~openculture | Bookmarks (27)

For some time now it has been fashionable to diagnose dead famous people with mental illnesses we never knew they had when they were alive. These postmortem clinical interventions can seem accurate or far-fetched, and mostly harmless—unless we let them color our appreciation of an artist’s work, or negatively influence the way we treat eccentric living personalities. Overall, […]

In 2006, Sting released an album called Songs from the Labyrinth, a collaboration with Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov consisting mostly of compositions by Renaissance composer John Dowland. This was regarded by some as rather eccentric, but to listeners familiar with the early music revival that had already been going on for a few decades, it […]

More than a quarter of a millennium after he composed his first pieces of music, different listeners will evaluate differently the specific nature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s genius. But one can hardly fail to be impressed by the fact that he wrote those works when he was five years old (or, as some scholars have […]

Everybody can sing. Maybe not well. But why should that stop you? That’s the basic philosophy of Pub  Choir, an organization based in Brisbane, Australia. At each Pub Choir event, a conductor “arranges a popular song and teaches it to the audience in three-part harmony.” Then, the evening culminates with a performance that gets filmed […]

By the early nineteen-nineties, at least in the United States, Latin instruction in schools wasn’t what it had once been. Students everywhere had long been showing impatience and irreverence about their having to study that “dead language,” of course. But surely it had never felt quite so irrelevant as it did in a world of […]

“To me, Lou stood out. The real deal! Something important to American music and to ALL MUSIC! I miss him and his dog.” — Keith Richards On what would have been Lou Reed’s 82nd birthday (March 2), Keith Richards released a cover of “I’m Waiting for the Man,” a track originally written by Reed in […]

In late October 2020, amidst another surge of the COVID-19 virus, the German government asked the Berlin Philharmonic to close down for a month. On the eve of their closure, the Philharmonic performed John Cage’s modernist composition, 4′33″, which asks performers not to play their instruments throughout the entire duration of the piece, allowing the […]

“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small…” Sometime in the summer of 2016, this isolated track of Grace Slick’s vocals for “White Rabbit”–probably the most famous Jefferson Airplane song and definitely one of the top ten psychedelic songs of the late ‘60s–popped up YouTube. As these things go, nobody took credit, […]

Above we have George Sakellariou performing Paul Desmond’s jazz classic, “Take Five,” on a vintage 1959 Viuda y Sobrinos de Domingo Esteso (Conde Hermanos) classical guitar. First recorded in 1959 by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, the track eventually became the best-selling jazz song of all time. It’s also a song frequently covered by other talented musicians. […]

We just had the chance to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers kick off a new tour, and so had to bring you this–Luna Lee performing RHCP’s “Californication” on the Gayageum, a traditional Korean stringed instrument dating back to the 6th century. Over the years, we’ve shown you her adaptations of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile;’ […]

When we think of Brian Eno’s work, we first think of his records. These include not just his own classics of “ambient music” — a term he popularized — like Discreet Music and Music for Airports, but also the albums he’s produced: Devo’s Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, Talking Heads’ Remain […]

Sam Edelston can rock the duclimer. On his YouTube channel, he writes: “Dulcimers are natural rock instruments. In fact, I even say that dulcimers are among the world’s coolest musical instruments, and they deserve to be known by the general public — the way that everybody knows guitars and ukuleles. Though usually associated with old […]

And the award for the first Black songwriter to win Song of the Year at the Country Music Awards goes to Tracy Chapman …for a tune that transfixed millions of rowdy concertgoers when she sang it at Wembley Stadium 35 years earlier (see above.) At the time of that performance, Chapman was just 24, nearly […]

Stephen Malinowski is a self-described “Music Animation Machine,” with a penchant for creating animated graphical scores. Above, he does his thing with the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony 5. How does he make this magic? Malinowski writes: “There were a lot of steps; here’s a short summary. I found a recording I could license and […]

It’s difficult to imagine Iman and David Bowie inviting Vogue readers to join them on the above virtual tour of their mountaintop home near Woodstock, New York when the rock legend was alive. Granted, shortly after their 1992 wedding, he gave Architectural Digest a peek at their ultra-luxurious, Indonesian-style holiday digs on the Caribbean island […]

Jazz pianist and composer Charles Cornell is not alone in his contempt for the sort of dumbed down musical fare typical of children’s programming. The late Johnny Costa, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’s long-time musical director and a self-described “real jazzer,” was of like mind: Children have ears, and they’re people, and they can hear good music […]

One needn’t think too hard to come up with a list of celebrated children who seem somehow less exceptional when their baby fat comes off and their permanent teeth come in. We’ll eat Werner Herzog’s shoe if Alma Deutscher’s name is on it. When she was 11, conductor Johannes Wildner told the New York Times […]

Bruce Hornsby is best known for his first album The Way It Is (1986), but has come light years since then through 18+ albums, experimenting with different styles, playing over 100 shows with the Grateful Dead, and scoring numerous projects for Spike Lee. He’s won three Grammys and recorded with music royalty including Elton John, Ornette […]

Everybody who’s been to a Tom Waits concert has stories to tell about it — no few of them heard straight from the mouth of Waits himself. The official live album for his 2008 Glitter and Doom tour actually devotes its entire second disc to “a selection of the comic bromides, strange musings, and unusual […]

Image via Wikimedia Commons A quick heads up: On Monday, Stanford Continuing Studies will kick off an online course called Psychedelia and Groove: The Music and Culture of the Grateful Dead. Taught by David Gans (author of Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead), the course got a nice […]

From the time that a nameless genius in either Ethiopia or Yemen decided to dry, crush and strain water through a berry known for making goats nervous and jumpy, coffee has been loved and worshiped like few other beverages. Early Arab doctors proclaimed the stuff to be a miracle drug. Thoroughly caffeinated thinkers from Voltaire […]

In 2018, the Pixies performed live for BBC Radio 6 Music, playing some new songs (“In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain”) and old classics (“Here Comes Your Man”). In that latter category, you’ll find a recording of “Gouge Away,” which I keep coming back to again, and yet again. About the video, one […]

This dance is serious. This dance is necessary. Do you feel that change? — David Byrne Everyone can dance, though some of us need a push from an enthusiastic, encouraging instructor…like singer-songwriter David Byrne. Movement has long been a hallmark of the former Talking Heads frontman’s performances, when he was a palpably nervous 23-year-old soldiering […]

More than thirty years after it was first privately published in 1928, Lady Chatterley’s Lover became the subject of the most famous obscenity trial in English history. Though the ultimate decision of R v Penguin Books Ltd in favor of the publisher opened a cultural floodgate in that country, the novel was also subject to […]