The Grateful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

in Film, Music | October 4th, 2020

The Grate­ful Dead Movie doc­u­ments “a tour-end­ing five night stand at the Win­ter­land Ball­room in Octo­ber 1974. These were their last shows with the Wall of Sound, and the film includes amaz­ing per­for­mances of many favorites like One More Sat­ur­day Night, Goin’ Down The Road Feel­in’ Bad, Truckin’, Sug­ar Magnolia/Sunshine Day­dream, Stel­la Blue, Casey Jones, and Morn­ing Dew.”

Enjoy it online, rather than hav­ing to drop $90 for a DVD. The Grate­ful Dead Movie will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of 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:

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Every Grate­ful Dead Song Anno­tat­ed in Hyper­text: Web Project Reveals the Deep Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tions of the Dead’s Lyrics

10,173 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

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When Shostakovich Adapted Gogol’s “The Nose” Into an Opera: Watch Giant Noses Tap Dancing on the Stage

in Dance, Literature, Music, Opera | October 2nd, 2020

The first-time read­er of a sto­ry called “The Nose” may expect any num­ber of things: a char­ac­ter with a keen sense of smell; a mur­der evi­denced by the tit­u­lar organ, dis­em­bod­ied; a broad­er iron­ic point about the things right in front of our faces that we some­how nev­er see. But giv­en its con­cep­tion in the imag­i­na­tion of Niko­lai Gogol, “The Nose” is about a nose — a nose that, on its own, lives, breathes, walks, and dress­es in fin­ery. The nose does this, it seems, in order to rise in rank past that of its for­mer own­er, the run-of-the-mill St. Peters­burg civ­il ser­vant Col­le­giate Asses­sor Kova­ly­ov.

Writ­ten in 1835 and 1836, “The Nose” sat­i­rizes the long era in Impe­r­i­al Rus­sia after Peter the Great intro­duced the Table of Ranks. Meant to ush­er in a kind of pro­to-mer­i­toc­ra­cy, that sys­tem assigned rank to mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment offi­cers accord­ing, at least in the­o­ry, to their abil­i­ty and achieve­ments. The fact that those who attained high enough ranks would rise the to the lev­el of hered­i­tary nobles cre­at­ed an all-out sta­tus war across many sec­tions of soci­ety — a war, to the mind of Gogol the mas­ter observ­er of bureau­cra­cy, that could pit a man not just against his col­leagues and friends but against his own body parts.

Near­ly a cen­tu­ry after the sto­ry’s pub­li­ca­tion, a young Dmitri Shostakovich took it upon him­self to adapt “The Nose” into his very first opera. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with Alexan­der Preis, Geor­gy Ion­in, and Yevge­ny Zamy­atin (author of the endur­ing dystopi­an nov­el We), the com­pos­er ren­dered even more out­ra­geous­ly this tale of a nose gone rogue. Incor­po­rat­ing pieces of Gogol’s oth­er sto­ries like the “The Over­coat” and “Diary of a Mad­man” as well as the play Mar­riage and the diary Dead Souls — not to men­tion the writ­ings of oth­er Russ­ian mas­ters, includ­ing Dos­toyevsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov — the 1928 opera com­bines a wide vari­ety of musi­cal styles both tra­di­tion­al and exper­i­men­tal, and among its set pieces includes a num­ber per­formed by giant tap-danc­ing noses.

You can see that part per­formed in the video above. The venue is Lon­don’s Roy­al Opera House, the direc­tor is Bar­rie Kosky of Berlin’s Komis­che Oper, and the year is 2016, half a cen­tu­ry after The Nose’s revival. Though com­plet­ed in the late 1920s, it did­n’t pre­miere on stage in full until 1930, when Sovi­et cen­sor­ship con­cen­trat­ed its ener­gies on quash­ing such non-rev­o­lu­tion­ary spec­ta­cles. It would­n’t be staged again in the Sovi­et Union until 1974, near­ly a decade after its pre­miere in the Unit­ed States. (Just a cou­ple years before, Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er had adapt­ed the sto­ry into the pin­screen ani­ma­tion pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) The sociopo­lit­i­cal con­cerns of Gogol’s ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry and Shostakovich’s ear­ly 20th may have passed, but the appeal of the for­mer’s sharp satire — and the sheer Pythonesque weird­ness of the lat­ter’s oper­at­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty — cer­tain­ly haven’t.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Revered Poet Alexan­der Pushkin Draws Sketch­es of Niko­lai Gogol and Oth­er Russ­ian Artists

The Bizarre, Sur­viv­ing Scene from the 1933 Sovi­et Ani­ma­tion Based on a Pushkin Tale and a Shostakovich Score

George Saun­ders’ Lec­tures on the Russ­ian Greats Brought to Life in Stu­dent Sketch­es

Why You Should Read The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Bulgakov’s Rol­lick­ing Sovi­et Satire

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Chris Frantz Breaks Down How He Crafted Songs for Talking Heads & Tom Tom Club: A Nakedly Examined Music Interview

in Music, Podcasts | October 1st, 2020

Chris found­ed Talk­ing Heads in the ear­ly ’70s with his wife Tina Wey­mouth and David Byrne, and he focus­es heav­i­ly on these ear­ly years of his career in his new mem­oir Remain in Love, describ­ing it as very much a group effort, even though they inten­tion­al­ly put the spot­light on David, who in turn pret­ty ear­ly on announced that he had to write all the lyrics, that he could­n’t sing oth­er peo­ple’s songs.

On the Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Pod­cast, Mark Lin­sen­may­er inter­views song­writ­ers about their cre­ative deci­sion-mak­ing, and in this inter­view, Chris tells how he and Tina and David col­lab­o­rat­ed on lyrics for their ear­ly sin­gle “Psy­cho Killer,” and then how Chris’ lyrics were used for “Warn­ing Sign,” a song (played in full as part of the pod­cast) that appeared on the Heads’ sec­ond album, 1978’s More Songs About Build­ings and Food.

Also sur­pris­ing is that Chris and Tina’s spin-off band, Tom Tom Club, formed in an inter­val when both David and the Heads’ lead gui­tarist Jer­ry Har­ri­son want­ed to pause Talk­ing Heads to record solo albums, actu­al­ly had its best-sell­ing sin­gle, “Genius of Love,” pri­or to the Talk­ing Heads real finan­cial suc­cess with hits like “Burn­ing Down the House” and “And She Was.”

The inter­view includes a detailed treat­ment of the com­po­si­tion and arrange­ment of two Tom Tom Club songs that are also played in full: “Bam­boo Town,” a reg­gae-inspired track from their sec­ond album Close to the Bone (1983); and “Who Feel­in’ It,” a dance track replete with record scratch per­cus­sion from The Good the Bad and the Funky (2000). This song was lat­er remixed by The inter­view con­cludes with a song that Chris sings: the title track from Tom Tom Club’s most recent release, Down­town Rock­ers (2012).

Both these last two tracks have as their main lyrics lists of artists that Chris and Tina want­ed to pay trib­ute to, both in influ­enc­ing their musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties and/or play­ing shows with them at CBG­B’s dur­ing their for­ma­tive years as Talk­ing Heads in New York City. Chris’ book gives us a vivid glimpse of that scene, as well as the excite­ment of their first album, work­ing with Bri­an Eno, their first Euro­pean tour, and oth­er mile­stones all the way up to their induc­tion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, which was their first time play­ing togeth­er since the group’s split in 1991.

For more Naked­ly Exam­ined Music in-depth inter­views about song­writ­ing, arrange­ment, and the musi­cal life, vis­it nakedlyexaminedmusic.com.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is also the host of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast and Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast. He releas­es music under the name Mark Lint.

 

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Ella Fitzgerald Imitates Louis Armstrong’s Gravelly Voice While Singing “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby”

in Music | September 30th, 2020

Are great artists born, or are they made? Prob­a­bly a lit­tle of both, but I sus­pect that deep down, even if we don’t like to admit it, we know it’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle more the for­mer. We can become skilled at most any­thing with ded­i­ca­tion and hard work. Tal­ent is anoth­er matter—a mys­te­ri­ous com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties we know when we hear but can’t always define. Ella Fitzger­ald had it when she first stepped on stage on ama­teur night at Harlem’s Apol­lo The­ater as a teenag­er, intend­ing to do a tap dance rou­tine.

She’d only done the per­for­mance on a dare, had no for­mal train­ing out­side of singing in church, her bed­room, and the Harlem streets, and she only chose to sing that night because the act before her did a tap dance and stole her thun­der.

She blew the audi­ence away—a tough New York crowd not known for being forgiving—and ren­dered even the bois­ter­ous teenagers in the bal­cony speech­less. “Three encores lat­er,” she wrote, “the $25 prize was mine.” Fitzgerald’s gold­en, three-octave voice, impec­ca­ble tim­ing, and impro­vi­sa­tion­al bril­liance are not exact­ly the kinds of things that can be taught.

She didn’t look the part of the typ­i­cal female jazz singer, at least accord­ing to pop­u­lar per­cep­tion, writes Hol­ly Glea­son at NPR. “A large woman who’d grown up rough,” includ­ing time spent in a New York State refor­ma­to­ry, she was reject­ed by band­lead­ers even after that first, rev­e­la­to­ry per­for­mance, and the press fre­quent­ly referred to her in terms that dis­par­aged her appear­ance. “Fitzger­ald rec­og­nized she didn’t pos­sess Bil­lie Holiday’s torchy allure,” Hol­ly Glea­son writes, or “Eartha Kitt’s fer­al sen­su­al­i­ty or Car­men McRae’s sex appeal. But that would not stop the woman who took her vocal cues from the horns, as well as from jazz singer Con­nee Boswell.”

It did­n’t stop her from win­ning a Gram­my in the Gram­my’s first year, or hav­ing a record label, Verve, found­ed just to put out her music. Ella’s range and pitch-per­fect ear meant she could imi­tate not only the horn sec­tion or her favorite singer Boswell but just about any­one else as well, from pop­u­lar jazz singer Rose Mur­phy, with her high, car­toon­ish voice, “chee chee” affec­ta­tions, and “brrrp” tele­phone sound effects, to the low, grav­el­ly rasp of Fitzgerald’s long­time duet part­ner Louis Arm­strong. See her do exact­ly that in the clip at the top, mov­ing effort­less­ly in “I Can’t Give You Any­thing but Love, Baby” from her own voice, to Murphy’s, to Armstrong’s in the space of just a few min­utes.

What­ev­er obsta­cles Fitzger­ald faced, her voice seemed to soar above it all. In becom­ing a glob­al jazz star and “The First Lady of Song,” says jazz writer Will Fried­wald, “she showed peo­ple that this is music Amer­i­cans should be proud of.”

via Ben Phillips

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ella Fitzgerald’s Lost Inter­view about Racism & Seg­re­ga­tion: Record­ed in 1963, It’s Nev­er Been Heard Until Now

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

How Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Helped Break Ella Fitzger­ald Into the Big Time (1955)

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

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When R.E.M.‘s Michael Stipe Created the Lyrics for “The Voice of Harold” by Riffing on the Liner Notes of an Old Gospel Album (1983)

in Music | September 30th, 2020

R.E.M. is one of those bands that just think­ing about can send me into a rever­ie of mem­o­ries of the rooms of friends with whom I lis­tened to “Pret­ty Per­sua­sion,” “Rockville,” and the poet­ry of “7 Chi­nese Bros.”—one of Michael Stipe’s ear­ly, incom­pre­hen­si­ble songs, like “Swan Swan H,” whose cryp­tic lyrics one must seem­ing­ly take on faith. The song must mean some­thing, after all, to Stipe. Maybe the mys­tery of who, exact­ly, the “sev­en Chi­nese broth­ers swal­low­ing the ocean” were to him would be revealed some­day in an inter­view or stray ref­er­ence in a biog­ra­phy….

Now that we live in an age of instant infor­ma­tion grat­i­fi­ca­tion, we can skip the years of won­der and find the answer right away: the song was part­ly inspired, we learn at Song­facts, by a 1938 children’s book called The Five Chi­nese Broth­ers, based on a tra­di­tion­al folk tale of young broth­ers with super­nat­ur­al pow­ers. (It’s also part­ly a trib­ute to pho­tog­ra­ph­er Car­ol Levy, a friend who died in a car crash before the record­ing of Reck­on­ing.) Need­ing anoth­er syl­la­ble, maybe, Stipe changed the num­ber to sev­en, an odd­ly prophet­ic move giv­en that a new ver­sion of the sto­ry, pub­lished ten years lat­er, also fea­tured sev­en broth­ers.

The ref­er­ence shows how many great song­writ­ers work: pick­ing at bits and pieces from their mem­o­ries and what­ev­er cap­ti­vat­ing text hap­pens to be lay­ing around…. And Stipe is one of those singers, like Elton John, who can sell any line, no mat­ter how obscure or absurd.

In ear­ly songs, espe­cial­ly, he showed an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to invest incan­ta­to­ry com­bi­na­tions of words with haunt­ing pathos and urgency. He could sing from the phone book or the back of a cere­al box and make it com­pelling. In fact, the sto­ry of “7 Chi­nese Bros.” involves an almost sim­i­lar feat in the form of “Voice of Harold,” famil­iar to fans as the B‑side to “So. Cen­tral Rain” and part of the 1987 odds and ends col­lec­tion Dead Let­ter Office. What pos­si­ble expla­na­tion could there be for these non sequitur gospel lyrics, sung to the tune of… “7 Chi­nese Bros.”?

Was Stipe a secret Evan­ge­list, hop­ing to win con­verts by extolling “the pure tenor qual­i­ty of the voice of Harold Mont­gomery”? More teas­ing­ly vague themes emerge, along with ref­er­ences to fig­ures like the Rev­erend Bill Fun­der­burk, Charles Sur­ratt, John Bar­bee, and Rhon­da Mont­gomery (“That’s Rhon­da! An artist!”). Instead of “Sev­en Chi­nese broth­ers swal­low­ing the ocean,” the cho­rus intro­duces us to “The Rev­e­laires, A must / The Rev­e­laires / A must.” If you’re one of those who heard this song and thought, “What…?”, you can won­der no more.

The expla­na­tion comes to us from a 2009 inter­view pro­duc­er Don Dixon gave to Uncut mag­a­zine. (For some rea­son, Dixon refers to “7 Chi­nese Bros.” as “7 Chi­nese Blues,” nev­er a title of the song). The sto­ry begins with Stipe feel­ing down in the dumps in a stair­well out­fit­ted as a lounge for him in the stu­dio.

We were work­ing on the vocal for “7 Chi­nese Blues,” but Michael just was­n’t into it. He was down in his stair­well. I hit the talk-back to let him know I was com­ing through to make an adjust­ment… This was just an excuse to take a look at him, see if I could loosen him up a lit­tle. While I was in the attic, I’d noticed a stack of old records that had been tak­en up there to die, local R&B and gospel stuff most­ly. I grabbed the one off the top (a gospel record enti­tled The Joy of Know­ing Jesus by the Rev­e­laires) and as I passed Michael on the way to the Con­trol Room, I tossed it down to him. I thought he might be amused. When I fired up the tape a few sec­onds lat­er, Michael was singing, but not the lyrics to “7 Chi­nese Blues.” He was singing the lin­er notes to the LP I’d tossed him. When Michael began to sing these lin­er notes, he was much loud­er than he’d been ear­li­er and it took a few sec­onds for me to realise what was going on and adjust the lev­els. He made it all the way through the song, work­ing in every word on the back of that album! I rewound the tape, we had a chuck­le and pro­ceed­ed to sing the beau­ti­ful one-take vocal of the real words that you hear on Reck­on­ing. He seemed more con­fi­dent after that day.

Stipe didn’t just sing the words from the back of the album, he impro­vised cut-ups as he went, re-arrang­ing phras­es to fit the meter of the orig­i­nal song. “Voice of Harold” became a fan favorite for much the same rea­son as “7 Chi­nese Bros.” and “Swan Swan H”—it seemed to hide a mys­tery in plain view, its impas­sioned deliv­ery at odds with its non­sen­si­cal nar­ra­tive. Released after Reck­on­ing, it turns a spon­ta­neous moti­va­tion­al tool dur­ing the mak­ing of the album into a cre­ation all its own.

Jim Con­nel­ly explores the rela­tion­ship between “7 Chi­nese Bros.” and “Voice of Harold” even fur­ther in a post at Medi­alop­er, point­ing to the firm con­vic­tion that’s so “chill-induc­ing” in the lat­ter (and that comes through in the for­mer record­ing, made imme­di­ate­ly after­ward). They may be found words, serendip­i­tous­ly picked up and put togeth­er on the spot, but in Stipe’s voice we can tell that “He’s real. He means it,” what­ev­er the hell it is. See a video of “Voice of Harold” with lyrics, at the top, and fol­low along with the lin­er notes on the back of Rev­e­laires’ gospel album The Joy of Know­ing Jesus just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” Michael Stipe Pro­claims Again, and He Still Feels Fine

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

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

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The Beastie Boys’ Final Concert Streaming Free Online This Weekend

in Music | September 26th, 2020

Until Mon­day, the Beast­ie Boys’ final concert–captured at Bon­na­roo on June 12, 2009–will stream free on YouTube. (Watch it above.) Just five weeks after the show, Adam “MCA” Yauch would announce that he had been diag­nosed with sali­vary gland can­cer. Orig­i­nal­ly opti­mistic, Yauch said “I just need to take a lit­tle time to get this in check, and then we’ll release the record and play some shows.” “It’s a pain in the neck (sor­ry had to say it) because I was real­ly look­ing for­ward to play­ing these shows, but the doc­tors have made it clear that this is not the kind of thing that can be put aside to deal with lat­er.” Sad­ly, the can­cer proved aggres­sive and took MCA’s life in May, 2012, leav­ing the show above as the Beast­ie Boys’ final live doc­u­ment. Find the setlist for the final show here.

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:

Watch 36 Beast­ie Boys Videos Now Remas­tered in HD

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

The Beast­ie Boys & Rick Rubin Reunite and Revis­it Their For­ma­tive Time Togeth­er in 1980s NYC

Look How Young They Are!: The Beast­ie Boys Per­form­ing Live Their Very First Hit, “Cooky Puss” (1983)

 

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Favorite Opera Recordings (and Her First Appearance in an Opera)

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | September 21st, 2020

U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s death has thrown an unbear­ably fraught polit­i­cal year into fur­ther dis­ar­ray, a fact that has sad­ly over­shad­owed memo­ri­al­iza­tion of her inspir­ing life and career. Gins­burg was a per­son­al hero for mil­lions of activists and students—from grade school to law school; an icon casu­al­ly iden­ti­fied by her ini­tials by those who felt like they knew her. “For many women, and many girls,” Sheryl Gay Stol­berg writes in a New York Times trib­ute, her loss is “deeply per­son­al.”

How should we remem­ber such a fig­ure at such a time? If you hap­pen to find the news numb­ing, full of ener­vat­ing ran­cor and alarm…. If you want to bring the focus back to the per­son we have lost, might we sug­gest a sound­track? The sug­ges­tions come from Gins­burg her­self, from the art form—opera—closest to her heart. “She was our great­est advo­cate and our great­est spokesper­son,” says Francesca Zam­bel­lo, direc­tor of the Wash­ing­ton Nation­al Opera, “the ide­al attendee… who knows every­thing but is open to inter­pre­ta­tions.”

Ginsburg’s com­mit­ment to the opera spans decades. She and her hus­band Mar­ty were in the audi­ence when Leon­tyne Price made her debut at the Met in 1961. Forty-sev­en years lat­er, the Jus­tice had occa­sion to hon­or Pryce at a 2008 Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts lun­cheon. Also in atten­dance: Antonin Scalia, Ginsburg’s noto­ri­ous rival. The only thing the two may have agreed on was a pas­sion for the opera. It formed the basis of a frag­ile peace, and the sub­ject of its own opera, Scalia v. Gins­burg, that explores extreme judi­cial dif­fer­ences through “Ver­di, Puc­ci­ni, Christ­mas car­ols, ‘The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner,’ and jazz.”

Scalia v. Gins­berg com­pos­er Der­rick Wang heard the grandios­i­ty of opera when he read the fierce­ly oppos­ing writ­ten opin­ions of the two jus­tices. It’s safe to assume that both were lis­ten­ing to their favorite works while they com­posed. In 2012, Gins­burg gave her list of favorites to Alex Ross at The New York­er, who points to oth­er Gins­burg con­nec­tions to the clas­si­cal world like her son, James Gins­burg, “pro­pri­etor of Cedille Records, an inde­pen­dent clas­si­cal label based in Chica­go.” (Read their state­ment on Ginsburg’s pass­ing here.)

There is far too much to say about Ruth Bad­er Ginsburg’s judi­cial influ­ence, and about the pow­er vac­u­um left behind by her loss. But if we want to under­stand what mat­tered to her most as an indi­vid­ual, we should turn to the music she most loved. “Her life was about under­stand­ing people’s sto­ries,” says Zam­bel­lo. The kinds of cas­es “she made her career of are the stuff of opera.” At the top, see Ginsburg’s first appear­ance onstage, in a non-singing role as the Duchess of Krak­en­thor­pe in the The Daugh­ter of the Reg­i­ment at the Kennedy Cen­ter. Just below, see her list of favorite works, pep­pered with occa­sion­al com­men­tary from the late, beloved R.B.G. her­self. This list orig­i­nal­ly comes from The New York­er. If you have a Spo­ti­fy account, you can stream the music in this 30-hour playlist.

Ver­di, “Aida”; Zin­ka Milanov, Jus­si Björ­ling, Leonard War­ren, Fedo­ra Bar­bi­eri, Boris Christoff, Jonel Per­lea con­duct­ing the Rome Opera Orches­tra and Cho­rus (RCA).

Ver­di, “Otel­lo”; Plá­ci­do Domin­go, Rena­ta Scot­to, Sher­rill Milnes, James Levine con­duct­ing the Nation­al Phil­har­mon­ic and Ambrosian Opera Cho­rus (RCA).

Dvořák, “Rusal­ka”; Renée Flem­ing, Ben Hep­p­n­er, Dolo­ra Zajick, Franz Hawla­ta, Charles Mack­er­ras con­duct­ing the Czech Phil­har­mon­ic and Kühn Mixed Choir (Dec­ca).

Han­del, “Julius Cae­sar”; Nor­man Trei­gle, Bev­er­ly Sills, Mau­reen For­rester, Bev­er­ly Wolff, Julius Rudel con­duct­ing the New York City Opera Orches­tra and Cho­rus (RCA).

Jus­tice Gins­burg com­ments: “Lis­tened to LP record­ing many times. Pro­duc­tion was Julius Rudel’s tri­umph, opened in the State The­atre the year the Met moved to Lin­coln Cen­ter. Met opened with the not at all tri­umphant pro­duc­tion of Barber’s ‘Antony and Cleopa­tra.’ Next, my two best-loved operas.”

Mozart, “Don Gio­van­ni”; Cesare Siepi, Fer­nan­do Core­na, Suzanne Dan­co, Lisa Del­la Casa, Anton Der­mo­ta, Hilde Gue­den, Wal­ter Berry, Kurt Böhme, Josef Krips con­duct­ing the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic and Vien­na State Opera Cho­rus (Dec­ca).

Mozart, “The Mar­riage of Figaro”; Samuel Ramey, Lucia Popp, Thomas Allen, Kiri Te Kanawa, Fred­er­i­ca von Stade, Kurt Moll, Robert Tear, Georg Solti con­duct­ing the Lon­don Phil­har­mon­ic and Lon­don Opera Cho­rus (Dec­ca).

Strauss, “Der Rosenkava­lier”; Elis­a­beth Schwarzkopf, Christa Lud­wig, Tere­sa Stich-Ran­dall, Otto Edel­mann, Eber­hard Wächter, Lju­ba Welitsch, Nico­lai Ged­da, Her­bert von Kara­jan con­duct­ing the Phil­har­mo­nia Orches­tra and Cho­rus (EMI).

Tchaikovsky, “Eugene One­gin”; Thomas Allen, Mirella Freni, Neil Shicoff, Anne Sofie von Otter, James Levine con­duct­ing the Dres­den Staatskapelle and Leipzig Radio Cho­rus (DG).

Puc­ci­ni, “Tosca”; Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Ste­fano, Tito Gob­bi, Vic­tor de Saba­ta con­duct­ing the La Scala orches­tra and cho­rus (EMI).

Menot­ti, “The Medi­um”; Joyce Cas­tle, Patrice Michaels, Lawrence Rapchak con­duct­ing the Chica­go Opera The­atre (Cedille).

Kur­ka, “The Good Sol­dier Schweik”; Jason Collins, Marc Embree, Kel­li Har­ring­ton, Buffy Bag­gott, Alexan­der Platt con­duct­ing the Chica­go Opera The­atre (Cedille).

Jus­tice Gins­burg com­ments: “Glim­mer­glass Opera lat­er mount­ed ‘Schweik’ with per­fect-for-the-part Antho­ny Dean Grif­fey.”

Stravin­sky, “The Rake’s Progress”; Philip Lan­gridge, Samuel Ramey, Cathryn Pope, Stafford Dean, Sarah Walk­er, John Dob­son, Astrid Var­nay, Ric­car­do Chail­ly con­duct­ing the Lon­don Sin­foni­et­ta and Cho­rus (Dec­ca).

Brit­ten, “Bil­ly Budd”; Nathan Gunn, Ian Bostridge, Gidon Saks, Daniel Hard­ing con­duct­ing the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and Cho­rus (Vir­gin Clas­sics).

Jus­tice Gins­burg com­ments: “Two Lieder record­ings I now and then play when work­ing at home: **Schu­bert, ‘An mein Herz,’ with Matthias Goerne; and songs by Brahms, with Ange­li­ka Kirch­schlager.”

via The New York­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg Doc­u­men­tary, RBG, Air­ing Tonight on CNN

When Vladimir Nabokov Taught Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg, His Most Famous Stu­dent, To Care Deeply About Writ­ing

The Opera Data­base: Find Scores, Libret­ti & Syn­opses for Thou­sands of Operas Free Online

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

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Free Jazz Musicians Intentionally Play Terrible Music to Drown Out the Noise of a Danish Far-Right Politician

in Music, Politics | September 18th, 2020

Art makes a way where pol­i­tics fail. I don’t mean that in any mawk­ish sense. Sure, art brings peo­ple togeth­er, encour­ages empa­thy and com­mon val­ues. Those can be won­der­ful things. But they are not always nec­es­sar­i­ly social goods. Vio­lent nation­al­ism brings peo­ple togeth­er around com­mon val­ues. Psy­chopaths can feel empa­thy if they want to.

When faced with fas­cism, or neo-fas­cism, or what­ev­er we want to call the 21st cen­tu­ry equiv­a­lent of fas­cism, those who pre­sume good faith in their oppo­nents pre­sume too much. Val­ues like respect for human rights or rules of log­i­cal debate or use of force, for exam­ple, are not in play. Direct con­fronta­tion usu­al­ly pro­vokes more vio­lence, and cor­re­spond­ing state repres­sion against anti-fas­cists.

Cre­ative thinkers have devised oth­er kinds of tactics—methods for meet­ing spec­ta­cle with spec­ta­cle, dis­rupt­ing and scat­ter­ing con­cen­trat­ed fear and hate by use of what William S. Bur­roughs called “mag­i­cal weapons.” Bur­roughs meant the phrase lit­er­al­ly when he aimed his occult audio/visual mag­ic at a gen­tri­fy­ing Lon­don cof­fee bar. But he used the very same ideas in his nov­els and man­u­als for over­throw­ing cor­rupt gov­ern­ments.

One might say some­thing sim­i­lar about the pio­neers of free jazz, a prod­uct of Black Pow­er pol­i­tics expressed in music. Coltrane drew on Mal­colm X when he divest­ed him­self of west­ern musi­cal con­straints; Ornette Cole­man estab­lished “har­molod­ic democ­ra­cy” in place of Euro­cen­tric struc­tures. These were inher­ent­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary forms, respond­ing to repres­sive times in new lan­guages. They were not, as many peo­ple thought then, just jazz played bad­ly.

But, as it turns out… free jazz delib­er­ate­ly played bad­ly makes quite an effec­tive rejoin­der to fas­cism, too. So a group of Dan­ish jazz musi­cians dis­cov­ered when they began crash­ing the staged events of far-right politi­cian Ras­mus Palu­dan, founder of the Stram Kurs (Hard Line) par­ty. As Vice reports:

[Palu­dan] is noto­ri­ous for organ­is­ing “demon­stra­tions” in neigh­bour­hoods with large immi­grant pop­u­la­tions, where he burns, throws, and stomps on Qurans behind walls of police offi­cers. A self-pro­claimed “guardian of free­dom” and “light of the Danes,” Palu­dan con­sid­ers immi­grants and Islam ene­mies of the Dan­ish peo­ple, as well as the country’s val­ues, tra­di­tions and gen­er­al way of life.

Does one respect­ful­ly argue with such a per­son? Try to breach the line of cops and knock them out? Hear out their point of view as they inspire acts of vio­lence? Or show up “armed with trum­pets, bon­go drums and sax­o­phones” and play right in his face, or at least “loud­ly enough to drown out his voice or draw atten­tion away from him”?

The col­lec­tive “Free Jazz Against Palu­dan” takes the mag­i­cal weapon of Sit­u­a­tion­ist free jazz pub­lic and rad­i­cal­izes har­molod­ic democ­ra­cy (done very, very obnox­ious­ly bad­ly on pur­pose, we must empha­size) for street action. “We’re fight­ing noise with noise,” one sax­o­phon­ist and self-described “old man turned activist” says. “I’m of the opin­ion that rhetoric like his should not be ignored. You have to protest against it, but in a way that is not destruc­tive and vio­lent.” Except that it is destructive—to Paludan’s weaponized igno­rance. [Palu­dan was recent­ly sen­tenced to jail on racism and defama­tion.] The revolv­ing col­lec­tive of activist musi­cians makes this plain, stat­ing on their Face­book page, “Any­one can join, with the excep­tion of just him. He can­not.”

What gives them the right to exclude him! one might cry indig­nant­ly. That’s the game Palu­dan wants to play. “What he wants is to get beat­en up by some immi­grants, get some close-ups of a soap eye or a bro­ken arm—that’d be great for him,” says pro­tes­tor Jørn Tol­strup. “So this is great, because here we have an idiot who won’t shut up, and now we’ve found a way to take his foot off the ped­al.” It’s cre­ative de-esca­la­tion and redi­rec­tion. And, we might say, not so much a pub­lic “can­celling” as the free expres­sion of oppos­ing ideas.

via Vice

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ornette Cole­man Freed Jazz with His The­o­ry of Har­molod­ics

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

William S. Bur­roughs’ Man­i­festo for Over­throw­ing a Cor­rupt Gov­ern­ment with Fake News and Oth­er Prophet­ic Meth­ods: It’s Now Pub­lished for the First Time

How Music Unites Us All: Her­bie Han­cock & Kamasi Wash­ing­ton in Con­ver­sa­tion

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

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