Why Are the Names of British Towns & Cities So Hard to Pronounce?: A Humorous But Informative Primer

in History, Language, Travel | February 18th, 2025

When they make their first transocean­ic voy­age, more than a few Amer­i­cans choose to go to Eng­land, on the assump­tion that, what­ev­er cul­ture shock they might expe­ri­ence, at least none of the dif­fi­cul­ties will be lin­guis­tic. Only when it’s too late do they dis­cov­er the true mean­ing of the old line about being sep­a­rat­ed by a com­mon lan­guage. Take place names, not just in Eng­land but even more so across the whole of Great Britain. How would you pro­nounce, for instance, Beaulieu, Ramp­isham, Mouse­hole, Tow­ces­ter, Gotham, Quern­more, Alnwick, or Frome?

There’s a good chance that you got most of those wrong, even if you’re not Amer­i­can. But as explained in the Map Men video above, bona fide Brits also have trou­ble with some of them: a few years ago, the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward-look­ing Frome came out on top of a domes­tic sur­vey of the most mis­pro­nounced names. If you’re keen on mak­ing your expe­ri­ence in Great Britain some­what less embar­rass­ing, what­ev­er your nation­al­i­ty, the Map Men have put togeth­er a humor­ous guide to the rules of “prop­er” place-name pro­nun­ci­a­tion — such as they exist — as well as an expla­na­tion of the his­tor­i­cal fac­tors that orig­i­nal­ly made it so coun­ter­in­tu­itive.

The evo­lu­tion of the Eng­lish lan­guage itself has some­thing to do with it, involv­ing as it does “a base of Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on,” a “healthy dash of Old Norse,” a “huge dol­lop of Nor­man French,” and “just a fair­ly detectable hint of Celtic.” British place names reflect its his­to­ry of set­tle­ment and inva­sion, the old­est of them being Celtic in ori­gin (the dread­ed Frome, for exam­ple), fol­lowed by Latin, then Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on (result­ing in cities with names like Nor­wich, whose silent W I nev­er seem to pro­nounce silent­ly enough to sat­is­fy an Eng­lish­man), then Norse.

After cen­turies and cen­turies of sub­se­quent shifts in pro­nun­ci­a­tion with­out cor­re­spond­ing changes in spelling, you arrive in a coun­try “lit­tered with pho­net­ic boo­by traps.” It could all seem like a reflec­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tic British anti-log­ic diag­nosed, not with­out a note of pride, by George Orwell. But trav­el­ing Amer­i­cans gassed up on their per­cep­tions of their own rel­a­tive prac­ti­cal­i­ty should take a long, hard look at a map of the Unit­ed States some time. Hav­ing grown up in Wash­ing­ton State, I ask this: who among you dares to pro­nounce the names of towns like Marysville, Puyallup, Yaki­ma, or Sequim?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wel­come to Llan­fair­p­wll­gwyn­gyll­gogerych­wyrn­drob­wl­l­l­lan­tysil­i­o­gogogoc, the Town with the Longest Name in Europe

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

How Lon­dini­um Became Lon­don, Lute­tia Became Paris, and Oth­er Roman Cities Got Their Mod­ern Names

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

The Atlas of True Names Restores Mod­ern Cities to Their Mid­dle Earth-ish Roots

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

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When William S. Burroughs Appeared on Saturday Night Live: His First TV Appearance (1981)

in Comedy, Literature, Television | February 17th, 2025

Though he nev­er said so direct­ly, we might expect that Sit­u­a­tion­ist Guy Debord would have includ­ed Sat­ur­day Night Live in what he called the “Spec­ta­cle”—the mass media pre­sen­ta­tion of a total­iz­ing real­i­ty, “the rul­ing order’s non­stop dis­course about itself, its nev­er-end­ing mono­logue of self-praise.” The slick­ness of TV, even live com­e­dy TV, masks care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed maneu­vers on the part of its cre­ators and adver­tis­ers. In Debor­d’s analy­sis, noth­ing is exempt­ed from the spec­ta­cle’s con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er; it co-opts every­thing for its pur­pos­es. Even seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions with­in the spectacle—the skew­er­ing of polit­i­cal fig­ures, for exam­ple, to their seem­ing displeasure—serve the pur­pos­es of pow­er: The spec­ta­cle, wrote Debord, “is the oppo­site of dia­logue.”

So I won­der, what he might have made of the appear­ance of cult writer and Beat pio­neer William S. Bur­roughs on the com­e­dy show in 1981? Was Burroughs—a mas­ter­mind of the counterculture—co-opted by the pow­ers that be? The author of Junkie, Naked Lunch, and Cities of the Red Night also appeared in a Nike ad and sev­er­al films and music videos, becom­ing a “pres­ence in Amer­i­can pop cul­ture,” writes R.U. Sir­ius in Every­body Must Get Stoned.

David Seed notes that Bur­roughs “is remem­bered by many mem­bers of the intel­li­gentsia and glit­terati as din­ner part­ner for the likes of Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Mick Jag­ger,” though he had “been a mod­el for the polit­i­cal and social left.” Had he been neutered by the 80s, his out­ra­geous­ly anar­chist sen­ti­ments turned to rad­i­cal kitsch?

Or maybe Bur­roughs dis­rupt­ed the spec­ta­cle, his dron­ing, monot­o­nous deliv­ery giv­ing view­ers of SNL exact­ly the oppo­site of what they were trained to expect. The appear­ance was his widest expo­sure to date (imme­di­ate­ly after­ward, he moved from New York to Lawrence, Kansas). One of the show’s writ­ers con­vinced pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol to put Bur­roughs on. In rehearsal, writes Bur­roughs’ biog­ra­ph­er Ted Mor­gan, Eber­sol “found Bur­roughs ‘bor­ing and dread­ful,’ and ordered that his time slot be cut from six to three and a half min­utes. The writ­ers, how­ev­er, con­spired to let his per­for­mance stand as it was, and on Novem­ber 7, he kicked off the show sit­ting behind a desk, the light­ing giv­ing his face a sepul­chral gaunt­ness.”

In the grainy video above, Bur­roughs reads from Naked Lunch and cut-up nov­el Nova Express, bring­ing the sadis­tic Dr. Ben­way into Amer­i­ca’s liv­ing rooms, as the audi­ence laughs ner­vous­ly. Sound effects of bombs and strains of the nation­al anthem play behind him as he reads. It stands as per­haps one of the strangest moments in live tele­vi­sion. “Bur­roughs had posi­tioned him­self as the Great Out­sider,” writes Mor­gan, “but on the night of Novem­ber 7 he had reached the posi­tion where the actress Lau­ren Hut­ton could intro­duce him to an audi­ence of 100 mil­lion view­ers as Amer­i­ca’s great­est liv­ing writer.” I’m sure Bur­roughs got a kick out of the descrip­tion. In any case, the clip shows us a SNL of bygone days that occa­sion­al­ly dis­rupt­ed the usu­al state of pro­gram­ming, as when it had punk band Fear on the show.

Per­haps Bur­roughs’ com­mer­cial appear­ances also show us how the coun­ter­cul­ture gets co-opt­ed and repack­aged for mid­dle-class tastes. Then again, one of the great ironies of Bur­roughs’ life is that he both began and end­ed it as “a true mem­ber of the mid­west­ern tax-pay­ing mid­dle class.” The fol­low­ing year in Lawrence, Kansas, he “caught up on his cor­re­spon­dence.” One stu­dent in Mon­tre­al wrote, imag­in­ing him in “a male whore­house in Tang­i­er.” Bur­roughs replied, “No… I live in a small house on a tree-lined street in Lawrence, Kansas, with my beloved cat Rus­ki. My hob­bies are hunt­ing, fish­ing, and pis­tol prac­tice.” Did Bur­roughs, who spent his life destroy­ing mass cul­ture with cut-ups and curs­es, sell out—as he once accused Tru­man Capote of doing—by becom­ing a celebri­ty?

Per­haps we should let him answer the charge. In answer to a fan from Eng­land who called him “God,” Bur­roughs wrote, “You got me wrong, Ray­mond, I am but a hum­ble prac­ti­tion­er of the scriven­er’s trade. God? Not me. I don’t have the qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Old Sarge told me years ago: ‘Don’t be a vol­un­teer, kid.’ God is always try­ing to foist his lousy job not some­one else. You got­ta be crazy to take it. Just a Tech Sergeant in the Shake­speare Squadron.” Bur­roughs may have used his celebri­ty sta­tus to his lit­er­ary advan­tage, and used it to pay the bills and work with artists he admired and vice-ver­sa, but he nev­er saw him­self as more than a writer (and per­haps lay magi­cian), and he abjured the hero wor­ship that made him a cult fig­ure.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

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Brian Eno Explores What Art Does in a New Book Co-Written with Artist Bette A

in Art, Books | February 17th, 2025

Bri­an Eno was think­ing about the pur­pose of art a decade ago, as evi­denced by his 2015 John Peel Lec­ture (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). But he was also think­ing about it three decades ago, as evi­denced by A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, his diary of the year 1995 pub­lished by Faber & Faber. This year, that same house is bring­ing out What Art Does: An Unfin­ished The­o­ry, a new book on that very sub­ject writ­ten by Eno, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the artist and nov­el­ist Bette Adri­aanse, bet­ter known as Bette A. It deals with the ques­tions Eno lays out in the video above: “What does art do for us? Why does it exist? Why do we like art?”

These mat­ters turn out to have pre­oc­cu­pied Eno “since I was a kid, real­ly,” when he first got curi­ous about a “bio­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tion for the exis­tence of art” — a dri­ve not so read­i­ly fol­lowed, it seems, by young peo­ple today. Eno relates a con­ver­sa­tion he had with an acquain­tance’s fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter, who said to him, “I want­ed to go to art school, actu­al­ly, because I real­ly love doing art, but my teacher said I was too bright for that, so I should go for sci­ence sub­jects.” He sees it as “the death of a cul­ture, when you take the bright­est young peo­ple and stop them from think­ing about a huge area of human activ­i­ty.”

Clear­ly times have changed since Eno’s youth, when art school could be a gate­way to mak­ing a per­ma­nent mark on the cul­ture. With What Art Does, Eno and Adri­aanse set about cre­at­ing a book that could eas­i­ly be read by a bright teenag­er — or even her teacher — and con­se­quent­ly clar­i­fy that read­er’s think­ing about the impor­tance of art. Eno has been dis­cussing that sub­ject for quite some time, and to Adri­aanse fell the “thank­less task” of read­ing through his many writ­ings, lec­tures, and inter­views in search of mate­r­i­al that could be dis­tilled into a sin­gle, pock­et-sized book.

Eno clar­i­fies that What Art Does is not an expla­na­tion of the whole of art, nor does it rep­re­sent a defin­i­tive answer to the ques­tion implied by its title. It’s more impor­tant to him that the book expands the swath of human endeav­or that its read­ers con­sid­er to be art. “Cre­ativ­i­ty is some­thing that is born into humans,” he says, and the goal is “reawak­en­ing that, say­ing to peo­ple, ‘You can actu­al­ly do it. What­ev­er it is, it’s your thing, you can do it.’ I like to say, it’s every­thing from Cézanne to cake dec­o­ra­tion.” As “the place where peo­ple exper­i­ment with their feel­ings about things” and come to under­stand those feel­ings, art can hap­pen any­where, from the painter’s ate­lier or musi­cian’s stu­dio to the hair salon and the bak­ery: all set­tings, Eno’s fans would sure­ly agree, that could ben­e­fit from the occa­sion­al Oblique Strat­e­gy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Eno: The New “Gen­er­a­tive Doc­u­men­tary” on Bri­an Eno That’s Nev­er the Same Movie Twice

Bri­an Eno’s Beau­ti­ful New Turntable Glows & Con­stant­ly Changes Col­ors as It Plays

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

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

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Watch the Historic First Episode of Saturday Night Live with Host George Carlin (1975)

in Comedy, Television | February 17th, 2025

50 years of Sat­ur­day Night Live. It all start­ed here with this first episode, aired on Octo­ber 11, 1975. George Car­lin host­ed the show. Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian served up the music. Jim Hen­son staged an elab­o­rate pup­pet show. And “the Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers” (Belushi, Aykroyd, Gil­da, Jane, Chevy, Gar­rett, Laraine and the rest) pro­vid­ed the com­e­dy, per­form­ing the first of 10,000 sketch­es that have since aired over SNL’s long his­to­ry. SNL added the com­plete episode to its YouTube chan­nel, and you can now watch how it all began. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

 

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Inside SNL: Al Franken Reveals How Saturday Night Live Is Crafted Every Week

in Comedy, Television | February 16th, 2025

As Sat­ur­day Night Live cel­e­brates its 50th anniver­sary, Al Franken takes you inside the mak­ing of an SNL episode. He should know a thing or two about the sub­ject. Part of the orig­i­nal SNL writ­ing team, Franken spent 15 years writ­ing and per­form­ing for the show. (Any­one remem­ber Stu­art Smal­l­ey giv­ing a moti­va­tion­al pep talk to Michael Jor­dan?) On his pod­cast, Franken walks you through what a typ­i­cal week on Sat­ur­day Night Live looks like. The week begins with the kick­off meet­ing on Mon­day, then moves mid-week to the writ­ing and selec­tion of sketch­es, and ends with dress rehearsals, the live show, and after-par­ty on Sat­ur­day. Above, Franken also talks about the role of the host and which ones excelled, and which ones flopped. If you would enjoy know­ing how the SNL sausage gets made, the 60-minute con­ver­sa­tion is well worth your while.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Gil­da Rad­ner Does a Com­ic Imper­son­ation of Pat­ti Smith: Watch the Clas­sic SNL Skit, “Rock Against Yeast” (1979)

Every­thing You Need to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Sea­son of the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show

When Was the Pin­na­cle of Sat­ur­day Night Live? A YouTu­ber Watch­es One Episode from Each Sea­son & Reports Back

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

 

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Meet Jesse Welles, the Folk Singer Who Turns News into Folk Music, Writing Songs on Elections, Plane Crashes, Ozempic & More

in Current Affairs, Music | February 14th, 2025

At first glance, Jesse Welles resem­bles noth­ing so much as a time trav­el­er from the year 1968. That’s how I would open a pro­file about him, but The New York Times’ David Peis­ner takes a dif­fer­ent approach, describ­ing him record­ing a song in his home stu­dio. “Welles, a singer-song­writer with a shag­gy, dirty-blond mane and a sand­pa­pery voice, has risen to recent promi­nence post­ing videos to social media of him­self alone in the woods near his home in north­west Arkansas, per­form­ing wry­ly fun­ny, polit­i­cal­ly engaged folk songs,” Peis­ner con­tin­ues. This prac­tice has pro­duced “viral hits on Tik­Tok and Insta­gram, build­ing an audi­ence of more than 2 mil­lion fol­low­ers on those plat­forms.”

Welles’ sub­jects have includ­ed “the war in Gaza, the rise of the weight-loss drug Ozem­pic, and the rapa­cious­ness of Unit­ed Healthcare’s busi­ness mod­el.” You can hear his musi­cal takes on these news-pegged sub­jects on his YouTube chan­nel, along with such oth­er much-viewed, ripped-from-the-head­lines songs as “Fen­tanyl,” “Wal­mart,” “Whis­tle Boe­ing,” and “We’re All Gonna Die.”

For his younger lis­ten­ers, his sub­ject mat­ter (and his per­spec­tive on it) have a kind of cur­ren­cy much inten­si­fied by life on social media; for his old­er lis­ten­ers, his man­ner and musi­cian­ship recall a gold­en age of the protest singer that many would have assumed a whol­ly closed chap­ter of cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

It will, per­haps, dis­ap­point both rel­e­vant demo­graph­ics that Welles’ forth­com­ing debut album Mid­dle includes none of these viral hits, nor any­thing much like them. “The only fil­ter placed on it was I wasn’t doing top­i­cal songs for this project,” Peis­ner quotes him as say­ing, lat­er writ­ing that the album “surfs between sur­re­al­is­tic fan­ta­sy worlds and Welles’s own inner life.” This coun­ter­in­tu­itive move is under­stand­able: giv­en his obvi­ous chops honed with the inspi­ra­tion of Bob Dylan, Tom Pet­ty, and John Prine, being pigeon­holed as a singer of the news on Tik­Tok has prob­a­bly nev­er been his ulti­mate goal. A cou­ple of decades from now, music crit­ics may declare that Oliv­er Antho­ny walked so that Jesse Welles could run.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

The Acoustic Gui­tar Project Gives Song­writ­ers World­wide a Gui­tar and One Week to Write a Song

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

John Prine’s Last Song Was Also His First to Go No. 1: Watch Him Per­form “I Remem­ber Every­thing”

The Effi­ca­cy of Protest Songs — Four Song­writ­ers Dis­cuss on Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #121

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

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Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand

in Literature | February 14th, 2025


In a let­ter dat­ed May 31, 1960, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, the author best known for her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (lis­ten to her read the sto­ry here) penned a let­ter to her friend, the play­wright Mary­at Lee. It begins rather abrupt­ly, like­ly because it’s respond­ing to some­thing Mary­at said in a pre­vi­ous let­ter:

I hope you don’t have friends who rec­om­mend Ayn Rand to you. The fic­tion of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fic­tion. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the sub­way and threw it in the near­est garbage pail. She makes Mick­ey Spillane look like Dos­to­evsky.

The let­ter, which you can read online or find in the book The Habit of Being, then turns to oth­er mat­ters.

O’Con­nor’s crit­i­cal appraisal of Ayn Rand’s books is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But here’s one fac­toid worth know­ing. Mick­ey Spillane (ref­er­enced in O’Con­nor’s let­ter) was a huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer, who sold some 225 mil­lion books dur­ing his life­time. Accord­ing to his Wash­ing­ton Post obit, “his spe­cial­ty was tight-fist­ed, sadis­tic revenge sto­ries, often fea­tur­ing his alco­holic gumshoe Mike Ham­mer and a cast of evil­do­ers.” Crit­ics, appalled by the sex and vio­lence in his books, dis­missed his writ­ing. But Ayn Rand defend­ed him. In pub­lic, she said that Spillane was under­rat­ed. In her book The Roman­tic Man­i­festo, Rand put Spillane in some unex­pect­ed com­pa­ny when she wrote: “[Vic­tor] Hugo gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cathedral–Dostoevsky gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cham­ber of hor­rors, but with a pow­er­ful guide–Spillane gives me the feel­ing of lis­ten­ing to a mil­i­tary band in a pub­lic park–Tolstoy gives me the feel­ing of an unsan­i­tary back­yard which I do not care to enter.”

All of this goes to show that _____. We’ll let you fill in the blank.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Should We Read Flan­nery O’Connor? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Hear Flan­nery O’Connor Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

Ayn Rand Issues 13 Com­mand­ments to Film­mak­ers for Mak­ing Good Cap­i­tal­ist Movies (1947)

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music

in History, Music, Technology | February 13th, 2025

In the cred­its of Phil Collins’ No Jack­et Required appears the dis­claimer that “there is no Fairlight on this record.” Cryp­tic though it may have appeared to most of that album’s many buy­ers, tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed musi­cians would’ve got it. In the half-decades since its intro­duc­tion, the Fairlight Com­put­er Musi­cal Instru­ment, or CMI, had reshaped the sound of pop music — or at least the pop music cre­at­ed by acts who could afford one. The device may have cost as much as a house, but for those who under­stood the poten­tial of play­ing and manip­u­lat­ing the sounds of real-life instru­ments (or of any­thing else besides) dig­i­tal­ly, mon­ey was no object.

The his­to­ry of the Fairlight CMI is told in the video above from the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald and The Age, incor­po­rat­ing inter­views from its Aus­tralian inven­tors Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie. Accord­ing to Ryrie, No Jack­et Required actu­al­ly did use the Fairlight, in the sense that one of its musi­cians sam­pled a sound from the Fairlight’s library. To musi­cians, using the tech­nol­o­gy not yet wide­ly known as dig­i­tal sam­pling would have felt like mag­ic; to lis­ten­ers, it meant a whole range of sounds they’d nev­er heard before, or at least nev­er used in that way. Take the “orches­tra hit” orig­i­nal­ly sam­pled from a record of Stravin­sky’s The Fire­bird (and whose sto­ry is told in the Vox video just above), which soon became prac­ti­cal­ly inescapable.

We might call the orches­tra hit the Fairlight’s “killer app,” though its breathy, faint­ly vocal sam­ple known as “ARR1” also saw a lot of action across gen­res. A desire for those par­tic­u­lar effects brought a lot of musi­cians and pro­duc­ers onto the band­wag­on through­out the eight­ies, but it was the ear­ly adopters who used the Fairlight most cre­ative­ly. The ear­li­est among them was Peter Gabriel, who appears in the clip from the French doc­u­men­tary above gath­er­ing sounds to sam­ple, blow­ing wind through pipes and smash­ing up tele­vi­sions in a junk­yard. Kate Bush embraced the Fairlight with a spe­cial fer­vor, using not just its sam­pling capa­bil­i­ties but also its ground­break­ing sequenc­ing soft­ware (includ­ed from the Series II onward) to cre­ate her 1985 hit “Run­ning Up That Hill,” which made a sur­prise return to pop­u­lar­i­ty just a few years ago.

The Fairlight’s high-pro­file Amer­i­can users includ­ed Ste­vie Won­der, Todd Rund­gren, and Her­bie Han­cock, who demon­strates his own mod­el along­side the late Quin­cy Jones in the doc­u­men­tary clip above. With its green-on-black mon­i­tor, its gigan­tic flop­py disks, and its futur­is­tic-look­ing “light pen” (as nat­ur­al a point­ing device as any in an era when most of human­i­ty had nev­er laid eyes on a mouse), it resem­bles less a musi­cal instru­ment than an ear­ly per­son­al com­put­er with a piano key­board attached. It had its cum­ber­some qual­i­ties, and some leaned rather too heav­i­ly on its packed-in sounds, but as Han­cock points out, a tool is a tool, and it’s all down to the human being in con­trol to get pleas­ing results out of it: “It does­n’t plug itself in. It does­n’t pro­gram itself… yet.” To which the always-pre­scient Jones adds: “It’s on the way, though.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Demo a Fairlight CMI Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

How the Yama­ha DX7 Dig­i­tal Syn­the­siz­er Defined the Sound of 1980s Music

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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

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Jane Austen Used Pins to Edit Her Manuscripts: Before the Word Processor & White-Out

in Literature | February 12th, 2025

Before the word proces­sor, before White-Out, before Post-It Notes, there were straight pins. Or, at least that’s what Jane Austen used to make edits in one of her rare man­u­scripts. In 2011, Oxford’s Bodleian Library acquired the man­u­script of Austen’s aban­doned nov­el, The Wat­sons. In announc­ing the acqui­si­tion, the Bodleian wrote:

The Wat­sons is Jane Austen’s first extant draft of a nov­el in process of devel­op­ment and one of the ear­li­est exam­ples of an Eng­lish nov­el to sur­vive in its for­ma­tive state. Only sev­en man­u­scripts of fic­tion by Austen are known to sur­vive. The Wat­sons man­u­script is exten­sive­ly revised and cor­rect­ed through­out, with cross­ings out and inter­lin­ear addi­tions.

Janeausten.ac.uk (the web­site where Austen’s man­u­scripts have been dig­i­tized) takes a deep­er dive into the curi­ous qual­i­ty of The Wat­sons man­u­script, not­ing:

The man­u­script is writ­ten and cor­rect­ed through­out in brown iron-gall ink. The pages are filled in a neat, even hand with signs of con­cur­rent writ­ing, era­sure, and revi­sion, inter­rupt­ed by occa­sion­al pas­sages of heavy inter­lin­ear cor­rec­tion.… The man­u­script is with­out chap­ter divi­sions, though not with­out infor­mal divi­sion by wider spac­ing and ruled lines. The full pages sug­gest that Jane Austen did not antic­i­pate a pro­tract­ed process of redraft­ing. With no cal­cu­lat­ed blank spaces and no obvi­ous way of incor­po­rat­ing large revi­sion or expan­sion she had to find oth­er strate­gies – the three patch­es, small pieces of paper, each of which was filled close­ly and neat­ly with the new mate­r­i­al, attached with straight pins to the pre­cise spot where erased mate­r­i­al was to be cov­ered or where an inser­tion was required to expand the text.

Accord­ing to Christo­pher Fletch­er, Keep­er of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions at the Bodleian Library, this prick­ly method of edit­ing was­n’t exact­ly new. Archivists at the library can trace pins being used as edit­ing tools back to 1617.

You can find The Wat­sons online here:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in August, 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Jane Austen Changed Fic­tion For­ev­er

The Jane Austen Fic­tion Man­u­script Archive Is Online: Explore Hand­writ­ten Drafts of Per­sua­sion, The Wat­sons & More

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Jane Austen’s Library

Jane Austen’s Music Col­lec­tion, Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

15-Year-Old Jane Austen Writes a Satir­i­cal His­to­ry Of Eng­land: Read the Hand­writ­ten Man­u­script Online (1791)

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What It Was Like to Get a Meal at a Medieval Tavern

in Food & Drink, History | February 12th, 2025

At least since The Can­ter­bury Tales, the set­ting of the medieval tav­ern has held out the promise of adven­ture. For their cus­tomer base dur­ing the actu­al Mid­dle Ages, how­ev­er, they had more util­i­tar­i­an virtues. “If you ever find your­self in the late medieval peri­od, and you are in need of food and drink, you’d bet­ter find your­self an inn, tav­ern, or ale­house,” says Tast­ing His­to­ry host Max Miller in the video above. The dif­fer­ences between them had to do with qual­i­ty: the tav­erns were nicer than the ale­hous­es, and the inns were nicer than the tav­erns, hav­ing begun as full-ser­vice estab­lish­ments where cus­tomers could stay the night.

As for what inn‑, tavern‑, or ale­house-goers would actu­al­ly con­sume, Miller men­tions that the local avail­abil­i­ty of ingre­di­ents would always be a fac­tor. “You might just get a veg­etable potage; in some places it would just be beans and cab­bage.”

Else­where, though, it could be “a fish stew, or some­thing with real­ly qual­i­ty meat in it.” For the recipe of the episode — this being a cook­ing show, after all — Miller choos­es a com­mon medieval meat stew called buke­nade or bok­nade. The actu­al instruc­tions he reads con­tain words reveal­ing of their time peri­od: the Bib­li­cal sound­ing smyte for cut, for instance, or eyroun, the Mid­dle Eng­lish term that ulti­mate­ly lost favor to eggs.

The cus­tomers of tav­erns would orig­i­nal­ly have drunk wine, which in Eng­land was import­ed from France at some expense. As they grew more pop­u­lar, these busi­ness­es diver­si­fied their menus, offer­ing “cider from apples and per­ry from pears,” as well as the pre­mi­um option of mead made with hon­ey. Ale­hous­es, as their name would sug­gest, began as pri­vate homes whose wives sold ale, at least the excess that the fam­i­ly itself could­n’t drink. How­ev­er infor­mal they sound, they were still sub­ject to the same reg­u­la­tions as oth­er drink­ing spots, and alewives found to be sell­ing an infe­ri­or prod­uct were sub­ject to the same kind of pub­lic humil­i­a­tions inflict­ed upon any medieval mis­cre­ant — the likes of whom we might rec­og­nize from any num­ber of the high-fan­ta­sy tales we read today.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Medieval Tav­erns: Learn the His­to­ry of These Rough-and-Tum­ble Ances­tors of the Mod­ern Pub

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

How to Make Medieval Mead: A 13th Cen­tu­ry Recipe

How to Make Ancient Mesopotami­an Beer: See the 4,000-Year-Old Brew­ing Method Put to the Test

The Entire Man­u­script Col­lec­tion of Geof­frey Chaucer Gets Dig­i­tized: A New Archive Fea­tures 25,000 Images of The Can­ter­bury Tales & Oth­er Illus­trat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

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

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Watch 10 Great German Expressionist Films: Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & More

in Film | February 12th, 2025

In 1913, Ger­many, flush with a new nation’s patri­ot­ic zeal, looked like it might become the dom­i­nant nation of Europe and a real rival to that glob­al super­pow­er Great Britain. Then it hit the buz­z­saw of World War I. After the Ger­man gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in 1918 from the eco­nom­ic and emo­tion­al toll of a half-decade of sense­less car­nage, the Allies forced it to accept dra­con­ian terms for sur­ren­der. The entire Ger­man cul­ture was sent reel­ing, search­ing for answers to what hap­pened and why.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism came about to artic­u­late these lac­er­at­ing ques­tions roil­ing in the nation’s col­lec­tive uncon­scious. The first such film was The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari (1920), about a malev­o­lent trav­el­ing magi­cian who has his ser­vant do his mur­der­ous bid­ding in the dark of the night. The sto­ry­line is all about the Freudi­an ter­ror of hid­den sub­con­scious dri­ves, but what real­ly makes the movie mem­o­rable is its com­plete­ly unhinged look. Marked by styl­ized act­ing, deep shad­ows paint­ed onto the walls, and sets filled with twist­ed archi­tec­tur­al impos­si­bil­i­ties — there might not be a sin­gle right angle in the film – Cali­gari’s look per­fect­ly mesh­es with the nar­ra­tor’s dement­ed state of mind.

Sub­se­quent Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies retreat­ed from the extreme aes­thet­ics of Cali­gari but were still filled with a mood of vio­lence, frus­tra­tion and unease. F. W. Mur­nau’s bril­liant­ly depress­ing The Last Laugh (1924) is about a proud door­man at a high-end hotel who is uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of his posi­tion and demot­ed to a low­ly bath­room atten­dant. When he hands over his uni­form, his pos­ture col­laps­es as if the jack­et were his exoskele­ton. You don’t need to be a semi­oti­cian to fig­ure out that the doorman’s loss of sta­tus par­al­lels Germany’s. Fritz Lang’s M (1931), a land­mark of ear­ly sound film, is the first ser­i­al killer movie ever made. But what starts out as a police pro­ce­dur­al turns into some­thing even more unset­tling when a gang of dis­tinct­ly Nazi-like crim­i­nals decide to mete out some jus­tice of their own.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism end­ed in 1933 when the Nazis came to pow­er. They weren’t inter­est­ed in ask­ing uncom­fort­able ques­tions and viewed such dark tales of cin­e­mat­ic angst as unpa­tri­ot­ic. Instead, they pre­ferred bright, cheer­ful tales of Aryan youths climb­ing moun­tains. By that time, the movement’s most tal­ent­ed direc­tors — Fritz Lang and F.W. Mur­nau — had fled to Amer­i­ca. And it was in Amer­i­ca where Ger­man Expres­sion­ism found its biggest impact. Its stark light­ing, grotesque shad­ows and bleak world­view would go on to pro­found­ly influ­ence film noir in the late 1940s after anoth­er hor­rif­ic, dis­il­lu­sion­ing war. See our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films here.

You can watch 10 Ger­man Expres­sion­ist movies – includ­ing Cali­gari, Last Laugh and M — for free below.

  • Nos­fer­atu — Free — Ger­man Expres­sion­ist hor­ror film direct­ed by F. W. Mur­nau. An unau­tho­rized adap­ta­tion of Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la. (1922)
  • The Stu­dent of Prague — Free — A clas­sic of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film. Ger­man writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and Dan­ish direc­tor Stel­lan Rye bring to life a 19th-cen­tu­ry hor­ror sto­ry. Some call it the first indie film. (1913)
  • Nerves — Free — Direct­ed by Robert Rein­ert, Nerves tells of “the polit­i­cal dis­putes of an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive fac­to­ry own­er Herr Roloff and Teacher John, who feels a com­pul­sive but secret love for Rolof­f’s sis­ter, a left-wing rad­i­cal.” (1919)
  • The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari — Free — This silent film direct­ed by Robert Wiene is con­sid­ered one of the most influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist films and per­haps one of the great­est hor­ror movies of all time. (1920)
  • Metrop­o­lis — Free — Fritz Lang’s fable of good and evil fight­ing it out in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia. An impor­tant clas­sic. (1927)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — A fol­low-up to Paul Wegen­er’s ear­li­er film, “The Golem,” about a mon­strous crea­ture brought to life by a learned rab­bi to pro­tect the Jews from per­se­cu­tion in medieval Prague. Based on the clas­sic folk tale, and co-direct­ed by Carl Boese. (1920)
  • The Golem: How He Came Into the World — Free — The same film as the one list­ed imme­di­ate­ly above, but this one has a score cre­at­ed by Pix­ies front­man Black Fran­cis. (2008)
  • The Last Laugh - Free — F.W. Mur­nau’s clas­sic cham­ber dra­ma about a hotel door­man who falls on hard times. A mas­ter­piece of the silent era, the sto­ry is told almost entire­ly in pic­tures. (1924)
  • Faust — Free - Ger­man expres­sion­ist film­mak­er F.W. Mur­nau directs a film ver­sion of Goethe’s clas­sic tale. This was Mur­nau’s last Ger­man movie. (1926)
  • Sun­rise: A Song of Two Humans — Free — Made by the Ger­man expres­sion­ist direc­tor F.W. Mur­nau. Vot­ed in 2012, the 5th great­est film of all time. (1927)
  • M — Free — Clas­sic film direct­ed by Fritz Lang, with Peter Lorre. About the search for a child mur­der­er in Berlin. (1931)

For more clas­sic films, peruse our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Is Ger­man Expres­sion­ism? A Crash Course on the Cin­e­mat­ic Tra­di­tion That Gave Us Metrop­o­lis, Nos­fer­atu & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Gave Rise to the “Dutch” Angle, the Cam­era Shot That Defined Clas­sic Films by Welles, Hitch­cock, Taran­ti­no & More

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

When the Nazis Declared War on Expres­sion­ist Art (1937)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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