B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Greatest Performances (1972)

in Music | December 23rd, 2015

“I was told that some of you dudes don’t know any­thing about blues,” he said from the stage before begin­ning what he would go on to call the one of the great­est shows of his career: “So I wan­na say this to you: I came to swap some with you. I imag­ine that quite a few of you dudes have the blues already.” After a lit­tle more friend­ly ban­ter and an acknowl­edg­ment that it is Thanks­giv­ing Day, B.B. King launch­es into “Down­heart­ed” (or “How Blue Can You Get”) in front of his admir­ing audi­ence of inmates at Sing Sing Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty in Ossin­ing, New York.

It is three years after John­ny Cash per­formed at San Quentin (four years after his Fol­som con­cert) and one year after Nixon declared the “war on drugs” and began the peri­od of mass incar­cer­a­tion that has reached epi­dem­ic pro­por­tions today.

The con­cert at Sing Sing includ­ed not only King but also per­for­mances from come­di­an Jim­my Walk­er (J.J. from Good Times, who intro­duces King at the top), ensem­ble vocal group Voic­es of East Harlem, and Joan Baez and her sis­ter Mimi Far­iña, who you can see below sing “I Shall Be Released” and “Viva mi patria Bolivia.” In-between the stars per­for­mances, inmates put on a play and recit­ed orig­i­nal poet­ry.

Baez, as you’ll see, was very well received, but the star of the night was King. The entire show was cap­tured on film by doc­u­men­tary direc­tor David Hoff­man, who had been teach­ing film at the prison and who orga­nized the show. In the clips above, Hoff­man shows us sev­er­al close-ups of the inmates’ faces in beau­ti­ful­ly human­iz­ing por­traits rem­i­nis­cent of the pho­tographs of Gor­don Parks. You can see Hoff­man below briefly describe the cir­cum­stances of the con­cert before anoth­er clip of the “Down­heart­ed” per­for­mance and more.

See a few more clips from the con­cert on Youtube here, and buy a copy of the com­plete DVD here (Richard and Mimi Fariña’s web­site has a com­plete list­ing of per­for­mances). The Sing Sing con­cert had an impact on the per­form­ers as well as the inmates. Baez wrote an orig­i­nal song for the film’s cred­its (below) and her sis­ter Mimi was inspired after­ward to found Bread & Ros­es, which orga­nizes con­certs for peo­ple in hos­pi­tals, home­less shel­ters, pris­ons, and oth­er insti­tu­tions (“any­where they serve Jell‑O,” joked come­di­an Don Nov­el­lo).

This was not the first time King had per­formed at a prison. The year pre­vi­ous, in 1971, he put on a con­cert at Chicago’s Cook Coun­ty Jail. The result­ing record made Rolling Stone’s 500 best albums list, though it didn’t mer­it the most favor­able review from the mag­a­zine. Nonethe­less, All­mu­sic pro­nounced it a “live album with some real sparks to it,” and “pos­si­bly the best live ver­sion of ‘The Thrill is Gone’ of all its many incar­na­tions.” Hear it below and decide for your­self, and hear the full Cook Coun­ty live album here.

Of that ear­li­er prison con­cert, King’s key­boardist Ron Levy remarked, “If any­body had the blues, it was those peo­ple incar­cer­at­ed. And B.B. real­ly felt com­pas­sion for those guys…. Peo­ple don’t real­ize B.B. King was much more than just a musi­cian and enter­tain­er. He’s a human being, a human­i­tar­i­an. He cared. He’s one of the real­ly good guys. There aren’t many like him in his­to­ry. He’s not just the king of the blues. He’s one of the kings of human­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

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

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Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rocking & Swinging Christmas Albums: From James Brown and Johnny Cash to Christopher Lee & The Ventures

in Music | December 22nd, 2015

When you think Christ­mas, you prob­a­bly think recent­ly deceased Stone Tem­ple Pilots singer Scott Wei­land, no? No, you prob­a­bly don’t, but he made a Christ­mas record all the same in 2011 (see his “Win­ter Won­der­land” video above). You might say crit­ics didn’t love it, but that’s not real­ly the point. Artists often record Christ­mas records as nov­el­ty items for shop­pers on a tear to snatch up and shove in the bas­ket with oth­er last-minute detri­tus. It seems like com­mon wis­dom that if you get your Christ­mas album on a Star­bucks or Tar­get prod­uct dis­play, you’ll prob­a­bly have a pret­ty hap­py new year.

James Browns Funky Christmas

But then there are the rare excep­tions, Christ­mas albums made with care, by artists who sure­ly want­ed to make mon­ey, but who also made some­thing unique­ly great of well-worn hol­i­day clas­sics, or penned new ones of their own. There is, of course, the most­ly instru­men­tal jazz great­ness of Vince Guaraldi’s Char­lie Brown Christ­mas sound­track. But have you heard instru­men­tal surf-rock leg­ends The Ven­tures Christ­mas album? It’s out­stand­ing. You’re inti­mate­ly famil­iar with The Jack­son 5’s bril­liant soul ren­di­tions of songs like “San­ta Claus is Com­ing to Town,” but you haven’t yet begun to yule­tide, I say, until you’ve put on James Brown’s Funky Christ­mas, fea­tur­ing such orig­i­nal tunes as “Go Pow­er at Christ­mas Time” and the heart­felt plea on behalf of impov­er­ished kids, “San­ta Claus Go Straight to the Ghet­to.”

We’ve got these albums and many more greats—from Bob Dylan, John­ny Cash, The Beach Boys, Willie Nel­son, Ella Fitzger­ald, Elvis Pres­ley etc.—compiled in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, where they rub shoul­ders with unex­pect­ed gems from indie band Low, punk rock­ers Bad Reli­gion, and hor­ror leg­end Christo­pher Lee, whose Heavy Met­al Christ­mas and Heavy Met­al Christ­mas Too should be required lis­ten­ing at every hol­i­day par­ty. Host­ing one of your own? Pull up our playlist of Christ­mas music worth hear­ing, hit play, and enjoy many qual­i­ty hours of jazz, funk, coun­try, soul, and rock and roll cheer and tid­ings. These sug­ges­tions come to us via Rolling Stone, Com­plex, and our read­ers on Twit­ter. If you need to down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware, get it here. You can find a com­plete list of the albums below, with links to pur­chase them, should you need a last minute gift.

James Brown’s Funky Christ­mas

John­ny Cash — The Clas­sic Christ­mas Album

The Beach Boys’ Christ­mas Album

Louis Arm­strong and Friends — What a Won­der­ful Christ­mas

A Motown Christ­mas

Elvis’ Christ­mas Album

A Christ­mas Gift for You from Phil Spec­tor

A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

Bob Dylan, Christ­mas in the Heart

We Wish You a Met­al Xmas … And a Head­bang­ing New Year

The Ven­tures’ Christ­mas Album

Jacob Miller, Nat­ty Christ­mas

A Very She and Him Christ­mas

A Very Spe­cial Christ­mas Vol­ume 1

A Jol­ly Christ­mas from Frank Sina­tra

Willie Nel­son, Pret­ty Paper

Ella Wish­es You a Swing­ing Christ­mas

Soul Christ­mas

Bing Cros­by, White Christ­mas

Christ­mas on Death Row

Christ­mas with the Rat Pack

The Jack­son 5 Christ­mas Album

Suf­jan Stevens, Songs for Christ­mas

Emmy­lou Har­ris, Light of the Sta­ble

James Brown, Soul­ful Christ­mas

Car­pen­ters’ Christ­mas Col­lec­tion

Low, Christ­mas

Bad Reli­gion, Christ­mas Songs

Christo­pher Lee, Heavy Met­al Christ­mas and Heavy Met­al Christ­mas Too

Squir­rel Nut Zip­pers, Christ­mas Car­a­van

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

John­ny Cash’s Christ­mas Spe­cials, Fea­tur­ing June Carter, Steve Mar­tin, Andy Kauf­man & More (1976–79)

John Waters Makes Hand­made Christ­mas Cards, Says the “Whole Pur­pose of Life is Christ­mas”

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

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Jane Austen Writes a Letter to Her Sister While Hung Over: “I Believe I Drank Too Much Wine Last Night”

in Letters, Literature | December 22nd, 2015

jane

In a time when peo­ple offer up every ges­ture as fod­der for their ador­ing social media pub­lic, it’s a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to imag­ine liv­ing a life as pri­vate as Jane Austen (1775–1817) did. And yet, the impres­sion we have of her as shy and retir­ing is mis­lead­ing. She did not achieve lit­er­ary fame dur­ing her life­time, it’s true, and it’s not clear that she desired it. As her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh wrote in the Mem­oir of Jane Austen, the 1870 bio­graph­i­cal sketch that helped pop­u­lar­ize Austen in the 19th cen­tu­ry, “her tal­ents did not intro­duce her to the notice of oth­er writ­ers, or con­nect her with the lit­er­ary world, or in any degree pierce through the obscu­ri­ty of her domes­tic retire­ment.” Yet, reduc­ing Austen’s per­son­al­i­ty, as Austen-Leigh does, to “the moral rec­ti­tude, the cor­rect taste, and the warm affec­tions with which she invest­ed her ide­al char­ac­ters” miss­es her fierce intel­li­gence and com­plex­i­ty.

Austen’s nephew’s por­trait of her seems con­cerned with pre­serv­ing those canons of pro­pri­ety that she scrupu­lous­ly doc­u­ment­ed and sat­i­rized in her nov­els. Per­haps this is part­ly why he char­ac­ter­izes her as a very shy per­son. But we know that Austen main­tained a live­ly social life and kept up reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence with fam­i­ly and friends. Her let­ter-writ­ing, some of it excerpt­ed in Austen-Leigh’s biog­ra­phy, gives us the dis­tinct impres­sion that she used her let­ters to prac­tice the sharp por­traits she drew in the nov­els of the mores and stric­tures of her social class. Thus it is sur­pris­ing when her nephew tells us we are “not to expect too much from them.” “The style is always clear,” he opined, “and gen­er­al­ly ani­mat­ed, while a vein of humour con­tin­u­al­ly gleams through the whole; but the mate­ri­als may be thought infe­ri­or to the exe­cu­tion, for they treat only of the details of domes­tic life. There is in them no notice of pol­i­tics or pub­lic events; scarce­ly any dis­cus­sions on lit­er­a­ture, or oth­er sub­jects of gen­er­al inter­est.”

What Austen’s nephew seems not to under­stand is what her legions of ador­ing read­ers and crit­ics have since come to see in her work: in Austen, the “details of domes­tic life” are revealed as micro­cosms of her soci­ety’s pol­i­tics, pub­lic events, lit­er­a­ture, and “sub­jects of gen­er­al inter­est.” Austen-Leigh almost admits as much, despite him­self, when he com­pares his aun­t’s let­ters to “the nest some lit­tle bird builds of the mate­ri­als near­est at hand, of the twigs and moss­es sup­plied by the tree in which it is placed; curi­ous­ly con­struct­ed out of the sim­plest mat­ters.” In Austen’s hands, how­ev­er, the small domes­tic dra­mas pro­ceed­ing on the coun­try estates around her were any­thing but sim­ple mat­ters. Let­ter-writ­ing plays a cen­tral role in nov­els like Pride and Prej­u­dice, as in most fic­tion of the peri­od. The sur­viv­ing Austen let­ters are worth read­ing as source mate­r­i­al for the novels—or worth read­ing for their own sake, so enjoy­able are their turns of phrase and with­er­ing char­ac­ter­i­za­tions.

Take a Novem­ber, 1800 let­ter Austen wrote to her sis­ter Cas­san­dra (pre­served in the so-called “Brabourne edi­tion” of her let­ters). Austen begins by con­fess­ing, “I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurst­bourne; I know not how else to account for the shak­ing of my hand to-day.” To the “venial error” of her hang­over she attrib­ut­es “any indis­tinct­ness of writ­ing.” She then goes on to describe in vivid and very wit­ty detail the ball she’d attend­ed the night pre­vi­ous, tak­ing the risk of bor­ing her sis­ter “because one is prone to think much more of such things the morn­ing after they hap­pen, than when time has entire­ly dri­ven them out of one’s rec­ol­lec­tion.” Read an excerpt of her descrip­tion below and see if the scene does­n’t come alive before your eyes:

There were very few beau­ties, and such as there were were not very hand­some. Miss Ire­mon­ger did not look well, and Mrs. Blount was the only one much admired. She appeared exact­ly as she did in Sep­tem­ber, with the same broad face, dia­mond ban­deau, white shoes, pink hus­band, and fat neck. The two Miss Cox­es were there: I traced in one the remains of the vul­gar, broad-fea­tured girl who danced at Enham eight years ago; the oth­er is refined into a nice, com­posed-look­ing girl, like Cather­ine Bigg. I looked at Sir Thomas Champ­neys and thought of poor Ros­alie; I looked at his daugh­ter, and thought her a queer ani­mal with a white neck. Mrs. War­ren, I was con­strained to think, a very fine young woman, which I much regret. She has got rid of some part of her child, and danced away with great activ­i­ty look­ing by no means very large. Her hus­band is ugly enough, ugli­er even than his cousin John; but he does not look so very old. The Miss Mait­lands are both pret­ty­ish, very like Anne, with brown skins, large dark eyes, and a good deal of nose. The Gen­er­al has got the gout, and Mrs. Mait­land the jaun­dice. Miss Debary, Susan, and Sal­ly, all in black, but with­out any stature, made their appear­ance, and I was as civ­il to them as their bad breath would allow me.

You can read the let­ter in full at Let­ters of Note, who have includ­ed it in their excel­lent fol­low-up cor­re­spon­dence col­lec­tion, More Let­ters of Note. For more con­text and oth­er let­ters to Cas­san­dra from this peri­od, see this sec­tion of the Brabourne Austen let­ters.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Aban­doned Man­u­script, The Wat­sons

Down­load the Major Works of Jane Austen as Free eBooks & Audio Books

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

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CBGB is Reborn … As a Restaurant in Newark Airport

in Food & Drink, Music | December 22nd, 2015

cbgb tweet

CBGB, the birth­place of New York’s 1970s punk scene, closed in 2006, with Pat­ti Smith head­lin­ing the final show. It was the end of an era, anoth­er great New York insti­tu­tion shut­ting its doors.

Since then, if you want­ed to re-live the CBGB expe­ri­ence, you could take a vir­tu­al tour of the grungy digs online, or watch vin­tage videos of 197s0s CBGB shows fea­tur­ing The Ramones, the Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, and even a young Pat­ti Smith. And now you can seem­ing­ly try to recap­ture the Bow­ery vibe in Newark, New Jer­sey.

As the tweet above from indie radio sta­tion WFMU sug­gests, CBGB will be rein­car­nat­ed appar­ent­ly as a restau­rant in a Newark Air­port ter­mi­nal, with a menu offer­ing Cheese­burg­ers, Chick­en Wings, Cap­rese Sal­ads, Seared Tog­a­rashi Tuna, and Kobe Chili Dogs. The menu does­n’t seem to be shoot­ing for authen­tic­i­ty, but maybe, hope­ful­ly the bath­rooms will.

via @WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of CBGB, the Ear­ly Home of Punk and New Wave

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

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Shot-By-Shot Breakdowns of Spielberg’s Filmmaking in Jaws, Scorsese’s in Cape Fear, and De Palma’s in The Untouchables

in Film | December 22nd, 2015

This past sum­mer, we fea­tured a shot-by-shot break­down of sev­er­al sequences in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris by film­mak­er and video essay­ist Anto­nios Papan­to­niou. Solaris, as well as the rest of Tarkovsky’s oeu­vre, has giv­en and will con­tin­ue to give detail-ori­ent­ed cinephiles a seem­ing­ly infi­nite amount of mate­r­i­al to break down, scru­ti­nize, and explain the genius of.

But what of big Hol­ly­wood films? Do they have noth­ing of inter­est to offer? Papan­to­niou clear­ly does­n’t think so: his oth­er Shot by Shot video essays include looks, and very close looks indeed, at Bri­an De Pal­ma’s The Untouch­ables, Mar­tin Scors­ese’s remake of Cape Fear, and even the moth­er of all block­busters, Steven Spiel­berg’s Jaws.

These three auteurs, all of the same gen­er­a­tion, came up in the 1970s cohort of film­mak­ers who brought about the “New Hol­ly­wood,” a move­ment where­in young direc­tors like Spiel­berg, De Pal­ma, and Scors­ese (as well as Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, George Lucas, Paul Schrad­er, and many oth­ers) changed the rules of clas­si­cal cin­e­ma, intro­duc­ing a host of sub­jects and tech­niques pre­vi­ous­ly unheard of in main­stream Amer­i­can films. Yet they still did make main­stream Amer­i­can films, which required a kind of hybridiza­tion of cut­ting-edge sen­si­bil­i­ties with sil­ver-screen expec­ta­tions. Papan­to­niou specif­i­cal­ly exam­ines how these direc­tors accom­plish it through the kind of shots they cap­ture and how they cut them togeth­er.

Papan­to­niou’s analy­ses iden­ti­fy the visu­al evi­dence of Spiel­berg’s “appetite for non­stop dynam­ic film­mak­ing,” De Pal­ma’s “own unique post-mod­ern style” expressed through tech­niques like point-of-view-shots, and of how “Scors­ese dis­tincts [sic] him­self by adopt­ing more rebel­lious tech­niques.” You might get the sense of a slight awk­ward­ness in the lan­guage here, but the images select­ed speak for them­selves — and besides, if you took film stud­ies class­es in col­lege, you no doubt had at least one or two pro­fes­sors who com­pen­sat­ed for their odd turns of phrase with their rig­or­ous love of cin­e­ma, and from whom you ulti­mate­ly learned a great deal. Video essays like these have increas­ing­ly made it pos­si­ble for any­one, with­out going back to col­lege or even going in the first place, to do that kind of learn­ing — and, whether watch­ing Tarkovsky or Spiel­berg, to nev­er watch them inat­ten­tive­ly again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash!’

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Rarely Seen 1968 Film, Amblin’

Mar­tin Scors­ese Makes a List of 85 Films Every Aspir­ing Film­mak­er Needs to See

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Chaos Cin­e­ma: A Break­down of How 21st-Cen­tu­ry Action Films Became Inco­her­ent

Learn the Ele­ments of Cin­e­ma: Spielberg’s Long Takes, Scorsese’s Silence & Michael Bay’s Shots

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

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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In 1911, Thomas Edison Predicts What the World Will Look Like in 2011: Smart Phones, No Poverty, Libraries That Fit in One Book

in History, Magazines, Science | December 21st, 2015

Thomas_Edison_crop

The end of 2015 has been dom­i­nat­ed by crises. At times, amidst the dai­ly bar­rage of fear­ful spec­ta­cle, it can be dif­fi­cult to con­ceive of the years around the cor­ner in ways that don’t resem­ble the next crop of blow-em-up action movies, near­ly every one of which depicts some vari­a­tion on the seem­ing­ly inex­haustible theme of the end-of-the-world. There’s no doubt many of our cur­rent chal­lenges are unprece­dent­ed, but in the midst of anx­i­eties of all kinds it’s worth remem­ber­ing that—as Steven Pinker has thor­ough­ly demon­strat­ed—“vio­lence has declined by dra­mat­ic degrees all over the world.”

In oth­er words, as bad as things can seem, they were much worse for most of human his­to­ry. It’s a long view cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an Otto Friedrich took in a grim sur­vey called The End of the World: A His­to­ry. Writ­ten near the end of the Cold War, Friedrich’s book doc­u­ments some 2000 years of Euro­pean cat­a­stro­phe, dur­ing which one gen­er­a­tion after anoth­er gen­uine­ly believed the end was nigh. And yet, cer­tain far-see­ing indi­vid­u­als have always imag­ined a thriv­ing human future, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the pro­found­ly destruc­tive 20th cen­tu­ry.

In 1900, engi­neer John Elfreth Watkins made a sur­vey of the sci­en­tif­ic minds of his day. As we not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, some of those pre­dic­tions of the year 2000 seem pre­scient, some pre­pos­ter­ous; all bold­ly extrap­o­lat­ed con­tem­po­rary trends and fore­saw a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent human world. At the height of the Cold War in 1964, Isaac Asi­mov part­ly described our present in his 50 year fore­cast. In 1926, and again 1935, no less a vision­ary than Niko­la Tes­la looked into the 21st cen­tu­ry to envi­sion a world both like and unlike our own.

Sev­er­al years ear­li­er in 1911, Tesla’s rival Thomas Edi­son made his own set of futur­is­tic pre­dic­tions for 100 years hence in a Cos­mopoli­tan arti­cle. These were also sum­ma­rized in an arti­cle pub­lished that year by the Mia­mi Metrop­o­lis, which begins by laud­ing Edi­son as a “wiz­ard… who has wrest­ed so many secrets from jeal­ous Nature.” We’ve con­densed Edison’s pre­dic­tions in list form below. Com­pare these to Tesla’s visions for a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast of two dif­fer­ent, yet com­ple­men­tary future worlds.

1. Steam pow­er, already on the wane, will rapid­ly dis­ap­pear: “In the year 2011 such rail­way trains as sur­vive will be dri­ven at incred­i­ble speed by elec­tric­i­ty (which will also be the motive force of all the world’s machin­ery).”

2. “[T]he trav­el­er of the future… will fly through the air, swifter than any swal­low, at a speed of two hun­dred miles an hour, in colos­sal machines, which will enable him to break­fast in Lon­don, trans­act busi­ness in Paris and eat his lun­cheon in Cheap­side.”

3. “The house of the next cen­tu­ry will be fur­nished from base­ment to attic with steel… a steel so light that it will be as easy to move a side­board as it is today to lift a draw­ing room chair. The baby of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry will be rocked in a steel cra­dle; his father will sit in a steel chair at a steel din­ing table, and his mother’s boudoir will be sump­tu­ous­ly equipped with steel fur­nish­ings….”

4. Edi­son also pre­dict­ed that steel rein­forced con­crete would replace bricks: “A rein­forced con­crete build­ing will stand prac­ti­cal­ly for­ev­er.” By 1941, he told Cos­mopoli­tan, “all con­struc­tions will be of rein­forced con­crete, from the finest man­sions to the tallest sky­scrap­ers.”

5. Like many futur­ists of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, and some few today, Edi­son fore­saw a world where tech would erad­i­cate pover­ty: “Pover­ty was for a world that used only its hands,” he said; “Now that men have begun to use their brains, pover­ty is decreas­ing…. [T]here will be no pover­ty in the world a hun­dred years from now.”

6. Antic­i­pat­ing agribusi­ness, Edi­son pre­dict­ed, “the com­ing farmer will be a man on a seat beside a push-but­ton and some levers.” Farm­ing would expe­ri­ence a “great shake-up” as sci­ence, tech, and big busi­ness over­took its meth­ods.

7. “Books of the com­ing cen­tu­ry will all be print­ed leaves of nick­el, so light to hold that the read­er can enjoy a small library in a sin­gle vol­ume. A book two inch­es thick will con­tain forty thou­sand pages, the equiv­a­lent of a hun­dred vol­umes.”

8. Machines, Edi­son told Cos­mopoli­tan, “will make the parts of things and put them togeth­er, instead of mere­ly mak­ing the parts of things for human hands to put togeth­er. The day of the seam­stress, weari­ly run­ning her seam, is almost end­ed.”

9. Tele­phones, Edi­son con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ed, “will shout out prop­er names, or whis­per the quo­ta­tions from the drug mar­ket.”

10. Antic­i­pat­ing the log­ic of the Cold War arms race, though under­es­ti­mat­ing the mass destruc­tion to pre­cede it, Edi­son believed the “pil­ing up of arma­ments” would “bring uni­ver­sal rev­o­lu­tion or uni­ver­sal peace before there can be more than one great war.”

11. Edi­son “sounds the death knell of gold as a pre­cious met­al. ‘Gold,’ he says, ‘has even now but a few years to live. They day is near when bars of it will be as com­mon and as cheap as bars of iron or blocks of steel.’”

He then went on, aston­ish­ing­ly, to echo the pre-sci­en­tif­ic alchemists of sev­er­al hun­dred years ear­li­er: “’We are already on the verge of dis­cov­er­ing the secret of trans­mut­ing met­als, which are all sub­stan­tial­ly the same mat­ter, though com­bined in dif­fer­ent pro­por­tions.’”

Excit­ed by the future abun­dance of gold, the Mia­mi Metrop­o­lis piece on Edison’s pre­dic­tions breath­less­ly con­cludes, “In the mag­i­cal days to come there is no rea­son why our great lin­ers should not be of sol­id gold from stem to stern; why we should not ride in gold­en taxi­cabs, or sub­sti­tut­ed gold for steel in our draw­ing rooms.”

In read­ing over the pre­dic­tions from shrewd thinkers of the past, one is struck as much by what they got right as by what they got often ter­ri­bly wrong. (Matt Novak’s Pale­o­fu­ture, which brings us the Mia­mi Metrop­o­lis arti­cle, has chron­i­cled the check­ered, hit-and-miss his­to­ry of futur­ism for sev­er­al years now.)  Edison’s tone is more stri­dent than most of his peers, but his accu­ra­cy was about on par, fur­ther sug­gest­ing that nei­ther the most con­fi­dent of tech­no-futur­ists, nor the most bale­ful of doom­say­ers knows quite what the future holds: their clear­est fore­casts obscured by the bias­es, tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions, and philo­soph­i­cal cat­e­gories of their present.

via Pale­o­fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­la Tesla’s Pre­dic­tions for the 21st Cen­tu­ry: The Rise of Smart Phones & Wire­less, The Demise of Cof­fee, The Rule of Eugen­ics (1926/35)

In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net, 3D Print­ers and Trained Mon­key Ser­vants

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

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

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Art Exhibit on Bill Murray Opens in the UK

in Architecture, Art, Comedy, Film | December 21st, 2015


Some­body get us Bill Mur­ray stat!

The actor and sec­u­lar saint has no direct involve­ment with BILL MURRAY: A Sto­ry of Dis­tance, Size, and Sin­cer­i­ty at the BALTIC Cen­tre for Con­tem­po­rary Art but the inter­view with artist Bri­an Grif­fiths, above, sug­gests that he should.

The major­i­ty of cre­atives pig­gy­back­ing on Murray’s pop­u­lar­i­ty these days would seem to be entre­pre­neur­ial crafts­peo­ple, where­as Grif­fiths is a fine artist. Pre­vi­ous projects include a Romani wag­on com­prised of sec­ond­hand fur­ni­ture and a series of his­tor­i­cal­ly cos­tumed busts cast from actor Peter Lorre’s death mask.

BALTIC’s web­site pro­vides some con­text for the cur­rent instal­la­tion, a series of nine mod­el build­ings in var­i­ous archi­tec­tur­al styles, fes­tooned with Murray’s face and oth­er visu­al indi­ca­tors from his con­sid­er­able oeu­vre:

Bill Mur­ray is always authen­tic. He is con­sis­tent­ly ‘BILL MURRAY’. His sin­gu­lar­i­ty breaks into irre­ducible ambi­gu­i­ties and con­tra­dic­tions – Bill the glob­al super­star, the guy-next-door, anti-brand brand, irre­press­ible lothario, dig­ni­fied clown and droll philoso­pher. This exhi­bi­tion takes these and many oth­er char­ac­ter­is­tics as an approach, turn­ing them into a fan­ta­sy car­i­ca­ture and a poet­ic tableau of scaled down archi­tec­ture and col­lec­tions.

Per­haps Grif­fiths was hav­ing an off day when the cam­era crew showed up to inter­view him about BILL MURRAY: A Sto­ry of Dis­tance, Size, and Sin­cer­i­ty. A Cre­ative Art Prac­tice stu­dent who attend­ed his guest lec­ture at Sheffield Halam Uni­ver­si­ty ear­li­er this year found him to be an enter­tain­ing and sim­i­lar­ly unpre­ten­tious speak­er.

The five minute talk above had the oppo­site effect.

I’d like to pro­pose a reshoot, star­ring Bill Mur­ray. Imag­ine what his par­tic­u­lar com­ic genius could bring to the tran­script above?

Saint Bill has demon­strat­ed that he is will­ing to work below scale when he believes in a project. Per­haps he would accept an exhi­bi­tion t‑shirt in return for liven­ing up this limp artis­tic state­ment.

(Might be what the artist was angling for all along…)

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

An Ani­mat­ed Bill Mur­ray on the Advan­tages & Dis­ad­van­tages of Fame

Bill Mur­ray Sings the Poet­ry of Bob Dylan: Shel­ter From the Storm

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

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The Auteurs of Christmas: Christmas Morning as Seen Through the Eyes of Kubrick, Tarantino, Scorsese & More

in Film | December 21st, 2015

What­ev­er our set of beliefs, most of us soon­er or lat­er unite in the same cel­e­bra­to­ry pur­suit on Christ­mas Day: the watch­ing of movies. Going out to the the­ater to catch a hol­i­day-sea­son block­buster or two after you’ve opened your presents (or after oth­er peo­ple have fin­ished open­ing their presents) has become a kind of tra­di­tion in itself, and enough of a tra­di­tion to per­mit vari­a­tions. Maybe you’d rather use film to free your­self of the bur­dens of the Christ­mas sea­son, going instead to the art house and catch­ing the least com­mer­cial film pos­si­ble in this increas­ing­ly com­mer­cial time of the year.

But even if you stick with the auteurs, you can’t get away from Christ­mas entire­ly. A cou­ple Christ­mases ago, “The Auteurs of Christ­mas” shot a series of ver­sions of this most antic­i­pat­ed morn­ing in the style of direc­tors Steven Spiel­berg, Sergei Eisen­stein, Wes Ander­son, Woody Allen, Lars von Tri­er, Mar­tin Scors­ese, Michael Moore, Stan­ley Kubrick, Wern­er Her­zog, and Baz Luhrmann.

More recent­ly, the fol­low-up above expand­ed the project to envi­sion Christ­mas as envi­sioned by Char­lie Chap­lin, Quentin Taran­ti­no, Ter­rence Mal­ick, Christo­pher Nolan, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitch­cock, Mor­gan Spur­lock, David Lynch, M. Night Shya­malan, and Michael Bay.

But just as the con­clu­sion of one year’s Christ­mas can sim­ply get you look­ing for­ward to the next year’s, so these two super-homages make you think about the pos­si­ble auteurs for inclu­sion in a third: what would Yasu­jirō Ozu’s Christ­mas morn­ing look like, shot just a cou­ple feet off the tata­mi mat? Or Chan­tal Aker­man’s, which, for prop­er pac­ing, might require a whole video by itself? Or a Coen Broth­ers Christ­mas? Gas­par Noé’s? Tru­ly, this hol­i­day keeps on giv­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ter­ry Gilliam’s Ani­mat­ed Short, The Christ­mas Card (1968)

An Ani­mat­ed Christ­mas Fable by Mau­rice Sendak (1977)

William S. Bur­roughs Nar­rates a Clay­ma­tion of His Grim Hol­i­day Sto­ry “The Junky’s Christ­mas”

A Christ­mas Car­ol Pre­sent­ed in a Thomas Edi­son Film (1910)

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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Hunter S. Thompson Sets His Christmas Tree on Fire, Nearly Burns His House Down (1990)

in Literature, Random | December 18th, 2015

It was some­thing of a Christ­mas rit­u­al at Hunter S. Thomp­son’s Col­orado cab­in, Owl Farm. Every year, his sec­re­tary Deb­o­rah Fuller would take down the Christ­mas tree and leave it on the front porch rather than dis­pose of it entire­ly. That’s because Hunter, more often than not, want­ed to set it on fire. In 1990, Sam Allis, a writer for then for­mi­da­ble TIME mag­a­zine, vis­it­ed Thomp­son’s home and watched the fiery tra­di­tion unfold. He wrote:

I gave up on the inter­view and start­ed wor­ry­ing about my life when Hunter Thomp­son squirt­ed two cans of fire starter on the Christ­mas tree he was going to burn in his liv­ing-room fire­place, a few feet away from an unopened wood­en crate of 9‑mm bul­lets. That the tree was far too large to fit into the fire­place mat­tered not a whit to Hunter, who was sport­ing a dime-store wig at the time and resem­bled Tony Perkins in Psy­cho. Min­utes ear­li­er, he had smashed a Polaroid cam­era on the floor.

Hunter had decid­ed to video­tape the Christ­mas tree burn­ing, and we lat­er heard on the replay the ter­ri­fied voic­es of Deb­o­rah Fuller, his long­time sec­re­tary-baby sit­ter, and me off-cam­era plead­ing with him, “NO, HUNTER, NO! PLEASE, HUNTER, DON’T DO IT!” The orig­i­nal man­u­script of Hell’s Angels was on the table, and there were the bul­lets. Noth­ing doing. Thomp­son was a man pos­sessed by now, full of the Chivas Regal he had been slurp­ing straight from the bot­tle and the gin he had been mix­ing with pink lemon­ade for hours.

The wood­en man­tle above the fire­place appar­ent­ly still has burn marks on it today. It’s one of the many things you can check out when Owl Creek starts run­ning muse­um tours in the near future.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Gothamist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Hunter S. Thomp­son, Exis­ten­tial­ist Life Coach, Gives Tips for Find­ing Mean­ing in Life

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

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Watch 34 of Quentin Tarantino’s Visual References to Citizen Kane, Blade Runner, 8 1/2 & Other Great Films

in Film | December 18th, 2015

Some­times when I enjoy a movie less than I thought I would, I find that my dis­sat­is­fac­tion stems from the feel­ing of hav­ing watched a movie made out of oth­er movies, a Franken­stein­ian cre­ation assem­bled from the dead bits and pieces that worked well when attached to their orig­i­nal bod­ies, alive long ago, but, when re-used, don’t come to life at all. When avid cinephile turned avid cinephile and direc­tor Quentin Taran­ti­no plays the role of a cin­e­mat­ic Dr. Franken­stein, how­ev­er, he turns the volt­age much high­er up, ele­vat­ing the prac­tice to an auteur’s art.

When Taran­ti­no’s films ref­er­ence his favorite films — be they clas­sics of the canon, tried-and-true west­erns, kung-fu obscu­ri­ties, pieces of Euro­pean new-wave, or grind-house exploita­tion flicks — they often tran­scend their sources. Jacob Swin­ney, whose super­cuts of Taran­ti­no’s use of sound, close-ups, and cars we fea­tured back in April, has cut togeth­er 34 par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive visu­al ref­er­ences of the thou­sands found in the direc­tor’s fil­mog­ra­phy and placed them along­side the works quot­ed.

The video cov­ers, in three min­utes, visu­al ref­er­ences from the “Mex­i­can stand­off” from City of Fire in Reser­voir Dogs to the dances from Band of Out­siders and 8 1/2 in Pulp Fic­tion to Super­chick and The Grad­u­ate’s open­ing titles in Jack­ie Brown to Bruce Lee’s track­suit in Game of Death on Uma Thur­man in Kill Bill Vol­ume One to Daryl Han­nah’s writhing from Blade Run­ner in Kill Bill Vol­ume Two to fram­ing from The Searchers in Inglo­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds.

It stops short of The Hate­ful Eight, Taran­ti­no’s lat­est, leav­ing it as an exer­cise for the view­er to tab­u­late just how wide a swatch of cin­e­ma the man has repur­posed this time. He’s gone on record as say­ing he’ll only make two more fea­ture films, but don’t wor­ry, cinephiles: they’ll more than like­ly con­tain enough ref­er­ences to oth­er movies, visu­al and oth­er­wise, to keep you in view­ing mate­r­i­al for the next twen­ty years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Taran­ti­no Tells You About The Actors & Direc­tors Who Pro­vid­ed the Inspi­ra­tion for “Reser­voir Dogs”

Watch Free Online My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

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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Muhammad Ali Sings in Broadway’s First Black Power Musical (1970)

in History, Politics, Sports, Television, Theatre | December 18th, 2015

The Great White Way is lit­tered with flops.

Crit­ic Frank Rich evis­cer­at­ed a 1988 musi­cal based on Stephen King’s Car­rie, lament­ing that a poten­tial camp mas­ter­piece wound up as “a typ­i­cal musi­cal-the­ater botch.”

Pro­duc­er David Mer­rick pulled the plug on a 1966 musi­cal adap­ta­tion of Break­fast at Tiffany’s star­ring Mary Tyler Moore long before its offi­cial open­ing night, thus spar­ing the dra­ma crit­ics and the pub­lic “an excru­ci­at­ing­ly bor­ing evening.”

And then there is 1970’s Big Time Buck White, activist Oscar Brown, Jr.’s adap­ta­tion of Joseph Dolan Tuotti’s play. It fea­tured Muham­mad Ali—tem­porar­i­ly benched from box­ing for draft evasion—in the tit­u­lar role of a mil­i­tant lec­tur­er, deliv­er­ing a Black Pow­er mes­sage to a char­ac­ter named Whitey.

The pri­mar­i­ly white Broad­way-going audi­ence that embraced the coun­ter­cul­tur­al “Trib­al Love-Rock Musi­cal” Hair two years ear­li­er with­held its love. In a col­or­blind world, we might be able to chalk that up to the champ’s sub-par singing chops or some clunky lyrics, but it would be a mis­take to turn a blind eye to the polit­i­cal cli­mate.

(Eight years lat­er, Ain’t Mis­be­havin’, a trib­ute to Fats Waller and the Harlem Renais­sance was a bonafide hit.)

Big Time Buck White ran for just sev­en per­for­mances, post­ing its clos­ing notice well in advance of its Jan­u­ary 18th appear­ance on the Ed Sul­li­van Show, above.

These days, the pro­duc­ers would prob­a­bly scram­ble to find a replace­ment, but Sul­li­van, a staunch sup­port­er of Civ­il Rights, hon­ored the book­ing, com­mand­ing his stu­dio audi­ence to give the cos­tumed play­ers “a fine recep­tion.”

After­ward, the champ thanked Sul­li­van for invit­ing him and “the group” so that view­ers who didn’t get a chance to could see “what type of play i was par­tic­i­pat­ing in.”

A bit of triv­ia. Play­bill cred­its actor Don­ald Suther­land, in the role of Black Man. He may be a movie star, but he’s some­thing of a Broad­way flop him­self, his only oth­er cred­it that of Hum­bert Hum­bert in 1980’s Loli­ta, Peo­ple Magazine’s Bomb of the Year.

Above is anoth­er scene from the musi­cal, shared by Ali’s admir­er, Mike Tyson.

via Messy N Chic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of The Black Pan­thers: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Artist Emory Dou­glas

Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lyn­de & the Orig­i­nal Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sul­li­van Show (1961)

Leonard Cohen’s 1983 Musi­cal for Cana­di­an Tele­vi­sion: I Am a Hotel

Watch Stephen Sond­heim Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

David Byrne Dis­cuss­es Here Lies Love, His Dis­co Musi­cal with Fat­boy Slim on the Life of Imel­da Mar­cos

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

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