Hear How Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Would Sound If Sung by Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra & 38 Other Artists

I con­sid­er Fred­dy Mer­cury and Michael Jack­son as the great­est per­form­ers of all time. Their vocal abil­i­ties are what I look up to as a vocal­ist.  — Antho­ny Vin­cent

Antho­ny Vin­cent, the cre­ator of Ten Sec­ond Songs, has a flow­ing mane, a lean physique, and the cock­sure man­ner of a 20th cen­tu­ry rock god.

He also spends hours in his home stu­dio, peer­ing at a com­put­er mon­i­tor through read­ing glass­es.

His lat­est effort, above, Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in the style of 42 oth­er artists, could seem like a gim­mick at first glance.

Con­sid­er, how­ev­er, all the research, time, and musi­cian­ship that went into it.

The YouTube star dis­ap­peared from the inter­net for a month in order to tack­le the beast that fans had long been beg­ging him for.

He emerged from this self-imposed sab­bat­i­cal refreshed, rec­om­mend­ing that per­haps “every­one should start pro­duc­ing songs in mul­ti­ple styles just so they too could take a vaca­tion from social media.”

Good idea, though I doubt many of us can mim­ic the wide range of vocal styles the large­ly self taught Vin­cent does, from  Muse’s lead singer Matt Belamy’s fabled high notes to the late Joe Strummer’s extreme­ly Eng­lish punk atti­tude to Janis Joplin at her most unfet­tered.

He also dis­plays an impres­sive facil­i­ty with a vari­ety of arrange­ments and instru­ments, though a cou­ple of off-hand­ed com­ments in the Mak­ing Of video, below, may not endear him to drum­mers, despite his obvi­ous respect for the essen­tial role per­cus­sion plays in struc­tur­ing his projects.

Var­i­ous ele­ments sug­gest­ed which artist to pair with each bite-sized sec­tion of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” includ­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty of lyrics, notes, and arrange­ments. (“Mama mia” was a no brain­er…as was “Mama, didn’t mean to make you cry.”)

By def­i­n­i­tion, the mul­ti-style “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” required him to look beyond his own per­son­al favorites for artists to high­light, a process he applies to all of his mash ups. As he said in a 2015 inter­view with Radio Met­al:

Obvi­ous­ly I don’t lis­ten to Enya in my free time, I don’t go and put on a Gre­go­ri­an chant and lis­ten to it to relax. If I’m going to put an artist in there, it’s because I have some kind of respect for them in some way… At first my inten­tion was to pro­mote my busi­ness and now my inten­tions are to show that there are dif­fer­ent ways that a song can be heard and that there’s noth­ing wrong with lik­ing dif­fer­ent things. You shouldn’t be afraid of what you don’t under­stand. Just because some­one is growl­ing doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just a way of express­ing a song, there is real­ly noth­ing else to it.

His “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” trib­ute is com­prised of over 1800 care­ful­ly labelled tracks, an inspir­ing dis­play of dig­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion as well as tech­ni­cal prowess.

While some of Vincent’s cho­sen 42—David Bowie, Dream The­ater—did cov­er “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in its entire­ty, an unfor­tu­nate side effect of his imper­son­ations are the way they whet our appetite for full cov­ers we’ll nev­er get to enjoy from the likes of John­ny Cash, Prince, Frank Sina­tra, Aretha Franklin….

Ulti­mate­ly, no one can hold a can­dle to the orig­i­nal, but there’s no harm in try­ing.

Read­ers, do you have a favorite from the line up below? Any­one you wish you could add to the list?

01. Queen

02. Me

03. The Chordettes

04. John­ny Cash

05. David Bowie

06. Ozzy Osbourne

07. Frank Sina­tra

08. Sam Cooke

09. Boyz II Men

10. Daft Punk

11. Janis Joplin

12. Scott Joplin (King Of Rag­time)

13. Skrillex

14. Hen­drix (Michael Winslow Ver­sion)

15. Ken­ny G

16. Bob­by McFer­rin

17. Star Wars

18. N.W.A.

19. Kendrick Lamar

20. Sys­tem Of A Down

21. Elvis Pres­ley

22. BOLLYWOOD

23. Bad Reli­gion

24. Bruno Mars

25. Death Grips

26. Chuck Berry

27. Michael jack­son

28. The Clash

29. Ray Charles

30. Aretha Franklin

31. Sog­gy Bot­tom Boys

32. Death

33. ABBA

34. Ghost

35. Muse

36. Vitas

37. Medieval Music

38. Frankie Val­li and the Four Sea­sons

39. Tool

40. Prince

41. Nir­vana

42. Dream The­ater

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Played by 28 Trom­bone Play­ers

Watch the Brand New Trail­er for Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the Long-Await­ed Biopic on Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

George Washington Writes to the First Jewish Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island: “The Government… Gives to Bigotry No Sanction, to Persecution No Assistance” (1790)

In the ear­ly Unit­ed States, devout Chris­tians who would impose their beliefs on oth­ers were in the minor­i­ty among the country’s founders. Thomas Jefferson’s views on the sub­ject are well-known. Much more con­ser­v­a­tive than Jef­fer­son, fel­low Vir­gin­ian George Wash­ing­ton made fre­quent state­ments on reli­gion as part of the essen­tial tex­ture of pub­lic life. But while Wash­ing­ton dis­cussed reli­gion as a com­mu­nal affair with impor­tant social and polit­i­cal dimen­sions, like Jef­fer­son he endorsed reli­gious lib­er­ty and free­dom of con­science and belief.

Wash­ing­ton went fur­ther in defense of reli­gious minori­ties than the huge­ly influ­en­tial the­o­rist of reli­gious tol­er­a­tion, John Locke. The prin­ci­ple of tol­er­a­tion was unique in Europe and Eng­land, where “state-spon­sored reli­gion was the norm,” as New­port, Rhode Island’s his­toric Touro Syn­a­gogue explains.

But the idea was usu­al­ly tak­en to mean that “non-Chris­tians were to be ‘tol­er­at­ed’ for their beliefs” in a pater­nal­ist sense, “with the hope that ‘Jews, Turks, and Infi­dels” would become Chris­t­ian.” Wash­ing­ton, how­ev­er, declared:

It is now no more that tol­er­a­tion is spo­ken of, as if it was by the indul­gence of one class of peo­ple, that anoth­er enjoyed the exer­cise of their inher­ent nat­ur­al rights. For hap­pi­ly the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, which gives to big­otry no sanc­tion, to per­se­cu­tion no assis­tance requires only that they who live under its pro­tec­tion should demean them­selves good cit­i­zens, in giv­ing it on all occa­sions their effec­tu­al sup­port.

These words come from Washington’s short 1790 let­ter to the “the Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tion in New­port, Rhode Island,” the first in a series of let­ters writ­ten to cit­i­zens of New­port after he and then-sec­re­tary of state Jef­fer­son made a vis­it. The address responds direct­ly to a let­ter of wel­come read to him on his arrival in the city by Moses Seixas, an offi­cial of the first Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion in New­port, which states:

Deprived as we hereto­fore have been of the invalu­able rights of free Cit­i­zens, we now (with a deep sense of grat­i­tude to the Almighty dis­pos­er of all events) behold a Gov­ern­ment, erect­ed by the Majesty of the People—a Gov­ern­ment, which to big­otry gives no sanc­tion, to per­se­cu­tion no assistance—but gen­er­ous­ly afford­ing to All lib­er­ty of con­science, and immu­ni­ties of Cit­i­zen­ship: deem­ing every one, of what­ev­er Nation, tongue, or lan­guage, equal parts of the great gov­ern­men­tal Machine….

As did many such procla­ma­tions, the doc­u­ment gloss­es the bru­tal con­tra­dic­tion of slav­ery, indige­nous slaugh­ter, and actu­al dis­crim­i­na­tion reli­gious minori­ties faced. Nonethe­less, the demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples Seixas out­lined so accord­ed with Washington’s ideals that the first pres­i­dent repeat­ed key phras­es ver­ba­tim. This is no mere pan­der­ing. When Wash­ing­ton arrived in New­port in 1790, state leg­is­la­tures were in the process of rat­i­fy­ing what was then the Third Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, which we know as the First, pro­hibit­ing the estab­lish­ment of state reli­gion and grant­i­ng free­dom of the press.

Argu­ments over reli­gious lib­er­ty were fierce, and tol­er­a­tion had strict lim­its. In some states “the rights of minor­i­ty groups such as Bap­tists, Pres­by­te­ri­ans, Catholics and Quak­ers were restrict­ed,” notes Touro. “In most states, non-Chris­tians were denied the rights of full cit­i­zen­ship, such as hold­ing pub­lic office. Even in reli­gious­ly lib­er­al Rhode Island, Jews were not allowed to vote.” While the First Amend­ment “did lit­tle to erase these injus­tices,” Washington’s let­ter set out ide­al con­di­tions in which the country’s “enlarged and lib­er­al pol­i­cy” grant­ed “lib­er­ty of con­science and immu­ni­ties of cit­i­zen­ship” to all.

That Wash­ing­ton would make such claims in Rhode Island bears par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance giv­en that the state is “most not­ed as the place where reli­gious free­dom was actu­al­ly born,” writes for­mer Ambas­sador and UN Del­e­gate John Loeb. The colony’s 1663 char­ter “set forth the first polit­i­cal enti­ty in the world to sep­a­rate the church from the state.” Washington’s state­ment one hun­dred and twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er “applied—and con­tin­ues to apply—to every Amer­i­can,” Loeb argues, despite its spe­cif­ic address “to a small group of Jew­ish cit­i­zens.” But that spe­cif­ic address mat­ters. It promised inclu­sion and pro­tec­tion to a com­mu­ni­ty that had faced cen­turies of ter­ror.

As his­to­ri­an Melvin Urof­sky writes, the let­ter “to the Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tion,” like many oth­er such state­ments made by the founders, “is a trea­sure to the entire nation”—a nation that “rec­og­nized,” at least in words, “diver­si­ty for what it was, one of the country’s great­est assets, and took as its mot­to E Pluribus Unum—Out of Many, One. The sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, and with it the free­dom of reli­gion enshrined in the First Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, has made the Unit­ed States a bea­con of hope to oppressed peo­ples every­where.”

Read Wash­ing­ton’s con­cise “Let­ter to the Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tion in New­port, Rhode Island” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civil­i­ty”: The Code of Decen­cy That Guid­ed America’s First Pres­i­dent

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

Har­vard Launch­es a Free Online Course to Pro­mote Reli­gious Tol­er­ance & Under­stand­ing

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

The Model Book of Calligraphy (1561–1596): A Stunningly Detailed Illuminated Manuscript Created over Three Decades

When­ev­er a tech­nol­o­gy devel­ops just enough to become inter­est­ing, some­one inevitably push­es it to extremes. In the case of that reli­able and long-lived tech­nol­o­gy known as the book, writ­ers and artists were look­ing for ways to max­i­mize its poten­tial as a device for con­vey­ing the writ­ten word and the drawn image as far back as the 16th cen­tu­ry. One par­tic­u­lar­ly glo­ri­ous exam­ple, The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy, has come avail­able online, to view or down­load, thanks to the Get­ty. This decades-span­ning col­lab­o­ra­tion shows off not just the artis­tic writ­ing implied by the title but illus­tra­tions whose vivid­ness and detail remain strik­ing even today.

“In the 1500s, as print­ing became the most com­mon method of pro­duc­ing books, intel­lec­tu­als increas­ing­ly val­ued the inven­tive­ness of scribes and the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties of writ­ing,” says the Get­ty’s site.

“From 1561 to 1562, Georg Boc­skay, the Croa­t­ian-born court sec­re­tary to the Holy Roman Emper­or Fer­di­nand I, cre­at­ed this Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy in Vien­na to demon­strate his tech­ni­cal mas­tery of the immense range of writ­ing styles known to him.”

Three decades lat­er, “Emper­or Rudolph II, Fer­di­nand’s grand­son, com­mis­sioned Joris Hoef­nagel” — a Flem­ish artist well known at the time for his spe­cial­iza­tion in sub­jects to do with nat­ur­al his­to­ry — “to illu­mi­nate Boc­skay’s mod­el book. Hoef­nagel added fruit, flow­ers, and insects to near­ly every page, com­pos­ing them so as to enhance the uni­ty and bal­ance of the page’s design. It was one of the most unusu­al col­lab­o­ra­tions between scribe and painter in the his­to­ry of man­u­script illu­mi­na­tion.”

What we see when we flip through (or zoom in to great lev­els of dig­i­tal detail on) The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy’s 184 pages may look like a uni­fied work exe­cut­ed all at once (see them all at the bot­tom of this page), but it actu­al­ly com­bines the sen­si­bil­i­ties of not just two cre­ators sep­a­rat­ed by not just the art forms in which they spe­cial­ized but more than thir­ty years of time. Hoef­nagel, how­ev­er, did­n’t stay entire­ly out of the realm of the tex­tu­al: though most of what he brought to the man­u­script takes the form of illu­mi­na­tions, he also added an entire­ly new sec­tion on writ­ing the alpha­bet. He under­stood the impor­tance of not just well-craft­ed pic­tures and text but their appeal­ing inte­gra­tion, a con­cept famil­iar to any design­er work­ing in today’s forms of cut­ting-edge media — as books were four cen­turies ago. You can pur­chase print edi­tions that repro­duce por­tions or the entire­ty of The Mod­el Book of Cal­lig­ra­phy.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Learn Cal­lig­ra­phy from Lloyd Reynolds, the Teacher of Steve Jobs’ Own Famous­ly Inspir­ing Cal­lig­ra­phy Teacher

The Art of Hand­writ­ing as Prac­ticed by Famous Artists: Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Jack­son Pol­lock, Mar­cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon­ing & More

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

Watch/Hear Led Zeppelin’s Earliest Performances from 1968–69 & Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Band’s Birth

For met­al­heads and lovers of gui­tar rock dark, heavy, and chock full of ref­er­ences to sex, demons, tarot cards, and fan­ta­sy nov­els, the birth of Led Zep­pelin should be cel­e­brat­ed like Christ­mas. The 50th anniver­sary of the band should be a non­stop glob­al cacoph­o­ny of awk­ward “Stair­way to Heav­en” cov­ers. Yes, there are oth­er things going on in the world, ter­ri­ble things—things that would be that much hard­er to bear with­out music as fiery and bom­bas­tic as that con­coct­ed by the com­bo of Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham.

In 1968, the band seemed to rock­et out of nowhere—erroneously billed as “Len Zef­flin” in its ear­li­est taped gig at a Gon­za­ga Uni­ver­si­ty Gym­na­si­um as an open­ing act for “The Vanil­la Fudge” (hear the boot­leg above).

But kids in the know knew them as recent­ly-ex-Yard­bird Jim­my Page’s new project, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be a super­group star­ring Jeff Beck and The Who’s Kei­th Moon and John Entwistle. This “dry run,” notes music jour­nal­ist Kei­th Shad­wick, was Page’s “first attempt to put some­thing togeth­er that was real­ly heavy­weight.”

Page’s friend from his ses­sion days, John Paul Jones, end­ed up on bass for the only record­ing ses­sion, the project fell apart, and instead Page recruit­ed two not-yet-super­stars, Plant and Bon­ham from Band of Joy, to form what was first known as the New Yard­birds before a cease and desist let­ter. Accounts of who came up with the replace­ment name—first “Led Bal­loon,” a vari­a­tion on the phrase for a big flop—vary. “But it was said after­wards that that’s what it could have been called,” remem­bers Page. “Because Moony want­ed to get out of The Who, and so did John Entwistle…. Instead, it didn’t hap­pen.”

Yet, it hap­pened. Less deter­mined musi­cians might have scrapped the idea and joined anoth­er band. Page, known as “Mis­ter Cool” for his pro­fes­sion­al­ism, had a dis­tinct vision for what he want­ed and was hell­bent on man­i­fest­ing it. “Page said he had Led Zeppelin’s sound, and first songs, ful­ly formed in his mind before the Yard­birds were even done,” Andrew Dal­ton writes at The Chica­go Tri­bune.“I just knew what way to go,” said Page. “It was in my instinct.”

He con­jured the mag­ic with a cer­e­mo­ni­al instrument—a 1959 Fend­er Tele­cast­er he got from Jeff Beck, on which he paint­ed a psy­che­del­ic drag­on. He called the gui­tar “the Excal­ibur” (now a sig­na­ture gui­tar that you can buy in repli­ca next year).

After tours of Scan­di­navia and Eng­land as the New Yard­birds, Led Zep­pelin made their for­mal debut at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sur­rey on Octo­ber 25th, 1968, then they toured the U.S. and released their debut album in Jan­u­ary. Here, you can hear and see some of the band’s first intro­duc­tions to the world, in the boot­leg Gon­za­ga con­cert record­ing at the top, a filmed 1968 per­for­mance of “Dazed and Con­fused,” fur­ther up, and, just above, a killer live set from March of ’69 at the Glad­saxe Teen Club in Den­mark.

It’s no great sur­prise that they sound­ed as good as they did from the start, nor that they had such savvy and poise. Zep­pelin was “typ­i­cal,” writes Shad­wick, “of this third wave [of British bands] in that… all were expe­ri­enced and thor­ough­ly pro­fes­sion­al even though they were still very young, and they had more than a pass­ing knowl­edge of how the indus­try worked before they even signed their first deal as a unit.” But what con­tin­ues to aston­ish about Led Zeppelin’s debut is just how heavy it still sounds, 50 years lat­er. Their dis­tant prog­e­ny may have tak­en the tem­plate to absurd extremes, but even in the bleak­est, most blis­ter­ing black met­al we hear Zeppelin’s musi­cal DNA.

As one ear­ly fan who caught them at that ear­ly Gon­za­ga show lat­er remarked, “It was like, after that, psy­che­delia was dead and heavy met­al was born, all in a three-hour show.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Whole Lot­ta Led Zep­pelin: Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

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

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” Gets Released on Instagram as a Digital “Insta Novel”: It’s Free from The New York Public Library

Back in August, we high­light­ed a new ini­tia­tive by the New York Pub­lic Library. An insti­tu­tion that’s hip with our times, the NYPL released on Insta­gram a dig­i­tal ver­sion of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land. Now, in the Hal­loween spir­it, comes a dig­i­tal adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s clas­sic tale, “The Raven.” They write:

“The Raven” includes a unique series of ani­ma­tions pro­duced by Psy­op and Stu­dio AKA that takes read­ers on an omi­nous pro­ces­sion through a stark psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape where the dif­fer­ing per­spec­tives of both the Raven and Poe’s pro­tag­o­nist are depict­ed. The view­points steadi­ly inter­cut and con­verge as the ani­ma­tion builds to its dis­qui­et­ing cli­max, as the door creaks open reveal­ing “dark­ness there and noth­ing more.”

Read “The Raven” on Insta­gram here. And keep an eye out for NYPL’s upcom­ing adap­ta­tion of “The Meta­mor­pho­sis” by Franz Kaf­ka. It’s due out by the end of the year.

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:

900 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee & More

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Super­nat­ur­al Poem to 3D Paper Life

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

The Grate­ful Dead Pays Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Con­cert: Hear “Raven Space”

 

36 Artists Give Advice to Young Creators: Wim Wenders, Jonathan Franzen, Lydia Davis, Patti Smith, David Byrne, Umberto Eco & More

“What­ev­er you do, nobody else can do that bet­ter than you. You have to find what you can do bet­ter than any­one else, what you have in your­self that nobody else has in them. Don’t do any­thing that you know, deep in your heart, that some­body else can do bet­ter, but do what nobody else can do except for you.” That sounds like fine advice, but when receiv­ing advice we should always con­sid­er the source. In this case we could hard­ly do bet­ter: the source is Wim Wen­ders, direc­tor of Alice in the CitiesParis, TexasWings of Desire, and many oth­er films besides, an auteur sel­dom accused of mak­ing movies any­one else could make.

Wen­ders’ inter­view clip and the oth­ers here come from “Advice to the Young,” a video series cre­at­ed by the Louisiana Muse­um in Den­mark (which has quite an impres­sive gift shop, inci­den­tal­ly, if you hap­pen to need advice on gift-shop­ping). Jonathan Franzen, author of nov­els like The Cor­rec­tionsFree­dom, and Puri­ty, admits to feel­ing embar­rass­ment about “giv­ing advice to the young writer,” but he still has valu­able words for cre­ators in any domain: “The most impor­tant advice I have is to have fun, to try to cre­ate some­thing that is fun to work on.”

And by fun he means fun like you have on a ten­nis court, where “you’re not just mess­ing around, you’re not just hit­ting the ball wher­ev­er you want — you are focused on hav­ing a game, and once you are in it you are hav­ing fun. That’s the kind of focused fun I’m talk­ing about, and if you are hav­ing that kind of focused fun, there’s a good chance that the read­er will too.”

The range of writ­ers from which Louisiana Muse­um has sought advice also includes Lydia Davis, whose sen­si­bil­i­ty may dif­fer from Franzen’s but who has gar­nered an equal (or even greater) degree of respect from her read­er­ship. “You learn from mod­els and you ana­lyze them, you study them, you ana­lyze them very close­ly, one thing at a time,” she says, begin­ning her more expan­sive advice based on her own method. “You don’t just sort of read the para­graph and say, ‘Oh, that real­ly flows, you know? That’s good.’ You say, ‘What kind of adjec­tives? How many? What kind of nouns? How long are the sen­tences? What’s the rhythm?’ You know, you pick it apart, and that’s very help­ful.” Her oth­er sug­ges­tions include to “be very patient, even patient with chaos” and to keep a note­book (“it takes some of the ten­sion and the wor­ry away, because if you write it down, it may just be a note. It does­n’t have to be the begin­ning of any­thing”).

“Do what you want to do,” Davis con­cludes, “and don’t wor­ry if it’s a lit­tle odd or does­n’t fit the mar­ket.” That bit of guid­ance seems to have worked for her, and in the great vari­ety of forms it can take seems to have worked for seem­ing­ly every oth­er artist. Take Ed Ruscha, for instance, whose can­vass­es of gas sta­tions, cor­po­rate sig­nage, and oth­er icons of Amer­i­can blank­ness must hard­ly have seemed geared toward any par­tic­u­lar “mar­ket” when first he paint­ed them. For the young he has only one piece of advice, received sec­ond-hand and briefly deliv­ered: “No one could ever beat this thing that Max Ernst said. They asked him what a young artist should do, and he said, ‘cut off an ear.’ That’s good advice to fol­low. You can’t beat that.”

Oth­er artists fea­tured in the video playlist include Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

To Make Great Films, You Must Read, Read, Read and Write, Write, Write, Say Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wern­er Her­zog

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Walt Whit­man Gives Advice to Aspir­ing Young Writ­ers: “Don’t Write Poet­ry” & Oth­er Prac­ti­cal Tips (1888)

Ursu­la Le Guin Gives Insight­ful Writ­ing Advice in Her Free Online Work­shop

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, 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.

Martin Scorsese Creates a List of the 11 Scariest Horror Films

“When it comes to ripe old fright­en­ers — or to any oth­er over­heat­ed genre — Scors­ese is the most ardent of pros­e­ly­tiz­ers,” writes the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane in a review of that respect­ed direc­tor’s ripe-old-fright­en­er-fla­vored Shut­ter Island, “so much so that I would pre­fer to hear him enthuse about Ham­mer Hor­ror films, say, than to watch a Ham­mer Hor­ror film.” And though no Ham­mer pro­duc­tions appear on it, Scors­ese, who often seems as much film enthu­si­ast as film­mak­er, has put togeth­er a sol­id list of his per­son­al eleven scari­est hor­ror movies for The Dai­ly Beast. At its very top we have Robert Wise’s The Haunt­ing, whose trail­er you can watch above. Scors­ese promis­ing­ly describes the sto­ry of the film, orig­i­nal­ly bal­ly­hooed with the tagline “You may not believe in ghosts but you can­not deny ter­ror!,” as “about the inves­ti­ga­tion of a house plagued by vio­lent­ly assaultive spir­its.” His full and fright­en­ing list–perfect for Halloween–runs as fol­lows:

You can watch clips of all these movies over at The Dai­ly Beast. (And if you sim­ply can’t get enough of the things, see also Time Out Lon­don’s list of the 100 best hor­ror films.) Such tastes make it no sur­prise to see a Hitch­cock film make Scors­ese’s list; so much does Scors­ese love Hitch­cock­’s work — “one of my guid­ing lights,” he calls the mak­er of Psy­cho — that he once spoofed his own fan­boy­ism in a com­mer­cial for Freix­enet sparkling wine. For those who’d pre­fer a more con­ven­tion­al Scors­ese-inspired binge watch, we’ve also fea­tured his list of twelve favorite films over­all and his list of 39 Essen­tial For­eign Films. What­ev­er genre you favor, you could do much worse than tak­ing his rec­om­men­da­tions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber, 2014.

via The Dai­ly Beast

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Patti Smith’s Award-Winning Memoir, Just Kids, Now Available in a New Illustrated Edition

Hard to believe it’s almost a decade ago now since Pat­ti Smith’s Just Kids took over Barnes & Noble dis­plays, topped best­seller lists, won the Nation­al Book Award, and sent Wikipedia search­es for “Pat­ti Smith” into the stratos­phere. A mem­oir of her grit­ty New York sal­ad days with roommate/lover/best friend/soulmate/photographer Robert Map­plethor­pe, the book imme­di­ate­ly entered “that gold­en canon of clas­sic New York sto­ries about young peo­ple com­ing to the city to find out who they were meant to be,” as NPR’s Mau­reen Cor­ri­g­an writes.

Indeed, Just Kids should be con­sid­ered rep­re­sen­ta­tive, its full text now a locus clas­si­cus of bohemi­an find­ing-your­self-in-New-York sto­ries. (The embit­tered con­verse of the genre is for­ev­er crowned by Joan Didion’s “Good­bye to All That.”) But Smith didn’t rest on the many lau­rels the book gar­nered her. She released a wide­ly-acclaimed album two years lat­er, with a bonus track on the deluxe edi­tion called “Just Kids,” then col­lab­o­rat­ed with Colom­bian artist José Anto­nio Suárez Lon­doño on the (sad­ly out-of-print) Hecatomb.

In 2015, Smith fol­lowed Just Kids with anoth­er mem­oir, M Train, a trav­el­ogue of sorts—of her lit­er­ary pil­grim­ages and jour­neys through the city that embraced her. But as her work eth­ic shows, and as Just Kids doc­u­ments in detail, she didn’t just luck out in the big city but fought her way to cre­ative free­dom and inde­pen­dence with zeal and real self-con­fi­dence, believ­ing in the pow­er of poet­ry and rock and roll, and of her place among the six­ties roy­al­ty she encoun­tered while “still a gan­g­ly twen­ty-two-year-old book clerk, strug­gling simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with sev­er­al unfin­ished poems.”

“I felt an inex­plic­a­ble sense of kin­ship with these peo­ple,” she wrote, for exam­ple, of her run-ins with Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Jimi Hen­drix ahead of Wood­stock, a “feel­ing of pre­science” that she might “one day walk in their path.” She saw “infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties” in the Chelsea Hotel’s plas­ter ceil­ing, “the man­dala of my life.” You may call it faith, hubris, or delu­sion, but she sure showed us, and keeps show­ing us, that she earned her cred. Just Kids will inspire young artists for gen­er­a­tions, not only through its first, explo­sive print­ing, but through a pos­si­ble series on Show­time, who acquired the rights in 2015, and, now, in an illus­trat­ed edi­tion just released last week.

The book res­onates for its depic­tions of a bygone, decayed New York, when free spir­its could scrape togeth­er their artis­tic selves with next to noth­ing, with­out hav­ing to craft their every move for social media. Smith’s vivid­ly expres­sive writ­ing brings that lost world alive in a wild­ly suc­cess­ful exper­i­ment, as she told KCRW in a 2010 inter­view, to “infuse truth with mag­ic and love.”

She announced the book’s new edi­tion on her Insta­gram, a forum she has tak­en to with aplomb, as antic­i­pat­ing the “30th year since Robert Map­plethor­pe’s pass­ing.” A poignant reminder, espe­cial­ly since she wrote the book, she once revealed, as a deathbed promise to her friend.

The full-col­or illus­trat­ed edi­tion of Just Kids fea­tures nev­er-before pub­lished pho­tos, draw­ings, and oth­er ephemera depict­ing major fig­ures in Smith’s young life, like Sam Shep­ard, William Bur­roughs, and Allen Gins­berg, as well as her and Map­plethor­pe’s first Brook­lyn apart­ment, the icon­ic Max’s Kansas City, and the fire escape of the Chelsea Hotel. Order a copy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

Hear a Com­plete Chrono­log­i­cal Discog­ra­phy of Pat­ti Smith’s Fierce­ly Poet­ic Rock and Roll: 13 Hours and 142 Tracks

Pat­ti Smith Reads Oscar Wilde’s 1897 Love Let­ter De Pro­fundis: See the Full Three-Hour Per­for­mance

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

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