Podcasts about beatniks

On Ron's Amazing Stories! Imagine standing at the mythical "Lake of Wisdom," only to find that even shallow waters can reflect the sky. This episode is a quirky dive into unexpected connections, featuring two stories that seem worlds apart—but are they really? Take on Ron's challenge: Can you figure out the twisted thread tying them together? Story 1: Like Man, Somebody Dig Me Series: Suspense Aired: May 25, 1958 Synopsis: A tale straight from the Beatnik era—cool cats, existential dread, and a man determined to exhaust everyone he meets. It's a wild ride through history's most dramatically unimpressed generation. Story 2: The Outer Limit Series: X Minus One Aired: November 11, 1955 Synopsis: Fasten your seatbelts for a leap into the "future"—1965, that is—where experimental rocket tests set the stage for humanity's triumphs and cautionary tales. Spoiler: Things don't go exactly as planned. Did you spot the connection between these two tales? Was it delusion, inspiration, or something more? Share your thoughts—we'd love to hear from you. Thank you for tuning in to Ron's Amazing Stories Episode #690. Don't forget to support the show by starting your free Audible trial at audibletrial.com/ronsmazingstories. Ron's Amazing Stories Is Sponsored by: Audible - You can get a free audiobook and a 30 day free trial at . Your Stories: Do you have a story that you would like to share on the podcast or the blog? Head to the main website, click on Story Submission, leave your story, give it a title, and please tell me where you're from. I will read it if I can. Links are below. Music Used In This Podcast: Most of the music you hear on Ron's Amazing Stories has been composed by Kevin MacLeod () and is Licensed under . Other pieces are in the public domain. You can find great free music at which is a site owned by Kevin. Program Info: Ron's Amazing Stories is published each Thursday. You can download it from , stream it on or on the mobile version of . Do you prefer the radio? We are heard every Thursday at 10:00 pm and Sunday Night at 11:00 PM (EST) on . Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this . Social Links: Contact Links:

Nick and Josh explore a theory of conjuring a fake ghost. The Philip Experiment has led to other theories about how today's psychical societies and social media platforms can create an entity and manifest it into existence. To book a ghost hunt with Stories in the Cemetery in Charleston, SC visit www.storiesinthecemetery.comTo book a paranormal scavenger hunt with Amen Paranormal Research in Pasadena, CA, visit www.amenparanormalresearch.comVisit our sponsor, Magnanimous Beard Superstore and use code "GHOST" at checkout for a $5 discount.Stories in the Cemetery logo created by April McGirr.Music "Renegade" by Beatnik.Resources used for this episode:YouTube Audio from the YT Channel, SpiritSeekers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2lGPT2J1ccWebsites:https://livinglibraryblog.com/the-skippy-experiment/https://theslenderman.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Linxables/Slenderman_Sighting.https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/slender-man-made-me-do-711301/8-scream/https://www.liveabout.com/how-to-create-a-ghost-2594058

Welcome to our new series, “The Beat Goes On,” where we will celebrate the work and enduring influence of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and the other writers whom we identify as “The Beats.” - that crop of artists who worked to expand our consciousness, exploring the hidden possibilities of post WW2 America in the 1950s - Other significant names to be explored: Diane Di Prima, Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Delmore Schwarz, Anne Waldman, Carolyn Cassidy, and many others.We will also include jazz musicians like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie, whose sinuous Bebop lines influenced the expansive prose of Kerouac and poetry of Ginsberg, and comedians like Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Brother Theodore and Dick Gregory with their scathing critique and unmasking of our nation's hypocrisy beneath the self-deceptive rhetoric of American exceptionalism.  And, then there are their artistic children like Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, Tom Waits and Lou Reed…. The list goes on.First off: we need to define that confusing term “beat”… Once the satirists were able to pin them down, the Beats and their devotees were labelled “Beatniks” (a cold war epithet) and put into a farcical box. This is where I, as a child, first became aware of them through the character of Maynard G. Krebs on the Dobie Gillis show. The child-like, pre-hippie with the dirty sweatshirt and goatee, indelibly played by Bob Denver, later of Gilligan fame. He was a gentle figure of fun, not to be taken seriously. But, the truth goes so much deeper. Kerouac defined Beat as short for “beatitude” - a state of grace, a codex for the maturing “peace and love” Baby Boom generation coming up - those in search of existence's deeper meaning beyond the consumerist and war-like American culture being offered as our only option.Well, boy, do we need them now! HENRY MILLER INTERVIEWOur inaugural offering is a 1964 interview with the writer Henry Miller, of TROPIC OF CANCER, TROPIC OF CAPRICORN, and THE ROSY CRUCIFIXION TRILOGY fame, among many others. This is an insightful, in depth look at a artist of gargantuan influence. Miller was interviewed by Audrey June Wood  in Minneapolis during a speaking tour; he considered this interview to be one of his best. Miller discourses on some of his favorite books and authors and the struggle of writing well. It was released on Smithsonian/ Folkways Records.Strictly speaking, Miller was not a Beat - he preceded them, and out lived many of them, making it to 88 in 1980, but he was their spiritual and artistic pathfinder.Living hand to mouth, on the edge, abroad in Paris, writing free form in a raw, explicit, semi-autobiographical manner, telling the truth about sex, love, art, and struggle - he set the artistic compass for the Beats - as Dostoevsky and Walt Whitman had done before him. They are all part of a chain - a chain of searchers, and we are fortunate to have these lights to guide us on our own personal journeys to self realization. Please enjoy…THE BEAT GOES ON. 

What's it like to headline a stage at Glastonbury? Who is more fun to hang out with, Mickey Rourke or Alan Titchmarsh? What item you could buy from a Robert Dyas does Mariah Carey insist on having at her parties? Answering all these questions is DJ Nikki Beatnik! She tells us about Mums That Rave and how her amazing daytime parties are taking over the world. There's a bit of serious chat as we discuss sexism in the music and theatre industries. And we talk about the trials of accepting a prestigious award while simultaneously trying to sort out your son's Roblox login. Plus, we play an amazing round of True or False, and find out how Nikki managed to offend Jordan from New Kids on the Block. We bloody LOVE Mums That Rave and strongly suggest you get yourself down there - this week's event is sold out, but tickets are available for Birmingham on 7 June and London on 12 July. Go to mumsthatrave.com and follow Nikki @djnikkibeatnik and @mumsthatrave.WE ARE BACK ON THE ROAD! Our new show Hot Mess is coming to theatres all over the country in 2025 and beyond. Many shows are SOLD OUT already so get your tickets NOW for Chelmsford, Worthing, Cardiff, Worcester, Trowbridge, Wellingborough, Maidstone, Dorchester, Brighton, Henley-on-Thames, Nottingham, Taunton, and many more... Visit scummymummies.com for dates and tickets. *WE HAVE A SHOP!* Visit scummymummiesshop.com for our ace t-shirts, mugs, washbags, sweatshirts and beach towels. FREE UK DELIVERY! We're on X, Instagram, and Facebook @scummymummies. If you like the podcast, please rate, review and subscribe. Thank you for listening! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chronique de Manu Di Pietro Merci pour votre écoute N'hésistez pas à vous abonner également aux podcasts des séquences phares de Matin Première: L'Invité Politique : https://audmns.com/LNCogwPL'édito politique « Les Coulisses du Pouvoir » : https://audmns.com/vXWPcqxL'humour de Matin Première : https://audmns.com/tbdbwoQRetrouvez tous les contenus de la RTBF sur notre plateforme Auvio.be Retrouvez également notre offre info ci-dessous : Le Monde en Direct : https://audmns.com/TkxEWMELes Clés : https://audmns.com/DvbCVrHLe Tournant : https://audmns.com/moqIRoC5 Minutes pour Comprendre : https://audmns.com/dHiHssrEt si vous avez apprécié ce podcast, n'hésitez pas à nous donner des étoiles ou des commentaires, cela nous aide à le faire connaître plus largement. Distribué par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

Beatniks: soft-spoken poets with a flair for jazz, turtlenecks, and late-night musings—perfect for sleep, relaxation, and winding down. Want More? Request a topic: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/request-a-topic Listen ad-free & support the show: https://icantsleep.supportingcast.fm/ Shop sleep-friendly stuff: https://www.icantsleeppodcast.com/sponsors This content is derived from the Wikipedia article on Beatnik, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license. Read the full article: Wikipedia – Beatnik. Next Week on the I Can't Sleep Podcast

Support us on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/user?u=4279967Jack Benny TV Videocasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/6BDar4CsgVEyUloEQ8sWpw?si=89123269fe144a10Jack Benny Show OTR Podcast!https://open.spotify.com/show/3UZ6NSEL7RPxOXUoQ4NiDP?si=987ab6e776a7468cJudy Garland and Friends OTR Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/5ZKJYkgHOIjQzZWCt1a1NN?si=538b47b50852483dStrange New Worlds Of Dimension X-1 Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/6hFMGUvEdaYqPBoxy00sOk?si=a37cc300a8e247a1Buck Benny YouTube Channelhttps://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrOoc1Q5bllBgQA469XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1707891281/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2f%40BuckBenny/RK=2/RS=nVp4LDJhOmL70bh7eeCi6DPNdW4-Support us on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/user?u=4279967

To book a Paranormal Scavenger Hunt with Josh in Pasadena, CA, check the schedule for available dates.You can also see Josh Amen's work at www.amenparanormalresearch.com.Check out our sponsor, Magnanimous Beard Superstore and use code "GHOST" at checkout!Music "Renegade" provided by Beatnik

Josh and I research how the unique instrument, called a theremin, could be used in paranormal investigating. If you are an electronics guru and would like to collaborate with us to create a brand new idea into the paranormal field, feel free to reach out to us at storiesinthecemetery@gmail.comArticle/Blog post for this episode: https://storiesinthecemetery.com/what-the-hell-is-a-theremin-and-how-can-we-use-it-for-paranormal-investigating/Music "Renegade" provided by Beatnik.References used to create this episode.Burton, T. (Director). (1993). The Nightmare Before Christmas [Film]. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1Cendrowski, M. (Director). (2011, January 6). The Bus Pants Utilization (Season 4, Episode 12) [TV series episode]. In The Big Bang Theory. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632227/?ref_=ttep_ep_12Cendrowski, M. (Director). (2013). Sheldon's Theremin [Film]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YYABE0R3uA (Original work published 2011)Eyck, C. (Director). (2021). Sally's Song [Film]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhtZh9nR6ZgLed Zeppelin (Director). (1973). Led Zeppelin: The Song Remains the Same – “Whole Lotta Love” Clip [Film]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPhXm-UPfEULeon Theremin | Lemelson. (n.d.). Lemelson-MIT. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/leon-thereminMalewar, A. (2016, October 31). Theremin: The Musical Instrument That You Never Touch To Play. Tech Explorist. Retrieved February 27, 2025, from https://www.techexplorist.com/theremin-musical-instrument-never-touch-play/4027/Sussman, E. (Director). (1999). The Theremin: How it Works [Film]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxagF-SczIE

Join us for an inspiring episode of Studio Stories as we dive into the remarkable journey of Andre, also known as Dres that BEATnik. Originally from Philadelphia, PA, Andre moved to Atlanta, GA in July 1995 with just $200 and a fierce determination to make a new home. Faced with challenges and setbacks, including a tough experience with an employer, Andre chose the path of independence, ensuring he'd never work under someone else's terms again. 3:08 Finding His Voice in Music5:01 Building Community in Atlanta21:53 Philanthropic Efforts and Personal Challenges24:47 Advice for Aspiring Artists Growing up surrounded by the sounds of R&B and gospel, and later embracing hip-hop as a powerful means of self-expression, Andre dedicated his life to creating safe and nurturing spaces for artists. His philosophy of fostering comfort and creativity has guided his 50-year journey, during which he's hosted over 23,000 events and built a career making people feel at home. Tune in to hear Andre's story of perseverance, creativity, and staying true to one's purpose, no matter the odds. His love for music, ability to connect across cultures, and dedication to inspiring audiences worldwide will leave you motivated and ready to chase your dreams.patreon.com/TheMarketingMadMen: https://www.nick-constantino.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Collage · Wenn man Bob Dylan im Hören denkt oder im Denken hört, bekommt Geschichte wieder Sound. Eigenwillige Coverversionen von Dylankennern wie Klaus Theweleit, Elfriede Jelinek, Marlene Streeruwitz, und Elisabeth Bronfen. | Von Theo Roos und Günther Janssen | Mit Alan Bangs, Sibylle Canonica, Danny Dziuk, Stefan Hunstein, Sophie von Kessel und anderen | Komposition: Bob Dylan | Regie: Theo Roos/Günther Janssen | BR 2001 | Podcast-Tipp: Andreas Ammer: "Thank Bob for Beatniks". Musikalisches Hörspiel über den Beatpoeten Bob Kaufman: https://1.ard.de/thankbobforbeatniks

INTERVIEW: Becca Caffyn, IVY, and The Beatniks on upcoming Ubar Ori'25 gig by Jack Knowles on Radio One 91FM Dunedin

We're looking at a Stingray tale this time, and were surprised at how much we enjoyed watching Titan Go Pop.

  [Ch 1] "Noise from the Hearts of Nerds" - “C1R7: The Best of 2024”    ———————————————————  ———————————————————  ———————————————————    Today's broadcast is  C1R7 for Wayback Wednesday, January 15th, 2025. Today's broadcast will be "The Best of 2024" - our look back at the previous year of Channel 1 as well as Channel 2 not already featured in the Ch 2 retrospectives.    Tracklist!     Track# / Track / Game / System / Composer(s) / Original Episode(s) / Originally Selected By / Timestamp     A1) Intro - 00:00:00     01) Connected (Yours Forever) - Tetris Effect: Connected - Multiplatform - Hydelic / Vocals: Kate Brady - C2E16 - St. John - 00:04:19     02) White Summit Prob Naberius - Phantasy Star Online 2 - Multiplatform - Hideki Kobayashi, Mitsuharu Fukuyama, Kenichi Tokoi, Tadashi Kinukawa, and/or Chihiro Aoki - C1E81 - St. John - 00:09:40     03) The Power of GT - Gran Turismo 5 - PS3 - Yudai Saitoh - C1E87 - St. John - 00:17:02     04) Fantavision 202X - Fantavision 202X - Multiplatform - Soichi Terada - C1E87 - St. John - 00:21:06     05) World B - Art of Balance - Multiplatform - Martin Schjøler - C1E83 / C1E84 - St. John - 00:22:05     06) Starmine - Fantavision (JP) - PS2 - Soichi Terada - C1E84 - St. John - 00:24:24     07) Green Hill Zone - Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis - Masato Nakamura - C1E90 - Hugues - 00:28:31     08) The Silence of Daylight - Castlevania II - NES - Kenichi Matsubara, Satoe Terashima, and/or Kouji Murata - C1E81 - St. John - 00:30:09     09) Brinstar - Metroid - NES - Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka - C1E89 - Hugues - 00:31:38     10) Garden - Die Hard - PC Engine - Kenji Yoshida - C1E82 - St. John - 00:33:21     11) Missions 2-2- and 4 - Rambo III - Genesis - Kazuhiko Nagai - C1E82 - St. John - 00:35:17     12) BGM 2 - Shinobi - PC Engine - Yasuhiro Kawakami - C1E85 - St. John - 00:37:31     13) Forest of Elrond - Wizards and Warriors - NES - David Wise - C1E90 - Hugues - 00:39:01     14) Underwater - TMNT - NES - Jun Funahashi and/or Hidenori Maezawa - C1E83 / C1E84 - St. John - 00:41:02     15) Beatnik on the Ship - Streets of Rage - Genesis - Yuzo Koshiro - C1E84 / C1E89 - St. John (84) / Hugues (89) - 00:42:51     16) Lab Theme - Ninja Gaiden - Genesis (unreleased) - Unknown - C2E18 - St. John - 00:45:03     17) Puzzle - 3D Tetris - VirtualBoy - Ken Kojima - C2E19 - Hugues - 00:46:50     18) Attack the Barbarian - Streets of Rage - Genesis - Yuzo Koshiro - C1E85 - St. John - 00:49:30     19) Never Return Alive - Streets of Rage 2 - Genesis - Yuzo Koshiro and/or Motohiro Kawashima - C1E85 - St. John - 00:52:14     20) Club Tigre - Final Vendetta - Multiplatform - Futurecast and/or Utah Saints - C1E87 - St. John - 00:55:48     21) Dice Dance Days - Gunstar Heroes - Genesis - Norio Hanzawa - C1E82 - St. John - 00:59:10     22) Neo Kobe Steel Factory - Contra III: The Alien Wars - SNES - Miki Higashino, Masanori Adachi, Tappi Iwase, and/or Aki Hata - C1E82 - St. John - 01:01:17     23) Alley / Sewer - Dick Tracy - Genesis - STI Sound Team - C1E82 - St. John - 01:05:01     24) The Demons from Adrian's Pen - DOOM - PC (OPL3) - Bobby Prince - C2E17 - St. John - 01:06:46     25) Chinatown - Revenge of Shinobi - Genesis - Yuzo Koshiro - C1E90 - Hugues - 01:09:26     26) The Last Soul - Streets of Rage - Genesis - Yuzo Koshiro - C1E83 / C1E84 - St. John - 01:12:10     27) Confronting Myself - Celeste - Multiplatform - Lena Raine - C1E86 - St. John - 01:15:33     28) Norfair - Metroid - NES - Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka - C1E85 - St. John - 01:19:40     29) Bootup Sequence - N/A (System Music) - FM Towns Marty - Unknown - C2E17 - St. John - 01:21:31     30) Taste of Blood - Portal - Multiplatform - Kelly Baily and/or Mike Morasky - C1E87 - St. John - 01:23:03     31) Wavebreaker - Zenses Ocean - DS - Martin Schjøler - C1E87 - St. John - 01:25:57     32) Shell Twirl - Zenses Ocean - DS - Martin Schjøler - C1E87 - St. John - 01:28:30     33) World E - Art of Balance - Multiplatform - Martin Schjøler - C1E81 - St. John - 01:30:39     34) Starmine - Fantavision (PAL) - PS2 - Jim Croft - C1E87 - St. John - 01:32:54     35) Love and Peace - Gran Turismo 5 - PS3 - Kemmei Adachi - C1E87 - St. John - 01:36:50     36) Home - n++ Multiplatform - Marcel Dettman - C1E84 - St. John - 01:41:06     37) Prologue - Celeste - Multiplatform - Lena Raine - C1E86 - St. John - 01:46:04     38) The Hanging Edge - Final Fantasy XIII - PS3/XB360 - Masashi Hamauzu - C1E81 - St. John - 01:47:08     39) The Corridors of Time - Chrono Trigger - SNES - Yasunori Mitsuda - C1E81 - St. John - 01:50:27     40) Crossing3084 - Phantasy Star Online - Dreamcast - Hideaki Kobayashi, and/or Fumie Kumatani - C1E90 - Hugues - 01:53:18     41) Beautiful Morning - Danganronpa 2 - PSP - Masafumi Takada - C1E90 - Hugues - 01:57:22     42) World F - Art of Balance - Multiplatform - Martin Schjøler - C1E84 - St. John - 02:01:22     43) Kraft und Licht - n++ - Multiplatform - Len Faki - C1E83 / C1E84 - St. John - 02:04:44     44) VR Sneaking - Metal Gear Solid 2 - PS2 - c: Iku Mizutani, Shigehiro Takenouchi, and/or Motoaki Furukawa / a: Norihiko Hibino - C1E88 - St. John - 02:11:41     45) Sudden Beautiful Lie - Danganronpa V3 - Vita - Masafumi Takada - C1E89 - Hugues - 02:14:24     46) Starshell - Futuri no Fantavision - PS2 - Soichi Terada - C1E87 - St. John - 02:18:17     47) Tokyo Daylight - Persona 5 - Multiplatform - Shōji Meguro - C1E90 - Hugues - 02:20:12     48) Passing Breeze - Outrun - Arcade - Hiroshi Kawaguchi - C1E88 / C1E89 - St. John (88) / Hugues (89) - 02:23:50     49) Theme - Space Harrier - Arcade - Hiroshi Kawaguchi - C1E90 - Hugues - 02:29:30     50) End Credits - Mega Man 3 - NES - Yasuaki Fujita and/or Harumi Fujita - C2E20 - St. John - 02:33:25     B1) Outro - 02:36:14     Music Block Runtime: 02:31:58 / Total Episode Runtime: 02:51:01     Our customary Channel 1 intro and outro music, which did not appear today is Funky Radio, from Jet Grind Radio, on the Sega Dreamcast - composed by BB Rights. Our special year-in-review intro and outro music are, respectively, Results Theme from Metroid Prime on the GameCube, composed by Kenji Yamamoto, and Results Parade, from the Check Mii Out Channel on the Wii, composed by Kazumi Totaka.    Produced using a nearly equal mix of Audacity and Ardour in Fedora Linux on an ASUS ROG Zephyrus 14 (2023) laptop with perhaps a little support from a Dell Latitude 7480 (also running Fedora Linux) or the Steam Deck (running Steam OS). Recorded with a Shure SM7B XLR dynamic microphone on a RØDE PSA1+ boom arm through a Cloudlifter and a Focusrite 4i4 XLR-to-USB interface!    You can also find all of our audio episodes on https://archive.org/details/@nerd_noise_radio as well as the occasional additional release only available there, such as remixes of previous releases and other content.    Our YouTube Channel, for the time being is in dormancy, but will be returning with content, hopefully, in 2022. Meanwhile, all the old stuff is still there, and can be found here:     https://www.youtube.com/user/NerdNoiseRadio    Occasional blogs and sometimes expanded show notes can be found here:    nerdnoiseradio.blogspot.com.    Nerd Noise Radio is also available on The Retro Junkies Network at www.theretrojunkies.com, and is a member of the VGM Podcast Fans community at     https://www.facebook.com/groups/VGMPodcastFans/    We are also a member of Podcasters of Des Moines at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1782895868426870/    Or, if you wish to connect with us directly, we have two groups of our own:     Nerd Noise Radio - Easy Mode: https://www.facebook.com/groups/276843385859797/ for sharing tracks, video game news, or just general videogame fandom.    Nerd Noise Radio - Expert Mode: https://www.facebook.com/groups/381475162016534/ for going deep into video game sound hardware, composer info, and/or music theory.    Or you can reach us by e-mail at nerd.noise.radio@gmail.com    You can also follow us on X (Twitter) at https://twitter.com/NerdNoiseRadio , Threads at https://www.threads.net/@nerdnoiseradio , Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nerdnoiseradio?igsh=MWF4NjBpdGVxazUxYw== , Mastodon at https://universeodon.com/@NerdNoiseRadio , and BlueSky at  And we are also now on Spotify, TuneIn, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Vurbl, Amazon Music and Audible! There is technically a Discord channel, but we may or may not ever take it public!    Thanks for listening! Join us again later this month for C1E91 (Channel 1, Episode 91):Mishmash Monday – vol. 16 - Delicious VGM on "Noise from the Hearts of Nerds"! And wherever you are - Fly the N!   

Welcome to the 2025 Season with new co-host, Joshua Amen from Tales From a Ghost Hunter. This episode kicks off a great conversation about how EMF Meters work, what they truly measure and a full review of the new EMF Mic and it's capabilities. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on this very deep conversations of the mechanics of ghost hunting gear and other outside the box thinking of paranormal investigating. Music "Renegade" provided by BeatNik. Our new sponsor! Magnanimous Beard Products. Use code "GHOST" for a discount at checkout. Our merch has moved over to TeePublic! Over 50 designs available for the paranormal enthusiast!

Welcome to episode 131 of Holly Jolly X'masu! In this special Christmas Day episode, I talk about the truly amazing 1971 album by the Warner Beatniks, “Rock Christmas Rock.” I hope you enjoyed “Rock Christmas Rock,” and that you were able to make it part of your Christmas celebration. It's one of the most unbelievable albums in my collection, and I'm lucky to have a copy. Have a Merry Christmas, then be sure to listen in next week for my special New Year's Eve episode. I'll be talking about the 1979 album, “Christmas Carol With Go Go,” by Korean guitarist Ra Eum Pa. It's another fantastic album you're sure to enjoy. As always, any feedback on this episode would be appreciated. If have any suggestions, or if you'd like to recommend a song or album for a future episode, drop me a line and let me know. Remember, I've added a button to my Ko-fi page. If you'd like to support me one cup of coffee at a time, a donation is only $3. I've also opened a Redbubble store. I only have a couple designs up, but keep an eye on it as I'll be trying to add more. Half of any proceeds or donations received will be donated to support the people of Ukraine, while the rest will be used to purchase new Japanese Christmas music to review for future episodes. You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And if you get a chance, leave me a review on iTunes. Thanks!

Hello Interactors,Language shapes power, but it can also obscure and manipulate. Words like woke and decolonize, rooted in justice, are now tools for distortion by figures like Trump and Modi. In this essay, we'll explore how these terms connect to economic and political geography, tracing their co-opting, parallels to colonialism, and the need to reclaim their transformative potential. Let's dig in — and stay woke.STAY WOKE, START TALKINGAre you woke? It's a provocative question these days. Especially since this term was co-opted by the right as a pejorative since the Black Lives Matter uprising of 2020. Even last June Trump said regarding so-called woke military generals, “I would fire them. You can't have woke military.”And then there's Elon Musk. He's been increasingly waging a war on what he calls the ‘woke mind virus'. It seems he started abusing the term in 2021, along with other political rhetoric he's been ramping up in recently. The Economist reports a “leap in 2023 and 2024 in talk of immigration, border control, the integrity of elections and the ‘woke mind virus'.”Folks more on the left are also starting to distance themselves from the term or use it as a pejorative. Including some of my friends. Even self-described leftist and socialist, Susan Neiman criticized "wokeness," in her 2023 book Left Is Not Woke. She argues, as do many, that it has become antithetical to traditional leftist values — especially as it becomes a weapon by the right.According to the definition in the Cambridge dictionary, I am decidedly woke. That means I'm “aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.” It worries me that people are eagerly running from this word. I'd rather they interrogate it. Understand it. Find it's meanings and question the intent behind its use. We should be discussing these nuances, not shushing them.Using the word in a sentence (in an approving manner), Cambridge offers hints at one of the original meanings: “She urged young black people to stay woke.” In 1938 the great blues legend Lead Belly also urged “everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Scottsboro, Alabama) – best stay woke, keep their eyes open." Those are spoken words in his song "Scottsboro Boys", about nine young Black men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama seven years earlier in 1931.Not a decade before, the Jamaican philosopher and social activist Marcus Garvey wrote in 1923, "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!" Fifty years later that inspired playwright and novelist Barry Beckham to write “Garvey Lives!”, a 1972 play that included this line, “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon stay woke.” #StayWoke was trending on Twitter the summer of 2020.In 1962, ten years before Beckham's play, novelist William Melvin Kelley wrote this headline for a piece in the New York Times Magazine: “If You're Woke You Dig It; No mickey mouse can be expected to follow today's Negro idiom without a hip assist. If You're Woke You Dig It.” The article, which is an uneasy glimpse of how mainstream media regarded Black people in 1962, is about how white people co-opt terms from the Black community. His target was white woke Beatniks of the 1960s.Awakening others to injustice in the United States may have originated with white folks inspired by Abraham Lincoln. In the lead up to the his 1860 election, the, then woke, Republican Party helped organize a paramilitary youth movement in the Northern states called the ‘Wide Awakes'. These activists, which included some Black people, were inspired by Lincoln's fight to abolish slavery and promote workers' rights.They took up arms to defend Republican politicians who brazenly awakened others to injustices in America in their campaign speeches. This armed aggression — especially armed Black men — in part is what woke the South to the dawning wokeness across the North. Frightened as they were, they organize their own paramilitary and soon a civil war broke out.RECLAIM, RESIST, REVIVEWords can have unusual lifecycles. The term "queer" evolved from a pejorative label for homosexuals to a term of empowerment. Particularly after the activism of the 1960s and 1970s, including the Stonewall Riots. Its reclamation was reinforced by academic queer theory, which critiques societal norms around sexuality and gender. Today, "queer" is widely embraced as a self-identifier that reflects pride and resistance against stigma.Christopher Hobson, of the Substack Imperfect Notes, suggested in a post about the word polycrisis, this progression of terminology:Proposed — A new word or meaning is introduced through individuals, cultural interactions, academia, or mass media.Adopted — A word or meaning is embraced by a community, shaped by social relevance and media influence.Spread — Diffusion occurs through social networks and media exposure, leading to wider acceptance.Critiqued — As words gain popularity, they face scrutiny from linguistic purists and cultural commentators. The appropriateness of a term can be questioned, highlighting the intent behind its dissemination.Institutionalized — Widely used words become institutionalized, appearing in dictionaries and everyday language as standards.Hobson adds one other stage that is particularly relevant today, ‘pipiked.' It's a term he ‘adopted' as ‘proposed' and I'm now ‘spreading'. It comes from Naomi Klein's book, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Hobson writes:"A useful concept she introduces is ‘pipikism', which she takes from Philip Roth's, Operation Shylock, one of the texts about doppelgangers that Klein engages with. She quote's Roth's description of ‘pipikism' as ‘the antitragic force that inconsequencializes everything—farcicalizes everything, trivializes everything, superficializes everything.' This captures the way in which the concepts and frames we use to help understand our world are rendered useless by bad actors and bad faith, caught in ‘a knot of seriousness and ridiculousness that would never be untangled.'" (3)This lifecycle certainly applies to the word woke, but let's turn to a term more closely related to economic geography that's also in the cross-hairs of being ‘pipiked' — decolonize.Like woke, the term decolonize began as a call to dismantle injustice, exposing the deep roots of exploitation in European colonial systems. It symbolized hope for liberation and justice for the oppressed. Over time, like many critical terms, its meaning shifted. Once radical, decolonize risks becoming performative as its potency weakens through co-optation, especially by bad faith actors.Narendra Modi exemplifies this, using decolonization rhetoric to promote Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist agenda. His government renames cities, revises textbooks to erase Muslim rulers like the Mughals, and marginalizes minorities, particularly Muslims, under the guise of rejecting British colonial legacies. This parallels America's own rewriting of history to reinforce a white Christian narrative. Protestant colonizers replaced Indigenous names and erased Native perspectives, reframing days like Thanksgiving, a time of mourning for many, into celebratory myths.DOCTRINES, DISSENT, AND DOMINIONEarly colonial educational curricula framed colonization as a divine mission to civilize the so-called savages. Native Americans were often depicted as obstacles to progress rather than as sovereign peoples with rich cultures and governance systems. Systems, like the Iroquois League, impressed and inspired the early framers of American government, like Benjamin Franklin.But it was Christian dogma like the Doctrine of Discovery, a theological justification for seizing Indigenous land, that was integrated into educational and legal frameworks. Slavery was sanitized in textbooks to diminish its horrors, portraying it as a benign or even benevolent system. Early 20th-century textbooks referred to enslaved people as “workers” and omitted the violence of chattel slavery.Early colonizers established theological institutions like Harvard University, originally intended to train ministers and propagate Christian doctrine. My own family lineage is culpable. I've already written about Jonas Weed (circa 1610–1676), a Puritan minister who helped colonize Weathersfield, Connecticut. But there's also the brother of my ninth Mother, Jonathan Mitchell (1624–1668). He was a Harvard graduate and Puritan minister who played a pivotal role in shaping the Protestant-oriented writing of American history.He promoted a Christian God-given view of history, framing events as manifestations of God's will. He emphasized covenant theology that cast Puritans as a chosen people. As a fellow at Harvard, he shaped the intellectual environment that influenced figures like Cotton Mather, who's Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) depicted New England as a "city upon a hill" destined to fulfill a divine mission. JFK ripped this quote from history, as did Reagan and Obama to further their campaigns but also to ingrain messages that started with people like Mitchell and Mather.Institutions like the church and universities advanced Christian-nationalist ideologies that justified colonial rule, marginalizing Indigenous, African, and non-European cultures by framing European Christian values as superior. European imperial powers reshaped local economies for their gain, turning colonies into sources of raw materials and markets for goods. Monocultures like sugar and cotton left regions vulnerable, while urban centers prioritized resource export over local needs, fostering uneven development.By the mid-20th century, America had risen to global dominance, cementing its power through institutions like the IMF and World Bank, which reinforced economic dependencies. Decolonization movements emerged in response, with nations in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean seeking justice and sovereignty. Yet many former colonies remain trapped in systemic inequalities shaped by imperial and American influence. While initiatives like the G-77 — a UN coalition of developing nations promoting collective economic interests and South-South cooperation — aim to reshape global systems, progress remains slow and resistance strong.Today, Project 2025 seeks to revive Christian-nationalist doctrines, echoing colonial practices. Signs of rising authoritarianism, white Christian nationalism, and silencing dissent are evident. The Levant, too, reflects another iteration of the colonial Doctrine of Discovery — seizing land and subjugating oppressed populations under theological justifications.Even in the early days of American colonization, there were woke voices. One of them happened to be another ancestor of mine. My tenth grandfather, Stephen Bachiler (circa 1561–1656) was an English clergyman and an early advocate for the separation of church and state. His life exemplified the struggles for religious autonomy in early American history, but also the importance of sustained critique of power and injustice.Educated at St. John's College, Oxford, he became the vicar of Wherwell but was ousted in 1605 for his Puritan beliefs. At nearly 70, he left to New England in 1632 to establish the First Church of Lynn near Boston. It was there it is assumed he cast the sole vote against the expulsion of Roger Williams — a proponent of equitable treatment of Native Americans and a fellow Separatist.Both men showed a commitment to religious freedom, tolerance, and fair dealings. While they were clearly colonizers and missionaries, each with their own religion, they were also relatively woke. They showed the importance of a sustained quest for liberty and justice amid prevailing authoritarian orthodoxies.Trump wields language as a tool to cement his prevailing authoritarian orthodoxies. He surrounds himself with figures who reduce substantive critical discourse to noise. His media allies, from Fox News to populist voices like Joe Rogan, amplify his rhetoric, diverting attention from systemic injustices. These platforms trivialize urgent issues, overshadowing genuine grievances with performative derision and bad faith gestures.When language meant to confront injustice is co-opted, maligned, or muted, its power is diminished. Performative actions can “pipikize” critical terms, rendering them absurd or hollow while leaving entrenched problems untouched — many rooted in centuries of European colonization. Yet Trump's alignment with a new breed of colonization deepens these issues.Figures like Elon Musk and JD Vance, champions of libertarian techno-optimism, feed into Trump's agenda. Musk dreams of private cities and space colonies free from governmental oversight, while Vance benefits from Silicon Valley backers like Peter Thiel, who pour millions into advancing deregulation and creating self-governing enclaves.These visions are the new face of colonialism — enclaves of privilege where exploitation thrives, disconnected from democratic accountability. They mirror the hierarchies and exclusions of the past, dressed as innovation but steeped in familiar patterns of dominance.In this age of populism — another word twisted and worn thin — vigilance is essential. Language must be scrutinized not just for its use but for its intent. Without this, we risk falling into complacency, lulled by superficial gestures and farcical displays. Stay awake. Words can preserve the power to transform — but only when their intent remains grounded in uprooting injustice and inhumanity.References:* Cambridge Dictionary. Definition of woke. * Economist. (2024). Immigration, border control, and the ‘woke mind virus': Tracking political rhetoric. * Hobson, Christopher. (Sep 13, 2024). Imperfect Notes: In conversation with Pete Chambers. * Klein, Naomi. (2023). Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.* Macmillan Publishers. (2023). Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy. * Neiman, Susan. (2023). Left Is Not Woke. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.* New York Times Magazine. (1962). Kelley, William Melvin. If You're Woke You Dig It; No Mickey Mouse Can Be Expected to Follow Today's Negro Idiom Without a Hip Assist.* Press, Eyal. (2012). Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.* Roth, Philip. (1993). Operation Shylock: A Confession. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.* Time Magazine. (2023). India's textbook revisions spark controversy over history and ideology. * Walker, Corinne A. (2024). Aeon. What is behind the explosion in talk about decolonisation. * Dull, Jonathan. (2021). Post-Colonialism: Understanding the Past to Change the Future. World History Connected, 18(1), 125–142. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Grab your copy of From Russia With Love and suck those LSD-infused corners with us as we trip out in New York City with Beatniks, Bohemians and off-Broadway performers. Just watch out for those Mafioso drug dealers - they have shoes in your size and they're not afraid to use them.We would love to hear from you if you have any favourite psychedelic Italian films, or if you've ever danced naked in one of Manhattan's fountains. You can contact us on Twitter and Instagram or by email at wildwildpodcast@gmail.com. You can also find our YouTube channel here.We also now have a small but developing merch store on Zazzle, so check it out if you have always wanted to wear our logo in public.Please also remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice!If you enjoy the podcast, why not buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/wildwildpodcast? Espresso, naturally. Grazie mille! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this minipod, Bina007 discusses the 1966 murder-mystery starring Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver. Seen as lower-tier Christie, Bina appreciates its evocation of Beatnik drug-addled Chelsea even if there are some plot holes. Spoiler free to 25m15s. [MP3] Download or play … Continue reading →

Today's broadcast is C1E89 for Theme Thursday, November 14th, 2024. Today's Broadcast is part 1 of a 2 part series on music from 100 of Hugues' favorite games as a part of his "farewell tour" to podcasting – 50 apiece for the occasion of his upcoming 50th birthday – curated, produced, and hosted by Hugues himself - on a program we're calling "Turning 50 – The A-Sides"    Tracklist!     Track# / Track / Game / System / Composer(s) / Timestamp     A1) Earcatcher - 00:00:00    A2) Intro - 00:01:37     01) Entrance - Shadowgate - NES - Hiroyuki Masuno - 00:03:45     02) The Moon - Duck Tales - NES - Hiroshige Tonomura - 00:04:56     03) Level Theme 1 - TMNT - NES - Konami Kukeiha Club - 00:05:44     04) Brinstar - Metroid - NES - Hirokazu Tanaka - 00:07:27     05) Map 3 - Super Mario Bros 3 - NES - Hirokazu Tanaka - 00:09:09     06) I wanna Close to You - Misty Blue - PC88 - Yuzo Koshiro - 00:11:10     07) Casino Night Zone - Sonic 2 - Genesis - Masato Nakamura - 00:13:52     08) Planet Dezoris - Phantasy Star 2 - Genesis - Tokuhiko Uwabo - 00:16:02     09) Robo's Theme - Chrono Trigger - Super Nintendo - Yasunori Mitsuda - 00:16:55     10) Fight 2 - Final Fantasy IV - SNES - Nobuo Uematsu - 00:18:22     11) MEGALOMANIA - Live-A-Live - Super Famicom - Yoko Shimomura - 00:20:38     12) Beatnik on the Ship - Streets of Rage - Genesis - 00:22:07     13) A Breach of Contract - Herzog Zwei - Genesis - 00:26:29     14) Terra - Final Fantasy VI - SNES - Nobuo Uematsu - 00:33:07     15) Into the Thick of It - Secret of Mana - SNES - Hiroki Kikuta - 00:33:07     16) The Road is Full of Dangers - Super Mario RPG - SNES - Yoko Shimomura - 00:37:12     17) Aquatic Ambiance - Donkey Kong Country - SNES - David Wise - 00:38:42     18) Town - Phantasy Star III - Genesis - Izuho Numata - 00:42:01     19) Normal Game - Puzzle Bobble - Arcade - Kazuko Umino and/or Yasuko Yamada - 00:44:34     20) The Girl who Stole the Stars - Radical Dreamers - Satellaview - Yasunori Mitsuda - 00:47:34     21) Last Moment of the Dark - Ys Book I & II - TG16 - Falcom Sound Team jdk (Yuzo Koshiro) - 00:50:46     22) Track 3.5 - Cosmic Fantasy 2 - TG16 - Shingo Murakami and/or Hisao Inoue - 00:53:06     23) BGM 3 - Graduation II: Neo Generation - PC Engine - NEC Avenue - 00:54:07     24) Crowded Street Corner - Lunar 2: Eternal Blue - Sega CD - Noriyuki Iwadare - 00:56:12     25) Country Selection - Jaguar XJ220 - Sega CD - Martin Iveson - 00:59:08     26) Thermal Resolution - Tempest 2000 - Jaguar - Ian Howe, Alistair Lindsay, Kevin Saville, and/or Julian Hodgson - 01:01:32     27) Time's Scar - Chrono Cross - PS1 - Yasunori Mitsuda - 01:05:26     28) The Man with the Machine Gun - Final Fantasy VIII - PS1 - Nobuo Uematsu - 01:07:47     29) Forest Temple - LoZ: Ocarina of Time - N64 - Koji Kondo - 01:10:33     30) Nozomi and Ryo - Shenmue - Dreamcast - Osamu Murata - 01:12:26     31) Eternity ~Memory of Lightwaves~ - Final Fantasy X-2 - PS2 - Noriko Matsueda and/or Takhito Eguchi - 01:16:17     32) Midna's Lament - LoZ: Twilight Princess - GameCube - Toru Minegishi, Asuka Ohta, Koji Kondo, and/or Mahito Yokota - 01:18:45     33) Rokka - Grandia Xtreme - PS2 - Noriyuki Iwadare - 01:21:49     34) Windfall Island - LoZ: Wind Waker - GameCube - Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Asuka Hayazaki, and/or Atsuko Asahi - 01:25:56     35) Golf Select - Wii Sports - Wii - Kazumi Totaka - 01:27:07     36) Crazy Dave (Intro Theme) - Plants vs Zombies - iOS / Android - Laura Shigihara - 01:28:02     37) Land of Light and Shadow - Bravely Default - DS - Revo - 01:30:41     38) Founding Anniversary - Trails from Zero - PSP - Falcom Sound Team JDK (Hatato Sonoda) - 01:32:13     39) Color Your Night - Persona 3 - PSP - Atsushi Kitajoh - 01:35:12     40) Sudden Beautiful Lie - Danganrompa V3 - Vita - Masafumi Takada - 01:38:52     41) Wintry Arrival - Trails of Cold Steel II - Vita - Falcom Sound Team JDK (Takahiro Unisuga) - 01:42:47     42) Town Where the Sunlight Doesn't Reach - Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - PSP - Takeharu Ishimoto - 01:45:47     43) X.R.C. - Tokyo Xanadu - Vita - Falcom Sound Team JDK (Takahiro Unisuga) - 01:48:57     44) Sunshine Coastline - Ys VIII - Vita - Falcom Sound Team JDK (Takahiro Unisuga) - 01:51:25     45) Freeway Escape - Shakedown Hawaii - PS4 - Matt Creamer - 01:54:31     46) Rave in the Grave - Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - WiiU - Jake Kaufman - 01:55:58     47) Spiral of Erebos - Trails of Cold Steel III - PS4 - Falcom Sound Team JDK (Takahiro Unisuga) - 01:59: 23     48) Reverse Babel - Trails into Reverie - PS4 - Falcom Sound Team JDK (Yukihiro Jindo) - 02:04:12     49) Peachy Pie - Doki Doki Literature Club Plus - Switch - Nikki Kaelar - 02:07:18     50) Hateno Village - LoZ: Breath of the Wild - WiiU / Switch - Yasuaki Iwata - 02:09:23    Music Block Runtime: 02:11:26, Total Episode Runtime: 02:15:12    Hugues' blog can be found here:      https://huguesjohnson.com/    You can also find all of our audio episodes on https://archive.org/details/@nerd_noise_radio as well as the occasional additional release only available there, such as remixes of previous releases and other content.    Our YouTube Channel, for the time being is in dormancy, but will be returning with content, hopefully, in 2022. Meanwhile, all the old stuff is still there, and can be found here:     https://www.youtube.com/user/NerdNoiseRadio    Occasional blogs and sometimes expanded show notes can be found here:    nerdnoiseradio.blogspot.com.    Nerd Noise Radio is also available on The Retro Junkies Network at www.theretrojunkies.com, and is a member of the VGM Podcast Fans community at     https://www.facebook.com/groups/VGMPodcastFans/    We are also a member of Podcasters of Des Moines at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1782895868426870/    Or, if you wish to connect with us directly, we have two groups of our own:     Nerd Noise Radio - Easy Mode: https://www.facebook.com/groups/276843385859797/ for sharing tracks, video game news, or just general videogame fandom.    Nerd Noise Radio - Expert Mode: https://www.facebook.com/groups/381475162016534/ for going deep into video game sound hardware, composer info, and/or music theory.    Or you can reach us by e-mail at nerd.noise.radio@gmail.com    You can also follow us on X (Twitter) at https://twitter.com/NerdNoiseRadio , Threads at https://www.threads.net/@nerdnoiseradio , Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/nerdnoiseradio?igsh=MWF4NjBpdGVxazUxYw== , Mastodon at https://universeodon.com/@NerdNoiseRadio , and BlueSky at  And we are also now on Spotify, TuneIn, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Vurbl, Amazon Music and Audible! There is technically a Discord channel, but we may or may not ever take it public!    Thanks for listening! Join us again this time next week for C1E90 (Channel 1, Episode 90): "Turning 50 – The B-Sides", and later this month or early December for C2R4 (Channel 2, Retrospective 4): "The Best of 2024" - Delicious VGM on "Noise from the Hearts of Nerds", as well as Tasty VGM and Talk on "Nerd Noise Game Club"! And wherever you are - Fly the N!    Cheers! 

One of the greatest songwriters of the 60's, Bob Dylan had released seven solo albums between 1962 and 1966.  Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits compiles many of the singles from this period along with some of the songs Dylan wrote for other musicians.  The compilation went to number 10 on the Billboard 200 chart, number 3 on the UK album chart, and has been certified five times platinum by the RIAA.In the summer of 1966, Dylan crashed his motorcycle near his home, and took off time to recover.  The record company was anxious to follow up Dylan's successful "Blonde on Blonde" album, but had no new recordings available, and no clarity on how long Dylan would be out of the studio.  Thus the decision to release a Greatest Hits album was an easy one for them.  Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, the stage name comes from the poet Dylan Thomas.  Bob Dylan rose out of the Beatnik coffee houses, and he took inspiration from a wide variety of sources including Woodie Guthrie, Hank Williams, and blues artists like Robert Johnson.  He has the unusual distinction of having won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Wayne takes us through this iconic folk rock compilation album, and friend of the show Greg Lyon joins us in Bruce's absence for this week's podcast. Positively 4th StreetThis non-album single was released in 1965 between the "Highway 61 Revisited" album and the "Blonde on Blonde" album, and reached the top 10 on charts in both the US and the UK.  The lyrics are laden with bitterness, as the singer laments the lack of compassion in a person who "has a lot of nerve to say you are my friend."  An inspiration for this song could have been the reaction Dylan received from folk artists and fans when he "went electric."Blowin' in the WindWhile Dylan released this as a single in 1963, the most successful version of this song was the cover by Peter, Paul and Mary in the same year.  This well-known protest song asks a number of questions in its lyrics, most focused on issues of peace and freedom.  Whether an answer "blowin' in the wind" is obvious or difficult to grasp is left deliberately ambiguous.  The Times They Are a-Changin'This is the title track to Dylan's 1964 album.  It is iconic today as a commentary on society in general and 1960's society in particular.  The number of groups that have covered this song is vast, including such diverse names as Joan Baez, the Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and Burl Ives.Subterranean Homesick BluesA number of things make this song famous, from the early video style to the rapid lyric pace, to the inspiration for the name of the domestic terrorist group of the 70's, the Weather Underground ("you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows").  Dylan claims inspiration from Chuck Berry and the scat songs of the 1940's in the creation of this track. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Sitting There Standing by the Chocolate Watchband (from the motion picture "Riot on the Sunset Strip")This counterculture movie came out during this time, sporting a soundtrack that may be better than the film itself. STAFF PICKS:Detroit City by Tom JonesRob starts the staff picks with a slow blues number originally written by Mel Tillis.  Jones cover of this country song originally released by Bobby Bare is about being lonely and homesick on the road.  Jones' version went to number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100.  I'll Be Doggone by Marvin GayeLynch brings us an upbeat tune which is the first song on which he collaborated with Smokey Robinson.  The lyrics tell the singer's girlfriend that if she cheats on him he'll be (dog)gone.  This was a big time for the Motown sound.Can't Help Falling In Love by Elvis PresleySpecial guest Greg's staff pick is an iconic ballad by the King.  Recorded for the movie "Blue Hawaii" in 1961, it was on the charts in 1962, but has been popular ever since.  Elvis was a great inspiration for Greg's life and musicianship.Action Woman by the LitterWayne features an early garage band with a fuzzy feel.  It is a good early example of psychedelic music, and chronicles a man's search for a woman of action - a more active girlfriend. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Music to Watch Girls By by the Bob Crewe GenerationThis is a great song title with which to finish off the podcast - or ride in an elevator!  Thanks for listening to “What the Riff?!?” NOTE: To adjust the loudness of the music or voices, you may adjust the balance on your device. VOICES are stronger in the LEFT channel, and MUSIC is stronger on the RIGHT channel.Please follow us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/whattheriffpodcast/, and message or email us with what you'd like to hear, what you think of the show, and any rock-worthy memes we can share.Of course we'd love for you to rate the show in your podcast platform!**NOTE: What the Riff?!? does not own the rights to any of these songs and we neither sell, nor profit from them. We share them so you can learn about them and purchase them for your own collections.

I'd love to hear from you! Send me a text message here and let me know what you thought about the episode. :)How does culture play into the spirit of giving? And how should we think about calling in our believers and finding our super fans?This is a special episode of a previously recorded keynote session from this year's Monthly Giving Summit. None other than Dr. Marcus Collins is sharing his incredible expertise on the transformative role of cultural identity in marketing, revealing how small groups like Beatniks, Hippies, and Hipsters grew into influential subcultures. Discover how aligning your nonprofit's mission with the core beliefs and values of your audience can transform your cause into a widespread movement. And together, we'll explore the fascinating interplay between culture and consumer behavior, and how our identities shape the brands we support and the causes we champion. With his guidance, you'll identify your personal and organizational beliefs, find your "believers," and build a network of brand evangelists who resonate with your vision.Every time I hear Marcus speak, I am BLOWN away. I hope you leave this episode even more empowered to create meaningful change and amplify your organization's impact!P.S. Applications are now open for the next round of my Monthly Giving Mastermind. Visit positiveequation.com/mastermind to apply.P.P.S. Are you a nonprofit leader running an established monthly giving program with 10,000 or more recurring donors? DM me @positivequation to learn more about my Monthly Giving Leaders Mastermind (with an in-person retreat!)Givebutter is the easiest all-in-one nonprofit fundraising software that helps you raise more. Have you heard about Givebutter Plus? Get advanced workflows and deeper donor insights. Start a free 30-day trial at givebutter.com/plus. How can you leverage Giving Tuesday to turn donors into recurring ambassadors? But how do you make that ask? Don't miss my on-demand webinar replay with DonorBox. Take advantage of DonorPerfect's FREE End of Year Playbook to create the best multi-channel engagements. Bloomerang is the complete donor volunteer and fundraising management solution. Deliver a better giving experience so you can raise more funds.Let's Connect! Send a DM on Instagram or LinkedIn and let us know what you think of the show! Head to YouTube for digital marketing how-to videos and podcast teasers Want to book Dana as a speaker for your event? Click here! ...

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INTERVIEW: The Beatniks on playing Dunedin Craft Beer and Food Festival 2024 by Zac Hoffman on Radio One 91FM Dunedin

Today in 1957, Sputnik because the world's first artificial satellite. This changed the world around us in countless ways, including one that doesn't get a lot of attention: it gave the English language a brand new word. Plus: today in 1992, two Toronto Blue Jays stars pranked their rookie teammate by pretending to give away his car on Fan Appreciation Day. How the Beat Generation Became “Beatniks” (JSTOR Daily) WHEN THE BLUE JAYS GAVE AWAY DEREK BELL'S CAR, AND OTHER PRANKS (SB Nation) Help keep our show beeping, so to speak, as a backer on Patreon --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/coolweirdawesome/support

Murph is joined by Lucy Caruana, Rob Caruana & Donna Collins to discuss the first half of the second season of the original Simpsons shorts that aired on The Tracey Ullman Show in the '80s

Has anyone seen a giant little person? The latest happenings with Raven's and Feeney's UFC betting; The best ice creams; What's the worst that could happen if Feeney went to work on a former mafia member's YouTube show? Stevie Richards and Dreamer are stirring the pot against Raven this week; Raven and the guys share painful back stories, which are not for the faint of heart; The history of Debbie Downer from SNL; Egotistical bands who think they're way better than they actually are, and of course, all the usual perversions. Follow the guys on X!Raven - @theRavenEffectRich - @RichBocchiniFeeney - @jffeeney3rdRaven has some action figures available for purchase at https://www.majorbendies.com/ so go buy them.Buy some of Raven's old comics and other goods. Check out the store by Ask Danna at https://www.ebay.com/str/askdannaHave Raven say things that you want him to say, either for yourself or for someone you want to talk big-game shit to by going to http://www.cameo.com/ravenprime1If you want all the uncensored goodness AND watch The Raven Effect, sign up for Patreon by going to http://www.patreon.com/TheRavenEffect it's only $5 a month!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-raven-effect--5166640/support.

In this episode, for … oh, no particular reason … we kick off a three-part look at the classic graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, collected by DC Comics!  Originally published in serial form in the British anthology magazine Warrior, this dystopian fantasy follows the anarchist vigilante known only as V, clad in a creepy Guy Fawkes mask, who's hell-bent on taking revenge on the staffers of a post-war “resettlement camp!” This mysterious, magnetic revolutionary rescues a 16-year-old would-be sex worker named Evey from a horrible fate at the hands of the nation's secret police, and soon enlists her in his one-man war to bring down the fascist British state! But is there more to the strangely powerful V than first appears? (Spoiler alert: Yes!) And can he hope to silence that Voice of Fate known as ... The Comics Canon? In This Episode: ·       The scourge of … THE BEATNIKS! ·       Pynchon, V? Really? ·       Maybe we shouldn't have given the guy in Room V so much freedom… ·       The Abominable Dr. Phibes ·       Kite Man: Hell Yeah! Join us in two weeks as we roll merrily along with Book 2: This Vicious Cabaret! Until then:Impress your friends with our Comics Canon merchandise! Rate us on Apple Podcasts! Send us an email! Hit us up on Facebook, Bluesky or The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter! And as always, thanks for listening!

INTERVIEW: The Beatniks on Catacombs Gig and giveaway by Zac Hoffman on Radio One 91FM Dunedin

INTERVIEW: Leo Lilley and Sam Charlesworth from The Beatniks on Dig the Gig and what's wrong with the world today? by Elliot Blyth on Radio One 91FM Dunedin

"A Dream for Winter"read by Peter C Wood - Englishread by Alexandre Khazal - French"My Bohemia"read byMarc Cashman in EnglishClaire Trevien in French Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Theater Month continues with 1988's Hairspray, and this time both Erika and Paul actually saw the musical that grew from it! They're here to take you through the John Waters classic, and to celebrate Ricki Lake, Divine, and, of course, early aughts pop princess Vitamin C…not sure why the “Graduation” singer is being mentioned? Listen and find out!You can follow That Aged Well on Twitter (@ThatAgedWellPod), Instagram (@ThatAgedWell), Threads (@ThatAgedWell), and Spoutible (@ThatAgedWell)! SUPPORT US ON PATREON FOR BONUS CONTENT!THAT AGED WELL MERCH!Hosts: Paul Caiola & Erika VillalbaProducer & Editor: Paul Caiola

Thomas Dolby came to prominence in the 1980s, releasing hit singles including “She Blinded Me with Science” (1982) and “Hyperactive!” (1984). He has also worked as a producer and as a session musician. He is associated with the new wave movement of the early 1980s, a form of pop music incorporating electronic instruments, but Dolby's work covers a wide range of musical styles and moods distinct from the high-energy pop sound of his few, better-known commercial successes. In the 1990s, he founded Beatnik, a Silicon Valley software company which developed the polyphonic ringtone software and created the Nokia tune. Its technology was used in more than half a billion cell phones. He was also the music director for TED Conferences. On the faculty at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University since 2014, he leads Peabody's Music for New Media program, which enrolled its first students in the fall of 2018. He has received four Grammy nominations, two each in 1984 and 1988 and recently published his first novel, "Prevailing Wind."

KITAMI & TCO CHOP IT UP WITH HER MOM MAMA SIMONE ABOUT HOW IT FEELS TO BE A BEATNIK REBORN. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lifeofabeatnikpodcast/message

durée : 00:59:23 - Affaires culturelles - par : Arnaud Laporte - L'interprète de “Vanina”, “Du côté de chez Swann” ou de “Mon cœur est malade” nous donne rendez-vous le 21 mai au Grand Rex pour souffler ses 80 bougies. Beatnik dans l'âme, spécialiste de théologie, parlant cinq langues, le véritable Dave est bien loin de son image auprès du grand public. - invités : Dave Chanteur

Ben and Star host 2VP this week, so shake off that tired feeling, take a moment to collect yourself, and be cool… daddy-o!  There are lots of definitions to cover before getting in to the conversation.  From music to an artistic subculture movement to one of Ben's favorite BMW “comercials,” there is much to talk about.  Star teaches Ben about Taylor Swift and a couple of Generation Z phrases.  Ben gets really excited about being able to do his oddly specific Bob Dylan impression, and bringing up his favorite movie director.  Games discussed in this episode include “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” “Hogwarts Legacy,” “Pacific Drive,” “Ultros,” “Cadence of Hyrule,” “Crypt of the Necrodancer,” “Alice: Madness Returns,” and “Hi-Fi Rush” 00:00:21 - Again with the third person, the unspoken bond, and TLoZ: Tears of the Kingdom 00:03:48 - Andrew's side quest, Star tried unique Japanese Pringles, and too many ducks 00:05:18 - Ben talks about Pacific Drive, Star's PS5 goals, and a playable acid flashback 00:09:43 - Borscht ingredients, Ben's poetry decade, the subjectivity of art, and time signatures 00:12:20 - Buckle your notebook, club or whip, and off brand Duck Hunt, and MatPat's show 00:15:47 - More verbs, birds flying, cooking, sailing, and Star explains “bro boats” to Ben 00:18:47 - On to the nouns, Star doesn't know “cop speak,” a surprise, and back to Beatniks  00:20:59 - “Old timey” phrases, of German origin, word confusion, and our music choice bpm 00:23:51 - The solicitation purr, Ben's cat impression, and the “Intro to Rhythm” class final 00:26:40 - Cowbells at daybreak, even for a Canadian, and an excuse for Swiftie Star 00:29:17 - Taylor Swift's latest album, Patti Smith, “No tea, no shade,” and 100 percent 00:34:37 - Trading friendship bracelets with 12 year olds, and Ben's FAVORITE impression 00:36:03 - Beyoncé and the West drama, “Beat the Devil,” and Star summarizes Alien 00:41:44 - Tony Scott movies, the original “True Romance” ending, and on to video games  00:44:07 - The “Crypt of the Necrodancer” franchise and the connection to Hi-Fi Rush 00:46:45 - On paper, mediocre 2-D platform elements, and Chai's backstory and origin 00:50:25 - Beautiful visuals, no target locking, feels very linear, and uninspired boss fights 00:54:41 - No “real” replay value, great music (but not enough), and angry dance music 00:56:50 - A difference in opinion on Ye, no actual wives were harmed, and keeping time   00:59:18 - Star's better final thought, beating the mulch, and a hitman for slumlord Tom Nook     Follow Two Vague on… Our website: https://www.twovaguepodcast.com  On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/two_vague_podcast On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@twovaguepodcast For show appearance and other inquiries, contact us at: twovaguepodcast@gmail.com References, Links, and Tags Ben recommends checking out this awesome game…  “Pacific Drive” developed by Ironwood Studios https://www.pacificdrivegame.com/ #Podbean #DIYPodcast #ApplePodcast #VideoGames #Trivia #Comedy #Talkshow #2VP #TwoVaguePodcast #PodernFamily #InterviewShow #GamersofThreads #Gamer #IronwoodStudios #KeplerInteractive #Ultros

Into The Heart of the Infinite https://twitter.com/MaetreyiiMa https://www.yogama.org Instagram @maetreyiima7 Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the MHS Podcast where we jump into the Metaphysical side of things with Maetreyii Ma Nolan Ph.D. More on her Below

Seriah is joined by Chris Ernst and author and researcher Adam Gorightly to discuss Discordionism, its origins, and its influences on society. Topics include the Illuminati, Kerry Thornley, Greg Hill, Lee Harvey Oswald, D.A. Jim Garrison, the goddess Discordia, order and chaos, Principia Discordia, public-domain publishing, Jonathan Vankin, U.S. Marine Corps, socialism, communism, the book “The Idle Warriors”, the Warren Commission, Wittier CA, New Orleans LA, Grace Zabriskie, Gary Kirstein, Slim Brooks, 1950's/early 60's Beatnik milieu, JFK assassination, counter-culture, groovy packs, Robert Anton Wilson, Playboy magazine, anarchism, “jakes”, the book “Oswald”, Operation Mindfuck, John Birch Society, Alan Chapman, Clay Shaw, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy witch hunt, the three tramps in Dallas, E. Howard Hunt, paranoid schizophrenia, the Inside Edition TV interview, Barbara Reid, Thornley/Oswald cloning theory, the books “The Illuminatus! Trilogy”, Loompanics publishing, esoteric Nazism, the Necronomicon, Ann Marjory Camron, the book “Wormwood Star the Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron”, Greg Hill and computer programming, Bank of America, hacking and Easter eggs, Bavarian Illuminati, Nesta Webster, John Robison, anti-communism, anti-Semitism, theories that the CIA introduced LSD to the counter-culture, Atsugi U.S. Navy base, “Behind the Bastards” podcast, “Who Killed JFK?” podcast, U-2 pilot Gary Powers, Oswald as intelligence agent, two-Oswald theories, the book “Harvey and Lee” by John Armstrong, Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien, the book “Family of Secrets” by Russ Baker, George H.W. Bush and the JFK assassination, “The Devil's Hour” TV series, Church of the Subgenius, Adam's book “The Prankster and the Conspiracy”, Ivan Stang's book “High Weirdness By Mail”, slack, the J.R. “Bob” Dobbs avatar, the alternative music group Negativland, audio sampling, the Burning Man festival, Roland Barthes' theory of semiotics, the commodification of Che Guevara's image, Sondra London, culture jamming, AI and future chaos, Adam's books, and much more! This is an absolutely fascinating discussion that goes all sorts of places!

Welcome to Live in the Lab, where we bring you the best of indie music straight from the underground scene. In this episode, we're diving into a vibrant array of sounds that'll leave you craving more. First up, we've got Catpack with their infectious track "Walk Away". Get ready to groove to their blend of indie soul and electronic beats that'll lift your spirits and have you hitting repeat all day long. Next, Kooley High takes the stage with "Penmanship", delivering boom-bap vibes and slick verses that'll transport you back to the golden era of hip-hop. This track is a must-have for any true hip-hop head looking for authentic beats and killer bars. And if you're craving something bold and unconventional, don't miss "The Intricate Piece" by Real Bad Man & Lukah featuring Billy Woods. This experimental hip-hop collaboration pushes boundaries and challenges the status quo, delivering a dark and brooding masterpiece that demands your attention. So, whether you're a music aficionado searching for fresh tunes or a casual listener looking to expand your horizons, Live in the Lab has got you covered. Tune in now and discover your new favorite indie tracks!

In 1959, Anti-Americanism surged in the UK. England seethed over America's treatment of its Prime Minister who was smacked down for daring to use diplomacy to resolve the crisis over divided Germany.  In 1959 England also fretted over a new American export: the Beatnik. The British foreign office forcefully responded with a report advocating for “ an increased effort in the field of press, radio and television in the U.K. to say the right kind of things about the Americans.” This is the very moment Kenneth Tynan was commissioned to make a documentary for British Television about American Non-conformism and Dissent. We take a close look at one of the Cold War's most bizarre and inspired artifacts of Anti Anti-American propaganda. Shownotes: Laura Bradley writes on Brecht and German theater. Kenneth Tynan's documentary aired on January 27th, 1960 and then was supposedly erased (it wasn't). Support ToE and get access to the incredible exclusive bonus companion series to Not All Propaganda is Art by subscribing at https://theoryofeverything.supercast.com/, or subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts by hitting “Subscribe” right on the show page. Support ToE and get access to the incredible exclusive bonus companion series to Not All Propaganda is Art by subscribing athttps://theoryofeverything.supercast.com/, or subscribe directly in Apple Podcasts by hitting “Subscribe” right on the show page.

Seriah is joined by Chris Ernst and author and researcher Adam Gorightly to discuss Discordionism, its origins, and its influences on society. Topics include the Illuminati, Kerry Thornley, Greg Hill, Lee Harvey Oswald, D.A. Jim Garrison, the goddess Discordia, order and chaos, Principia Discordia, public-domain publishing, Jonathan Vankin, U.S. Marine Corps, socialism, communism, the book “The Idle Warriors”, the Warren Commission, Wittier CA, New Orleans LA, Grace Zabriskie, Gary Kirstein, Slim Brooks, 1950's/early 60's Beatnik milieu, JFK assassination, counter-culture, groovy packs, Robert Anton Wilson, Playboy magazine, anarchism, “jakes”, the book “Oswald”, Operation Mindfuck, John Birch Society, Alan Chapman, Clay Shaw, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy witch hunt, the three tramps in Dallas, E. Howard Hunt, paranoid schizophrenia, the Inside Edition TV interview, Barbara Reid, Thornley/Oswald cloning theory, the books “The Illuminatus! Trilogy”, Loompanics publishing, esoteric Nazism, the Necronomicon, Ann Marjory Camron, the book “Wormwood Star the Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron”, Greg Hill and computer programming, Bank of America, hacking and Easter eggs, Bavarian Illuminati, Nesta Webster, John Robison, anti-communism, anti-Semitism, theories that the CIA introduced LSD to the counter-culture, Atsugi U.S. Navy base, “Behind the Bastards” podcast, “Who Killed JFK?” podcast, U-2 pilot Gary Powers, Oswald as intelligence agent, two-Oswald theories, the book “Harvey and Lee” by John Armstrong, Rob Reiner and Soledad O'Brien, the book “Family of Secrets” by Russ Baker, George H.W. Bush and the JFK assassination, “The Devil's Hour” TV series, Church of the Subgenius, Adam's book “The Prankster and the Conspiracy”, Ivan Stang's book “High Weirdness By Mail”, slack, the J.R. “Bob” Dobbs avatar, the alternative music group Negativland, audio sampling, the Burning Man festival, Roland Barthes' theory of semiotics, the commodification of Che Guevara's image, Sondra London, culture jamming, AI and future chaos, Adam's books, and much more! This is an absolutely fascinating discussion that goes all sorts of places! - Recap by Vincent Treewell of The Weird Part Podcast Outro Music is Sickhoose with SJR.The song can be found on Spotify under Diablo Sickhoose) Download

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 272 of the Down Cellar Studio Podcast. Show notes with photos can be found on my website- www.downcellarstudio.com/272   This week's segments included:   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins Brainstorming Knitting in Passing From the Armchair KAL News Events Contest, News & Notes Life in Focus On a Happy Note Quote of the Week     Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Same as It Ever Was Hat Pattern: Same as It Ever Was by Sarah Jordan ($6 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in the Beatnik colorway Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Ravelry Project Page   Nimbus Vest Pattern: Nimbus by Berrocco Design Team (free knitting pattern) Yarn: Worsted Weight 100% Wool (from Rhinebeck 2022) held double Needles:  US 10 (6.0mm) Ravelry Project Page Notes: I added length to the body before the underarms. I worked 13 inches before the sleeves (4 inches longer than called for) Goofed up working on front left.  Didn't read the instructions well and I bound off stitches for the underarm on the RS of the piece instead of the WS. Thankfully the rows were very short after that, so ripped back and was able to fix it in less than an hour. Seaming- I seamed the shoulders and then the sides before setting in the sleeve. I should have done it in this order 1) shoulders 2) sleeves, 3) sides. This post from Amy Herzog was helpful re: Setting in Sleeves. Collar- added a row of SC around the collar to make it look a little neater. Finished Project 700g.   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Jenny's Blanket Pattern: Modified Sedge Stitch Blanket by Nicole Mansfield ($2 crochet pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Big Twist Value Solids in Sky Blue, Teal, Mint, Cyan, Jade Green and Aqua Hook: I (5.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page Progress: Finished all 5 color-block sections. I am using the 6th color for the border because the blanket was already long enough with 5 colors. The pattern has 2 border options, a scalloped edge & a modified picot edge. The latter is what I was planning but I think instead I'll use a bobble edging. I first used this border on a Cozy Clusters Blanket  (Ravelry project page here). I learned about this edge technique on this website.   Same as It Ever Was Hat #2 Pattern: Same as It Ever Was by Sarah Jordan ($6 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Kingdom Fleece and Fiberworks. No colorway listed. Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Ravelry Project Page About the colorway- pink/mauve base with taupes, blues, greens and other pinks/maroons.   Declan's 2nd Socks Yarn: Patons Kroy in the Greener Pastures Colorway Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry ) Ravelry Project Page Green, black, gray, cream, mustard stripes + gray/green/white self patterning stripe. Progress- I finished the first sock and turned the heel on the second sock this weekend.   FearLESS Socks Yarn: Legacy Fiber Artz DK (75% Merino, 25% Nylon) in the FearLESS Colorway Needles: US 3 (3.25 mm) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry ) Cast on for the smallest size and that fits well. About the Colorway- Special Colorway “FearLESS” available in DK, Steel Toes (sock) and Cozy Toes (sock). Sue & Chelsea are donating 50% of sales to our FearLESS Living Fund. Progress: Leg of the first sock is almost done!.   Brainstorming Greyhaven Hat by Robin Ulrich. $5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry Chicken Family Crochet Pattern by Atomic Crochet Shop on Etsy. $5 crochet pattern on Etsy.   Knitting in Passing Millie finished the headband she'd started for Mom. Riley made Mom a chemo hat on a knitting loom in craft class at school. I cast on for a hat with the Plied Yarn we bought for Millie at the Farm Fiber Days event in January and handed it off to Millie to knit a hat for her Dad.   From the Armchair Bad Mormon by Heather Gay. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link. Spare by Prince Harry. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link. Maybe Once, Maybe Twice by Alison Rose Greenberg. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link.   Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.   KAL News Pigskin Party '23   Tune in to hear about: Quarter 4 Challenge: Cable It Up winners Participation Prize Winners Commentator Update   The mad dash to get all those points entered was in full swing on Saturday night (superbowl eve).  As of the time I looked, players had entered 299 projects since the start of February!     On the boards, HikesandBikes (Nikii) shared their experience with a new approach to the tubular cast on where you use Judy's Magic Cast On.  I'd seen this on Patty Lyon's instagram and was intrigued so I was super interested in what Nikii thought of it (as were others).   There's also been some talk of knitting and walking. Loonyhiker shared that when she knits and walks she has a lot of interesting conversations because people are fascinated that she can do it.  Deafelis shared the hot tip that Lowes or Home Depot are great places to practice because the aisles are wide and the floors are smooth (so fewer tripping hazards).  Azknitwit noted that an indoor mall might be a great place to practice too!   Finally, continuing with a recent theme about how yarn and how many projects to bring when traveling, Socalknit girl shared a sad cautionary tale of how to recover when disaster strikes the one and only project you brought on vacation.   Thanks for a fun season! Mary   Events Check out all of the details about our Fiber Community February FearLESS Living Fundraiser including the participating makers.   To make a personal donation, you can use this link  Please use the option to “Add a Public Comment” to let us know you're part of this Fiber Community Fundraiser.  I recommend including your Instagram/Ravelry user name so sponsors doing prize drawings and confirm/find you.   More About This Project: February 9th is my mom, Diane Lassonde's, birthday. Diane came up with the idea for the FearLESS Living Fund when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer in December 2021. Since then, each birthday we celebrate with her is precious and this year, with your help, I want to make her birthday month even MORE special by raising funds for this charity she's created.   The FearLESS Living Fund picks up where the Blind Center of Nevada's services leave off, helping their outstanding clients to live more fearlessly in pursuit of their dreams. In 2023, we gave out over $9,000 in scholarships. You can watch a video of the event here. With your help, we can raise even more.   Contest, News & Notes   New Videos on the Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Let the Mystery Unravel February Box Yarnable Unboxing- February 2024 Diane Lassonde Health Update #10 including more background on the FearLESS Living Fund inspiration with videos from the Blind Center of Nevada and more information about our February Fundraiser. Check out this video with Lisa from Fibernymph Dyeworks about the FearLESS Living Fund and her custom colorway- Dream Big Check out this video with Sue from Legacy Fiber Artz about the FearLESS Living Fund and their custom colorway- FearLESS   Life in Focus   2024 Word of the Year- Heart In sorting jewelry with Mom, I found a pair of gold earrings and a necklace that coordinate; both have hearts on them. I've been wearing them most of the time and loving them. Connection to her and to my word, which is a million times better than any of the items I was looking at on Etsy. I hung the heart collage photo poster in the dining room with painters tape! Let's not overcomplicate things!   24 for 2024 list Get 2 massages beyond the one per month at Massage Envy End the year with more money in the bank than when I started in January. Make & assess goals each month of the year - Jan done Read more books than you did in 2023 (50) Organize a fundraiser for the FearLESS Living Fund Come up with better temporary & more permanent storage for memory items. Bought a beautiful box to put items in. Store in hutch in diningroom where I work most days. Visit 1 new (to me) museum or historical site Add one new indoor plant to my collection Buy/make/work with Dan/Oisin on at least 1 plant stand for the living or dining room Publish at least one new pattern Knit at least 1 finished project with handspun Knit/crochet myself a new sweater Make a Christmas afghan for the living room Take a class Purge at least 20 items from my wardrobe Go skiing Watch at least 5 of the movies on the Jen/Liz movie list Do something special for our Anniversary in May Do a regular (ideally monthly) review of Dropbox Camera Uploads to delete unnecessary items Buy a new quilt and/or duvet cover for our bed Buy a new blow dryer. Get my car detailed Buy new curtains for living room Ordered 3. We picked one! I ordered more, they arrived and we hung them up! YAY! Try a new local restaurant   On a Happy Note The whole family went to Garret's hockey game and out for dinner after. I've been trying out Dinnerly meal kit delivery service. So far, I'm really enjoying the 2 meals a week I'm getting. The food is fresh and the portions are generous. If you'd like to try it, you can use this link to get a free box. There is a limit, so don't wait. If the link doesn't work, please email me and I can get a unique offer sent to your email address. Birthday dinner at Mom's on her actual birthday with Mom, Dad, Jeff and the kids + Dan. Dad & Riley lipsyncing to Taylor Swift. Hilarious! Birthday dinner for birthday twins, Diane & Hattie. Karaoke, hair shaving, presents, cake and lots of silliness. I planted amaryllis from a bulb that was gifted to me and its flowering beautifully! I'm so excited.   Quote of the Week   Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear –OCTAVIA E. BUTLER   ------   Thank you for tuning in!   Contact Information: Check out the Down Cellar Studio Patreon! Ravelry: BostonJen & Down Cellar Studio Podcast Ravelry Group Instagram: BostonJen1 YouTube: Down Cellar Studio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downcellarstudio Sign up for my email newsletter to get the latest on everything happening in the Down Cellar Studio Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Knit Picks Affiliate Link Bookshop Affiliate Link Yarnable Subscription Box Affiliate Link FearLESS Living Fund to benefit the Blind Center of Nevada Music -"Soft Orange Glow" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/ Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.  

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 271 of the Down Cellar Studio Podcast. Full show notes with photos can be found on my website- www.downcellarstudio.com/271    This week's segments included:   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins From the Armchair Crafty Adventures In my Travels KAL News Events Life in Focus On a Happy Note Quote of the Week   Thank you to this episode's sponsor: Stitched by Jessalu   Off the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   I Love You More Socks Yarn: Malabrigo Arroyo in the Azules colorway (medium denim blue) Needles: US 3(3.25 mm) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry ) Ravelry Project Page For these DK socks, I cast on 48 sts and followed the OMG heel instructions for that stitch count. I worked more ruonds of ribbing than I usually do and used that as the whole leg of the sock, then worked heel, and foot as usual.  I included some colorwork in a neon coral DK yarn to say " I love" on the left sock and "you more" on the right sock. When squished up it looks like it says I Love You Mom which is also perfect!   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Jenny's Blanket Pattern: Modified Sedge Stitch Blanket by Nicole Mansfield ($2 crochet pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Big Twist Value Solids in Sky Blue, Teal, Mint, Cyan, Jade Green and Aqua Hook: I (5.5 mm) Ravelry Project Page Progress: nearly done with color 2 of 6.   Same as It Ever Was Hat Pattern: Same as It Ever Was by Sarah Jordan ($6 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in the Beatnik colorway Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Ravelry Project Page Knit wit designs. Snack shack sponsor. Progress: nearly ready for the decreases.   Same as It Ever Was Hat #2 Pattern: Same as It Ever Was by Sarah Jordan ($6 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Kingdom Fleece and Fiberworks. No colorway listed. Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Ravelry Project Page Progress: more than half way done.   Nimbus Vest Pattern: Nimbus by Berrocco Design Team (free knitting pattern) Yarn: Worsted Weight 100% Wool (from Rhinebeck 2022) held double Needles:  US 10 (6.0mm) Ravelry Project Page Notes: I added about 4 inches to the body before the armholes.   From the Armchair Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewel. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link. The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link.   Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.   Crafty Adventures   We recently had a crafty sleepover at my parents- Kris, Aila, Megg, Hattie, Millie, Riley (Jeff for a bit), Mom & her long-time friend Lin. Needle felting & Alcohol Inks + Fire on Glass (click here for a related video tutorial if you're curious)   Stitched by JessaLu is the home of handmade project bags in a variety of fun, floral, geeky, or pop-culture themed prints. All bags are made by one woman - JessaLu - on an antique Singer sewing machine in her home in Western Massachusetts. JessaLu has been making quality project bags and an assortment of sewn accessories since 2008 and has recently begun to design her own exclusive prints! Check them out at StitchedbyJessalu.com and stay tuned for a special FearLESS Living Fund themed bag coming soon as part of the February Fundraiser for BostonJensMom.   In My Travels   Mom, Millie and I met up with our friend Ryan at the Farm Fiber Days Event at Wayland Farmers Market at Russells Garden Center. Millie was looking for yarn to knit a hat for her dad. We found it in one of the first booths- Plied Yarns. Always great to see Ann Weaver. We did a full loop and went back to purchase yarn. I bought a handsewn chicken potholder set. The Blue Heron Farm (in Vermont) hosted their table for folks to learn Needle Felting. Millie made Ryan a butterfly like the ones she made for us. Thanks to "Auntie Shelly" at Blue Heron for encouraging Millie. I got some great info from Jim Grant from Good Karma Farm about getting going on my Cricular Sock Machine. Check out their video on How to Knit a Sock on Circular Sock Machine for beginners. We got lunch after at The Local. Then Mom and I went back and I bought a few plants, a watering can & a decorative pumpkin from the clearance section. The next Farm Fiber Days at Wayland Farmer's Market is March 3, 2024. Details can be found on their website.   Vogue Knitting Live in New York City Class: A Lace for Everything and Everything in Its Lace with Bristol Ivy In the marketplace, I ran into my friend Sarah in the Cowgirlblues booth where I bought some mini skeins. I was thrilled to run into Petrina, Shameika, Twinset Jan I was so happy to meet Pigskin Sponsor, Terri from At Haynes House Yarns. I bought a mini skein bundle from The Golden Purls. I got a quilted bucket bag from M.A.B.E.L, yarn for hat, earrings & a bracelet with fabric covered beads.   Other New York City Notable Moments: Saturday- farmer's market, walked the High Line, visited Chelsea Market, had dinner at Shukette & saw Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway. Sunday- we saw Poor Things at a theater in Lincoln Center and continued our Oscar Nominee movie watch with Past Lives & Anatomy of a Fall (which I didn't enjoy as much as The Replacements which we watched earlier in the weekend)   KAL News Pigskin Party '23 #DCSPigskinParty23 Official Rules Find everything you need on my website or in the Start Here Thread in the Ravelry Group Register using this Google Form (you must be Registered to be eligible for prizes) Enter your projects using the Point Tally Form Find the full list of Sponsors in this Google Doc. Coupon Codes are listed in this Google Doc & in this Ravelry Thread Exclusive Items from our Pro Shop Sponsors are listed in this Ravelry Thread Questions-  ask them in this Ravelry Thread or email Jen at downcellarstudio @ gmail.com Quarter 4 Challenge: Cable It Up brought to you by our Official Sponsor of the 4th Quarter Lolodidit. Full details can be found in this Google Doc and in this Ravelry Thread. Reminder- the KAL ends on February 12th. Get those projects finished! Update from Commentator: Mary There's lots of strategizing and discussion about what there is and is not time to finish before the end of PSP.  Relatedly, there is some discussion about the joys of finishing longstanding WIPs even if those projects don't count for pigskin party. There was also recently some discussion on pros and cons of different approaches to provisional cast ons, including a method where you use a stitch saver instead of scrap yarn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olAZk2tkTus).  Finally, there's been some talk of travel plans including the intense decision making process that crafters go through when they are trying to decide what projects to bring on a trip.  This has included discussion of pros and cons of checking luggage vs. carrying on and some musings about who decided that packing light is a value we should all aspire to anyway. Kristen recently shared a link to a story about monkeyshine hunting.  Its a neat tradition that coincides with lunar new year in Tacoma. https://gritcitymag.com/2020/01/a-little-backstory-on-monkeyshines-in-tacoma/ Here's a highlight from the endzone dance thread: Sandyrlevin completed an amazing sweater with a really detailed octopus on it. She did it all with duplicate stitch!  It is truly amazing. https://www.ravelry.com/projects/Sandyrlevin/217-12-amur-maple     Events   Check out all of the details about our Fiber Community February FearLESS Living Fundraiser including the participating makers.   To make a personal donation, you can use this link  Please use the option to “Add a Public Comment” to let us know you're part of this Fiber Community Fundraiser.  I recommend including your Instagram/Ravelry user name so sponsors doing prize drawings and confirm/find you.   More About This Project: February 9th is my mom, Diane Lassonde's, birthday. Diane came up with the idea for the FearLESS Living Fund when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer in December 2021. Since then, each birthday we celebrate with her is precious and this year, with your help, I want to make her birthday month even MORE special by raising funds for this charity she's created.   The FearLESS Living Fund picks up where the Blind Center of Nevada's services leave off, helping their outstanding clients to live more fearlessly in pursuit of their dreams. In 2023, we gave out over $9,000 in scholarships. You can watch a video of the event here. With your help, we can raise even more.   I also have some wonderful goodies here that I am going to giveaway. I'll be pulling winners from those who donate via the PayPal page. Be sure to mention you're part of the Fiber Community Fundraiser and list your Instagram or Ravelry Name so I can find you and send you your prize.   Life in Focus   2024 Word of the Year- Heart Found a heart mural in NYC Bought a small heart shaped pottery dish to use for stitch markers at a local shop where everything is handcrafted by disabled students at their school. Made a collage of photos (from Walgreens template) from family photo shoot and had it printed 11x14. Now I need to find a place to hang it. Looked at heart jewelry but didn't find any pieces that were "me" so I'm still looking.   24 for 2024 List- updates Get 2 massages beyond the one per month at Massage Envy End the year with more money in the bank than when I started in January. ($51,397- includes CD) Make & assess goals each month of the year Read more books than you did in 2023 (50) Organize a fundraiser for the FearLESS Living Fund (DONE) Come up with better temporary & more permanent storage for memory items. Visit 1 new (to me) museum or historical site Add one new indoor plant to my collection (DONE) Buy/make/work with Dan/Oisin on at least 1 plant stand for the living or dining room Publish at least one new pattern Knit at least 1 finished project with handspun Knit/crochet myself a new sweater Make a Christmas afghan for the living room- in progress Take a class (DONE) Purge at least 20 items from my wardrobe Go skiing Watch at least 5 of the movies on the Jen/Liz movie list 1) Hercules Do something special for our Anniversary in May Do a regular (ideally monthly) review of Dropbox Camera Uploads to delete unnecessary items Buy a new quilt and/or duvet cover for our bed Buy a new blow dryer. Get my car detailed (DONE) Buy new curtains for living room- ordered some to try on 1/19 Try a new local restaurant - Lolita (want one even MORE local)   4 of 24 done in January!   On a Happy Note I was chatting with my friend Margarita who is from the Philippines. She mentioned she gets dried mango in bulk from home and sent some over to me! So sweet of her! Movie night with Liz- Hercules. Car Detailing! It literally feels and smells like a new car! Usually 3+ month wait list- but not at this time of year. Mom made it through Round 1 of Chemo- 3 days in a row. My cousin Jenny (also a nurse at the hospital) visited during day 2 and our cousin Joanie took Mom in on day 3 instead of dad. It was great to spend some quality time with them. Seeing Moulin Rouge with Megg at the Boston Opera House (and dinner at Lolita beforehand) Quality time with Laura & my first visit to NYC since before the pandemic...   Quote of the Week Energy creates energy. It is by spending myself that I become rich. –SARAH BERNHARDT   ------ Thank you for tuning in!   Contact Information: Check out the Down Cellar Studio Patreon! Ravelry: BostonJen & Down Cellar Studio Podcast Ravelry Group Instagram: BostonJen1 YouTube: Down Cellar Studio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downcellarstudio Sign up for my email newsletter to get the latest on everything happening in the Down Cellar Studio Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Knit Picks Affiliate Link Bookshop Affiliate Link Yarnable Subscription Box Affiliate Link FearLESS Living Fund to benefit the Blind Center of Nevada Music -"Soft Orange Glow" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/ Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.

Legendary musician, composer, visual artist and co-founder of DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh, talks to Danz about scoring Wes Anderson's 2004 film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and about his new book, Apotropaic Beatnik Graffiti. This is the extended version of a conversation originally presented at one of the Synth History ‘Iconic Scores' screening series nights at the Vidiots Theater in Los Angeles, CA. 

Thank you for tuning in to Episode 270 of the Down Cellar Studio Podcast. Full show notes with photos can be found on my website.    This week's segments included:   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins Brainstorming From the Armchair KAL News Events Contest, News & Notes Life in Focus Ask Me Anything On a Happy Note Quote of the Week   On the Needles, Hook or Bobbins   Calendula Christmas Quilt Pattern: Calendula Quilt by Elena Fedotova available on Ravelry for $7.50 US. Yarn: Big Twist Value Solids in Ivory, Deep Red, Varsity Green, Aqua, Medium Rose Hook:  G (4.0 mm) Ravelry Project Page I used Canva to help me figure out color placement to extend out the quilt pattern. I am extending what is written as a square into a rectangle. 64 squares now. about 24 totally seamed   Let the Mystery Unravel 2023 Blanket of Calm Pattern: Blanket of Calm by Casapinka (free crochet pattern) Yarn: Woolen Women Fibers- Let the Mystery Unravel subscription + Cascade Heritage Sock yarn in the Forged Iron Colorway Hook: 3.25 mm (D) Ravelry Project Page You can find my Let the Mystery Unravel Unboxing Video on YouTube in this Playlist This subscription is not available to new subscribers but I hope you'll watch each month and see how my blanket comes along. Stay tuned to Woolen Women for all of the fun kits they have! Don't forget, they're Pro Shop Sponsors. Progress Notes- first 3 sets of squares seamed & border added. December squares- all 9 done. not seamed.   Jen/Riley's Matching Hexi Blankets Pattern: Using this photo tutorial & this video tutorial. Hook: D (3.25 mm) We are making 4 round hexagons. As Riley finishes one, she texts me and I work up my corresponding mini. We've done 14 so far. I'm making collages in Canva for each.   Same as It Ever Was Hat Pattern: Same as It Ever Was by Sarah Jordan ($6 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in the Beatnik colorway Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm) Ravelry Project Page Knit Wit Sesigns is a Pigskin Snack Shack Sponsor. Progress: around 75% done. I think this pattern is a great use for Felici which I've found doesn't hold up as well to hard wearing things like socks.   Nimbus Vest Pattern: Nimbus by Berrocco Design Team (free knitting pattern on the Berrocco website) Yarn: Worsted Weight 100% Wool (from Rhinebeck 2022) held double Needles:  US 10 (6.0mm) Ravelry Project Page Progress: I'm currently working on the back and am almost done with the 13 inches I need before I decrease for the armholes.   Declan's 2nd Socks Yarn: Patons Kroy in the Greener Pastures Colorway Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) Pattern: OMG Heel Socks by Megan Williams ($5 knitting pattern available on Ravelry) Ravelry Project Page Green, black, gray, cream, mustard stripes + gray/green/white self patterning stripe. Progress- the first sock probably about ready for the toe. Second sock- cuff is done, about 3 inches into the leg. I also did some darning on his first pair of handknit socks.   Brainstorming   Bought yarn for 3 blanket projects huge sale at Joann Conor & Carly Baby using this crochet pattern on Ravelry. Colleen & Patrick Baby Blanket using this crochet pattern on Ravelry. Jenny & Manny Baby Blanket  using the Modified Sedge Stitch Baby Blanket- a $2 crochet pattern available on Ravelry.   From the Armchair The Bodyguard by Katherine Center. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link. Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center. Bookshop Affiliate Link. Amazon Affiliate Link.   Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.     KAL News Pigskin Party '23 #DCSPigskinParty23 Official Rules Find everything you need on my website or in the Start Here Thread in the Ravelry Group Register using this Google Form (you must be Registered to be eligible for prizes) Enter your projects using the Point Tally Form Find the full list of Sponsors in this Google Doc. Coupon Codes are listed in this Google Doc & in this Ravelry Thread Exclusive Items from our Pro Shop Sponsors are listed in this Ravelry Thread Questions-  ask them in this Ravelry Thread or email Jen at downcellarstudio @ gmail.com Quarter 4 Challenge: Cable It Up brought to you by our Official Sponsor of the 4th Quarter Lolodidit. Full details can be found in this Google Doc and in this Ravelry Thread. Tune in to see if you're one of our Quarter 3 Challenge Winners or a December Participation Prize Winners The last day to register for Pigskin is 1/31. Reminder- the event ends on Monday 2/12/24! Get those projects finished. Updates from Commentator Mary Lots of chatter on the ravelry boards about the Q4 challenge! First to submit was player Audioann--who knit a really cool beanie with a large diagonal cable.  It has a super interesting construction--you knit a flat parallelogram shaped piece and then seam it up. Check it out: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/audioann/viviani-beanie-2 In the endzone dance thread, there are so many great projects!  In particular, a lot of stuffies caught my eye. It should come as no surprise that a bunch of people knit imaginedlandscapes' mystery gnomes last month since she is a sponsor.  Here are a few examples:  stillstranding: https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/down-cellar-studio-podcast/4272642/476-500#498 nellsknitting: https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/down-cellar-studio-podcast/4272642/476-500#491 supercraftygirl: https://www.ravelry.com/projects/Supercraftygirl/snow-matter-what esalaza: https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/down-cellar-studio-podcast/4272642/501-525#516 In other stuffie news, stitchr made pill bug stuffed animal that is truly awesome! It has rainbow legs and a bright orange and red body but it still rolls up into a gray ball.  Super cool! https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/down-cellar-studio-podcast/4272642/501-525#508 She also made a grizzly bear that is so lifelike--really cool! https://www.ravelry.com/discuss/down-cellar-studio-podcast/4272642/501-525#520   Events Vogue Knitting Live, New York: January 25-28th, 2024 I'm taking classes on Friday & then planning to go to the market 5-8p Friday. I'm teaching a class on the OMG Sock Pattern at Staci's Stitches in Scituate, MA on Sundays starting February 18th (4 classes)- the class is SOLD OUT   Contest, News & Notes Yarnable Unboxing January 2024 Video posted- this kit came with stitch markers with numbers on them, 25, 50, 75, 100 intended for use when casting on a large amount of stitch. Hawkeygirl3 on YouTube suggested it would also be great for counting rows/rounds like on the leg of a sock if you want to do matching ones! Great idea December 2023 Let the Mystery Unravel Unboxing + Blanket Update   Life in Focus 2023 Review: Knitting/Crochet/Spinning 61 Finished Projects 32 knitting - 2 sweaters (1 for me, 1 for Mom). Lots of hats & socks. 29 crochet (same as last year)- 9 toys 43 are gifts (+ 3 charity items) Spinning- 3 finished projects. 880 meters of yarn. (3 Spinning WIPs) Favorite projects Jean Marie shawl for Mom's birthday- Ravelry Project Page (fingering held double) Crochet Ice Cream Cone for Hattie's Birthday- Ravelry Project Page Domingo the Easter Goat for Millie for Christmas- Ravelry Project Page   2023 Numbers: 50 Books read 24 Podcast Episodes 66 Videos on YouTube (some only available for Patrons) YouTube Subscribers- 461 new subscribers, 2,578 subscribers total 5 times- Donated Blood 14 Massages Book Signings- 1 Plays/Musicals/drag Shows- 12 Concerts- 5 (night time only in Nashville) + 1 (Kane Brown) + 1 (Lainey Wilson ) + 1 (Old Dominion)= 8 Birthday Sleepovers- 3 Fiber Events- 6 (Russells, CT sheep & Wool, Maryland, Rhinebeck, C&SSYH, Fiber Fest of NE) Trips: Nashville, Maryland, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Rhinebeck. 23 for 2023 list Read 23 books (35 as of August) Try at least one pair of fake eyelashes Print and hang at least 1 of our new family photos  (ordered 8/9 from Walgreens- 8x10 for $12!) Kayak in one new place Did not complete Hike in one new place See 4 plays/musicals (Hamilton 2/9, Shrek in March twice. Secret Garden at Company in April, Matilda [Millie] in May) Give blood at least 3 times (March, May, August, October & December done) Knit myself a pair of mittens Knit/crochet at least one project with handspun (Strathcona sweater "aka my Rhinebeck sweater" Watch 3 movies in one day (1/22 w/ Mom, Terri, Megg- Everything. Everywhere, All At Once. Women Talk. Armageddon Time) See a movie in the theater (A Man Called Otto w/ Laura) Go to a museum (Liz and I went in December) Finish 1 punch needle project- Did not complete Ski at least 1 day (ideally 2-4)- Did not complete Try at least 1 new gym/in person fitness option 4/8- consult at Big Day Fitness. First class on 4/10. Signed up for a month.  Make at least 1 new financial investment (CD started in February) Purge at least 23 items from the house. Ideally 46. After a smaller clean out earlier in the year, I took a full car load to Savers in October- lots of clothes. Publish 1 knitting pattern Send 5 cards to friends/family just because- Did not complete Go Camping- Did not complete Participate in the Fiberuary Challenge on Instagram Take a class (in person or virtual)- Zumba twice. Create a new music playlist. Riley's. Plus CMA fest artists.   2024 Word of the Year- Heart Definitions: The central or innermost part of something To like very much, love courage, determination, hope or enthusiasm (don't lose heart) the vital part or essence one's real nature (at heart)   What I want to focus on in 2024: Stay close to my family- which is the heart and life blood of my life. Be true to my heart- what I value, what's most important to me. I won't lose heart even when times are hard. I will be true to my heart, my real nature, the heart of me.   2024-  Goals: Use my podcast/YouTube/Instagram following to raise money for the FearLESS Living Fund (details in the Ravelry group- and email if you're one of our regular sponsors) Make & assess goals every month in 2024 Monthly review of number of workouts + weigh on at least twice a month. Stretch/Theragun 2-4 times a week [][][][]   24 for 2024 list Get 2 massages beyond the one per month at Massage Envy End the year with more money in the bank than when I started in January. Make & assess goals each month of the year Read more books than you did in 2023 (50) Organize a fundraiser for the FearLESS Living Fund Come up with better temporary & more permanent storage for memory items. Visit 1 new (to me) museum or historical site Add one new indoor plant to my collection Buy/make/work with Dan/Oisin on at least 1 plant stand for the living or dining room Publish at least one new pattern Knit at least 1 finished project with handspun Knit/crochet myself a new sweater Make a Christmas afghan for the living room Take a class Purge at least 20 items from my wardrobe Go skiing Watch at least 5 of the movies on the Jen/Liz movie list Do something special for our Anniversary in May Do a regular (ideally monthly) review of Dropbox Camera Uploads to delete unnecessary items Buy a new quilt and/or duvet cover for our bed Buy a new blow dryer. Get my car detailed Buy new curtains for living room Try a new local restaurant   Health update on my Mom, Diane: She was hospitalized for several days because of issues with heart palpitation and then we learned her cancer is back in brain, lymph nodes, pleura (lining of lungs) and ribs. She will start with the same chemo she had last time (Oct '22- March '23). It's likely she'll also need radiation for the brain, but will do an MRI 4 weeks after chemo starts to know for sure & decide what's best… Health update video coming soon. Keep those prayers and good wishes coming. Diane starts chemo Monday 1/22.   On a Happy Note We had a great visit with my friend Laura who was here for New Year's. We struck a great balance of lazily watching tv (The Gilded Age & Slow Horses) and getting out and about. We also went to see Boys in the Boat the movie theater. My parents' annual open house the Saturday after Christmas. Mom gave the girls needle felting kits for Christmas; Millie Facetimed me several times with questions and showing me her progress! Getting sick has not been fun, but the fact that it didn't ruin my holidays and the fact that work is also still relatively quiet is a huge happy note. Dan has been taking great care of me, and we're rewatching Hell On Wheels. I spent Sunday of MLK weekend at my parents'. We played Wordle board game (Amazon affiliate link) with Mom, Riley, Millie and Aila. We visited my cousin Jenny's new house, got our nails done, went out for Mexican, played more games! Fun impromptu sleepover. Millie- All of the Jokers have been Joked! and telling Grammy to "be her best self" adorable.   Quote of the Week   Everything and everyone at their own pace. Flow with not against yourself. -Akiroq Brost   ------ Thank you for tuning in. Remember show notes for this episode can be found at www.downcellarstudio.com/# If you have a moment to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, I'd greatly appreciate it. I can be found on Ravelry as BostonJen and I'd love it if you came over to join our lively and engaged Down Cellar Studio Ravelry Group. Check me out on Instagram at BostonJen1 if you want to see what I'm up to between episodes. Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Email me at downcellarstudio@gmail.com   For website: Thank you for tuning in!   Contact Information: Check out the Down Cellar Studio Patreon! Ravelry: BostonJen & Down Cellar Studio Podcast Ravelry Group Instagram: BostonJen1 YouTube: Down Cellar Studio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/downcellarstudio Sign up for my email newsletter to get the latest on everything happening in the Down Cellar Studio Check out my Down Cellar Studio YouTube Channel Knit Picks Affiliate Link Bookshop Affiliate Link Yarnable Subscription Box Affiliate Link Music -"Soft Orange Glow" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/ Note: Some links are listed as Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click those, please know that I am an Amazon Associate and I earn money from qualifying purchases.  

Savage reconnects with jazz musician Sam Gendel as they discuss their unlikely collaboration. They first met in 2013 when Gendel sent Savage a collection of poetry titled "The Found Poetry of Michael Savage." Gendel creatively transformed Savage's words into poetry adding musical compositions in the style of the Beatniks. Find out how the two connected as they discuss the sequence of events that led to this groundbreaking radio performance. Savage recites an excerpt from "The Death Poem," a historic chronicle that covers the history of the earth, from its creation to present times. The two contemplate the decline of media, the peril of social media, and the need for creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hideous and eloquent! In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Seth Nicholas Johnson of Rusty Needle's Record Club returns to Weirdhouse Cinema to discuss Roger Corman's 1959 Beatnik horror comedy "A Bucket of Blood," starring Dick Miller.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Emerging in the conformist 1950s, the Beat subculture pushed back against corporatism and consumerism in favor of a contemplatively nonconformist lifestyle focused on art, poetry, jazz and “kicks.” The small circle of young writers at the core of this lit-erary movement—Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady—were all heavily influenced by the improvisation, illumination. and imagination they found in cannabis.  Among their most acclaimed and lasting works are Kerouac's generation-defining novel On the Road and Ginsberg's epic poem Howl. On this episode, Martin Torloff—author of Bop Apocalypse: Jazz, Race, the Beats and Drugs—explains just how central cannabis was as a creative tool for the Beats as they sought to bust through the conventions of both literature and society. And how along the way, they founded LeMar, America's first cannabis legalization organization. EPISODE ARCHIVE Visit our podcast feed for 90+ episodes of our classic Great Moments in Weed History format, and subscribe now to get a new weekly podcast every Weednesday. PATREON Please support Great Moments in Weed HIstory on Patreon. Supporters get exclusive access to video versions of this podcast and private seshes, plus cool rewards like a signed book. And it truly helps us make the best show possible 

Episode 169 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Piece of My Heart" and the short, tragic life of Janis Joplin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There are two Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two . For information on Janis Joplin I used three biographies -- Scars of Sweet Paradise by Alice Echols, Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, and Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. I also referred to the chapter '“Being Good Isn't Always Easy": Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul' in Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton. Some information on Bessie Smith came from Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay, a book I can't really recommend given the lack of fact-checking, and Bessie by Chris Albertson. I also referred to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis And the best place to start with Joplin's music is this five-CD box, which contains both Big Brother and the Holding Company albums she was involved in, plus her two studio albums and bonus tracks. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode contains discussion of drug addiction and overdose, alcoholism, mental illness, domestic abuse, child abandonment, and racism. If those subjects are likely to cause you upset, you may want to check the transcript or skip this one rather than listen. Also, a subject I should probably say a little more about in this intro because I know I have inadvertently caused upset to at least one listener with this in the past. When it comes to Janis Joplin, it is *impossible* to talk about her without discussing her issues with her weight and self-image. The way I write often involves me paraphrasing the opinions of the people I'm writing about, in a mode known as close third person, and sometimes that means it can look like I am stating those opinions as my own, and sometimes things I say in that mode which *I* think are obviously meant in context to be critiques of those attitudes can appear to others to be replicating them. At least once, I have seriously upset a fat listener when talking about issues related to weight in this manner. I'm going to try to be more careful here, but just in case, I'm going to say before I begin that I think fatphobia is a pernicious form of bigotry, as bad as any other form of bigotry. I'm fat myself and well aware of how systemic discrimination affects fat people. I also think more generally that the pressure put on women to look a particular way is pernicious and disgusting in ways I can't even begin to verbalise, and causes untold harm. If *ANYTHING* I say in this episode comes across as sounding otherwise, that's because I haven't expressed myself clearly enough. Like all people, Janis Joplin had negative characteristics, and at times I'm going to say things that are critical of those. But when it comes to anything to do with her weight or her appearance, if *anything* I say sounds critical of her, rather than of a society that makes women feel awful for their appearance, it isn't meant to. Anyway, on with the show. On January the nineteenth, 1943, Seth Joplin typed up a letter to his wife Dorothy, which read “I wish to tender my congratulations on the anniversary of your successful completion of your production quota for the nine months ending January 19, 1943. I realize that you passed through a period of inflation such as you had never before known—yet, in spite of this, you met your goal by your supreme effort during the early hours of January 19, a good three weeks ahead of schedule.” As you can probably tell from that message, the Joplin family were a strange mixture of ultraconformism and eccentricity, and those two opposing forces would dominate the personality of their firstborn daughter for the whole of her life.  Seth Joplin was a respected engineer at Texaco, where he worked for forty years, but he had actually dropped out of engineering school before completing his degree. His favourite pastime when he wasn't at work was to read -- he was a voracious reader -- and to listen to classical music, which would often move him to tears, but he had also taught himself to make bathtub gin during prohibition, and smoked cannabis. Dorothy, meanwhile, had had the possibility of a singing career before deciding to settle down and become a housewife, and was known for having a particularly beautiful soprano voice. Both were, by all accounts, fiercely intelligent people, but they were also as committed as anyone to the ideals of the middle-class family even as they chafed against its restrictions. Like her mother, young Janis had a beautiful soprano voice, and she became a soloist in her church choir, but after the age of six, she was not encouraged to sing much. Dorothy had had a thyroid operation which destroyed her singing voice, and the family got rid of their piano soon after (different sources say that this was either because Dorothy found her daughter's singing painful now that she couldn't sing herself, or because Seth was upset that his wife could no longer sing. Either seems plausible.) Janis was pushed to be a high-achiever -- she was given a library card as soon as she could write her name, and encouraged to use it, and she was soon advanced in school, skipping a couple of grades. She was also by all accounts a fiercely talented painter, and her parents paid for art lessons. From everything one reads about her pre-teen years, she was a child prodigy who was loved by everyone and who was clearly going to be a success of some kind. Things started to change when she reached her teenage years. Partly, this was just her getting into rock and roll music, which her father thought a fad -- though even there, she differed from her peers. She loved Elvis, but when she heard "Hound Dog", she loved it so much that she tracked down a copy of Big Mama Thornton's original, and told her friends she preferred that: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog"] Despite this, she was still also an exemplary student and overachiever. But by the time she turned fourteen, things started to go very wrong for her. Partly this was just down to her relationship with her father changing -- she adored him, but he became more distant from his daughters as they grew into women. But also, puberty had an almost wholly negative effect on her, at least by the standards of that time and place. She put on weight (which, again, I do not think is a negative thing, but she did, and so did everyone around her), she got a bad case of acne which didn't ever really go away, and she also didn't develop breasts particularly quickly -- which, given that she was a couple of years younger than the other people in the same classes at school, meant she stood out even more. In the mid-sixties, a doctor apparently diagnosed her as having a "hormone imbalance" -- something that got to her as a possible explanation for why she was, to quote from a letter she wrote then, "not really a woman or enough of one or something." She wondered if "maybe something as simple as a pill could have helped out or even changed that part of me I call ME and has been so messed up.” I'm not a doctor and even if I were, diagnosing historical figures is an unethical thing to do, but certainly the acne, weight gain, and mental health problems she had are all consistent with PCOS, the most common endocrine disorder among women, and it seems likely given what the doctor told her that this was the cause. But at the time all she knew was that she was different, and that in the eyes of her fellow students she had gone from being pretty to being ugly. She seems to have been a very trusting, naive, person who was often the brunt of jokes but who desperately needed to be accepted, and it became clear that her appearance wasn't going to let her fit into the conformist society she was being brought up in, while her high intelligence, low impulse control, and curiosity meant she couldn't even fade into the background. This left her one other option, and she decided that she would deliberately try to look and act as different from everyone else as possible. That way, it would be a conscious choice on her part to reject the standards of her fellow pupils, rather than her being rejected by them. She started to admire rebels. She became a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose music combined the country music she'd grown up hearing in Texas, the R&B she liked now, and the rebellious nature she was trying to cultivate: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] When Lewis' career was derailed by his marriage to his teenage cousin, Joplin wrote an angry letter to Time magazine complaining that they had mistreated him in their coverage. But as with so many people of her generation, her love of rock and roll music led her first to the blues and then to folk, and she soon found herself listening to Odetta: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] One of her first experiences of realising she could gain acceptance from her peers by singing was when she was hanging out with the small group of Bohemian teenagers she was friendly with, and sang an Odetta song, mimicking her voice exactly. But young Janis Joplin was listening to an eclectic range of folk music, and could mimic more than just Odetta. For all that her later vocal style was hugely influenced by Odetta and by other Black singers like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, her friends in her late teens and early twenties remember her as a vocal chameleon with an achingly pure soprano, who would more often than Odetta be imitating the great Appalachian traditional folk singer Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Lord Randall"] She was, in short, trying her best to become a Beatnik, despite not having any experience of that subculture other than what she read in books -- though she *did* read about them in books, devouring things like Kerouac's On The Road. She came into conflict with her mother, who didn't understand what was happening to her daughter, and who tried to get family counselling to understand what was going on. Her father, who seemed to relate more to Janis, but who was more quietly eccentric, put an end to that, but Janis would still for the rest of her life talk about how her mother had taken her to doctors who thought she was going to end up "either in jail or an insane asylum" to use her words. From this point on, and for the rest of her life, she was torn between a need for approval from her family and her peers, and a knowledge that no matter what she did she couldn't fit in with normal societal expectations. In high school she was a member of the Future Nurses of America, the Future Teachers of America, the Art Club, and Slide Rule Club, but she also had a reputation as a wild girl, and as sexually active (even though by all accounts at this point she was far less so than most of the so-called "good girls" – but her later activity was in part because she felt that if she was going to have that reputation anyway she might as well earn it). She also was known to express radical opinions, like that segregation was wrong, an opinion that the other students in her segregated Texan school didn't even think was wrong, but possibly some sort of sign of mental illness. Her final High School yearbook didn't contain a single other student's signature. And her initial choice of university, Lamar State College of Technology, was not much better. In the next town over, and attended by many of the same students, it had much the same attitudes as the school she'd left. Almost the only long-term effect her initial attendance at university had on her was a negative one -- she found there was another student at the college who was better at painting. Deciding that if she wasn't going to be the best at something she didn't want to do it at all, she more or less gave up on painting at that point. But there was one positive. One of the lecturers at Lamar was Francis Edward "Ab" Abernethy, who would in the early seventies go on to become the Secretary and Editor of the Texas Folklore Society, and was also a passionate folk musician, playing double bass in string bands. Abernethy had a great collection of blues 78s. and it was through this collection that Janis first discovered classic blues, and in particular Bessie Smith: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues"] A couple of episodes ago, we had a long look at the history of the music that now gets called "the blues" -- the music that's based around guitars, and generally involves a solo male vocalist, usually Black during its classic period. At the time that music was being made though it wouldn't have been thought of as "the blues" with no modifiers by most people who were aware of it. At the start, even the songs they were playing weren't thought of as blues by the male vocalist/guitarists who played them -- they called the songs they played "reels". The music released by people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold and so on was thought of as blues music, and people would understand and agree with a phrase like "Lonnie Johnson is a blues singer", but it wasn't the first thing people thought of when they talked about "the blues". Until relatively late -- probably some time in the 1960s -- if you wanted to talk about blues music made by Black men with guitars and only that music, you talked about "country blues". If you thought about "the blues", with no qualifiers, you thought about a rather different style of music, one that white record collectors started later to refer to as "classic blues" to differentiate it from what they were now calling "the blues". Nowadays of course if you say "classic blues", most people will think you mean Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, people who were contemporary at the time those white record collectors were coming up with their labels, and so that style of music gets referred to as "vaudeville blues", or as "classic female blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] What we just heard was the first big blues hit performed by a Black person, from 1920, and as we discussed in the episode on "Crossroads" that revolutionised the whole record industry when it came out. The song was performed by Mamie Smith, a vaudeville performer, and was originally titled "Harlem Blues" by its writer, Perry Bradford, before he changed the title to "Crazy Blues" to get it to a wider audience. Bradford was an important figure in the vaudeville scene, though other than being the credited writer of "Keep A-Knockin'" he's little known these days. He was a Black musician and grew up playing in minstrel shows (the history of minstrelsy is a topic for another day, but it's more complicated than the simple image of blackface that we are aware of today -- though as with many "more complicated than that" things it is, also the simple image of blackface we're aware of). He was the person who persuaded OKeh records that there would be a market for music made by Black people that sounded Black (though as we're going to see in this episode, what "sounding Black" means is a rather loaded question). "Crazy Blues" was the result, and it was a massive hit, even though it was marketed specifically towards Black listeners: [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] The big stars of the early years of recorded blues were all making records in the shadow of "Crazy Blues", and in the case of its very biggest stars, they were working very much in the same mould. The two most important blues stars of the twenties both got their start in vaudeville, and were both women. Ma Rainey, like Mamie Smith, first performed in minstrel shows, but where Mamie Smith's early records had her largely backed by white musicians, Rainey was largely backed by Black musicians, including on several tracks Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider"] Rainey's band was initially led by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most important men in American music, who we've talked about before in several episodes, including the last one. He was possibly the single most important figure in two different genres -- hokum music, when he, under the name "Georgia Tom" recorded "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red: [Excerpt: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That"] And of course gospel music, which to all intents and purposes he invented, and much of whose repertoire he wrote: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"] When Dorsey left Rainey's band, as we discussed right back in episode five, he was replaced by a female pianist, Lil Henderson. The blues was a woman's genre. And Ma Rainey was, by preference, a woman's woman, though she was married to a man: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Prove it on Me"] So was the biggest star of the classic blues era, who was originally mentored by Rainey. Bessie Smith, like Rainey, was a queer woman who had relationships with men but was far more interested in other women.  There were stories that Bessie Smith actually got her start in the business by being kidnapped by Ma Rainey, and forced into performing on the same bills as her in the vaudeville show she was touring in, and that Rainey taught Smith to sing blues in the process. In truth, Rainey mentored Smith more in stagecraft and the ways of the road than in singing, and neither woman was only a blues singer, though both had huge success with their blues records.  Indeed, since Rainey was already in the show, Smith was initially hired as a dancer rather than a singer, and she also worked as a male impersonator. But Smith soon branched out on her own -- from the beginning she was obviously a star. The great jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet later said of her "She had this trouble in her, this thing that would not let her rest sometimes, a meanness that came and took her over. But what she had was alive … Bessie, she just wouldn't let herself be; it seemed she couldn't let herself be." Bessie Smith was signed by Columbia Records in 1923, as part of the rush to find and record as many Black women blues singers as possible. Her first recording session produced "Downhearted Blues", which became, depending on which sources you read, either the biggest-selling blues record since "Crazy Blues" or the biggest-selling blues record ever, full stop, selling three quarters of a million copies in the six months after its release: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues"] Smith didn't make royalties off record sales, only making a flat fee, but she became the most popular Black performer of the 1920s. Columbia signed her to an exclusive contract, and she became so rich that she would literally travel between gigs on her own private train. She lived an extravagant life in every way, giving lavishly to her friends and family, but also drinking extraordinary amounts of liquor, having regular affairs, and also often physically or verbally attacking those around her. By all accounts she was not a comfortable person to be around, and she seemed to be trying to fit an entire lifetime into every moment. From 1923 through 1929 she had a string of massive hits. She recorded material in a variety of styles, including the dirty blues: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Empty Bed Blues] And with accompanists like Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, "Cold in Hand Blues"] But the music for which she became best known, and which sold the best, was when she sang about being mistreated by men, as on one of her biggest hits, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" -- and a warning here, I'm going to play a clip of the song, which treats domestic violence in a way that may be upsetting: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do"] That kind of material can often seem horrifying to today's listeners -- and quite correctly so, as domestic violence is a horrifying thing -- and it sounds entirely too excusing of the man beating her up for anyone to find it comfortable listening. But the Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has made a convincing case that while these records, and others by Smith's contemporaries, can't reasonably be considered to be feminist, they *are* at the very least more progressive than they now seem, in that they were, even if excusing it, pointing to a real problem which was otherwise left unspoken. And that kind of domestic violence and abuse *was* a real problem, including in Smith's own life. By all accounts she was terrified of her husband, Jack Gee, who would frequently attack her because of her affairs with other people, mostly women. But she was still devastated when he left her for a younger woman, not only because he had left her, but also because he kidnapped their adopted son and had him put into a care home, falsely claiming she had abused him. Not only that, but before Jack left her closest friend had been Jack's niece Ruby and after the split she never saw Ruby again -- though after her death Ruby tried to have a blues career as "Ruby Smith", taking her aunt's surname and recording a few tracks with Sammy Price, the piano player who worked with Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Ruby Smith with Sammy Price, "Make Me Love You"] The same month, May 1929, that Gee left her, Smith recorded what was to become her last big hit, and most well-known song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] And that could have been the theme for the rest of her life. A few months after that record came out, the Depression hit, pretty much killing the market for blues records. She carried on recording until 1931, but the records weren't selling any more. And at the same time, the talkies came in in the film industry, which along with the Depression ended up devastating the vaudeville audience. Her earnings were still higher than most, but only a quarter of what they had been a year or two earlier. She had one last recording session in 1933, produced by John Hammond for OKeh Records, where she showed that her style had developed over the years -- it was now incorporating the newer swing style, and featured future swing stars Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden in the backing band: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Gimme a Pigfoot"] Hammond was not hugely impressed with the recordings, preferring her earlier records, and they would be the last she would ever make. She continued as a successful, though no longer record-breaking, live act until 1937, when she and her common-law husband, Lionel Hampton's uncle Richard Morgan, were in a car crash. Morgan escaped, but Smith died of her injuries and was buried on October the fourth 1937. Ten thousand people came to her funeral, but she was buried in an unmarked grave -- she was still legally married to Gee, even though they'd been separated for eight years, and while he supposedly later became rich from songwriting royalties from some of her songs (most of her songs were written by other people, but she wrote a few herself) he refused to pay for a headstone for her. Indeed on more than one occasion he embezzled money that had been raised by other people to provide a headstone. Bessie Smith soon became Joplin's favourite singer of all time, and she started trying to copy her vocals. But other than discovering Smith's music, Joplin seems to have had as terrible a time at university as at school, and soon dropped out and moved back in with her parents. She went to business school for a short while, where she learned some secretarial skills, and then she moved west, going to LA where two of her aunts lived, to see if she could thrive better in a big West Coast city than she did in small-town Texas. Soon she moved from LA to Venice Beach, and from there had a brief sojourn in San Francisco, where she tried to live out her beatnik fantasies at a time when the beatnik culture was starting to fall apart. She did, while she was there, start smoking cannabis, though she never got a taste for that drug, and took Benzedrine and started drinking much more heavily than she had before. She soon lost her job, moved back to Texas, and re-enrolled at the same college she'd been at before. But now she'd had a taste of real Bohemian life -- she'd been singing at coffee houses, and having affairs with both men and women -- and soon she decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin. At this point, Austin was very far from the cultural centre it has become in recent decades, and it was still a straitlaced Texan town, but it was far less so than Port Arthur, and she soon found herself in a folk group, the Waller Creek Boys. Janis would play autoharp and sing, sometimes Bessie Smith covers, but also the more commercial country and folk music that was popular at the time, like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", a song that had originally been recorded by Wanda Jackson but at that time was a big hit for Dusty Springfield's group The Springfields: [Excerpt: The Waller Creek Boys, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"] But even there, Joplin didn't fit in comfortably. The venue where the folk jams were taking place was a segregated venue, as everywhere around Austin was. And she was enough of a misfit that the campus newspaper did an article on her headlined "She Dares to Be Different!", which read in part "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break out into song it will be handy." There was a small group of wannabe-Beatniks, including Chet Helms, who we've mentioned previously in the Grateful Dead episode, Gilbert Shelton, who went on to be a pioneer of alternative comics and create the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Shelton's partner in Rip-Off Press, Dave Moriarty, but for the most part the atmosphere in Austin was only slightly better for Janis than it had been in Port Arthur. The final straw for her came when in an annual charity fundraiser joke competition to find the ugliest man on campus, someone nominated her for the "award". She'd had enough of Texas. She wanted to go back to California. She and Chet Helms, who had dropped out of the university earlier and who, like her, had already spent some time on the West Coast, decided to hitch-hike together to San Francisco. Before leaving, she made a recording for her ex-girlfriend Julie Paul, a country and western musician, of a song she'd written herself. It's recorded in what many say was Janis' natural voice -- a voice she deliberately altered in performance in later years because, she would tell people, she didn't think there was room for her singing like that in an industry that already had Joan Baez and Judy Collins. In her early years she would alternate between singing like this and doing her imitations of Black women, but the character of Janis Joplin who would become famous never sang like this. It may well be the most honest thing that she ever recorded, and the most revealing of who she really was: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, "So Sad to Be Alone"] Joplin and Helms made it to San Francisco, and she started performing at open-mic nights and folk clubs around the Bay Area, singing in her Bessie Smith and Odetta imitation voice, and sometimes making a great deal of money by sounding different from the wispier-voiced women who were the norm at those venues. The two friends parted ways, and she started performing with two other folk musicians, Larry Hanks and Roger Perkins, and she insisted that they would play at least one Bessie Smith song at every performance: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, Larry Hanks, and Roger Perkins, "Black Mountain Blues (live in San Francisco)"] Often the trio would be joined by Billy Roberts, who at that time had just started performing the song that would make his name, "Hey Joe", and Joplin was soon part of the folk scene in the Bay Area, and admired by Dino Valenti, David Crosby, and Jerry Garcia among others. She also sang a lot with Jorma Kaukonnen, and recordings of the two of them together have circulated for years: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonnen, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] Through 1963, 1964, and early 1965 Joplin ping-ponged from coast to coast, spending time in the Bay Area, then Greenwich Village, dropping in on her parents then back to the Bay Area, and she started taking vast quantities of methamphetamine. Even before moving to San Francisco she had been an occasional user of amphetamines – at the time they were regularly prescribed to students as study aids during exam periods, and she had also been taking them to try to lose some of the weight she always hated. But while she was living in San Francisco she became dependent on the drug. At one point her father was worried enough about her health to visit her in San Francisco, where she managed to fool him that she was more or less OK. But she looked to him for reassurance that things would get better for her, and he couldn't give it to her. He told her about a concept that he called the "Saturday night swindle", the idea that you work all week so you can go out and have fun on Saturday in the hope that that will make up for everything else, but that it never does. She had occasional misses with what would have been lucky breaks -- at one point she was in a motorcycle accident just as record labels were interested in signing her, and by the time she got out of the hospital the chance had gone. She became engaged to another speed freak, one who claimed to be an engineer and from a well-off background, but she was becoming severely ill from what was by now a dangerous amphetamine habit, and in May 1965 she decided to move back in with her parents, get clean, and have a normal life. Her new fiance was going to do the same, and they were going to have the conformist life her parents had always wanted, and which she had always wanted to want. Surely with a husband who loved her she could find a way to fit in and just be normal. She kicked the addiction, and wrote her fiance long letters describing everything about her family and the new normal life they were going to have together, and they show her painfully trying to be optimistic about the future, like one where she described her family to him: "My mother—Dorothy—worries so and loves her children dearly. Republican and Methodist, very sincere, speaks in clichés which she really means and is very good to people. (She thinks you have a lovely voice and is terribly prepared to like you.) My father—richer than when I knew him and kind of embarrassed about it—very well read—history his passion—quiet and very excited to have me home because I'm bright and we can talk (about antimatter yet—that impressed him)! I keep telling him how smart you are and how proud I am of you.…" She went back to Lamar, her mother started sewing her a wedding dress, and for much of the year she believed her fiance was going to be her knight in shining armour. But as it happened, the fiance in question was described by everyone else who knew him as a compulsive liar and con man, who persuaded her father to give him money for supposed medical tests before the wedding, but in reality was apparently married to someone else and having a baby with a third woman. After the engagement was broken off, she started performing again around the coffeehouses in Austin and Houston, and she started to realise the possibilities of rock music for her kind of performance. The missing clue came from a group from Austin who she became very friendly with, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and the way their lead singer Roky Erickson would wail and yell: [Excerpt: The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me (live)"] If, as now seemed inevitable, Janis was going to make a living as a performer, maybe she should start singing rock music, because it seemed like there was money in it. There was even some talk of her singing with the Elevators. But then an old friend came to Austin from San Francisco with word from Chet Helms. A blues band had formed, and were looking for a singer, and they remembered her from the coffee houses. Would she like to go back to San Francisco and sing with them? In the time she'd been away, Helms had become hugely prominent in the San Francisco music scene, which had changed radically. A band from the area called the Charlatans had been playing a fake-Victorian saloon called the Red Dog in nearby Nevada, and had become massive with the people who a few years earlier had been beatniks: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "32-20"] When their residency at the Red Dog had finished, several of the crowd who had been regulars there had become a collective of sorts called the Family Dog, and Helms had become their unofficial leader. And there's actually a lot packed into that choice of name. As we'll see in a few future episodes, a lot of West Coast hippies eventually started calling their collectives and communes families. This started as a way to get round bureaucracy -- if a helpful welfare officer put down that the unrelated people living in a house together were a family, suddenly they could get food stamps. As with many things, of course, the label then affected how people thought about themselves, and one thing that's very notable about the San Francisco scene hippies in particular is that they are some of the first people to make a big deal about what we now  call "found family" or "family of choice". But it's also notable how often the hippie found families took their model from the only families these largely middle-class dropouts had ever known, and structured themselves around men going out and doing the work -- selling dope or panhandling or being rock musicians or shoplifting -- with the women staying at home doing the housework. The Family Dog started promoting shows, with the intention of turning San Francisco into "the American Liverpool", and soon Helms was rivalled only by Bill Graham as the major promoter of rock shows in the Bay Area. And now he wanted Janis to come back and join this new band. But Janis was worried. She was clean now. She drank far too much, but she wasn't doing any other drugs. She couldn't go back to San Francisco and risk getting back on methamphetamine. She needn't worry about that, she was told, nobody in San Francisco did speed any more, they were all on LSD -- a drug she hated and so wasn't in any danger from. Reassured, she made the trip back to San Francisco, to join Big Brother and the Holding Company. Big Brother and the Holding Company were the epitome of San Francisco acid rock at the time. They were the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, which Helms ran, and their first ever gig had been at the Trips Festival, which we talked about briefly in the Grateful Dead episode. They were known for being more imaginative than competent -- lead guitarist James Gurley was often described as playing parts that were influenced by John Cage, but was equally often, and equally accurately, described as not actually being able to keep his guitar in tune because he was too stoned. But they were drawing massive crowds with their instrumental freak-out rock music. Helms thought they needed a singer, and he had remembered Joplin, who a few of the group had seen playing the coffee houses. He decided she would be perfect for them, though Joplin wasn't so sure. She thought it was worth a shot, but as she wrote to her parents before meeting the group "Supposed to rehearse w/ the band this afternoon, after that I guess I'll know whether I want to stay & do that for awhile. Right now my position is ambivalent—I'm glad I came, nice to see the city, a few friends, but I'm not at all sold on the idea of becoming the poor man's Cher.” In that letter she also wrote "I'm awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you. I understand your fears at my coming here & must admit I share them, but I really do think there's an awfully good chance I won't blow it this time." The band she met up with consisted of lead guitarist James Gurley, bass player Peter Albin, rhythm player Sam Andrew, and drummer David Getz.  To start with, Peter Albin sang lead on most songs, with Joplin adding yelps and screams modelled on those of Roky Erickson, but in her first gig with the band she bowled everyone over with her lead vocal on the traditional spiritual "Down on Me", which would remain a staple of their live act, as in this live recording from 1968: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me (Live 1968)"] After that first gig in June 1966, it was obvious that Joplin was going to be a star, and was going to be the group's main lead vocalist. She had developed a whole new stage persona a million miles away from her folk performances. As Chet Helms said “Suddenly this person who would stand upright with her fists clenched was all over the stage. Roky Erickson had modeled himself after the screaming style of Little Richard, and Janis's initial stage presence came from Roky, and ultimately Little Richard. It was a very different Janis.” Joplin would always claim to journalists that her stage persona was just her being herself and natural, but she worked hard on every aspect of her performance, and far from the untrained emotional outpouring she always suggested, her vocal performances were carefully calculated pastiches of her influences -- mostly Bessie Smith, but also Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, Etta James, Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. That's not to say that those performances weren't an authentic expression of part of herself -- they absolutely were. But the ethos that dominated San Francisco in the mid-sixties prized self-expression over technical craft, and so Joplin had to portray herself as a freak of nature who just had to let all her emotions out, a wild woman, rather than someone who carefully worked out every nuance of her performances. Joplin actually got the chance to meet one of her idols when she discovered that Willie Mae Thornton was now living and regularly performing in the Bay Area. She and some of her bandmates saw Big Mama play a small jazz club, where she performed a song she wouldn't release on a record for another two years: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Ball 'n' Chain"] Janis loved the song and scribbled down the lyrics, then went backstage to ask Big Mama if Big Brother could cover the song. She gave them her blessing, but told them "don't" -- and here she used a word I can't use with a clean rating -- "it up". The group all moved in together, communally, with their partners -- those who had them. Janis was currently single, having dumped her most recent boyfriend after discovering him shooting speed, as she was still determined to stay clean. But she was rapidly discovering that the claim that San Franciscans no longer used much speed had perhaps not been entirely true, as for example Sam Andrew's girlfriend went by the nickname Speedfreak Rita. For now, Janis was still largely clean, but she did start drinking more. Partly this was because of a brief fling with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, who lived nearby. Janis liked Pigpen as someone else on the scene who didn't much like psychedelics or cannabis -- she didn't like drugs that made her think more, but only drugs that made her able to *stop* thinking (her love of amphetamines doesn't seem to fit this pattern, but a small percentage of people have a different reaction to amphetamine-type stimulants, perhaps she was one of those). Pigpen was a big drinker of Southern Comfort -- so much so that it would kill him within a few years -- and Janis started joining him. Her relationship with Pigpen didn't last long, but the two would remain close, and she would often join the Grateful Dead on stage over the years to duet with him on "Turn On Your Lovelight": [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, "Turn on Your Lovelight"] But within two months of joining the band, Janis nearly left. Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records came to see the group live, and was impressed by their singer, but not by the rest of the band. This was something that would happen again and again over the group's career. The group were all imaginative and creative -- they worked together on their arrangements and their long instrumental jams and often brought in very good ideas -- but they were not the most disciplined or technically skilled of musicians, even when you factored in their heavy drug use, and often lacked the skill to pull off their better ideas. They were hugely popular among the crowds at the Avalon Ballroom, who were on the group's chemical wavelength, but Rothchild was not impressed -- as he was, in general, unimpressed with psychedelic freakouts. He was already of the belief in summer 1966 that the fashion for extended experimental freak-outs would soon come to an end and that there would be a pendulum swing back towards more structured and melodic music. As we saw in the episode on The Band, he would be proved right in a little over a year, but being ahead of the curve he wanted to put together a supergroup that would be able to ride that coming wave, a group that would play old-fashioned blues. He'd got together Stefan Grossman, Steve Mann, and Taj Mahal, and he wanted Joplin to be the female vocalist for the group, dueting with Mahal. She attended one rehearsal, and the new group sounded great. Elektra Records offered to sign them, pay their rent while they rehearsed, and have a major promotional campaign for their first release. Joplin was very, very, tempted, and brought the subject up to her bandmates in Big Brother. They were devastated. They were a family! You don't leave your family! She was meant to be with them forever! They eventually got her to agree to put off the decision at least until after a residency they'd been booked for in Chicago, and she decided to give them the chance, writing to her parents "I decided to stay w/the group but still like to think about the other thing. Trying to figure out which is musically more marketable because my being good isn't enough, I've got to be in a good vehicle.” The trip to Chicago was a disaster. They found that the people of Chicago weren't hugely interested in seeing a bunch of white Californians play the blues, and that the Midwest didn't have the same Bohemian crowds that the coastal cities they were used to had, and so their freak-outs didn't go down well either. After two weeks of their four-week residency, the club owner stopped paying them because they were so unpopular, and they had no money to get home. And then they were approached by Bob Shad. (For those who know the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the Bob Shad in that film is named after this one -- Judd Apatow, the film's director, is Shad's grandson) This Shad was a record producer, who had worked with people like Big Bill Broonzy, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Billy Eckstine over an eighteen-year career, and had recently set up a new label, Mainstream Records. He wanted to sign Big Brother and the Holding Company. They needed money and... well, it was a record contract! It was a contract that took half their publishing, paid them a five percent royalty on sales, and gave them no advance, but it was still a contract, and they'd get union scale for the first session. In that first session in Chicago, they recorded four songs, and strangely only one, "Down on Me", had a solo Janis vocal. Of the other three songs, Sam Andrew and Janis dueted on Sam's song "Call on Me", Albin sang lead on the group composition "Blindman", and Gurley and Janis sang a cover of "All Is Loneliness", a song originally by the avant-garde street musician Moondog: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "All is Loneliness"] The group weren't happy with the four songs they recorded -- they had to keep the songs to the length of a single, and the engineers made sure that the needles never went into the red, so their guitars sounded far more polite and less distorted than they were used to. Janis was fascinated by the overdubbing process, though, especially double-tracking, which she'd never tried before but which she turned out to be remarkably good at. And they were now signed to a contract, which meant that Janis wouldn't be leaving the group to go solo any time soon. The family were going to stay together. But on the group's return to San Francisco, Janis started doing speed again, encouraged by the people around the group, particularly Gurley's wife. By the time the group's first single, "Blindman" backed with "All is Loneliness", came out, she was an addict again. That initial single did nothing, but the group were fast becoming one of the most popular in the Bay Area, and almost entirely down to Janis' vocals and on-stage persona. Bob Shad had already decided in the initial session that while various band members had taken lead, Janis was the one who should be focused on as the star, and when they drove to LA for their second recording session it was songs with Janis leads that they focused on. At that second session, in which they recorded ten tracks in two days, the group recorded a mix of material including one of Janis' own songs, the blues track "Women is Losers", and a version of the old folk song "the Cuckoo Bird" rearranged by Albin. Again they had to keep the arrangements to two and a half minutes a track, with no extended soloing and a pop arrangement style, and the results sound a lot more like the other San Francisco bands, notably Jefferson Airplane, than like the version of the band that shows itself in their live performances: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Coo Coo"] After returning to San Francisco after the sessions, Janis went to see Otis Redding at the Fillmore, turning up several hours before the show started on all three nights to make sure she could be right at the front. One of the other audience members later recalled “It was more fascinating for me, almost, to watch Janis watching Otis, because you could tell that she wasn't just listening to him, she was studying something. There was some kind of educational thing going on there. I was jumping around like the little hippie girl I was, thinking This is so great! and it just stopped me in my tracks—because all of a sudden Janis drew you very deeply into what the performance was all about. Watching her watch Otis Redding was an education in itself.” Joplin would, for the rest of her life, always say that Otis Redding was her all-time favourite singer, and would say “I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I Can't Turn You Loose (live)"] At the start of 1967, the group moved out of the rural house they'd been sharing and into separate apartments around Haight-Ashbury, and they brought the new year in by playing a free show organised by the Hell's Angels, the violent motorcycle gang who at the time were very close with the proto-hippies in the Bay Area. Janis in particular always got on well with the Angels, whose drugs of choice, like hers, were speed and alcohol more than cannabis and psychedelics. Janis also started what would be the longest on-again off-again relationship she would ever have, with a woman named Peggy Caserta. Caserta had a primary partner, but that if anything added to her appeal for Joplin -- Caserta's partner Kimmie had previously been in a relationship with Joan Baez, and Joplin, who had an intense insecurity that made her jealous of any other female singer who had any success, saw this as in some way a validation both of her sexuality and, transitively, of her talent. If she was dating Baez's ex's lover, that in some way put her on a par with Baez, and when she told friends about Peggy, Janis would always slip that fact in. Joplin and Caserta would see each other off and on for the rest of Joplin's life, but they were never in a monogamous relationship, and Joplin had many other lovers over the years. The next of these was Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, who were just in the process of recording their first album Electric Music for the Mind and Body, when McDonald and Joplin first got together: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Grace"] McDonald would later reminisce about lying with Joplin, listening to one of the first underground FM radio stations, KMPX, and them playing a Fish track and a Big Brother track back to back. Big Brother's second single, the other two songs recorded in the Chicago session, had been released in early 1967, and the B-side, "Down on Me", was getting a bit of airplay in San Francisco and made the local charts, though it did nothing outside the Bay Area: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me"] Janis was unhappy with the record, though, writing to her parents and saying, “Our new record is out. We seem to be pretty dissatisfied w/it. I think we're going to try & get out of the record contract if we can. We don't feel that they know how to promote or engineer a record & every time we recorded for them, they get all our songs, which means we can't do them for another record company. But then if our new record does something, we'd change our mind. But somehow, I don't think it's going to." The band apparently saw a lawyer to see if they could get out of the contract with Mainstream, but they were told it was airtight. They were tied to Bob Shad no matter what for the next five years. Janis and McDonald didn't stay together for long -- they clashed about his politics and her greater fame -- but after they split, she asked him to write a song for her before they became too distant, and he obliged and recorded it on the Fish's next album: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Janis"] The group were becoming so popular by late spring 1967 that when Richard Lester, the director of the Beatles' films among many other classics, came to San Francisco to film Petulia, his follow-up to How I Won The War, he chose them, along with the Grateful Dead, to appear in performance segments in the film. But it would be another filmmaker that would change the course of the group's career irrevocably: [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"] When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival, nobody had any great expectations. They were second on the bill on the Saturday, the day that had been put aside for the San Francisco acts, and they were playing in the early afternoon, after a largely unimpressive night before. They had a reputation among the San Francisco crowd, of course, but they weren't even as big as the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape or Country Joe and the Fish, let alone Jefferson Airplane. Monterey launched four careers to new heights, but three of the superstars it made -- Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who -- already had successful careers. Hendrix and the Who had had hits in the UK but not yet broken the US market, while Redding was massively popular with Black people but hadn't yet crossed over to a white audience. Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the other hand, were so unimportant that D.A. Pennebaker didn't even film their set -- their manager at the time had not wanted to sign over the rights to film their performance, something that several of the other acts had also refused -- and nobody had been bothered enough to make an issue of it. Pennebaker just took some crowd shots and didn't bother filming the band. The main thing he caught was Cass Elliot's open-mouthed astonishment at Big Brother's performance -- or rather at Janis Joplin's performance. The members of the group would later complain, not entirely inaccurately, that in the reviews of their performance at Monterey, Joplin's left nipple (the outline of which was apparently visible through her shirt, at least to the male reviewers who took an inordinate interest in such things) got more attention than her four bandmates combined. As Pennebaker later said “She came out and sang, and my hair stood on end. We were told we weren't allowed to shoot it, but I knew if we didn't have Janis in the film, the film would be a wash. Afterward, I said to Albert Grossman, ‘Talk to her manager or break his leg or whatever you have to do, because we've got to have her in this film. I can't imagine this film without this woman who I just saw perform.” Grossman had a talk with the organisers of the festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips, and they offered Big Brother a second spot, the next day, if they would allow their performance to be used in the film. The group agreed, after much discussion between Janis and Grossman, and against the wishes of their manager: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Ball and Chain (live at Monterey)"] They were now on Albert Grossman's radar. Or at least, Janis Joplin was. Joplin had always been more of a careerist than the other members of the group. They were in music to have a good time and to avoid working a straight job, and while some of them were more accomplished musicians than their later reputations would suggest -- Sam Andrew, in particular, was a skilled player and serious student of music -- they were fundamentally content with playing the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and making five hundred dollars or so a week between them. Very good money for 1967, but nothing else. Joplin, on the other hand, was someone who absolutely craved success. She wanted to prove to her family that she wasn't a failure and that her eccentricity shouldn't stop them being proud of her; she was always, even at the depths of her addictions, fiscally prudent and concerned about her finances; and she had a deep craving for love. Everyone who talks about her talks about how she had an aching need at all times for approval, connection, and validation, which she got on stage more than she got anywhere else. The bigger the audience, the more they must love her. She'd made all her decisions thus far based on how to balance making music that she loved with commercial success, and this would continue to be the pattern for her in future. And so when journalists started to want to talk to her, even though up to that point Albin, who did most of the on-stage announcements, and Gurley, the lead guitarist, had considered themselves joint leaders of the band, she was eager. And she was also eager to get rid of their manager, who continued the awkward streak that had prevented their first performance at the Monterey Pop Festival from being filmed. The group had the chance to play the Hollywood Bowl -- Bill Graham was putting on a "San Francisco Sound" showcase there, featuring Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and got their verbal agreement to play, but after Graham had the posters printed up, their manager refused to sign the contracts unless they were given more time on stage. The next day after that, they played Monterey again -- this time the Monterey Jazz Festival. A very different crowd to the Pop Festival still fell for Janis' performance -- and once again, the film being made of the event didn't include Big Brother's set because of their manager. While all this was going on, the group's recordings from the previous year were rushed out by Mainstream Records as an album, to poor reviews which complained it was nothing like the group's set at Monterey: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] They were going to need to get out of that contract and sign with somewhere better -- Clive Davis at Columbia Records was already encouraging them to sign with him -- but to do that, they needed a better manager. They needed Albert Grossman. Grossman was one of the best negotiators in the business at that point, but he was also someone who had a genuine love for the music his clients made.  And he had good taste -- he managed Odetta, who Janis idolised as a singer, and Bob Dylan, who she'd been a fan of since his first album came out. He was going to be the perfect manager for the group. But he had one condition though. His first wife had been a heroin addict, and he'd just been dealing with Mike Bloomfield's heroin habit. He had one absolutely ironclad rule, a dealbreaker that would stop him signing them -- they didn't use heroin, did they? Both Gurley and Joplin had used heroin on occasion -- Joplin had only just started, introduced to the drug by Gurley -- but they were only dabblers. They could give it up any time they wanted, right? Of course they could. They told him, in perfect sincerity, that the band didn't use heroin and it wouldn't be a problem. But other than that, Grossman was extremely flexible. He explained to the group at their first meeting that he took a higher percentage than other managers, but that he would also make them more money than other managers -- if money was what they wanted. He told them that they needed to figure out where they wanted their career to be, and what they were willing to do to get there -- would they be happy just playing the same kind of venues they were now, maybe for a little more money, or did they want to be as big as Dylan or Peter, Paul, and Mary? He could get them to whatever level they wanted, and he was happy with working with clients at every level, what did they actually want? The group were agreed -- they wanted to be rich. They decided to test him. They were making twenty-five thousand dollars a year between them at that time, so they got ridiculously ambitious. They told him they wanted to make a *lot* of money. Indeed, they wanted a clause in their contract saying the contract would be void if in the first year they didn't make... thinking of a ridiculous amount, they came up with seventy-five thousand dollars. Grossman's response was to shrug and say "Make it a hundred thousand." The group were now famous and mixing with superstars -- Peter Tork of the Monkees had become a close friend of Janis', and when they played a residency in LA they were invited to John and Michelle Phillips' house to see a rough cut of Monterey Pop. But the group, other than Janis, were horrified -- the film barely showed the other band members at all, just Janis. Dave Getz said later "We assumed we'd appear in the movie as a band, but seeing it was a shock. It was all Janis. They saw her as a superstar in the making. I realized that though we were finally going to be making money and go to another level, it also meant our little family was being separated—there was Janis, and there was the band.” [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] If the group were going to make that hundred thousand dollars a year, they couldn't remain on Mainstream Records, but Bob Shad was not about to give up his rights to what could potentially be the biggest group in America without a fight. But luckily for the group, Clive Davis at Columbia had seen their Monterey performance, and he was also trying to pivot the label towards the new rock music. He was basically willing to do anything to get them. Eventually Columbia agreed to pay Shad two hundred thousand dollars for the group's contract -- Davis and Grossman negotiated so half that was an advance on the group's future earnings, but the other half was just an expense for the label. On top of that the group got an advance payment of fifty thousand dollars for their first album for Columbia, making a total investment by Columbia of a quarter of a million dollars -- in return for which they got to sign the band, and got the rights to the material they'd recorded for Mainstream, though Shad would get a two percent royalty on their first two albums for Columbia. Janis was intimidated by signing for Columbia, because that had been Aretha Franklin's label before she signed to Atlantic, and she regarded Franklin as the greatest performer in music at that time.  Which may have had something to do with the choice of a new song the group added to their setlist in early 1968 -- one which was a current hit for Aretha's sister Erma: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] We talked a little in the last episode about the song "Piece of My Heart" itself, though mostly from the perspective of its performer, Erma Franklin. But the song was, as we mentioned, co-written by Bert Berns. He's someone we've talked about a little bit in previous episodes, notably the ones on "Here Comes the Night" and "Twist and Shout", but those were a couple of years ago, and he's about to become a major figure in the next episode, so we might as well take a moment here to remind listeners (or tell those who haven't heard those episodes) of the basics and explain where "Piece of My Heart" comes in Berns' work as a whole. Bert Berns was a latecomer to the music industry, not getting properly started until he was thirty-one, after trying a variety of other occupations. But when he did get started, he wasted no time making his mark -- he knew he had no time to waste. He had a weak heart and knew the likelihood was he was going to die young. He started an association with Wand records as a songwriter and performer, writing songs for some of Phil Spector's pre-fame recordings, and he also started producing records for Atlantic, where for a long while he was almost the equal of Jerry Wexler or Leiber and Stoller in terms of number of massive hits created. His records with Solomon Burke were the records that first got the R&B genre renamed soul (previously the word "soul" mostly referred to a kind of R&Bish jazz, rather than a kind of gospel-ish R&B). He'd also been one of the few American music industry professionals to work with British bands before the Beatles made it big in the USA, after he became alerted to the Beatles' success with his song "Twist and Shout", which he'd co-written with Phil Medley, and which had been a hit in a version Berns produced for the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] That song shows the two elements that existed in nearly every single Bert Berns song or production. The first is the Afro-Caribbean rhythm, a feel he picked up during a stint in Cuba in his twenties. Other people in the Atlantic records team were also partial to those rhythms -- Leiber and Stoller loved what they called the baion rhythm -- but Berns more than anyone else made it his signature. He also very specifically loved the song "La Bamba", especially Ritchie Valens' version of it: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, "La Bamba"] He basically seemed to think that was the greatest record ever made, and he certainly loved that three-chord trick I-IV-V-IV chord sequence -- almost but not quite the same as the "Louie Louie" one.  He used it in nearly every song he wrote from that point on -- usually using a bassline that went something like this: [plays I-IV-V-IV bassline] He used it in "Twist and Shout" of course: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] He used it in "Hang on Sloopy": [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] He *could* get more harmonically sophisticated on occasion, but the vast majority of Berns' songs show the power of simplicity. They're usually based around three chords, and often they're actually only two chords, like "I Want Candy": [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Or the chorus to "Here Comes the Night" by Them, which is two chords for most of it and only introduces a third right at the end: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And even in that song you can hear the "Twist and Shout"/"La Bamba" feel, even if it's not exactly the same chords. Berns' whole career was essentially a way of wringing *every last possible drop* out of all the implications of Ritchie Valens' record. And so even when he did a more harmonically complex song, like "Piece of My Heart", which actually has some minor chords in the bridge, the "La Bamba" chord sequence is used in both the verse: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] And the chorus: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] Berns co-wrote “Piece of My Heart” with Jerry Ragavoy. Berns and Ragavoy had also written "Cry Baby" for Garnet Mimms, which was another Joplin favourite: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And Ragavoy, with other collaborators

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