least the more con­trol­lable nature of old-fash­ioned print books takes the issue of screen vari­a­tion out of the equa­tion.

Hence the val­ue in bring­ing back to print cer­tain visu­al­ly-ori­ent­ed books, even when we can already read them on our screens. This goes espe­cial­ly for vol­umes like Emi­ly Noyes Van­der­poel’s Col­or Prob­lems: a Prac­ti­cal Man­u­al for the Lay Stu­dent of Col­or, which deals direct­ly with issues of col­or in the phys­i­cal world and its rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Van­der­poel, an artist and his­to­ri­an, first pub­lished the book “under the guise of flower paint­ing and dec­o­ra­tive arts, sub­jects that were appro­pri­ate for a woman of her time,” writes Colos­sal’s Kate Sierzputows­ki. But “the study pro­vid­ed an exten­sive look at col­or the­o­ry ideas of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry,” and one whose tech­niques proved silent­ly influ­en­tial over time. “Many of the includ­ed stud­ies pre­dict design and art trends that wouldn’t occur for sev­er­al decades, such as a con­cen­tric square for­mat that pre­dates Joseph Albers’s Homage to the Square by fifty years.”

You can read a dig­i­tized ver­sion of Col­or Prob­lems at the Inter­net Archive (or embed­ded right above), but know that pub­lish­er The Cir­ca­di­an Press and Sacred Bones Records recent­ly raised well over $200,000 on Kick­starter to repub­lish the book in its full paper glo­ry. “With this new edi­tion we have tak­en metic­u­lous mea­sures to repro­duce the orig­i­nal arti­fact at an afford­able price,” says the pro­jec­t’s about page. “Work­ing with the His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety that Emi­ly Noyes Van­der­poel helped estab­lish, we are the first to invest the time, mon­ey, and love it takes to repli­cate this bril­liant col­lec­tion of col­or stud­ies accu­rate­ly. Using the most cur­rent dig­i­tal meth­ods and archival print­ing pro­duc­tion, we aim to final­ly do jus­tice to Vanderpoel’s for­got­ten lega­cy as vision­ary and pio­neer.”

This new edi­tion will also fea­ture an intro­duc­tion by design schol­ar Alan P. Bru­ton meant to “reflect on her incred­i­ble body of work from the van­tage point of 21st cen­tu­ry art his­to­ry and wom­en’s move­ments, help­ing to illus­trate that Van­der­poel remains one of the most impor­tant, under­rat­ed, and con­tem­porar­i­ly rel­e­vant artists of her time and of the last cen­tu­ry.” Had Van­der­poel pub­lished Col­or Prob­lems thir­ty years lat­er, writes John F. Ptak in his exam­i­na­tion of the book, “we’d call it some sort of constructivist/constructionist art form. But since the art­work in the book comes a decade before the first non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al art­work in human his­to­ry (or so), I don’t know exact­ly what to call it.” Its repub­li­ca­tion will allow gen­er­a­tions of new read­ers, see­ing it in the way Van­der­poel intend­ed it to be seen, to come to con­clu­sions like Ptak’s: “I still do not know what this book is try­ing to tell me, but I do know that it is remark­able.”

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colour, the 19th-Cen­tu­ry “Col­or Dic­tio­nary” Used by Charles Dar­win (1814)

A Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­ors: Dutch Book From 1692 Doc­u­ments Every Col­or Under the Sun

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

The Female Pio­neers of the Bauhaus Art Move­ment: Dis­cov­er Gertrud Arndt, Mar­i­anne Brandt, Anni Albers & Oth­er For­got­ten Inno­va­tors

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949)

orwell huxley

In 1949, George Orwell received a curi­ous let­ter from his for­mer high school French teacher.

Orwell had just pub­lished his ground­break­ing book Nine­teen Eighty-Four, which received glow­ing reviews from just about every cor­ner of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. His French teacher, as it hap­pens, was none oth­er than Aldous Hux­ley who taught at Eton for a spell before writ­ing Brave New World (1931), the oth­er great 20th cen­tu­ry dystopi­an nov­el.

Hux­ley starts off the let­ter prais­ing the book, describ­ing it as “pro­found­ly impor­tant.” He con­tin­ues, “The phi­los­o­phy of the rul­ing minor­i­ty in Nine­teen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been car­ried to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by going beyond sex and deny­ing it.”

Then Hux­ley switch­es gears and crit­i­cizes the book, writ­ing, “Whether in actu­al fact the pol­i­cy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indef­i­nite­ly seems doubt­ful. My own belief is that the rul­ing oli­garchy will find less ardu­ous and waste­ful ways of gov­ern­ing and of sat­is­fy­ing its lust for pow­er, and these ways will resem­ble those which I described in Brave New World.” (Lis­ten to him read a dra­ma­tized ver­sion of the book here.)

Basi­cal­ly while prais­ing Nine­teen Eighty-Four, Hux­ley argues that his ver­sion of the future was more like­ly to come to pass.

In Hux­ley’s seem­ing­ly dystopic World State, the elite amuse the mass­es into sub­mis­sion with a mind-numb­ing drug called Soma and an end­less buf­fet of casu­al sex. Orwell’s Ocea­nia, on the oth­er hand, keeps the mass­es in check with fear thanks to an end­less war and a hyper-com­pe­tent sur­veil­lance state. At first blush, they might seem like they are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed but, in fact, an Orwellian world and a Hux­leyan one are sim­ply two dif­fer­ent modes of oppres­sion.

Obvi­ous­ly we are nowhere near either dystopic vision but the pow­er of both books is that they tap into our fears of the state. While Hux­ley might make you look askance at The Bach­e­lor or Face­book, Orwell makes you recoil in hor­ror at the gov­ern­ment throw­ing around phras­es like “enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion” and “sur­gi­cal drone strikes.”

You can read Huxley’s full let­ter below.

Wright­wood. Cal.

21 Octo­ber, 1949

Dear Mr. Orwell,

It was very kind of you to tell your pub­lish­ers to send me a copy of your book. It arrived as I was in the midst of a piece of work that required much read­ing and con­sult­ing of ref­er­ences; and since poor sight makes it nec­es­sary for me to ration my read­ing, I had to wait a long time before being able to embark on Nine­teen Eighty-Four.

Agree­ing with all that the crit­ics have writ­ten of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how pro­found­ly impor­tant the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals — the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion? The first hints of a phi­los­o­phy of the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion — the rev­o­lu­tion which lies beyond pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics, and which aims at total sub­ver­sion of the indi­vid­u­al’s psy­chol­o­gy and phys­i­ol­o­gy — are to be found in the Mar­quis de Sade, who regard­ed him­self as the con­tin­u­a­tor, the con­sum­ma­tor, of Robe­spierre and Babeuf. The phi­los­o­phy of the rul­ing minor­i­ty in Nine­teen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been car­ried to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion by going beyond sex and deny­ing it. Whether in actu­al fact the pol­i­cy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indef­i­nite­ly seems doubt­ful. My own belief is that the rul­ing oli­garchy will find less ardu­ous and waste­ful ways of gov­ern­ing and of sat­is­fy­ing its lust for pow­er, and these ways will resem­ble those which I described in Brave New World. I have had occa­sion recent­ly to look into the his­to­ry of ani­mal mag­net­ism and hyp­no­tism, and have been great­ly struck by the way in which, for a hun­dred and fifty years, the world has refused to take seri­ous cog­nizance of the dis­cov­er­ies of Mes­mer, Braid, Esdaile, and the rest.

Part­ly because of the pre­vail­ing mate­ri­al­ism and part­ly because of pre­vail­ing respectabil­i­ty, nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry philoso­phers and men of sci­ence were not will­ing to inves­ti­gate the odd­er facts of psy­chol­o­gy for prac­ti­cal men, such as politi­cians, sol­diers and police­men, to apply in the field of gov­ern­ment. Thanks to the vol­un­tary igno­rance of our fathers, the advent of the ulti­mate rev­o­lu­tion was delayed for five or six gen­er­a­tions. Anoth­er lucky acci­dent was Freud’s inabil­i­ty to hyp­no­tize suc­cess­ful­ly and his con­se­quent dis­par­age­ment of hyp­no­tism. This delayed the gen­er­al appli­ca­tion of hyp­no­tism to psy­chi­a­try for at least forty years. But now psy­cho-analy­sis is being com­bined with hyp­no­sis; and hyp­no­sis has been made easy and indef­i­nite­ly exten­si­ble through the use of bar­bi­tu­rates, which induce a hyp­noid and sug­gestible state in even the most recal­ci­trant sub­jects.

With­in the next gen­er­a­tion I believe that the world’s rulers will dis­cov­er that infant con­di­tion­ing and nar­co-hyp­no­sis are more effi­cient, as instru­ments of gov­ern­ment, than clubs and pris­ons, and that the lust for pow­er can be just as com­plete­ly sat­is­fied by sug­gest­ing peo­ple into lov­ing their servi­tude as by flog­ging and kick­ing them into obe­di­ence. In oth­er words, I feel that the night­mare of Nine­teen Eighty-Four is des­tined to mod­u­late into the night­mare of a world hav­ing more resem­blance to that which I imag­ined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased effi­cien­cy. Mean­while, of course, there may be a large scale bio­log­i­cal and atom­ic war — in which case we shall have night­mares of oth­er and scarce­ly imag­in­able kinds.

Thank you once again for the book.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

Aldous Hux­ley

via Let­ters of Note

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in March, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

Aldous Hux­ley Tells Mike Wal­lace What Will Destroy Democ­ra­cy: Over­pop­u­la­tion, Drugs & Insid­i­ous Tech­nol­o­gy (1958)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

Hear Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and 84 Clas­sic Radio Dra­mas from CBS Radio Work­shop (1956–57)

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

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 bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Italian Street Musician Plays Amazing Covers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pantheon in Rome

Before Pink Floyd, rock and roll was all about atti­tude. After Pink Floyd, it could be all atmos­phere. Though per­fect­ly suit­ed for head­phones and hi-fis, their sound is archi­tec­tur­al, and almost requires the grand­est of set­tings for its full real­iza­tion. The bom­bast of the band’s sta­di­um shows, with all their the­atri­cal excess­es, seems entire­ly jus­ti­fied by the music, unlike the Spinal Tap-like pre­ten­sions of many oth­er are­na rock bands. In 1989, Pink Floyd (sans Roger Waters) played for 20,000 Ital­ian fans from a mas­sive stage float­ing in the canals of Venice, a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast to a 1972 per­for­mance, when the band played for no one but a film crew, in an amphithe­ater in the ruined city of Pom­peii.

Invok­ing these mag­i­cal moments, a street musi­cian named Serin plays the music of Pink Floyd in the streets of Rome, park­ing him­self right in front of the Pan­theon. With pre-record­ed back­ing tracks and a black Stra­to­cast­er rem­i­nis­cent of David Gilmour’s sig­na­ture instru­ment, Serin not only nails the songs, he gets the atmos­phere just right, an achieve­ment no doubt aid­ed by his choice of set­ting. At the top, see him play “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” just above, “Com­fort­ably Numb” and, below, an excel­lent ren­di­tion of “Time” (on a white Strat this time). For comparison’s sake, watch Pink Floyd them­selves play “Echoes” at Pom­peii, fur­ther down. (Stream more clips of their Pom­peii con­cert film here).

For anoth­er ver­sion of the one-man-Pink Floyd-cov­er band con­cept, see 19-year-old Ewan Cun­ning­ham cov­er “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb” and oth­er songs, mul­ti­track­ing him­self on every instru­ment.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

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

Hunter S. Thompson Sends a Letter to the Indianapolis Colts, Urging Them to Pick Ryan Leaf Over That “Peyton Manning Kid” (1998)

The 1998 NFL draft was a mem­o­rable one. A debate raged around whether the Indi­anapo­lis Colts should use their first round pick to select Ryan Leaf or Pey­ton Man­ning. Every­one had an opin­ion about these two quar­ter­backs, includ­ing Hunter S. Thomp­son. The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hel­l’s Angels sent a let­ter to Colts own­er Jim Irsay, urg­ing him to select the high­ly-tout­ed Leaf.

Dear James,

In response to yr addled request for a quick $30M loan to secure the ser­vices of the Man­ning kid — I have to say No, (sic) at this time

But the Leaf boy is anoth­er mat­ter. He looks strong & Man­ning doesn’t — or at least not strong enough to han­dle that “Wel­come to the NFL” busi­ness for two years with­out a world-class offen­sive line.

How are you fixed at left OT for the next few years, James? Think about it. You don’t want a chi­na (sic) doll back there when that freak [War­ren] Sapp comes crash­ing in.

Okay. Let me know if you need some mon­ey for Leaf. I expect to be very rich when this [John­ny] depp (sic) movie comes out.

Yr. faith­ful con­sul­tant,

HUNTER

Twen­ty years lat­er, we know how things played out. The Colts ulti­mate­ly picked Man­ning, who became one of the most pro­duc­tive and cel­e­brat­ed quar­ter­backs ever. As for Leaf, he played four sea­sons and exit­ed the sport, con­sid­ered by some the No. 1 “draft bust” in NFL his­to­ry. But he’s cer­tain­ly a good sport. Leaf post­ed Thomp­son’s let­ter (above) on his Twit­ter stream last month

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Deca­dent Dai­ly Break­fast: The “Psy­chic Anchor” of His Fre­net­ic Cre­ative Life

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

How Zildjian Cymbals Were Created by an Alchemist in the Ottoman Empire, Circa 1618

When it comes to musi­cal instru­ments, there are brands and then there are legacies—names so unques­tion­ably indica­tive of qual­i­ty and crafts­man­ship that play­ers swear by them for life. Mar­tin Gui­tars, for exam­ple, have inspired this kind of loy­al­ty among musi­cians like Willie Nel­son and John­ny Cash. Mar­t­in’s sto­ry—dat­ing back to 1833—inspires book-length his­to­ries and doc­u­men­taries. In the drum world, the longest-lived and most-sto­ried brand would have to be Zild­jian, the famed cym­bal mak­er known the world over, beloved by the best drum­mers in the busi­ness.

But Zild­jian is far old­er than Mar­tin Gui­tars, or any oth­er con­tem­po­rary instru­ment man­u­fac­tur­er. Indeed, the com­pa­ny may be the world’s old­est exist­ing man­u­fac­tur­er of almost any prod­uct. Though incor­po­rat­ed in the U.S. in 1929, Zild­jian was actu­al­ly found­ed 400 years ago in Con­stan­tino­ple by Armen­ian met­al­work­er Avedis, who in 1622 “melt­ed a top-secret com­bi­na­tion of met­als,” writes Smith­son­ian, “to cre­ate the per­fect cym­bal.” The short film above recre­ates in dra­mat­ic fash­ion the alche­my of Avedis’ dis­cov­ery and the glob­al his­to­ry of Zild­jian.

The brief Smith­son­ian his­to­ry can seem a lit­tle sen­sa­tion­al and may not be entire­ly accu­rate at points. Lara Pel­le­grinel­li, writ­ing at The New York Times, dates Avedis’ “secret cast­ing process” to four years ear­li­er, 1618. (The com­pa­ny itself dates its found­ing to 1623.) Pel­le­grinel­li notes that Avedis’ “new bronze alloy” pleased the Sul­tan, Osman II, who “grant­ed the young arti­san per­mis­sion to make instru­ments for the court and gave him the Armen­ian sur­name Zild­jian (mean­ing ‘son of cym­bal mak­er’). The fam­i­ly set up shop in the sea­side neigh­bor­hood of Samatya in Con­stan­tino­ple, where met­al arrived on camel car­a­vans and don­keys pow­ered prim­i­tive machines.”

Zild­jian cym­bals were admired by Mozart and his con­tem­po­raries, and “what came to be known sim­ply as ‘Turk­ish cym­bals’ were assim­i­lat­ed by Euro­pean orches­tras and, in the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, into new mil­i­tary and wind band styles” of the East and West. In 1851, Zild­jian cym­bals set sail on a 25-foot schooner bear­ing the fam­i­ly name, bound for London’s Great Exhi­bi­tion. Kerope Zild­jian intro­duced the K Zild­jian line of cym­bals in 1865, still in pro­duc­tion and wide­ly in use today. (The old K’s can still be heard in sev­er­al major sym­pho­ny orches­tras.)

As the jazz scene took off in the 1920’s, many music shops exclu­sive­ly car­ried Zild­jians, and drum­mers like Gene Kru­pa helped refine and devel­op the famous instru­ments even fur­ther, mak­ing them thin­ner, more respon­sive, and able to cut through the big band sound. The sto­ry of Zild­jian is the sto­ry of West­ern music and its unmis­tak­able East­ern influ­ence, an incred­i­ble his­to­ry four cen­turies in the mak­ing, full of intrigue and bril­liant inno­va­tion, and con­tain­ing at its heart an alchem­i­cal mys­tery, a secret recipe still close­ly guard­ed by the Zild­jian fam­i­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

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

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

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.