Mostly complete copy of first Super Bowl telecast finally surfaces

The first Super Bowl was held in 1967, pitting the NFL champs Green Bay Packers vs. the upstart AFL champs, Kansas City Chiefs.

Two networks telecast that first Super Bowl, but, amazingly, neither CBS nor NBC saved a copy. The only archival video from the game is courtesy of NFL Films, which shot from the sideline.

That was until a mostly complete video recording of the CBS broadcast finally surfaced after decades in a Pennsylvania attic. The tape has been restored, but because of rights issues remains out of the public view.

Speaking for other diehard Packer fans, let's hope the NFL and the tape owner reach agreement so the rest of us can see the game that started the Super Bowl frenzy that now consumes America like no other single event.

Street View goes inside world's finest museums

This is awesome: The Google Art Project uses the company's Street View technology to capture some of the world's greatest paintings, sculptures and other art.

The video above shows the great lengths the company took in documenting amazing works of art in the proper light. And the Google blog details the project further.

But just take a trip through at least one museum. The experience is stunning, with high-resolution images and clear navigation. A project like this could easily come across as artificial, but Google really has succeeded in almost putting you right inside the museum.

The greatness that was Keith Moon

I stumbled across a fun New Yorker magazine podcast from late last year (thanks to a tip from another fun podcast from the great folks at The Word magazine) that does a terrific job of celebrating the true greatness of Who drummer Keith Moon.

Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Moon was a great drummer up to his untimely -- yet unsurprising -- death at age 32 in 1978. His manic playing inspired legions of fans and musicians, and helped power some of the greatest music ever made. 

The New Yorker podcast features writer James Wood, who wrote an accompanying feature on Moon for the magazine (here's a link to an abstract; you have to pay to read the complete article, which is something like 5,000 words). 

There are two things that make this 14-minute podcast worth your time:

1) Woods' impressive display of finger drumming; this man could power a band with his hands alone. Woods uses his talents to show the difference between how Ringo Starr and Moon would approach the same song.

2) Hearing an isolated drum track from a "Quarophenia song called "The Dirty Jobs" that shows just how complex and unorthodox some of Moon's playing really was. As Woods says, Moon was different in that he often never repeated any fills as he drove through a song. 

My favorite Moon track is "I Can See for Miles," a 1967 psych-pop classic that features manic drumming from the get-go, building to a long, amazing snare roll crescendo accented by crashing cymbals. Back in the day I tried many times to play that long fill, let alone the entire song, and was left exhausted and humbled and nowhere close to the real thing. I keep thinking they had to multi-track his parts, in order for him to have been able to pull off such magic.

But even if the band is miming in the video above, check out Moon's 40-second barrage that begins at 3:18. It's a recorded performance for the ages, and one that packs a wallop more than 40 years later.