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in Music | May 29th, 2019

Wayne’s Worldkind of ruined “Stair­way to Heav­en” for me. Yes, it’s been 27 years, but I still can’t help but think of Wayne turn­ing to the cam­era with his ston­er grin, say­ing “Denied!” when the gui­tar store clerk points out a “No Stair­way to Heav­en” sign. It was not a song I took par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous­ly, but I respect­ed the fact that it took itself so seri­ous­ly… and thread­ed my way out of the room if some­one picked up a gui­tar, earnest­ly co*cked an ear, and played those gen­tle open­ing notes.

Now I gig­gle even when I hear the mag­is­te­r­i­al orig­i­nal intro. This is not the fault of Zep­pelin but of the many who approach the Zep­pelin tem­ple of rock grandios­i­ty unpre­pared, attempt­ing riffs that only Jim­my Page could pull off with author­i­ty. At least the joke gave us a way to talk about the phe­nom­e­non: in less­er hands than Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way” can sound… well, a bit ridicu­lous (with apolo­gies to Dol­ly Par­ton.)Although accused (and acquit­ted) of rip­ping off the open­ing notes to Spirit’s instru­men­tal “Tau­rus,” the song is all Zep­pelin in every pos­si­ble way.

“Stair­way” is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pler pack of the band’s sig­na­ture moves: mix­ing folk rock and heavy met­al with a Delta blues heart; explod­ing in thun­der­heads of John Bon­ham drum fills and a world-famous Page solo; Plant scream­ing cryp­tic lyrics that vague­ly ref­er­ence Tarot, Tolkien, Eng­lish folk tra­di­tions and “a bus­tle in your hedgerow”; John Paul Jones’ wild­ly under­rat­ed mul­ti-instru­men­tal genius; bizarre charges of Satan­ic mes­sages encod­ed back­wards in the record…. (bring­ing to mind anoth­er Wayne’s World actor’s char­ac­ter.)

“Stair­way… crys­tal­lized the essence of the band,” said Page lat­er. “It had every­thing there and showed us at our best. It was a mile­stone.” It set a very high bar for big, emo­tion­al rock songs. “All epic anthems must mea­sure them­selves against ‘Stair­way to Heav­en,’” writes Rolling Stone. It is “epic in every sense of the word,” says the Poly­phon­ic video at the top, includ­ing the lit­er­ary sense. It can “make you feel like you’re part of a dif­fer­ent time, part of a dif­fer­ent world. It can make you feel like you’re part of a sto­ry.”

That sto­ry? “One of the great­est nar­ra­tive struc­tures in human his­to­ry,” the Hero’s Jour­ney, as so famous­ly elab­o­rat­ed by Joseph Camp­bell in The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces—an arche­typ­al mytho­log­i­cal arc that has “per­me­at­ed sto­ries for as long as humans have told them.” Not only do Robert Plant’s mys­ti­cal lyrics reflect this ancient nar­ra­tive, but the song’s com­po­si­tion also enacts it, build­ing stage by stage, from ques­tion­ing to quest­ing to bat­tling to return­ing with the wis­dom of how “to be a rock and not to roll.”

The song’s almost clas­si­cal struc­ture is, of course, no acci­dent, but it is also no indi­vid­ual achieve­ment. Hear the sto­ry of its com­po­si­tion, and why it has been so influ­en­tial, despite the jokes at the expense of those it influ­enced, in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top and straight from Jim­my Page him­self in the inter­view above.

Out of all of Zeppelin’s many epic jour­neys, “Stair­way” best rep­re­sents “the rea­son,” as cul­tur­al crit­ic Steven Hyden writes, “why that band endures… the mythol­o­gy, that Joseph Camp­bell idea of an epic jour­ney into the wild that Zeppelin’s music rep­re­sents, the sense that when you lis­ten to this band, you feel like you’re plug­ging into some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than a band.” Or that the band is open­ing a door­way to some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

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

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in Podcasts, Television | May 29th, 2019

The HBO TV show Game of Thrones, like its source books, George R.R. Mar­t­in’s A Song of Ice and Fire, is clas­si­fied as “fan­ta­sy,” but that term as lit­er­ary clas­si­fi­ca­tion has become unmoored from its lit­er­al mean­ing. A per­son­’s fan­ta­sy is most typ­i­cal­ly a mat­ter of wish ful­fill­ment, which should put super-hero media at the cen­ter of the genre: We reg­u­lar mor­tals wish to be pow­er­ful and strong, to save the day and be rec­og­nized as a hero. Cer­tain ele­ments of clas­si­cal fan­ta­sy fall under this descrip­tion: Fro­do in Lord of the Ringsgets to save the world while remain­ing more or less ordi­nary (well, yes, he can turn invis­i­ble with the ring, but that becomes prob­lem­at­ic), and Har­ry Pot­ter qual­i­fies as a kid super-hero.

Anoth­er key ele­ment of fan­ta­sy is obvi­ous­ly the imag­i­na­tion, which can be deployed as in dreams and the psy­che­del­ic art that draws on dream expe­ri­ence to come up with ever-more-fan­tas­ti­cal imagery, ever more amaz­ing sit­u­a­tions and pow­ers one could fan­ta­size about pos­sess­ing. How­ev­er, the imag­i­na­tion also seeks to expand the fan­ta­sized cre­ation, to make its world wider and rich­er, to fill in the details, and almost inevitably to try to make the fan­ta­sy more “real­is­tic.” What would it actu­al­ly be like to have super pow­ers? Would you suf­fer emo­tion­al trau­ma from dam­ag­ing all those vil­lains? What about col­lat­er­al dam­age? If you get to ride on a drag­on, how do you take care of it? What (who) does it eat?

George R.R. Mar­tin writes in the tra­di­tion pop­u­lar­ized by J.R.R. Tolkien of “high fan­ta­sy,” which involves not only char­ac­ters of high stature engaged in epic strug­gles, but typ­i­cal­ly involves a very fleshed out alter­na­tive world with its own slight­ly dif­fer­ent laws. The more spelled out these laws are, the more nuts and bolts of the work­ings of the world are spec­i­fied, the more real­ism and hence suf­fer­ing can be depict­ed.A Song of Ice and Firedescribes its rotat­ing cast of pro­tag­o­nists with such a degree of detail that read­ers are (as in much lit­er­a­ture) able to iden­ti­fy with them, to see the world through their eyes, but they suf­fer so much that such alter­nate lives as these books offer read­ers would hard­ly be any­one’s fan­ta­sy in the sense of wish ful­fill­ment. A visu­al pre­sen­ta­tion like a TV show by neces­si­ty can’t be as clear about whose eyes the view­er is sup­posed to see events through (we see through the cam­era instead), but nonethe­less Game of Thrones invites us to live through (some of) its char­ac­ters, to iden­ti­fy with them, through their exer­tions of pow­er, through their reac­tions to loss and tri­umph. But such iden­ti­fi­ca­tions will always be imper­fect, giv­en that these char­ac­ters have been drawn as liv­ing in a world that is fun­da­men­tal­ly for­eign to us, not because there are zom­bies and drag­ons, but because HBO view­ers are for the most part liv­ing com­fort­ably in a peace­ful coun­try, not hav­ing been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and often per­son­al­ly exposed to hor­ri­ble suf­fer­ings.

Hear Mark Lin­sen­may­er and Wes Alwan, reg­u­lar hosts of The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast, along with guest Sab­ri­na Weiss, dis­cuss the psy­cho­log­i­cal and social aspects of the show, but in what is depict­ed on screen and how these play out in our soci­ety’s rela­tion­ship to this grand spec­ta­cle.

Read more about it on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life web­site.

Mark Lin­sen­may­er is the host ofThe Par­tial­ly Exam­ined LifeandNaked­ly Exam­ined Musicpod­casts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Game of Thrones: A Great Behind-the-Scenes Look at The Show’s Visu­al Effects

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in , Nature | May 29th, 2019

How are the world’s hon­ey bees doing? Just a few years ago, word spread that they were on the verge of a mys­te­ri­ous extinc­tion. Look for updates on their sit­u­a­tion now and you get con­tra­dic­to­ry results, all of them fair­ly recent, from “Bees Are Still Dying” to“Bees Are Bounc­ing Back From Colony Col­lapse Dis­or­der” to“Yes, the Bees Are Still in Trou­ble” to“The Bee Apoc­a­lypse Was Nev­er Real.” But whether they’re in exis­ten­tial dan­ger or not, bees at least now have their very own McDon­ald’s — bees in cer­tain parts of Swe­den, any­way.

“McDonald’s has cre­at­ed a tiny repli­ca of one of its restau­rants, too small for any human to eat there,” writes Emi­ly Chudy in theInde­pen­dent. “The repli­ca, dubbed the ‘McHive,’ is a ful­ly-func­tion­ing bee­hive designed to look like a McDonald’s restau­rant and fea­tures seat­ing, a dri­ve-through and an entrance. The brain­child of set design­er Nick­las Nils­son, the hive is part of an ini­tia­tive which has seen bee­hives placed on cer­tain Swedish branch­es of the fran­chise.” This project seems to be the first insect-scale restau­rant for Nils­son, whose past work includes cos­tume design on the video for David Bowie’s “Black­star.”

You can see footage of the McHive’s design and assem­bly process, as well as an assem­bled McHive full of its “thou­sands of impor­tant guests,” in the video at the top of the post. There are more pho­tos at design­boom, which quotes the pro­jec­t’s adver­tis­ing agencyNORD DDBas say­ing that “the ini­tia­tive start­ed out local­ly but is now grow­ing.” In addi­tion to installing bee­hives on their rooftops, more Swedish McDon­ald’s fran­chisees “have also start­ed replac­ing the grass around their restau­rants with flow­ers and plants that are impor­tant for the well­be­ing of wild bees.”

Why so much con­cern about hon­ey bees in the first place? Chudy quotes a Green­peace esti­mate that they “per­form about 80% of all pol­li­na­tion and a sin­gle bee colony can pol­li­nate 300 mil­lion flow­ers each day.” Bees do the hard work of keep­ing a sur­pris­ing­ly large part of the nat­ur­al world work­ing as we’ve always known it to, and to the extent that bees die out, much else may die out as well, with poten­tial knock-on effects many would pre­fer not to think about. But then, the taste for pre­dic­tions of eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter on the inter­net seems only to have grown since we first noticed the prob­lem with bees: if you real­ly want to feel moti­vat­ed to peti­tion your local McDon­ald’s to put up a McHive, try Googling the phrase “cat­a­stroph­ic col­lapse of nature.”

via design­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mes­mer­iz­ing Time­lapse Film Cap­tures the Won­der of Bees Being Born

The Bil­lion-Bug High­way You Can’t See

Based in Seoul,Col­in Mar­shallwrites and broad­castson cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.His projects include the bookThe State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­lesand the video seriesThe City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at@colinmarshall, onFace­book, or onInsta­gram.

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in Books | May 28th, 2019

It’s becom­ing an annu­al rit­u­al. Every sum­mer Bill Gates offers us a read­ing list–5‑books to take on vaca­tion. As you’ll see, his list assumes that even if you’re phys­i­cal­ly on vaca­tion, your mind isn’t. The curi­ous mind takes no breaks. Bill writes:

Upheaval,by Jared Dia­mond. I’m a big fan of every­thing Jared has writ­ten, and his lat­est is no excep­tion. The book explores how soci­eties react dur­ing moments of cri­sis. He uses a series of fas­ci­nat­ing case stud­ies to show how nations man­aged exis­ten­tial chal­lenges like civ­il war, for­eign threats, and gen­er­al malaise. It sounds a bit depress­ing, but I fin­ished the book even more opti­mistic about our abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems than I start­ed. More here.

Nine Pints,by Rose George. If you get grossed out by blood, this one prob­a­bly isn’t for you. But if you’re like me and find it fas­ci­nat­ing, you’ll enjoy this book by a British jour­nal­ist with an espe­cial­ly per­son­al con­nec­tion to the sub­ject. I’m a big fan of books that go deep on one spe­cif­ic top­ic, soNine Pints(the title refers to the vol­ume of blood in the aver­age adult) was right up my alley. It’s filled with super-inter­est­ing facts that will leave you with a new appre­ci­a­tion for blood. More here.

A Gen­tle­man in Moscow,by Amor Towles. It seems like every­one I know has read this book. I final­ly joined the club after my broth­er-in-law sent me a copy, and I’m glad I did. Towles’s nov­el about a count sen­tenced to life under house arrest in a Moscow hotel is fun, clever, and sur­pris­ing­ly upbeat. Even if you don’t enjoy read­ing about Rus­sia as much as I do (I’ve read every book by Dos­toyevsky),A Gen­tle­man in Moscowis an amaz­ing sto­ry that any­one can enjoy. More here.

Pres­i­dents of War,by Michael Beschloss. My inter­est in all aspects of the Viet­nam War is the main rea­son I decid­ed to pick up this book. By the time I fin­ished it, I learned a lot not only about Viet­nam but about the eight oth­er major con­flicts the U.S. entered between the turn of the 19th cen­tu­ry and the 1970s. Beschloss’s broad scope lets you draw impor­tant cross-cut­ting lessons about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. More here.

The Future of Cap­i­tal­ism,by Paul Col­lier. Collier’s lat­est book is a thought-pro­vok­ing look at a top­ic that’s top of mind for a lot of peo­ple right now. Although I don’t agree with him about everything—I think his analy­sis of the prob­lem is bet­ter than his pro­posed solutions—his back­ground as a devel­op­ment econ­o­mist gives him a smart per­spec­tive on where cap­i­tal­ism is head­ed.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter,please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­inga dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Gates Names 5 Books You Should Read This Sum­mer (2018)

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends Five Books for Sum­mer 2017

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer (2016)

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in Music | May 28th, 2019

Rock and roll needs its out­siders, its prodi­gious weirdos, trick­sters and pas­tiche artists to rein­vig­o­rate mori­bund gen­res and put things togeth­er no one thought would go. No two peo­ple fit the descrip­tion bet­ter than Frank Zap­pa and Cap­tain Beef­heart (Don Van Vli­et), some­time col­lab­o­ra­tors, fren­e­mies, and par­al­lel evil genius­es with crack teams of musi­cal hench­men at the ready—Zappa the genre-hop­ping vir­tu­oso and music busi­ness supervil­lain; Beef­heart the mad blues­man with a Beat poet’s heart and Mer­ry Prankster’s sense of humor….

Their intense on-again-off-again musi­cal rela­tion­ship threat­ened to come apart for good dur­ing the record­ing of Beefheart’s Zap­pa-pro­duced weirdo mas­ter­piece Trout Mask Repli­ca. These trou­bled stages of their asso­ci­a­tion are what we often talk about when we talk about Zappa/Beefheart, when they dis­cov­ered, writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “that their cre­ative process­es and work habits—Zappa was dis­ci­plined and exact­ing, while Beef­heart pre­ferred to be spon­ta­neous and freeform—couldn’t have been more at odds.”

A lit­tle over a decade ear­li­er, before either of them had musi­cal careers neces­si­tat­ing work habits, the two began record­ing togeth­er in “either late 1958 or ear­ly 1959,” notes Dan­ger­ous Minds. They had known each oth­er since high school in Lan­cast­er, Cal­i­for­nia, where their shared sen­si­bil­i­ties brought them togeth­er: “The two found they had a sim­i­lar taste in music, and quick­ly bond­ed over a shared love of blues, doo-wop, and R&B records.”

Pre­sag­ing all of the ways they would go on to warp, can­ni­bal­ize, and mash up these gen­res, “Lost in a Whirlpool,” with music by Zap­pa and lyrics by Van Vli­et, was one of sev­er­al songs they had begun writ­ing while still teenagers. Zap­pa tells the sto­ry of the record­ing in a 1989 inter­view:

“Lost in a Whirlpool” was taped on one of those tape recorders that you have in a school in the audio/visual depart­ment. We went into this room, this emp­ty room at the junior col­lege in Lan­cast­er, after school, and got this tape record­ed, and just turned it on. The gui­tars are me and my broth­er (Bob­by Zap­pa) and the vocal is Don Vli­et.

The sto­ry of “Lost in a Whirlpool” goes back even far­ther. When I was in high school in San Diego in ‘55, there was a guy who grew up to be a sports writer named Lar­ry Lit­tle­field. He, and anoth­er guy named Jeff Har­ris, and I used to hang out, and we used to make up sto­ries, lit­tle skits and stuff, you know, dumb lit­tle teenage things. One of the plots that we cooked up was about a per­son who was skindiving—San Diego’s a surfer kind of an area—skindiving in the San Diego sew­er sys­tem [laugh­ter], and talk­ing about encoun­ter­ing brown, blind fish. [laugh­ter] It was kind of like the Cousteau expe­di­tion of its era. [laugh­ter] So, when I moved to Lan­cast­er from San Diego, I had dis­cussed this sce­nario with Vli­et, and that’s where the lyrics come from. It’s like a musi­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of this oth­er skin­div­ing sce­nario.

Scat­o­log­i­cal skin­div­ing seems like such a per­fect con­cep­tu­al sum­ma­ry of the shared Zappa/Beefheart ethos it’s a won­der they didn’t use the title them­selves. Despite their grow­ing cre­ative dif­fer­ences and incom­pat­i­ble tem­pera­ments, they col­lab­o­rat­ed into the mid-70s.

In 1975, twen­ty years after cook­ing up the sto­ry of skin­div­ing in the San Diego sew­ers, they “regaled their fans with the amus­ing­ly titled (most­ly) live album, Bon­go Fury,” Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock writes, “a his­toric cease­fire in their oth­er­wise tur­bu­lent rela­tion­ship that would sad­ly prove all too fleet­ing.” The record is the result of an “inten­sive, 30-date tour” in which “Beef­heart con­tributed har­mon­i­ca, occa­sion­al sax, and numer­ous dis­plays of his eccen­tric poet­ry and one-of-a-kind vocals to the [Zap­pa] ensemble’s reper­toire.” Above, hear Bon­go Fury’s “Advance Romance,” as clas­sic a slice of Zappa/Beefheart odd­ball blues as their very first record­ings from the late 50s.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Why Cap­tain Beefheart’s Awful Sound­ing Album, Trout Mask Repli­ca, Is a True Mas­ter­piece

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

Hear a Rare Poet­ry Read­ing by Cap­tain Beef­heart (1993)

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

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in Literature | May 27th, 2019

A des­per­ate­ly poor law stu­dent kills a pawn­bro­ker. There we have the sto­ry, max­i­mal­ly dis­tilled, ofFyo­dor Dos­to­evsky’sCrime and Pun­ish­ment.Or at least we have the cen­tral event, to which every­thing in Dos­to­evsky’s best-known nov­el leads and from which every­thing else fol­lows. But as with so many 19th-cen­tu­ry Russ­ian nov­els, there’s much more to it than that; some Dos­to­evsky enthu­si­asts see the book as not just the sto­ry of a mur­der’s med­i­ta­tion and after­math but an inci­sive por­tray­al of the eter­nal moral con­di­tion of human­i­ty. But since such grand-sound­ing claims no doubt put off as many read­ers as they bring in, we’d do bet­ter to ask a sim­pler ques­tion: Why should you readCrime and Pun­ish­ment?

Theani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son by Alex Gendler above answers that ques­tion in four and a half ani­mat­ed min­utes. “Though the nov­el is some­times cit­ed as one of the first psy­cho­log­i­cal thrillers,” Gendler says, its scope reach­es far beyond the inner tur­moil of the stu­dent-turned-killer Raskol­nikov. “From dank tav­erns to dilap­i­dat­ed apart­mentsand claus­tro­pho­bic police sta­tions,the under­bel­ly of 19th-cen­tu­ry Saint Peters­burg is brought to lifeby Dostoyevsky’s sear­ing prose.”

With its large cast of ful­ly real­ized and often not-quite-savory inhab­i­tants, this “bleak por­trait of Russ­ian soci­ety reflects the author’s own com­plex life expe­ri­ences and evolv­ing ideas” — expe­ri­ences that includ­ed four years in a Siber­ian labor camp as pun­ish­ment for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in intel­lec­tu­al dis­cus­sions of banned social­ist texts.

You might assume that such a back­ground would pro­duce a bit­ter writer con­cerned only with revenge against the state, but Dos­to­evsky’s social cri­tique, Gendler says, “cuts far deep­er. Raskol­nikov ratio­nal­izes that his own advance­ment at the cost of the exploita­tive pawnbroker’s death would be a net ben­e­fit to soci­ety,” which “echoes the doc­trines of ego­ism and util­i­tar­i­an­ism embraced by many of Dostoyevsky’s con­tem­po­rary intel­lec­tu­als.” And all of us, not just intel­lec­tu­als and polit­i­cal lead­ers, have the poten­tial to cut our­selves off from our own human­i­ty as Raskol­nikov does. Some of us face pun­ish­ment for the crimes we com­mit, but many of us don’t — or not offi­cial, exter­nal­ly applied pun­ish­ment, in any case, but“Dostoyevsky’s grip­ping account of social and psy­cho­log­i­cal tur­moil”still shows us how the harsh­est pun­ish­ment comes from with­in.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dos­to­evsky Draws Doo­dles of Raskol­nikov and Oth­er Char­ac­ters in the Man­u­script of Crime and Pun­ish­ment

The Ani­mat­ed Dos­to­evsky: Two Fine­ly Craft­ed Short Films Bring the Russ­ian Novelist’s Work to Life

Bat­man Stars in an Unusu­al Car­toon Adap­ta­tion of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun­ish­ment

Based in Seoul,Col­in Mar­shallwrites and broad­castson cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.His projects include the bookThe State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­lesand the video seriesThe City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at@colinmarshall, onFace­book, or onInsta­gram.

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in Education, Graduation Speech, Life, Music | May 25th, 2019

The Inter­net has redeemed grad­u­a­tion sea­son for those of us whose com­mence­ment speak­ers failed to inspire.

One of the chief dig­i­tal plea­sures of the sea­son is truf­fling up words of wis­dom that seem ever so much wis­er than the ones that were poured past the mor­tar­board into our own ten­der ears.

Our most-recent­ly found pearls come from the mouth of one of our favorite dark hors­es, musi­cian, pro­duc­er, and mul­ti­me­dia pio­neer Todd Rund­gren, one of Berklee Col­lege of Music’s 2017 com­mence­ment speak­ers.

Rund­gren claims he nev­er would have passed the pres­ti­gious institution’s audi­tion. He bare­ly man­aged to grad­u­ate from high school. But he struck a blow for life­long learn­ers whose pur­suit of knowl­edge takes place out­side the for­mal set­ting by earn­ing hon­orary degrees from both Berklee, and DePauw Uni­ver­si­ty, where the new­ly anoint­ed Doc­tor of Per­form­ing Arts can be seen below, study­ing his hon­oris causa as the school band ser­e­nades him with a stu­dent-arranged ver­sion of his song, All the Chil­dren Sing.

Rundgren’s out­sider sta­tus played well with Berklee’s Class of 2017, as he imme­di­ate­ly ditched his cer­e­mo­ni­al head­dress and con­ferred some cool on the sun­glass­es dic­tat­ed by his fail­ing vision.

But it wasn’t all open­ing snark, as he praised the stu­dents’ pre­vi­ous night’s musi­cal per­for­mance, telling them that they were a cred­it to their school, their fam­i­lies and them­selves.

His was a dif­fer­ent path.

Rund­gren, an expe­ri­enced pub­lic speak­er, claims he was stumped as to how one would go about craft­ing com­mence­ment speech­es. Reject­ing an avalanche of advice, whose urgency sug­gest­ed his speech could only result in “uni­ver­sal jubi­la­tion or mass sui­cide if (he) didn’t get it right,” he chose instead to spend his first 10 min­utes at the podi­um recount­ing his per­son­al his­to­ry.

It’s inter­est­ing stuff for any stu­dent of rock n roll, with added cool points owing to the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame’s fail­ure to acknowl­edge this musi­cal inno­va­tor.

Whether or not the Class of 17 were famil­iar with their speak­er pri­or to that day, it’s prob­a­ble most of them were able to do the math and real­ize that the self-edu­cat­ed Rund­gren would have been their age in 1970, when his debut album, Runt, was released, and only a cou­ple of years old­er when his third album, 1972’s two disc, Rital­in-fueled Something/Anything shot him to fame.

After which, this proud icon­o­clast prompt­ly thumbed his nose at com­mer­cial suc­cess, detour­ing into the son­ic exper­i­ments of A Wiz­ard, a True Star, whose dis­as­trous crit­i­cal recep­tion belies the mas­ter­piece rep­u­ta­tion it now enjoys.

Rolling Stone called it a case of an artist “run amok.”

Pat­ti Smith, whose absolute­ly manda­to­ry Creem review reads like beat poet­ry, was a rare admir­er.

Did a shiv­er of fear run through the par­ents in the audi­ence, as Rund­gren regaled their chil­dren with tales of how this delib­er­ate trip into the unknown cost him half his fan­base?

How much is Berklee’s tuition these days, any­way?

Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal urges from the com­mence­ment podi­um run the risk of com­ing off as inap­pro­pri­ate indul­gence, but Rundgren’s per­son­al sto­ry is sup­port­ing evi­dence of his very wor­thy mes­sage to his younger fel­low artists :

• Don’t self-edit in an attempt to fit some­one else’s image of who you should be as an artist. See your­self.
• Use your art as a tool for vig­or­ous self-explo­ration.
• Com­mit to remain­ing free and fear­less, in the ser­vice of your defin­ing moment, whose arrival time is rarely pub­lished in advance.
• Don’t view grad­u­a­tion as the end of your edu­ca­tion. Think of it as the begin­ning. Learn about the things you love.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Nev­er Hav­ing to Spend Time with A‑Holes

The First 10 Videos Played on MTV: Rewind the Video­tape to August 1, 1981

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Join her in New York City this June for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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in | May 24th, 2019

From Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty comes “Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal,” a course that “explores how suc­cess­ful star­tups nav­i­gate fund­ing, man­ag­ing, and scal­ing their new enter­prise. This process is explored through guest lec­tures and men­tor­ship from expe­ri­enced ven­ture cap­i­tal investors and sea­soned entre­pre­neurs who man­age these issues on a dai­ly basis in Sil­i­con Val­ley.” Top­ics cov­ered in the course include “cus­tomer val­ue equa­tion, board man­age­ment, mar­ket strat­e­gy, com­pa­ny cul­ture, and hyper growth.” Stan­ford adds:

With over a cen­tu­ry and a half of ven­ture cap­i­tal expe­ri­ence and many more years of prac­tice in entre­pre­neur­ship, our teach­ing team and guest lec­tur­ers cov­er the fun­da­men­tals for build­ing a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny. While there is no set for­mu­la for build­ing a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny, basic prin­ci­ples and gen­er­al pat­terns are man­i­fest­ed in the most suc­cess­ful start-ups. With assis­tance from expe­ri­enced ven­ture cap­i­tal investors and sea­soned entre­pre­neurs from Sil­i­con Val­ley, this course pro­ceeds through the stages of growth and chal­lenges expe­ri­enced by star­tups.

You can find the lec­tures above, on YouTube, or iTunes.

“Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal” has been added to our col­lec­tion of Free Busi­ness Cours­es, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion,1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter,please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­inga dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

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in Astronomy, Music, Science | May 24th, 2019

Johannes Kepler deter­mined just how the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem make their way around the sun. He pub­lished his inno­v­a­tive work on the sub­ject from 1609 to 1619, and in the final year of that decade he also came up with a the­o­ry that each plan­et sings a song, and each in a dif­fer­ent voice at that.Mars is a tenor, Mer­cury is a sopra­no, and Earth, as the BBC showQI (orQuite Inter­est­ing) recent­ly tweet­ed, “is an alto that sings two notes Mi and Fa, which Kepler read as ‘Mis­e­ri­am & Famem’, ‘mis­ery and famine’” — two phe­nom­e­na not unknown on Earth in Kepler’s time, even though the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion had already start­ed to change the way peo­ple lived.

Not all of the best minds of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion thought pure­ly in terms of cal­cu­la­tion. The blog Thats­Maths describes Kepler’s mis­sion as explain­ing the solar sys­tem “in terms of divine har­mo­ny,” find­ing “a sys­tem of the world that was math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect and har­mon­i­cal­ly pleas­ing.” Tru­ly divine har­mo­ny could pre­sum­ably find its expres­sion in music, an idea that led Kepler to explain “plan­e­tary motions in terms of har­mon­ic rela­tion­ships, a scheme that he called the ‘song of the Earth.’”

Accord­ing to this scheme, “each plan­et emits a tone that varies in pitch as its dis­tance from the Sun varies from per­i­he­lion to aphe­lion and back” — that is, from the near­est they get to the sun to the far­thest they get from the sun and back — “pro­duc­ing a con­tin­u­ous glis­san­do of inter­me­di­ate tones, a ‘whistling pro­duced by fric­tion with the heav­en­ly light.’”

Kepler named the com­bined result “the music of the spheres,” but what does it sound like? Switzer­land-based cor­net­tist Bruce Dick­ey wants to give us a sense of it withNature’s Whis­per­ing Secret, “a project for a CD record­ing explor­ing the ideas about music and cos­mol­o­gy of Johannes Kepler.” Demand­ing the musi­cian­ship of not just Dick­ey butcom­pos­er Cal­liope Tsoupa­ki, singerHana Blažíková, and a group ofsingers and instru­men­tal­ists from across Europe and Amer­i­ca as well, all “among the most dis­tin­guished musi­cians per­form­ing 16th-cen­tu­ry poly­phon­ic music today.” The Indiegogo cam­paign for this ambi­tious trib­ute to Kepler’s ideas at the inter­sec­tion of sci­ence and aes­thet­ics, which involves an album as well as a series of live per­for­mances into the year 2020, is on its very last day, so if you’d like to hear the music of the spheres for your­self, con­sid­er mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion.

via Quite Inter­est­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

Based in Seoul,Col­in Mar­shallwrites and broad­castson cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture.His projects include the bookThe State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­lesand the video seriesThe City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at@colinmarshall, onFace­book, or onInsta­gram.

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in History, Music | May 23rd, 2019

“For six­ty years, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom has told us that women gen­er­al­ly did not per­form rock and roll dur­ing the 1950s,” writes Leah Branstet­ter, Ph.D. can­di­date in musi­col­o­gy at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty. Like so many cul­tur­al forms into which we are ini­ti­at­ed, through edu­ca­tion, per­son­al inter­est, and gen­er­al osmo­sis, this pop­u­lar form of West­ern music—now a genre with sev­en­ty years under its belt—has func­tioned as an almost ide­al exam­ple of the great man the­o­ry of his­to­ry.

It can seem like set­tled fact that Chuck Berry, Elvis Pres­ley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Lit­tle Richard, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and their cel­e­brat­ed male con­tem­po­raries invent­ed the music; and that women played pas­sive roles as fans, stu­dio audi­ence mem­bers, groupies, per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of cars and gui­tars.…

The recog­ni­tion of rare excep­tions, like Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, does not chal­lenge the rule. But Branstetter’s Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave project almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly does.

The real­i­ty is, how­ev­er, that hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls per­formed and record­ed rock and roll in its ear­ly years. Andmany more par­tic­i­pat­ed in oth­er ways:writ­ing songs,own­ingorwork­ing forrecord labels, work­ing asses­sion or tour­ing musi­cians,design­ing stage wear, danc­ing, or man­ag­ing tal­ent…. [W]omen’s careers didn’t always resem­ble those of their more famous male coun­ter­parts. Some female per­form­ers were well known and per­formed nation­al­ly as stars, while oth­ers had more influ­ence region­al­ly or only in one tiny club. Some made the pop charts, but even more had impact through live per­for­mance. Some women exhib­it­ed the kind of wild onstage behav­ior that had come to be expect­ed from fig­ures Jer­ry Lee Lewis or Lit­tle Richard—but that wasn’t the only way to be rebel­lious, and oth­ers found their own meth­ods of being rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

Branstetter’s project, a dig­i­tal dis­ser­ta­tion, cov­ers dozens of musi­cians from the peri­od, just a frac­tion of the names she has uncov­ered in her research. Some of the women pro­filed were nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known. Many more were accom­plished stars before the 60’s girl group phe­nom­e­non, and con­tin­ued per­form­ing into the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Meet rock­ers like Sparkle Moore(see up top), born in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka and inspired by Bill Haley in the mid-fifties to play rock­a­bil­ly in her home­town. She went on to tour the coun­try, putting out record after record. “By 1957,” writes Branstet­ter, “she had about forty song­writ­ing cred­its to her name.” Teen mag­a­zine Digwrote that Moore had “an amaz­ing resem­blance to the late James Dean… Presley’s style and Dean’s looks.” She is still a “favorite with rock­a­bil­ly fans,” notes her biog­ra­phy. Moore “has been induct­ed into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also made a new album in 2010 enti­tled Spark-a-Bil­ly.”

Meet Lil­lie Bryant, one half of duo Bil­lie & Lil­lie, whose breezi­er R&B sounds and more whole­some image res­onat­ed with ear­ly rock and roll fans, pro­mot­ers, and stars. Bryant began per­form­ing in New York City clubs as a teenag­er. Then pro­duc­ers Bob Crewe and Frank Slay turned her and singer Bil­lie Ford into a duo who went on to star in leg­endary DJ Alan Freed’s stage shows, “includ­ing a six-week tour with Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon” and an appear­ance on Amer­i­can Band­stand. Bryant still per­forms in her home­town of New­burgh, New York.

Meet The Chan­tels. “Formed in the Bronx, New York in the ear­ly 1950s,” they were “among the first African-Amer­i­can female vocal groups to gain nation­al atten­tion.” They also toured with Alan Freed and appeared on Amer­i­can Band­standand The Dick Clark Show. In 1961, their hit “Look in My Eyes” went to num­ber 14 on the pop charts and 6 on the R&B charts. (Thir­ty years lat­er, it appeared on the Good­fel­lassound­track.)

Most peo­ple who grew up on the music of the 50s and 60s have like­ly heard of many of these women rock­ers, or have at least heard their music if they didn’t know the names and faces. ButBranstetter’s project does more than tell the sto­ries of individuals—inbiogra­phies, inter­views (with, for one, Jer­ry Lee Lewis’s sis­ter, singer and piano play­er Lin­da Gail Lewis), blog posts, playlists (hear one below), song analy­ses, and essays.

She also sub­stan­ti­ates her larg­er claim that women’s “con­tri­bu­tions shaped the cul­ture and sound of rock and roll,” in numer­ous well-doc­u­ment­ed ways. This despite the fact that women in ear­ly rock were told ver­sions of the same thing Joan Jett heard 20 years later—“girls don’t play rock and roll.” They some­times heard it from oth­er women in the music busi­ness. Pop singer Con­nie Frances, for exam­ple, offered her opin­ion in a 1958 issue of Bill­board: “A girl can’t sing rock and roll. It’s basi­cal­ly too sav­age for a girl singer to han­dle.”

Atti­tudes like these per­sist­ed so long, and became so uncon­scious, that one of the largest gui­tar mak­ers in the world, Fend­er, and sev­er­al oth­er musi­cal instru­ment mak­ers, may have lost mil­lions in sales before they final­ly real­ized that women make up half of new gui­tar play­ers. Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave will inspire and enlight­en many of those young musi­cians who did­n’t grow up know­ing any­thing about Sparkle Moore or The Chan­tels, but should have. Unless rock his­to­ri­ans will­ing­ly ignore the work of schol­ars like Branstet­ter, sub­se­quent accounts should reflect a more expan­sive, inclu­sive, view of the ter­ri­to­ry. Start here.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Hot Gui­tar Solos of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, “America’s First Gospel Rock Star”

How Joan Jett Start­ed the Run­aways at 15 and Faced Down Every Bar­ri­er for Women in Rock and Roll

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

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