Live Music Show - The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, 1969

Famous free Stones concert in Hyde Park, which took place just two days after original member Brian Jones passed away.

Curated by Whitney Weiss

Total Runtime: 0:53:00

You know the story: Brian Jones gets kicked out of the Stones, the Stones replace him with Mick Taylor and get ready to debut their new lineup at an outdoor concert in Hyde Park---which Jones dies two days before, turning the whole thing into a memorial show that 80,000 people showed up to attend.

From Wikipedia: "The Rolling Stones performed at a free concert in Hyde Park on 5 July 1969, two days after Jones's death. The concert had been scheduled weeks earlier as an opportunity to present the new guitarist, and the band decided to dedicate the concert to Jones. Before the Rolling Stones' set, Jagger read excerpts from "Adonais", a poem by Percy Shelley about the death of his friend John Keats, and stagehands released hundreds of white butterflies as part of the tribute. The band opened with a Johnny Winter song that was one of Jones's favourites, 'I'm Yours and I'm Hers.'"

Doc - Heaven's Gate - The Day After

The story of the Heaven's Gate cult.

Curated by Joey Mansfield

Total Runtime: 1:21:17

Heaven's Gate members believed that the planet Earth was about to be recycled (wiped clean, renewed, refurbished and rejuvenated), and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately. While the group was formally against suicide, they defined "suicide" in their own context to mean "to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered," and believed that their "human" bodies were only vessels meant to help them on their journey. In conversation, when referring to a person or a person's body, they routinely used the word "vehicle"; when shown a picture of his son in an interview, Rio Di Angelo commented, "Look, there's the little vehicle."

The group believed in several paths for a person to leave the Earth and survive before the "recycling," one of which was hating this world strongly enough: "It is also possible that part of our test of faith is our hating this world, even our flesh body, to the extent to be willing to leave it without any proof of the Next Level's existence."

The members of the group added "-ody" to the first names they adopted in lieu of their original given names, which defines "children of the Next Level." This is mentioned in Applewhite's final video, "Do's Final Exit," that was filmed on March 19–20, 1997, just days prior to the suicides.

They believed "to be eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to shed every attachment to the planet." (Balch, 2002, p. 211) This meant that all members had to give up all human-like characteristics such as their family, friends, sexuality, individuality, jobs, money and possessions (Balch, 2002, p. 211).

These basic beliefs of the cult stayed generally consistent over the years however, "the details of their ideology were flexible enough to undergo modification over time." (Lewis, 2001, p. 16) There are many examples of the cult adding or slightly changing their beliefs over the years. This includes modifying the way one can enter the Next Level, changing the way they describe themselves, placing more importance on the idea of Satan, and adding several other New Age concepts. One of these concepts was the belief of extraterrestrial walk-ins. When the cult began, "Applewhite and Nettles taught their followers that they were extraterrestrial beings. However, after the notion of walk-ins became popular within the New Age subculture, the Two changed their tune and began describing themselves as extraterrestrial walk-ins." (Lewis, 2001, p. 16) The idea of walk-ins is very similar to the concept of being possessed by spirits. A walk-in can be defined as "an entity who occupies a body that has been vacated by its original soul." (Lewis, 2001, p. 368) An extraterrestrial walk-in, which is what Heaven's Gate came to believe, is "a walk-in that is supposedly from another planet." (Lewis, 2001, p. 368) The concept of walk-ins actually aided Applewhite and Nettles in starting from a clean slate personally. They no longer were the people they had been prior to the start of the group, but had taken on a new life and this idea actually gave them a way to "erase their human personal histories as the histories of souls who formerly occupied the bodies of Applewhite and Nettles." (Lewis, 2001, p. 368)

Another New Age belief that Applewhite and Nettles adopted was the ancient astronaut hypothesis. The term "ancient astronauts" is used to refer to various forms of the concept that ufonauts visited our planet in the distant past. (Lewis, 2001, p. 16) Applewhite and Nettles took part of this concept and taught it as the belief that "aliens planted the seeds of current humanity millions of years ago, and have to come to reap the harvest of their work in the form of spiritual evolved individuals who will join the ranks of flying saucer crews. Only a select few members of humanity will be chosen to advance to this transhuman state. The rest will be left to wallow in the spiritually poisoned atmosphere of a corrupt world." (Lewis, 2001, p. 17) Only the individuals that chose to join Heaven's Gate and follow Applewhite and Nettle's belief and make the sacrifices that membership required would be allowed to escape human suffering.

Collection - Shape Note Singing

Real-life examples of the eerie and wondrous world of Sacred Harp shape note singing.

Curated by Whitney Weiss

Total Runtime: 0:18:01

Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music. Sacred Harp music is performed a capella (voice only, without instruments) and originated as Protestant Christian music. The songs sung are primarily from the book The Sacred Harp.

The name of the tradition comes from the title of the shape note book from which the music is sung, The Sacred Harp. This book exists today in various editions, discussed below.

"Shape note" music means that the notes are printed in special shapes that help the reader fluently identify them on the musical scale. There are two prevalent systems, one using four shapes, and one using seven. In the four-shape system, each of the four shapes is connected to a particular syllable: fa, sol, la, and mi; and these syllables are employed in singing the notes, just as in the more familiar system that uses do, re, mi, etc. (see solfege). The system used in the Sacred Harp is able to cover the full musical scale because each syllable-shape combination other than mi is assigned to two distinct notes of the scale.

In Sacred Harp singing, pitch is not absolute. The shapes and notes designate degrees of the scale, not particular pitches. Thus for a song in the key of C, fa designates C and F; for a song in G, fa designates G and C, and so on; hence it is called a moveable "do"system.

When Sacred Harp singers begin a song, they normally start by singing it with the appropriate syllable for each pitch, using the shapes to guide them. For those in the group not yet familiar with the song, the shapes help with the task of sight reading. The process of reading through the song with the shapes also helps fix the notes in memory. Once the shapes have been sung, the group then sings the verses of the song with their printed words.

-From Wikipedia

Live Music Show - The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, 1969

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Whitney Weiss

Live Music Show - The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, 1969

0:53:00

Doc - Heaven's Gate - The Day After

1:21:17

Collection - Shape Note Singing

0:18:01

Trailer Trash - Jesus Christ

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