Stephen Hawking Picks the Music (and One Novel) He’d Spend Eternity With: Stream the Playlist Online

in Music | March 15th, 2018

Image by NASA, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In Aspen, Col­orado they hold a music fes­ti­val every year and, in 1995, Stephen Hawking—who joined the cos­mos this week—was there. This is where he first heard Fran­cis Poulenc’s Glo­ria, con­sid­ered by many the composer’s mas­ter­piece.

“You can sit in your office in the physics cen­tre there and hear the music with­out ever buy­ing a tick­et,” he said. “But on this occa­sion I was actu­al­ly in the tent to hear the Glo­ria. It is one of a small num­ber of works I con­sid­er great music.”

In 1992, the physi­cist was a guest on BBC Radio4’s long-run­ning “Desert Island Discs” pro­gram to nar­row down a list of music he’d take to the myth­i­cal island. Except for two pop songs, he chose clas­si­cal works. You can lis­ten to a Spo­ti­fy playlist we’ve made con­tain­ing the works below, or lis­ten to the full inter­view with excerpts of the music here.

“I first became aware of clas­si­cal music when I was 15,” he said in a Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty inter­view. “LPs had recent­ly appeared in Britain. I ripped out the mech­a­nism of our old wind-up gramo­phone and put in a turntable and a three-valve ampli­fi­er. I made a speak­er cab­i­net from an old book case, with a sheet of chip-board on the front. The whole sys­tem looked pret­ty crude, but it didn’t sound too bad.”

“At the time LPs were very expen­sive so I couldn’t afford any of them on a school­boy bud­get. But I bought Stravinsky’s Sym­pho­ny Of Psalms because it was on sale as a 10” LP, which were being phased out. The record was rather scratched, but I fell in love with the third move­ment, which makes up more than half the sym­pho­ny.” How­ev­er, on the BBC broad­cast, he says the first record he bought was Brahms’ Vio­lin Con­cer­to in D Major, and he made that one of his Island selec­tions.

The whole broad­cast is worth lis­ten­ing to for Hawking’s very per­son­al con­nec­tions to all his choic­es, from Wag­n­er to the Bea­t­les to his all-time favorite, Mozart’s Requiem. Final­ly the show also asks for Hawking’s favorite book—George Eliot’s Mid­dle­march—and a Lux­u­ry Choice, for which he choos­es creme brulee.

His two main plea­sures in life, he said, are physics and music.

But his final choice is the most poignant and sums up a life well lived, espe­cial­ly since doc­tors told him he had two years left…in 1963. He proved them wrong, and then some. As Edith Piaf sings, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawk­ing: The Physi­cist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliv­er

The Big Ideas of Stephen Hawk­ing Explained with Sim­ple Ani­ma­tion
Stephen Hawking’s Lec­tures on Black Holes Now Ful­ly Ani­mat­ed with Chalk­board Illus­tra­tions

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Watch “Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on The 405,” the New Oscar-Winning Portrait of an Artist

in Film | March 15th, 2018

A quick fyi: IndieWire has made avail­able on its YouTube chan­nel “Heav­en Is a Traf­fic Jam on The 405,” a 40-minute doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by Frank Stiefel. A por­trait of a bril­liant 56 year old artist, the film won the Oscar for Best Doc­u­men­tary (Short Sub­ject) at the recent Acad­e­my Awards. Here’s the gist of what it’s about:

Mindy Alper is a tor­tured and bril­liant 56 year old artist who is rep­re­sent­ed by one of Los Ange­les’ top gal­leries. Acute anx­i­ety, men­tal dis­or­der and dev­as­tat­ing depres­sion have caused her to be com­mit­ted to men­tal insti­tu­tions under­go elec­tro shock ther­a­py and sur­vive a 10 year peri­od with­out the abil­i­ty to speak. Her hyper self aware­ness has allowed her to pro­duce a life­long body of work that express­es her emo­tion­al state with pow­er­ful psy­cho­log­i­cal pre­ci­sion. Through inter­views, reen­act­ments, the build­ing of an eight and a half foot papi­er-mache’ bust of her beloved psy­chi­a­trist, and exam­in­ing draw­ings made from the time she was a child, we learn how she has emerged from dark­ness and iso­la­tion to a life that includes love, trust and sup­port.

You can watch the com­plete film online. It will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

Depres­sion & Melan­choly: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the Cru­cial Dif­fer­ence Between Every­day Sad­ness and Clin­i­cal Depres­sion

Watch Edith+Eddie, an Intense, Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film About America’s Old­est Inter­ra­cial New­ly­weds

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H.P. Lovecraft Writes “Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance,” a Devastating Parody of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1923)

in Literature, Poetry | March 15th, 2018

Image by Lucius B. Trues­dell and Lady Mor­rell, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Howard Phillips Love­craft, as his ever-grow­ing fan base knows, sel­dom spared his char­ac­ters — or at least their san­i­ty — from the vast, unspeak­able hor­rors lurk­ing beneath his imag­ined real­i­ty. Not that he showed much more mer­cy as a crit­ic either, as his assess­ment of “The Waste Land” (1922) reveals. Though now near-uni­ver­sal­ly respect­ed, T.S. Eliot’s best-known poem failed to impress Love­craft, who, in his jour­nal The Con­ser­v­a­tive, wrote in 1923 that

We here behold a prac­ti­cal­ly mean­ing­less col­lec­tion of phras­es, learned allu­sions, quo­ta­tions, slang, and scraps in gen­er­al; offered to the pub­lic (whether or not as a hoax) as some­thing jus­ti­fied by our mod­ern mind with its recent com­pre­hen­sion of its own chaot­ic triv­i­al­i­ty and dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion. And we behold that pub­lic, or a con­sid­er­able part of it, receiv­ing this hilar­i­ous melange as some­thing vital and typ­i­cal; as “a poem of pro­found sig­nif­i­cance”, to quote its spon­sors.

Eliot’s work, Love­craft argued, sim­ply could­n’t hold up in the mod­ern world, where “man has sud­den­ly dis­cov­ered that all his high sen­ti­ments, val­ues, and aspi­ra­tions are mere illu­sions caused by phys­i­o­log­i­cal process­es with­in him­self, and of no sig­nif­i­cance what­so­ev­er in an infi­nite and pur­pose­less cos­mos.” Sci­ence, in his view, has made non­sense of tra­di­tion and “a rag-bag of unre­lat­ed odds and ends” of the soul. A poet like Eliot, it seems, “does not know what to do about it; but com­pro­mis­es on a lit­er­a­ture of analy­sis, chaos, and iron­ic con­trast.”

Look­ing on even this hatch­et job, Love­craft must have felt he’d failed to slay the beast, and so he com­posed a par­o­dy of “The Waste Land” enti­tled “Waste Paper” in late 1922 or ear­ly 1923. This “Poem of Pro­found Insignif­i­cance,” which Love­craft schol­ar S.T. Joshi calls the writer’s “best satir­i­cal poem,” begins thus:

Out of the reach­es of illim­itable light
The blaz­ing plan­et grew, and forc’d to life
Unend­ing cycles of pro­gres­sive strife
And strange muta­tions of undy­ing light
And bore­some books, than hell’s own self more trite
And thoughts repeat­ed and become a blight,
And cheap rum-hounds with moon­shine hootch made tight,
And quite con­trite to see the flight of fright so bright

You can read the whole thing, includ­ing its prob­a­bly apoc­ryphal half-epi­graph from the Greek poet Gly­con, at the H.P. Love­craft Archive. “In many parts of this quite lengthy poem,” Joshi writes, “he has quite faith­ful­ly par­o­died the insu­lar­i­ty of mod­ern poet­ry — its abil­i­ty to be under­stood only by a small coterie of read­ers who are aware of inti­mate facts about the poet.”

Love­craft also tried his hand at non-par­o­d­ic poet­ry, though his­to­ry remem­bers him much less for that than for strik­ing a more pri­mal chord with his sui gener­is “weird fic­tion,” whose para­me­ters he was deter­min­ing at the same time he was sav­aging his con­tem­po­rary Eliot. And though sci­en­tif­ic progress has marched much far­ther on since the 1920s, espe­cial­ly as regards the under­stand­ing of the human mind and what­ev­er now pass­es for a soul, both men’s bod­ies of work have only gained in res­o­nance.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

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

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Enter Digital Archives of the 1960s Fluxus Movement and Explore the Avant-Garde Art of John Cage, Yoko Ono, John Cale, Nam June Paik & More

in Art | March 15th, 2018

When it comes to the influ­ence of the arts on every­day life, it can seem like our real­i­ty derives far more from Jeff Koons’ “aug­ment­ed banal­i­ty” than from the Fluxus move­ment’s play­ful exper­i­ments with chance oper­a­tions, con­cep­tu­al rig­or, and impro­visato­ry per­for­mance. But per­haps in a Jeff Koons world, these are pre­cise­ly the qual­i­ties we need. Main­ly based in New York, and “tak­ing shape around 1959,” notes the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa’s Fluxus: A Field Guide, “the inter­na­tion­al cohort of artists known as Fluxus exper­i­ment­ed with—or bet­ter yet between—poet­ry, the­ater, music, and the visu­al arts.” Big names like John Cage and Yoko Ono might give the unini­ti­at­ed a sense of what the 60s art move­ment was all about. An “inter­dis­ci­pli­nary aes­thet­ic,” writes Ubuweb, that “brings togeth­er influ­ences as diverse as Zen, sci­ence, and dai­ly life and puts them to poet­ic use.”

Of course, there’s more to it than that… but Fluxus artists keep us won­der­ing what that might be, sug­gest­ing that ordi­nary expe­ri­ence and the stuff of every­day life pro­vide all the mate­r­i­al we need. Japan­ese artist Mieko Shio­mi describes Fluxus as a “prag­mat­ic con­scious­ness” that makes us “see things dif­fer­ent­ly in every­day life after per­form­ing or see­ing Fluxus works.”

The def­i­n­i­tions of Fluxus, you might notice, can begin to sound a bit cir­cu­lar, maybe because they are entire­ly beside the point. George Maci­u­nas, who named and co-found­ed the move­ment, called Fluxus “a way of doing things.” He called it a num­ber of oth­er things as well.

Maci­u­nas’ 1963 “Fluxus Man­i­festo” makes all the right man­i­festo moves, para­phras­ing Tris­tan Tzara’s “Dada Man­i­festo” in its promise to “purge the world of bour­geois sick­ness, ‘intel­lec­tu­al,’ pro­fes­sion­al & com­mer­cial­ized cul­ture,” and so on. He begins with a dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of Fluxus, involv­ing the symp­toms of dysen­tery, and “the mat­ter just dis­charged.” But the art of Fluxus, aim­ing at a “non art real­i­ty,” seems mild-man­nered by con­trast with this iron­ic blus­ter.

Though it could also be dan­ger­ous at times, Fluxus was always a form of play, often seem­ing­ly con­tent­less, as in Nam June Paik’s “Zen for Film,” a silent, eight-minute film almost entire­ly com­posed of a fuzzy white screen or, in the most noto­ri­ous exam­ple, John Cage’s “musi­cal” com­po­si­tion, 4.33.

Fluxus has become so close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the musi­cal exper­i­ments and per­for­mance art of Cage and Ono that the cen­tral­i­ty of poet­ry and the visu­al arts to the move­ment can go unre­marked. Maci­u­nas him­self was a high­ly skilled graph­ic artist and an aspir­ing bour­geois pro­pri­etor: he first sought to turn Fluxus into a com­mer­cial cor­po­ra­tion and designed a num­ber of prod­ucts such as chess sets, posters, and a wood­en box filled with assem­blages of small art objects cre­at­ed by his fel­low Fluxus artists. He lat­er admit­ted, “no one was buy­ing it.” Of course, plen­ty of peo­ple did, just not in a way that returned on his siz­able cash invest­ment. See an “unbox­ing” of Maci­u­nas’ Flux Box 2, above and try not to think of Wes Ander­son.

Like their Dada fore­bears, Fluxus artists worked in every medi­um. At the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa Library’s Fluxus Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tion, you can find visu­al art by Maci­u­nas and his col­leagues, like Joseph Beuy’s “Fluxus West” post­card, fur­ther up, George Brecht’s Fluxus Games and Puz­zles below it, and A‑Yo’s “Fin­ger Box,” above. At Mono­skop, you’ll find links to more art, film, music, and books by and about artists like Yoko Ono and Fluxus poet Dick Higgens.

At Ubuweb, you’ll find a Flux­film Anthol­o­gy, dat­ing from 1962–1970 and con­tain­ing short films by Paik, Ono, Maci­u­nas, George Brecht, and many more (includ­ing a 1966 short from John Cale). And at Ubuweb: Sound, you’ll find eight cas­settes worth of Fluxus and Fluxus-inspired music, from 1962 to 1992, like the Wolf Vostell “music sculp­ture,” Le Cri / The Cry, from 1990, above. The Fluxus approach may seem puck­ish­ly quaint, even pre­cious, next to the slick hyper­re­al­i­ty of Snapchat, but you will expe­ri­ence the every­day world around you quite dif­fer­ent­ly after immers­ing your­self in the con­cep­tu­al process-world of Fluxus.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yoko Ono Lets Audi­ence Cut Up Her Clothes in Con­cep­tu­al Art Per­for­mance (Carnegie Hall, 1965)

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

When John Cage & Mar­cel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chess­board That Turned Chess Moves Into Elec­tron­ic Music (1968)

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

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

in Life, Physics | March 14th, 2018

Stephen Hawk­ing died last night at age of 76. I can think of no bet­ter, brief social media trib­ute than that from the @thetweetofgod: “It’s only been a few hours and Stephen Hawk­ing already math­e­mat­i­cal­ly proved, to My face, that I don’t exist.” Hawk­ing was an athe­ist, but he didn’t claim to have elim­i­nat­ed the idea with pure math­e­mat­ics. But if he had, it would have been bril­liant­ly ele­gant, even—as he  used the phrase in his pop­u­lar 1988 cos­mol­o­gy A Brief His­to­ry of Time—to a the­o­ret­i­cal “mind of God.”

Hawk­ing him­self used the word “ele­gant,” with mod­esty, to describe his dis­cov­ery that “gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty can be com­bined with quan­tum the­o­ry,” that is, “if one replaces ordi­nary time with so-called imag­i­nary time.” In the best­selling A Brief His­to­ry of Time, he described how one might pos­si­bly rec­on­cile the two. His search for this “Grand Uni­fied The­o­ry of Every­thing,” writes his edi­tor Peter Guz­zar­di, rep­re­sent­ed “the quest for the holy grail of science—one the­o­ry that could unite two sep­a­rate fields that worked indi­vid­u­al­ly but whol­ly inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er.”

The physi­cist had to help Guz­zar­di trans­late rar­i­fied con­cepts into read­able prose for book­buy­ers at “drug­stores, super­mar­kets, and air­port shops.” But this is not to say A Brief His­to­ry of Time is an easy read. (In the midst of that process, Hawk­ing also had to learn how to trans­late his own thoughts again, as a tra­cheoto­my end­ed his speech, and he tran­si­tioned to the com­put­er devices we came to know as his only voice.) Most who read Hawking’s book, or just skimmed it, might remem­ber it for its take on the big bang. It’s an aspect of his the­o­ry that piqued the usu­al cre­ation­ist sus­pects, and thus gen­er­at­ed innu­mer­able head­lines.

But it was the oth­er term in Hawking’s sub­ti­tle, “from the Big Bang to Black Holes,” that real­ly occu­pied the cen­tral place in his exten­sive body of less acces­si­ble sci­en­tif­ic work. He wrote his the­sis on the expand­ing uni­verse, but gave his final lec­tures on black holes. The dis­cov­er­ies in Hawk­ing’s cos­mol­o­gy came from his inten­sive focus on black holes, begin­ning in 1970 with his inno­va­tion of the sec­ond law of black hole dynam­ics and con­tin­u­ing through ground­break­ing work in the mid-70s that his for­mer dis­ser­ta­tion advi­sor, emi­nent physi­cist Den­nis Scia­ma, pro­nounced “a new rev­o­lu­tion in our under­stand­ing.”

Hawk­ing con­tin­ued to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the­o­ret­i­cal physics through the study of black holes into the last years of his life. In Jan­u­ary 2016, he pub­lished a paper on arXiv.org called “Soft Hair on Black Holes,” propos­ing “a pos­si­ble solu­tion to his black hole infor­ma­tion para­dox,” as Fiona Mac­Don­ald writes at Sci­ence Alert. Hawking’s final con­tri­bu­tions show that black holes have what he calls “soft hair” around them—or waves of zero-ener­gy par­ti­cles. Con­trary to his pre­vi­ous con­clu­sion that noth­ing can escape from a black hole, Hawk­ing believed that this quan­tum “hair” could store infor­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly thought lost for­ev­er.

Hawk­ing fol­lowed up these intrigu­ing, but excep­tion­al­ly dense, find­ings with a much more approach­able text, his talks for the BBC’s Rei­th Lec­tures, which artist Andrew Park illus­trat­ed with the chalk­board draw­ings you see above. The first talk, “Do Black Holes Have No Hair?” walks us briskly through the for­ma­tion of black holes and the big names in black hole sci­ence before mov­ing on to the heavy quan­tum the­o­ry. The sec­ond talk con­tin­ues to sketch its way through the the­o­ry, using strik­ing metaphors and wit­ti­cisms to get the point across.

Hawk­ing’s expla­na­tions of phe­nom­e­na are as pro­found, verg­ing on mys­ti­cal, as they are thor­ough. He doesn’t for­get the human dimen­sion or the emo­tion­al res­o­nance of sci­ence, occa­sion­al­ly sug­gest­ing metaphysical—or meta-psychological—implications. Thanks in part to his work, we first thought of black holes as nihilis­tic voids from which noth­ing could escape. He left us, how­ev­er with a rad­i­cal new view, which he sums up cheer­ful­ly as “if you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up, There’s a way out.” Or, even more Zen-like, as he pro­claimed in a 2014 paper, “there are no black holes.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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

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The Lighter Side of Stephen Hawking: The Physicist Cracks Jokes and a Smile with John Oliver

in Uncategorized | March 14th, 2018

In our trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing ear­li­er today, we dis­cussed the intel­lec­tu­al lega­cy of the depart­ed physi­cist, pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to his ground­break­ing work on black holes. The video above is a bit lighter. It just lets you watch Hawk­ing in a comedic exchange with his com­pa­tri­ot John Oliv­er. If I’m not mis­tak­en, around the 3:46 mark, you can even see him crack a smile. Enjoy.

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

Free Online Physics Cours­es

 

 

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Download 10,000 of the First Recordings of Music Ever Made, Thanks to the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive

in Music, Technology | March 14th, 2018

Three min­utes with the min­strels / Arthur Collins, S. H. Dud­ley & Ancient City. Edi­son Record. 1899.

Long before vinyl records, cas­sette tapes, CDs and MP3s came along, peo­ple first expe­ri­enced audio record­ings through anoth­er medi­um — through cylin­ders made of tin foil, wax and plas­tic. In recent years, we’ve fea­tured cylin­der record­ings from the 19th cen­tu­ry that allow you to hear the voic­es of Leo Tol­stoy, Tchaikovsky, Otto von Bis­mar­ck and oth­er tow­er­ing fig­ures. Those record­ings were orig­i­nal­ly record­ed and played on a cylin­der phono­graph invent­ed by Thomas Edi­son in 1877. But those were obvi­ous­ly just a hand­ful of the cylin­der record­ings pro­duced at the begin­ning of the record­ed sound era.

Thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara Cylin­der Audio Archive, you can now down­load or stream a dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of more than 10,000 cylin­der record­ings. “This search­able data­base,” says UCSB, “fea­tures all types of record­ings made from the late 1800s to ear­ly 1900s, includ­ing pop­u­lar songs, vaude­ville acts, clas­si­cal and oper­at­ic music, comedic mono­logues, eth­nic and for­eign record­ings, speech­es and read­ings.” You can also find in the archive a num­ber of “per­son­al record­ings,” or “home wax record­ings,” made by every­day peo­ple at home (as opposed to by record com­pa­nies).

If you go to this page, the record­ings are neat­ly cat­e­go­rized by genre, instru­ment, subject/theme and ethnicity/nation of ori­gin. You can lis­ten, for exam­ple, to record­ings of Jazz, Rag­time, Operas, and Vaude­ville acts. Or hear record­ings fea­tur­ing the Man­dolin, Gui­tar, Dul­cimer and Ban­jo, among oth­er instru­ments. Plus there are the­mat­i­cal­ly-arranged playlists here.

Host­ed by UCSB (UC San­ta Bar­bara), the archive is sup­port­ed by fund­ing from the Insti­tute of Muse­um and Library Ser­vices, the Gram­my Foun­da­tion, and oth­er donors.

Above, hear a record­ing called “Three min­utes with the min­strels,” by Arthur Collins, released in 1899. Below that is “Alexan­der’s rag­time band med­ley,” fea­tur­ing the ban­jo play­ing of Fred Van Eps, released in 1913.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Beer Bot­tle Gets Turned Into a 19th Cen­tu­ry Edi­son Cylin­der and Plays Fine Music

Voic­es from the 19th Cen­tu­ry: Ten­nyson, Glad­stone, Whit­man & Tchaikovsky

Thomas Edison’s Record­ings of Leo Tol­stoy: Hear the Voice of Russia’s Great­est Nov­el­ist

Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)

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Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chronological Playlist of Live Grateful Dead Performances (1966–1995)

in Music | March 14th, 2018

I am not a Dead­head nor an expert on the Grate­ful Dead, by any means. I am an occa­sion­al lis­ten­er and, one might say, occa­sion­al enthu­si­ast of Dead­head cul­ture, in that I find it equal parts mys­ti­fy­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing. I men­tion all these qual­i­fiers ful­ly aware that thou­sands upon thou­sands of ded­i­cat­ed fans have spent life­times lis­ten­ing to, fol­low­ing, and tap­ing the Dead. It is pos­si­ble that those peo­ple have absolute­ly no need of what fol­lows below, a chrono­log­i­cal playlist of 346 hours of live Grate­ful Dead, track­ing the band’s career on stage after stage, from their very begin­nings in 1966 with the tal­ent­ed and trag­ic Pig­pen to their trag­ic end with the death of Jer­ry Gar­cia in 1995.

Com­pletists may scoff and quibble—I can’t tell what’s miss­ing here. I speak for those who kind of get it and kind of don’t—somewhere between peo­ple “who believe that the Dead only ever stum­bled,” as Nick Paum­garten writes at The New York­er, and those who “believe that they only ever soared.” Some­times, maybe a lot of times, the Grate­ful Dead just sound­ed awful, and I dare any­one to prove oth­er­wise. But the same could be said of a lot of great bands, who have all had far less longevi­ty and pro­fi­cien­cy.

And so much depends on the qual­i­ty of the record­ing, to be fair, not a giv­en in most Dead tapes. Then there’s the “copi­ous drug use, an aver­sion to rehearsal, and a gen­uine anar­chic streak.” But when they were in phase and in time, and some­times even when they weren’t, they could be “glo­ri­ous”:

The chance at musi­cal tran­scen­dence amid a ten­den­cy toward some­thing less—was what kept us com­ing back. This argu­ment is a lit­tle like the East Coaster’s on behalf of his weath­er: the nice days are nicer when there are crap­py ones in between.

Writ­ing, he says, as an “apol­o­gist,” Paum­garten claims that the Dead’s ups and downs were large­ly the result of their most tal­ent­ed and “charis­mat­ic fig­ure” Jer­ry Garcia’s errat­ic per­for­mances. “When he had a bad night, you knew it. The oth­ers, when they were off, could sort of hide.” When he was on, his “iri­des­cent gui­tar leads” were trans­port­ing (check out his effort­less coun­try licks at the top in “Big Riv­er”). But his strength waned, and the band lost much of its ener­gy in lat­er years.

Anoth­er Dead fan, Marc Wein­garten, writes at Slate in praise of the “famous­ly var­ied… archi­tec­ture of band leader Jer­ry Garcia’s fre­quent­ly tran­scen­dent gui­tar work,” and blames not Gar­ci­a’s decline for the band’s decline in gen­er­al but, you prob­a­bly guessed it, Dead­head fans, who har­bor an “a pri­ori assump­tion… that Dead shows were always mag­ic and that the mag­ic could be rou­tine­ly sum­moned on a night­ly basis.”

Per­haps unfair. Some­times fans could make a bad show mag­i­cal… ish. And it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the Grate­ful Dead with­out their rabid fan­base, who cru­cial­ly allowed the band to grow, expand, and exper­i­ment, always assured of a packed house. But a large part of the Dead’s appeal, to casu­al fans, at least, is that they were only human. Dudes you could total­ly get high with (on the pow­er of music!). That’s right, I’ll say it, take a long strange trip. Come back in 346 hours and tell us what you found.

Stream the “Grate­ful Dead Full Live Chronol­o­gy” playlist above, or find it on Spo­ti­fy here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11,215 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Ulti­mate Boot­leg” Now Online & Added to the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry

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

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