Keith Moon, Drummer of The Who, Passes Out at 1973 Concert; 19-Year-Old Fan Takes Over

in Music | August 28th, 2012

In November 1973, Scot Halpin, a 19-year-old kid, scalped tickets to The Who concert in San Francisco, California. Little did he know that he’d wind up playing drums for the band that night — that his name would end up etched in the annals of rock ’n’ roll.

The Who came to California with its album Quadrophenia topping the charts. But despite that, Keith Moon, the band’s drummer, had a case of the nerves. It was, after all, their first show on American soil in two years. When Moon vomited before the concert, he ended up taking some tranquillizers to calm down. The drugs worked all too well, not least because the tranquillizers actually ended up being PCP. During the show, Moon’s drumming became sloppy and slow, writes his biographer Tony Fletcher. Then, halfway through “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” he slumped onto his drums. Moon was out cold. (Watch a condensed version of the whole affair, from start to finish, above. Or watch another take below.) As the roadies tried to bring him back to form, The Who played as a trio. The drummer returned, but only briefly and collapsed again, this time heading off to the hospital to get his stomach pumped.

Scot Halpin watched the action from near the stage. Years later, he told an NPR interviewer, “my friend got real excited when he saw that [Moon was going to pass out again]. And he started telling the security guy, you know, this guy can help out. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere comes Bill Graham,” the great concert promoter. Graham asked Halpin straight up, “Can you do it?,” and Halpin shot back “yes.”

When Pete Townshend asked the crowd, “Can anybody play the drums?” Halpin mounted the stage, settled into Moon’s drum kit, and began confidently playing the blues jam “Smoke Stacked Lighting” that soon segued into “Spoonful.” It was a way of testing the kid out. Then came a nine minute version of “Naked Eye.” By the time it was over, Halpin was physically spent.

The show ended with Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Scot Halpin taking a bow center stage. And, to thank him for his efforts, The Who gave him a concert jacket that was promptly stolen.

As a sad footnote to an otherwise great story, Halpin died in 2008. The cause, a brain tumor. He was only 54 years old.

The video at the top shows where The Who asks for a drummer in the audience and Halpin takes over. The second video shows Moon passing out beforehand. You can watch the complete concert on YouTube here.

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The Talking Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

in Music | August 27th, 2012

High on the list of historical periods I regret having missed, I would place Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the seventies. Despite being something less than a shining time for major cities, especially American major cities, and especially New York City, that era’s seemingly hollowed-out downtowns offered cradles to many a cultural movement. David Byrne’s band the Talking Heads count as a major one unto themselves. Generation X author Douglas Coupland memorably asked only one question to determine whether one belongs to that particular cohort: do you like the Talking Heads? In an entire book he wrote about the band’s 1979 album Fear of Music, novelist Jonatham Lethem remembers this of his own enthusiasm: “At the peak, in 1980 or 81, my identification was so complete that I might have wished to wear the album Fear of Music in place of my head so as to be more clearly seen by those around me.”

Talking about the origin of the Talking Heads, we must talk about CBGB, the Bowery nightclub that hosted formative shows for such punk, new wave, and culturally proximate but difficult to categorize acts like Television, the Cramps, Blondie, the Patti Smith Group, and the B‑52s. Byrne and company began playing there in the mid-seventies, and would eventually drop the place’s name in the track “Life During Wartime.” (“This ain’t no Mudd Club or CBGB…”) At the top of this post, you’ll see their 1975 performance of “Psycho Killer” at CBGB, along with “Tentative Decisions” and “With Our Love.” Though CBGB shut down in 2006, its essence lives on in the influential music it shaped. “It is the venue that makes the music scene happen just as much as the creativity of the musicians,” wrote Byrne himself in CBGB and OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock. “There is continually and forever a pool of talent, energy, and expression waiting to be tapped—it simply needs the right place in which to express itself.”

Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Performed on Traditional Chinese Instruments

David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve

Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.

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Rudolf Brazda, Last Man to Wear the Pink Triangle During the Holocaust, Tells His Story

in History | August 27th, 2012

According to estimates by the United States Holocaust Museum, anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were imprisoned in concentration camps under the Third Reich, where they were sometimes the subjects of gruesome experiments. Prior to this mass persecution, homosexuality was criminalized under the so-called Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, and the Gestapo was charged with “registering” gays, who could be sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years for violations–in addition to permanent loss of many civil rights–and even worse penalties, like castration. Gay men convicted under these laws had to wear a pink triangle to identify themselves. The short documentary above tells the story of Rudolf Brazda, the last camp survivor to have worn the pink triangle. Brazda died last year at the age of 98.

Brazda, who lived as an openly gay man in the thirties, was convicted under Paragraph 175 in 1937 and served a term of six months. He thought this might be the extent of his harassment by the Nazis, but ultimately, he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald in 1942, where he would spend three years. In the video above, Brazda mostly tells his own story, in German with English subtitles. It’s not the first time he has done so. Brazda’s story was prominently featured in a book by author Jean-Luc Schwab (who also appears above), Itinerary of the Pink Triangle (Itineraire d’un Triangle rose), which recounts the dehumanizing experiences of gay men during the Holocaust. Schwab’s book and the brief interview above preserve important testimony from a man who was “very likely the last victim and the last witness” of the Nazi persecution of homosexual men in the 30s and 40s. Brazda’s willingness to tell his story has been invaluable to scholars and activists seeking to document this little-known (and often denied) history.

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.

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What Do Satellites Have in Common with Falling Cats? Attitude Control

in Physics, Science, Technology | August 27th, 2012

Have you ever wondered how the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellites can be pointed in any direction at the will of scientists on the ground? Given the energy constraints for satellites designed to stay in space for years, the technical challenges are immense.

In this video from the “Smarter Every Day” YouTube series we learn a little about two clever methods scientists use to control the attitude, or orientation, of satellites with very little energy. The first method exploits the power of the Earth’s magnetic field by using electric current to selectively activate electromagnets and nudge the satellite in a desired direction, rather like the needle of a compass. The second and, in some ways, more fascinating method takes its inspiration from the amazingly agile cat. It has long been known that cats can fall from any initial orientation and almost always land on their feet. They can reorient themselves 180 degrees without violating the conservation of angular momentum. They do it by adjusting their shape and thus rearranging the mass, and changing the moment of inertia, within their bodies. Scientists employ a similar tactic using moving parts within satellites.

The host of the “Smarter Every Day” videos goes only by the name of “Destin,” and is reportedly a missile engineer at the U.S. Army’s Redstone Arsenal, near Huntsville Alabama. Some viewers will, like us, find the tone and sensibility of this video juvenile and annoying, with its overuse of the words “cool” and “awesome” and with the gratuitous cat-dropping scenes (note to future YouTube auteurs: consider using stock footage) but the science itself is, without a doubt, fascinating.

by Mike Springer | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Bill Nye, The Science Guy, Says Creationism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

in Education, K-12, Science | August 27th, 2012

Bill Nye will tell you that he’s a man on a mission. He’s out there trying to “help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work.” From 1993 to 1998, Nye hosted Bill Nye the Science Guy, a Disney/PBS children’s science show that won 18 Emmys along the way. A graduate of Cornell and a student of Carl Sagan, Nye has also presented shows on the Science Channel, the Discovery Channel and other media outlets.

If you’re familiar with Bill Nye, you’ll know that he’s not exactly an in-your-face kind of scientist. He’s no Richard Dawkins. Nye is mild-mannered, affable and wears a bow tie. But, like Dawkins, he’ll tell you that if you deny evolution, you’re not living in the world of basic facts. And if you teach creationism to kids, you’re not preparing them to compete in a world where scientific literacy means everything. That bodes ill for your kids in particular, and for America’s future more generally.

Now you might be inclined to say that America has always had creationists, and that didn’t stop the country from becoming an economic and military superpower. Perhaps that’s true. But you need to recall this. America reached its zenith when every other power had blown themselves to smithereens. We were the only game in town. And it almost didn’t matter what we thought, or how much we thought. We just needed to show up to work. Nowadays, we don’t have that luxury. We face stiff competition from ambitious nations that take science and education seriously. A country that scoffs at scientific reasoning, that dismisses it all as “elitist,” has only one way to go, and that’s down. God help us.

You can find more clips from Nye’s talk here.

Growing Up in the Universe: Richard Dawkins Presents Captivating Science Lectures for Kids (1991)

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Remembering Neil Armstrong, the First Man on the Moon, with Historic Footage and a BBC Bio Film

in Astronomy, Life | August 25th, 2012

Several weeks ago, we watched NASA scientists explode with applause when they landed their rugged rover, Curiosity, on Mars. Imagine how an earlier generation of scientists must have felt when, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon and then uttered his immortal words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” You can get goosebumps thinking about it.

Today, America lost a great one. Neil Armstrong has died at 82, after undergoing heart-bypass surgery earlier this month. Above, we bring you legendary footage from the Apollo 11 Mission. And here you can view high resolution images from that historic space flight. Below, we present an hour-long BBC documentary on the life and times of the pioneering astronaut.

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mockumentary on Stanley Kubrick and the Moon Landing Hoax

125 Great Science Videos: From Astronomy to Physics & Psychology

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When Asteroids Attack! Neil deGrasse Tyson and NASA Explain How To Stop an Armageddon

in Astronomy | August 24th, 2012

If pop culture has taught us non-scientists anything about asteroids, it’s that we should blow them up. From classic video game Asteroids to the Michael Bay disaster classic Armageddon, asteroids are either random bits of floating debris out to destroy us, or massive malignant space tumors hurtling our way to destroy us, which we’re told is how the dinosaurs died out. But, says superstar physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson—in Vice’s short video (above) “Blowing Up Asteroids with NASA and Neil deGrasse Tyson”—“We’re clever enough that we never have to go extinct by an asteroid. We have more choices available to us than Tyrannosaurus Rex did.” Choices like turning an asteroid into space dust? Probably not. Turns out, Armageddon wasn’t entirely scientifically accurate. In fact, NASA shows Michael Bay’s movie to its trainees to see how many scientific absurdities they can find. The record, as of 2007, was at 168.

So what to do! Well, it turns out that the chances of an asteroid colliding with the earth are slim, but still a bit too close for comfort. As Tyson explains above, there is, in fact, an asteroid headed our way, called Apophis, in 2029. If Apophis goes through a region called “the keyhole,” it will impact the earth seven years later. The probability of this occurring as of 2009 is 1 in 250,000. Yikes. Astronaut Mike Gernhardt, a primary investigator at NEEMO (NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations) is on the case. His team uses underwater simulations in Key Largo, Florida to recreate an asteroid-like environment and explore it, collect samples, etc. in what NASA calls an “Analog Mission.” Just how any of this might prevent an asteroid from destroying the planet escapes me, to be honest (and the “blowing up” part of the video’s title doesn’t ever get an explanation). But the NEEMO project is still pretty cool, as you can witness in an interview with NEEMO Mission Manager Bill Todd below.

The Vice video is part of their Motherboard TV series, which informs us on its site that NEEMO, like everything cool these days, is likely to be defunded. Let’s hope they can figure out how save us from asteroid Armageddon before the money runs out.

via The Atlantic

Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |