MetaFilter

"Will Marion Cook is a name to reckon with in the history of black American music." Many of us have never heard of him, but with a recent recording of his work available, along with a new biography, now would be a good time to catch up and swing along.
comment posted at 6:58 AM on Feb-1-09

We may never know whether the bailout worked
comment posted at 3:15 PM on Jan-30-09

Every day we go on to the streets, dying at his defenders who thought about us. About us, that they were not destined to see. But we can remember!

And imagine that the horror that the people was to survive.

WWII era Photographs, I assume, of Leningrad combined with current photographs. This era has also recently been portrayed effectively by David Benioff in his novel City of Thieves. Found the pictures via Warren Ellis who thinks the photographer may be Sergei Larenkov.
comment posted at 3:45 PM on Jan-29-09

Kimiko Yoshida - Self-Portraits. [Via]
comment posted at 4:51 AM on Jan-27-09

Charlie Brooker cannot help saying out loud what many of us were thinking. He's already known to the Secret Service - and as having "the same mentality as Hitler" (previously on Metafilter)
comment posted at 3:55 AM on Jan-26-09

The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show is easily the most terrifying "children's show" ever broadcast.
comment posted at 4:57 PM on Jan-25-09

Easy access to the internet and simplified technology for recording songs and videos might do great things for the future of pop music. Or it might be like this.
comment posted at 3:42 PM on Jan-21-09

Blandings is "a guide and companion to the books, stories, plays and musicals of P. G. Wodehouse, probably the finest craftsman of the English language in the 20th Century." It has lists of his works (and advice on collecting them), a miscellany (old English counties, money and words, JPs, younger sons, sport, public schools and much more), a gazetteer (with notes on real places and maps), and other amenities, but what really put a jaunty spring in my step was the detailed notes for the works. If you go, say, to the Something Fresh page and click on the Notes & Quotes tab, you will find, well, Notes and Quotes. The first thing your bright, expectant orb will encounter: "Arundell Street - no longer exists but it was close to Leicester Square and held both the Hotels Mathis and Previtali (also gone). See West End for a sketch map showing its location." It's a blooming marvel! (Via Wordorigins.org; Wodehouse previously on MetaFilter.)
comment posted at 3:30 PM on Jan-21-09
comment posted at 5:06 AM on Jan-22-09

Rundgren/Utopia Filter: Two Obscure Gems. Emergency Splashdown. Umbrella Man.
comment posted at 4:57 AM on Jan-21-09

185. "Revolution 9"

Shortly after recording "Revolution 9", John Lennon allegedly went around telling friends that his new song was the music of the future. Well, here we are, 40 years later, and I don’t see the pop charts filled with experimental song collages featuring recording engineers, chanting football crowds, mangled orchestras, and bizarre non-sequiturs. [...]
comment posted at 4:06 PM on Jan-20-09

"The city is so cash-strapped that firefighters have to purchase their own toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Their aging bunker gear is coated in carbon, 'making them the equivalent of walking matchsticks.' The firehouses' brass poles have been removed and sold off by the city." - The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep by Matt Labash.
comment posted at 12:15 PM on Jan-20-09

Happy Birthday Dr. King. Today is Martin Luther King Day. He was born 80 years ago, on January 15th, 1929. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just thirty-nine years old. Tomorrow, more than four decades after Dr. King’s death, Barack Obama will take his oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States and the first African American president in US history. The Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr, King, will deliver the benediction at the inauguration ceremony. Obama accepted the Democratic party nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, arguably his most famous address. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People"s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic US foreign policy and the Vietnam War.
comment posted at 7:02 PM on Jan-19-09

Your favorite music blog sucks.

Rock/Psych/Prog/Indie/Folk
ChrisGoesRock
Prog Not Frog
Like Dynamite to your Brain
YoungMossTongue
Glamorous Indie Rock'n'Roll
FANTASY
SONZEIRANANET
A L A I N F I N K I E L K R A U T R O C K
Orexis Of Death

comment posted at 4:26 PM on Jan-19-09

Tips for Visitors from a D.C. Resident
comment posted at 7:46 PM on Jan-18-09

The Bioscope is dedicated to the subject of early and silent cinema. It is designed to be a news and information resource on all aspects of the motion picture before sound. It covers news, publications, events, discoveries, documents, critical theory, filmmakers, performers, audiences and technology, and aims to encompass film production, distribution and exhibition in the silent era, as well as ‘pre-cinema’, chronophotography, optical toys, and related media, across the world.
comment posted at 8:00 PM on Jan-16-09

The New Creation was born in 1970 when Chris Towers, an unknown guitarist from Vancouver, decided to form a Christian rock group with his mother Lorna as lead singer and their neighbor Janet Tiessen on drums. Scared by reports of the hippie excesses of the Manson/Altamont era, Lorna Towers wrote doom-laden, apocalyptic lyrics for the New Creation's aptly titled album, Troubled. The band was unpolished, yet somehow captured a unique lo-fi sound comparable to a hybrid of the Velvet Underground and the Shaggs. The group might be totally forgotten today, if an aging hippie record dealer named Ty Scammel hadn't rescued a copy from a $1 bargain bin, leading to the album's rediscovery by collectors of Christian rock and outsider music.
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Jan-16-09
comment posted at 8:05 PM on Jan-16-09

A British tabloid claims that NASA will today announce the probable presence of life on Mars. Planetary and atmospheric scientists from NASA's Mars program will address a press conference at 2PM EST, apparently about concentrated methane plumes that bloom and dissipate [pdf]. There was a false alarm about a similar briefing a few months ago; is this the real deal?
comment posted at 3:24 AM on Jan-15-09
comment posted at 1:55 PM on Jan-15-09
comment posted at 6:46 PM on Jan-15-09

Obama's People [full-screen slideshow]: one photographer; one background; fifty-two members of the incoming US administration. Oh, and one "significant item" per person. The kind of thing -- not just a political piece, but a photographic project -- that reminds you what the institutional clout of the New York Times can make possible.
comment posted at 3:29 AM on Jan-15-09

Smiles, everyone. Ricardo Montalban dies at 88. The actor may be best remembered for his roles as Mr. Roarke in Fantasy Island and as the malevolent Khan in Star Trek (and, to a younger generation, as the grandfather in Spy Kids, and, to teevee fans, as the hawker of the fine Corinthian leather of the Cordoba), but, after early years of playing Asians (!), the actor might be most important for gaving been one of the few Hispanic actors to get lead roles during the 1950s and 60s. Also, the actor introduced the song "Baby It's Cold Outside," which he never gets credit for.
comment posted at 1:51 PM on Jan-14-09

Reading this could save you two days of intense suffering.
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Jan-14-09

Charlie Corcoran, Bagman of the Morris Ring, believes that Morris dancing (previously) may be on the "brink of extinction". This is what the world would miss. Not everyone is that troubled by the news, however - as assistant librarian at the English Folk Dance and Song Society Elaine Bradtke argues, there are more obscure types of English folk dancing, including (but probably not limited to) Long Sword dancing (a serious-looking dance), Molly dancing (not a very serious dance at all), Rapper dancing (the Welsh miner kind, not the hip-hop kind), Step clog (which needs no introduction), and the English ceilidh (aka barn dancing).
comment posted at 4:35 AM on Jan-13-09

Hochbetrieb [Nuts & Bolts] is a 2003 short from Germany that utilizes live actors and computer-generated effects in tribute to influences ranging from silent comedies to Charles Ebbetts' images of construction crews atop the GE Building, along with a cat & mouse cartoon from MGM guest-starring a baby and a Warner Brothers piece about an amphibian.
comment posted at 3:55 PM on Jan-12-09

Everybody has one -- that album that first made you a music-lover for life. It could be the first album you ever heard or bought with your own money. It could be one you didn't hear until later in life. But everybody has one, and we want to know about yours.
comment posted at 12:09 PM on Jan-10-09

William Zantzinger, who inspired the Bob Dylan song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," died January 3. He was 69 years old.
comment posted at 2:12 PM on Jan-9-09

There's dancing and syrup. Also: cheerleaders and rapping. And mullets.
comment posted at 4:59 PM on Jan-8-09

Salon has an article up which is a pretty solid summary of why marijuana is illegal.
comment posted at 8:07 PM on Jan-7-09

R. Stevie Moore likes to stay home and play himself some music. Having done so for over 42 years--that's over 2000 songs and 400 albums--he has become the undisputed grandfather of do-it-yourself psychedelic pop and punk. Tagged for decades as underground, an outsider and criminally ignored local genius, R. Stevie is now exploiting and exploding that myth, no short thanks to the internets. Here's where he has scattered his recordings; here are two places where he keeps his home-made videos. WFMU archives his pioneering appearances on their great radio station from 1978-1998. Finally, here are two complete albums' worth of his Greatest "Hits": Hobbies Galore (1973-2005) and Tra La La Phooey (1959-2003). Long Live R. Stevie!
comment posted at 8:13 PM on Jan-7-09

An Awesome Book : About the power of dreams. Ostensibly "for children."
comment posted at 10:27 AM on Jan-4-09

Kurt Kuenne is a filmmaker and composer. His light hearted, modern fairy tales have a strange continuity to them. Validation is the story of how free parking can change your life. Rent-A-Person is a musical about restroom attendants and Slow is about the power of travel. But Kurt's work isn't just fairy tales.
comment posted at 6:15 AM on Jan-3-09

What Will Change Everything? - the 2009 Edge Annual Question
comment posted at 1:44 PM on Jan-1-09

In defense of suburbs: "Revolutionary Road," based on Richard Yates's 1961 novel of the same name, is the latest entry in a long stream of art that portrays the American suburbs as the physical correlative to spiritual and mental death.
comment posted at 11:22 AM on Dec-29-08
comment posted at 12:08 PM on Dec-29-08

Before moving on to House (Laurie) and being bloody awesome (Fry), even before Jeeves and Wooster, but after Blackadder I think, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry appeared in an amazing sketch show called A Bit of Fry and Laurie. Fry, in particular, has a way of taking any bit of linguistic madness at all and turning it into something that sounds almost respectable.
To start off, these are calculated to make your brain explode: Tricky Linguistics and Part 2, Buying an Engagement Ring, and The Haircut
comment posted at 5:01 AM on Dec-25-08

"Goat Gland" referred to a completed silent film in which one or more talking sequences/musical numbers were added in an attempt to make the film more marketable to talkie-crazed filmgoers.
comment posted at 4:00 PM on Dec-22-08

The Digital Snow Museum has all kinds of photographs and images of snow around the world. With an assortment of forecasting tools, weather maps, travel reports, info for skiers and snowboarders, a library and art gallery. Let It Snow. For those in the northern hemisphere, December 21st is the Winter Solstice, also known as Yule, the darkest day of the year. From this day until that of Midsummer, the days grow longer. Previously.
comment posted at 4:38 AM on Dec-22-08

When Jesus met Buddha. "Something remarkable happened when evangelists for two great religions crossed paths more than 1,000 years ago: they got along." [Via]
comment posted at 7:14 AM on Dec-20-08

At Sammy's at 2016 Main, on September 8, a historic jam session occurred, an impromptu reunion of many of the city of New Orleans's finest musicians. Each player who walked in the door was much more than a mere musician that night -- they were an affirmation of life. Not only did their attendance indicate that they had survived the storm, but their collective presence also indicated that their music would survive, too.

The New Birth Brass Band (and friends) tears it the hell up in downtown Houston post-Katrina. The whole show is great, but if you're short on time, parts one and three are especially smoking.
comment posted at 9:46 AM on Dec-14-08

The Benny Hillifier. We all know that Yakety Sax makes everything funny, right? Now you can try it out for yourself with any YouTube video. I'll get things started with some violet action, an old favorite bizzarre cat video, and something special that everyone can appreciate.
comment posted at 8:47 AM on Dec-13-08

Interior New York Subway, 14th St. to 42nd St. (1905) (sound added). In June, 1905, G.W. "Billy" Bitzer, D.W. Griffith's cinematographer, mounted a camera at the front of a train and shot 6 1/2 minutes of footage from 14th Street (Union Square) to the old Grand Central Depot, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt and architect John Snook in 1871. At the time of filming, the subway was only seven months old, having opened in October 1904. Two weeks after completing "Interior New York Subway," Bitzer shot "2 AM in the Subway," a comic short about late-night cavorting in an underground station. In March, 1905, Ray Stannard Baker (author of "What is a Lynching") called New York's new subway "a confusion of wonders" -- "the next step in the evolution of a Modern City." It would have its challenges.
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Dec-9-08

Medical studies have indicated that high intelligence is often synonymous with the likelihood of alcoholism and suicidal tendencies. Animal studies have suggested that being smarter can actually be bad for animals...and it's not always an advantage for humans either. There should be a point here, but I'm a little fuzzy on what it is.
comment posted at 4:41 PM on Dec-9-08

Want to hear your favorite song? Just type in the name and it will play. Like magic.
comment posted at 8:22 PM on Dec-8-08

Sadie tells Maurice, "You’re a schmuck! You always were a schmuck and you always will be a schmuck! You look, act and dress like a schmuck! You’ll be a schmuck until the day you die! And if they ran a world-wide competition for schmucks, you would be the world’s second biggest schmuck!" "Why only second place?" Maurice asks. "Because you’re a schmuck!" Sadie screams. Some Jewish humor.
comment posted at 4:36 AM on Dec-8-08

"We know kids growing up in resource-poor environments have more trouble with the kinds of behavioral control that the prefrontal cortex is involved in regulating," Boyce said. "But the fact that we see functional differences in prefrontal cortex response in lower socioeconomic status kids is definitive."
comment posted at 4:54 PM on Dec-7-08

I don't suppose anyone could call John Etheridge famous. He was the president of the Sacred Harp Book Company, the publisher of the Cooper Revision of the Sacred Harp. He was a mainstay of the the Florida State Convention, and the arranger of the popular tune Mercy Seat. And there is an interview with him (and the other board members of the company) as part of the Alabama Arts Radio Series. Still, I don't suppose many know his name. Yet he was "a great man and a great singer," and I suspect that many on Metafilter would be glad to have and to make as much music as John did in his life. John Etheridge died on December 5, 2008.
comment posted at 12:53 PM on Dec-6-08

The Neglected Books Page
comment posted at 4:54 PM on Dec-5-08

So when I was in London some buddies and I went into one of the many all you can eat Chinese restaurants. It was a nice spread too: fish, chicken, steaks all slathered in sauces. "That was great," one of my friends said. "Yeah," I responded. "And all vegetarian, too!" They were dumbfounded. I was apparently the only one who'd noticed the "Vegetarian" sign in the window, and they were all victims of the hoax meat known as Seitan.
comment posted at 3:26 PM on Dec-4-08