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Thursday, August 3rd, 2017
| Time | Event |
| 6:19a | Siri Can Sing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”
It's true. And you can try it yourself, at home. Just sing "I see a little silhouetto of a man." Then let Siri do the rest. Have fun! Related Content: 1910 Fairground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and It Works Like a Charm Bohemian Gravity: String Theory Explored With an A Cappella Version of Bohemian Rhapsody Siri Can Sing Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” 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 | 89 Essential Songs from The Summer of Love: A 50th Anniversary Playlist
Image by Bryan Costales, via Wikimedia Commons The Summer of Love was not just a season of great music and the zenith of the flower child, but the culmination of a movement that started back on a chillier Bay Area day, on January 14, 1967. That was the month of the Human Be-In, and what must have looked like a full on invasion of the counterculture into Golden Gate Park. The backdrop of this outpouring of good vibrations was anything but loving: Vietnam, inner city riots, Civil Rights, and a huge generation gap. The crowd size was estimated at 100,000, and everybody there suddenly realized they weren’t alone. They were a force. Joel Selvin, interviewed by Michael Krasny for this KQED segment on the Summer of Love (listen here), says that the real Summer of Love for San Franciscans at least, happened in 1966, when it was a local secret. One year later, the hippie movement had become mainstream. And that's when every band on both sides of the Atlantic had turned on to the zeitgeist, and the gates of psychedelic music opened up. Today, we have a playlist of 89 songs to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that historic summer. (Download Spotify's free software here, if you need it.) If you are coming to this as a music fan, but not somebody who lived through that era, you might think you know all the songs from that period, having had them hammered into your brain over the years from the ubiquitous hits of classic rock radio, and nostalgic movies. [Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<div [...] http://cdn8.openculture.com/>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] <p><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1040289" src="http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/02223657/KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner.png" alt="" srcset="http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/02223657/KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner.png 1280w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/02223657/KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner-150x100.png 150w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/02223657/KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner-300x200.png 300w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/02223657/KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner-768x512.png 768w, http://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/08/02223657/KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner-1024x683.png 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px" width="320"/></p>
<p align="right"><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KFRC_Fantasy_Fair_Dryden_Balin_Kantner.png"><small><em>Image by Bryan Costales, via Wikimedia Commons</em></small></a></p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Love">The Summer of Love</a> was not just a season of great music and the zenith of the flower child, but the culmination of a movement that started back on a chillier Bay Area day, on January 14, 1967. That was the month of the <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2014/09/rare-footage-of-human-be-in.html">Human Be-In</a>, and what must have looked like a full on invasion of the counterculture into Golden Gate Park. The backdrop of this outpouring of good vibrations was anything but loving: Vietnam, inner city riots, Civil Rights, and a huge generation gap. The crowd size was estimated at 100,000, and everybody there suddenly realized they weren’t alone. They were a force.</p>
<p>Joel Selvin, interviewed by Michael Krasny for this <a href="https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/07/19/the-soundtrack-of-the-summer-of-love/">KQED segment on the Summer of Love</a> (<a href="https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/07/19/the-soundtrack-of-the-summer-of-love/">listen here</a>), says that the real Summer of Love for San Franciscans at least, happened in 1966, when it was a local secret. One year later, the hippie movement had become mainstream. And that's when every band on both sides of the Atlantic had turned on to the zeitgeist, and the gates of psychedelic music opened up.</p>
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<p>Today, we have a <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/1233852097/playlist/5yJEzNXdGuXOW3jONvfA8V">playlist of 89 songs</a> to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that historic summer. (Download <a href="https://www.spotify.com/download/">Spotify's free software</a><a href="https://www.spotify.com/download/"> here</a>, if you need it.) If you are coming to this as a music fan, but not somebody who lived through that era, you <em>might</em> think you know all the songs from that period, having had them hammered into your brain over the years from the ubiquitous hits of classic rock radio, and nostalgic movies.</p>
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<p>There are of course the stone cold classics from 1967, with not one but two Beatles releases, including the iconic Sgt. Pepper album; the best two songs from Jefferson Airplane; Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”; the Who’s best psychedelic song “I Can See for Miles”; Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?” and “Hey Joe”; the Rolling Stones' move into chamber pop with “Ruby Tuesday” and their own trippy “She’s a Rainbow” and “We Love You”—the last time they ever felt lovey dovey about anything; and the first releases by the Doors.</p>
<p>Soul and R’n’B was also at the height of its mid-60s power, with Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, and Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man” infecting the charts.</p>
<p>“We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave,” is how Hunter S. Thompson famously put it in <a href="http://amzn.to/2fa9Wsc"><em>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</em></a>, and this playlist might just convince you of that considering how music seemed to fracture so soon after—even the Beatles would be delivering that strange and sometimes frightening trip of a <em>White Album</em> a year later. Vietnam would continue to drag on, and the decade’s metaphorical end at Altamont was looming on the horizon, not that many could see it. (By the way, Joel Selvin<a href="http://amzn.to/2fb7SzY"> just wrote a very good book</a> on that dark, decade-ending concert.)</p>
<p>Enjoy the playlist and argue over what’s missing in the comments. (No “Waterloo Sunset”? “I Second That Emotion”? “Gloria”? Hmmph!)</p>
<p><strong>Related Content:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2014/09/rare-footage-of-human-be-in.html">Rare Footage of the “Human Be-In,” the Landmark Counter-Culture Event Held in Golden Gate Park, 1967</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2016/01/jimi-hendrix-opens-for-the-monkees-on-a-1967-tour.html">Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.openculture.com/2017/06/paul-mccartney-admits-to-dropping-acid-in-a-scrappy-interview-with-a-prying-reporter-june-1967.html">Paul McCartney Admits to Dropping Acid in a Scrappy Interview with a Prying Reporter (June, 1967)</a></p>
<p><em> Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the <a href="http://www.funkzonepodcast.com/">FunkZone Podcast</a>. You can also follow him on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/tedmills">@tedmills</a>, read his other arts writing at <a href="http://www.tedmills.com">tedmills.com</a> and/or watch his films <a href="https://vimeo.com/user749601">here</a>.</em></p>
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| 5:08p | Watch “The Woodswimmer,” a Stop Motion Film Made Entirely with Wood, and “Brutally Tedious” Techniques
Above you can watch "The Woodswimmer," a new stop-motion music video shot by Brett Foxwell. As Foxwell describes it, the film was shot with "a straightforward technique but one which is brutally tedious to complete." Elaborating, he told the website This is Colossal, "Fascinated with the shapes and textures found in both newly-cut and long-dead pieces of wood, I envisioned a world composed entirely of these forms.” “As I began to engage with the material, I conceived a method using a milling machine and an animation camera setup to scan through a wood sample photographically and capture its entire structure. Although a difficult and tedious technique to refine, it yielded gorgeous imagery at once abstract and very real. Between the twisting growth rings, swirling rays, knot holes, termites and rot, I found there is a lot going on inside of wood." Finally, Foxwell notes on his personal website: "As a short film began to build from [the filmed sequences], I collaborated with bedtimes, an animator and musician of special talents to write a song and help edit a tight visual and sonic journey through this wondrous and fascinating material. WoodSwimmer is the result." Watch it, in all of its glory, above. via This is Colossal 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 History of Stop-Motion Films: 39 Films, Spanning 116 Years, Revisited in a 3-Minute Video Watch The Amazing 1912 Animation of Stop-Motion Pioneer Ladislas Starevich, Starring Dead Bugs Watch Japanese Woodworking Masters Create Elegant & Elaborate Geometric Patterns with Wood Watch “The Woodswimmer,” a Stop Motion Film Made Entirely with Wood, and “Brutally Tedious” Techniques 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. |
| 5:29p | How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums
When Leonard Cohen released You Want it Darker in late 2016, some suspected that it would be his last album. When the 82-year-old singer-songwriter died nineteen days later, it felt like a reprise of David Bowie's passage from this mortal coil at the beginning of that year in which we lost so many important musicians: just two days after the release of his album Blackstar, Bowie shocked the world by dying of an illness he'd chosen not to make public. Both Cohen and Bowie's fans immediately doubled down their scrutiny of what turned out to be their final works, finding in both of them artistic interpretations of the confrontation with death. The title track of You Want It Darker, says the narrator of the Polyphonic video essay above, "is not just any song, but the culmination of many meditations on Cohen's own mortality. The result is a hauntingly accusatory song towards his own god." This analysis focuses on lines, delivered by Cohen's gravelier-than-ever singing voice, like "If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game / If you are the healer, that means I'm broken and lame" and "If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame / You want it darker, we kill the flame." Cohen also uses phrases taken from a Jewish mourner's prayer as a way of "facing up to his god and submitting."
The non-religious Bowie took a different tack. "Just take a look at Bowie's costume," says the essay's narrator. "He's bandaged, frail, and maniacal in the 'Blackstar' video. While the bandage serves to represent wounds, it can also be taken as a blindfold," historically "worn by those condemned to execution." Using Christian imagery, Bowie frames his song "in the post-paradise world of mortal life," in a sense referencing what Cohen once described as "our blood myth," the crucifixion. And so Bowie's song "is using our cultural vocabulary to explore our relationship with death." And yet, "in the midst of this dark song, Bowie offers optimism" in the form of the titular Blackstar, a "newly inspired being" that emerges from death. "While mankind can't cheat death, we can still find immortality in the way people remember us, the legacy that they carry on." And despite recognizing their basic humanity, many of us carriers of the legacy still struggle to process the deaths of high-profile, sui generis performing artists. Maybe it has to do with their status as icons, and icons, strictly speaking, can't die — but nor can they live. Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, the men, may have finished their days, and what days they were, but Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, the cultural phenomena, will surely outlast us all. You can listen to Cohen and Bowie's final albums above. If you need Spotify's free software, get it here. Related Content: Leonard Cohen Has Passed at Age 82: His New and Now Final Album Is Streaming Free Online Hear Leonard Cohen’s Final Interview: Recorded by David Remnick of The New Yorker David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Performance, 2006 Dave: The Best Tribute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See Death: A Free Philosophy Course from Yale 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. How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums 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. |
| 5:30p | DC’s Legendary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Catalog Free to Stream Online
Image of Fugazi by Brad Sigal, via Flickr Commons Apart from whatever political nightmare du jour we’re living in, it can be easy to dislike Washington, DC. I say this as someone who grew up outside the city, called it home for many years, and generally found its public face of monuments, tourists, politicos, and waves of lobbyists and bureaucrats pretty alienating. The “real” DC was elsewhere, in the city’s historic Black neighborhoods, many now heavily gentrified, which hosted legendary jazz clubs and gave birth to the genius of go-go. And even in the privileged, middle class neighborhoods and DMV suburbs. Among the skate punks and disaffected military brats who created the DC punk scene, a seething, furiously productive punk economy centered around Dischord Records. The small label has been as hugely influential in the past few decades as Seattle's Sub Pop or Long Beach's SST.
Formed in 1980 by Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye and his bandmate Jeff Nelson, Dischord is 6 years older than Sub Pop and in several ways it inspired a template for the West Coast. Dave Grohl came from the DC Punk scene, as did Black Flag’s Henry Rollins. Rollins and MacKaye were childhood friends and DC natives, and MacKaye went on to form Fugazi, virtually a DC institution for well over a decade. MacKaye’s brother Alec was a member of Dischord band Faith—one of Kurt Cobain’s admitted influences—and of Ignition with Gray Matter’s Dante Ferrando, who went on, with investments from Dave Grohl, to found the club Black Cat, a central hub of punk and indie rock in DC for 27 years. The more you dig into the musical families of Dischord, the more you see how embedded they are not only in their home city, but in the weft of modern American rock.
Dischord has been celebrated in gallery exhibitions, the hip documentary Salad Days, and the short An Impression: Dischord Records (watch here). Now they’ve released their catalog to stream for free at Bandcamp. The slew of bands featured offers a gallery of nostalgia for a certain brand and vintage of DC native. And it offers a pristine opportunity to get caught up if you don’t know Dischord bands.
Image of Hoover by Dischord Records, via Wikimedia Commons The common features of its lineup—political urgency, earnestness, melodic experimentation, unpretentiousness—stand out. Dischord bands could be math-y and technical, straight edge, vegan, Buddhist, Hare Krishna, fiercely feminist, anti-capitalist, and anti-war.... These may not sound like the makings of a great party scene, but they made for a committed cadre of hard working musicians and a wide circle of dedicated fans around the country who have kept the label thriving in its way.
What distinguishes Dischord from its more famous peers is the fact that it only releases bands from the DC area. Why? “Because this is the city where we live, work, and have the most understanding,” they write on their site. Still, given the label’s heightened profile in recent years, it’s surprising that so much of its music remains unknown outside of a specific audience. Fugazi is the best-known band on the roster, and for all their major critical importance, they have kept a fairly low profile. But this is the spirit of the label, whose founders wanted to make music, not make stars. Bands like Shudder to Think and Jawbox may have eventually moved to bigger labels, but they did their best work with Dischord.
Dag Nasty, Embrace, Government Issue, Make-Up, Q and Not U, Rites of Spring, Soulside, Void, Untouchables, Slant 6, the Nation of Ulysses.... these are bands, if you don’t know them, you should hear, and already have, in some way, through their enormous influence on so many others: not only Nirvana, but also a contingent of derivative emo bands some of us might prefer to forget. Still the label's history should not be taken as the gospel canon of DC punk. One of the most influential of DC punk bands, Bad Brains, came out of the jazz scene, invented a blistering mashup of punk and reggae, and get credit for creating hardcore and inspiring Rollins, MacKaye, and their friends. But Bad Brains was “Banned in DC” in 1979, shut out of the clubs. They moved to New York and eventually signed with SST.
Other parts of the scene scorned the clean-living moralism of Dischord, and the label’s sober founders later found themselves “alienated by the violent, suburban, teenage machismo they now saw at their shows,” writes Jillian Mapes at Flavorwire. Dischord became known for championing causes on the left, a legacy that is inseparable from its legend. Not everyone loved their politics, as you might imagine in a city with as many conservative activists and political aspirants as DC. “Great political punk bands—like Priests—still exist in DC,” writes Mapes—and Dischord continues to release great records—“but the ‘80s scene retains its place in history as the pinnacle of political American hardcore music.” And Dischord remains a sometimes unacknowledged legislator of American punk rock in the ‘80s and '90s. Stream their whole catalog at Bandcamp. You can also download tracks for a fee. Related Content: 33 Songs That Document the History of Feminist Punk (1975-2015): A Playlist Curated by Pitchfork The History of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016 Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness DC’s Legendary Punk Label Dischord Records Makes Its Entire Music Catalog Free to Stream Online 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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