The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grateful Dead (1970)

in Music | January 8th, 2025


What’s that, you ask? Did Miles Davis open for the Grate­ful Dead at the Fill­more West? In what world could such a thing hap­pen? In the world of the late sixties/early sev­en­ties, when jazz fused with acid rock, acid rock with coun­try, and pop cul­ture took a long strange trip. The “inspired pair­ing” of the Dead with Davis’ elec­tric band on April 9–12, 1970, “rep­re­sent­ed one of [pro­mot­er] Bill Graham’s most leg­endary book­ings,” writes the blog Cryp­ti­cal Devel­op­ments. I’ll say. Davis had just released the ground­break­ing dou­ble-LP Bitch­es Brew and was “at some­what of an artis­tic and com­mer­cial cross­roads,” exper­i­ment­ing with new, more flu­id com­po­si­tions.

Aggres­sive and dom­i­nat­ed by rock rhythms and elec­tric instru­ments, the album became Davis’ best sell­er and brought him before young, white audi­ences in a way his ear­li­er work had not.  The band that Davis brought into the Fill­more West, com­pris­ing [Chick] Corea, [Dave] Hol­land, sopra­no sax play­er Steve Gross­man, drum­mer Jack Dejohnette, and per­cus­sion­ist Air­to Mor­eira, was ful­ly versed in this new music, and stood the Fill­more West audi­ences on their ears.

I can only imag­ine what it would have been like to see that per­for­mance live. But we don’t have to imag­ine what it sound­ed like. You can hear Davis’s set below.

In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Davis described it as “an eye-open­ing con­cert for me.” “The place was packed with these real spa­cy, high white peo­ple,” he wrote, “and when we first start­ed play­ing, peo­ple were walk­ing around and talk­ing.” Once the band got into the Bitch­es Brew mate­r­i­al, though, “that real­ly blew them out. After that con­cert, every time I would play out there in San Fran­cis­co, a lot of young white peo­ple showed up at the gigs.”

Did the Dead become a crossover hit with jazz fans? Not exact­ly, but Davis real­ly hit it off with them, espe­cial­ly with Jer­ry Gar­cia. “I think we all learned some­thing,” Davis wrote: “Jer­ry Gar­cia loved jazz, and I found out that he loved my music and had been lis­ten­ing to it for a long time.” In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, the Dead’s Phil Lesh remem­bered hav­ing his mind blown by Davis and band: “As I lis­tened, lean­ing over the amps with my jaw hang­ing agape, try­ing to com­pre­hend the forces that Miles was unleash­ing onstage, I was think­ing What’s the use. How can we pos­si­bly play after this? […] With this band, Miles lit­er­al­ly invent­ed fusion music. In some ways it was sim­i­lar to what we were try­ing to do in our free jam­ming, but ever so much more dense with ideas – and seem­ing­ly con­trolled with an iron fist, even at its most alarm­ing­ly intense moments.” You can stream the Dead­’s full per­for­mance from that night below. Think what must have been run­ning through their minds as they took the stage after watch­ing Miles Davis invent a new form of music right before their eyes.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Opens for Neil Young and “That Sor­ry-Ass Cat” Steve Miller at The Fill­more East (1970)

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

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

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Compare the “It Ain’t Me Babe” Scene from A Complete Unknown to the Real Bob Dylan & Joan Baez Performance at the Newport Folk Festival

in Film, History, Music | January 8th, 2025

A Com­plete Unknown, the new movie about Bob Dylan’s rise in the folk-music scene of the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties and sub­se­quent elec­tri­fied break with it, has been praised for not tak­ing exces­sive lib­er­ties, at least by the stan­dards of pop­u­lar music biopics. Its con­ver­sion of a real chap­ter of cul­tur­al his­to­ry has entailed var­i­ous con­fla­tions, com­pres­sions, and rearrange­ments, but you’d expect that from a Hol­ly­wood direc­tor like James Man­gold. What many view­ers’ judg­ment will come down to is less his­tor­i­cal verac­i­ty than whether they believe Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met as the young Bob Dylan — or rather, as the young Bob Dylan they’ve always imag­ined.

Still, much depends on the rest of the cast, who por­tray a host of major folk- and folk-adja­cent fig­ures includ­ing Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, John­ny Cash, Alan Lomax, and the late Peter Yarrow. No per­for­mance apart from Cha­la­met’s has received as much atten­tion as Mon­i­ca Bar­baro’s Joan Baez. In those char­ac­ters’ key scene togeth­er they take the stage at the 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val and sing “It Ain’t Me Babe,” a Dylan song that Baez also record­ed. Their ren­di­tion con­veys the depth of their roman­tic and artis­tic con­nec­tion not just to the audi­ence, but also to Dylan’s girl­friend, played by Elle Fan­ning, watch­ing just off­stage.


“That idea of the secret is real­ly what I need­ed to dri­ve the scene,” says Man­gold, using the lan­guage of his trade, in the Vari­ety video at the top of the post. “Ulti­mate­ly, I’ve got to get it to where Elle is dri­ven away by what­ev­er she’s seen on stage. But it would­n’t have worked as well if Cha­la­met and Bar­baro had­n’t nailed the per­for­mance, just one of many in the film shot 100 per­cent live. If you’d like to com­pare them to the real thing, have a look at the footage of Dylan and Baez singing “It Ain’t Me Babe” at the actu­al 1964 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val just above. After that, you may want to go back to the pre­vi­ous year’s fes­ti­val and watch their per­for­mance of “With God on Our Side” — and, while you’re at it, lis­ten to Dylan’s entire cat­a­log all over again.

Relat­ed con­tent

Joan Baez Live in 1965: Full Con­cert

Bob Dylan’s His­toric New­port Folk Fes­ti­val Per­for­mances, 1963–1965

Watch Joan Baez Endear­ing­ly Imi­tate Bob Dylan (1972)

The Moment When Bob Dylan Went Elec­tric: Watch Him Play “Maggie’s Farm” at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1965

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Radio Caroline, the Pirate Radio Ship That Rocked the British Music World (1965)

in Music | January 6th, 2025

Nowa­days musi­cians can reach hun­dreds, thou­sands, some­times mil­lions of lis­ten­ers with a few, usu­al­ly free, online ser­vices and a min­i­mal grasp of tech­nol­o­gy. That’s not to say there aren’t still eco­nom­ic bar­ri­ers aplen­ty for the strug­gling artist, but true inde­pen­dence is not an impos­si­ble prospect.

In the 1950s and 60s, on the oth­er hand, as pop­u­lar music attained new­found com­mer­cial val­ue, musi­cians found them­selves com­plete­ly behold­en to record com­pa­nies and radio sta­tions in order to have their music heard by near­ly any­one. And those enti­ties schemed togeth­er to pro­mote cer­tain record­ings and ignore or mar­gin­al­ize oth­ers. Pay­ola, in a word, ruled the day.

In the UK, a dif­fer­ent but no less impreg­nable order pre­sent­ed itself to the aspir­ing obscu­ri­ty. Rather than cor­po­rate inter­ests and well-bribed DJs, the BBC and British gov­ern­ment, writes the Modesto Radio Muse­um, “were increas­ing­ly hos­tile toward any com­pe­ti­tion for their radio monop­oly.” (After WWII, the British Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice main­tained a monop­oly on radio, and lat­er tele­vi­sion, broad­cast­ing in the UK.) Enter the pirates.

While the phrase now denotes a class of free­boot­ers who work from their ter­mi­nals, the orig­i­nal music pirates actu­al­ly took to the seas. The first, Radio Mer­cur, “estab­lished by a group of Dan­ish busi­ness­men” in 1958, “trans­mit­ted from a small ship anchored off Copen­hagen, Den­mark.” Mer­cur inspired Radio Nord in 1960, anchored off the Swedish Coast, then the Dutch Radio Veron­i­ca that same year.

Then, in 1962, Irish man­ag­er Ronan O’Rahilly met Aus­tralian busi­ness­man Allan Craw­ford. O’Rahilly had pre­vi­ous­ly attempt­ed to launch the career of musi­cian Georgie Fame, but to no avail. Record com­pa­nies would­n’t record him, and when O’Rahilly fund­ed an album, the BBC refused to play it—he wasn’t on their favored labels, EMI and Dec­ca. So O’Rahilly and Craw­ford con­spired to cre­ate their own pirate sta­tion, Radio Car­o­line (named after the daugh­ter of John F. Kennedy).

They pur­chased their first ship, the MV Mi Ami­go, in 1963, then set about secur­ing funds and rig­ging up the ves­sel with two 10 Kilo­watt AM trans­mit­ters and a 13-ton, 165 foot anten­na mast. Broad­cast­ing from 6am to 6pm dai­ly, Radio Car­o­line man­aged to break the BBC monop­oly (and launch Georgie Fame to… well actu­al, chart-top­ping fame). In 1965, a British Pathé film crew vis­it­ed the ship, not­ing in their nar­ra­tion that “for over a year,” Radio Car­o­line had “giv­en pop music to some­thing like 20 mil­lion lis­ten­ers,” chang­ing British pop cul­ture “with the con­nivance of almost every teenag­er in South­east Eng­land.”

The sta­tion kicked off their first broad­cast, which you can hear above, on East­er Sun­day, March 1964, with the announce­ment, “This is Radio Car­o­line on 199, your all day music sta­tion.” The very first tune they played was the Rolling Stones’ cov­er of Bud­dy Hol­ly’s “Not Fade Away” (one of the band’s first major hits). In the mid-60s pirate radio, par­tic­u­lar­ly Radio Car­o­line, helped break a num­ber of bands, intro­duc­ing eager young lis­ten­ers to The Who’s first four sin­gles, for exam­ple. (The band returned the favor by attempt­ing to give 1967’s The Who Sell Out the raw sound and feel of a pirate radio broad­cast.)

Learn more about Radio Caroline’s long and sto­ried exis­tence in the doc­u­men­tary seg­ment fur­ther up, Part 6 of DMC World’s com­pre­hen­sive The His­to­ry of DJ. The Modesto Radio Museum’s thor­ough, mul­ti­part essay series, com­plete with pho­tographs, offers a rich his­to­ry, as does Ray Clark’s book, Radio Car­o­line: The True Sto­ry of the Boat that Rocked. “The world’s most famous off­shore radio sta­tion,” is still on the air today (even though the orig­i­nal ship sank in 1980) or rather, on the web, with stream­ing pro­grams and “gad­gets and wid­gets” for Android devices, iPhones, iPads, and browsers.

It’s some­thing of an irony that they’ve end­ed up just one of hun­dreds of online stream­ing sta­tions vying for lis­ten­ers’ atten­tion, but it’s safe to say that with­out their exploits in the 60s and beyond, pop music as we know it—with all its legal and not-so-legal means of dissemination—may nev­er have spread and evolved into the myr­i­ad forms we now take for grant­ed.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Lis­ten to the Radio: The BBC’s 1930 Man­u­al for Using a New Tech­nol­o­gy

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979; Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

“Joe Strummer’s Lon­don Call­ing”: All 8 Episodes of Strummer’s UK Radio Show Free Online

Jimi Hen­drix Wreaks Hav­oc on the Lulu Show, Gets Banned From BBC (1969)

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

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Laurie Anderson’s Mind-Blowing Performance of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Waiting for the Barbarians” & “Ithaca”

in Music, Poetry | January 3rd, 2025


In the video above, Lau­rie Ander­son describes C. P. Cavafy’s poem “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians” as being “set in ancient Rome.” That’s a rea­son­able inter­pre­ta­tion, giv­en that it con­tains an emper­or, sen­a­tors, and ora­tors, though Cavafy him­self said that none of them are nec­es­sar­i­ly Roman. The uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion the poem describes, in which a state’s elite turn out in their fin­ery despite hav­ing noth­ing to do but await the tit­u­lar bar­bar­ian inva­sion, cer­tain­ly has­n’t been lost on its inter­preters. J. M. Coet­zee, for exam­ple, set his nov­el Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians on the edge of an unnamed “Empire.”

Ander­son also men­tions think­ing, while con­sid­er­ing the poem’s evo­ca­tion of gov­ern­ment dead­lock, “Hang on, this sounds famil­iar” — and none can deny that com­par­isons between the Unit­ed States and the declin­ing Roman Empire have been in the air late­ly. That, in part, inspired the per­for­mance that fol­lows, in which Ander­son and a ver­i­ta­ble Greek cho­rus inter­pret both “Wait­ing for the Bar­bar­ians,” which Cavafy wrote in 1904, and the Odyssey-based “Itha­ca” (which you can also hear read by Sean Con­nery with a Van­ge­lis score) from sev­en years lat­er. “Itha­ca” is Cavafy’s best-known work, thanks not least to its being read at the funer­al of for­mer first lady of the Unit­ed States Jacque­line Kennedy Onas­sis.

It was, in fact, the Alexan­der S. Onas­sis Foun­da­tion, estab­lished by Aris­to­tle Onas­sis in the name of his late son, that spon­sored this event, which took place in New York City’s Saint Thomas Church in Novem­ber of 2023. The occa­sion was the open­ing of the Cavafy Archive in Athens, on whose web­site clas­si­cist Gre­go­ry Jus­da­nis declares that the poet­’s “great­ness lies in his tal­ent to pre­dict our own world one hun­dred years ago.” Cavafy might well have under­stood that some polit­i­cal con­di­tions are inevitable, but he could­n’t have known how Ander­son­’s per­for­mance of his words, in Eng­lish trans­la­tion with the right instru­men­tal and elec­tron­ic back­ing, would sound like some­thing right out of her Big Sci­ence era.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Watch Lau­rie Anderson’s Hyp­not­ic Har­vard Lec­ture Series on Poet­ry, Med­i­ta­tion, Death, New York & More

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

Sean Con­nery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Itha­ca,” Set to the Music of Van­ge­lis

Is Amer­i­ca Declin­ing Like Ancient Rome?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” Performed by a Choir of 4,000 Singers

in Music | January 3rd, 2025

Through­out the years, we’ve fea­tured per­for­mances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to that meets week­ly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgar­den’s “Black Hole Sun” (to hon­or Chris Cor­nell), and Pat­ti Smith’s “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er.” In their lat­est video, they revis­it an old favorite: Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah,” a song released on the 1984 album Var­i­ous Posi­tions. Orig­i­nal­ly over­looked, Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” has since become deeply woven into our cul­tur­al fab­ric. Over the past 40 years, some 300 musi­cians have cov­ered “Hal­lelu­jah,” with Jeff Buck­ley offer­ing per­haps the most cel­e­brat­ed ver­sion. Above, you can watch 4,000 singers come togeth­er and pay their own trib­ute to the song. This per­for­mance took place last year at the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre in Ottawa, Cana­da. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” Played on Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to 6th Cen­tu­ry

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

A Choir with 1,000 Singers Pays Trib­ute to Sinéad O’Connor & Per­forms “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

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What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Early Hitchcock Films, Tintin and Popeye Cartoons & More

in Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Law, Music | January 1st, 2025

Each Pub­lic Domain Day seems to bring us a rich­er crop of copy­right-lib­er­at­ed books, plays, films, musi­cal com­po­si­tions, sound record­ings, works of art, and oth­er pieces of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. This year hap­pens to be an espe­cial­ly notable one for con­nois­seurs of Bel­gian cul­ture. Among the char­ac­ters enter­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic domain, we find a cer­tain boy reporter named Tintin, who first appeared — along with his faith­ful pup Milou, or in Eng­lish, Snowy — in the Jan­u­ary 10th, 1929 issue of Le Petit Vingtième, the chil­dren’s sup­ple­ment of the news­pa­per Le Vingtième Siè­cle.

Now, here in le vingt-et-unième-siè­cle, that first ver­sion of Tintin can be rein­vent­ed in any man­ner one can imag­ine — at least in the Unit­ed States. In the Euro­pean Union, as the Duke Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain direc­tors Jen­nifer Jenk­ins and James Boyle note in their Pub­lic Domain Day blog post for this year, that Tintin remains under copy­right until 2054, a date based on his cre­ator Hergé hav­ing died in 1983. The thor­ough­ly Amer­i­can com­ic-strip hero Pop­eye also made his debut in 1929, but as Jenk­ins and Boyle has­ten to add, while that “Pop­eye 1.0 had super­hu­man capa­bil­i­ties, he did not derive them from eat­ing spinach until 1931.” Even so, “it appears that the copy­right in this 1931 com­ic strip was not renewed — if this is true, Popeye’s spinach-fueled strength is already in the pub­lic domain.”

This year also brings a devel­op­ment in a sim­i­lar mat­ter of detail relat­ed to no less a car­toon icon than Mick­ey Mouse: last year freed the first ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse, his riv­er-nav­i­gat­ing, farm-ani­mal-bash­ing Steam­boat Willie incar­na­tion. “In 2025 we wel­come a dozen new Mick­ey Mouse films from 1929,” write Jenk­ins and Boyle, “Mick­ey speaks his first words – ‘Hot dogs! Hot dogs!’ – and debuts his famil­iar white gloves. That ver­sion of Mick­ey is now offi­cial­ly in the pub­lic domain.”

This Pub­lic Domain Day also brings us lit­er­ary works like Faulkn­er’s The Sound and the Fury, Hem­ing­way’s A Farewell to Arms, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (as well as detec­tive nov­els from Agatha Christie and the pseu­do­ny­mous Ellery Queen, once the biggest mys­tery writer in Amer­i­ca); the first sound films by Alfred Hitch­cock, John Ford, and the Marx Broth­ers; musi­cal com­po­si­tions like “Sin­gin’ in the Rain,” Gersh­win’s An Amer­i­can in Paris, and Rav­el’s Boléro; actu­al record­ings of Rhap­sody in Blue and “It Had To Be You”; and Sur­re­al­ist works of art by Sal­vador Dalí and — pend­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion into their copy­right sta­tus — per­haps even René Magritte, whose L’empire des lumières just sold for a record $121 mil­lion. Who knows? 2025 could be the year we all look to Bel­gium for inspi­ra­tion.

For more on what’s enter­ing the pub­lic domain today, vis­it this Duke Uni­ver­si­ty web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hergé Draws Tintin in Vin­tage Footage (and What Explains the Character’s Endur­ing Appeal)

An Intro­duc­tion to René Magritte, and How the Bel­gian Artist Used an Ordi­nary Style to Cre­ate Extra­or­di­nar­i­ly Sur­re­al Paint­ings

William Faulkn­er Reads His Nobel Prize Speech

Alfred Hitch­cock Presents Some of the First Words Ever Spo­ken on Film .… and They’re Saucy Ones (1929)

An Ear­ly Ver­sion of Mick­ey Mouse Enters the Pub­lic Domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2024

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2024: Enjoy Clas­sic Works by Vir­ginia Woolf, Char­lie Chap­lin, Buster Keaton, D. H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Complete History of the Music Video: From the 1890s to Today

in History, Music | December 31st, 2024

If you want to under­stand the his­to­ry of music videos, you must con­sid­er a lot of things that are not obvi­ous­ly music videos. The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first selec­tion of MTV’s inau­gur­al broad­cast, must sure­ly count as a music video — but then, it was pro­duced a cou­ple years ear­li­er for the much dif­fer­ent con­text of the British chart pro­gram Top of the Pops, much like Queen’s pro­to music video for “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” from 1975. But is Bob Dylan’s much-par­o­died card-drop­ping “per­for­mance” of “Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Blues” from a decade ear­li­er, shot for D. A. Pen­nebak­er’s Dont Look Back, a music video? What about A Hard Day’s Night, the Bea­t­les’ exu­ber­ant­ly nar­ra­tive-light film from the year before?

All of these come up in the new his­to­ry of the music video from YouTube chan­nel Poly­phon­ic above, which com­piles into an over three-hour-long view­ing expe­ri­ence all the episodes of its series on the sub­ject. In its long his­tor­i­cal view, the music video did­n’t begin with the Fab Four, and not even with their epoch-mak­ing appear­ance on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

One can trace it far­ther back, past Sco­pi­tone film juke­box­es (includ­ed in “the canon of Camp” by Susan Son­tag in her famous essay); past Dis­ney’s Fan­ta­sia (essen­tial­ly eight ani­mat­ed clas­si­cal music videos strung togeth­er); past even The Jazz Singer, the first fea­ture-length musi­cal “talkie,” which in 1927 put a defin­i­tive end to the era of silent film.

Per­haps the ear­li­est iden­ti­fi­able pre­de­ces­sor of the music video is “The Lit­tle Lost Child,” which in 1894 was exhib­it­ed as an “illus­trat­ed song.” Its deliv­ery of a nar­ra­tive through pro­ject­ed still images accom­pa­nied by live piano was like noth­ing its audi­ences had expe­ri­enced before, with an emo­tion­al pow­er greater than the sum of its visu­al and musi­cal parts. This was a brand new tech­nol­o­gy, and indeed, like any cul­tur­al his­to­ry, that of the music video is also a tech­no­log­i­cal his­to­ry, one advanced by film, broad­cast tele­vi­sion, cable tele­vi­sion, and in our time, inter­net stream­ing, which stayed the for­m’s loom­ing prospect of pop-cul­tur­al irrel­e­vance. Now, in the twen­ty-twen­ties, we must ask our­selves this: when Tik­Tok users post them­selves danc­ing, zoom­ing in on pan­cakes, or skate­board­ing while drink­ing Ocean Spray, is it a music video?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hunter S. Thompson Remembers Jimmy Carter’s Captivating Bob Dylan Speech (1974)

in Literature, Music, Politics | December 29th, 2024

51 years ago, Hunter S. Thomp­son wrote Fear and Loathing on the Cam­paign Trail ’72, which “is still con­sid­ered a kind of bible of polit­i­cal report­ing,” not­ed Matt Taib­bi in a 40th anniver­sary edi­tion of the book. Fear and Loathing ’72 entered the canon of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal writ­ing for many rea­sons. But if you’re look­ing for one bot­tom-line expla­na­tion, it prob­a­bly comes down to this: Says Taib­bi, “Thomp­son stared right into the flam­ing-hot sun of shame­less lies and cyn­i­cal horse­shit that is our pol­i­tics, and he described exact­ly what he saw—probably at seri­ous cost to his own men­tal health, but the ben­e­fit to us was [his leg­endary book].”

Thomp­son may have reached some jour­nal­is­tic apogee with his cov­er­age of the ’72 Nixon-McGov­ern cam­paign. But his polit­i­cal writ­ing hard­ly stopped there. The Gonzo jour­nal­ist cov­ered the ’76 elec­tion for Rolling Stone mag­a­zine. And inevitably he crossed paths with Jim­my Carter (RIP), the even­tu­al win­ner of the elec­tion. Above, Thomp­son recalls the day when Carter first made an impres­sion upon him.

It hap­pened at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia School of Law on May 4, 1974. Speak­ing before a gath­er­ing of alum­ni lawyers, Carter upset their cel­e­bra­to­ry occa­sion when he dis­man­tled the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem they were so proud of. And Carter par­tic­u­lar­ly caught Thomp­son’s atten­tion when he traced his sense of social jus­tice back to a song writ­ten by Bob Dylan:

The oth­er source of my under­stand­ing about what’s right and wrong in this soci­ety is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. After lis­ten­ing to his records about “The Bal­lad of Hat­tie Car­ol” and “Like a Rolling Stone” and “The Times, They Are a‑Changing,” I’ve learned to appre­ci­ate the dynamism of change in a mod­ern soci­ety.

I grew up as a landown­er’s son. But I don’t think I ever real­ized the prop­er inter­re­la­tion­ship between the landown­er and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan’s record, “I Ain’t Gonna Work on Mag­gie’s Farm No More.” So I come here speak­ing to you today about your sub­ject with a base for my infor­ma­tion found­ed on Rein­hold Niebuhr and Bob Dylan.

You can read the full text of Carter’s speech here. It’s also worth watch­ing a relat­ed clip below, where Thomp­son elab­o­rates on Carter, his famous speech and his alleged mean streak that put him on the same plane as Muham­mad Ali and Son­ny Barg­er (the god­fa­ther of The Hells Angels).

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post first appeared on our site in 2012. With the pass­ing of Pres­i­dent Carter, it seemed like a good time to bring it back.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The 2,000+ Films Watched by Pres­i­dents Nixon, Carter & Rea­gan in the White House

Hear the Uncen­sored Orig­i­nal Ver­sion of “Hur­ri­cane,” Bob Dylan’s Protest Song About Jailed Box­er Rubin “Hur­ri­cane” Carter (1976)

Hunter Thomp­son Explains What Gonzo Jour­nal­ism Is, and How He Writes It (1975)

 

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