Hear the Beatles Play Their Final Concert 50 Years Ago Today (August 29, 1966)

in History, Music | August 29th, 2016

50 years ago today, the Bea­t­les played their final offi­cial con­cert and put an end to their tour­ing career. It all hap­pened at the now defunct Can­dle­stick Park in San Fran­cis­co.

As Josh Jones told us in 2014, “know­ing it would be their final show, the band brought a cam­era onstage to take pho­tos of the crowd and them­selves.” And “Paul McCart­ney asked the band’s press offi­cer Tony Bar­row to record the con­cert on a hand-held tape recorder.” Bar­rows even­tu­al­ly talked more about how this record­ing came to see the light of day. He said:

Back in Lon­don I kept the con­cert cas­sette under lock and key in a draw­er of my office desk, mak­ing a sin­gle copy for my per­son­al col­lec­tion and pass­ing the orig­i­nal to Paul for him to keep. Years lat­er my Can­dle­stick Park record­ing re-appeared in pub­lic as a boot­leg album. If you hear a boot­leg ver­sion of the final con­cert that fin­ish­es dur­ing Long Tall Sal­ly it must have come either from Paul’s copy or mine, but we nev­er did iden­ti­fy the music thief!

Above, you can hear the Bea­t­les’ last 28 min­utes as a live act—save, of course, their impromp­tu gig played on a Lon­don rooftop in 1969. For all its rough­ness, there’s a good chance that the sound qual­i­ty rivals what fans heard that cold August night in Can­dle­stick. Like oth­er sta­di­ums from that era, Can­dle­stick had a god-awful sound sys­tem, ill-equipped to com­pete with an end­less bar­rage of teenage screams and gusts of wind. But that did­n’t stop fans from enjoy­ing the show all the same.

Find a setlist for the 11-song con­cert below:

01. “Rock and Roll Music”
02. “She’s a Woman”
03. “If I Need­ed Some­one”
04. “Day Trip­per”
05. “Baby’s In Black”
06. “I Feel Fine”
07. “Yes­ter­day”
08. “I Wan­na Be Your Man”
09. “Nowhere Man”
10. “Paper­back Writer”
11. “Long Tall Sal­ly” (Incom­plete)

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 and BlueSky.

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:

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in 4 Dif­fer­ent Accents: Dr. Strangelove, Cock­ney, Irish & Upper Crust

Watch HD Ver­sions of The Bea­t­les’ Pio­neer­ing Music Videos: “Hey Jude,” “Pen­ny Lane,” “Rev­o­lu­tion” & More

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

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Nakedly Examined Music Podcast Explores Songwriting with Cracker, King Crimson, Cutting Crew, Jill Sobule & More

in Music, Podcasts | August 28th, 2016

nakedly-examined-music-logo_500
I’m Mark Lin­sen­may­er, the host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, and I’d like to intro­duce you to a new-in-2016 inter­view series called Naked­ly Exam­ined Music (iTunes — Face­book — RSS) that fea­tures great song­writ­ers talk­ing about their moti­va­tions and tech­niques regard­ing spe­cif­ic songs.

In episode one, for instance, indie rock icon and activist for artist rights David Low­ery decon­struct­ed the lyrics for his sto­ry songs “All Her Favorite Fruit” (Camper Van Beethoven, 1989) and “I Sold the Arabs the Moon” (from his 2011 solo album), con­trast­ing these with the non­sense song that launched his career, “Take the Skin­heads Bowl­ing.”

The songs dis­cussed are played in full, and the idea is to get a sense of the artist’s approach in very spe­cif­ic terms, and how this has changed over time. In episode 15, Craig Wedren shows us his devel­op­ment from writ­ing heavy (“post-hard­core”), dis­so­nant music in the 90s with Shud­der to Think, to cre­at­ing dis­co synth­scapes with his ear­ly 00’s band Baby, to now com­pos­ing music for sound­tracks like Net­flix’s “Wet Hot Amer­i­can Sum­mer: First Day of Camp.”

The empha­sis in a giv­en inter­view depends on the artist: Gui­tar vir­tu­oso Gary Lucas (Cap­tain Beef­heart, Jeff Buck­ley) eschews music the­o­ry, so the focus is more on the ide­ol­o­gy of cre­ation, where­as tap-gui­tar wiz­ard Trey Gunn (King Crim­son, David Syl­vian) instructs us in com­bin­ing time sig­na­tures and solo­ing in modes. The inter­views both teach us how to lis­ten to and appre­ci­ate music by show­ing us what to focus on, and also serve to instruct song­writ­ers real and vic­ar­i­ous about deci­sions that go into a choice of chord or lyric or instru­men­ta­tion.

What kind of music can you expect to hear? Offi­cial­ly, any­thing that has thought behind it, but I’m start­ing with my expe­ri­ence as musi­cian (see www.marklint.com) and music lover grow­ing up in the 80s and 90s lis­ten­ing to pop­u­lar, indie, folk, punk, and pro­gres­sive rock. There hare been some move­ment into soul (Episode 16 fea­tures the great Nara­da Michael Walden, who pro­duced Whit­ney Hous­ton among many oth­ers), elec­tron­i­ca (Gareth Mitchell), coun­try (Beth Kille), and future episodes will ven­ture into clas­si­cal, hip-hop, and world music. More typ­i­cal, how­ev­er (i.e. more akin to my own writ­ing), are fig­ures like 90s sweet­heart and polit­i­cal activist Jill Sob­ule, cow-punk pio­neer Jon Lang­ford (Mekons), grunge-ped­dler turned sym­phon­ist Jonathan Don­ahue (Mer­cury Rev), NPR dar­ling Chad Clark (Beau­ty Pill), and 80s Cut­ting Crew front-man Nick Eede. One of the episodes next to be released will fea­ture Bill Bru­ford (Yes, King Crim­son, Earth­works).

Lis­ten to Jill Sob­ule in episode 18:

In one of the most inter­est­ing inter­views (episode 3), major league music video director–and mem­ber of 70s super­group 10cc and 80s duo God­ley & Creme–Kevin God­ley takes us from 70s prog excess (and get­ting to record jazz leg­end Sarah Vaugh­an) into the New Wave and out of music alto­geth­er, only to redis­cov­er it post-retire­ment.

This is not about get­ting behind the scenes with your favorite stars or any oth­er hype of that sort, but about talk­ing with smart peo­ple to fig­ure out the lan­guage of music, the moti­va­tions behind cre­ation, and the tech­niques avail­able for self-expres­sion. In the course of these dis­cus­sions, we get into chang­ing trends in mak­ing a liv­ing in music (or not!), new music tech­nolo­gies, and, of course, philo­soph­i­cal issues.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is a writer and musi­cian in Madi­son, WI. His Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast has been down­loaded more than 15 mil­lion times. Learn more about Naked­ly Exam­ined Music at www.nakedlyexaminedmusic.com, sub­scribe via iTunes, or fol­low on Face­book.

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Angelo Badalamenti Reveals How He and David Lynch Composed the Twin Peaks’ “Love Theme”

in Music, Television | August 26th, 2016


On my last trip to New York, some friends took me to a favorite new-wave Chi­nese place of theirs. When I asked where to find the bath­room, they said to go down­stairs. The stair­case deposit­ed me into one of the most sur­re­al bath­room approach­es I’ve ever expe­ri­enced: a long, nar­row, ful­ly mir­rored hall­way with a haunt­ing­ly famil­iar com­po­si­tion piped in from speak­ers installed along its length. Not until I resur­faced and asked what the deal was could I iden­ti­fy the music: the “Love Theme” from David Lynch’s ear­ly-1990s tele­vi­sion series Twin Peaks.

Many TV themes have lodged them­selves into our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, most­ly through sheer rep­e­ti­tion, but few have retained as much evoca­tive pow­er as the one Lynch’s com­pos­er, Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, record­ed for his short-lived post­mod­ern detec­tive show.

It had that pow­er from the moment Badala­men­ti put his fin­gers to the key­board, a sto­ry told in the clip above. “What do you see, David?” he remem­bers ask­ing the direc­tor as he sits down before the very same Fend­er Rhodes on which he com­posed Twin Peaks’ major themes all those years ago. “Just talk to me.”

“We’re in a dark woods,” Badala­men­ti recalls Lynch first say­ing. “There’s a soft wind blow­ing through sycamore trees. There’s a moon out, some ani­mal sounds in the back­ground. You can hear the hoot of an owl. Just get me into that beau­ti­ful dark­ness.” Badala­men­ti plays as he played then, which drew an imme­di­ate response from Lynch: “Ange­lo, that’s great. I love that. That’s a good mood. But can you play it slow­er?” With the feed­back loop between the scene in Lynch’s mind and the mood of Badala­men­ti’s music engaged, Lynch added a detail: “From behind a tree, in the back of the woods, is this very lone­ly girl. Her name is Lau­ra Palmer.”

Badala­men­ti light­ens his impro­vi­sa­tion in a way that makes it some­how eerier. “That’s it!” The com­pos­er and the direc­tor play off one anoth­er’s ideas, almost like two long-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cians in a jam ses­sion. “She’s walk­ing toward the cam­era, she’s com­ing clos­er… just keep build­ing it! Just keep build­ing it!” Even­tu­al­ly, they’ve cre­at­ed an entire ris­ing and falling dra­mat­ic arc in this sin­gle piece of music (arguably more dra­mat­ic than the one cre­at­ed by the series itself, which Lynch left after two sea­sons). “David got up, gave me a big hug, and said, ‘Ange­lo, that’s Twin Peaks’ ” — and to this day, a part of the cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Ele­men­tary School Stu­dents Per­form in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear the One Night Sun Ra & John Cage Played Together in Concert (1986)

in Jazz, Music | August 25th, 2016

It’s hard to imag­ine two fig­ures more rep­re­sen­ta­tive of two dis­parate direc­tions exper­i­men­tal music took in the 20th cen­tu­ry than John Cage and Sun Ra. Cage’s aleato­ry arrange­ments and instru­ments impro­vised from radios and TV sets left much to the dis­cre­tion of the per­former. And yet, odd­ly, he did­n’t think much of impro­visato­ry music, writ­ing in his 1961 book Silence that he con­sid­ered jazz “rather sil­ly” and “unsuit­ed,” notes Seth Colter Walls at Pitch­fork, “for ‘seri­ous’ con­texts.”

Sun Ra, on the oth­er hand, while a mas­ter impro­vis­er, left lit­tle to chance. He embraced the role of band­leader of his Arkestra with unique vig­or, “com­plete­ly obsessed with pre­ci­sion and dis­ci­pline.” Cage pre­ferred the plain-spo­ken, unspo­ken, and word­less. Ra deliv­ered roco­co trea­tis­es onstage, dressed in glit­ter­ing capes and head­dress­es. How the two would, or could, come togeth­er may seem a mys­tery, but come togeth­er they did, for a one-time con­cert event at a Coney Island freak show.

The result­ing album is “one of the most sought after records in either discog­ra­phy,” writes The Vinyl Fac­to­ry in an announce­ment of the full per­for­mance’s recent release by label Mod­ern Har­mon­ic. Fans can final­ly pur­chase that dou­ble LP, or lis­ten to the live record­ing for free below. (If you need Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, down­load it here.) Though it may seem like a bit of a nov­el­ty, “the album grad­u­al­ly emerges as some­thing greater than a foot­note,” Walls writes, “despite the arms-length embrace, the over­all con­cert has a sur­pris­ing­ly seam­less qual­i­ty.”

Cage’s con­tri­bu­tions con­sist main­ly of word­less vocal­iza­tions and poignant silences. Ra recites poet­ry and unleash­es solo after solo on his Yama­ha DX7 syn­the­siz­er, blend­ing “sci-fi movie tones” with “spright­ly fig­ures” and “dense chords and drones.” The album’s trail­er at the top of the post offers some rare black and white footage of the occa­sion, which briefly includ­ed a cou­ple of addi­tion­al artists–Arkestra sax­o­phon­ist Mar­shall Allen and singer June Tyson. (Tyson’s inten­tion­al­ly strained per­for­mance “is beset by ampli­fi­ca­tion prob­lems,” Walls warns, “though the noise-dam­aged result works, in con­text.”

Through­out the one-off meet­ing, Ra and Cage trade solos, each respect­ful­ly yield­ing the stage to the oth­er in turn. While this set­up high­lights the two giants’ pro­found­ly dif­fer­ent approach­es to making–and con­ceiv­ing of–music, Sun Ra’s “abil­i­ty to meet Cage more than halfway… helps hold the entire gig togeth­er,” writes Walls. One of the few tracks on which the two col­lab­o­rate direct­ly, “Silent Duet,” is, well, exact­ly that. Since we can­not see the per­for­mance, we have to imag­ine the two of them, sit­ting side-by-side in silence, as the audi­ence seems to all but hold its breath.

The odd thump of a foot against the mic stand aside, the record­ing doc­u­ments almost total dead air. Then this gives way to Cage’s cryp­tic mum­bling and Ra’s restrained key­board taps in “Emp­ty Words and Key­board.” The effect is elec­tric, the moment sacred, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion, though fleet­ing, reveals itself as gen­uine­ly inspired, not only for its care­ful play of con­trast­ing avant-gardis­m’s against each oth­er but for the extra­or­di­nary instances in which Afro­fu­tur­ist free jazz and Fluxus min­i­mal­ism find accord.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sun Ra Christ­mas: Hear His 1976 Radio Broad­cast of Poet­ry and Music

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

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

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

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

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Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra

in Music, Television | August 25th, 2016

With Twin Peaks com­ing back to our TV screens next year, fans want to know who’s com­ing back from the orig­i­nal cast and crew. The same could be said for com­pos­er Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, whose theme music for the series still evokes shots of sawmills, high water­falls, rustling pines, and a deep, dark sense of mys­tery com­bined with the pangs of doomed romance.

In this selec­tion from an August 19, 2016 con­cert from the Dan­ish Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, under the baton of Antho­ny Wee­den, Badalamenti’s score is giv­en a chance to stand alone as a com­po­si­tion with­out the visu­als. Bathed in red light, the orches­tra looks appro­pri­ate­ly Lynchi­an, and all that’s miss­ing is a large red cur­tain and zigzag floor­ing. The arrange­ment hews close to Badalamenti’s, though his small com­bo from the orig­i­nal sound­track gets expand­ed to a full orches­tra, with ket­tle­drums, glock­en­spiel, harp, and con­cert bells. How­ev­er, when “Lau­ra Palmer’s Theme” segues into the title theme, the two-note twang is still played on elec­tric gui­tar. (You can’t mess with that!)

In this con­text, Badalamenti’s nods to Bernard Hermann’s Ver­ti­go score are even more appar­ent, espe­cial­ly in the del­i­cate, swelling love melody that is always in dan­ger of sad col­lapse. The con­cert also fea­tured selec­tions from oth­er great tele­vi­sion sound­tracks, includ­ing Game of Thrones, Home­land, Break­ing Bad, Six Feet Under, and more. The whole con­cert can be watched here.

“We had a fab­u­lous time per­form­ing it —a very spe­cial part of the evening,” Antho­ny Wee­den is quot­ed as say­ing on the go-to Wel­come to Twin Peaks site. And he added, “I can’t wait for the new series!”

Nei­ther can we, Mr. Wee­den.

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch Draws a Map of Twin Peaks (to Help Pitch the Show to ABC)

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based 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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Pizza Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Magic of Conductive Ink

in Food & Drink, Music, Technology | August 25th, 2016

Turns out Piz­za Hut is good for some­thing…

They’ve teamed up with the print­ed elec­tron­ics com­pa­ny Novalia to turn card­board piz­za box­es into playable turnta­bles. Spe­cial­iz­ing in tech­nol­o­gy that adds touch and con­nec­tiv­i­ty to every­day sur­faces, Novalia has cre­at­ed two scratch­able decks, each with con­trols that let you fine-tune the vol­ume, pitch, play­back, and cross­fad­ing. And it’s all done with the mag­ic of con­duc­tive ink.

Accord­ing to Live for Music, “the bat­tery-pow­ered box can be hooked up to a com­put­er or phone through Blue­tooth, then con­nect­ed to any DJ soft­ware like Ser­a­to or DJ Pro.” Right now, the playable piz­za box is only avail­able at a few Piz­za Hut loca­tions in the UK. Above, DJ Vec­tra offers a primer on using the new gad­get.

via Live for Music

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 and BlueSky.

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:

Lis­ten to Tree Rings Get­ting Played on a Turntable and Turned into Music

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Dou­ble as Playable Vinyl Records

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

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Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Gets an Epic, Instrumental Soundtrack from the Indie Band Joan of Arc

in Film, Music | August 23rd, 2016

The lega­cy of the silent film era is always with us, even as we move fur­ther and fur­ther away from film and clos­er to com­put­er art. Not only do the com­po­si­tions, cos­tum­ing, and cam­er­a­work of gold­en age clas­sics like Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari and oth­ers con­tin­ue to inform cur­rent direc­tors’ work, CGI and oth­er­wise, but these films have spawned their own pres­ti­gious form of music. In recent decades scores for clas­sic silents have become the spe­cial prove­nance of avant-garde and exper­i­men­tal com­posers. The pair­ing makes sense. These are movies that raised the stakes for their medi­um and estab­lished the first gen­er­a­tion of cin­e­mat­ic auteurs—Fritz Lang, F.W. Mur­nau, D.W. Grif­fith, Char­lie Chap­lin, and, of course, Carl Drey­er, the Dan­ish direc­tor of 1928’s pro­found­ly intense The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc.

As with all of the acknowl­edged clas­sics of the era, Dreyer’s mas­ter­piece has received many con­tem­po­rary musi­cal treat­ments in the past few decades, includ­ing an orig­i­nal operetta by Richard Ein­horn (on the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion edi­tion) and many more clas­si­cal and mod­ernist scores. But it has also been part of a par­al­lel trend—of indie rock musi­cians like Dengue Fever, Yo La Ten­go, Sparkle­horse, and Dean and Brit­ta scor­ing clas­sic silent films. First, Aus­tralians Nick Cave and The Dirty Three came togeth­er in 1995 to play a live sound­track for Joan of Arc in Lon­don. Then Cat Pow­er accom­pa­nied the film in 1999 for sev­er­al dates. In 2011, for one night only, Chica­go indie stal­warts Joan of Arc per­formed their 80-minute instru­men­tal score for a packed screen­ing at the Chica­go Inter­na­tion­al Movies and Music Fes­ti­val. Hear it, along with the film, above. (A copy can be pur­chased online here.) It was an “unex­pect­ed turn for the band,” their label Joy­ful Noise notes, giv­en that they had just “released their most con­ven­tion­al­ly ‘rock­ing’ album in years, ‘Life Like.’”

Asso­ci­at­ed with singer and sole per­ma­nent mem­ber Tim Kinsella’s raspy yelps and warped songcraft, the band here takes a post-rock direc­tion, loud and dirge-like. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it does, writes Joy­ful Noise, offer a “dark, flow­er­ing son­ic coun­ter­part to the film’s grim sub­ject mat­ter (which is a rather haunt­ing depic­tion of sav­age reli­gious per­se­cu­tion).” Dreyer’s film is indeed a grim work of art, but it is not any less beau­ti­ful for its oppres­sive nar­ra­tive. As run­ning titles in the Joan of Arc-scored film’s intro inform us, like its pro­tag­o­nist, “The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc was the vic­tim of sev­er­al ordeals,” includ­ing cen­sor­ship upon release and the loss of the orig­i­nal neg­a­tive and a re-edit­ed copy to fire. Like­wise for the film’s actress, the great Renee Maria Fal­conet­ti, “the per­for­mance was an ordeal,” as Roger Ebert points out, with leg­ends telling “of Drey­er forc­ing her to kneel painful­ly on stone and then wipe all expres­sion from her face.”

Known “only in muti­lat­ed copies” for over half a cen­tu­ry, the 1985 restora­tion above comes from an orig­i­nal Dan­ish copy dis­cov­ered “com­plete and in very good con­di­tion” at a Nor­we­gian men­tal insti­tu­tion in 1981. It is a curi­ous sto­ry. Schol­ars have often spec­u­lat­ed that the his­tor­i­cal Joan of Arc was schiz­o­phrenic or that she suf­fered from “one of numer­ous neu­ro­log­i­cal and psy­chi­atric con­di­tions that trig­ger hal­lu­ci­na­tions or delu­sions.” Falconetti’s per­for­mance of Joan is ambigu­ous, sug­gest­ing on the one hand, a “faith that seemed to stay any sug­ges­tion of irri­ta­tion,” as one con­tem­po­rary review­er wrote, and on the oth­er, the dazed, far­away look of a per­son in the throes of men­tal ill­ness. And the film’s warped per­spec­tives and extreme close-ups and angles sug­gest a kind of dis­tur­bance, of the cor­rupt, super­sti­tious social order that inter­ro­gates and exe­cutes Joan, and also of Joan’s mind as she con­fronts her implaca­ble judges. Joan of Arc’s puls­ing, atmos­pher­ic sound­track, draws out this very ten­sion, writ­ten in Falconetti’s every exquis­ite expres­sion.

This ver­sion of Drey­er’s Joan of Arc will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Anoth­er ver­sion, with­out any sound what­so­ev­er, can be found above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Watch the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem, with a Sound­track by The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis

Watch Online The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc by Carl Theodor Drey­er (1928) 

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 358 Film­mak­ers

Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Fritz Lang’s M to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

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

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The Accidental Origin of the Hit Song ‘American Woman’: Randy Bachman Tells the Story

in Music | August 23rd, 2016

In one of our favorite old posts, gui­tarist Randy Bach­man did us a favor when he mer­ci­ful­ly demys­ti­fied the open­ing chord of The Bea­t­les’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’ Mys­tery final­ly solved.

Today, he returns and brings us inside the mak­ing of anoth­er clas­sic song–“Amer­i­can Woman,” which Bach­man co-wrote as a mem­ber of The Guess Who in 1970. In the clip above, the musi­cian reflects on his “anti­war protest song” and its mem­o­rable riff. You know it. It goes dum dum dada­da dada dada dada dum dum dada­da dada da dum. The riff came about by acci­dent, the hap­py byprod­uct of a bro­ken gui­tar string and some spur of the moment impro­vi­sa­tion. I’ll let Randy tell you the rest of the sto­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of The Bea­t­les’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

Enter Bri­an Wilson’s Cre­ative Process While Mak­ing The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds 50 Years Ago: A Fly-on-the Wall View

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