Do Our Dreams Predict the Future? Vladimir Nabokov Spent Three Months Testing That Theory in 1964

in Books, Literature, Psychology | June 29th, 2018

Photo by NC Mallory via Flickr Commons

Why keep a dream journal? There’s probably amusing befuddlement and even a kind of roundabout enlightenment to be had in looking back over one’s subconscious visions, so vivid during the night, that vanish so soon after waking. But now we have another, more compelling reason to write down our dreams: Vladimir Nabokov did it. This we know from the recently published Insomniac Dreams, a collection of the entries from the Lolita and Pale Fire author’s dream journal — written, true to his compositional method, on index cards— edited and contextualized by Nabokov scholar Gennady Barabtarlo.

“On October 14, 1964, in a grand Swiss hotel in Montreux where he had been living for three years, Vladimir Nabokov started a private experiment that lasted till January 3 of the following year, just before his wife’s birthday (he had engaged her to join him in the experiment and they compared notes),” writes Barabtarlo in the book’s first chapter, which you can read online. “Every morning, immediately upon awakening, he would write down what he could rescue of his dreams. During the following day or two he was on the lookout for anything that seemed to do with the recorded dream.”

He wanted to “test a theory according to which dreams can be precognitive as well as related to the past. That theory is based on the premise that images and situations in our dreams are not merely kaleidoscoping shards, jumbled, and mislabeled fragments of past impressions, but may also be a proleptic view of an event to come.” That notion, writes Dan Piepenbring at the New Yorker, “came from J. W. Dunne, a British engineer and armchair philosopher who, in 1927, published An Experiment with Time, arguing, in part, that our dreams afforded us rare access to a higher order of time.” The book’s fan base included such other literary notables as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Aldous Huxley.

Nabokov had his own take on Dunne’s theory: “The waking event resembling or coinciding with the dream event does so not because the latter is a prophecy,” he writes on the first notecard in the stack produced by his own three-month experiment with time, “but because this would be the kind of dream that one might expect to have after the event.” But Nabokov’s dream data seem to have provided little in the way in absolute proof of what he called “reverse memory.” In the strongest example, a dream about eating soil samples at a museum precedes his real-life viewing of a television documentary about the soil of Senegal. And as Barabtarlo points out, the dream “distinctly and closely followed two scenes” of a short story Nabokov had written 25 years before.

And so we come to the real appeal of Insomniac Dreams: Nabokov’s skill at rendering evocative and memorable images in language — or rather, in his polyglot case, languages – as well as dealing with themes of time and memory. You can read a few samples at Lithub involving not just soil but sexual jealousy, a lecture hastily scrawled minutes before class time, the Red Army, and “a death-sign consisting of two roundish golden-yellow blobs with blurred edges.” They may bring to mind the words of the narrator of Ada, the novel Nabokov published the following year, who in his own consideration of Dunne guesses that in dreams, “some law of logic should fix the number of coincidences, in a given domain, after which they cease to be coincidences, and form, instead, the living organism of a new truth.”

Take Vladimir Nabokov’s Quiz to See If You’re a Good Reader–The Same One He Gave to His Students

Vladimir Nabokov (Channelled by Christopher Plummer) Teaches Kafka at Cornell

Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov Trade Letters and Ideas for a Film Collaboration (1964)

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Creativity

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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Famous Break Up of Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung Explained in a New Animated Video

in History, Psychology | June 28th, 2018

Making friends with similar interests can be a challenge for anyone. But imagine you are the founder of an entirely new discipline, with its own peculiar jargon, set of practices, and conceptual categories. Imagine, for example, that you are Sigmund Freud, who in 1896 made his break with medicine to pursue the work of psychoanalysis. Drawing on clinical experience with patients, his own self-analysis, cocaine-induced reveries, and an idiosyncratic reading of Greek mythology, Freud invented his strange psychosexual theories within the confidence of a very small circle of acquaintances and admirers.

One of his close relationships during those productive and turbulent years, with eccentric ear, nose, and throat doctor Wilhelm Fliess—a collaborator, influence, “confessor and moral supporter”—ended badly in 1906. It was in that same year that Freud met the much-younger Carl Jung. At their first meeting, the two “talked nonstop for 13 hours,” the Aeon video above, animated by Andrew Khosravani, tells us. Thus began the intense and now-legendary six-year friendship between the psychiatrists, a “passionate and surpassingly weird relationship, which, given the people involved, perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise.” Freud settled upon Jung as his protege and successor, the “Joshua to my Moses,” overjoyed to have found a friend who seemed to understand his ideas intimately.

They traveled to the US to give joint lectures and analyzed each other’s dreams. Freud wrote to propose that Jung should think of their relationship as between “father and son,” an odd proposal in any friendship, but especially when the “father” invented the Oedipal complex; “this did not go unnoticed by Freud, and he freaked out a little.” The unsettling dynamic already presented a shaky basis for a long term bond, but it was their wildly divergent ideas that ultimately drove them apart. Jung took issue with Freud’s obsession with libido as the primary driver of human behavior. Freud cast a withering eye on Jung’s keen interest in religion, mysticism, and the paranormal as expressions of a collective unconscious.

As he had divorced himself from Wilhelm Fleiss in 1906, Freud similarly, abruptly, broke off his friendship with Jung in 1913, sending a rather nasty break-up letter to sever their “emotional tie.” Jung, he wrote, “while behaving abnormally keeps shouting that he is normal,” giving rise to “the suspicion that he lacks insight into his illness. Accordingly, I propose that we abandon our personal relations entirely.” The video ends by declaring Freud the winner of this “feud,” such as it was, though the personal conflict seems rather one-sided. As Jung would later relate, he “soon discovered that when [Freud] had thought something, then it was settled.” After Freud broke it off, Jung wrote in his diary, “the rest is silence.”

As for the legacies of both men, these seem settled as well. They both had significant influence on writers and artists of all kinds, on literary theorists, new age mystics, and philosophers. But Jung is hardly taken seriously in the mainstream of psychiatry, and Freud’s ideas have largely been abandoned, save for one: as millions who still reveal themselves weekly on therapists’ couches can attest, the talking cure of psychoanalysis is alive and well.

via Aeon

The Famous Letter Where Freud Breaks His Relationship with Jung (1913)

Carl Jung Explains Why His Famous Friendship with Sigmund Freud Fell Apart in Rare 1959 Audio

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

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Glenn Gould Plays Bach on His U.S. TV Debut … After Leonard Bernstein Explains What Makes His Playing So Great (1960)

in Music, Television | June 28th, 2018

Why, 35 years after his death, do so many music lovers still respect Glenn Gould above all other pianists? One might assume that, since he played the work of such well-known composers as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, and Brahms, he would have acceptable substitutes among the most highly skilled pianists of each successive generation. But none have ever taken Gould’s place, and quite possibly none ever will. His distinctiveness owes both to sheer aptitude, and to something else besides: Leonard Bernstein attempts an explanation of that something in the clip above, from the CBS Ford Presents broadcast of January 31, 1960.

“Gould and Bach have become a kind of legendary combination, in spite of Gould’s extreme youth and Bach’s extreme age,” says Bernstein just before a 28-year-old Gould makes his American television debut playing Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D minor. He goes on to explain the special challenge of playing Bach, who “belonged to a time when composers weren’t being very generous with information about how to play their notes.”

Simply playing the notes on the page would result in an “unutterably dull” performance, but “to what extent can the pianist supply dynamic variety?” Gould imbued the pieces he played with variety, dynamic and otherwise, all of it reflecting his own “judgments, instincts, and highly individual personality.”

In the years after this broadcast (which you can see in full here), Gould’s personality would grow even more highly individual. Just two years later, Gould and the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto came preceded by Bernstein’s infamous disclaimer: he found himself not in “total agreement” Gould’s performance, one “distinctly different from any I’ve ever heard, or even dreamt of for that matter, in its remarkably broad tempi and its frequent departures from Brahms’ dynamic indications.” Two years after that, Gould would retire from live performance entirely, keeping a safe distance from his audience in the studio instead. We now remember him as the first classical pianist to truly inhabit the age of recording and broadcasting; did that habitation begin, in some sense, in the television studio with Bernstein?

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musical Genius on Display (1959)

Watch Glenn Gould Perform His Last Great Studio Recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (1981)

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebastian Bach (1962)

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

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 Faceboo k.

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How to Make the Oldest Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Nettle Pudding Dating Back 6,000 BC

in Food & Drink, History, Nature | June 28th, 2018

Attention culinary historians, survivalists, wildcrafters, and gonzo eaters!

Nettle pudding, Britain’s—and quite possibly the world’s—oldest recipe, looks like a good bet in the event of a zombie invasion, or some other catastrophe.

The ingredients—sorrel, watercress, dandelions, nettles—are the sort of thing you can find in a ditch or public park.

If you’re worried about pulling an Into the Wild, book a prophylactic tour with naturalist Wildman Steve Brill.

Should barley flour prove in short supply, don’t worry about it! Grind some acorns, like that kid in My Side of the Mountain.

You think early man sweated substitutions?

No way! Improvisation was the name of the game.

Rigid adherence to published ingredients will have no place in the zombie invasion! As Cardiff Metropolitan University’s home economist Dr. Ruth Fairchild told The Daily Mail:

You have to think how much more is wasted now than then.

Food waste today is huge. A third of the food in our fridges is thrown away every week without being eaten.

But they wouldn’t have wasted anything, even hooves would have been used for something.

They had to eat what was grown within a few miles, because it would have taken so long to collect everything, and even collecting water would have been a bit of a trial.

Yet today, so many people don’t want to cook because they think of it as a chore.

Stop thinking of nettle pudding as a chore! Start practicing for the zombie invasion with Antiquity Now’s step-by-step recipe and let us know how it tastes.

NETTLE PUDDING (an 8000 year old recipe!)

Ingredients

1 bunch of sorrel

1 bunch of watercress

1 bunch of dandelion leaves

2 bunches of young nettle leaves

Some chives

1 cup of barley flour

1 teaspoon of salt

Instructions

Chop the herbs finely and mix in the barley flour and salt.

Add enough water to bind it together and place in the center of a linen or muslin cloth.

Tie the cloth securely and add to a pot of simmering venison or wild boar (a pork joint will do just as well). Make sure the string is long enough to pull the pudding from the pot.

Cook the pudding until the meat is done (at least two hours).

Leave the pudding to cool slightly, remove the muslin, then cut the pudding into thick slices with a knife.

Serve the pudding with chunks of barley bread.

(Be mindful that fire may attract zombies. Keep a shovel beside you at all times. Good luck!)

You can read more about the discovery of Nettle Pudding at the BBC and The Telegraph.

Watch a 4000-Year Old Babylonian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Harvard

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dating Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

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

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Joseph Heller’s Handwritten Outline for Catch-22, One of the Great Novels of the 20th Century

in Books, Literature | June 27th, 2018

We remember Catch-22, more than half a century after its publication, as a rollicking satire of American military culture in wartime. But those of us who return to Joseph Heller’s debut novel, a cult favorite turned bestseller turned pillar of the modern canon, find a much more complex piece of work. Heller began writing the manuscript in 1953, while still employed as a copywriter at a small advertising agency. The project grew in ambition over the next eight years he spent working on it, eventually in collaboration with editor Robert Gottlieb and its other advocates at Simon & Schuster, the publisher that had bought it.

When Catch-22 finally went into print, one of those advocates, an advertising manager named Nina Bourne, launched an aggressive one-woman campaign to get copies into the hands of all the influential readers of the day. “You are mistaken in calling it a novel,” replied Evelyn Waugh. “It is a collection of sketches — often repetitious — totally without structure.” But the book’s apparently free-form narrative, full of and often turning on puns and seemingly far-fetched associations, had actually come as the product of a deceptive compositional rigor. As one piece of evidence we have Heller’s handwritten outline above. (You can also find a more easily legible version here.)

The outline’s grid presents the events of the story in chronological order, as the novel itself certainly doesn’t. The rows of its vertical axis run from early 1944 at the top to December 1944 at the bottom, and the columns of its horizontal axis lists the book’s major characters. They include the protagonist John Yossarian, Air Force bombardier; the “poor and rustic” Orr; Colonel Cathcart, a “Harvard graduate with a cigarette holder,” and Major Major, who “looks like Henry Fonda.” Within this matrix Heller kept track of what should happen to which characters when, at the time of which events of the real war.

The descriptions of events sketched on the outline range from the broadly comic (“Chaplain spies Yossarian naked in a tree and thinks it is a mystical vision”) to the cynical (“Milo justifies bombing the squadron in terms of free enterprise and the large profit he has made”) to the straightforwardly brutal (“Snowden is shot through the middle and dies”). Their placement together in the same neutral space reflects the single quality that, perhaps more than any other, brought upon the novel such a wide range of reactions and earned it a lasting place in not just American literature but American culture. Look at all the aspects of war straight on, it reminds us still today, and the total picture — bloody and senseless for the individual participant, though not without its minor triumphs and laughs — looks something like absurdist art.

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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 Faceboo k.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Discover an Archive of Taped New York City-Area Punk & Indie Concerts from the 80s and 90s: The Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Replacements & Many More

in Archives, Music | June 27th, 2018

“For decades now,” John Coulthart writes at Dangerous Minds, “Hoboken has been on an implacable course of gentrification… to the point that scruffy and legendary music venues can’t hack it there anymore.” One could replace “Hoboken” with the name of virtually any US city that once hosted a seminal live venue. You live long enough, you see the world completely change, and all the punk and indie clubs shut down or moved to Brooklyn. The 21st century has given us cities few indie artists or their fans can afford, even as it also gives us high-speed internet, huge servers, cheap web hosting, and hard drives that can hold terabytes of digital music.

But at least the club shows of the past can live on in incredibly awesome archives like The McKenzie Tapes, “a collection of live audio recordings from some of the New York City-area’s most prominent music venues of the 1980s and 1990s.”

Recorded by David McKenzie, a former employee of legendary Hoboken venue Maxwell’s and consummate concert-goer, the taped gigs come from such venues as The Ritz, Tramps, Irving Plaza, The Roxy, the Cat Club, Bowery Ballroom, CBGB’s, the Knitting Factory, and, of course, Maxwell’s.

Too many legendary bands to list in full show up here: some major highlights include The Replacements at the Ritz in 1986, right after the release of Tim. (See them at the top in a soundcheck at Maxwell’s that same year); the Pixies at Maxwell’s in 1988, playing songs from their just-released watershed Surfer Rosa; Sonic Youth on back-to-back nights at CBGB’s in 88, playing Daydream Nation the month before recording the album. Hüsker Dü, Wire, John Spencer Blues Explosion, The Fall, The Feelies, Afghan Whigs, Mudhoney, Violent Femmes, Mojo Nixon—the shows are a who’s who of punk and indie from the last two decades of the century, with appearances from 70s legends like Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine.

Sprinkled throughout are surprises like a 1989 performance from Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Arkestra at Maxwell’s and gigs by blues stalwarts T Model Ford and R.L. Burnside, as well as the occasional outlier show abroad. The project is the work of Jersey City record collector, archivist, event producer, and podcaster Tom Gallo, friend of David McKenzie, and he has done an excellent job of preserving not only the music from McKenzie’s tapes, but images of the tapes themselves—with hand-written band names and song titles and black-and-white Xeroxed covers—as well as Village Voice listings of the gigs and occasional ticket stubs, setlists, and live photos.

Don’t expect much in the way of sound quality—that’s part of the charm of a taped show. These are raw documents of the cassette age, a time come and gone, never to come again. We might not mourn its passing, but something—a spirit of experimental, noisy, tuneful, angry, raucous, lo-fi, analog indie fun—seems to have disappeared along with it. All of these digitized tapes are downloadable. Put ’em on your phone and relive the glory days, or discover these treasures from the recent past for the first time at The McKenzie Tapes here.

via Dangerous Minds

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Dancing in Movies: A Montage of Dance Moments from Almost 300 Feature Films

in Dance, Film | June 27th, 2018

Someone went through a great deal of effort to stitch together a montage of dance scenes from some 300 feature films. Below find a list of films in order of their appearance, and with the appropriate timestamp.

00:00:06 — Tropic Thunder (2008)

00:09:17 — 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

00:10:10 — Frank (2014)

00:11:02 — Deadpool (2016)

00:12:02 — Girlhood (2015)

00:13:10 — West Side Story (1961)

00:16:18 — Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

00:18:00 — Big (1988)

00:18:14 — Risky Business (1983)

00:19:05 — Forrest Gump (1994)

00:19:21 — 20th Century Women (2016)

00:21:02 — God Help the Girl (2014)

00:22:07 — Begin Again (2013)

00:23:16 — The Rocketeer (1991)

00:25:13 — Dead Poets Society (1989)

00:27:21 — Braveheart (1995)

00:28:22 — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

00:29:23 — Robin Hood (1973)

00:31:00 — Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

00:32:14 — Titanic (1997)

00:33:14 — Big Fish (2003)

00:35:07 — Go (1999)

00:36:14 — Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

00:37:12 — Citizen Kane (1941)

00:38:12 — Life is Beautiful (1997)

00:40:01 — White Nights (1985)

00:42:08 — Swing Time (1936)

00:44:13 — Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

00:45:21 — Mermaids (1990)

00:48:14 — Home Alone (1990)

00:49:18 — Mulholland Drive (2001)

00:50:22 — Boy (2010)

00:51:20 — Girl Asleep (2015)

00:52:08 — Despicable Me (2010)

00:55:05 — Airplane (1980)

00:57:08 — Carrie (1976)

00:58:21 — Love, Rosie (2014)

00:59:21 — The Mask (1994)

01:00:14 — Dope (2015)

01:01:13 — Rock of Ages (2012)

01:02:21 — Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

01:04:14 — Monthy Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

01:04:19 — Kung Fu Hustle (2004)

01:05:12 — Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

01:06:07 — (500) Days of Summer (2009)

01:08:23 — Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope (1977)

01:10:03 — The Muppets (2011)

01:11:00 — Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

01:10:03 — The Muppets (2011)

01:14:00 — Love Actually (2003)

01:16:05 — Mean Girls (2004)

01:19:01 — Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

01:20:15 — Scarface (1983)

01:22:05 — Grease (1978)

01:24:22 — It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

01:26:13 — The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)

01:28:13 — Young Frankenstein (1974)

01:29:16 — Get Smart (2008)

01:31:07 — My Fair Lady (1964)

01:32:12 — An Education (2009)

01:33:21- The Deer Hunter (1978)

01:35:06 — The Sitter (2011)

01:35:22 — Up in the Air (2009)

01:36:20 — Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

01:38:10 — This Is the End (2013)

01:39:13 — Hairspray (2007)

01:40:07 — Dumb and Dumber (1994)

01:41:03 — The Way Way Back (2013)

01:42:01 — Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

01:43:05 — Blazing Saddles (1974)

01:44:05 — Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

01:45:18 — Shrek 2 (2004)

01:47:18 — Flashdance (1983)

01:48:14 — The Gold Rush (1925)

01:49:10 — Magic Mike (2012)

01:50:20 — Viva Las Vegas (1964)

01:52:00 — Clerks II (2006)

01:53:10 — The Great Gatsby (2013)

01:54:08 — Eagle vs Shark (2007)

01:57:06 — What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

01:58:15 — The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

01:59:17 — Rush Hour (1998)

02:01:17 — Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

02:02:17 — The Last Picture Show (1971)

02:03:18 — Band of Outsiders (1964)

02:05:23 — Weird Science (1985)

02:07:15 — Reservoir Dogs (1992)

02:09:10 — Batman (1989)

02:12:20 — Mommy (2014)

02:14:00 — Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

02:15:20 — Hot Shots! (1991)

02:16:14 — Borat (2006)

02:17:14 — American Beauty (1999)

02:18:18 — Moonlight (2016)

02:19:14 — Superbad (2007)

02:20:15 — Garden State (2004)

02:21:15 — Royal Wedding (1951)

02:22:17 — The Big Lebowski (1998)

02:24:07 — My Week with Marilyn (2011)

02:25:13 — Mary Poppins (1964)

02:27:20 — Kickboxer (1989)

02:29:07 — The Blues Brothers (1980)

02:30:21 — Bring it On (2000)

02:32:07 — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

02:33:17 — Trainspotting (1996)

02:34:10 — American Gangster (2007)

02:34:21 — Don Jon (2013)

02:35:14 — Morris from America (2016)

02:36:08 — Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

02:36:08 — A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

02:39:06 — Striptease (1996)

02:40:10 — Donnie Darko (2001)

02:41:04 — The Pink Panther (1963)

02:41:20 — Monsters University (2013)

02:43:09 — Everybody Wants Some (2016)

02:44:18 — Clueless (1995)

02:46:13 — The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

02:47:04 — All That Jazz (1979)

02:48:04 — The Princess Diaries (2001)

02:50:16 — Sing Street (2016)

02:52:12 — While We’re Young (2014)

02:54:06 — Once Bitten (1985)

02:55:15 — Lost River (2014)

02:56:10 — Ruby Sparks (2012)

02:58:03 — Saturday Night Fever (1977)

02:59:05 — Boogie Nights (1997)

03:00:15 — The Reunion 2: The Funeral (2014)

03:01:11 — American Hustle (2013)

03:02:20 — Ex Machina (2015)

03:04:10 — The Losers (2010)

03:06:00 — Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

03:06:20 — The Best Man Holiday (2013)

03:07:10 — Step Up Revolution (2012)

03:08:19 — Shaun of the Dead (2004)

03:10:07 — Billy Elliot (2000)

03:11:22 — Funny Face (1957)

03:14:09 — King of New York (1990)

03:15:10 — Mistress America (2015)

03:16:13 — The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

03:17:15 — Save the Last Dance (2001)

03:18:14 — Elf (2003)

03:19:03 — The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

03:19:16 — Little Sister (2016)

03:21:00 — The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

03:22:04 — Moon (2009)

03:23:12 — The Boondock Saints (1999)

03:26:03 — Monsters University (2013)

03:27:08 — Let’s Be Cops (2014)

03:29:09 — The World’s End (2013)

03:31:04 — Fun Size (2012)

03:32:10 — Spider-Man 3 (2007)

03:34:14 — To Die For (1995)

03:35:16 — The Breakfast Club (1985)

03:37:11 — The Goonies (1985)

03:38:11 — The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

03:39:15 — Blue Valentine (2010)

03:41:01 — Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

03:42:22 — Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

03:43:16 — 13 Going On 30 (2004)

03:44:04 — Wedding Crashers (2005)

03:44:15 — Pitch Perfect (2012)

03:45:07 — Wayne’s World (1992)

03:45:21 — Milk (2008)

03:46:11 — Something Borrowed (2011)

03:47:17 — School of Rock (2003)

03:48:16 — Hitch (2005)

03:49:19 — The Kings of Summer (2013)

03:50:17 — Bling Ring (2013)

03:52:10 — Neighbors (2014)

03:53:04 — Animal House (1978)

03:54:07 — A League of Their Own (1992)

03:55:19 — Hot Rod (2007)

03:57:11 — Zoolander (2001)

03:58:17 — Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

03:59:17 — The Great Dictator (1940)

04:01:23 — Charlie’s Angels (2000)

04:03:03 — Romeo + Juliet (1996)

04:04:05 — Kill Your Darlings (2013)

04:05:02 — Amadeus (1984)

04:06:00 — Days of Heaven (1978)

04:10:07 — Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

04:12:15 — The Lobster (2015)

04:14:01 — House of Flying Daggers (2004)

04:15:13 — Big Night (1996)

04:17:23 — Band of Robbers (2015)

04:19:06 — Almost Famous (2000)

04:21:03 — Rain Man (1988)

04:22:15 — Brooklyn (2015)

04:23:10 — The Imitation Game (2014)

04:24:09 — Moulin Rouge! (2001)

04:27:13 — Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

04:29:12 — The Godfather (1972)

04:30:11 — The Sound of Music (1965)

04:32:01 — Dirty Dancing (1987)

04:34:08 — Focus (2015)

04:35:10 — The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

04:36:08 — Zombieland (2009)

04:37:07 — Beauty and the Beast (1991)

04:40:23 — The Addams Family (1991)

04:44:06 — Beetlejuice (1988)

04:47:02 — Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

04:49:12 — Like Crazy (2011)

04:50:09 — End of Watch (2012)

04:51:14 — Pretty in Pink (1986)

04:53:03 — House Party (1990)

04:54:05 — Along Came Polly (2004)

04:55:23 — Some Like it Hot (1959)

04:56:23 — Reality Bites (1994)

04:59:01 — Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

05:01:10 — Obvious Child (2014)

05:02:14 — The Man from U.N.C.L.E (2015)

05:04:14 — Lost in Translation (2003)

05:06:03 — Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

05:06:18 — A Clockwork Orange (1974)

05:08:14 — Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)

05:09:16 — Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi (1983)

05:10:18 — Penguins of Madagascar (2014)

05:11:19 — European Vacation (1985)

05:13:02 — The Wizard of Oz (1939)

05:15:04 — The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)

05:16:12 — Three Amigos (1986)

05:18:00 — The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)

05:18:23 — A Night At The Roxbury (1998)

05:20:01 — Coming To America (1988)

05:20:21 — Cinderella (2015)

05:21:17 — About Time (2013)

05:23:16 — Groundhog Day (1993)

05:25:03 — Chef (2014)

05:26:07 — Somewhere (2010)

05:28:08 — Office Space (1999)

05:30:03 — Shall We Dance (2004)

05:31:04 — The Artist (2011)

05:31:18 — The Red Shoes (1948)

05:33:21 — Strictly Ballroom (1992)

05:36:07 — The Turning Point (1977)

05:37:05 — Do the Right Thing (1989)

05:38:03 — Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

05:39:09 — Chicago (2002)

05:41:09 — Footloose (1984)

05:43:17 — When Harry Met Sally… (1989)

05:45:02 — The Producers (1967)

05:46:05 — The Full Monty (1997)

05:47:20 — Back to the Future Part III (1990)

05:49:00 — Dances with Wolves (1990)

05:50:07 — Hook (1991)

05:50:22 — Short Circuit (1986)

05:51:13 — Pulp Fiction (1994)

05:53:08 — Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

05:53:22 — Dazed and Confused (1993)

05:54:20 — From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

05:55:16 — My Golden Days (2015)

05:56:12 — Midnight in Paris (2013)

05:58:21 — The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991)

05:59:12 — The Intouchables (2011)

06:00:10 — Les Misérables (2012)

06:01:08 — A Royal Affair (2012)

06:02:11 — King Kong (2005)

06:03:17 — Happy Feet (2006)

06:04:20 — Tangled (2010)

06:06:01 — Tarzan (1999)

06:07:01 — Top Hat (1935)

06:08:01 — Hail, Caesar (2016)

06:09:05 — Center Stage (2000)

06:10:03 — American Pie (1999)

06:11:10 — A Hard Days Night (1964)

06:12:01 — 45 Years (2015)

06:12:15 — La Dolce Vita (1960)

06:13:10 — O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

06:14:00 — West Side Story (1961)

06:14:20 — Straight Outta Compton (2015)

06:15:12 — La La Land (2016)

06:16:12 — Her (2013)

06:17:08 — Being John Malkovich (1999)

06:18:03 — Flashdance (1983)

06:19:01 — Barton Fink (1991)

06:19:22 — The Artist (2011)

06:24:09 — Casablanca (1942)

06:26:13 — Sunset Boulevard (1950)

06:27:15 — Black Book (2006)

06:28:08 — Edward Scissorhands (1990)

06:29:17 — Labyrinth (1986)

06:31:18 — Short Term 12 (2013)

06:33:18 — When Marnie Was There (2014)

06:36:18 — Before Sunrise (1995)

06:37:15 — Scent of a Woman (1992)

06:39:14 — Sabrina (1954)

06:40:20 — Lolita (1962)

06:41:23 — Schindler’s List (1993)

06:42:14 — Gangs of New York (2002)

06:43:16 — Black Swan (2010)

06:44:23 — Pride and Prejudice (2005)

06:46:15 — Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

06:48:06 — Up (2009)

06:49:23 — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

06:51:05 — Out of Africa (1985)

06:52:22 — Jackie (2016)

06:54:15 — Rushmore (1998)

by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How Innovative Jazz Pianist Vince Guaraldi Became the Composer of Beloved Charlie Brown Music

in Music, Television | June 27th, 2018

Nostalgia gets a bad rap these days, and for good reason. Too many people who pine for the past seem to want the very worst parts of it back. Sadly, even fun retreads—8‑bit video games, 90s cartoon kitsch—became dark harbingers, as the memes of “Remember when?” listicles turned into carriers of viral evil. What a bummer. Is there any pop culture from the past that survives untainted by cynicism, sappiness, or trolldom? Unequivocally yes—that purest of artifacts is A Charlie Brown Christmas, and its perfection of a soundtrack by the Vince Guaraldi trio. Nothing can touch its sublime mix of joy, innocence, melancholy, and bossa nova-driven cool.

The 1965 movie, an earnest exploration of the holiday through the worldly-wise eyes of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang, has affected several generations since it first aired. But at first, the “unabashedly anti-consumerist story” met with disapproval from its sponsors, Coca-Cola and CBS, who “had no choice but to air it,” writes Liz Pelly at Rolling Stone, “they had already advertised it in TV Guide.”

Guaraldi trio drummer Jerry Granelli remembers that the corporate execs “really didn’t like that a little kid was going to come out and say what Christmas was all about, which wasn’t about shopping. And then the jazz music, which was improvised.”

Although each holiday season we’re supposed to believe there’s a war on Christmas, everyone, from every faith or none, loves A Charlie Brown Christmas. Its plainspoken piety is a big part of its appeal, but equally so is the music: the unalloyed delight of “Linus and Lucy” and its dance scene (top), the downbeat charm of “Christmastime is Here” and its children’s choir…. The story of how the special came to be is a fascinating one, a series of serendipitous encounters that begins in 1963 with producer Lee Mendelson at work on a documentary about Schulz.

While driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, he just happened to catch Guaraldi’s hit “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” (above). “It was melodic and open,” he thought, “and came in like a breeze off the bay. And it struck me that this might be the kind of music I was looking for.” He tracked the pianist and composer down to score his Schulz documentary. While that project fizzled, Coca-Cola liked it enough to enlist Mendelson for the Christmas special, and some of Guaraldi’s original music—including “Linus and Lucy”—migrated over, written, notes Derrick Bang, to “reflect Charlie Brown’s gentle, kid-oriented universe.” The whole soundtrack was laid down in three hours in the studio. “That’s just the way jazz records were recorded,” recalls Granelli.

“Christmastime is Here” was originally an instrumental (above), but at the last moment, Mendelson had the idea to “put some words to this.” Unable to find a lyricist in time, he penned those words himself. “We rushed it to the choir that Vince Guaraldi had been working with in San Francisco. And he recorded it, and we got it into the show about a week before it went on the air.” Guaraldi “probably would have loved to recycle much of the music from the never-aired documentary,” writes Bang, but the Christmas special called for a slightly different tone, so he wrote two additional compositions, including the bouncy “Skating,” below, “a lyrical jazz waltz highlighted by sparkling keyboard runs that sounded precisely like children ice-skating joyously on a frozen pond.”

The combined talents of Mendelson, Schulz, Guaraldi, and animator Bill Melendez have made A Charlie Brown Christmas an enduringly beloved classic, so critically successful at the time that the four collaborated on several other Peanuts films. In fact, Guaraldi composed music for a total of sixteen Peanuts movies, including the 1969 feature film A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Guaraldi’s compositional and instrumental skills will be forever linked to Charles Schulz’s iconic characters, perhaps no more so than during the winter holidays.

But he should by no means be solely remembered as the Peanuts composer—any more than the similarly bossa-nova inspired Burt Bacharach should be forever tied to his film themes. Guaraldi’s work stands on its own, or as jazz writer Ted Gioia recently tweeted, “I’ll say it straight: Vince Guaraldi was a brilliant, underrated jazz musician. No one need feel any embarrassment about enjoying (or praising) his music.” If, for some reason, you happened to feel you needed permission to love Guaraldi, there you have it.

The Velvet Underground as Peanuts Characters: Snoopy Morphs Into Lou Reed, Charlie Brown Into Andy Warhol

How Franklin Became Peanuts‘ First Black Character, Thanks to a Caring Schoolteacher (1968)

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Do Our Dreams Predict the Future? Vladimir Nabokov Spent Three Months Testing That Theory in 1964

The Famous Break Up of Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung Explained in a New Animated Video

Glenn Gould Plays Bach on His U.S. TV Debut … After Leonard Bernstein Explains What Makes His Playing So Great (1960)

How to Make the Oldest Recipe in the World: A Recipe for Nettle Pudding Dating Back 6,000 BC

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Discover an Archive of Taped New York City-Area Punk & Indie Concerts from the 80s and 90s: The Pixies, Sonic Youth, The Replacements & Many More

Dancing in Movies: A Montage of Dance Moments from Almost 300 Feature Films

How Innovative Jazz Pianist Vince Guaraldi Became the Composer of Beloved Charlie Brown Music

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