https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSluIrqj4IU In 1958, Merle Haggard saw Johnny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing honest country songs for country outlaws. In 1982, future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello saw Joe Strummer play with The Clash...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDZzhLY_BVo The most streamed Beatles song isn’t “She Loves You,” “Hey Jude,” or “All You Need Is Love.” It isn’t even “Yesterday.” If you were about to guess “Something,” you’re on the right track, at least as far as the...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkHr-yQEJ6g Leonard Cohen was Canada’s answer to Bob Dylan. While best known perhaps as a singer-songwriter who penned the tune “Hallelujah” — which was covered by Jeff Buckley, John Cale and just about everyone else under the sun — he...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_aYXYUT5l8 When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past summer, its creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos took a close look at the “sustained two-shot,” which captures a stretch of dialogue between two...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNbwMrBMGgE It’s hard to know where to start. This election comes down to whether or not we want to reward someone who tried to subvert our democracy four years ago. Whether we want to preserve the alliances that have kept...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9nTb86csPQ This past summer, out came a trailer for Megalopolis, the movie Francis Ford Coppola has spent half of his life trying to make. It took the bold approach of opening with quotes from reviews of his previous pictures, and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhv5GVexW2E ?si=tyjBCsSNLIAgh7SM Written by Ron Grainer, and then famously arranged and recorded by Delia Derbyshire in 1963, the Doctor Who theme song has been adapted and covered many times, and even referenced by Pink Floyd. In the hands of comedian Bill...
Kurt Vonnegut’s life was not without its ironies. Fighting in World War II, that descendant of a long line of German immigrants in the United States found himself imprisoned in Dresden just when it was devastated by Allied firebombing. To...
Born 196 years ago, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a period of immense social, political, and technological change, paralleled in his own life by his radical shift from hedonistic nobleman to theologian, anarchist, and vegetarian pacifist. Though he...
The phrase “April is the cruelest month” was first printed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in common circulation almost as long. One can easily know it without having the faintest idea of its source, let alone its...
