The Big Lebowski at 20: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman & Steve Buscemi Reunite to Discuss the Coen Brothers’ Beloved Film

The Big Lebows­ki came out 20 years ago. State­ments of that kind are often pre­ced­ed by the ques­tion of whether you want to feel old, but this one would­n’t have quite the same effect: on some lev­el, The Big Lebows­ki feels as old as, or maybe even old­er than, cin­e­ma itself. In their half-hour con­ver­sa­tion look­ing back at the film and its lega­cy, NBC’s Har­ry Smith asks actors John Good­man, Steve Busce­mi, and Jeff Bridges, bet­ter known to the movie’s legions of fans as Wal­ter Sobchak, Don­ny Ker­abat­sos, and of course Jeff Lebows­ki — also known as His Dude­ness, Dud­er, El Dud­eri­no if you’re not into the whole brevi­ty thing, but above all as the Dude — whether it felt like 20 years have passed. More than one of them come right back with just the right response: “It does and does­n’t.”

The con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on such sub­jects as what they first thought of the script (“Right on the page, it felt like it was impro­vi­sa­tion,” says Bridges), the spir­i­tu­al impli­ca­tions of the sto­ry and char­ac­ters (Bridges tells of the encounter with a Bud­dhist teacher that led to the book The Dude and the Zen Mas­ter in 2013), how many “F‑bombs” the final prod­uct end­ed up con­tain­ing (275), and what usu­al­ly hap­pens in the still extreme­ly com­mon event of an encounter with a Lebows­ki fan on the street.

All three actors evince great plea­sure at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remem­ber work­ing with Joel and Ethan Coen on what would become the direct­ing broth­ers’ most beloved film, one that has inspired its own fes­ti­val, its own reli­gion, and much more besides. But as many of the movie’s cur­rent enthu­si­asts (per­haps due to their youth, per­haps due to their indul­gence in mem­o­ry-cloud­ing sub­stances) won’t remem­ber, The Big Lebows­ki did­n’t become a phe­nom­e­non right away.

“So you make a movie like this, you love the script, you love work­ing togeth­er,” as Smith puts it, “and then nobody goes to see it.” Indeed, the moviego­ing pub­lic of 1998 did­n’t quite know what to make of the fact that, as a fol­low-up to the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Far­go, the Coen broth­ers served up what Good­man describes as “Philip Mar­lowe meets The Trip.” As Busce­mi remem­bers, “it took like five or six years before peo­ple start­ed com­ing up to me and say­ing that they loved it.” Then came the col­lege kids, who would tell him not just that they loved it, but that they’d seen it eight, nine, ten times. The first time peo­ple saw The Big Lebows­ki they came out in bewil­der­ment ask­ing what it means, but “what the movie does so bril­liant­ly is, once you know what it is, then you real­ly enjoy, like, every moment of it.”

Among the few view­ers attuned enough to its fre­quen­cy to enjoy it right away was Roger Ebert: “Some may com­plain The Big Lebows­ki rush­es in all direc­tions and nev­er ends up any­where,” he wrote in his ini­tial review. “That isn’t the film’s flaw, but its style.” But even his appre­ci­a­tion grew over time, and in 2010 he anoint­ed it one of his offi­cial Great Movies, describ­ing it as involv­ing “kid­nap­ping, ran­som mon­ey, a porno king, a reclu­sive mil­lion­aire, a run­away girl, the Mal­ibu police, a woman who paints while nude and strapped to an over­head har­ness, and the last act of the dis­agree­ment between Viet­nam vet­er­ans and Flower Pow­er,” all held togeth­er by “a plot and dia­logue that per­haps only the Coen broth­ers could have devised.” Hence Bridges’ wor­ries about get­ting the music of the script down cold before shoot­ing: “Did I get the ‘man’ in the right place? Did I add anoth­er F‑bomb?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is The Big Lebows­ki a Great Noir Film? A New Way to Look at the Coen Broth­ers’ Icon­ic Movie

What Makes a Coen Broth­ers Movie a Coen Broth­ers Movie? Find Out in a 4‑Hour Video Essay of Bar­ton Fink, The Big Lebows­ki, Far­go, No Coun­try for Old Men & More

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

Tui­leries: The Coen Broth­ers’ Short Film About Steve Buscemi’s Very Bad Day in the Paris Metro

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

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.

Rembrandt’s Masterpiece, The Night Watch, Will Get Restored and You Can Watch It Happen Live, Online

Many of the world’s most admired paint­ings don’t look the same now as when the artists com­plet­ed them. Time, espe­cial­ly when it adds up to cen­turies and cen­turies, takes its toll on paints and the can­vas­es to which they’re applied, or at least it changes them in ways human­i­ty has­n’t pre­dict­ed or ful­ly under­stood. Take Rem­brandt’s 1642 Mili­tia Com­pa­ny of Dis­trict II under the Com­mand of Cap­tain Frans Ban­ninck Cocq, much bet­ter known as The Night Watch — but only because a lay­er of var­nish on top of the paint dark­ened over time, giv­ing the scene an unin­tend­ed noc­tur­nal qual­i­ty. The var­nish came off in the 1940s, but much more work remains to return Rem­brandt’s mas­ter­piece to the state in which Rem­brandt him­self beheld it.

Start­ing next sum­mer, the Rijksmu­se­um will launch a mul­ti-year, mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar project to give The Night Watch its long-await­ed thor­ough­go­ing restora­tion. (The three restora­tions the paint­ing received in the 20th cen­tu­ry repaired dam­ages inflict­ed by the occa­sion­al vis­i­tor bent, for rea­sons known only to them­selves, on destroy­ing it.)

The insti­tu­tion “plans to first study the paint­ing for about eight months, using new scan­ning tech­nolo­gies that were not avail­able dur­ing pre­vi­ous restora­tions, such as macro X‑ray flu­o­res­cence scan­ning, which can explore dif­fer­ent lay­ers of the paint sur­face to deter­mine what needs to be done.” Through­out the whole process, “a trans­par­ent show­case will be built around the paint­ing, the sci­en­tists and the restor­ers, so that vis­i­tors can view the progress.”

Art con­ser­va­tors have tra­di­tion­al­ly done their metic­u­lous work away from pub­lic eyes, but in the 21st cen­tu­ry pub­lic restora­tion has become, as we now say, a thing. Ear­li­er this month, Art­net’s Janelle Zara wrote about var­i­ous oth­er muse­um projects that have put “a pub­lic face on this nor­mal­ly closed-door pro­fes­sion,” even involv­ing social media plat­forms like Insta­gram in the process. The Rijksmu­se­um, as its direc­tor Taco Dib­bits announces in the video above, will take it a step fur­ther by stream­ing all the restora­tion work online, pro­vid­ing view­ers around the world a clos­er look at the paint­ing than they’ve ever had before, no mat­ter how many times they’ve vis­it­ed the Rijksmu­se­um’s Night Watch Hall in per­son. The first stages of the process will deter­mine how, exact­ly, The Night Watch has changed over the past 376 years. Dur­ing it we’ll no doubt find that Rem­brandt, whose finest work seems to grow rich­er with each exam­i­na­tion, still has a few sur­pris­es in store for us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300+ Etch­ings by Rem­brandt Now Free Online, Thanks to the Mor­gan Library & Muse­um

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

What Makes The Night Watch Rembrandt’s Mas­ter­piece

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 361,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces by Rem­brandt Includ­ed!

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.

Behold Kurt Vonnegut’s Drawings: Writing is Hard. Art is Pure Pleasure.

I see hints of blue­prints, tile work, lead­ed-glass win­dows, William Blake, Paul Klee, Saul Stein­berg, Al Hirschfeld, Edward Gorey, my mother’s wasp waist, cats and dogs. I see my father, at age four, forty, and eighty-four, doo­dling his heart out.

—Nanette Von­negut

Car­toon­ist, edu­ca­tor, and neu­rol­o­gy buff Lyn­da Bar­ry believes that doo­dling is good for the cre­ative brain.

In sup­port of that the­o­ry, we sub­mit author Kurt Von­negut, a very con­vinc­ing case.

His daugh­ter, Nanette, notes that he was drawn by the human face—his own and those of oth­ers.

Por­traits include one of his best-known fic­tion­al char­ac­ters, the unsuc­cess­ful sci­ence fic­tion author Kil­go­re Trout. It’s a rev­e­la­tion, espe­cial­ly to those of us who imag­ined Trout as some­thing  clos­er to vet­er­an char­ac­ter actor Sey­mour Cas­sel.

In addi­tion to his humor­ous doo­dles, Von­negut was known to chis­el out a sculp­ture or two on the kitchen counter.

As a Cape Cod year-rounder, he paint­ed seascapes.

He had a one-man show of his felt tip draw­ings in Green­wich Vil­lage in 1980 (“not because my pic­tures were any good but because peo­ple had heard of me”).

But the doo­dles are what cap­tured the pub­lic’s imag­i­na­tion, from the illus­tra­tions of Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons to his numer­ous self por­traits.

The son and grand­son of archi­tects, Von­negut pre­ferred to think of him­self less as an artist than as a “pic­ture design­er.” Work­ing on a nov­el was a “night­mare,” but draw­ing was pure plea­sure.

Per­fec­tion was not the goal. Von­negut real­ized a sym­pa­thet­ic com­mu­ni­ty would spring up around an artist strug­gling with­in his lim­i­ta­tions, and act­ed accord­ing­ly.

To that end, he rec­om­mend­ed that peo­ple prac­tice art “no mat­ter how bad­ly because it’s known to make a soul grow.”

 

See a book of 145 Von­negut draw­ings curat­ed by his daugh­ter, Nanette Von­negut here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Maps Out the Uni­ver­sal Shapes of Our Favorite Sto­ries

22-Year-Old P.O.W. Kurt Von­negut Writes Home from World War II: “I’ll Be Damned If It Was Worth It”

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 15 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Iggy Pop’s Totally Bonkers Contract Rider for Concerts

Pho­to by Man Alive!, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“There’s only a cou­ple of peo­ple I’ve felt gen­uine­ly fright­ened tak­ing pho­tos in front of live because the per­son is out of con­trol,” says Man­ches­ter-based rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kevin Cum­mins. The first was Joy Division’s Ian Cur­tis, “and Iggy Pop was anoth­er.” Iggy’s onstage mania rivals any lead singer, liv­ing or dead. The intim­i­dat­ing Hen­ry Rollins tells a sto­ry about his one and only attempt to upstage his idol. He describes Iggy as “two guys. There’s Jim (Jim Osterberg)—‘Hey, my name’s Jim, good to meet you, man, how are you?’ And then there’s Iggy Pop,” Rollins says, and does an impres­sion of a seething mad­man. “Jim is cool. Iggy is like this ter­ri­fy­ing mon­ster of rock and roll.”

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the sto­ries of those ear­ly Stooges gigs. Smear­ing him­self with peanut but­ter, cut­ting him­self open with bro­ken glass and leap­ing into the audi­ence long before stage-div­ing was some­thing peo­ple did. We’ve also heard a lot more from Jim these days: shirt­less, but “lucid, intel­li­gent,” and dis­play­ing excel­lent recall in his inter­view with Marc Maron in the comedian’s garage; most­ly clothed, bespec­ta­cled, and pro­fes­so­r­i­al in his deliv­ery of the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture.

In inter­views and on his radio show, includ­ing a recent two-hour Bowie trib­ute, he is wit­ty, gre­gar­i­ous, and some­times wist­ful. But Iggy’s still pret­ty ter­ri­fy­ing onstage even into his elder-states­man-hood. Wit­ness the stage plan drawn up in 2006 by Jos Grain, pro­duc­tion man­ag­er for the 21st-cen­tu­ry tour­ing ver­sion of Iggy and The Stooges.

we like to keep it as clear as pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly at the front.

This means all cables for the down­stage wedges etc must be run off the front in the pit, not accross the front of the stage.

My insur­ance does­n’t cov­er me for allow­ing rock­stars to fall off the front of the stage.

No light­ing or mon­i­tor cables, no pow­er cables, no toy robots, no tele­vi­sion evan­ge­lists, no tele­vi­sion cam­era­men, no sub­stances relat­ed to the man­u­fac­ture of cre­osote, no plas­tic sea­hors­es, no baili­wicks, no crepes­cules, no kooks and espe­cial­ly NO CAMERAMEN.

This way Iggy can run around in his cus­tom­ary man­ner like a crazed run­ning around-type-thing and we can all relax in a haze of self-sat­is­fied pan­ic. [all sic]

This excerpt comes from the sav­age­ly fun­ny, and total­ly bonkers, text of Grain’s “Mar­velous and Most Instruc­tive Infor­ma­tion Doc­u­ment: Includ­ing Utter­ly Con­fus­ing Com­ments and Asides”— oth­er­wise known as the con­tract rid­er, the spec­i­fi­ca­tions detail­ing the band’s require­ments. “When you’re as leg­endary as Iggy Pop,” writes Luka Osbourne at Enmore Audio, “you tend to get away with a lot.”

Grain’s rider—a hilar­i­ous write-up prone to pro­fane fugue states full of jar­ring non-sequiturs and riotous asides—pushes the genre as far as it can go. “If there was a Gram­my for ‘best con­tract rid­er,’ writes Bri­an Mack­ay at the Spring­field, Illi­nois State Jour­nal-Reg­is­ter, “Iggy and the Stooges would retire the cat­e­go­ry.” A note about a gui­tar rack sud­den­ly swerves into the fol­low­ing rever­ie:

Horse v Pan­da? I think the pan­da might just win it if he man­aged to get on the horse’s back and sink his teeth and claws into its neck. With­out get­ting kicked in the bol­locks, of course. Two hooves in a Pan­da’s gonads would prob­a­bly bring vic­to­ry to the horse, though I doubt it would cel­e­brate much. Hors­es arent big cham­pagne drinkers.
And fuck­ing Grand Prix dri­vers just squirt it all over each oth­er.

The requests get ridicu­lous­ly spe­cif­ic, but it’s still more or less stan­dard rock star stuff (noth­ing on the order of Van Halen’s “no brown M&M’s”) …or is it…? When we get down to the require­ments for Iggy’s dress­ing room, Grain asks for:

Some­body dressed as Bob Hope doing fan­tas­tic Bob Hope imper­son­ations and telling all those hilar­i­ous Bob Hope jokes about golf and Hol­ly­wood and Bing Cros­by. Oh God, I wish I’d been alive in those days, so that Bob Hope could have come and enter­tained me in some World War 2 hell-hole before I went off and got shot. What joy they must have expe­ri­enced…

OR 

Sev­en dwarves, dressed up as those dwarves out of that mar­velous Walt Dis­ney film about the woman who goes to sleep for a hun­dred years after bit­ing a poi­soned dwarf, or maybe after prick­ing her fin­ger on a rather sharp apple… or some­thing. What was the name of that film? Was it Cin­derel­la? Taller peo­ple are accept­able, of course. It’s atti­tude, more than height, that’s impor­tant here. Don’t for­get the pointy hats!

As for the band’s needs, oth­er ref­er­ences to pan­das come up. The bass play­er needs three Mar­shall VBA Bass Ampli­fiers. “Please make sure they’re good ones,” Grain writes, “or we’ll all end up as worm­like web-based life forms in the bass player’s online lit­er­ary dia­hor­rea. Hon­est­ly. He’s like a sort of inter­net Pepys or Boswell, except with­out the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.” The Stooges’ bass play­er, by the way, is punk leg­end Mike Watt, whose tour diaries real­ly are a species of lit­er­ary genius.

Some­times when I get down about the state of rock and roll, I remem­ber that Iggy Pop is still alive and run­ning around shirt­less onstage like a lunatic at 71. And I remem­ber this rid­er exists. Read the whole thing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Marc Maron Recalls Inter­view­ing a Shirt­less Iggy Pop in LA Garage

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Stream Iggy Pop’s Two-Hour Radio Trib­ute to David Bowie

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

How the Sears Catalog Disrupted the Jim Crow South and Helped Give Birth to the Delta Blues & Rock and Roll

For all of the jus­ti­fied ire direct­ed at cer­tain online retail­ers for their anti-com­pet­i­tive prac­tices, tax eva­sion, labor exploita­tion, and so on, one fact often goes unre­marked upon since it seems to fall out­side the usu­al nar­ra­tives. The explo­sion of online retail gave pur­chas­ing pow­er to peo­ple locked out of cer­tain mar­kets because of income or geog­ra­phy or dis­abil­i­ty, etc. More­over, it gave peo­ple out­side of tra­di­tion­al mar­ket demo­graph­ics the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with new inter­ests in judg­ment-free zones.

These changes have allowed a gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians access to instru­ments they would nev­er have been will­ing or able to find in the past. For exam­ple, Fend­er gui­tars has dis­cov­ered that women now account for 50 per­cent of all “begin­ner and aspi­ra­tional play­ers,” notes Rolling Stone. “The instru­ment-mak­er is adjust­ing its mar­ket­ing focus accord­ing­ly… around a mas­sive new audi­ence that it’d pre­vi­ous­ly been ignor­ing.” Walk­ing into a music store and feel­ing like you’ve been ignored by the big com­pa­nies may not make for an encour­ag­ing expe­ri­ence. But the abil­i­ty to buy gear online with­out a has­sle may be one sig­nif­i­cant rea­son why so many more women have tak­en up the instru­ment.

Which brings us to Sears. Yes, it’s a round­about way to get there, but bear with me. You’ve sure­ly heard the news by now, the ven­er­a­ble retail giant has gone bank­rupt after 132 years in business—a casu­al­ty of preda­to­ry cap­i­tal­ism or bad busi­ness prac­tices or the inevitably chang­ing times or what-have-you. A num­ber of eulo­gies have described the company’s ear­ly “cat­a­logue shop­ping sys­tem” as “the Ama­zon of its day,” as Lila MacLel­lan points out at Quartz. The com­par­i­son sure­ly fits. Dur­ing its hey­day, peo­ple all over the coun­try, in the most far-flung rur­al areas, could order almost any­thing, even a house.

But a num­ber of sto­ries, includ­ing MacLel­lan’s, have also described Sears, Roe­buck & Com­pa­ny as a great equal­iz­er of its day for the way it bust­ed the Jim Crow bar­ri­ers black shop­pers once faced. Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ry pro­fes­sor Louis Hyman has post­ed a thread on his Twit­ter and giv­en an inter­view on Jezebel describ­ing the democ­ra­tiz­ing pow­er of the Sears Cat­a­log in the late 19th cen­tu­ry for black Amer­i­cans, most of whom lived in rur­al areas (as did most Amer­i­cans gen­er­al­ly) and had to suf­fer dis­crim­i­na­tion from white shop­keep­ers, who charged inflat­ed prices, denied sales and cred­it, forced black cus­tomers to wait at the back of long lines, and so on.

Hyman talks about this spe­cif­ic his­to­ry in the video lec­ture above (start­ing at 6:24). The vicious­ness of seg­re­ga­tion didn’t stop at the store. As he says, local post­mas­ters would often refuse to sell stamps or mon­ey orders to black cus­tomers. The Sears Cat­a­log, then, includ­ed spe­cif­ic instruc­tions for giv­ing cash direct­ly to mail car­ri­ers. Store­keep­ers burned the cat­a­logs, but still rur­al cus­tomers were able to get their hands on them and order what they need­ed, pay cash, and receive it with­out dif­fi­cul­ty. A new world opened up for peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly shut out of many con­sumer mar­kets, and this includ­ed, writes Chris Kjor­ness at Rea­son, turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry musi­cians.

The Sears gui­tar, says Michael Roberts, who teach­es the his­to­ry of the blues at DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty, “was inex­pen­sive enough that the blues artists were able to save up the mon­ey they made as share­crop­pers to make that pur­chase.” As Kjor­ness puts it, “There was no Delta blues before there were cheap, read­i­ly avail­able steel-string gui­tars. And those gui­tars, which trans­formed Amer­i­can cul­ture, were brought to the boon­docks by Sears, Roe­buck & Co.”

The first Sears, Roe­buck cat­a­log was pub­lished in 1888. It would go on to trans­form Amer­i­ca. Farm­ers were no longer sub­ject to the vari­able qual­i­ty and arbi­trary pric­ing of local gen­er­al stores. The cat­a­log brought things like wash­ing machines and the lat­est fash­ions to the most far-flung out­posts. Gui­tars first appeared in the cat­a­log in 1894 for $4.50 (around $112 in today’s mon­ey). By 1908 Sears was offer­ing a gui­tar, out­fit­ted for steel strings, for $1.89 ($45 today), mak­ing it the cheap­est har­mo­ny-gen­er­at­ing instru­ment avail­able. 

Qual­i­ty improved, prices went down, and blues­men could get their instru­ments by mail. Most of the big names we asso­ciate with the Delta blues bought a gui­tar from the Sears Cat­a­log. Gui­tars became such a pop­u­lar item that Sears intro­duced their own brand, under the exist­ing Sil­ver­tone line, in the 1930s. Lat­er bud­get gui­tars and ampli­fiers sold through Sears includ­ed Dan­elec­tro, Val­co, Har­mo­ny, Kay, and Teis­co (all of whom, at one time or anoth­er, made Sil­ver­tones).

These brands are now known to musi­cians as clas­sic roots and garage rock instru­ments played by the likes of Jack White, but their his­to­ries all come togeth­er with Sears (you may hear them lumped togeth­er some­times as “the Sears gui­tars”). The com­pa­ny first sup­plied blues­men and coun­try pick­ers with acoustic gui­tars, but “once the sound of the elec­tric gui­tar became that of Amer­i­can music,” Whet Moser writes at Chica­go Mag­a­zine, “teens in garages all over start­ed pick­ing up axes, and Sears was there to sup­ply them.”

Through their busi­ness deal with Nathan Daniel, they man­u­fac­tured the “amp-in-case” line of Dan­elec­tro Masonite gui­tars, sold in stores and cat­a­logs. These funky 50s instru­ments, designed for max­i­mum cost-cut­ting, incor­po­rat­ed sur­plus lip­stick tubes as hous­ing for their pick­ups. They made such a dis­tinc­tive jan­g­ly sound, thanks to the way Daniel wired them, that it became a hall­mark of 50s and 60s garage rock. Often sold under the Sil­ver­tone name as well, Dan­elec­tro gui­tars were cheap, but well designed. (Jim­my Page has had a par­tic­u­lar fond­ness for the Dan­elec­tro 59).

While the prod­uct his­to­ry of Sears elec­tric gui­tars is incred­i­bly com­pli­cat­ed, with brand names, designs, and prod­uct lines shift­ing from year to year, it’s enough to say that with­out their bud­get gui­tars and amps, many of the strug­gling musi­cians who inno­vat­ed the blues and rock and roll would have been unable to afford their instru­ments. The sto­ry of Sears writ large can be told as the sto­ry of a mar­ket “dis­rup­tor” rais­ing stan­dards of liv­ing for mil­lions of rur­al and urban Amer­i­cans. The company’s inno­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion schemes were also total­ly cen­tral to the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can pop­u­lar music.

via @TedGioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the First Record­ed Blues Song by an African Amer­i­can Singer: Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” (1920)

His­to­ry of Rock: New MOOC Presents the Music of Elvis, Dylan, Bea­t­les, Stones, Hen­drix & More

A Brief His­to­ry of Gui­tar Dis­tor­tion: From Ear­ly Exper­i­ments to Hap­py Acci­dents to Clas­sic Effects Ped­als

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

Stephen Hawking’s Final Book and Scientific Paper Just Got Published: Brief Answers to the Big Questions and “Information Paradox”

How did it all begin?  Is there a god? Can we pre­dict the future? Is there oth­er intel­li­gent life in the uni­verse? For decades, many of us turned to Stephen Hawk­ing for answers to those ques­tions, or at least supreme­ly intel­li­gent sug­ges­tions as to where the answers might lie. But the cel­e­brat­ed astro­physi­cist’s death ear­li­er this year — after an aston­ish­ing­ly long life and career, giv­en the chal­lenges he faced — took that option away. It turns out, though, that we haven’t actu­al­ly heard the last of him: his last book, Brief Answers to the Big Ques­tions (whose trail­er you can watch just above), came out just this week.

The book is quin­tes­sen­tial Hawk­ing,” writes physics pro­fes­sor Marce­lo Gleis­er at NPR. “He starts by address­ing the ques­tions in physics and cos­mol­o­gy that he ded­i­cat­ed his intel­lec­tu­al life to answer, using easy-to-fol­low argu­ments and draw­ing from every­day images and thought exper­i­ments.” Hawk­ing’s answers to the big ques­tions fig­ure into his view of not just the world but all exis­tence: he believes, writes Gleis­er, “that human­i­ty’s evo­lu­tion­ary mis­sion is to spread through the galaxy as a sort of cos­mic gar­den­er, sow­ing life along the way. He believes, even if not with­out wor­ry, that we will devel­op a pos­i­tive rela­tion­ship with intel­li­gent machines and that, togeth­er, we will redesign the cur­rent fate of the world and of our species.”

In par­al­lel with his career as a pub­lic fig­ure and writer of pop­u­lar explana­to­ry books, which began with 1988’s A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Hawk­ing per­formed sci­en­tif­ic research on black holes. The Guardian’s sci­ence edi­tor Ian Sam­ple describes it as a “career-long effort to under­stand what hap­pens to infor­ma­tion when objects fall into black holes,” capped off by a posthu­mous­ly pub­lished paper titled “Black Hole Entropy and Soft Hair.” “Toss an object into a black hole and the black hole’s tem­per­a­ture ought to change,” writes Sam­ple. “So too will a prop­er­ty called entropy, a mea­sure of an object’s inter­nal dis­or­der, which ris­es the hot­ter it gets.” In the paper Hawk­ing and his col­lab­o­ra­tors show that “a black hole’s entropy may be record­ed by pho­tons that sur­round the black hole’s event hori­zon, the point at which light can­not escape the intense grav­i­ta­tion­al pull. They call this sheen of pho­tons ‘soft hair’.”

If that sounds tricky to under­stand, all of us who have appre­ci­at­ed Hawk­ing’s writ­ing know that we can at least go back to his books to get a grip on black holes and the ques­tions about them that get sci­en­tists most curi­ous. Much remains for future astro­physi­cists to work on about that “infor­ma­tion para­dox,” to do with where, exact­ly, every­thing that seem­ing­ly gets sucked into a black hole actu­al­ly goes. “We don’t know that Hawk­ing entropy accounts for every­thing you could pos­si­bly throw at a black hole, so this is real­ly a step along the way,” Hawk­ing’s col­lab­o­ra­tor Mal­colm J. Per­ry tells Sam­ple. “We think it’s a pret­ty good step, but there is a lot more work to be done.” As Hawk­ing sure­ly knew, the big ques­tions — in physics or any oth­er realm of exis­tence — nev­er quite get ful­ly answered.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Hawk­ing (RIP) Explains His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary The­o­ry of Black Holes with the Help of Chalk­board Ani­ma­tions

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Watch A Brief His­to­ry of Time, Errol Mor­ris’ Film About the Life & Work of Stephen Hawk­ing

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion

Watch Stephen Hawking’s Inter­view with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Record­ed 10 Days Before His Death: A Last Con­ver­sa­tion about Black Holes, Time Trav­el & More

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.

The Serial Killer Who Loved Jazz: The Infamous Story of the Axeman of New Orleans (1919)

If you are a fan of “Amer­i­can Hor­ror Sto­ry” you might remem­ber a char­ac­ter in Sea­son Three (“Coven”) played by Dan­ny Hus­ton, broth­er of actress Anjel­i­ca, son of direc­tor John. He was called The Axe­man, and if you were not par­tic­u­lar­ly steeped in New Orleans lore or ser­i­al killer his­to­ry, that par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence might have flown right past.

But denizens of the city know him full well, because of his bru­tal killing meth­ods, his weapon of choice, his ran­dom attacks…and his love of jazz. Oh, and the fact that he was nev­er caught.

Let’s talk about that jazz, though. At the time of his attacks, between 1918 and 1919, jazz was in its infan­cy and rapid­ly evolv­ing in this south­ern port city, which was new­ly unseg­re­gat­ed in the years after the Civ­il War. It was a mix of African-Amer­i­cans, Jews, Cre­ole, whites, and every­body else, and jazz was the sound of a young gen­er­a­tion ready to par­ty. (Need­less to say, old­er gen­er­a­tions hat­ed this music.)

At first the killer was not known as the Axe­man, but a mys­te­ri­ous intrud­er who had chis­eled open front doors, hacked own­ers (and their wives) to death with his axe, and dis­ap­peared, leav­ing behind his sig­na­ture weapon (which, it turned out, usu­al­ly belonged to the home own­er). The news­pa­pers at the time report­ed on every lurid detail and sent the city into a state of fear dur­ing the sum­mer of 1918.

His vic­tims were all Ital­ian shop­keep­ers, but that wasn’t enough to add his name to the his­to­ry books. But on March 14, 1919, that changed, when the New Orleans Times-Picayune pub­lished an infa­mous let­ter from the hand of the killer him­self:

Esteemed Mor­tal of New Orleans:

They have nev­er caught me and they nev­er will. They have nev­er seen me, for I am invis­i­ble, even as the ether that sur­rounds your earth. I am not a human being, but a spir­it and a demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orlea­ni­ans and your fool­ish police call the Axe­man.

When I see fit, I shall come and claim oth­er vic­tims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me com­pa­ny.

If you wish you may tell the police to be care­ful not to rile me. Of course, I am a rea­son­able spir­it. I take no offense at the way they have con­duct­ed their inves­ti­ga­tions in the past. In fact, they have been so utter­ly stu­pid as to not only amuse me, but His Satan­ic Majesty, Fran­cis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to dis­cov­er what I am, for it were bet­ter that they were nev­er born than to incur the wrath of the Axe­man. I don’t think there is any need of such a warn­ing, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.

Undoubt­ed­ly, you Orlea­ni­ans think of me as a most hor­ri­ble mur­der­er, which I am, but I could be much worse if I want­ed to. If I wished, I could pay a vis­it to your city every night. At will I could slay thou­sands of your best cit­i­zens (and the worst), for I am in close rela­tion­ship with the Angel of Death.

Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earth­ly time) on next Tues­day night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infi­nite mer­cy, I am going to make a lit­tle propo­si­tion to you peo­ple. Here it is: I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the dev­ils in the nether regions that every per­son shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just men­tioned. If every­one has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the bet­ter for you peo­ple. One thing is cer­tain and that is that some of your peo­ple who do not jazz it out on that spe­cif­ic Tues­day night (if there be any) will get the axe.

Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tar­tarus, and it is about time I leave your earth­ly home, I will cease my dis­course. Hop­ing that thou wilt pub­lish this, that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spir­it that ever exist­ed either in fact or realm of fan­cy.

–The Axe­man

Did you note the part in bold (our empha­sis)? Read­ers in 1919 cer­tain­ly did.

That Tues­day, the musi­cal city was even more live­ly than usu­al. If you had a record play­er, it played all night and loud­ly. If you had a piano, you were bang­ing away at the keys. And if you had a jazz club near­by, it was stand­ing room only. It might have been the biggest night of jazz in his­to­ry. And indeed, nobody got the chop that evening.

The Axe­man struck four more times that year, with only one vic­tim suc­cumb­ing to his wounds. And after that The Axe­man dis­ap­peared. With no fin­ger­prints, sus­pects, or descrip­tions of the killer, the case was nev­er solved.

His­to­ri­ans haven’t done well in uncov­er­ing his iden­ti­ty either, but one thing they agree on: the killer prob­a­bly didn’t write the let­ter.

His­to­ri­an Miri­am Davis has a the­o­ry that it was one John Joseph Dávi­la, a musi­cian and a jazz com­pos­er. Right after the pub­li­ca­tion of the Axe­man let­ter, he pub­lished a sheet-music tie-in called “The Mys­te­ri­ous Axeman’s Jazz (Don’t Scare Me Papa)”, and made a bun­dle of mon­ey from it.

Cash­ing in on a mur­der­ous event and pub­lic hys­te­ria? Now that’s quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Amer­i­can, my friends, just like jazz.

For more on this sto­ry, read Miri­am Davis’ book, The Axe­man of New Orleans: The True Sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Series About A Young Crime-Fight­ing Sig­mund Freud Is Com­ing to Net­flix

Some Joy for Your Ears: New Orleans Brass Band Plays Life-Affirm­ing Cov­er of Mar­vin Gaye’s “Sex­u­al Heal­ing”
Guns N’ Ros­es “Sweet Child O’ Mine” Retooled as 1920s New Orleans Jazz

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

Twerking, Moonwalking AI Robots–They’re Now Here

In a study released last year, Kat­ja Grace at Oxford’s Future of Human­i­ty Insti­tute “sur­veyed the world’s lead­ing researchers in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence by ask­ing them when they think intel­li­gent machines will bet­ter humans in a wide range of tasks.” After inter­view­ing 1,634 experts, they found that they “believe there is a 50% chance of AI out­per­form­ing humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automat­ing all human jobs in 120 years.” That includes every­thing from dri­ving trucks, run­ning cash reg­is­ters, to per­form­ing surgery, and writ­ing New York Times best­sellers. These sober­ing pre­dic­tions have prompt­ed aca­d­e­mics, like North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun, to write books along the lines of Robot-Proof: High­er Edu­ca­tion in the Age of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence which asks the ques­tion, How can uni­ver­si­ties “edu­cate the next gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents to invent, to cre­ate, and to discover—filling needs that even the most sophis­ti­cat­ed robot can­not”? It’s a good ques­tion. But a chal­leng­ing one too. Because it assumes we under­stand what robots can, and can­not, do. Case in point, Boston Dynam­ics released a video this week of its Spot­Mi­ni robot danc­ing to Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk.” It can moon­walk. It can twerk. Did the dance depart­ments see that com­ing? Doubt it.

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:

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.