The story, the many stories, of Miles Davis as an opening act for several rock bands in the 1970s makes for fascinating reading. Before he blew the Grateful Dead’s minds as their opening act at the Fillmore West in April...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcHJvtRK2uY When Netflix launched around the turn of the millennium, it was received as a godsend by many American cinephiles, especially those who lived nowhere near diversely programmed revival houses or well-curated video stores. A quarter-century later, it’s safe to...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrbwvG0XeUQ I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me. — Winston Churchill Winston Churchill had a reputation as a brilliant statesman and a prodigious drinker. The former prime minister imbibed throughout the day, every...
MTV still exists. At least, it still exists in the United States, or in certain of that country’s markets, for the time being. A flurry of premature obituaries recently blew through the internet after the announcement that the network had...
Think back, if you will, to the works of art you created at age twelve or thirteen. For many, perhaps most of us, our output at that stage of adolescence amounted to directionless doodles, chaotic comics, and a few unsteady-at-best...
In our experience, bird lovers fall into two general categories: Keenly observant cataloguers like John James Audubon … And those of us who cannot resist assigning anthropomorphic personalities and behaviors to the 435 stars of Audubon’s The Birds of America, a stunning collection...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSiuMgKmiyk Formed in 1965, the Doors burned hot until Jim Morrison died in 1971, and the band finally broke up in 1973. The group left behind more than a few fine songs—“Light My Fire,” “Break On Through (To the Other...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n89F9YKPNOg Imagine, if you will, taking a seat at the piano before a full house of 2,000 music lovers ready to hear Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor — and, more importantly, on stage with an orchestra and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI5xaum_HlA Humanity was already enjoying motion pictures a century ago. But the ability to do so at home still lay a few decades in the future, and the ability to pull up a movie on demand through a streaming service...
One potential drawback of genius, it seems, is restlessness, a mind perpetually on the move. Of course, this is what makes many celebrated thinkers and artists so productive. That and the extra hours some gain by sacrificing sleep. Voltaire reportedly...
