I really enjoy the work of illustrator Max Dalton, and I wish I could get a print of this Beatles poster. Alas, it is long sold-out. And it seems a nit-pick to note that Abbey Road was recorded after Let It Be and the rooftop concert.

• A contronym is a word with opposing definitions. See: handicap, custom, fix, weather and more.
• This extensive interview with then-Chicagoan Jim O’Rourke covers a lot of ground—he gets at some of the diverse influences for his work. While still active recently, his trajectory continues to change.
• Did I just watch a full half-hour of online speed chess? I can’t follow it all, but the commentary is fascinating.

There’s a breathtaking digital archive of Alan Lomax’s later field recordings at the Association for Cultural Equity. Their collection starts in 1946, so Lomax had been doing his thing for a while, but it marks the start of his use of magnetic tape, and, later, the stereo recording technique.

The archive is a work in progress, but for a sample of the high-quality of recordings available check out this tape of Big Bill Broonzy recorded in a Paris hotel room in 1952.

Jackson at Franklin, 1936. Chicago Past is a large-format historical photo blog.

Jack White has a “debut” solo album coming out near the end of April, and I’ve been digging back into the White Stripes. Above is the first part of a Dutch documentary on the Detroit rock scene, including the White Stripes and the Dirtbombs, from 2001—relatively early in their careers.

Near the end of the video Mick Collins of the Dirtbombs visits a now-closed venue called the Gold Dollar, a small, sweaty bar where many of the Detroit bands got their starts. The club closed in 2001, but I went looking for its old website to see if I could find anything intact.

Amazingly, the old website has a list of nearly all show announcements for the five years that they were open. It makes for an interesting hometown lens with which to see their popularity rise. Here are the descriptions for the first few White Stripes shows:

Fri 8/15/97: Hentchmen, Insects, White Stripes – High energy rock with organ, guitar, and drums from the Hentchmen. Insects inject a kinda mid tempo 60′s kinda sound in the middle. The show is opened with the debut of the White Stripes, 2 pc original Detroit music. Or was that 2 pc extra spicy?

2/7/98: White Stripes w/ Soldad Brothers – It’s almost kind of a 2 piece festival! Stripped down to the basics… guitar, voice, and drums. It’s the first time headlining for the White Stripes. A good opportunity to give a little more exposure to Jack’s smooth, emotive, & explosive voice and guitar, ably backed by the minimalist percussion of wife Meg.

Sat 10/02/99 – White Stripes, Bell – White Stripes just keep getting better. Minimalist stripped down duo rock from Jack & Meg, also on tour with Pavement?!! Bell from Seattle and distributed by K & Get Hip opens. Front-woman Vanessa Veselka’s sex in the sand vocals mix perfectly with bassist Susan Larsen’s descant to create an effect that is alternately poetic and brutal. Punk, blues, and pop with a hint of 60′s garage – loud guitars, neurotic lyrics – what more do you want?

Fri 11/26/99 – White Stripes & The Go – SubPop’s new Detroit darlings are back from tour and ready to rock. Sympathy’s White Stripes duo burns it up!

Thu 6/7/01 – White Stripes, Rock*A*Teens, Ko & the Midnight Intruders – CD Release Show!! It’s the Whites Stripes again! This may be the last time you’ll be able to see this great Southwest Detroit duo in this intimate setting, as they continue to take the world by storm. From Atlanta, Rockateens make a rare appearance. Reverb drenched garagey energy. It’s art school meets old-school garage, cow punk and surf, fresh, fun and utterly unpretentious. Ko & Co. open with rock, garage, and hints of country.

That prediction turned out to be true, as the club closed shortly after and the White Stripes never played venues that small again.

When Grace Hopper appeared on Letterman in 1987, she was just shy of 80 years old. Her work is absolutely integral to modern computing, and she is wonderfully sharp in that engineer’s sort of way. Wikipedia has more.

• In 1940, the city of Chicago produced a video called Streamlining Chicago which documented the construction of the underground portions of the train system. It’s interesting to see how the project was sold to the public, and the film itself is full of 20th-century industrial pride. WBEZ has more information.
• Thousands of kodachrome color images by amateur photographer Charles W. Cushman are now online, and a book of pictures was recently published. Taken between 1938 and 1969, he captured a “gaslight and cobblestone Chicago yielding to the bulldozer and progress.”
• How Bucktown Got Boutiqued: a Chicago Magazine article gives a timeline of some of the significant events that led to Bucktown as it is today.

NASA’s visualization of the world’s ocean currents ends up looking like a Van Gogh in motion.

• Watching Google: The EFF looks at what actually changed with Google’s privacy policy announcements last month. NYT reports Google is working on augmented reality HUD glasses.
• This week in robot music: A scanner that sounds like Eric Burdon, and some quadrotors do James Bond.
• A wikipedia list of people known as “The Great.”

For Leap Day why not check out some of Philippe Halsman’s jump portraits?