How Computers Ruined Rock Music

in Music | May 24th, 2019

There are purists out there who think com­put­ers ruined elec­tron­ic music, made it cold and alien, removed the human ele­ment: the warm, war­bling sounds of ana­log oscil­la­tors, the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of ana­log drum machines, syn­the­siz­ers that go out of tune and have minds of their own. Musi­cians played those instru­ments, plugged and patched them togeth­er, tried their best to con­trol them. They did not pro­gram them.

Then came dig­i­tal sam­plers, MIDI, DAWs (dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tions), pitch cor­rec­tion, time cor­rec­tion… every note, every arpeg­gio, every drum fill could be mapped in advance, exe­cut­ed per­fect­ly, end­less­ly editable for­ev­er, and entire­ly played by machines.

All of this may have been true for a short peri­od of time, when pro­duc­ers became so enam­ored of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy that it became a sub­sti­tute for the old ways. But ana­log has come back in force, with both tech­nolo­gies now exist­ing har­mo­nious­ly in most elec­tron­ic music, often with­in the same piece of gear.

Dig­i­tal elec­tron­ic music has virtues all its own, and the dizzy­ing range of effects achiev­able with vir­tu­al com­po­nents, when used judi­cious­ly, can lead to sub­lime results. But when it comes to anoth­er argu­ment about the impact of com­put­ers on music made by humans, this con­clu­sion isn’t so easy to draw. Rock and roll has always been pow­ered by human error—indeed would nev­er have exist­ed with­out it. How can it be improved by dig­i­tal tools designed to cor­rect errors?

The ubiq­ui­tous sound of dis­tor­tion, for exam­ple, first came from ampli­fiers and mix­ing boards pushed beyond their frag­ile lim­its. The best songs seem to all have mis­takes built into their appeal. The open­ing bass notes of The Breeder’s “Can­non­ball,” mis­tak­en­ly played in the wrong key, for exam­ple… a zeal­ous con­tem­po­rary pro­duc­er would not be able to resist run­ning them through pitch cor­rec­tion soft­ware.

John Bonham’s thun­der­ing drums, a force of nature caught on tape, feel “impa­tient, ster­ile and unin­spired” when sliced up and snapped to a grid in Pro Tools, as pro­duc­er and YouTu­ber Rick Beato has done (above) to prove his the­o­ry that com­put­ers ruined rock music. You could just write this off as an old man rant­i­ng about new sounds, but hear him out. Few peo­ple on the inter­net know more about record­ed music or have more pas­sion for shar­ing that knowl­edge.

In the video at the top, Beato makes his case for organ­ic rock and roll: “human beings play­ing music that is not metro­nom­ic, or ‘quantized’”—the term for when com­put­ers splice and stretch acoustic sounds so that they align math­e­mat­i­cal­ly. Quan­tiz­ing, Beato says, “is when you deter­mine which rhyth­mic fluc­tu­a­tions in a par­tic­u­lar instrument’s per­for­mance are impre­cise or expres­sive, you cut them, and you snap them to the near­est grid point.” Overuse of the tech­nol­o­gy, which has become the norm, removes the “groove” or “feel” of the play­ing, the very imper­fec­tions that make it inter­est­ing and mov­ing.

Beato’s thor­ough demon­stra­tion of how dig­i­tal tools turn record­ed music into mod­u­lar fur­ni­ture show us how the pro­duc­tion process has become a men­tal exer­cise, a design chal­lenge, rather than the pal­pa­ble, spon­ta­neous out­put of liv­ing, breath­ing human bod­ies. The “present state of affairs,” as Nick Mes­sitte puts it, is “key­boards trig­ger­ing sam­ples quan­tized to with­in an inch of their human­i­ty by pro­duc­ers in the pre-pro­duc­tion stages.” Any­one resist­ing this sta­tus quo becomes an acoustic musi­cian by default, argues Mes­sitte, stand­ing on one side of the “acoustic ver­sus syn­thet­ic” divide.

Whether the two modes of music can be har­mo­nious­ly rec­on­ciled is up for debate, but at present, I’m inclined to agree with Beato: dig­i­tal record­ing, pro­cess­ing, and edit­ing tech­nolo­gies, for all their incred­i­ble con­ve­nience and unlim­it­ed capa­bil­i­ty, too eas­i­ly turn rhythms made with the elas­tic tim­ing of human hearts and hands into machin­ery. The effect is fatigu­ing and dull, and on the whole, rock records that lean on these tech­niques can’t stand up to those made in pre­vi­ous decades or by the few hold­outs who refuse to join the arms race for syn­thet­ic pop per­fec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Mistakes/Studio Glitch­es Give Famous Songs Their Per­son­al­i­ty: Pink Floyd, Metal­li­ca, The Breed­ers, Steely Dan & More

The Dis­tor­tion of Sound: A Short Film on How We’ve Cre­at­ed “a McDonald’s Gen­er­a­tion of Music Con­sumers”

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

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

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Johannes Kepler Theorized That Each Planet Sings a Song, Each in a Different Voice: Mars is a Tenor; Mercury, a Soprano; and Earth, an Alto

in Astronomy, Music, Science | May 24th, 2019

Johannes Kepler deter­mined just how the plan­ets of our solar sys­tem make their way around the sun. He pub­lished his inno­v­a­tive work on the sub­ject from 1609 to 1619, and in the final year of that decade he also came up with a the­o­ry that each plan­et sings a song, and each in a dif­fer­ent voice at that. Mars is a tenor, Mer­cury is a sopra­no, and Earth, as the BBC show QI (or Quite Inter­est­ing) recent­ly tweet­ed, “is an alto that sings two notes Mi and Fa, which Kepler read as ‘Mis­e­ri­am & Famem’, ‘mis­ery and famine’ ” — two phe­nom­e­na not unknown on Earth in Kepler’s time, even though the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion had already start­ed to change the way peo­ple lived.

Not all of the best minds of the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion thought pure­ly in terms of cal­cu­la­tion. The blog Thats­Maths describes Kepler’s mis­sion as explain­ing the solar sys­tem “in terms of divine har­mo­ny,” find­ing “a sys­tem of the world that was math­e­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect and har­mon­i­cal­ly pleas­ing.” Tru­ly divine har­mo­ny could pre­sum­ably find its expres­sion in music, an idea that led Kepler to explain “plan­e­tary motions in terms of har­mon­ic rela­tion­ships, a scheme that he called the ‘song of the Earth.’ ”

Accord­ing to this scheme, “each plan­et emits a tone that varies in pitch as its dis­tance from the Sun varies from per­i­he­lion to aphe­lion and back” — that is, from the near­est they get to the sun to the far­thest they get from the sun and back — “pro­duc­ing a con­tin­u­ous glis­san­do of inter­me­di­ate tones, a ‘whistling pro­duced by fric­tion with the heav­en­ly light.’ ”

Kepler named the com­bined result “the music of the spheres,” but what does it sound like? Switzer­land-based cor­net­tist Bruce Dick­ey wants to give us a sense of it with Nature’s Whis­per­ing Secret, “a project for a CD record­ing explor­ing the ideas about music and cos­mol­o­gy of Johannes Kepler.” Demand­ing the musi­cian­ship of not just Dick­ey but com­pos­er Cal­liope Tsoupa­ki, singer Hana Blažíková, and a group of singers and instru­men­tal­ists from across Europe and Amer­i­ca as well, all “among the most dis­tin­guished musi­cians per­form­ing 16th-cen­tu­ry poly­phon­ic music today.” The Indiegogo cam­paign for this ambi­tious trib­ute to Kepler’s ideas at the inter­sec­tion of sci­ence and aes­thet­ics, which involves an album as well as a series of live per­for­mances into the year 2020, is on its very last day, so if you’d like to hear the music of the spheres for your­self, con­sid­er mak­ing a con­tri­bu­tion.

via Quite Inter­est­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

Relax with 8 Hours of Clas­si­cal Space Music: From Richard Strauss & Haydn, to Bri­an Eno, Philip Glass & Beyond

The Sound­track of the Uni­verse

Kepler, Galileo & Nos­tradamus in Col­or, on Google

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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New Web Project Immortalizes the Overlooked Women Who Helped Create Rock and Roll in the 1950s

in History, Music | May 23rd, 2019

“For six­ty years, con­ven­tion­al wis­dom has told us that women gen­er­al­ly did not per­form rock and roll dur­ing the 1950s,” writes Leah Branstet­ter, Ph.D. can­di­date in musi­col­o­gy at Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty. Like so many cul­tur­al forms into which we are ini­ti­at­ed, through edu­ca­tion, per­son­al inter­est, and gen­er­al osmo­sis, this pop­u­lar form of West­ern music—now a genre with sev­en­ty years under its belt—has func­tioned as an almost ide­al exam­ple of the great man the­o­ry of his­to­ry.

It can seem like set­tled fact that Chuck Berry, Elvis Pres­ley, Jer­ry Lee Lewis, Lit­tle Richard, Bud­dy Hol­ly, and their cel­e­brat­ed male con­tem­po­raries invent­ed the music; and that women played pas­sive roles as fans, stu­dio audi­ence mem­bers, groupies, per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of cars and gui­tars.…

The recog­ni­tion of rare excep­tions, like Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, does not chal­lenge the rule. But Branstetter’s Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave project almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly does.

The real­i­ty is, how­ev­er, that hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls per­formed and record­ed rock and roll in its ear­ly years. And many more par­tic­i­pat­ed in oth­er ways: writ­ing songs, own­ing or work­ing for record labels, work­ing as ses­sion or tour­ing musi­cians,design­ing stage wear, danc­ing, or man­ag­ing tal­ent…. [W]omen’s careers didn’t always resem­ble those of their more famous male coun­ter­parts. Some female per­form­ers were well known and per­formed nation­al­ly as stars, while oth­ers had more influ­ence region­al­ly or only in one tiny club. Some made the pop charts, but even more had impact through live per­for­mance. Some women exhib­it­ed the kind of wild onstage behav­ior that had come to be expect­ed from fig­ures Jer­ry Lee Lewis or Lit­tle Richard—but that wasn’t the only way to be rebel­lious, and oth­ers found their own meth­ods of being rev­o­lu­tion­ary.

Branstetter’s project, a dig­i­tal dis­ser­ta­tion, cov­ers dozens of musi­cians from the peri­od, just a frac­tion of the names she has uncov­ered in her research. Some of the women pro­filed were nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known. Many more were accom­plished stars before the 60’s girl group phe­nom­e­non, and con­tin­ued per­form­ing into the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Meet rock­ers like Sparkle Moore (see up top), born in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka and inspired by Bill Haley in the mid-fifties to play rock­a­bil­ly in her home­town. She went on to tour the coun­try, putting out record after record. “By 1957,” writes Branstet­ter, “she had about forty song­writ­ing cred­its to her name.” Teen mag­a­zine Dig wrote that Moore had “an amaz­ing resem­blance to the late James Dean… Presley’s style and Dean’s looks.” She is still a “favorite with rock­a­bil­ly fans,” notes her biog­ra­phy. Moore “has been induct­ed into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also made a new album in 2010 enti­tled Spark-a-Bil­ly.”

Meet Lil­lie Bryant, one half of duo Bil­lie & Lil­lie, whose breezi­er R&B sounds and more whole­some image res­onat­ed with ear­ly rock and roll fans, pro­mot­ers, and stars. Bryant began per­form­ing in New York City clubs as a teenag­er. Then pro­duc­ers Bob Crewe and Frank Slay turned her and singer Bil­lie Ford into a duo who went on to star in leg­endary DJ Alan Freed’s stage shows, “includ­ing a six-week tour with Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon” and an appear­ance on Amer­i­can Band­stand. Bryant still per­forms in her home­town of New­burgh, New York.

Meet The Chan­tels. “Formed in the Bronx, New York in the ear­ly 1950s,” they were “among the first African-Amer­i­can female vocal groups to gain nation­al atten­tion.” They also toured with Alan Freed and appeared on Amer­i­can Band­stand and The Dick Clark Show. In 1961, their hit “Look in My Eyes” went to num­ber 14 on the pop charts and 6 on the R&B charts. (Thir­ty years lat­er, it appeared on the Good­fel­las sound­track.)

Most peo­ple who grew up on the music of the 50s and 60s have like­ly heard of many of these women rock­ers, or have at least heard their music if they didn’t know the names and faces. But Branstetter’s project does more than tell the sto­ries of individuals—in biogra­phies, inter­views (with, for one, Jer­ry Lee Lewis’s sis­ter, singer and piano play­er Lin­da Gail Lewis), blog posts, playlists (hear one below), song analy­ses, and essays.

She also sub­stan­ti­ates her larg­er claim that women’s “con­tri­bu­tions shaped the cul­ture and sound of rock and roll,” in numer­ous well-doc­u­ment­ed ways. This despite the fact that women in ear­ly rock were told ver­sions of the same thing Joan Jett heard 20 years later—“girls don’t play rock and roll.” They some­times heard it from oth­er women in the music busi­ness. Pop singer Con­nie Frances, for exam­ple, offered her opin­ion in a 1958 issue of Bill­board: “A girl can’t sing rock and roll. It’s basi­cal­ly too sav­age for a girl singer to han­dle.”

Atti­tudes like these per­sist­ed so long, and became so uncon­scious, that one of the largest gui­tar mak­ers in the world, Fend­er, and sev­er­al oth­er musi­cal instru­ment mak­ers, may have lost mil­lions in sales before they final­ly real­ized that women make up half of new gui­tar play­ers. Women in Rock and Roll’s First Wave will inspire and enlight­en many of those young musi­cians who did­n’t grow up know­ing any­thing about Sparkle Moore or The Chan­tels, but should have. Unless rock his­to­ri­ans will­ing­ly ignore the work of schol­ars like Branstet­ter, sub­se­quent accounts should reflect a more expan­sive, inclu­sive, view of the ter­ri­to­ry. Start here.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Hot Gui­tar Solos of Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe, “America’s First Gospel Rock Star”

How Joan Jett Start­ed the Run­aways at 15 and Faced Down Every Bar­ri­er for Women in Rock and Roll

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Chrissie Hynde’s 10 Pieces of Advice for “Chick Rock­ers” (1994)

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

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

in History, Television | May 23rd, 2019

What is a Mup­pet? Homer Simp­son once offered this expla­na­tion: “It’s not quite a mop and it’s not quite a pup­pet, but man…” — before crack­ing up with amuse­ment. “So to answer your ques­tion, I don’t know.” That episode of The Simp­sons aired in the mid-1990s, a some­what fal­low peri­od for Jim Hen­son’s pup­pet-like (though less so mop-like) cre­ations, but the decades between now and then have shown them to be at least as cul­tur­al­ly influ­en­tial as Matt Groen­ing’s fam­i­ly of Spring­fiel­dians. What gives the Mup­pets, who made their tele­vi­sion debut in 1955 and have now sur­vived their cre­ator by near­ly thir­ty years, their pow­er to endure?

Insight into that ques­tion is on offer right now in a new six-part doc­u­men­tary series on Jim Hen­son’s life and work. It comes as a part of Defunct­land, “a YouTube series dis­cussing the his­to­ry of extinct theme parks and themed enter­tain­ment expe­ri­ences” that has recent­ly expand­ed its cul­tur­al purview.

The first episode of Defunct­land’s Jim Hen­son explores “the his­to­ry of Jim’s begin­nings and his first tele­vi­sion show, Sam and Friends”; the sec­ond “the ori­gins of Sesame Street, the Mup­pet­land spe­cials, and the failed Mup­pet pilots”; and the third the prop­er begin­nings of The Mup­pet Show, whose cre­ators did­n’t know they were “about to make the most pop­u­lar show in the world.” After you’ve caught up with the first three episodes of Jim Hen­son, the next three episodes will appear on the series’ Youtube playlist.

As you’ll know if you’ve seen the sur­re­al ear­ly films, exper­i­men­tal ani­ma­tions, and vio­lent cof­fee com­mer­cials made by Jim Hen­son pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the man behind the Mup­pets hard­ly sought to pro­duce enter­tain­ment for chil­dren alone: one of the pilots of The Mup­pet Show, in fact, was titled “Sex and Vio­lence.” Defunct­land’s doc­u­men­tary series gets into that and all the oth­er aspects of Hen­son’s life and work, two con­cepts hard­ly sep­a­ra­ble for such a famous­ly ded­i­cat­ed cre­ator. There’s much more to Hen­son’s lega­cy than a child­hood full of Sesame Street — now in its 50th year on the air — would sug­gest. As for how rig­or­ous a def­i­n­i­tion of “Mup­pet” the series will leave us with, we’ll have to wait until it con­cludes to find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

A Young Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets with Socks, Ten­nis Balls & Oth­er House­hold Goods (1969)

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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When John Waters Appeared on The Simpsons and Changed America’s LGBTQ Views (1997)

in Television | May 23rd, 2019

On the week where Alaba­ma Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion banned an episode of the kids’ car­toon Arthur for show­ing a gay wed­ding (just after ban­ning abor­tion the week before), let’s go back to a time when the entire coun­try need­ed a lit­tle bit of an edu­ca­tion on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and used The Simp­sons and a guest appear­ance by direc­tor John Waters to make the point.

“Homer’s Pho­bia” pre­miered on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1997 in the show’s eighth sea­son. Writ­ten by Ron Hauge, the episode casts Waters as John, the own­er of Springfield’s antique and mem­o­ra­bil­ia store “Cockamamie’s”, who befriends the fam­i­ly. Bart and Lisa love the retro and campy objects on sale, Marge loves John’s com­pli­ments, but Homer freaks out when he real­izes (and it takes some time) that John is gay. Pan­ick­ing that Bart might become gay from John’s influ­ence, he forces Bart to take a tour of the man­li­est thing he can think of, a steel mill, only to find that it dou­bles as a gay dis­co after work (“We work hard and we play hard,” says the fore­man).

Homer dou­bles down, believ­ing that hunt­ing and killing a deer will make Bart a man. John saves the day of course, Homer learns a lit­tle les­son on accep­tance, and only at the end does Bart under­stand what the whole pan­ic has been about.

As com­e­dy with a mes­sage, the episode still holds up. Homer’s clue­less­ness (when Marge says “He prefers the com­pa­ny of men,” Homer responds, “Who does­n’t?”) and his homo­pho­bia (refer­ring to the word “queer” he says “I resent you peo­ple using that word. That’s our word for mak­ing fun of you! We need it!”) is both dopey and point­ed, but nev­er vicious. Also delight­ful is John’s vis­it to the Simp­sons’ home, where he has a vin­tage collector’s swoon over the kitsch of the entire inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion, which as view­ers we’ve nev­er real­ly con­sid­ered. There’s plen­ty of visu­al gags, like a pink flamin­go in John’s shop and the amaz­ing Sha-Boom-Ka-Boom goo­gie-archi­tec­ture cafe.

Accord­ing to Matt Baume’s recent video essay, this episode did more for aware­ness and expos­ing intol­er­ance than any live action show at the time. John Waters, despite his filthy fil­mog­ra­phy, is fun, col­lect­ed, and cool. He is nei­ther a punch­line nor a trag­ic fig­ure. At this time in Amer­i­ca, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was still a crime in many states. A head cen­sor at Fox object­ed to near­ly every line in the show (although not always from the right–there was also con­cern that gay peo­ple might be offend­ed). Time solved the prob­lem, how­ev­er. By the time it came back from the ani­ma­tors that one cen­sor had lost his job.

A few months lat­er Ellen Degeneres came out on Oprah and the cul­ture start­ed to shift even a lit­tle more. But as this week proved, this episode’s insights still ring true today.

For Waters, it’s been a weird lega­cy, with kids and fam­i­lies rec­og­niz­ing him from the episode and not from his more infa­mous work. He now has out a new book, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tar­nished Wis­dom of a Filth Elder.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of The Simp­sons: An In-Depth Video Essay Explores What Made the Show Great, and When It All Came to an End

John Waters Talks About His Books and Role Mod­els in a Whim­si­cal Ani­mat­ed Video

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth is Nev­er Hav­ing to Spend Time with A‑Holes

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Banksy Strikes Again in Venice

in Art, Current Affairs | May 22nd, 2019

Jux­tapoz writes: “Nev­er invit­ed to be the part of Venice Bien­nale, Banksy once again invit­ed him­self to show­case his work. Using a typ­i­cal pop-up stand that usu­al­ly sells tacky paint­ings and sou­venirs, he assem­bled a selec­tion of 9 works that col­lec­tive­ly built an image of a mas­sive cruise ship block­ing the city.”

In recent years, the flood of mas­sive cruise ships into Venice has cre­at­ed ten­sions between Vene­tians and tourism com­pa­nies. It’s pret­ty clear on what side the street artist comes down.

Get more at Jux­tapoz.

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 Venice Works: 124 Islands, 183 Canals & 438 Bridges

Venice in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images 125 Years Ago: The Rial­to Bridge, St. Mark’s Basil­i­ca, Doge’s Palace & More

The Venice Time Machine: 1,000 Years of Venice’s His­to­ry Gets Dig­i­tal­ly Pre­served with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Big Data

Watch City Out of Time, A Short Trib­ute to Venice, Nar­rat­ed by William Shat­ner in 1959

Huge Hands Rise Out of Venice’s Waters to Sup­port the City Threat­ened by Cli­mate Change: A Poignant New Sculp­ture

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Fleetwood Mac Unveils Their New Singer Stevie Nicks & The World Takes Notice: Watch Bewitching Performances of “Rhiannon” (1975–1976)

in Music, Television | May 22nd, 2019

Fleet­wood Mac lost one lead singer and gui­tarist after anoth­er in the 70s, first to a men­tal health cri­sis, then a reli­gious cult, then dra­mat­ic fir­ings and rela­tion­al break­downs. They were in a bit of a sham­bles when new prospect Lind­say Buck­ing­ham arrived, bring­ing with him even more dra­ma, as well as an unknown singer, Ste­vie Nicks. One year lat­er, their breakup coin­cid­ed with the dis­so­lu­tion of John and Chris­tine McVie’s mar­riage, and drum­mer and name­sake Mick Fleet­wood’s divorce, dur­ing the record­ing of the mas­sive-sell­ing Rumors album in 1976.

Some­how, the band kept on, mak­ing greater leaps for­ward with Tusk, sur­viv­ing into the 90s intact and mount­ing sev­er­al reunion tours after­ward. How? Many a book and doc­u­men­tary have tack­led the sub­ject. But maybe the main rea­son is plain.

Despite endur­ing cir­cum­stances that would tear most bands apart, despite the cyn­i­cal lures and traps of wealth and fame, Fleet­wood Mac’s pro­fes­sion­al longevi­ty came from the fact that they were musi­cians who loved play­ing togeth­er, who knew how good they were at what they did, and knew they were bet­ter when they did it togeth­er.

Not only did the new five-piece put aside huge per­son­al con­flicts and an already leg­endary his­to­ry to make some of the great­est pop music ever writ­ten, both col­lab­o­rat­ing and let­ting indi­vid­ual song­writ­ers take the lead, but they had the smarts to rec­og­nize the enor­mous tal­ent they had in Nicks, who first joined the band at Buckingham’s insis­tence then quick­ly became its star front­woman. Her mag­net­ism was unde­ni­able, her song­writ­ing bewitch­ing, her stage pres­ence trans­for­ma­tive.

Fans see­ing Nicks onstage with the band after the release of 1975’s Fleet­wood Mac have “no idea who Ste­vie Nicks is,” writes Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone. They have “heard ‘Rhi­an­non’ on the radio,” have maybe bought the record, but “they’ve nev­er seen her rock.” Then they did—explaining the ori­gins of “Rhi­an­non” on The Old Grey Whis­tle Test (top) before launch­ing into the “song about a Welsh witch,” and going full-on new-age diva with super-feath­ered hair on The Mid­night Spe­cial (above).

“She’s the new girl in a long-run­ning band,” writes Sheffield, “but she’s here to blow all that his­to­ry away. She keeps push­ing the song hard­er, faster, as if she’s impa­tient to prove the new Mac is a real sav­age-like rock mon­ster, now that she’s ful­ly arrived.” Buck­ing­ham was the right gui­tarist at the right time in the band’s evo­lu­tion, step­ping into sev­er­al huge pairs of shoes to help them recre­ate their sound. But Ste­vie Nicks pro­vid­ed the voice and elec­tri­fy­ing­ly weird ener­gy they need­ed to become their best new selves.

Big, dra­mat­ic TV appear­ances were one thing, but the band’s tran­si­tion from British blues rock­ers to pop radio super­stars wasn’t a total eclipse of their past. While they may have been pro­mot­ed as a Ste­vie Nicks-cen­tric enti­ty, Chris­tine McVie still played a major singer/songwriter role, as did Buck­ing­ham. In one of their first live con­certs with the two new mem­bers, at the Capi­tol The­atre in New Jer­sey, above, McVie opens the set with “Get Like You Used to Be” and “Spare Me a Lit­tle of Your Love.”

Buck­ing­ham shows off his impec­ca­ble blues and coun­try chops, and Nicks sits in on back­ing vocals, then takes the lead three songs in on “Rhi­an­non.” Oth­er new songs in the short setlist include “World Turn­ing,” sung by McVie and Buck­ing­ham, and the Buck­ing­ham-led “Blue Let­ter” and “I’m So Afraid.” (They reach as far back in the back cat­a­log as Peter Green’s “Green Man­al­ishi.”) It’s clear at this point that the band doesn’t quite know what to do with Ste­vie Nicks. But once they debuted on tele­vi­sion, she knew exact­ly how to sell her­self to audi­ences.

FYI: If you hap­pen to be an Audi­ble mem­ber, you can down­load Rob Sheffield­’s audio­book, The Wild Heart of Ste­vie Nicks, as a free addi­tion­al book this month. (It’s part of their Audi­ble Orig­i­nals pro­gram.) If you’re not an Audi­ble mem­ber, you can always sign up for a free 30-day tri­al here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances by Peter Green, Founder of Fleet­wood Mac & the Only British Blues Gui­tarist Who Gave B.B. King “the Cold Sweats”

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

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The Strikingly Beautiful Maps & Charts That Fired the Imagination of Students in the 1880s

in Education, History, Maps | May 22nd, 2019

We all remem­ber the world maps that hung on the walls of our class­rooms, the ones at which we spent count­less hours star­ing when we could­n’t focus on the les­son at hand. Did we look at them and imag­ine flee­ing school for one of the far-off lands they pic­tured — or indeed find­ing a way to escape plan­et Earth itself? Such time-pass­ing fan­tasies unite school­child­ren of all eras, though some eras have pro­vid­ed their school­child­ren rich­er mate­r­i­al to fire up their imag­i­na­tions than oth­ers.

Take, for instance, the rich, vivid maps of Yag­gy’s Geo­graph­i­cal Study, which depict not just the world but the cos­mos, and which were first pro­duced for class­rooms in 1887. The epony­mous Levi Wal­ter Yag­gy, says Boston Rare Maps, “seems to have viewed him­self as an inno­va­tor and entre­pre­neur tap­ping into a trans­for­ma­tion­al moment in Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion.”

An adver­tise­ment for Yag­gy’s Chica­go-based West­ern Pub­lish­ing House lays out the com­pa­ny’s mis­sion: “Instead of offer­ing the pub­lic old things ‘made over,’ it has come to the help of teach­ers and schools with a series of appli­ances which in design, mech­a­nism and man­ner of illus­tra­tion, are new, ele­gant and prac­ti­cal.”

It also points to “the enthu­si­asm which has been aroused in edu­ca­tion­al cir­cles by this new depar­ture” as “proof of the fact that teach­ers are tired of stereo­typed and worn-out means of school-room illus­tra­tion.”

One can well imag­ine the enthu­si­asm aroused among school­child­ren of the late 19th cen­tu­ry when the teacher brought out Yag­gy’s Geo­graph­i­cal Study, a ply­wood box filled with col­or­ful, large-for­mat maps mea­sur­ing rough­ly two by three feet that revealed a wealth of knowl­edge about the Earth and out­er space.

The David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion has dig­i­tized and made avail­able to down­load every­thing that came inside, includ­ing the cross-sec­tion of the geo­log­i­cal stra­ta of “pre-Adamite Earth”; the illus­tra­tion of the civ­i­liza­tions of five cli­mat­ic zones “Show­ing in a Graph­ic Man­ner the Cli­mates, Peo­ples, Indus­tries & Pro­duc­tions of The Earth”; the 3D relief map of the Unit­ed States built into the back of the box; and the jew­el in the crown of Yag­gy’s Geo­graph­i­cal Study, the star chart.

The star chart, as Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Greg Miller describes it, “has five pan­els held in place by tiny met­al latch­es. Each pan­el can be opened to reveal a more detailed dia­gram. One shows the phas­es of the moon, for exam­ple, while anoth­er includes a slid­er to illus­trate how the posi­tion of the sun changes rel­a­tive to Earth with the sea­sons,” the whole thing “designed to high­light cer­tain fea­tures when a bright light is placed behind it.”

Despite dis­play­ing here and there what we now regard as sci­en­tif­ic inac­cu­ra­cies (Miller points to how the ellip­ti­cal orbit of plan­ets are shown as cir­cles) and unfash­ion­able social atti­tudes, Yag­gy’s Geo­graph­i­cal Study also embod­ies the spir­it of its time in a way that still fires up the imag­i­na­tion. The gold­en age of explo­ration had already entered its final chap­ter and space trav­el remained the stuff of sci­ence fic­tion (a genre that had only recent­ly tak­en the form in which we know it today), but with maps like these on the wall, no day­dream­ing stu­dent of the 1880s could doubt that real­i­ty still offered much to dis­cov­er.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

A Plan­e­tary Per­spec­tive: Tril­lions of Pic­tures of the Earth Avail­able Through Google Earth Engine

3D Map of Uni­verse Cap­tures 43,000 Galax­ies

A Mas­sive, Knit­ted Tapes­try of the Galaxy: Soft­ware Engi­neer Hacks a Knit­ting Machine & Cre­ates a Star Map Fea­tur­ing 88 Con­stel­la­tions

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Drew an Accu­rate Satel­lite Map of an Ital­ian City (1502)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Lives of John Coltrane & Billie Holiday Are Now Told in Two Graphic Novels

in Books, Jazz | May 22nd, 2019

How do you tell the sto­ries of larg­er-than-life cul­tur­al figures—of peo­ple whose his­to­ries inter­sect with piv­otal moments in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, whose careers set new stan­dards for excellence—without over­sim­pli­fy­ing and risk­ing car­i­ca­ture? With com­ic art, of course. Graph­ic nov­els have long proven them­selves wor­thy vehi­cles for biog­ra­phy. Some­thing about the bold strokes of the illus­tra­tions, the dia­logue in word bub­ble form, and the pan­el style of sto­ry­telling makes for a par­tic­u­lar­ly vivid encounter with his­to­ry.

Artist Pao­lo Parisi has cap­i­tal­ized on this kismet of form and con­tent in three bio­graph­i­cal graph­ic nov­els now, one of which—the sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s rise to fame and for­tune—we high­light­ed just a cou­ple days ago.

Parisi’s ear­li­er efforts took on no less icon­ic fig­ures than John Coltrane and Bil­lie Hol­i­day in Coltrane and Blues for Lady Day: The Sto­ry of Bil­lie Hol­i­day. The Ital­ian artist has demon­strat­ed a pas­sion for Amer­i­can music, espe­cial­ly jazz, in his career as an illus­tra­tor. As a writer, he also dis­plays a tal­ent for restraint, large­ly let­ting the images tell the sto­ry.

As in Basquiat, these images are both drawn from famous pho­tographs and from imag­i­na­tive recon­struc­tions of what it might have been like, sit­ting in on record­ing ses­sions, in the clubs, and in the heat­ed con­ver­sa­tions. Parisi may inevitably view his sub­jects through an out­sider’s lens—he may roman­ti­cize them at times and may elide impor­tant, but hard to visu­al­ize, details, as is the nature of the form.

But he excels at mak­ing these two musi­cal giants approach­able, telling their sto­ries in broad strokes so that those who haven’t read the dense, heav­i­ly-foot­not­ed tomes about them can devel­op appre­ci­a­tion and empa­thy for their art and too-short lives. It is a sad irony that those who burn bright and die young leave behind the most com­pelling mate­r­i­al for those who tell their sto­ries.

Parisi seems drawn to such trag­ic fig­ures, or per­haps the form itself requires high-con­trast highs and lows. “How could a graph­ic treat­ment pro­vide any­thing oth­er than the sketchi­est of details?” asks Coltrane review­er William Rycroft Tring. “Per­haps by choos­ing the right sub­ject.” In Coltrane and Hol­i­day, Parisi has two sub­jects whose lives were inher­ent­ly dra­mat­ic, full of major tri­umphs and tragedies.

Above all is the music. Graph­ic nov­els may not be sub­sti­tutes for a “prop­er biog­ra­phy,” as Tring writes, but they are excel­lent sup­ple­ments for get­ting to know the artists as you lis­ten to Lady Sings the Blues or A Love Supreme, whether for the first time or the mil­lionth.

You can pick up copies of Coltrane and Blues for Lady Day: The Sto­ry of Bil­lie Hol­i­day online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

An Ani­mat­ed John Coltrane Explains His True Rea­son for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

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

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The Bauhaus Bookshelf: Download Original Bauhaus Books, Journals, Manifestos & Ads That Still Inspire Designers Worldwide

in Art, Design, History | May 21st, 2019

The Bauhaus, Bar­ry Bergdoll writes in the New York Times of the Ger­man design school found­ed a cen­tu­ry ago last month, “last­ed just 14 years before the Nazis shut it down. And yet in that time it proved a mag­net for much that was new and exper­i­men­tal in art, design and archi­tec­ture — and for decades after, its lega­cy played an out­size role in chang­ing the phys­i­cal appear­ance of the dai­ly world, in every­thing from book design to house­hold light­ing to light­weight fur­ni­ture.” Cel­e­bra­tions of the Bauhaus’ cen­te­nary have tak­en many forms, includ­ing the doc­u­men­tary series Bauhaus World, the reimag­in­ing of mod­ern cor­po­rate logos in the clas­sic Bauhaus style, and now the free online resource Bauhaus Book­shelf.

Bauhaus Book­shelf cre­ator Andrea Riegel calls the site “my mod­est con­tri­bu­tion to #bauhaus100 and beyond: (almost) all Bauhaus books and jour­nals in a vir­tu­al book­case — with the pos­si­bil­i­ty to down­load and take a clos­er look at the media and orig­i­nal sources, sup­ple­ment­ed by short excerpts and con­tri­bu­tions by Bauhaus peo­ple and con­tem­po­rary wit­ness­es or oth­er con­tent in con­text.”

In oth­er worlds, you’ll find there not just the orig­i­nal Bauhaus man­i­festo, but sec­tions on the series of “Bauhaus books” pub­lished by Wal­ter Gropius and Lás­zló Moholy-Nagy; Bauhaus-asso­ci­at­ed cre­ators and teach­ers like Paul Klee; Bauhaus adver­tis­ing; the women of the Bauhaus (a sub­ject pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture); and mate­ri­als from the 1938 exhi­bi­tion at New York’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art that intro­duced the Bauhaus to the world.

And 100 years after its found­ing, the world is still think­ing about the Bauhaus, which, in Bergdol­l’s words, “pro­duced one of the most pow­er­ful expres­sions of a view that design was every­thing. It served, in a way, as the embassy of mod­ernist design. But its suc­cess has often led to a reduc­tion­ism in our under­stand­ing of the rich nexus of artis­tic move­ments that criss­crossed at the school itself, as well as the diverse devel­op­ments it helped inspire.” For a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the Bauhaus, per­haps we must go back to the Bauhaus itself, not just in the sense of look­ing at the art, craft, design, and build­ings its teach­ers and stu­dents pro­duced, but the doc­u­ments it issued on its mis­sion and ideals. Whether in its Eng­lish or Ger­man ver­sions, Riegel’s Bauhaus Book­shelf serves as an intel­lec­tu­al­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing place to find them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Orig­i­nal Bauhaus Books & Jour­nals for Free: A Dig­i­tal Cel­e­bra­tion of the Found­ing of the Bauhaus School 100 Years Ago

32,000+ Bauhaus Art Objects Made Avail­able Online by Har­vard Muse­um Web­site

How the Rad­i­cal Build­ings of the Bauhaus Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture: A Short Intro­duc­tion

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

Mod­ern Cor­po­rate Logos Reimag­ined in a Clas­sic Bauhaus Style: Cel­e­brate the 100th Anniver­sary of the Bauhaus Move­ment Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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James Taylor Gives Guitar Lessons, Teaching You How to Play Classic Songs Like “Fire and Rain,” “Country Road” & “Carolina in My Mind”

in Music | May 21st, 2019

The Amer­i­can folk revival of the 1950s and 60s paid div­i­dends in the 1970s, a decade we usu­al­ly asso­ciate with prog rock, dis­co, funk, and punk. These were the years of some of Cros­by, Stills & Nash and Neil Young’s best acoustic folk, and the finest work of Joni Mitchell and James Tay­lor, both of whom had such unique takes on folk gui­tar that they rede­fined the instru­ment for gen­er­a­tions. Mitchell drew from her teenage appre­ci­a­tion for jazz gui­tar, which she taught her­self to play while still in high school. Tay­lor picked up his unusu­al voic­ings and arrange­ments from a num­ber of Amer­i­can sources.

His influ­ences, he told Adam Gop­nik on The New York­er Radio Hour, came from his ear­ly study of the cel­lo (he played “bad­ly, reluc­tant­ly,” he says); ear­ly expo­sure to Broad­way show tunes and “light clas­sics”, thanks to par­ents who shut­tled him by train from North Car­oli­na to New York City, and his admi­ra­tion for Elvis, the Bea­t­les, and Ray Charles.

Through a mix of child­hood train­ing, ado­les­cent obses­sions, and a mature fin­ger­style honed by hours and hours of patient prac­tice, Tay­lor came to dom­i­nate the charts with songs like 1970’s “Fire and Rain” and “Coun­try Road,” bring­ing his acoustic folk and coun­try sen­si­bil­i­ties to soft rock sta­tions every­where.

Taylor’s song­writ­ing, for all its lyri­cal dra­ma and melan­choly, begins with the gui­tar. Through pure tech­nique, he makes the instru­ment sing, pulling his melodies from chord pat­terns and pick­ing styles. As befits such a thought­ful play­er, he is also a teacher of the instru­ment, offer­ing a free series of lessons for play­ing his most beloved songs. Here you can see his “Fire and Rain” les­son fur­ther up, “Coun­try Road” above, and at the top, a brief intro to the series from Tay­lor him­self.

Note that these lessons are for inter­me­di­ate play­ers, at least, and assume pri­or famil­iar­i­ty with the chord changes in the songs. The videos were orig­i­nal­ly avail­able on Taylor’s web­site, and required a sign-in, he says, some­what apolo­get­i­cal­ly. Since 2011, they are all—8 lessons total—available on his offi­cial YouTube chan­nel. See les­son num­ber 6, “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” just below, and watch all the rest for free here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

For Joni Mitchell’s 70th Birth­day, Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances of “Both Sides Now” & “The Cir­cle Game” (1968)

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

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