The Books on Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List (2019)

in Books | August 19th, 2019

Pho­to by Pete Souza via obamawhitehouse.archive.gov

As is his cus­tom, Barack Oba­ma post­ed on Face­book his sum­mer read­ing list, a mix of nov­els, mem­oirs, and instruc­tive non-fic­tion. If you haven’t achieved the per­fect state of tsun­doku, you can get a few new reads for the wan­ing days of sum­mer. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma writes:

It’s August, so I want­ed to let you know about a few books I’ve been read­ing this sum­mer, in case you’re look­ing for some sug­ges­tions. To start, you can’t go wrong by read­ing or re-read­ing the col­lect­ed works of Toni Mor­ri­son. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, every­thing else — they’re tran­scen­dent, all of them. You’ll be glad you read them. And while I’m at it, here are a few more titles you might want to explore:

Some­times dif­fi­cult to swal­low, The Nick­el Boys by Col­son White­head is a nec­es­sary read, detail­ing the way Jim Crow and mass incar­cer­a­tion tore apart lives and wrought con­se­quences that rip­ple into today.

Exha­la­tion by Ted Chi­ang is a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries that will make you think, grap­ple with big ques­tions, and feel more human. The best kind of sci­ence fic­tion.

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel­’s epic fic­tion­al­ized look at Thomas Cromwell’s rise to pow­er, came out in 2009, but I was a lit­tle busy back then, so I missed it. Still great today.

Haru­ki Murakami’s Men With­out Women exam­ines what hap­pens to char­ac­ters with­out impor­tant women in their lives; it’ll move you and con­fuse you and some­times leave you with more ques­tions than answers.

Amer­i­can Spy by Lau­ren Wilkin­son is a whole lot more than just a spy thriller, wrap­ping togeth­er the ties of fam­i­ly, of love, and of coun­try.

The Shal­lows by Nicholas Carr came out a few years ago, but its argu­ments on the internet’s impact on our brains, our lives, and our com­mu­ni­ties are still wor­thy of reflec­tion, which is some­thing we all could use a lit­tle more of in this age.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren is a beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten mem­oir about the life of a woman in sci­ence, a bril­liant friend­ship, and the pro­fun­di­ty of trees. Ter­rif­ic.

Inland by Téa Obre­ht just came out yes­ter­day, so I won’t spoil any­thing. But those of you who’ve been wait­ing for Obreht’s next nov­el won’t be dis­ap­point­ed.

You’ll get a bet­ter sense of the com­plex­i­ty and redemp­tion with­in the Amer­i­can immi­grant sto­ry with Dinaw Mengestu’s nov­el, How to Read the Air.

Maid by Stephanie Land is a sin­gle mother’s per­son­al, unflinch­ing look at America’s class divide, a descrip­tion of the tightrope many fam­i­lies walk just to get by, and a reminder of the dig­ni­ty of all work.

POTUS’ pre­vi­ous lists of rec­om­mend­ed books can be found in the Relat­eds below.

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:

Barack Oba­ma Shares a List of Enlight­en­ing Books Worth Read­ing

The 5 Books on Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Sum­mer Read­ing List

A Free POTUS Sum­mer Playlist: Pres. Oba­ma Curates 39 Songs for a Sum­mer Day

The Books on Barack Obama’s Sum­mer Read­ing List: Naipaul, Ondaat­je & More

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Woodstock,” the Song that Defined the Legendary Music Festival, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

in Music | August 16th, 2019

Among the slew of icon­ic late-60s acts who played Wood­stock 50 years ago, one name stands out con­spic­u­ous­ly for her absence: Joni Mitchell. Was she not invit­ed? Did she decline? Was she dou­ble-booked? Mitchell was, of course, invit­ed, and eager­ly want­ed to be there. The sto­ry of her non-appear­ance involves alarm­ing head­lines in The New York Times and an appear­ance on The Dick Cavett Show the day after the fes­ti­val that her man­ag­er, Elliot Roberts and label head David Gef­fen, decid­ed she sim­ply couldn’t miss.

Her sig­nif­i­cant oth­er at the time, Gra­ham Nash, reached the upstate New York fes­ti­val with CSNY, “by heli­copter and a stolen truck hot-wired by Neil Young,” reports the site Night­flight. But Gef­fen and Mitchell, see­ing the head­line “400,000 Peo­ple Sit­ting in Mud,” and a descrip­tion of the roads as “so clogged with cars that con­cert­go­ers were aban­don­ing them and walk­ing,” decid­ed they shouldn’t take the risk. (She described the scene as a “nation­al dis­as­ter area.”) Instead, they watched news about the mud-splat­tered event from Geffen’s New York City apart­ment (oth­er accounts say they holed up in the Plaza Hotel).

So how is it Mitchell came to write the defin­i­tive Wood­stock anthem, with its era-defin­ing lyric “we’ve got to get our­selves back to the gar­den”? In the way of all artists—she watched, lis­tened, and used her imag­i­na­tion to con­jure a scene she only knew of sec­ond­hand. CSNY’s ver­sion of “Wood­stock” (live, below, at Madi­son Square Gar­den in 2009) is the one we tend to hear most and remem­ber, but Mitchell’s—her voice soar­ing high above her piano—best con­veys the song’s sense of youth­ful hip­pie ide­al­ism, mys­ti­cal won­der, and just a touch of des­per­a­tion. (At the top, she plays the song live in Big Sur in 1969.) David Yaffe, author of Reck­less Daugh­ter: A Por­trait of Joni Mitchell describes the song as “pur­ga­tion. It is an omen that some­thing very, very bad will hap­pen with the mud dries and the hip­pies go home.”

Mitchell did make the Cavett Show gig, along­side Stephen Stills, David Cros­by, and Jef­fer­son Air­plane, all just return­ing from the fes­ti­val. But she didn’t have much to say. Instead, the gre­gar­i­ous Cros­by does most of the talk­ing, describ­ing Wood­stock as “incred­i­ble, prob­a­bly the strangest thing that’s ever hap­pened in the world.” Sur­vey­ing the scene from a heli­copter, he says, was like see­ing “an encamp­ment of a Mace­don­ian army on a Greek hill crossed with the biggest batch of gyp­sies you ever saw.” Lat­er on the show, Mitchell played “Chelsea Morn­ing” and oth­er songs, after per­for­mances by Jef­fer­son Air­plane.

“The depri­va­tion of not being able to go,” she remem­bered, “pro­vid­ed me with an intense angle” on the fes­ti­val. “Wood­stock, for some rea­son, impressed me as being a mod­ern mir­a­cle, like a mod­ern-day fish­es-and-loaves sto­ry. For a herd of peo­ple that large to coop­er­ate so well, it was pret­ty remark­able and there was tremen­dous opti­mism. So I wrote the song ‘Wood­stock’ out of these feel­ings, and the first three times I per­formed it in pub­lic, I burst into tears, because it brought back the inten­si­ty of the expe­ri­ence and was so mov­ing.”

She did final­ly get the chance to play “Wood­stock” at Wood­stock, in 1998 (above, on elec­tric gui­tar), for an appre­cia­tive long-haired, tie-dyed audience—many of them nos­tal­gic for a moment they missed or were too young to have expe­ri­enced. The per­for­mance high­lights the “sense of long­ing that became essen­tial to the song’s impact,” as Leah Rosen­zweig writes at Vinyl Me, Please. “Sure, it was the irony of the cen­tu­ry”: the song that best cap­tured Wood­stock for the peo­ple who weren’t there was writ­ten by some­one who wasn’t there. “But it was also a per­fect recipe for Mitchell to do what she did best: draw humans togeth­er while remain­ing com­plete­ly on the side­lines.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Joni Mitchell’s Clas­sic Per­for­mances of “Both Sides Now” & “The Cir­cle Game” (1968)

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

Young Joni Mitchell Per­forms a Hit-Filled Con­cert in Lon­don (1970)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear Laurie Anderson Read from The Tibetan Book of the Dead on New Album Songs from the Bardo

in Music, Religion | August 16th, 2019

Lau­rie Ander­son began her career as an artist in the late 1960s, and since then she’s made con­nec­tions both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al with many of the most influ­en­tial cul­tur­al fig­ures of the past five decades. She has also, inevitably, seen a fair few of them depart this earth­ly exis­tence, includ­ing her hus­band Lou Reed. The ques­tion of what hap­pens to the dead is, for Ander­son, appar­ent­ly not with­out inter­est, even in the case of the non-human dead: the 2015 doc­u­men­tary Heart of a Dog traces the jour­ney of Ander­son­’s late pet Lola­belle through the bar­do, in Tibetan Bud­dhism the lim­i­nal state between death and rebirth.

The bar­do is the cen­tral theme of Bar­do Thodol, bet­ter known to West­ern­ers in trans­la­tion as The Tibetan Book of the Dead. On the new album Songs from the Bar­do, Ander­son reads from that eighth-cen­tu­ry text with impro­vi­sa­tion­al accom­pa­ni­ment by, among oth­ers, Tibetan musi­cian Ten­zin Cho­e­gyal and com­pos­er Jesse Paris Smith.

Stere­ogum’s Peter Hel­man writes that “Smith, the daugh­ter of punk leg­end Pat­ti Smith” — one of the many still-liv­ing influ­en­tial artists in Ander­son­’s wide net­work — “first met Cho­e­gyal in 2008 at the annu­al Tibet House US Ben­e­fit Con­cert at Carnegie Hall.” Sev­en years lat­er, they enlist­ed Ander­son to nar­rate the first per­formed ver­sion of what would become Songs from the Bar­do.

“Ander­son nar­rates text from the Tibetan Book Of the Dead while Cho­e­gyal, Smith, cel­list Rubin Kod­he­li, and per­cus­sion­ist Shahzad Ismai­ly pro­vide the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment,” writes Hel­man. “Smith plays piano and cre­ates drone beds using a col­lec­tion of crys­tal bowls, while Cho­e­gyal incor­po­rates tra­di­tion­al Tibetan instru­ments like ling­bu (a bam­boo flute), dranyen (a lute-like stringed instru­ment), singing bowls, gong, and his own voice.” In the record’s lin­er notes, Cho­e­gyal writes of try­ing to “chan­nel the wis­dom and tra­di­tions of my ances­tors through my music in a very con­tem­po­rary way while hold­ing the depth of my lin­eage.” The music, Ander­son explains, “is meant to help you float out of your body, to go into these oth­er realms, and to let your­self do that with­out bound­aries.”

You can get a taste of this tran­scen­dence from “Lotus Born, No Need to Fear” the first sam­ple track from the album the group has released. On it Ander­son reads of the expe­ri­ence of the bar­do, where “con­scious­ness becomes airy, speed­ing, sway­ing, and imper­ma­nent.” For a Metafil­ter user named Capt. Renault, lis­ten­ing brings to mind anoth­er of Ander­son­’s art­works: her vir­tu­al-real­ty piece Aloft, which “has you sit­ting in an emp­ty air­plane which dis­in­te­grates around you, leav­ing you high, high above the ground with no sup­port. You are aware of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of death, but Lau­rie’s smooth, com­fort­ing voice leads to a com­plete absence of fear, and you are free to explore this world she’s cre­at­ed. Because of Lau­rie, I faced my death and I did­n’t mind it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen Nar­rates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Fea­tur­ing the Dalai Lama (1994)

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island

Lau­rie Ander­son Cre­ates a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Takes View­ers on an Uncon­ven­tion­al Tour of the Moon

When Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD, Expe­ri­enc­ing “the Most Serene, the Most Beau­ti­ful Death” (1963)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Science Shows That Snowball the Cockatoo Has 14 Different Dance Moves: The Vogue, Headbang & More

in Biology, Dance, Music, Nature, Neuroscience | August 16th, 2019

We humans think we invent­ed every­thing.

The wheel…

The print­ing press…

Danc­ing…

Well, we’re right about the first two.

Turns out the impulse to shake a tail feath­er isn’t an arbi­trary cul­tur­al con­struct of human­i­ty but rather a hard-wired neu­ro­log­i­cal impulse in beings clas­si­fied as vocal learners—us, ele­phants, dol­phins, song­birds, and par­rots like the Inter­net-famous sul­phur-crest­ed cock­a­too, Snow­ball, above.

Ani­mals out­side of this elite set can be trained to exe­cute cer­tain phys­i­cal moves, or they may just look like they’re danc­ing when track­ing the move­ments of their food bowl or shim­my­ing with relief at being picked up from dog­gy day­care.

Snow­ball, how­ev­er, is tru­ly danc­ing, thanks to his species’ capac­i­ty for hear­ing, then imi­tat­ing sounds. Like every great spon­ta­neous dancer, he’s got the music in him.

Anirud­dh Patel, a Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy at Tufts who spe­cial­izes in music cog­ni­tion, was the first to con­sid­er that Snowball’s habit of rock­ing out to the Back­street Boys CD he’d had in his pos­ses­sion when dropped off at a par­rot res­cue cen­ter in Dyer, Indi­ana, was some­thing more than a par­ty trick.

Dr. Patel notes that par­rots have more in com­mon with dinosaurs than human beings, and that our mon­key cousins don’t dance (much to this writer’s dis­ap­point­ment).

(Also, for the record? That goat who sings like Ush­er? It may sound like Ush­er, but you’ll find no sci­en­tif­ic sup­port for the notion that its vocal­iza­tions con­sti­tute singing.)

Snow­ball, on the oth­er hand, has made a major impres­sion upon the Acad­e­my.

In papers pub­lished in Cur­rent Biol­o­gy and Annals of the New York Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Patel and his co-authors John R. Iversen, Mic­ah R. Breg­man, and Ire­na Schulz delved into why Snow­ball can dance like … well, maybe not Fred Astaire, but cer­tain­ly your aver­age mosh­ing human.

After exten­sive obser­va­tion, they con­clud­ed that an indi­vid­ual must pos­sess five spe­cif­ic men­tal skills and predilec­tions in order to move impul­sive­ly to music:

  1. They must be com­plex vocal learn­ers, with the accom­pa­ny­ing abil­i­ty to con­nect sound and move­ment.
  2. They must be able to imi­tate move­ments.
  3. They must be able to learn com­plex sequences of actions.
  4. They must be atten­tive to the move­ments of oth­ers.
  5. They must form long-term social bonds.

Cock­a­toos can do all of this. Humans, too.

Patel’s for­mer stu­dent R. Joanne Jao Keehn recent­ly reviewed footage she shot in 2009 of Snow­ball get­ting down to Queen’s “Anoth­er One Bites the Dust” and Cyn­di Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” iden­ti­fy­ing 14 dis­tinct moves.

Accord­ing to her research, his favorites are Vogue, Head-Foot Sync, and Head­bang with Lift­ed Foot.

If you’ve been hug­ging the wall since mid­dle school, maybe it’s time to take a deep breath, fol­lowed by an avian danc­ing les­son.

How did Snow­ball come by his aston­ish­ing rug-cut­ting con­fi­dence? Cer­tain­ly not by watch­ing instruc­tion­al videos on YouTube. His human com­pan­ion Schulz dances with him occa­sion­al­ly, but does­n’t attempt to teach him her moves, which she describes as “lim­it­ed.”

Much like two human part­ners, they’re not always doing the same thing at the same time.

And the chore­og­ra­phy is pure­ly Snowball’s.

As Patel told The Har­vard Gazette:

It’s actu­al­ly a com­plex cog­ni­tive act that involves choos­ing among dif­fer­ent types of pos­si­ble move­ment options. It’s exact­ly how we think of human danc­ing.

If he is actu­al­ly com­ing up with some of this stuff by him­self, it’s an incred­i­ble exam­ple of ani­mal cre­ativ­i­ty because he’s not doing this to get food; he’s not doing this to get a mat­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, both of which are often moti­va­tions in exam­ples of cre­ative behav­ior in oth­er species.

You can read more sci­ence-based arti­cles inspired by Snow­ball and watch some of his many pub­lic appear­ances on the not-for-prof­it, dona­tion-based sanc­tu­ary Bird Lovers Only’s web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why We Dance: An Ani­mat­ed Video Explains the Sci­ence Behind Why We Bust a Move

The Strange Danc­ing Plague of 1518: When Hun­dreds of Peo­ple in France Could Not Stop Danc­ing for Months

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Listen Online to Every Minute of the Original Woodstock Festival

in Music | August 15th, 2019

Image of Joe Cock­er by Derek Red­mond and Paul Camp­bel, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Life­hack­er has this great tip. “Start­ing at 5:07 p.m. EST today, August 15, you can lis­ten to every minute of the three days of con­certs, cour­tesy of Philadel­phia radio sta­tion WXPN. It will include all of the festival’s archived audio: from the icon­ic per­for­mances to the stage announce­ments to the rain delays. The exclu­sive broad­cast will fea­ture new­ly recon­struct­ed audio archives of each of Woodstock’s 32 acts, start­ing with Richie Havens’ open­ing set, and con­tin­u­ing through to Jimi Hendrix’s clos­ing per­for­mance on Sun­day morn­ing. Accord­ing to a release from the sta­tion, it will be broad­cast in as close to real time as pos­si­ble.” To lis­ten, go to this page, scroll down, and launch the media play­er.

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!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Short Animated Introduction to Hypatia, Ancient Alexandria’s Great Female Philosopher

in History, Philosophy | August 15th, 2019

Ten years ago, a film came out called Ago­ra, a biopic of philoso­pher and math­e­mati­cian Hypa­tia of Alexan­dria, daugh­ter of math­e­mati­cian Theon, the last record­ed direc­tor of the Library of Alexan­dria. The movie wasn’t well-reviewed or wide­ly seen, which is nei­ther here nor there, but it was heav­i­ly crit­i­cized for his­tor­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cies. This seemed a lit­tle sil­ly. “One does not go to the movies to learn about ancient his­to­ry but to be enter­tained,” as Joshua J. Mark writes at the Ancient His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­dia. Ago­ra is not an accu­rate ren­der­ing of the lit­tle we know of Hypa­tia, but nei­ther is Spar­ta­cus, a far more enter­tain­ing film, an accu­rate depic­tion of the 2nd cen­tu­ry B.C.E. glad­i­a­tor and rebel.

And yet, we should know who Hypa­tia was, and we should under­stand what hap­pened to her, some­thing many of the film’s reli­gious­ly-moti­vat­ed crit­ics refused to admit, claim­ing that the depic­tion of hos­tile, anti-intel­lec­tu­al Chris­tians in the movie was noth­ing more than prej­u­di­cial ani­mus on the part of direc­tor Ale­jan­dro Amenabar. The truth is that “the anti-intel­lec­tu­al stance of the ear­ly church is attest­ed to by ear­ly Chris­t­ian writ­ers,” Mark points out. And “the his­tor­i­cal records state” that Hypa­tia “was beat­en and flayed to death by a mob of Chris­t­ian monks who then burned her in a church.”

The TED-Ed video above calls this mob a “mili­tia” who saw Hypatia’s sci­en­tif­ic pur­suits as “witch­craft.” The charge is, of course, specif­i­cal­ly gen­dered. The man­ner of her death was so bru­tal and shock­ing that “even those Chris­t­ian writ­ers who were hos­tile to her and claimed she was a witch,” Mark writes, “are gen­er­al­ly sym­pa­thet­ic in record­ing her death as a tragedy. These accounts rou­tine­ly depict Hypa­tia as a woman who was wide­ly known for her gen­eros­i­ty, love of learn­ing, and exper­tise in teach­ing in the sub­jects of Neo-Pla­ton­ism, math­e­mat­ics, sci­ence, and phi­los­o­phy.”

As is the case with many ancient fig­ures, none of her own writ­ings sur­vive, but both her con­tem­po­rary crit­ics and sym­pa­thet­ic stu­dents record sim­i­lar impres­sions of her intel­lec­tu­al curios­i­ty and sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. The short video les­son tells us Hypa­tia was born around 355 A.C.E., which means she would have been around six­ty years old at the time of her death. She lived in Alexan­dria, “then part of the Egypt­ian province of the East­ern Roman Empire, and an intel­lec­tu­al cen­ter.” Edu­cat­ed by her father, she sur­passed him “in both math­e­mat­ics and phi­los­o­phy, becom­ing the city’s fore­most schol­ar.”

She even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed Theon as head of the Pla­ton­ic school, “sim­i­lar to a mod­ern uni­ver­si­ty,” and she served as a trust­ed advi­sor to the city’s lead­ers, includ­ing its gov­er­nor, Orestes, a “mod­er­ate Chris­t­ian” him­self. Her achieve­ments were many, but her teach­ing, draw­ing on Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, Plot­i­nus, and Pythago­ras, was her great­est lega­cy, the TED-Ed les­son (script­ed by Soraya Field Fio­rio) asserts. Hypatia’s death not only deprived the city of a beloved teacher and schol­ar. Her mur­der, at the behest of Alexan­dri­an bish­op Cyril, “was a turn­ing point.” Oth­er philoso­phers fled the city, and Alexandria’s “role as a cen­ter of learn­ing declined.”

“In a very real way,” the les­son tells us, “the spir­it of inqui­si­tion, open­ness, and fair­ness she fos­tered died with her.”

For a more com­plete treat­ment of Hypa­ti­a’s life and intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions, read Maria Dziel­ska’s book, Hypa­tia of Alexan­dria.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of the Great Library of Alexan­dria: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Carl Sagan Explains How the Ancient Greeks, Using Rea­son and Math, Fig­ured Out the Earth Isn’t Flat, Over 2,000 Years Ago

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy 

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch John Entwistle’s Bass-Playing Genius on Display in Isolated Tracks for “Won’t Be Fooled Again” and “Baba O’Reilly”

in Music | August 15th, 2019

I guess it’s easy to be “The Qui­et One” in The Who when sur­round­ed by a preen­ing singer with gold­en locks, a gui­tarist with a wind­mill arm who smash­es his equip­ment, and a com­plete­ly insane drum­mer (on and off stage). But John Entwistle helped root the band by stand­ing still and deliv­er­ing some of the meati­est and beat­i­est licks and melod­ic runs in ‘60s rock.

The above footage sal­vaged from the doc The Kids Are Alright shows the mas­ter at work. “Won’t Be Fooled Again” isn’t known as a bass-for­ward song, so this iso­lat­ed track from a live take show will make you hear it anew. Entwistle plays his bass like an elec­tric lead, dou­bling the drums some­times, oth­er times mim­ic­k­ing the vocals. He plays triplets and runs. He zooms up the neck, slides down, arpeg­giates, the lot. It’s thick. Just hit play.

As some YouTube wag points out, it’s some­thing of a bass play­er joke come to life at the end, where Entwistle leaves his bass onstage and walks off, while a girl rush­es out of the audi­ence to embrace the lead singer. Such is life in a band.

From the same shoot, you can also check out his iso­lat­ed bass from “Baba O’Reilly.” Entwistle has a three-note riff to work with. He stays true to it while fill­ing in spaces here and there with dis­tor­tion turned way up. At the end he has a sip of (I assume) water and looks about as excit­ed as when he start­ed.

In the mid-nineties, Entwistle was inter­viewed for a book on drum­mer Kei­th Moon. Author Tony Fletch­er caught him in an hon­est mood:

“I wast­ed my whole fuck­ing career on The Who,” he said between gulps of Remy Mar­tin brandy, his favourite tip­ple. “Com­plete fuck­ing waste of time. I should be a mul­ti-mil­lion­aire. I should be retired by now. I’ll be known as an inno­v­a­tive bass play­er. But that doesn’t help get my swim­ming pool rebuilt and let me sit on my arse watch­ing TV all day. I wouldn’t want to, but I’d like the chance to be able to.”

Not all rock bands con­sist of best friends, and some are down­right ran­corous. But that’s often what brings out the best in peo­ple. So as you gaze at Entwistle sti­fling a yawn dur­ing these two clips, con­sid­er his con­fes­sion and enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

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

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

People Pose in Uncanny Alignment with Iconic Album Covers: Discover The Sleeveface Project

in Music, Photography | August 15th, 2019

We’ve all heard a great deal over the past twen­ty years or so about the death of the album. This talk seems to have begun with the emer­gence of the down­load­able indi­vid­ual song, a tech­nol­o­gy that would final­ly allow us con­sumers to pur­chase only the tracks we want to hear and avoid pay­ing full price for “filler.” But against these odds, the long-play­ing album has per­sist­ed: artists still record them and lis­ten­ers, at least ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­ers, still buy them, some­times even on vinyl.

Some­how the album has remained cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant, and a fair bit of the cred­it must go to its cov­er. It did­n’t take long after the intro­duc­tion of the 12-inch, 33 1/3‑RPM vinyl record in 1948 for the mar­ket­ing pur­pos­es of its large out­er sleeve to become evi­dent, and the past 71 years have pro­duced many a mem­o­rable image in that form. Few plat­forms could be as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of our dig­i­tal age as Insta­gram, but it is on Insta­gram that the album cov­er has recent­ly received homage from across the globe.

“Sleeve­face is an amus­ing par­tic­i­pa­to­ry pho­to project in which peo­ple from all over the world strate­gi­cal­ly pose with match­ing album cov­ers,” writes Laugh­ing Squid’s Lori Dorn, “cre­at­ing the illu­sion that the orig­i­nal pic­ture is com­plete.”

Browse the tags #sleeve­face and #sleeve­face­sun­day (for every­thing on the inter­net even­tu­al­ly gets its day) on Insta­gram and you’ll see a vari­ety of trib­ute pos­es, some of them uncan­ni­ly well-aligned, to musi­cians whose faces we all know not least because they’ve appeared on icon­ic album cov­ers: Bruce Spring­steen to Bob Mar­ley, Simon and Gar­funkel to Iggy and the Stooges, Leonard Cohen to Fred­die Mer­cury, Janis Joplin to Adele.

All those famous names have under­gone the sleeve­face treat­ment, and quite a few of them have under­gone it more than once. Many of us have grown famil­iar indeed with these albums, and sure­ly even those of us who’ve nev­er lis­tened to them start-to-fin­ish prob­a­bly know at least a cou­ple of their songs. But even if you’ve nev­er heard so much as a mea­sure of any of them, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly seen their cov­ers — and may well, at one time or anoth­er, have been tempt­ed to hold them up in front of your own face to see how they lined up. Pop­u­lar music shows us how much we have in com­mon, but so does its pack­ag­ing.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Brings Clas­sic Album Cov­ers to Life in a Visu­al­ly-Packed Com­mer­cial: Pur­ple Rain, Beg­gars Ban­quet, Nev­er­mind & More

The Impos­si­bly Cool Album Cov­ers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Cre­ative Team Behind These Icon­ic Designs

Clas­sic Jazz Album Cov­ers Ani­mat­ed & Brought to Life

The Ground­break­ing Art of Alex Stein­weiss, Father of Record Cov­er Design

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.