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Intro: Today we’re looking at a song by Otis Redding, an artist underappreciated in his own time but celebrated after his death, and the Blacks Crows, a group who were perhaps outside of their own time and deserved to be bigger than they were. Let’s take a look at the historic context in which each hit came out in. The scenes: 1968 was a tumultuous year with the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The Tet offensive marked the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War. The Apollo 8 mission circled the moon ten times. African American Athletes Tommie Smith and Johnny Carlos raised their black gloved fists as a protest against racial discrimination at the Mexican Olympic Games. In 1990 Operation Desert Shield began with America sending troops to Saudi Arabia after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.   The Simpsons airs on TV for the first time. The first web page is published on the World Wide Web and a hole in the Ozone layer is discovered. The Original: T

Intro: Whiskey in the jar is a traditional Irish song perhaps dating from as far back as 1650. It contains many popular themes found in that genre of song, drinking, sex and killing Englishmen. It was also one of the biggest rock songs ever.    The scenes: It’s 1972, eleven Israeli athletes are killed by Arab gunmen at the Munich Olympics. Bloody Sunday show the escalation of tensions between the IRA and the British government with the loss of innocent lives. The Watergate Scandal comes to light in the US. In 1998 the Good Friday agreement puts an end to the sectarian violence in the north of Ireland. Bill Clinton denies having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, only to later admit that he did. The Original: The song Whiskey in the Jar was released by the Irish rock band Thin Lizzy by their record label Decca. It topped the Irish charts and reached no. 6. In the U.K. The band itself disliked the decision to release it, feeling that it didn’t represent the ba

Five months ago America threatened to veto a UN resolution to make rape a war crime, placing it in the moral company of Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. A week ago America abandoned the Kurds to the Turks. This caused the release of former Islamic radicals who were being held by the Kurds, Russia and the Syrian Defense forces to occupy the ground formerly held by US forces with open arms and mass atrocities committed against the Kurds by the Turkish forces.           Have they any right to claim to be the defenders of the free world anymore? Sure, they played their own games when the iron curtain was still up. Yet their self-appointed title, at the very least made them act like that sometimes, in gesture or symbol, even sometimes by a genuine desire to help. If you profess to do good, you must do good sometimes, even if it’s just for the photo shoot. So now America has cast off even the slightest pretense of being the good guy. It’s also lashing out everywhere. At China,

The Pitch : Why are all the You tubers I ‘ve recommended Funky Beardmeisters? Is the question nobody is asking. Simon Williams is an English chess Grand Master and one of the strongest players in Great Britain. His videos are about chess. Williams is passionate about attacking, aggressive chess. This is the kind of chess most club level players are looking for (me included). What you get:   Anybody looking to improve their chess, should check out this channel. It’s fun, informative and useful (although it’s not for the complete beginner). It’s a great example of a niche channel. Recommended Videos: Just jump into the video lists, if you want tactics, openings or annotated games you got it. Conclusion: Check this channel out and start naming your pawns; before you sacrifice them. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClV9nqHHcsrm2krkFDPPr-g

Intro: So far in this series I’ve looked at songs that can be put in the camp of interpretations. There was just a different vision of the song   This is the first time I will look at a song in which the version was more successful and considered better than the original (even by the song writer himself). This is a case of the version taking on a life and trajectory of its own. The Scene: It’s 1967/1968, and America’s military presence in Vietnam escalates, with military personnel reaching a total of 475,000. Protesting became more intense and rioting and looting becomes widespread across American cities, cumulating in the National Guard being called in to restore law and order in Detroit. The Beatles continue to revolutionize popular music with their “Sargent Pepper’s lonely Hearts Club Band”. Israel acquires vast swathes of territory after the six day war.   The Original: All Along the Watchtower was written and recorded by legendary singer song writer and Nob

“All art is quite useless” Oscar Wilde. Wilde is of course right. In terms of plain old survival; art is useless. That is part of its joy. To have the time to try to make or enjoy something beautiful, or thought provoking, is the one of the most sublime aspects of leisure. That’s why the verb “To Netflick” exists. That is also why a lot of the internet, is people talking about the useless . We share our overlapping narratives whether they are fictional or not. So, the summer’s gone and so too has that weird moment in time when my YouTube recommendations were chockablock with Vlogs and video essays; ranting about Star Wars and Game of Thrones. Now, I know I locked myself into an algorithm bubble. You Tube’s A.I. just fed me that stuff because I click, click, click. Even so, that’s a lot of content generated and a very big bubble. When the new trilogy of Star wars came out and everybody was happy for a while and then the Fandom started to complain that the Force Awakens

The Pitch: Whether you’re an armchair general or a History graduate there’s something in MVH (Military History Visualized) for you. MVH creates informative and short videos, based around a single theme. These are usually, but not always on WWII. The episodes draw heavily from cited sources, and often demystify commonly held beliefs with cold, hard facts. What you get: This channel does all of the above and more. There’s a second channel Military History Not Visualized, which is more of a talking head style (because of logistics, a word you’ll hear quite often in these videos). Also, there’s a community of Military History you tubers, which although having  their own unique channels fed into each other with collaborations and guest appearances. Recommended Episodes: Panzer Tactics - "Blitzkrieg" Years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg8JM3SUeSU Why is Rommel so complicated? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw1UJCwcgNc        US Navy vs Chines

The Scene: It’s 1995, the year in which we saw Richey James Edwards heartbreakingly surreal disappearance from the Manic Street Preachers, Tupac have   a No. 1 album whilst in prison, The Beetles and   Queen release “new” material and Bjork   telling everyone about the joys of being quiet. But did you know that the Oasis song “Wonderwall” hit No.1 and No.2 in the British charts at the same time? The original:                            Wonderwall by Oasis was the anthem of my youth, and there is no way in hell that overplay could scratch its raw honesty and ubiquity. My mate Keith played and sang a great version of it, we sang it on the way to parties, we sang it at parties, on the bus on the way home from parties, at our school graduation, at weddings, we chanted along with it, at the pub. It came on the radio like the unexpected visit of a good friend. From it’s simple opening guitar chords to, the Beetle’s influenced   orchestration of   melancholic   cello’s, t

I love being pretentious. It’s my third favorite thing to do in the world (don’t ask). I’m really good at it. I’ve being doing it all my life. Knowing things granted me the attention I was desperate for at school, I soon became addicted to it, and like many addicts I soon found it surprisingly easier than I thought to “phone it in”, and sound smarter than I really am. I think all swots and teacher’s pets are pretentious people in training. I especially enjoyed the gambler’s adrenaline rush of multiply choice questions. Yet modern society frowns on pretense. At least, it does in our face to face everyday interactions. It’s important to distinguish between this form of pretense and the on-line form, because on the Internet we have entered a golden age of pretense. The ability to edit our lives, find videos of cute cats to share, intellectually pose on reedit, in other words; make ourselves and our ideas sound far more important than they really are. Goggle has also had a warping

You Tuber Review: Beau of the fifth column The Pitch: It is the philosophical duty of everyone to put some skepticism in the path of our opinions and the opinions of others. That, I’m happy to acknowledge, was what “Beau” of the fifth column did to me, the first time I opened one of his videos. With a beard that would provoke envy in any hipster, a southern drawl, and pro-gun t-shirt, my prejudices were in top gear. I should just note, I’m European, so my mind was maybe even narrower going into it, than an American viewer. So, when I heard a balanced, well researched argument with a dose of our grandparent’s common sense; delivered in a tool shed, as a talking head program. I was happier than a hog in whatever that expression is. Sound and quality: The format is simple, so it doesn’t have to be too fancy. I personally prefer my editorials without the flashing green screen, especially those who use slickness to cover half-baked ideas. You tubers take note. The sound