Jim Henson’s Farewell: Revisit the “Nice, Friendly” Memorial Service at St. John the Divine (1990)

in Television | September 30th, 2021

Please watch out for each oth­er and love and for­give every­body. It’s a good life, enjoy it. — Jim Hen­son

Born in Greenville, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Jim Hen­son spent his youth prac­tic­ing the tenets of Chris­t­ian Sci­ence, a faith he would offi­cial­ly renounce in 1975. But the pow­er of pos­i­tive think­ing his ear­ly reli­gion years instilled would per­sist, roman­ti­cized by his alter-ego, Ker­mit the Frog, and tem­pered by foils like the earthy, iras­ci­ble Ms. Pig­gy. For every foul-mouthed Oscar the Grouch, there was always a lov­able Big Bird, “Jim taught us many things: to save the plan­et, be kind to each oth­er, praise God, and be sil­ly,” said Mup­pet writer Jer­ry Juhl at Henson’s 1990 New York City memo­r­i­al ser­vice. “That’s how I’ll remem­ber him — as a man who was bal­anced effort­less­ly and grace­ful­ly between the sacred and the sil­ly.”

Henson’s first memo­r­i­al, held at the cav­ernous Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine bore wit­ness to Juhl’s por­trait of the late, bril­liant creator’s lega­cy. In true Hen­son fash­ion, the pup­peteer direct­ed the event him­self from beyond the grave, a final light­heart­ed joke, as he had writ­ten in a let­ter to his fam­i­ly four years ear­li­er: “It feels strange writ­ing this while I am still alive, but it wouldn’t be easy after I go …. This all may seem sil­ly to you guys, but what the hell, I’m gone and who can argue with me?”

By “this all,” Hen­son meant a funer­al ser­vice in which guests were for­bid­den to wear black and asked to mourn and cel­e­brate to the tunes of a Dix­ieland brass band: “A nice, friend­ly lit­tle ser­vice,” he wrote in his instruc­tions, with a “rous­ing” sound­track.

To the sounds of jazz, his friends and fam­i­ly added — of course — the songs that defined Henson’s career, includ­ing “Sun­ny Day,” the Sesame Street theme song, Mup­pets anthem “The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion,” and — in a sec­ond memo­r­i­al ser­vice held two months lat­er at St. Paul’s in Lon­don — Ker­mit the Frog’s anthem, “It’s Not Easy Being Green” (above) sung by Big Bird and Oscar pup­peteer Car­oll Spin­ney. (Spin­ney passed away in 2019.) Both Hen­son memo­ri­als were solemn (unavoid­able giv­en the occa­sion and the venues) but also decid­ed­ly sil­ly, as sto­ry after sto­ry about the man poured forth from those who knew him best.

In the Defunct­land video at the top, you can see Henson’s friend and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Juhl take the pul­pit at St. John the Divine to tell his favorite Hen­son sto­ry of work­ing on their first show in 1955, Sam and Friends, a local Wash­ing­ton, D.C. live-action/pup­pet pro­gram that gave birth to Ker­mit. Doubt­ing the joke at the heart of a sketch, Juhl went to Hen­son with his mis­giv­ings; and Hen­son replied, “It’s a ter­ri­ble joke, but it’s wor­thy of us.” The laugh­ter that rum­bles through the crowd is char­ac­ter­is­tic of both funer­al ser­vices, which feel far more inti­mate than they are. Or as Hen­son’s son Bri­an says in his trib­ute, “Sor­ry Dad. Lit­tle ser­vice, big place.” See the full New York funer­al ser­vice for Hen­son just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wit­ness the Birth of Ker­mit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

The Cre­ative Life of Jim Hen­son Explored in a Six-Part Doc­u­men­tary Series

Watch Blondie’s Deb­bie Har­ry Per­form “Rain­bow Con­nec­tion” with Ker­mit the Frog on The Mup­pet Show (1981)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Nirvana Refuses to Mime Along to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Top of the Pops (1991)

in Music | September 29th, 2021

This month marks the 30th anniver­sary of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind, first released on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1991, “the day,” writes Michael Ted­der at Stere­ogum, “that col­lege radio-nur­tured types and arty hard rock offi­cial­ly became rebrand­ed as Alter­na­tive Rock, and, accord­ing to leg­end, every­thing changed for­ev­er.” You might believe that leg­end even if you remem­ber the real­i­ty. Yes, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” was just as huge as every­body says — and, yes, you like­ly recall where you were when you first saw the video or heard the song explode with Pix­ies-inspired qui­et-loud feroc­i­ty from the radio. But the change was already on the way.

Nir­vana emerged in a pop music land­scape slow­ly becom­ing sat­u­rat­ed with alter­na­tive music. You might also remem­ber where you were the first time you saw the video for Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence,” for exam­ple, or R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” or Sinéad O’Connor’s “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” — or when you first expe­ri­enced the dynamic/melodic assault of the afore­men­tioned Pix­ies, vir­tu­al alt-rock elders by the time they released Trompe Le Monde, their fourth stu­dio album, in the same Sep­tem­ber week that Nev­er­mind appeared. (You may remem­ber where you were the first time you heard the word “Lol­la­palooza,” first orga­nized in 1991.)

The fate­ful week in Sep­tem­ber also saw the release of 90s-defin­ing albums like Pri­mal Scream’s Screa­madel­i­ca, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers’ Blood Sug­ar Sex Magik, and A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End The­o­ry. In the year that Nev­er­mind sup­pos­ed­ly sin­gle-hand­ed­ly invent­ed “grunge,” Soundgar­den released Bad­mo­torfin­ger and Pearl Jam released Ten. It’s fair to say Nir­vana were one of just many bands rein­vent­ing them­selves and the cul­ture. Even the hair met­al bands and teen pop idols Nir­vana put out of busi­ness were already try­ing to make more seri­ous, “authen­tic” music before Nev­er­mind turned every executive’s head.

Kurt Cobain was already well aware — and wary — of the dan­gers of hero wor­ship and blind alle­giance to style over sub­stance. It was an atti­tude he came by nat­u­ral­ly giv­en that, in 1991, his friends in Olympia, Wash­ing­ton found­ed an indie record label called Kill Rock Stars. He’d writ­ten an anthem, “In Bloom,” about it before any­one heard the open­ing pow­er chords of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it.” As he pur­sued, with rig­or­ous ambi­tion, the pow­er of rock star­dom, he reject­ed its trap­pings and pre­ten­sions, as when the band appeared on Top of the Pops and took the piss out of the show, rather than mime along duti­ful­ly, as Mark Beau­mont writes at NME:

Pre­tend­ing to strum his gui­tar like a robot and mak­ing no attempt to go any­where near an actu­al chord – pre­sum­ably a state­ment about being asked to per­form like a mechan­i­cal pup­pet – Kurt launch­es into his vocal in deep, the­atri­cal bari­tone, an homage to Mor­ris­sey that comes across more like Jim Mor­ri­son on mogadon. Mean­while Krist Novosel­ic flails his bass around his head like he’s wrestling a live wolf and Dave Grohl’s ‘drum­ming’ is more like an inter­pre­tive dance to rep­re­sent ‘goofy imp’. Oh, and heav­en knows what the TOTP cen­sors thought of Kurt chang­ing the open­ing lyrics to “load up on drugs, kill your friends” before try­ing to eat the micro­phone. 

In light of the groundswell of alter­na­tive bands emerg­ing — or still plug­ging away — at the time of Nev­er­mind’s release, the myth of Nir­vana as the sin­gle-hand­ed inven­tors of 90s alt-rock is more than a lit­tle overblown. This is espe­cial­ly so in a decade that saw elec­tron­ic dance music and hip hop cross over into rock and vice-ver­sa, a trend Nir­vana had noth­ing to do with. They were a thun­der­ing­ly great band, and Kurt Cobain was a rare and gift­ed song­writer, but the heart of Nirvana’s pop­u­lar appeal was extra-musi­cal. The band — mean­ing, prin­ci­pal­ly, Cobain — most hon­est­ly embod­ied the spir­it of the time: painful­ly ambiva­lent and at war with its aspi­ra­tions. “Kurt — I would call him a wind­mill,” says bassist Krist Novosel­ic. “He want­ed to be a rock star — and he hat­ed it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Record­ing Secrets of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind Revealed by Pro­duc­er Butch Vig

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain’s Head­bang­ing Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

America’s First Banned Book: Discover the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puritans

in Books, History | September 29th, 2021

In the con­test for the title of the most Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal fig­ure of them all, Thomas Mor­ton’s name can’t be left out. Busi­nesslike, liti­gious, giv­en to rhap­sodies over nature, and not resis­tant to turn­ing celebri­ty, he was also — in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Amer­i­can man­ner — born else­where. Back in Devon, Eng­land, he’d made his name as a lawyer, rep­re­sent­ing mem­bers of the low­er class in court, but in 1622 he was hired by investor Sir Fer­di­nan­do Gorges on a trip to han­dle his affairs in the North Amer­i­can colonies. This was just two years after the found­ing of Ply­mouth Colony, whose suc­cess had inspired many an Eng­lish busi­ness­man to con­tem­plate get­ting in on the New World action him­self. In 1624, Gorges sent Mor­ton across the Atlantic again, this time with every­thing need­ed to found a colony of his own.

Mor­ton was not a Puri­tan, nor was he “on board with the strict, insu­lar, and pious soci­ety they had hoped to build for them­selves,” as Atlas Obscu­ra’s Matthew Taub puts it. Though his own colony of Mer­ry­mount became Ply­mouth’s rival in the fur trade, for the Puri­tans “the prob­lem wasn’t only that Mor­ton was tak­ing goods and com­merce away from Ply­mouth, but that he was giv­ing that busi­ness to the Native Amer­i­cans, includ­ing trad­ing guns to the Algo­nquins. With Plymouth’s monop­oly dis­solved and its per­ceived ene­mies armed, Mor­ton had per­haps done more than any­one else to under­mine the Puri­tan project in Mass­a­chu­setts.” And that was before Mor­ton erect­ed Mer­ry­moun­t’s 80-foot, antler-topped may­pole, around which he invit­ed res­i­dents to “drink, dance, and frol­ic.”

Obvi­ous­ly, Mor­ton’s reign as a “lord of mis­rule” (as Plymouth’s gov­er­nor William Brad­ford deemed him) could not be borne for long. “Dur­ing the 1628 fes­tiv­i­ties, a Puri­tan mili­tia led by Myles Stan­dish invad­ed Mer­ry­mount and chopped down the may­pole,” writes Taub, not­ing that the inci­dent inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1832 short sto­ry “The May-Pole of Mer­ry Mount.” Mor­ton also turned out to be an able chron­i­cler of the peri­od him­self, at least after the sub­se­quent tribu­la­tions that saw him sen­tenced to death by star­va­tion, helped to sur­vive by the Native Amer­i­can tribes with whom he had main­tained good rela­tions, safe­ly returned to Eng­land, and frus­trat­ed in his attempts to return to the colonies. Around 1630, he did what any true Amer­i­can, offi­cial or aspir­ing, would do: put togeth­er a law­suit.

Mor­ton demand­ed, writes World His­to­ry Ency­clo­pe­di­a’s Joshua Mark, “that the gov­ern­ment of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony demon­strate by what author­i­ty they exer­cised their pow­er,” argu­ing for the revo­ca­tion of its char­ter “because the Puri­tans of Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony had not only mis­rep­re­sent­ed them­selves in obtain­ing the char­ter but had no right to col­o­nize the region in the first place as it was legal­ly in Gorges’ patent.” As the long (and in any case futile) legal pro­ceed­ings dragged on, Mor­ton got the idea of turn­ing his exten­sive briefs for the tri­al into “a three-vol­ume work of his­to­ry, nat­ur­al his­to­ry, satire, and poet­ry” called New Eng­lish Canaan, a Bib­li­cal allu­sion under­scor­ing Mor­ton’s crit­i­cal view of the Puri­tans as “abus­ing the natives and the land for prof­it and then jus­ti­fy­ing their actions in the name of their god and the scrip­tures.”

Lin­da Can­toni at Hot off the Press writes that “the first two books of New Eng­lish Canaan are most­ly non-con­tro­ver­sial, con­tain­ing Morton’s obser­va­tions on the native Amer­i­cans, whom he respect­ed great­ly, and on the rich nat­ur­al resources in New Eng­land. It was in the third book that Mor­ton rolled up his sleeves and got down to his real pur­pose of skew­er­ing the New Eng­land Puri­tans, who, he said, ‘make a great shewe of Reli­gion, but no human­i­ty.’ ” As a result, writes Men­tal Floss’ Jake Rossen, “his book was per­ceived as an all-out attack on Puri­tan moral­i­ty, and they didn’t take kind­ly to it. So they banned it,” mak­ing New Eng­lish Canaan what Christie’s called “Amer­i­ca’s first banned book” when they auc­tioned a copy off for $60,000. But you can read it for free at Project Guten­berg, bear­ing in mind the most Amer­i­can les­son of all from the life of Thomas Mor­ton: when all else fails, pub­lish a tell-all mem­oir.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Library Dig­i­tizes Its Col­lec­tion of Obscene Books (1658–1940)

It’s Banned Books Week: Lis­ten to Allen Gins­berg Read His Famous­ly Banned Poem, “Howl,” in San Fran­cis­co, 1956

When L. Frank Baum’s Wiz­ard of Oz Series Was Banned for “Depict­ing Women in Strong Lead­er­ship Roles” (1928)

Read 14 Great Banned & Cen­sored Nov­els Free Online: For Banned Books Week 2014

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

When Christ­mas Was Legal­ly Banned for 22 Years by the Puri­tans in Colo­nial Mass­a­chu­setts

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Why Scientists Can’t Recreate the Sound of Stradivarius Violins: The Mystery of Their Inimitable Sound

in Art, Music | September 29th, 2021

In his influ­en­tial 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion,” crit­ic Wal­ter Ben­jamin used the word “aura” to describe an artwork’s “pres­ence in time and space” — an expla­na­tion of the thrill, or chill, we get from stand­ing before a Jack­son Pol­lock, say, or a Michelan­ge­lo, rather than a pho­to­graph of the same. Writ­ing in the age of radio, pho­tog­ra­phy, and news­pa­pers, Ben­jamin believed that aura could not be trans­mit­ted or copied: “Even the most per­fect repro­duc­tion of a work of art is lack­ing in one ele­ment” — that rare thing that makes art worth pre­serv­ing and repro­duc­ing in the first place.

Let’s grant, for the sake of argu­ment, that musi­cal instru­ments have aura — that the very sounds they make are its man­i­fes­ta­tion, and that, no mat­ter how sophis­ti­cat­ed our tech­nol­o­gy, we may nev­er repro­duce those sounds per­fect­ly. As Hank Green explains in the SciShow video above: “For cen­turies, musi­cians, instru­ment mak­ers, engi­neers, and sci­en­tists have been try­ing to under­stand and repro­duce the ‘Stradi­var­ius’ sound. They’ve inves­ti­gat­ed every­thing from the mate­ri­als their mak­er used to how he craft­ed the vio­lins. But the mys­tique is still there.” Can sci­ence solve the mys­tery?

At heart, the ques­tion seems to be whether the aur­al qual­i­ties of a Stradi­vari instru­ment can be plucked from their time and place of ori­gin and made fun­gi­ble, so to speak, across the cen­turies. Anto­nio Stradi­vari (his name is often Latinized to “Stradi­var­ius”) began mak­ing vio­lins in the 1600s and con­tin­ued, with his sons Francesco and Omobono, until his death in 1737, pro­duc­ing around 1000 instru­ments, most of which were vio­lins. About 650 of those instru­ments sur­vive today, and approx­i­mate­ly 500 of those are vio­lins, rang­ing in val­ue from tens of mil­lions to price­less.

Green sur­veys the tech­niques, mate­ri­als, physics, and chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of Stradi­vari vio­lins “to under­stand why Stradi­var­ius vio­lins have been so hard to recre­ate.” Their sound has been described as “sil­very,” says Green, a word that sounds pret­ty but has lit­tle tech­ni­cal mean­ing. Rather than rely on adjec­tives, researchers from diverse fields have tried to work from the objects them­selves — ana­lyz­ing and attempt­ing to recre­ate the vio­lins’ shape, con­struc­tion, mate­ri­als, etc. They’ve learned that time and place mat­ter more than they sup­posed.

The wood of a Stradi­vari vio­lin “real­ly is dif­fer­ent,” Green says, “but because Stradi­vari nev­er wrote down his process, researchers can’t quite tell why.” That wood itself grew in a process over which Stradi­vari had no con­trol. The alpine spruce he used came from trees har­vest­ed “at the edge of Europe’s Lit­tle Ice Age, a 70-year peri­od of unsea­son­ably cold weath­er … that slowed tree growth and made for even more con­sis­tent wood.” We begin to see the dif­fi­cul­ties. One researcher, Joseph Nagy­vary, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of bio­chem­istry at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty, recent­ly made anoth­er dis­cov­ery. As Texas A&M Today notes:

[Stradi­vari and fel­low mak­er Guarneri] soaked their instru­ments in chem­i­cals such as borax and brine to pro­tect them from a worm infes­ta­tion that was sweep­ing through Italy in the 1700s. By pure acci­dent the chem­i­cals used to pro­tect the wood had the unin­tend­ed result of pro­duc­ing the unique sounds that have been almost impos­si­ble to dupli­cate in the past 400 years.

Per­haps we can­not dupli­cate the sound because none of us is Anto­nio Stradi­vari, work­ing with his sons in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry in Cre­mona, Italy, build­ing vio­lins with a unique crop of alpine spruce while fight­ing unsea­son­ably cold weath­er and worms.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

Why Stradi­var­ius Vio­lins Are Worth Mil­lions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

Stand-Up Comedy in the Internet Age — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #106

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | September 29th, 2021

 

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er dis­cuss­es how Inter­net cul­ture has changed stand-up with three come­di­ans: past Pret­ty Much Pop guests Rod­ney Ram­sey (who co-owns the Unknown Com­e­dy Club) and Daniel Lobell (host of Mod­ern Day Philoso­phers and author of the Fair Enough com­ic), plus Dena Jack­son (also a speak­er on yoga and mind­ful­ness and host of The Ego Pod­cast).

How does the exis­tence of YouTube, social media, and vir­tu­al spaces changed the way come­di­ans con­struct a set, relate to their fans, and make a liv­ing? We talk about sto­ry-telling vs. one-lin­ers, rep­ping your home­town, com­e­dy cliques, sur­viv­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty, and more.

Some arti­cles that go into these issues fur­ther include:

Fol­low @TheUnknownVenue, @Denatalks, and @DanielLobell.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How New Yorkers Dodged Pre-Prohibition Drinking Laws by Inventing the World’s Worst Sandwich

in Food & Drink, History | September 28th, 2021

Three men feast on free lunch in a draw­ing by Charles Dana Gib­son

In one of my favorite episodes of The Simp­sons, beer-swill­ing Homer falls in love with a sand­wich. He spends his days nib­bling away at the “sick­en­ing, fes­ter­ing remains of a 10-foot hoagie,” Nathan Rabin writes, “long after decen­cy, self-respect, and sur­vival would all seem to dic­tate throw­ing it out.” The sand­wich may be yet anoth­er instance of the show pulling some obscure detail from Amer­i­can his­to­ry for com­ic effect — or maybe writer David M. Stern read Eugene O’Neill’s The Ice­man Cometh, in which the play­wright describes “an old des­ic­cat­ed ruin of dust-laden bread and mum­mi­fied ham or cheese.”

O’Neill’s sand­wich is so his­tor­i­cal, it has a name, the Raines Sand­wich, named after New York State Sen­a­tor John Raines, the author of an 1896 law that raised the cost of liquor licens­es sub­stan­tial­ly, upped the drink­ing age from six­teen to eigh­teen, and banned alco­holic bev­er­ages on Sun­days except in large hotels and lodg­ing hous­es which served a com­pli­men­ta­ry meal with their drinks. The law tar­get­ed work­ing peo­ple and their one day of respite, and it hit bar own­ers hard. “After all,” writes the Irish Exam­in­er, “labour­ers most­ly worked six days a week, with Sun­day their only full day for drink­ing, and Sun­day was the most prof­itable day for saloons.”

The com­pli­men­ta­ry-meal-with-drinks man­date, as it were, was designed so that wealthy patrons at lux­u­ry hotels could drink on Sun­days, but low-rent saloon own­ers seized on the loop­hole, trans­form­ing dive bars into room­ing hous­es overnight with table­cloths and “alleged bed­rooms” made from attics and base­ments. “It was then that the loos­est pos­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of a ‘sub­stan­tial meal’ became the Raines Sand­wich.” The sand­wich might be made of any­thing, even a brick between two slices of bread; it was rarely eat­en. Some­times, it would be served to a guest with their beer or whiskey, then whisked away and giv­en to some­one else. A sin­gle Raines Sand­wich might last the day, or even the whole week.

Some estab­lish­ments tried to get away with serv­ing crack­ers and moldy cheese alone (stal­wart New York Irish pub McSor­ley’s gave away crack­ers, cheese, and onions — a dish for which they now charge). But the courts required a sand­wich, at the very least to be served, and the city enforced the law with right­eous vig­or — thanks in large part to a young Theodore Roo­sevelt. As Dar­rell Hart­man writes at Atlas Obscu­ra, New York Repub­li­cans in Albany “spoke for a con­stituen­cy large­ly com­prised of rur­al small-town church­go­ers” wor­ried about urban vice. But Raines had a city ally in Roo­sevelt, then a “37-year-old fire­brand… push­ing a law-and-order agen­da as pres­i­dent of the city’s new­ly orga­nized police com­mis­sion.”

Roo­sevelt can­vassed the Low­er East Side with patrol­man Frank Rathge­ber, send­ing him into saloons in plain clothes to inves­ti­gate. “Rathge­ber said he saw many sand­wich­es but only one bed,” writes author Richard Zacks in Island of Vice. The sand­wich­es were moldy, and were tak­en away uneat­en. “He nev­er was asked to buy a sec­ond sand­wich” with sub­se­quent drinks, “or even to eat the first one.” Despite the reform crack­downs, the shady busi­ness of the Raines Sand­wich let saloon own­ers skirt the law until it was repealed, final­ly, in 1924. As Hart­man notes, behind the pur­port­ed good inten­tions of the Tem­per­ance move­ment lay a deter­mined cul­ture war:

Those in favor of the Sun­day ban, gen­er­al­ly mid­dle-class and Protes­tant, saw it as a cor­ner­stone of social improve­ment. For those against, includ­ing the city’s tide of Ger­man and Irish immi­grants, it was an act of repression—an espe­cial­ly spite­ful one because it lim­it­ed how the aver­age labor­er could enjoy him­self on his one day off. The Sun­day ban was not pop­u­lar, to say the least, among the city’s Jews, who’d already observed their Sab­bath the day before.

The Raines Law was as much about enforc­ing reli­gious obser­vance and cul­tur­al con­for­mi­ty on immi­grants as it was an attempt to com­bat crime, pover­ty, and vio­lence in the city. Those whose beliefs did not pre­vent them from enjoy­ing them­selves on Sun­day saw no rea­son to take the law any more seri­ous­ly than they would a rot­ting week-old sand­wich or a brick between two slices of moldy bread.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore Thou­sands of Free Vin­tage Cock­tail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

The First Known Pho­to­graph of Peo­ple Shar­ing a Beer (1843)

The Sci­ence of Beer: A New Free Online Course Promis­es to Enhance Your Appre­ci­a­tion of the Time­less Bev­er­age

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Listen to Freddie Mercury & David Bowie on the Isolated Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pressure,’ 1981

in Music | September 28th, 2021

In the sum­mer of 1981, the British band Queen was record­ing tracks for their tenth stu­dio album, Hot Space, at Moun­tain Stu­dios in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. As it hap­pened, David Bowie had sched­uled time at the same stu­dio to record the title song for the movie Cat Peo­ple. Before long, Bowie stopped by the Queen ses­sions and joined in. The orig­i­nal idea was that he would add back­up vocals on the song “Cool Cat.” “David came in one night and we were play­ing oth­er peo­ple’s songs for fun, just jam­ming,” says Queen drum­mer Roger Tay­lor in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen. “In the end, David said, ‘This is stu­pid, why don’t we just write one?’ ”

And so began a marathon ses­sion of near­ly 24-hours–fueled, accord­ing to Blake, by wine and cocaine. Built around John Dea­con’s dis­tinc­tive bass line, the song was most­ly writ­ten by Mer­cury and Bowie. Blake describes the scene, begin­ning with the rec­ol­lec­tions of Queen’s gui­tarist:

‘We felt our way through a back­ing track all togeth­er as an ensem­ble,’ recalled Bri­an May. ‘When the back­ing track was done, David said, “Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go–just off the top of our heads–and we’ll com­pile a vocal out of that.” And that’s what we did.’ Some of these impro­vi­sa­tions, includ­ing Mer­cury’s mem­o­rable intro­duc­to­ry scat­ting vocal, would endure on the fin­ished track. Bowie also insist­ed that he and Mer­cury should­n’t hear what the oth­er had sung, swap­ping vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.

“It was very hard,” said May in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us. Pas­sions ran very high. I found it very hard because I got so lit­tle of my own way. But David had a real vision and he took over the song lyri­cal­ly.” The song was orig­i­nal­ly titled “Peo­ple on Streets,” but Bowie want­ed it changed to “Under Pres­sure.” When the time came to mix the song at Pow­er Sta­tion stu­dios in New York, Bowie insist­ed on being there. “It did­n’t go too well,” Blake quotes Queen’s engi­neer Rein­hold Mack as say­ing. “We spent all day and Bowie was like, ‘Do this, do that.’ In the end, I called Fred­die and said, ‘I need help here,’ so Fred came in as a medi­a­tor.” Mer­cury and Bowie argued fierce­ly over the final mix.

At one point Bowie threat­ened to block the release of the song, but it was issued to the pub­lic on Octo­ber 26, 1981 and even­tu­al­ly rose to num­ber one on the British charts. It was lat­er named the num­ber 31 song on VH1’s list of the 100 great­est songs of the 1980s. “ ‘Under Pres­sure’ is a sig­nif­i­cant song for us,” May said in 2008, “and that is because of David and its lyri­cal con­tent. I would have found that hard to admit in the old days, but I can admit it now.… But one day, I would love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

After lis­ten­ing to the iso­lat­ed vocal track above, you can hear the offi­cial­ly released 1981 mix below:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this clas­sic post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

Watch David Bowie & Annie Lennox in Rehearsal, Singing “Under Pres­sure,” with Queen (1992)

Watch Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Act­ed Out Lit­er­al­ly as a Short Crime Film

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Quentin Tarantino Reviews Movies: From Dunkirk and King of New York, to Soul Brothers of Kung Fu & More

in Film | September 28th, 2021

Some of the most influ­en­tial direc­tors of the French New Wave, like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truf­faut, and Éric Rohmer, first stepped into the world of film as crit­ics. They found their voic­es by pub­lish­ing in the Paris cinephile insti­tu­tion of Cahiers du ciné­ma; a few decades lat­er, Quentin Taran­ti­no found his own by work­ing at the Man­hat­tan Beach cinephile insti­tu­tion of Video Archives. Sto­ries of all the myr­i­ad ways in which he would express his enthu­si­asm for and exper­tise on cin­e­ma there have passed into leg­end. But just like the crit­ics Godard, Truf­faut, and Rohmer, the video-store clerk Taran­ti­no ulti­mate­ly seems to have signed on to the old propo­si­tion that the best response to a work of art is anoth­er work of art.

Taran­ti­no’s endorse­ments of and intro­duc­tions to the work of oth­er direc­tors (for exam­ple, the one he record­ed for Wong Kar-wai’s Chungk­ing Express) have giv­en us a sense of his cin­e­mat­ic taste. So, in an even more telling man­ner, do the ele­ments he steals — by his own admis­sion — from oth­er movies.

A look at the dance scene in Pulp Fic­tion, for exam­ple, reveals a film­mak­er well acquaint­ed with the French New Wave, and even more so with the work of Italia mas­ter Fed­eri­co Felli­ni that came out in the same era. And even if you think you could go head-to-head with Taran­ti­no on mid­cen­tu­ry Euro­pean auteurs, could you match his under­stand­ing of A Man Called Tiger, Fatal Nee­dles vs. Fatal Fists, or Soul Broth­ers of Kung Fu?

Those are just three of the films Taran­ti­no has reviewed at the web site of the New Bev­er­ly Cin­e­ma, the the­ater he owns in Los Ange­les. Pub­lished in a low-pro­file man­ner, these short essays on the kind of 1970s Hong Kong mar­tial-arts pic­tures that right­ful­ly belong on down­town triple-bills (and that Taran­ti­no sure­ly first saw on down­town triple-bills) exude the kind of fan-crit­ic ener­gy that brings to mind bygone days of the inter­net.

Not that Taran­ti­no eschews more recent movies and movie media. In late 2019 and ear­ly 2010, he appeared three times on The Ringer’s The Rewatch­ables pod­cast to share his thoughts on three pic­tures worth see­ing again: Christo­pher Nolan’s Dunkirk from 2017, Tony Scot­t’s Unstop­pable from 2010, and Abel Fer­rara’s King of New York from 1990. Lis­ten and you may just feel like a Video Archive cus­tomer in the 1980s, get­ting rec­om­men­da­tions from an odd­ly per­sua­sive clerk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

Quentin Tarantino’s Copy­cat Cin­e­ma: How the Post­mod­ern Film­mak­er Per­fect­ed the Art of the Steal

Quentin Taran­ti­no Releas­es His First Nov­el: A Pulpy Nov­el­iza­tion of Once Upon a Time in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Building Without Nails: The Genius of Japanese Carpentry

in Art | September 27th, 2021

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try impress­es us today, not so much with the tools its prac­ti­tion­ers use as with the ones they don’t: nails, for exam­ple. Or glue, for that mat­ter. Here on Open Cul­ture we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured intro­duc­tions to Japan­ese wood join­ery, the art of cut­ting wood in a man­ner such that pieces slide togeth­er and solid­ly inter­lock with­out the aid of any oth­er mate­ri­als. Though it may seem like mag­ic, it’s real­ly just physics — or rather, physics, and engi­neer­ing, and the branch­es of biol­o­gy rel­e­vant to grow­ing the right wood. For the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­ter him­self, it all comes down to exten­sive train­ing and prac­tice.

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese car­pen­try need not even be done in Japan. Take Miya Sho­ji, the New York City shop pro­filed in the Chi­na Uncen­sored video above. Under cur­rent own­er Hisao Hana­fusa, who came to the Unit­ed States in 1963, it makes and sells fur­ni­ture craft­ed using canon­i­cal tech­niques, but in ser­vice of par­tic­u­lar pieces quite unlike any found in Japan.

Part of the dif­fer­ence comes from the wood itself: as it would be sourced only local­ly in Japan, so it’s sourced only local­ly in the Unit­ed States. This video shows the felling of a 300-year-old tree, killed by Dutch elm dis­ease, and its trans­for­ma­tion into slabs des­tined to become Miya Sho­ji tables.

There­after, the dry­ing process could take twen­ty years. “By the time the wood hits the cut­ting bench, it is already near­ing the end of its jour­ney.” But the car­pen­ter still has to craft the joints need­ed to hold the fin­ished piece togeth­er “like a three-dimen­sion­al puz­zle” — and with a set of hand tools, at that. The very same tech­niques have been used to con­struct tem­ples in Japan that can stand for a mil­len­ni­um, and indeed go back even deep­er into his­to­ry than that, hav­ing evolved from car­pen­try per­formed in 6th- and 7th-cen­tu­ry Chi­na. Here in the 21st cen­tu­ry, con­nois­seurs of every nation­al­i­ty have come to appre­ci­ate the wabi-sabi aes­thet­ic and tran­scen­dent sim­plic­i­ty of fur­ni­ture so con­struct­ed — a sim­plic­i­ty that sure­ly does­n’t come cheap.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery: A Kyoto Wood­work­er Shows How Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Cre­at­ed Wood Struc­tures With­out Nails or Glue

See How Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Can Build a Whole Build­ing Using No Nails or Screws

Japan­ese Car­pen­ters Unearth 100-Year-Old Wood Joiner­ies While Tak­ing Apart a Tra­di­tion­al House

Mes­mer­iz­ing GIFs Illus­trate the Art of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Join­ery — All Done With­out Screws, Nails, or Glue

Watch Japan­ese Wood­work­ing Mas­ters Cre­ate Ele­gant & Elab­o­rate Geo­met­ric Pat­terns with Wood

Free Soft­ware Lets You Cre­ate Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Wood Joints & Fur­ni­ture: Down­load Tsug­ite

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Beethoven’s Unfinished Tenth Symphony Gets Completed by Artificial Intelligence: Hear How It Sounds

in Music, Technology | September 27th, 2021

Few sym­phonies are as well-known as Beethoven’s Ninth, an asser­tion sup­port­ed by the fact that it’s no doubt play­ing in your head even as you read this. Few sym­phonies are less well-known — at least by Beethoven’s stan­dards — than his Tenth, pri­mar­i­ly because he nev­er actu­al­ly got the thing fin­ished. He did make a start on it, how­ev­er, and at his death in 1827 left behind notes and drafts com­posed along­side the Ninth, which had also been com­mis­sioned by the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic Soci­ety. Such is Beethoven’s stature that his enthu­si­asts have been spec­u­lat­ing ever since on what his incom­plete sym­pho­ny would sound like if com­plet­ed, employ­ing any tech­niques to do so that their time put at hand.

“In 1988, musi­col­o­gist Bar­ry Coop­er ven­tured to com­plete the first and sec­ond move­ments,” writes Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty Art & AI Lab direc­tor Ahmed Elgam­mal at The Con­ver­sa­tion. “He wove togeth­er 250 bars of music from the sketch­es to cre­ate what was, in his view, a pro­duc­tion of the first move­ment that was faith­ful to Beethoven’s vision. Yet the sparse­ness of Beethoven’s sketch­es made it impos­si­ble for sym­pho­ny experts to go beyond that first move­ment.”

When Beethoven’s mile­stone 250th year approached, how­ev­er, the age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was well under­way. To Matthias Röder, the direc­tor of Salzburg’s Kara­jan Insti­tute, unit­ing this tow­er­ing com­pos­er and this promis­ing tech­nol­o­gy had become an irre­sistible propo­si­tion.

Elgam­mal and Röder were just two of the team that came togeth­er to take on the for­mi­da­ble task of engi­neer­ing a form of machine learn­ing capa­ble of help­ing to com­plete Beethoven’s Tenth. The oth­ers includ­ed com­pos­er Wal­ter Wer­zowa (“famous for writ­ing Intel’s sig­na­ture bong jin­gle”), com­pu­ta­tion­al music expert Mark Gotham, and musi­col­o­gist-pianist Robert Levin, who “had pre­vi­ous­ly fin­ished a num­ber of incom­plete 18th-cen­tu­ry works by Mozart and Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach.” Deutsche Telekom pro­vid­ed fund­ing for the project, and also pro­duced the short doc­u­men­tary video on its result above. How­ev­er con­cep­tu­al­ly intrigu­ing, this A.I.-driven musi­cal endeav­or could final­ly be put to the test in only one way: hear­ing it per­formed by a 100-per­cent human orches­tra. As Wer­zowa puts it, look­ing sky­ward, “We hope when he hears it now that he smiles.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Beethoven’s 16 String Quar­tets: An Ear­ly Cel­e­bra­tion of the 250th Anniver­sary of His Birth

Did Beethoven Use a Bro­ken Metronome When Com­pos­ing His String Quar­tets? Sci­en­tists & Musi­cians Try to Solve the Cen­turies-Old Mys­tery

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Writes a Piece in the Style of Bach: Can You Tell the Dif­fer­ence Between JS Bach and AI Bach?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Andy Warhol’s Vibrant, Impractical, Illustrated Cookbook from 1959: A Feast for the Eyes

in Art, Books, Design, Food & Drink | September 27th, 2021


Gor­geous­ly illus­trat­ed cook­books fea­tur­ing sump­tu­ous images of fan­cy desserts and oth­er spe­cial occa­sion food can be quite an intim­i­dat­ing propo­si­tion to self-doubt­ing begin­ners.

The recipes them­selves are daunt­ing, and as every Great British Bak­ing Show view­er learns, watch­ing the top con­tes­tants squirm in advance of co-host Paul Hol­ly­wood’s icy judg­ment, fla­vor can’t save an edi­ble cre­ation that fails as art.

Andy Warhol’s approach to cook­ery appears rather more blithe.

His 1959 cook­book, Wild Rasp­ber­ries — the title is a play on Ing­mar Bergman’s Wild Straw­ber­ries — dis­plays lit­tle inter­est in its read­ers’ cook­ing abil­i­ty… or, for that mat­ter, its authors.

Fan­ci­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tions of such del­i­ca­cies as Gar­doons a la Mous­se­line are pret­ty as a pic­ture… and stress free giv­en that no one is actu­al­ly expect­ed to make them.

Wild Rasp­ber­ries is all about atti­tude… and ambi­tion of a pure­ly social nature.

Warhol’s co-author, inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tor and soci­ety host­ess Suzie Frank­furt, recalled hatch­ing the idea for this col­lab­o­ra­tion, short­ly after encoun­ter­ing the young artist at New York City’s fabled sweet spot, Serendip­i­ty: “We thought it would be a mas­ter­piece and we’d sell thou­sands. I think we sold 20.”

It’s pos­si­ble the endeav­or was a few decades ahead of its time. We can imag­ine Wild Rasp­ber­ries doing quite well as an impul­sive lifestyle type buy at Urban Out­fit­ters.

Sec­ond­hand copies of a 1997 reprint occa­sion­al­ly resur­face, as do auc­tion lots of the orig­i­nal 34 lith­o­graph sets, hand-col­ored by four school­boys who lived upstairs from Warhol, pri­or to hand-bind­ing by rab­bis on the Low­er East Side.

After con­sign­ing a few copies to Dou­ble­day and Riz­zoli book­stores, Warhol and Frank­furt gave the bulk of the first edi­tion away as Christ­mas presents to friends, who were no doubt well equipped to appre­ci­ate the tongue-in-cheek nature of its “recipes,” hand-let­tered by Warhol’s moth­er, Julia — whose spelling boo-boos were pur­pose­ful­ly allowed to stand.

The instruc­tions eschew crass men­tion of mea­sure­ments or cook­ing times… per­fect for any­one with hired staff, stand­ing reser­va­tions at Upper East Side hot spots, or a social X‑Ray diet reg­i­men.

Instead, read­ers are direct­ed to send the Cadil­lac round to Trad­er Vic’s tiki bar for a suck­ling pig of suf­fi­cient size for a par­ty of 15, or to gath­er morels should they find them­selves hol­i­day­ing in the vicin­i­ty of Nor­mandy.

Salade de Alf Lan­don, a bombe of lob­ster tails named for FDR’s oppo­nent in the 1936 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, crowned with aspara­gus tips and hard­boiled plover eggs, seems like it could dou­ble as a fetch­ing cha­peau, espe­cial­ly when paired with one of Warhol’s whim­si­cal fan­ta­sy  for footwear com­pa­ny I. Miller’s week­ly ads in The New York Times.

In fact, near­ly every­thing in this vibrant­ly hand col­ored “cook­book” makes for plau­si­ble mid-cen­tu­ry millinery, from Torte a la Dobosch to an imprac­ti­cal­ly ver­ti­cal arrange­ment of Hard Boiled Eggs.

 

 

Wild Rasp­ber­ries may have been a swipe at aspi­ra­tional, host­ess-ori­ent­ed late-50s cook­books, but Green­gages a la Warhol’s ref­er­ence to hyper­local pro­duce would fit right in with with Portlandia’s 21st cen­tu­ry food­ie spoofs.

High and low com­bine to great effect with wink­ing ref­er­ences to Gre­ta Gar­bo and gos­sip colum­nist Dorothy Kil­gallen, Lucky Whip dessert top­ping, a “Seared Roe­buck,” and store-bought super­mar­ket sponge cake (the lat­ter in Wild Rasp­ber­ries’ most legit-sound­ing recipe, some­thing of an upgrade from the recipe for “cake” Warhol shared in The Phi­los­o­phy of Andy Warhol — a choco­late bar served between slices of bread.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

MoMA’s Artists’ Cook­book (1978) Reveals the Meals of Sal­vador Dalí, Willem de Koon­ing, Andy Warhol, Louise Bour­geois & More

300 Rarely-Seen, Risqué Draw­ings by Andy Warhol Pub­lished in the New Book, Andy Warhol: Love, Sex, and Desire. Draw­ings (1950–1962)

130,000 Pho­tographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Avail­able Online, Cour­tesy of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |


« Newer Entries | Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast
    Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.