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Stream 15 Hours of the

John Peel Sessions: 255
Tracks by Syd Barrett,
David Bowie, Siouxsie
and the Banshees &
Other Artists
in Music | July 12th, 2016

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Siouxsie and the Banshees - Love in a Void ( Jo...
For fans of what came to be called
“alternative music,” the discovery of
new artists and bands felt like a
genuine adventure before the
internet irrevocably changed music
consumption. A few official venues
acted as guides—magazines like
Trouser Press and NME, shows like
120 Minutes, MTV’s late-night
showcase of post-punk, new wave,
industrial, etc. Word of mouth, local
zines, college radio, mixtape gifts,
and the purloined contents of older
brothers and sisters’ record
collections went a long way. Many
of us had access to independent
record stores that stocked all sorts of
underground oddities, often run by
 obsessive know-it-alls like High
Fidelity’s Rob Gordon.

Venturing into that world could be

an intimidating experience. But one
dependable
1. 2016 Scholarship marker of quality
Programs
hardly
2. Top 10 eBooksever let young seekers down:
of 2016
the name of BBC DJ and curator
extraordinaire John Peel. Peel’s
influence on the musical trends of
the last forty years is incalculable,
and impossible to summarize in
brief. (Learn about his legacy at this
BBC tribute page.) From 1967 to his
death in 2004, he recorded up and
coming and underground bands in
intimate sessions at BBC studios,
and many of these classic recordings
came out on his Strange Fruit label.

No matter the band, no matter the

genre, the mysterious gray cover of
a Peel Sessions release always
promised something worth forking
over one’s hard-earned
lawnmowing money to hear. Peel
broadcast and recorded Nirvana
before “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit
the mainstream; introduced his
listeners to now-legends like Joy
Division, The Smiths, and The
Specials; gave Bowie his first break
before his Ziggy Stardust fame; and
played Bob Marley before Catch a
Fire made him world famous.

Gangsters
The Specials
The John Peel Sessions ...

Gangsters
1 3:02
The Specials

2 Too Much Too Young 2:06

The Specials

Sheela-Na-Gig - Peel 29.10.91

3 3:19
PJ Harvey

Oh My Lover - Peel 29.10.91

4 3:51
PJ Harvey

Do You Remember The First T... 4:00

5
Pulp

6 Theme From Peter Gunn - Kin... 4:06

Pulp

Love In A Void - John Peel Se... 2:38

7
Siouxsie and the Banshees

These sessions and many more have

been lovingly compiled in one
Spotify playlist by Sebastien
Vanblaere. If you have nostalgic
memories of putting on a Peel
Sessions record or cassette and
having your mind blown by music
the likes of which you’d never heard
before, you may find your favorites
here. My personal touchstone is
Siouxsie and the Banshees Peel
Session recordings, which to this
day I prefer to their still excellent
studio releases (hear “Love in a
Void” at the top). Something about
the way those focused live sessions
were recorded, and the immediacy
of their raw, uncluttered mixes,
make them feel very personal, like a
concert in your living room.

While I associate Peel’s name

mainly with the post-punk niche of
my youth, his eclectic tastes
spanned the gamut. Before he gave
the Ramones, The Damned, and
other punk bands their first major
play in the mid-seventies, Peel
championed the psychedelic
spacerock of Pink Floyd, the droning
krautrock of Neu!, and the
uncategorizable weirdness of
Captain Beefheart; “he was among
the first (and only) DJs anywhere,”
writes the Houston Press, “to
broadcast reggae, punk, hardcore,
grindcore, grime and dubstep music
over the radio.”

Peel’s relevance never waned

because his interest in finding,
broadcasting, and recording new
music never did either, but the
playlist here mostly represents
his pre-1990 favs, and sticks closely
to rock, punk, new wave, and folk.
See this page for a full listing of
every John Peel session, from 1967
to three posthumous releases in
2004. And for a sense of the
incredible breadth and eclectic
inclusiveness of Peel’s musical
tastes, visit the John Peel Archive, an
online project currently cataloguing
every single record in Peel’s
collection. They’re currently up to
2679 of over 100,000 records total.

Related Content:

The 120 Minutes Archive Compiles

Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes
of MTV’s Alternative Music Show
(1986-2013)

Revisit the Radio Sessions and

Record Collection of
Groundbreaking BBC DJ John Peel

Prof. Iggy Pop Delivers the BBC’s

2014 John Peel Lecture on “Free
Music in a Capitalist Society”

Josh Jones is a writer and musician

based in Durham, NC. Follow him
at @jdmagness

by Josh Jones | Make a Comment

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Dada Was Born 100 Years

Ago: Celebrate the Avant-
Garde Movement
Launched by Hugo Ball
on July 14, 1916
in Art | July 11th, 2016

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Dada and Cabaret Voltaire
What is Dada? The curious may
start, as with any subject, at its
Wikipedia page. But that entry on
“the World War I–era ‘anti-art’
movement characterized by random
nonsense words, bizarre
photocollage, and the repurposing
of pre-existing material to strange
and disturbing effect,” the
Onion once comedically
reported, “may or may not have
been severely vandalized” into a
state of mysterious and seemingly
deliberate chaos. But “the fact that
the web page continually reverts to
a ‘normal’ state, observers say, is
either evidence that ongoing
vandalization is being deleted
through vigilant updating, or a
deliberate statement on the
impermanence of superficial petit-
bourgeois culture in the age of
modernity.”

This raises a more

interesting question: how has Dada
remained relevant enough to make
fun of? Whatever its condition,
its Wikipedia entry should inform
you that it began in July 1916,
making it — whatever, exactly, “it”
is — a century old this month. On
July 14th, 1916, writes the New York
Times‘ Corinna da Fonseca-
Wollheim, “the poet Hugo Ball
proclaimed the manifesto for a new
movement. Its name: Dada. Its aim:
to ‘get rid of everything that smacks
of journalism, worms, everything
nice and right, blinkered, moralistic,
europeanised, enervated.'” Meeting
at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, Ball and
a group of collaborators labored,
briefly but excitingly, to create
“poetry shorn of intelligible words,
music devoid of melodies and
statements in which the message
was cannibalized by the absurdity
of the language” as “a protest
against a European civilization
hellbent on war.”
The Onion began having fun with
Dada’s mission almost eighty years
after the original movement itself
dispersed at the armistice of
November 1918 (though the Cabaret
Voltaire itself still exists, as you can
see just above), imagining a war on
art launched jointly by Dadaists
and Republicans “calling for the
elimination of federal funding for
the National Endowment for the
Arts; the banning of offensive art
from museums and schools; and the
destruction of the ‘hoax of reason’ in
our increasingly random, irrational
and meaningless age.” The
firebrands of Dada didn’t hate art so
much as they hated what they
diagnosed as the “logical” and
“rational” ways of thinking that had
led Europe into a period of self-
destruction and theretofore
unheard-of brutality, and arrived at
the direct opposition to the
supposed fruits of Western
civilization as the only meaningful
response.

Dada at the Cabaret Voltaire

from DERTV

00:52

Enthusiasm for Dada traveled well

beyond the boundaries of Zürich to
Berlin, Cologne, New York, Paris, the
Netherlands, Italy, eastern Europe,
Russia, and even Japan (where it
inspired a well-known television
monster), an impressive
development indeed for a highly
provocative, absurdity-venerating
creative shout into the darkness
well before the advent of anything
like modern communication
technology. You can get a clearer
sense — as clear as anything about
Dada gets, anyway — of how that
happened from The ABCs of Dada,
the half-hour documentary just
below:

The ABC's of DADA (1 of 3)

If you really want to connect to the
spirit of Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara,
George Grosz, Hans Richter and the
rest of the Dadaists, start with their
modern descendants and work
backward: any movement that
opened the space for artists
like Captain Beefheart, Devo, and
even, according to Ben Ratliff in the
aforementioned New York Times
article, Kanye West in his MTV
Video Music Awards speech last
year was certainly on to something.
Given how many observers of the
political scene in Europe and
elsewhere say we’ve entered a grim
but inevitable era — one where
Kanye running for president as he
promised on MTV might actually
improve matters
— Dada’s pronouncements may
soon come in handier than they
have in… oh, about a hundred years.

Find more good Dada material in

the Relateds below.

Related Content:

Three Essential Dadaist Films:

Groundbreaking Works by Hans
Richter, Man Ray & Marcel
Duchamp

Hear the Experimental Music of the

Dada Movement: Avant-Garde
Sounds from a Century Ago

Entr’Acte: René Clair’s Dadaist

Masterpiece (1924)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes

and broadcasts on cities and
culture. He’s at work on a book about
Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer,
the video series The City in
Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism
project Where Is the City of the
Future?, and the Los Angeles Review
of Books’ Korea Blog. Follow him on
Twitter at @colinmarshall or
on Facebook.

by Colin Marshall | Make a

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The Source Code for the

Apollo 11 Moon Landing
Mission Is Now Free on
Github
in Technology | July 11th, 2016

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If you listen to the conspiracy

theorists, they’ll tell you that Stanley
Kubrick helped fake the Apollo 11
moon landing mission in 1969.
Remember the vintage moon
landing footage you’ve seen?
Kubrick apparently shot the
breathtaking video on a sound stage
in Huntsville, Alabama, drawing on
the special effects he perfected
while shooting 2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968).

That’s how they explain that

artifact. I wonder how they deal
with this?: On Github, you can now
download the source code for Apollo
11’s command and lunar modules.
Originally written by programmers
at the MIT Instrumentation
Laboratory in the mid-1960s, the
code, according to Quartz, was
recently put online by NASA intern
Chris Garry, making it freely
available to the coding community.
You can find it all here and start
hacking your way through the
reams of obscure, vintage code.
Skeptics can put their theories in the
comments section below.

via Quartz 

Related Content

Michio Kaku & Noam Chomsky

School Moon Landing and 9/11
Conspiracy Theorists

8,400 Stunning High-Res Photos

From the Apollo Moon Missions Are
Now Online

Stanley Kubrick Faked the Apollo 11

Moon Landing in 1969, Or So the
Conspiracy Theory Goes

Free Online Computer Science

Courses

by Dan Colman | Make a Comment

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Hunter S. Thompson Gets

Confronted by The Hell’s
Angels: Where’s Our Two
Kegs of Beer? (1967)
in Literature | July 11th, 2016

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Hunter S. Thompson meets a Hell's Angel, 196...
In 1965, the editor of The Nation
asked Hunter S. Thompson to write
a story about the Hell’s Angels
Motorcycle Club, as they’re officially
known. The assignment eventually
yielded the article, “The Motorcycle
Gangs” (read it online), which
became the basis for the 1966
book, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and
Terrible Saga. It was Thompson’s
first book, and America’s first real
introduction to Thompson’s Gonzo-
style journalism. Reviewing the
book for The New York Times, Leo
Litwak wrote:

Hunter Thompson entered this terra

incognita [the world of the Hell’s Angels] to
become its cartographer. For almost a
year, he accompanied the Hell’s Angels on
their rallies. He drank at their bars,
 exchanged home visits, recorded their
brutalities, viewed their sexual caprices,
became converted to their motorcycle
mystique, and was so intrigued, as he puts
it, that “I was no longer sure whether I was
doing research on the Hell’s Angels or
being slowly absorbed by them.” At the
conclusion of his year’s tenure the
ambiguity of his position was ended when
a group of Angels knocked him to the
ground and stomped him…

Hunter Thompson has presented us with a

close view of a world most of us would
never dare encounter, yet one with which
we should be familiar. He has brought on
stage men who have lost all options and
are not reconciled to the loss. They have
great resources for violence which doesn’t
as yet have any effective focus. Thompson
suggests that these few Angels are but the
vanguard of a growing army of
disappropriated, disaffiliated and
desperate men. There’s always the risk that
somehow they may force the wrong
options into being.

This clip above, which aired on

Canadian television in 1967,
describes the circumstances that led
to the Angels giving HST a beat
down. The misogyny that’s on
display as the biker tells the story
will make you shudder. Even worse
are the laughs from the 1960s,
buttoned-down crowd.

As for whether the Angels ever got

their two kegs of beer, I don’t know.

Note: You can download

Thompson’s Hell’s Angels: A Strange
and Terrible Saga as a free
audiobook if you sign up for a 30-
Day Free Trial with Audible. Find
more information on that program
here.

Related Content

Read 18 Lost Stories From Hunter S.

Thompson’s Forgotten Stint As a
Foreign Correspondent
Read 11 Free Articles by Hunter S.
Thompson That Span His Gonzo
Journalist Career (1965-2005)

Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Read Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear

and Loathing in Las Vegas, as It Was
Originally Published in Rolling Stone

by Dan Colman | Make a Comment

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The Creativity of Female

Graffiti & Street Artists
Will Be Celebrated in
Street Heroines, a New
Documentary
in Art, Creativity, Film, Life | July
11th, 2016

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Official Trailer | STREET HEROINES A
Film By Alexandra Henry
from Alexandra Henry PLUS

03:39

Street art is a frequently dangerous

game. The threat of arrest pales in
comparison to some of the hazards
long time practitioners describe.
While other artists sketch in
pleasant cafes, creators of large-
scale street pieces often have no
choice but to wriggle through
ragged holes in chain link fences
and climb to vertiginous heights to
get to their canvases.

There’s a popular conception of

graffiti artist as lone wolf, but when
it comes to the perils of the street,
there’s safety in numbers. You need
a crew. Female street artists must
draw on the power of sisterhood.

As photojournalist Martha Cooper

notes in the trailer for director
Alexandra Henry’s Street Heroines,
above:

I think bringing women together

empowers them and there’s been
some resistance on the part of
men…it has to do with
camaraderie too. It’s not that
they’re saying, “You can’t do it,”
but they’re just not allowing them
in to their inner group.

Apparently, street art is something

of an old boy’s club.

“What!?” gasps Lady Pink, a well

known veteran with over 35 years’
experience. “You need a penis to
climb a ladder? Does it help you
hold on?”

The female camaraderie Cooper

cites extends to the successful
funding of a Kickstarter campaign to
complete this documentary on “the
courage and creativity of female
graffiti & street artists from around
the world.” As the deadline loomed,
Lexi Bella & Danielle Mastrion, two
of the women featured in the
documentary, issued an open
invitation to New York City-based
female artists to join them in
creating a spur-of-the-moment
mural in Brooklyn, surrendering
artistic control to
embrace community spirit.

Many of the 25 artists Henry has

profiled thus far speak of using their
work to bring beauty to the street,
and to advocate on behalf of the
oppressed. Such earnestness
may diminish them even further in
the eyes of the old school He Man
Woman Haters Club. Lexi Bella
counterbalances the laughably soft
image certain macho practitioners
may assign to them by speaking
unapologetically of the thrill
of making one’s work as big as
possible “so millions of people can
see it.”

Street Heroines is aiming for release

in 2017.

via The Creators Project

Related Content:

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of

Street Art from Across the Globe

The Battle for LA’s Murals

The Odd Couple: Jean-Michel

Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Ayun Halliday is an author,

illustrator, and Chief Primatologist of
the East Village Inky zine. Follow her
@AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Make a

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Open Culture editor Dan Colman
scours the web for the best
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He finds the books you want, the
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