The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Now Free Online

in Maps | February 22nd, 2018

Worth a quick men­tion: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press has made avail­able online — at no cost — the first three vol­umes of The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what Edward Roth­stein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” He con­tin­ues:

Peo­ple come to know the world the way they come to map it—through their per­cep­tions of how its ele­ments are con­nect­ed and of how they should move among them. This is pre­cise­ly what the series is attempt­ing by sit­u­at­ing the map at the heart of cul­tur­al life and reveal­ing its rela­tion­ship to soci­ety, sci­ence, and reli­gion…. It is try­ing to define a new set of rela­tion­ships between maps and the phys­i­cal world that involve more than geo­met­ric cor­re­spon­dence. It is in essence a new map of human attempts to chart the world.

If you head over to this page, then look in the upper left, you will see links to three vol­umes (avail­able in a free PDF for­mat). My sug­ges­tion would be to look at the gallery of col­or illus­tra­tions for each book, links to which you’ll find below. The image above, appear­ing in Vol. 2, dates back to 1534. It was cre­at­ed by Oronce Fine, the first chair of math­e­mat­ics in the Col­lège Roy­al (aka the Col­lège de France), and it fea­tures the world mapped in the shape of a heart. Pret­ty great.

Vol­ume 1

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions

Vol­ume 2: Part 1

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–24)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 25–40)

Vol­ume 2: Part 2

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–16)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 17–40)

Vol­ume 2: Part 3

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–8)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 9 –24)

Vol­ume 3: Part 1

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 1–24)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 25–40)

Vol­ume 3: Part 2

Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 41–56)
Gallery of Col­or Illus­tra­tions (Plates 57–80)

If you buy Vol 1. on Ama­zon, it will run you $248. As beau­ti­ful as the book prob­a­bly is, you’ll prob­a­bly appre­ci­ate this free dig­i­tal offer­ing. The series will be added to our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

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

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:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

A Won­der­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Map of the Moon from 1679: Can You Spot the Secret Moon Maid­en?

Galileo’s Moon Draw­ings, the First Real­is­tic Depic­tions of the Moon in His­to­ry (1609–1610)

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

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Google Digitizes and Puts Online a Vast Archive of Latino Artworks and Artifacts

in Art, History | February 22nd, 2018

You can’t under­stand human cul­ture in the 21st cen­tu­ry with­out under­stand­ing Amer­i­can cul­ture, and as any­one who’s spent time in most any major U.S. city knows, you cer­tain­ly can’t under­stand Amer­i­can cul­ture with­out under­stand­ing Lati­no cul­ture. I write this while trav­el­ing in Los Ange­les, a city that makes that point with par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive force, but just a few moments with an overview of Lati­no art will under­score the vital­i­ty it has pro­vid­ed Amer­i­ca, and thus the world. You could do lit­tle bet­ter for such an overview than the Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute’s brand new Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. project, a siz­able free dig­i­tal archive of Lati­no art and arti­facts of Lati­no his­to­ry.

Forbes’ Veron­i­ca Vil­lafañe quotes Google and Youtube Head of His­pan­ic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Jesús Gar­cía as describ­ing the archive as “a labor of love for many Googlers and part­ner insti­tu­tions. It was a project that was more than a year in the mak­ing and took a small army to help dig­i­tize the 2,500 new art­works and curate 69 new exhibits.”

As a whole it offers “over 4,300 archives and art­works — includ­ing Diego Rivera murals — relat­ed to the Lati­no expe­ri­ence in the U.S., mul­ti­me­dia exhibits in Eng­lish and Span­ish and vir­tu­al tours of his­toric sites, as well as pro­files of key Lati­no fig­ures, such as Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huer­ta and Supreme Court Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or.”

Google Head of Lati­no Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment Lau­ra Mar­quez notes that it also allows you to “vis­it some of the most vibrant neigh­bor­hoods in the U.S. — the homes to and cen­ters of Lati­no cul­ture— by way of his­toric pho­tographs or unmiss­able loca­tions on Google Street View, all from your phone.” You’ll also find “ultra-high res­o­lu­tion images of icon­ic Lati­no murals, such as Diego Rivera’s Detroit Indus­try from the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts.” Using the for­mi­da­ble explorato­ry plat­form of Google Earth, the project has also cre­at­ed a whole Lati­no Murals in the U.S. sec­tion, from River­a’s work in Detroit to José Clemente Oroz­co’s Prometheus in Cal­i­for­nia to the Mia­mi Arti­sans’ Free­dom Tow­er mur­al at Mia­mi Dade Col­lege.

You can also browse the Lati­no Cul­tures in the U.S. Project’s offer­ings by form, includ­ing dance, film, music, and style. And though the designs of Oscar de la Renta, the songs of Glo­ria Este­fan, the paint­ings of Frank Romero (and, of course, lowrid­ers) have drawn the inter­est of many a non-Lati­no toward Lati­no cul­ture, what has done quite so much out­reach as the food? Google’s project even cov­ers that ter­ri­to­ry with con­tent like an edi­to­r­i­al fea­ture on “Fast Food, Tor­tillas, and the Art of Accept­ing Your­self” by Javier Cabral, a food crit­ic based, and well known, in — where else? — Los Ange­les.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

Charles & Ray Eames’ Short Film on the Mex­i­can Day of the Dead (1957)

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

Google Lets You Take a 360-Degree Panoram­ic Tour of Street Art in Cities Across the World

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.

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What the Map of the United States Would Look Like If All 50 States Had Equal Populations

in History, Politics | February 22nd, 2018

In the U.S., recent elec­toral events with which we’re all quite famil­iar have prompt­ed one par­tic­u­lar rad­i­cal re-eval­u­a­tion of the polit­i­cal sys­tem, among many oth­ers: we find every­one from high-pro­file Con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars to anony­mous com­menters engaged in debates about the neces­si­ty, or demo­c­ra­t­ic legit­i­ma­cy, of the Elec­toral Col­lege. While the debate may not be new, it has reached an urgent inten­si­ty, and hap­pens to occur at a time when every­thing seems up for grabs. When Neil Free­man pro­posed redraw­ing state bor­ders on his pre­scient­ly-named design site Fake is the New Real back in 2012, he cre­at­ed the map above (view it in a larg­er for­mat here) to even­ly dis­trib­ute the country’s pop­u­la­tion. He did so with the dis­claimer, “this is an art project, not a seri­ous pro­pos­al.”

The idea might get a more seri­ous recep­tion these days. Nonethe­less, the iner­tia of tra­di­tion has­n’t less­ened any. Not only is it total­ly unlike­ly that states would ever be redrawn and renamed, but the Elec­toral Col­lege is also a found­ing insti­tu­tion, emerg­ing at the first Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion when James Madi­son first pro­posed it in 1787. Since then, PBS’s Kamala Kelkar wrote on Novem­ber 6th, 2016, “the Elec­toral Col­lege sys­tem has cost four can­di­dates the race after they received the pop­u­lar vote.” Two days lat­er that num­ber went up to five.

Still, whether one deems it nec­es­sary, super­flu­ous, or deeply per­ni­cious, it’s hard­ly con­tro­ver­sial to note that this elect­ing body comes from an era so unlike our own as to be unrec­og­niz­able. A time when, as some founders argued, writes Akhil Reed Amar at Time, “ordi­nary Amer­i­cans across a vast con­ti­nent [lacked] suf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion to choose direct­ly and intel­li­gent­ly among lead­ing pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates.” This might still be the case for var­i­ous rea­sons. But putting aside man­u­fac­tured fil­ter bub­bles and vast dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns, most Amer­i­cans now have instant access, if they want it, to more infor­ma­tion than they know what to do with.

When we look at the pri­ma­ry sources, we find the actu­al rea­son for the Elec­toral Col­lege: slav­ery. Madi­son, notes Kelkar, “now known as the ‘Father of the Con­sti­tu­tion,’” was a slave­hold­ing Vir­gin­ian who wor­ried vocal­ly that North­ern states would have a decid­ed advan­tage, since upwards of 40% of the pop­u­la­tion in South­ern states con­sist­ed of enslaved peo­ple, who, of course, would not be cast­ing votes. Madison’s propo­si­tion includ­ed the infa­mous and dehu­man­iz­ing “three-fifths com­pro­mise,” which his­to­ri­an Paul Finkel­man argues enabled Thomas Jef­fer­son to win over John Adams in 1800.

Despite this his­to­ry, most peo­ple are taught that the sys­tem arose sole­ly to “bal­ance the inter­ests,” Amar writes, “of high-pop­u­la­tion and low-pop­u­la­tion states.” This sounds like a polit­i­cal­ly neu­tral inten­tion. But Free­man doesn’t ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of the Elec­toral Col­lege, call­ing it “a time-hon­ored, log­i­cal sys­tem” that he thinks should be pre­served. And yet, he writes, “it’s obvi­ous that reforms are need­ed.”

“The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem of the elec­toral col­lege,” Free­man writes, “is that the states of the Unit­ed States are too dis­parate in size and influ­ence. The largest state is 66 times as pop­u­lous as the small­est and has 18 times as many elec­toral votes. This increas­es the chance for Elec­toral Col­lege results that don’t match the pop­u­lar vote.” This is hard­ly the only issue. But is Freeman’s pro­pos­al a more sta­ble solu­tion to major flaws in U.S. nation­al elec­tions than sim­ply scrap­ping the Elec­toral Col­lege alto­geth­er? He makes the fol­low­ing argu­ment, in a series of bul­let-point­ed advan­tages. His map:

  • Pre­serves the his­toric struc­ture and func­tion of the Elec­toral Col­lege.
  • Ends the over-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of small states and under-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of large states in pres­i­den­tial vot­ing and in the US Sen­ate by elim­i­nat­ing small and large states.
  • Polit­i­cal bound­aries more close­ly fol­low eco­nom­ic pat­terns, since many states are more cen­tered on one or two metro areas.
  • Ends vary­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the House. Cur­rent­ly, the pop­u­la­tion of House dis­tricts ranges from 528,000 to 924,000. After this reform, every House seat would rep­re­sent dis­tricts of the same size. (Since the cur­rent size of the House isn’t divis­i­ble by 50, the num­bers of seats should be increased to 450 or 500.)
  • States could be redis­trict­ed after each cen­sus — just like House seats are dis­trib­uted now.

Free­man based the map–featuring new states like “Mesabi,” “Ogal­lala,” “Big Thick­et,” “Chi­nati,” and “King”–on data from the 2010 Cen­sus, which, inci­den­tal­ly, actu­al­ly did change the dis­tri­b­u­tion of elec­tors in 2012. The Cen­sus “records a pop­u­la­tion of 308,745,538 for the Unit­ed States,” he notes, “which this map divides into 50 states, each with a pop­u­la­tion of about 6,175,000.”

He does seem to down­play the dis­ad­van­tages, list­ing only two con­cerns about dupli­cat­ed coun­ty names and a “shift in state laws and pro­ce­dures.” Free­man doesn’t men­tion the high like­li­hood of civ­il war or wide­spread social unrest if such a mas­sive redis­tri­b­u­tion of the country’s state pop­u­la­tions were ever attempt­ed. Giv­en the exam­ples of pitched legal bat­tle fought dai­ly over con­gres­sion­al redis­trict­ing of ger­ry­man­dered states, it’s also prob­a­ble noth­ing like this plan would ever make it through the courts. Con­sid­ered as an “art project” or thought exper­i­ment in civics, how­ev­er, who knows? It just might work….

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal Khan & the Mup­pets’ Grover Explain the Elec­toral Col­lege

Why Socrates Hat­ed Democ­ra­cies: An Ani­mat­ed Case for Why Self-Gov­ern­ment Requires Wis­dom & Edu­ca­tion

The “True Size” Maps Shows You the Real Size of Every Coun­try (and Will Change Your Men­tal Pic­ture of the World)

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

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Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972)

in Music | February 22nd, 2018

Joan Baez was already her­ald­ed as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zim­mer­man aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the bur­geon­ing folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his tele­vi­sion set long before he met her. He was smit­ten. He would write much lat­er in Chron­i­cles, Vol. 1, that she had “A voice that drove out bad spir­its… she sang in a voice straight to God… Noth­ing she did didn’t work.”

And for a cou­ple of years they became col­lab­o­ra­tors, part­ners, lovers, and folk roy­al­ty. It was Baez who intro­duced a then-unknown Dylan to the crowds at the 1963 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. But soon, for­tunes changed: Dylan became an unstop­pable cul­tur­al force and Baez would be on the receiv­ing end of sev­er­al betray­als, artis­tic and oth­er­wise.

An excerpt from an Earl Scrug­gs doc­u­men­tary, the cute video above, shot by David Hoff­man and post­ed on his YouTube chan­nel, shows Baez imi­tat­ing Dylan after she sings a verse of “It Ain’t Me Babe”. (She does this while hold­ing her baby and try­ing to get it to drink from a pitch­er, too.) A 16-year-old Ricky Skaggs—not look­ing any­thing like a teenager—accompanies her on gui­tar.

For one thing she does a crackin’ good Dylan impres­sion. The oth­er is watch­ing the emo­tion behind that impression—there’s a lot of his­to­ry there, a bit of sad­ness, a bit of nos­tal­gia, noth­ing bit­ter or mean, but evi­dence of a shared life togeth­er that once exist­ed.

By this time in 1972, Dylan’s voice had matured. The croon­er on Nashville Sky­line was a dif­fer­ent per­son from the man on Blonde on Blonde, all those rough cor­ners sand­ed off and the reg­is­ter deep­ened. Yet when any­one imi­tates Dylan, they head on back to those mid-‘60s albums, the “bray­ing beat­nik” as writer Rob Jones calls him. (Jones posits that Dylan has had eight par­tic­u­lar voic­es dur­ing his career.)

Remem­ber, as Slate’s Carl Wil­son points out, when Dylan first start­ed out, he was com­mend­ed for his voice, and was con­sid­ered  “one of the most com­pelling white blues singers ever record­ed,” by Robert Shel­ton, who wrote the copy on the back cov­er of Dylan’s 1962 debut album. He came from a tra­di­tion of both Woody Guthrie and Howl­in’ Wolf, and sev­er­al oth­er idio­syn­crat­ic singers who didn’t sound like Frank Sina­tra. (Although Dylan’s last few projects have been cov­ers from the Great Amer­i­can Song­book.)

Dylan him­self, in a 2015 award accep­tance speech, turned his ire towards crit­ics of his voice:

Crit­ics have been giv­ing me a hard time since Day One. Crit­ics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t crit­ics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Crit­ics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. [Why] don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get spe­cial treat­ment? Crit­ics say I can’t car­ry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Real­ly? I’ve nev­er heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? … Slur my words, got no dic­tion. Have you peo­ple ever lis­tened to Charley Pat­ton or Robert John­son, Mud­dy Waters? … “Why me, Lord?” I would say that to myself.

Fast for­ward to the present and Dylan’s voice shows the wear of years of per­form­ing and years of indul­gence. It’s grav­el­ly and phleg­mat­ic, smoky and whiskey-soaked, but Wil­son points out: “Even the rasp and burr of his late voice, sev­er­al keen lis­ten­ers have noticed, is very much like a more gen­uine copy of the old-blues­man tim­bre he pre­ten­tious­ly affect­ed as a young man. It’s almost like this is what he’s been aim­ing toward.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly-Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. 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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Massive Archive of 78RPM Records Now Digitized & Put Online: Stream 78,000 Early 20th Century Records from Around the World

in Archives, Music | February 21st, 2018

Last sum­mer we checked in with the Inter­net Archive’s Great 78 Project, a vol­un­teer effort to dig­i­tize thou­sands of 78rpm records—the old­est mass-pro­duced record­ing medi­um. Draw­ing on the exper­tise and vast hold­ings of preser­va­tion com­pa­ny George Blood, L.P., the ARChive of Con­tem­po­rary Music, and over 20 more insti­tu­tions from around the world, the project aims to save the record­ed sounds of the past, and not only those that have come down to us through the efforts of high­ly selec­tive cura­tors. What we think of as the sound of the ear­ly 20th century—the blues, jazz, coun­try, clas­si­cal, rag­time, gospel, blue­grass, etc.—only rep­re­sents a pop­u­lar sam­ple.

Inter­net Archive founder Brew­ster Kahle wants to widen our son­ic appre­ci­a­tion of the peri­od, and include every­thing, “Mid­west, dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent social class­es, dif­fer­ent immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties and their loves and fears.”

This mas­sive archive will even­tu­al­ly num­ber in the mil­lions, up to 3 mil­lion record­ings, to be exact, and con­tin­ues apace at the rate of about 5,000 new uploads per month.

Last August, the record­ings in the archive num­bered over 25,000. Now, the Great 78 Project con­tains more than 78,000 and count­ing dig­i­tal trans­fers of frag­ile 78rpm records—everything from Prokofiev to the Carter Fam­i­ly (fur­ther up) to Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt from 1928 (above) to inter­na­tion­al folk dances to field record­ings of ani­mal sounds.

The col­lect­ed works of Al Jol­son, span­ning the years 1911 to 1926, appear (above), as does a fas­ci­nat­ing col­lec­tion from Argenti­na, brought to the U.S. by Tina Argume­do, who began col­lect­ing 78s in the 30s and con­tin­ued to do so for anoth­er 20 years before mov­ing to the States. Her dig­i­tized col­lec­tion of almost 700 records “com­pris­es pri­mar­i­ly tan­go music, with boleros, sam­bas, mam­bo, and oth­er dance music,” like the Argen­tine swing of Dajos Bela y su Orques­tra from 1932 below.

As we not­ed in our pre­vi­ous post, the utmost care has gone into pre­serv­ing the orig­i­nal sound of these records, with a vari­ety of dig­i­tal trans­fers made with dif­fer­ent vin­tage sty­lus­es to rep­re­sent the dif­fer­ences in play­back sys­tems. The process also pre­serves all the orig­i­nal records’ crack­le and hiss—sometimes the music seems to swim below the sur­face noise, which only enhances the effect of hear­ing, trans­port­ed through time, music from 80, 90, and 100 years ago and more.

Enter the 78 archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25,000+ 78RPM Records Now Pro­fes­sion­al­ly Dig­i­tized & Stream­ing Online: A Trea­sure Trove of Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry Music

The Boston Pub­lic Library Will Dig­i­tize & Put Online 200,000+ Vin­tage Records

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

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

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What Made John Entwistle One of the Great Rock Bassists? Hear Isolated Tracks from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley” & “Pinball Wizard”

in Music | February 21st, 2018

Drum­mer Kei­th Moon was sure­ly the most kinet­ic mem­ber of The Who—which is real­ly say­ing a lot—but he was not the band’s best musi­cian, even if he is rou­tine­ly named one of the best drum­mers of all time. Moon knew the appeal of his play­ing often lay in the fact that it was like no one else’s: he described him­self as the “great­est Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer in the world.” Noth­ing in rock approached his untamed excess, mod­eled after the far more dis­ci­plined flights of his hero, Gene Kru­pa.

But if the band “can be said to have an instru­men­tal vir­tu­oso,” writes Chris Jisi at Drum! mag­a­zine, “it is John Alec Entwistle,” their true sol­id cen­ter (they called him “The Ox”) and the per­fect rhyth­mic foil to Moon, who “could sound like a drum kit falling down­stairs,” Entwistle says. The bass play­er not only kept time, he tells Jisi, since Moon didn’t, and fol­lowed Moon’s “mess of cym­bals” and “all over the place” snare drum, but he also filled in for a rhythm gui­tarist as Pete Town­shend slashed away.

He kept his bass riffs rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple, he had to, and he “added top end or tre­ble… to cut through the rest of the noise.” It works, for sure. He is right­ful­ly sin­gled out as one of the great­est rock bass play­ers ever for his phe­nom­e­nal skill and poise.

A less­er play­er try­ing to com­pete with Moon’s wall of drums and Townshend’s mas­sive pow­er chords might dis­ap­pear entire­ly. Entwistle always stands out. His com­ments about Moon’s play­ing might sound dis­parag­ing, but they come off in con­text as hon­est and accu­rate, as do his descrip­tions of his own play­ing.

Entwistle sug­gests he wouldn’t be the play­er he became with­out Moon and the rest of the band. “We con­struct­ed our music to fit ‘round each oth­er,” he says. “It was some­thing very pecu­liar that none of us played the same way as oth­er peo­ple.” In their best moments, some parts “slid togeth­er by mag­ic and were gone for­ev­er.” This is the essence, real­ly, of rock and roll, the serendip­i­tous tran­scen­dence that aris­es from wild­ly col­lid­ing waves of sound.

But such con­trolled chaos can require, espe­cial­ly in a band like The Who, one cool, well-trained vir­tu­oso who can­not be ruf­fled, no mat­ter what, whose per­fec­tion looks effort­less and who nev­er breaks a sweat. The eter­nal arche­type of that play­er is John Entwistle. At the top, hear Entwistle’s iso­lat­ed bass in a live take of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” (He comes in at 1:45, after a much-extend­ed intro). Below it, you’ll eas­i­ly pick out his every note in the stu­dio ver­sion. And fur­ther up, after anoth­er extend­ed syn­the­siz­er intro, hear him solo at 1:25 on “Baba O’Ri­ley,” also live at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in 1978. (The stu­dio record­ing is above).

And just above, in one of his most ener­getic per­for­mances, hear him play a live ver­sion of “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” (start­ing at 0:36). And then catch one more jaw-drop­ping solo, just for good mea­sure, record­ed live at Roy­al Albert Hall.

Entwistle is some­times com­pared to Jimi Hen­drix, but in some ways, The Ox came first with his fuzzed-out sound. The mild-man­nered play­er “pio­neered the use of feed­back in music and smash­ing his instru­ment,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “with Jimi Hen­drix fol­low­ing suit after see­ing Entwistle do it.” For all his reserved Eng­lish cool­ness, Entwistle first pushed the bound­aries of loud­ness, “using 200 watts of pow­er when most bands used 50,” just one of the rea­sons, as you’ll hear in these tracks, for his oth­er nick­name: “Thun­derfin­gers.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

The Jimi Hen­drix of the Bass: Watch a Busker Shred the Bass on the Streets of New­cas­tle

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

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Watch 3000 Years of Art, a 1968 Experimental Film That Takes You on a Visual Journey Through 3,000 Years of Fine Art

in Art, Film, Music | February 21st, 2018

Even if we can’t name them, we’ve all seen hun­dreds of the most impor­tant paint­ings in art his­to­ry, and even if we can’t name it, we’ve all heard “Clas­si­cal Gas.” 3000 Years of Art, the 1968 exper­i­men­tal film above, offi­ci­ates an aes­thet­ic union of about 2500 of those much-seen, high­ly influ­en­tial images and Mason Williams’ instru­men­tal hit song, all in just over three min­utes.

Ini­tial­ly released on The Mason Williams Phono­graph Record in 1967, the track went on, with the help of 3000 Years of Art, to become “one of the ear­li­est records that used a visu­al to help pro­mote it on tele­vi­sion, which prob­a­bly qual­i­fies it as one of the ear­li­est music videos.” Those words come from Williams him­self, who post­ed the video to his own Youtube chan­nel.

When “Clas­si­cal Gas” first became a hit, he writes, “I was also the head writer for The Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour on CBS. I had seen a film titled God Is Dog Spelled Back­wards at The Encore, an off beat movie house in L.A. The film was a col­lec­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 2500 clas­si­cal works of art, most­ly paint­ings, that flashed by in three min­utes. Each image last­ed only two film frames, or twelve images a sec­ond! At the end of the film the view­er was pro­nounced ‘cul­tur­al’ since they had just cov­ered ‘3000 years of art in 3 min­utes!’ ”

Con­tact­ing the short­’s cre­ator, a UCLA stu­dent by the name of Dan McLaugh­lin, Williams asked if he could re-cut its imagery to “Clas­si­cal Gas” for a Smoth­ers Broth­ers seg­ment. First air­ing on the show in the sum­mer of 1968 — the same year that saw anoth­er of the show’s writ­ers, a young man by the name of Steve Mar­tin, bring his tal­ents direct­ly to the air — the result­ing pro­to-music-video rock­et­ed Williams’ song to anoth­er sphere of pop­u­lar­i­ty entire­ly. Not only that, it “opened the door to real­iza­tions that the view­er’s mind could absorb this intense lev­el of visu­al input” with its use of kines­ta­sis, the phe­nom­e­non where­by a mon­tage of still images cre­ates its own kind of motion.

Fol­low­ing the idea to its then-log­i­cal con­clu­sion, Williams soon after wrote a skit for the Smoth­ers Broth­ers Com­e­dy Hour “pro­ject­ing the idea that some­day VJs would be play­ing hit tapes on TV.” And so the tra­jec­to­ries of easy-lis­ten­ing instru­men­tal music, gen­tly sub­ver­sive tele­vi­sion com­e­dy, and art his­to­ry inter­sect­ed to give the world an ear­ly glimpse of MTV, Youtube, and whichev­er host of even short­er-form, intenser view­ing expe­ri­ences comes next.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry

One Minute Art His­to­ry: Cen­turies of Artis­tic Styles Get Packed Into a Short Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion

100,000 Free Art His­to­ry Texts Now Avail­able Online Thanks to the Get­ty Research Por­tal

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

The Art His­to­ry Web Book

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.

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Learn to Code with Harvard’s Popular Intro to Computer Science Course: A Free Course (2017)

in Computer Science, Online Courses | February 21st, 2018

In recent months, Har­vard has been rolling out videos from the 2017 edi­tion of Com­put­er Sci­ence 50 (CS50), the uni­ver­si­ty’s intro­duc­to­ry cod­ing course designed for majors and non-majors alike. Taught by David Malan, a peren­ni­al­ly pop­u­lar pro­fes­sor (you’ll see why), the one-semes­ter course (taught most­ly in C) com­bines cours­es typ­i­cal­ly known else­where as “CS1” and “CS2.”

Even if you’re not a Har­vard stu­dent, you’re wel­come to fol­low CS50 online by head­ing over to this site here. There you will find video lec­tures (stream them all above or access them indi­vid­u­al­ly here), prob­lem sets, quizzes, and oth­er use­ful course mate­ri­als. Once you’ve mas­tered the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in CS50, you can start branch­ing out into new areas of cod­ing by perus­ing our big col­lec­tion of Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,300 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Note: Har­vard’s CS50 is also avail­able as a MOOC (Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es) on edX. Also taught by David Malan, the course can be tak­en in a self-paced for­mat for free. Find it here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. 

If you’d like to sup­port Open Cul­ture and our mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us pro­vide the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Sandel’s Free Course on Jus­tice, the Most Pop­u­lar Course at Har­vard, Is Now Online

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Online Course

Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy: A Free Online Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

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