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Monday, July 3rd, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 11:00a | 209 Beatles Songs in 209 Days: Memphis Musician Covers The Beatles’ Songbook (After Getting a Special Job Offer from Steve Jobs)
There’s a danger for musicians in covering well-known songs from famous artists. The obvious problem: one can fail to meet the challenge and deliver a substandard performance of a beloved classic, almost a criminal act in the estimation of die-hard fans. But it’s too tempting not to try. Musicians, like writers and other artists, learn best by mimicking the greats, then take what they’ve learned and develop their own style. Some of the best covers of popular songs are those that transpose them into a different key, style, tempo, or another genre entirely. “Make it your own!” as they say. Still a risky move... especially when it comes to the Beatles.
There are indeed many phenomenal Beatles covers—such as Bad Brains’ live take on “Day Tripper” (for me anyway)—that rival the originals. Some others... not so much. But when a Beatles cover is really good, and I mean really, really good... it’s usually a pro who pulls it off. So hats off to David Brookings, an able non-famous musician and Beatles superfan who set himself the gargantuan task of covering 209 Beatles songs in 209 days. Are all his cover versions gems? No, but the bar is set so high that it’s an impossible expectation, especially given the constraints. Brookings isn’t re-inventing the pop genius wheel. He’s having fun with Beatles’ songs, accompanied by an acoustic guitar, a keyboard, a friend—singing Yoko’s parts in the silly “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill,” above—or his wife Shelby, as in “Please Please Me,” below....
With their home video production values, Brookings’ covers don’t rise far above the wealth of other such efforts that flood YouTube, many of which are highly admirable in their own way. But what sets his project apart—beyond its ambitious scope—is his occasionally trenchant commentary and an interesting personal backstory. Brookings undertook his Beatles covers project in 2010 as a tribute not only to the Beatles, but also, perhaps, to Steve Jobs, founder of that company named after the band’s own label (and likely tax shelter). Brookings says the whole thing may have been just a stunt just to show that “some idiot recorded all 209 songs in 209 days.” But it’s surely more than a coincidence that the year earlier, while working as a tour guide at Memphis’ legendary Sun Studios, he made such an impression on Jobs that the Apple founder invited him to Cupertino to help build Apple’s iTunes library of blues and early rock and roll.
A dream gig for any musician and student of musical history, and enough of an inspiration to take on the entire catalog of the most famous band in the world. What's more, Brookings happened to be recovering from liver-transplant surgery when he met Jobs at Sun and scored the job. See Brookings and his adorable daughter McKinley sing “Norwegian Wood,” above and "She Said She Said" below, and check out all of his covers, as well as original songs and performances with his band, on his YouTube channel. Find Beatles covers 1-110 here. And songs 111-209 here.
h/t Mark at PartiallyExaminedLife Related Content: Hear 100 Amazing Cover Versions of Beatles Songs Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness 209 Beatles Songs in 209 Days: Memphis Musician Covers The Beatles’ Songbook (After Getting a Special Job Offer from Steve Jobs) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.  |
| 2:00p | An Animated Introduction to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Laureate
Looking for an introduction or reintroduction to the life and work of scientist Marie Curie? You could have a peek at her original manuscripts, after first signing a waiver and garbing yourself in protective gear, so as to avoid the radioactivity permeating her possessions... Or you could turn to song. Army of Lovers, the Crypts!, and the Deedle Deedle Dees have all written songs in celebration of this brilliant woman, the first female Nobel Laureate and only person in history to have been awarded Nobel prizes in two different sciences. (Her lead-lined coffin, forbidden studies, and romance with fellow physicist and husband Pierre are the stuff from which golden lyrics are spun…) Or you could watch the TED-Ed animation above, written and narrated by Dr. Shohini Ghose, Physics Professor and Director of Wilfrid Laurier University’s Centre for Women in Science. Ghose counterbalances the tantalizing biographical tidbits of the world’s most famous female scientist with her actual contributions to the fields of oncology, technology, medicine, and nuclear physics. Ghose’s full TED-Ed lesson includes a review quiz and further resources. To get an even more in-depth introduction to the Curies, listen to the episode of In Our Time, below. And do remember to put down the sparklers and potato salad for a moment in silent recognition that this July 4th marks the 83rd anniversary of Mme. Curie’s death from aplastic anemia, the result of prolonged exposure to radiation. Related Content: Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioactive 100+ Years Later Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Science The Contributions of Women Philosophers Recovered by the New Project Vox Website Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday. An Animated Introduction to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Laureate is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 7:00p | The Music from Jack Kerouac’s Classic Beat Novel On the Road: Stream Tracks by Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon & Other Jazz Legends When readers talk about the "music" of On the Road, they usually mean the distinctive qualities of its prose, all typed out by Jack Kerouac, so literary legend has it, on a three-week writing bender in April of 1951. "Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of image," he wrote, spontaneously, in his "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose." He also insisted on "no periods separating sentence-structures already arbitrarily riddled by false colons and timid usually needless commas-but the vigorous space dash separating rhetorical breathing (as jazz musician drawing breath between outblown phrases)." But actual music, and especially jazz music, also forms an integral part of the background — or rather, an integral part of the ever-shifting backgrounds — of the story of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty's automotive criscrossing of America. "Kerouac often made it clear that the sound of jazz in the 1940s had a lot to do with the kind of tone, intensity and unpremeditated drive he was trying to capture in the rhythms of his book," writes the Guardian's John Fordham. "In Los Angeles, Kerouac describes 'the wild humming night of Central Avenue - the night of Hamp's (that's swing-band leader Lionel Hampton's) 'Central Avenue Breakdown' - howled and boomed ... they were singing in the halls, singing from their windows, just hell and be damned and look out.'" An evocative passage, to be sure, and one drawn from just one of many jazz-infused sections of the novel. After enough of them, though, readers will want to hear some of this music, with its power to bring the cops "swarming from the nearest precinct," for themselves. The 25-track Youtube playlist at the top of the post comes packed with selections drawn straight from the text, such as Miles Davis and the Charlie Parker Septet's "Ornithology," which Kerouac uses to establish the period of bop in which the novel opens, and Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray's The Hunt, so invigorating a live recording that Neal and Sal put it on the turntable in two separate chapters. The playlist even includes Red Norvo's Congo Blues, the record that a girl at one point breaks over Dean's head — and at Sal's suggestion, no less — a memorable moment that shows that, however much Kerouac loved and drew inspiration from jazz, he certainly didn't feel the need to keep reverent about it. Related Content: Jack Kerouac Reads from On the Road (1959) Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Map of the Hitchhiking Trip Narrated in On the Road Jack Kerouac Lists 9 Essentials for Writing Spontaneous Prose Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He’s at work on the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles, 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. The Music from Jack Kerouac’s Classic Beat Novel On the Road: Stream Tracks by Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon & Other Jazz Legends is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
| 8:54p | Dog Crashes a Performance of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, in the Ancient City of Ephesus: The “Cutest Moment in Classical Music”
A quick one for all dog lovers out there. Last week, while performing Mendelssohn’s 'Italian' Symphony No.4 in the ancient city of Ephesus, members of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra noticed something strange out of the corner of their eyes: a dog wandering on stage, mid performance, and taking a seat, right at the feet of the first violinist. The short clip above comes from Turkish pianist Fazil Say, who called it the "Cutest moment in classical music." Hard not to agree. 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. If you'd like to support Open Culture and our mission, please consider making a donation to our site. It's hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us provide the best free cultural and educational materials. Related Content: The Bohr-Einstein Debates, Reenacted With Dog Puppets Kurt Vonnegut Reveals “Why My Dog Is Not a Humanist” in His Humanist of the Year Award Speech (1992) Dog Crashes a Performance of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, in the Ancient City of Ephesus: The “Cutest Moment in Classical Music” is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs. |
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