Encore! Encore! An Hour of the World’s Most Beautiful Classical Guitar

in Music | October 1st, 2021

When it comes to encores, most musi­cians like to slate in a guar­an­teed crowd­pleas­er to send the audi­ence out on a high. Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom holds that an encore should be short, and change the mood cre­at­ed by the piece pre­ced­ing it.

Clas­si­cal gui­tarist Ana Vidović takes a dif­fer­ent approach.

For the last few years, she has con­clud­ed most con­certs by tak­ing audi­ence sug­ges­tions for the piece that will take it on home, view­ing it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make an extra con­nec­tion with fans:

It’s like a gift to me, also… some­times I get ner­vous because I don’t know what they will ask me to play and I may not have prac­ticed that par­tic­u­lar piece, but you know, what­ev­er! I think it’s just more of a ges­ture of appre­ci­a­tion. Of course there’s a con­nec­tion through music, but obvi­ous­ly we don’t speak to each oth­er.

The live audi­ence for her March 2021 appear­ance at San Francisco’s St. Mark’s Luther­an Church, above, was unusu­al­ly small due to COVID-19 pro­to­cols — just a few staffers from the Omni Foun­da­tion for the Per­form­ing Arts, an orga­ni­za­tion that brings the world’s finest acoustic gui­tarists to the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

Their applause was enthu­si­as­tic, helped by St. Mark’s excel­lent acoustics, but it feels thin in con­trast to the wall of sound that would greet a musi­cian of Vidović’s cal­iber when she per­forms to a packed house.

Despite the extreme­ly inti­mate set­ting, after her final piece, Noc­turno by fel­low Croa­t­ian Slavko Fumic, Vidović observed her own tra­di­tion, open­ing the floor to requests with a bit of a gig­gle:

If you have any encores, please feel free to ask. No, seri­ous­ly, requests! Hope­ful­ly I prac­ticed it … Richard?

One of her lis­ten­ers prompt­ly sug­gests 19th-cen­tu­ry Span­ish com­pos­er Isaac Albéniz’s Asturias, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for piano and now con­sid­ered one of the most essen­tial works in the clas­si­cal gui­tar reper­toire.

Although she has been known to polite­ly decline if she’s feel­ing too rusty, on this occa­sion, Vidović oblig­ed, and beau­ti­ful­ly so.

The com­plete pro­gram, which includes her cus­tom­ary healthy dose of her child­hood favorite Bach, is below.

Flute Par­ti­ta in A minor, BWV 1013

by Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach

(Tran­scribed by Val­ter Despalj)

-Alle­mande (3:06)

-Cor­rente (8:40)

Vio­lin Sonata No. 1, BWV 1001

by Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach

(arr. by Manuel Bar­rue­co)

-Ada­gio (12:44)

-Fuga (16:38)

-Sicil­iana (21:19)

-Presto (24:25)

Un Dia de Noviem­bre (27:36)

by Leo Brouw­er

Gran Sonata Eroica, Op. 150 (32:17)

by Mau­ro Giu­liani

Sonata in E major, K. 380, L. 23 (41:39)

Sonata in D minor K.1, L. 366 (46:28)

by Domeni­co Scar­lat­ti

Noc­turno (48:55)

by Slavko Fumic

Encore -

Asturias (53:49)

by Isaac Alb­eniz

San Fran­cis­co has now resumed live con­certs (includ­ing Vidović’s sched­uled return to St. Mark’s in April 2022), but the pan­dem­ic led Omni to expand its mis­sion, with vir­tu­al con­certs by top gui­tarists in var­i­ous loca­tions around the world, includ­ing Xue­fei Yang play­ing in Beijing’s 15th-Cen­tu­ry Zhizhu Tem­ple, Marko Topchii play­ing in Ukraine’s St. Andrew’s Cathe­dral, and David Rus­sell in the monastery of Celano­va, Spain. Watch a playlist of Omni On Loca­tion vir­tu­al events, includ­ing Q&As with per­form­ers here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrés Segovia, Father of Clas­si­cal Gui­tar, at the Alham­bra

Hear Musi­cians Play the Only Playable Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World: The “Sabionari”

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Japanese Guided Tours of the Louvre, Versailles, the Marais & Other Famous French Places (English Subtitles Included)

in Art, Travel | October 1st, 2021

“As tourist sea­son here in Paris winds to a close and the air once again becomes crisp, fresh, and new,” writes The Atlantic’s Chelsea Fagan, “we must unfor­tu­nate­ly acknowl­edge that it does not end with­out a few casu­al­ties.” That piece was pub­lished at this time of year, albeit a decade ago, when “tourist sea­son” any­where had a bit more bus­tle. But the world­wide down­turn in trav­el has­n’t done away with the object of her con­cern: Paris Syn­drome, “a col­lec­tion of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal symp­toms expe­ri­enced by first-time vis­i­tors real­iz­ing that Paris isn’t, in fact, what they thought it would be.” This dis­or­der, one often hears, is espe­cial­ly preva­lent among the Japan­ese.

Japan, writes Fagan, is rich with por­tray­als of the French cap­i­tal as a city “filled with thin, gor­geous, unbe­liev­ably rich cit­i­zens. The three stops of a Parisian’s day, accord­ing to the Japan­ese media, are a cafe, the Eif­fel Tow­er, and Louis Vuit­ton.” To some­one who knows it only through such images, a con­fronta­tion with the real Paris — with its ser­vice-indus­try work­ers who treat tourists “like some­thing they recent­ly scraped from the bot­tom of their shoes” to its sub­way cars “filled with grop­ing cou­ples, scream­ing chil­dren, and unimag­in­ably loud accor­dion music” — can trig­ger “acute delu­sions, hal­lu­ci­na­tions, dizzi­ness, sweat­ing, and feel­ings of per­se­cu­tion.”

Not all Japan­ese vis­i­tors to Paris, of course, come down with Paris Syn­drome. Some plunge into an even more over­whelm­ing con­di­tion of love for the City of Light, as might well have been the case with the Youtu­ber France Guide Naka­mu­ra. “I stud­ied art his­to­ry at a uni­ver­si­ty in France and was amazed at how inter­est­ing it was,” he writes on his about page. “When you study art, there is a moment of rev­e­la­tion! Some­thing that was not vis­i­ble until now sud­den­ly appears. It is the ‘plea­sure’ of ‘know­ing’ and ‘under­stand­ing.’ I think this is the ‘core’ of tourism.” It is on that basis that he cre­ates videos like the hour-long Lou­vre tour above, a smooth first-per­son walk through the world’s most famous muse­um that he nar­rates with a high degree of artic­u­la­cy, knowl­edge, and enthu­si­asm.

Expe­ri­enced in lead­ing tours for his coun­try­men, he describes all his videos in his native Japan­ese. But in the case of his Lou­vre tour, you can turn on Eng­lish sub­ti­tles by click­ing the CC but­ton in the tool­bar at the bot­tom of the video. His oth­er pop­u­lar Eng­lish-sub­ti­tled videos include walks through Mont­martre, Marais, and the Latin Quar­ter, as well as cer­tain excur­sions out­side of Paris, such as this vis­it to Ver­sailles. If you do speak Japan­ese, you’ll also be able to enjoy Naka­mu­ra’s many pre­vi­ous videos dig­ging into the nature, his­to­ry, and cul­tur­al con­text of oth­er things French, from neigh­bor­hoods to works of art to con­ve­nience stores, but not, as yet, the Eif­fel Tow­er — or for that mat­ter, Louis Vuit­ton.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Long Vir­tu­al Tour of the Lou­vre in Three High-Def­i­n­i­tion Videos

The Louvre’s Entire Col­lec­tion Goes Online: View and Down­load 480,00 Works of Art

Take Immer­sive Vir­tu­al Tours of the World’s Great Muse­ums: The Lou­vre, Her­mitage, Van Gogh Muse­um & Much More

Hear the First Japan­ese Vis­i­tor to the Unit­ed States & Europe Describe Life in the West (1860–1862)

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

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 or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

David Bowie’s Lost Album Toy Will Get an Official Release: Hear the First Track “You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving”

in Music | September 30th, 2021

To the seri­ous Bowie fan, the unre­leased self-cov­ers album Toy is not a secret. This col­lec­tion of reworked pre-“Space Odd­i­ty” songs record­ed with his tour­ing band from his 2000 Glas­ton­bury appear­ance was boot­legged a year after it was shelved in 2001. And it has been re-pressed ille­gal­ly near­ly every year since, some­times as Toy and some­times as The Lost Album. Some of the four­teen cuts popped up as b‑sides over the years, but the whole album? Maybe, fans thought…one day.

Well, that one day is here, as the first sin­gle “You’ve Got a Habit of Leav­ing” dropped yes­ter­day along with an announce­ment for a larg­er 90’s‑encompassing box set release com­ing soon after.
Accord­ing to Chris O’Leary’s Push­ing Ahead of the Dame web­page—which you real­ly should book­mark if you haven’t yet—the orig­i­nal ver­sion of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leav­ing” was writ­ten when he was only 18, and earned him a rep­ri­mand from none oth­er than The Who’s Pete Town­shend. ”You’re try­ing to write like me!” said Pete.

You can total­ly hear the Who influ­ence in the cho­rus of the ver­sion released by Davy Jones and the Low­er Third, which apes the fuzz-gui­tar freak-outs from “My Gen­er­a­tion.”

Three and a half decades and mul­ti­ple Bowie-incar­na­tions lat­er, and the for­mer Davy Jones decid­ed to look back at those hun­gry ear­ly years and redo some of his songs.

The plan in 2000 was to gath­er his band and record an album old-school, live, in stu­dio, with all the ener­gy and some­times slop­pi­ness that used to hap­pen in the 1960s, when most bands got at most two days to record their first albums. The first Bea­t­les album was record­ed this way, and look where that got them.

But this also afford­ed Bowie a chance to fix the weak­ness­es of those orig­i­nal songs in struc­ture and arrange­ment. Says O’Leary: “The new ver­sion is longer, far more elab­o­rate­ly pro­duced, far more pro­fes­sion­al­ly played and it still sounds like a Who knock-off, only a knock-off of The Who ca. 1999. That said, Bowie sings it well and it does final­ly rock out at the end.”

Bowie’s plan was to quick­ly fin­ish Toy and drop it unan­nounced as a sur­prise to his fans. This is com­mon­place now—Beyonce and Radio­head have done sim­i­lar secret releases—but EMI freaked out, balked, and their reac­tion ulti­mate­ly led Bowie to leave the label.

Oth­er songs reimag­ined on Toy include “Liza Jane,” Bowie’s debut sin­gle from 1964; “Sil­ly Boy Blue” from his first self-titled 1967 LP; and “The Lon­don Boys” a 1966 B‑side. The album also includes songs that didn’t make it on the bootlegs: “Kar­ma Man,” the orig­i­nal of which turned up on Bowie at the Beeb from a 1968 ses­sion, and “Can’t Help Think­ing About Me,” orig­i­nal­ly released in 1966.

The release will be part of Bril­liant Adven­ture (1992–2001) an 11-CD or 18-LP box set that will focus on Bowie’s third decade. Toy will be released sep­a­rate­ly as a 3‑CD release called Toy:Box, con­tain­ing “alter­nate mix­es and out­takes.” Bet­ter save your pen­nies!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

See Every Nuclear Explosion in History: 2153 Blasts from 1945–2015

in History, Physics, Technology | September 30th, 2021

There have been more than 2,000 nuclear explo­sions in all of his­to­ry — which, in the case of the tech­nol­o­gy required to det­o­nate a nuclear explo­sion, goes back only 76 years. It all began, accord­ing to the ani­mat­ed video above, on July 16, 1945, with the nuclear device code-named Trin­i­ty. The fruit of the labors of the Man­hat­tan Project, its explo­sion famous­ly brought to the mind of the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Robert J. Oppen­hemier a pas­sage from the Bha­gavad Gita: “Now I am become Death, destroy­er of worlds.” But how­ev­er rev­e­la­to­ry a spec­ta­cle Trin­i­ty pro­vid­ed, it turned out mere­ly to be the over­ture of the nuclear age.

Cre­at­ed by Ehsan Rezaie of Orbital Mechan­ics, the video offers a sim­ple-look­ing but decep­tive­ly infor­ma­tion-rich pre­sen­ta­tion of every nuclear explo­sion that has so far occurred. It belongs to a per­haps unlike­ly but nev­er­the­less deci­sive­ly estab­lished genre, the ani­mat­ed nuclear-explo­sion time-lapse, of which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured exam­ples from Busi­ness Insid­er’s Alex Kuzoian and artist Isao Hasi­mo­to here on Open Cul­ture.

The size of each cir­cle that erupts on the world map indi­cates the rel­a­tive pow­er of the explo­sion in its loca­tion (all infor­ma­tion also pro­vid­ed in the scrolling text on the low­er left); those det­o­nat­ed under­ground appear in yel­low, those det­o­nat­ed under­wa­ter in blue, and those det­o­nat­ed in the atmos­phere in red.

Trin­i­ty cre­at­ed an atmos­pher­ic explo­sion above New Mex­i­co’s Jor­na­da del Muer­to desert. (Oth­er­wise Oppen­heimer would­n’t have been able to wit­ness it change the world.) So did Lit­tle Boy and Fat Man, the bombs dropped on Japan in World War II. Those remain the only det­o­na­tions of nuclear weapons in com­bat, and thus the nuclear explo­sions every­one knows, but they, too, rep­re­sent only the begin­ning. As the Cold War sets in, some­thing of a test­ing vol­ley emerges between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union, cul­mi­nat­ing in the colos­sal red dot of 1961’s Tsar Bom­ba, still the most pow­er­ful nuclear weapon ever test­ed. With the USSR long gone today, the explo­sions have only slowed. But in recent years, as the data on which this video is based indi­cates, nuclear test­ing has turned into a one-play­er game — and that play­er is North Korea.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every Nuclear Bomb Explo­sion in His­to­ry, Ani­mat­ed

53 Years of Nuclear Test­ing in 14 Min­utes: A Time Lapse Film by Japan­ese Artist Isao Hashimo­to

200 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

U.S. Det­o­nates Nuclear Weapons in Space; Peo­ple Watch Spec­ta­cle Sip­ping Drinks on Rooftops (1962)

J. Robert Oppen­heimer Explains How He Recit­ed a Line from Bha­gavad Gita–“Now I Am Become Death, the Destroy­er of Worlds” — Upon Wit­ness­ing the First Nuclear Explo­sion

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

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 or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Jim Henson’s Farewell: Revisit the “Nice, Friendly” Memorial Service at St. John the Divine (1990)

in Television | September 30th, 2021

Please watch out for each oth­er and love and for­give every­body. It’s a good life, enjoy it. — Jim Hen­son

Born in Greenville, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Jim Hen­son spent his youth prac­tic­ing the tenets of Chris­t­ian Sci­ence, a faith he would offi­cial­ly renounce in 1975. But the pow­er of pos­i­tive think­ing his ear­ly reli­gion years instilled would per­sist, roman­ti­cized by his alter-ego, Ker­mit the Frog, and tem­pered by foils like the earthy, iras­ci­ble Ms. Pig­gy. For every foul-mouthed Oscar the Grouch, there was always a lov­able Big Bird, “Jim taught us many things: to save the plan­et, be kind to each oth­er, praise God, and be sil­ly,” said Mup­pet writer Jer­ry Juhl at Henson’s 1990 New York City memo­r­i­al ser­vice. “That’s how I’ll remem­ber him — as a man who was bal­anced effort­less­ly and grace­ful­ly between the sacred and the sil­ly.”

Henson’s first memo­r­i­al, held at the cav­ernous Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine bore wit­ness to Juhl’s por­trait of the late, bril­liant creator’s lega­cy. In true Hen­son fash­ion, the pup­peteer direct­ed the event him­self from beyond the grave, a final light­heart­ed joke, as he had writ­ten in a let­ter to his fam­i­ly four years ear­li­er: “It feels strange writ­ing this while I am still alive, but it wouldn’t be easy after I go …. This all may seem sil­ly to you guys, but what the hell, I’m gone and who can argue with me?”

By “this all,” Hen­son meant a funer­al ser­vice in which guests were for­bid­den to wear black and asked to mourn and cel­e­brate to the tunes of a Dix­ieland brass band: “A nice, friend­ly lit­tle ser­vice,” he wrote in his instruc­tions, with a “rous­ing” sound­track.

To the sounds of jazz, his friends and fam­i­ly added — of course — the songs that defined Henson’s career, includ­ing “Sun­ny Day,” the Sesame Street theme song, Mup­pets anthem “The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion,” and — in a sec­ond memo­r­i­al ser­vice held two months lat­er at St. Paul’s in Lon­don — Ker­mit the Frog’s anthem, “It’s Not Easy Being Green” (above) sung by Big Bird and Oscar pup­peteer Car­oll Spin­ney. (Spin­ney passed away in 2019.) Both Hen­son memo­ri­als were solemn (unavoid­able giv­en the occa­sion and the venues) but also decid­ed­ly sil­ly, as sto­ry after sto­ry about the man poured forth from those who knew him best.

In the Defunct­land video at the top, you can see Henson’s friend and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Juhl take the pul­pit at St. John the Divine to tell his favorite Hen­son sto­ry of work­ing on their first show in 1955, Sam and Friends, a local Wash­ing­ton, D.C. live-action/pup­pet pro­gram that gave birth to Ker­mit. Doubt­ing the joke at the heart of a sketch, Juhl went to Hen­son with his mis­giv­ings; and Hen­son replied, “It’s a ter­ri­ble joke, but it’s wor­thy of us.” The laugh­ter that rum­bles through the crowd is char­ac­ter­is­tic of both funer­al ser­vices, which feel far more inti­mate than they are. Or as Hen­son’s son Bri­an says in his trib­ute, “Sor­ry Dad. Lit­tle ser­vice, big place.” See the full New York funer­al ser­vice for Hen­son just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wit­ness the Birth of Ker­mit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

The Cre­ative Life of Jim Hen­son Explored in a Six-Part Doc­u­men­tary Series

Watch Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Per­form “Rain­bow Con­nec­tion” with Ker­mit the Frog on The Mup­pet Show (1981)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Nirvana Refuses to Mime Along to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Top of the Pops (1991)

in Music | September 29th, 2021

This month marks the 30th anniver­sary of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind, first released on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1991, “the day,” writes Michael Ted­der at Stere­ogum, “that col­lege radio-nur­tured types and arty hard rock offi­cial­ly became rebrand­ed as Alter­na­tive Rock, and, accord­ing to leg­end, every­thing changed for­ev­er.” You might believe that leg­end even if you remem­ber the real­i­ty. Yes, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” was just as huge as every­body says — and, yes, you like­ly recall where you were when you first saw the video or heard the song explode with Pix­ies-inspired qui­et-loud feroc­i­ty from the radio. But the change was already on the way.

Nir­vana emerged in a pop music land­scape slow­ly becom­ing sat­u­rat­ed with alter­na­tive music. You might also remem­ber where you were the first time you saw the video for Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence,” for exam­ple, or R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” or Sinéad O’Connor’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” — or when you first expe­ri­enced the dynamic/melodic assault of the afore­men­tioned Pix­ies, vir­tu­al alt-rock elders by the time they released Trompe Le Monde, their fourth stu­dio album, in the same Sep­tem­ber week that Nev­er­mind appeared. (You may remem­ber where you were the first time you heard the word “Lol­la­palooza,” first orga­nized in 1991.)

The fate­ful week in Sep­tem­ber also saw the release of 90s-defin­ing albums like Pri­mal Scream’s Screa­madel­i­ca, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ Blood Sug­ar Sex Magik, and A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End The­o­ry. In the year that Nev­er­mind sup­pos­ed­ly sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed “grunge,” Soundgar­den released Bad­mo­torfin­ger and Pearl Jam released Ten. It’s fair to say Nir­vana were one of just many bands rein­vent­ing them­selves and the cul­ture. Even the hair met­al bands and teen pop idols Nir­vana put out of busi­ness were already try­ing to make more seri­ous, “authen­tic” music before Nev­er­mind turned every executive’s head.

Kurt Cobain was already well aware — and wary — of the dan­gers of hero wor­ship and blind alle­giance to style over sub­stance. It was an atti­tude he came by nat­u­ral­ly giv­en that, in 1991, his friends in Olympia, Wash­ing­ton found­ed an indie record label called Kill Rock Stars. He’d writ­ten an anthem, “In Bloom,” about it before any­one heard the open­ing pow­er chords of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” As he pur­sued, with rig­or­ous ambi­tion, the pow­er of rock star­dom, he reject­ed its trap­pings and pre­ten­sions, as when the band appeared on Top of the Pops and took the piss out of the show, rather than mime along duti­ful­ly, as Mark Beau­mont writes at NME:

Pre­tend­ing to strum his gui­tar like a robot and mak­ing no attempt to go any­where near an actu­al chord – pre­sum­ably a state­ment about being asked to per­form like a mechan­i­cal pup­pet – Kurt launch­es into his vocal in deep, the­atri­cal bari­tone, an homage to Mor­ris­sey that comes across more like Jim Mor­ri­son on mogadon. Mean­while Krist Novosel­ic flails his bass around his head like he’s wrestling a live wolf and Dave Grohl’s ‘drum­ming’ is more like an inter­pre­tive dance to rep­re­sent ‘goofy imp’. Oh, and heav­en knows what the TOTP cen­sors thought of Kurt chang­ing the open­ing lyrics to “load up on drugs, kill your friends” before try­ing to eat the micro­phone. 

In light of the groundswell of alter­na­tive bands emerg­ing — or still plug­ging away — at the time of Nev­er­mind’s release, the myth of Nir­vana as the sin­gle-hand­ed inven­tors of 90s alt-rock is more than a lit­tle overblown. This is espe­cial­ly so in a decade that saw elec­tron­ic dance music and hip hop cross over into rock and vice-ver­sa, a trend Nir­vana had noth­ing to do with. They were a thun­der­ing­ly great band, and Kurt Cobain was a rare and gift­ed song­writer, but the heart of Nirvana’s pop­u­lar appeal was extra-musi­cal. The band — mean­ing, prin­ci­pal­ly, Cobain — most hon­est­ly embod­ied the spir­it of the time: painful­ly ambiva­lent and at war with its aspi­ra­tions. “Kurt — I would call him a wind­mill,” says bassist Krist Novosel­ic. “He want­ed to be a rock star — and he hat­ed it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Record­ing Secrets of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind Revealed by Pro­duc­er Butch Vig

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s Head­bang­ing Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

America’s First Banned Book: Discover the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puritans

in Books, History | September 29th, 2021

In the con­test for the title of the most Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal fig­ure of them all, Thomas Mor­ton’s name can’t be left out. Busi­nesslike, liti­gious, giv­en to rhap­sodies over nature, and not resis­tant to turn­ing celebri­ty, he was also — in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can man­ner — born else­where. Back in Devon, Eng­land, he’d made his name as a lawyer, rep­re­sent­ing mem­bers of the low­er class in court, but in 1622 he was hired by investor Sir Fer­di­nan­do Gorges on a trip to han­dle his affairs in the North Amer­i­can colonies. This was just two years after the found­ing of Ply­mouth Colony, whose suc­cess had inspired many an Eng­lish busi­ness­man to con­tem­plate get­ting in on the New World action him­self. In 1624, Gorges sent Mor­ton across the Atlantic again, this time with every­thing need­ed to found a colony of his own.

Mor­ton was not a Puri­tan, nor was he “on board with the strict, insu­lar, and pious soci­ety they had hoped to build for them­selves,” as Atlas Obscu­ra’s Matthew Taub puts it. Though his own colony of Mer­ry­mount became Ply­mouth’s rival in the fur trade, for the Puri­tans “the prob­lem wasn’t only that Mor­ton was tak­ing goods and com­merce away from Ply­mouth, but that he was giv­ing that busi­ness to the Native Amer­i­cans, includ­ing trad­ing guns to the Algo­nquins. With Plymouth’s monop­oly dis­solved and its per­ceived ene­mies armed, Mor­ton had per­haps done more than any­one else to under­mine the Puri­tan project in Mass­a­chu­setts.” And that was before Mor­ton erect­ed Mer­ry­moun­t’s 80-foot, antler-topped may­pole, around which he invit­ed res­i­dents to “drink, dance, and frol­ic.”

Obvi­ous­ly, Mor­ton’s reign as a “lord of mis­rule” (as Plymouth’s gov­er­nor William Brad­ford deemed him) could not be borne for long. “Dur­ing the 1628 fes­tiv­i­ties, a Puri­tan mili­tia led by Myles Stan­dish invad­ed Mer­ry­mount and chopped down the may­pole,” writes Taub, not­ing that the inci­dent inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1832 short sto­ry “The May-Pole of Mer­ry Mount.” Mor­ton also turned out to be an able chron­i­cler of the peri­od him­self, at least after the sub­se­quent tribu­la­tions that saw him sen­tenced to death by star­va­tion, helped to sur­vive by the Native Amer­i­can tribes with whom he had main­tained good rela­tions, safe­ly returned to Eng­land, and frus­trat­ed in his attempts to return to the colonies. Around 1630, he did what any true Amer­i­can, offi­cial or aspir­ing, would do: put togeth­er a law­suit.

Mor­ton demand­ed, writes World His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­di­a’s Joshua Mark, “that the gov­ern­ment of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony demon­strate by what author­i­ty they exer­cised their pow­er,” argu­ing for the revo­ca­tion of its char­ter “because the Puri­tans of Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony had not only mis­rep­re­sent­ed them­selves in obtain­ing the char­ter but had no right to col­o­nize the region in the first place as it was legal­ly in Gorges’ patent.” As the long (and in any case futile) legal pro­ceed­ings dragged on, Mor­ton got the idea of turn­ing his exten­sive briefs for the tri­al into “a three-vol­ume work of his­to­ry, nat­ur­al his­to­ry, satire, and poet­ry” called New Eng­lish Canaan, a Bib­li­cal allu­sion under­scor­ing Mor­ton’s crit­i­cal view of the Puri­tans as “abus­ing the natives and the land for prof­it and then jus­ti­fy­ing their actions in the name of their god and the scrip­tures.”

Lin­da Can­toni at Hot off the Press writes that “the first two books of New Eng­lish Canaan are most­ly non-con­tro­ver­sial, con­tain­ing Morton’s obser­va­tions on the native Amer­i­cans, whom he respect­ed great­ly, and on the rich nat­ur­al resources in New Eng­land. It was in the third book that Mor­ton rolled up his sleeves and got down to his real pur­pose of skew­er­ing the New Eng­land Puri­tans, who, he said, ‘make a great shewe of Reli­gion, but no human­i­ty.’ ” As a result, writes Men­tal Floss’ Jake Rossen, “his book was per­ceived as an all-out attack on Puri­tan moral­i­ty, and they didn’t take kind­ly to it. So they banned it,” mak­ing New Eng­lish Canaan what Christie’s called “Amer­i­ca’s first banned book” when they auc­tioned a copy off for $60,000. But you can read it for free at Project Guten­berg, bear­ing in mind the most Amer­i­can les­son of all from the life of Thomas Mor­ton: when all else fails, pub­lish a tell-all mem­oir.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Dig­i­tizes Its Col­lec­tion of Obscene Books (1658–1940)

It’s Banned Books Week: Lis­ten to Allen Gins­berg Read His Famous­ly Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Fran­cis­co, 1956

When L. Frank Baum’s Wiz­ard of Oz Series Was Banned for “Depict­ing Women in Strong Lead­er­ship Roles” (1928)

Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

When Christ­mas Was Legal­ly Banned for 22 Years by the Puri­tans in Colo­nial Mass­a­chu­setts

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 or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Why Scientists Can’t Recreate the Sound of Stradivarius Violins: The Mystery of Their Inimitable Sound

in Art, Music | September 29th, 2021

In his influ­en­tial 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion,” crit­ic Wal­ter Ben­jamin used the word “aura” to describe an artwork’s “pres­ence in time and space” — an expla­na­tion of the thrill, or chill, we get from stand­ing before a Jack­son Pol­lock, say, or a Michelan­ge­lo, rather than a pho­to­graph of the same. Writ­ing in the age of radio, pho­tog­ra­phy, and news­pa­pers, Ben­jamin believed that aura could not be trans­mit­ted or copied: “Even the most per­fect repro­duc­tion of a work of art is lack­ing in one ele­ment” — that rare thing that makes art worth pre­serv­ing and repro­duc­ing in the first place.

Let’s grant, for the sake of argu­ment, that musi­cal instru­ments have aura — that the very sounds they make are its man­i­fes­ta­tion, and that, no mat­ter how sophis­ti­cat­ed our tech­nol­o­gy, we may nev­er repro­duce those sounds per­fect­ly. As Hank Green explains in the SciShow video above: “For cen­turies, musi­cians, instru­ment mak­ers, engi­neers, and sci­en­tists have been try­ing to under­stand and repro­duce the ‘Stradi­var­ius’ sound. They’ve inves­ti­gat­ed every­thing from the mate­ri­als their mak­er used to how he craft­ed the vio­lins. But the mys­tique is still there.” Can sci­ence solve the mys­tery?

At heart, the ques­tion seems to be whether the aur­al qual­i­ties of a Stradi­vari instru­ment can be plucked from their time and place of ori­gin and made fun­gi­ble, so to speak, across the cen­turies. Anto­nio Stradi­vari (his name is often Latinized to “Stradi­var­ius”) began mak­ing vio­lins in the 1600s and con­tin­ued, with his sons Francesco and Omobono, until his death in 1737, pro­duc­ing around 1000 instru­ments, most of which were vio­lins. About 650 of those instru­ments sur­vive today, and approx­i­mate­ly 500 of those are vio­lins, rang­ing in val­ue from tens of mil­lions to price­less.

Green sur­veys the tech­niques, mate­ri­als, physics, and chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of Stradi­vari vio­lins “to under­stand why Stradi­var­ius vio­lins have been so hard to recre­ate.” Their sound has been described as “sil­very,” says Green, a word that sounds pret­ty but has lit­tle tech­ni­cal mean­ing. Rather than rely on adjec­tives, researchers from diverse fields have tried to work from the objects them­selves — ana­lyz­ing and attempt­ing to recre­ate the vio­lins’ shape, con­struc­tion, mate­ri­als, etc. They’ve learned that time and place mat­ter more than they sup­posed.

The wood of a Stradi­vari vio­lin “real­ly is dif­fer­ent,” Green says, “but because Stradi­vari nev­er wrote down his process, researchers can’t quite tell why.” That wood itself grew in a process over which Stradi­vari had no con­trol. The alpine spruce he used came from trees har­vest­ed “at the edge of Europe’s Lit­tle Ice Age, a 70-year peri­od of unsea­son­ably cold weath­er … that slowed tree growth and made for even more con­sis­tent wood.” We begin to see the dif­fi­cul­ties. One researcher, Joseph Nagy­vary, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of bio­chem­istry at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, recent­ly made anoth­er dis­cov­ery. As Texas A&M Today notes:

[Stradi­vari and fel­low mak­er Guarneri] soaked their instru­ments in chem­i­cals such as borax and brine to pro­tect them from a worm infes­ta­tion that was sweep­ing through Italy in the 1700s. By pure acci­dent the chem­i­cals used to pro­tect the wood had the unin­tend­ed result of pro­duc­ing the unique sounds that have been almost impos­si­ble to dupli­cate in the past 400 years.

Per­haps we can­not dupli­cate the sound because none of us is Anto­nio Stradi­vari, work­ing with his sons in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry in Cre­mona, Italy, build­ing vio­lins with a unique crop of alpine spruce while fight­ing unsea­son­ably cold weath­er and worms.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

Why Stradi­var­ius Vio­lins Are Worth Mil­lions

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

Stand-Up Comedy in the Internet Age — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #106

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | September 29th, 2021

 

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er dis­cuss­es how Inter­net cul­ture has changed stand-up with three come­di­ans: past Pret­ty Much Pop guests Rod­ney Ram­sey (who co-owns the Unknown Com­e­dy Club) and Daniel Lobell (host of Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers and author of the Fair Enough com­ic), plus Dena Jack­son (also a speak­er on yoga and mind­ful­ness and host of The Ego Pod­cast).

How does the exis­tence of YouTube, social media, and vir­tu­al spaces changed the way come­di­ans con­struct a set, relate to their fans, and make a liv­ing? We talk about sto­ry-telling vs. one-lin­ers, rep­ping your home­town, com­e­dy cliques, sur­viv­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty, and more.

Some arti­cles that go into these issues fur­ther include:

Fol­low @TheUnknownVenue, @Denatalks, and @DanielLobell.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How New Yorkers Dodged Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws by Inventing the World’s Worst Sandwich

in Food & Drink, History | September 28th, 2021

Three men feast on free lunch in a draw­ing by Charles Dana Gib­son

In one of my favorite episodes of The Simp­sons, beer-swill­ing Homer falls in love with a sand­wich. He spends his days nib­bling away at the “sick­en­ing, fes­ter­ing remains of a 10-foot hoagie,” Nathan Rabin writes, “long after decen­cy, self-respect, and sur­vival would all seem to dic­tate throw­ing it out.” The sand­wich may be yet anoth­er instance of the show pulling some obscure detail from Amer­i­can his­to­ry for com­ic effect — or maybe writer David M. Stern read Eugene O’Neill’s The Ice­man Cometh, in which the play­wright describes “an old des­ic­cat­ed ruin of dust-laden bread and mum­mi­fied ham or cheese.”

O’Neill’s sand­wich is so his­tor­i­cal, it has a name, the Raines Sand­wich, named after New York State Sen­a­tor John Raines, the author of an 1896 law that raised the cost of liquor licens­es sub­stan­tial­ly, upped the drink­ing age from six­teen to eigh­teen, and banned alco­holic bev­er­ages on Sun­days except in large hotels and lodg­ing hous­es which served a com­pli­men­ta­ry meal with their drinks. The law tar­get­ed work­ing peo­ple and their one day of respite, and it hit bar own­ers hard. “After all,” writes the Irish Exam­in­er, “labour­ers most­ly worked six days a week, with Sun­day their only full day for drink­ing, and Sun­day was the most prof­itable day for saloons.”

The com­pli­men­ta­ry-meal-with-drinks man­date, as it were, was designed so that wealthy patrons at lux­u­ry hotels could drink on Sun­days, but low-rent saloon own­ers seized on the loop­hole, trans­form­ing dive bars into room­ing hous­es overnight with table­cloths and “alleged bed­rooms” made from attics and base­ments. “It was then that the loos­est pos­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of a ‘sub­stan­tial meal’ became the Raines Sand­wich.” The sand­wich might be made of any­thing, even a brick between two slices of bread; it was rarely eat­en. Some­times, it would be served to a guest with their beer or whiskey, then whisked away and giv­en to some­one else. A sin­gle Raines Sand­wich might last the day, or even the whole week.

Some estab­lish­ments tried to get away with serv­ing crack­ers and moldy cheese alone (stal­wart New York Irish pub McSor­ley’s gave away crack­ers, cheese, and onions — a dish for which they now charge). But the courts required a sand­wich, at the very least to be served, and the city enforced the law with right­eous vig­or — thanks in large part to a young Theodore Roo­sevelt. As Dar­rell Hart­man writes at Atlas Obscu­ra, New York Repub­li­cans in Albany “spoke for a con­stituen­cy large­ly com­prised of rur­al small-town church­go­ers” wor­ried about urban vice. But Raines had a city ally in Roo­sevelt, then a “37-year-old fire­brand… push­ing a law-and-order agen­da as pres­i­dent of the city’s new­ly orga­nized police com­mis­sion.”

Roo­sevelt can­vassed the Low­er East Side with patrol­man Frank Rathge­ber, send­ing him into saloons in plain clothes to inves­ti­gate. “Rathge­ber said he saw many sand­wich­es but only one bed,” writes author Richard Zacks in Island of Vice. The sand­wich­es were moldy, and were tak­en away uneat­en. “He nev­er was asked to buy a sec­ond sand­wich” with sub­se­quent drinks, “or even to eat the first one.” Despite the reform crack­downs, the shady busi­ness of the Raines Sand­wich let saloon own­ers skirt the law until it was repealed, final­ly, in 1924. As Hart­man notes, behind the pur­port­ed good inten­tions of the Tem­per­ance move­ment lay a deter­mined cul­ture war:

Those in favor of the Sun­day ban, gen­er­al­ly mid­dle-class and Protes­tant, saw it as a cor­ner­stone of social improve­ment. For those against, includ­ing the city’s tide of Ger­man and Irish immi­grants, it was an act of repression—an espe­cial­ly spite­ful one because it lim­it­ed how the aver­age labor­er could enjoy him­self on his one day off. The Sun­day ban was not pop­u­lar, to say the least, among the city’s Jews, who’d already observed their Sab­bath the day before.

The Raines Law was as much about enforc­ing reli­gious obser­vance and cul­tur­al con­for­mi­ty on immi­grants as it was an attempt to com­bat crime, pover­ty, and vio­lence in the city. Those whose beliefs did not pre­vent them from enjoy­ing them­selves on Sun­day saw no rea­son to take the law any more seri­ous­ly than they would a rot­ting week-old sand­wich or a brick between two slices of moldy bread.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Thou­sands of Free Vin­tage Cock­tail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

The First Known Pho­to­graph of Peo­ple Shar­ing a Beer (1843)

The Sci­ence of Beer: A New Free Online Course Promis­es to Enhance Your Appre­ci­a­tion of the Time­less Bev­er­age

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

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

in Music | September 28th, 2021

In the sum­mer of 1981, the British band Queen was record­ing tracks for their tenth stu­dio album, Hot Space, at Moun­tain Stu­dios in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. As it hap­pened, David Bowie had sched­uled time at the same stu­dio to record the title song for the movie Cat Peo­ple. Before long, Bowie stopped by the Queen ses­sions and joined in. The orig­i­nal idea was that he would add back­up vocals on the song “Cool Cat.” “David came in one night and we were play­ing oth­er peo­ple’s songs for fun, just jam­ming,” says Queen drum­mer Roger Tay­lor in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen. “In the end, David said, ‘This is stu­pid, why don’t we just write one?’ ”

And so began a marathon ses­sion of near­ly 24-hours–fueled, accord­ing to Blake, by wine and cocaine. Built around John Dea­con’s dis­tinc­tive bass line, the song was most­ly writ­ten by Mer­cury and Bowie. Blake describes the scene, begin­ning with the rec­ol­lec­tions of Queen’s gui­tarist:

‘We felt our way through a back­ing track all togeth­er as an ensem­ble,’ recalled Bri­an May. ‘When the back­ing track was done, David said, “Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go–just off the top of our heads–and we’ll com­pile a vocal out of that.” And that’s what we did.’ Some of these impro­vi­sa­tions, includ­ing Mer­cury’s mem­o­rable intro­duc­to­ry scat­ting vocal, would endure on the fin­ished track. Bowie also insist­ed that he and Mer­cury should­n’t hear what the oth­er had sung, swap­ping vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.

“It was very hard,” said May in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us. Pas­sions ran very high. I found it very hard because I got so lit­tle of my own way. But David had a real vision and he took over the song lyri­cal­ly.” The song was orig­i­nal­ly titled “Peo­ple on Streets,” but Bowie want­ed it changed to “Under Pres­sure.” When the time came to mix the song at Pow­er Sta­tion stu­dios in New York, Bowie insist­ed on being there. “It did­n’t go too well,” Blake quotes Queen’s engi­neer Rein­hold Mack as say­ing. “We spent all day and Bowie was like, ‘Do this, do that.’ In the end, I called Fred­die and said, ‘I need help here,’ so Fred came in as a medi­a­tor.” Mer­cury and Bowie argued fierce­ly over the final mix.

At one point Bowie threat­ened to block the release of the song, but it was issued to the pub­lic on Octo­ber 26, 1981 and even­tu­al­ly rose to num­ber one on the British charts. It was lat­er named the num­ber 31 song on VH1’s list of the 100 great­est songs of the 1980s. “ ‘Under Pres­sure’ is a sig­nif­i­cant song for us,” May said in 2008, “and that is because of David and its lyri­cal con­tent. I would have found that hard to admit in the old days, but I can admit it now.… But one day, I would love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

After lis­ten­ing to the iso­lat­ed vocal track above, you can hear the offi­cial­ly released 1981 mix below:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this clas­sic post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

Watch David Bowie & Annie Lennox in Rehearsal, Singing “Under Pres­sure,” with Queen (1992)

Watch Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Act­ed Out Lit­er­al­ly as a Short Crime Film

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.