Discover the Ambient Music of Hiroshi Yoshimura, the Pioneering Japanese Composer

The his­to­ry of ambi­ent music is a dif­fi­cult sto­ry to tell in the same way we tell oth­er his­to­ries, name­ly by ref­er­ence to great men and women and the move­ments they inspired. When it comes to ambi­ent music, there are few stars, and it can be dif­fi­cult to lump artists togeth­er into cat­e­gories. But what else would we expect from music designed to exist in the back­ground?

The con­ve­nient ori­gin point of the genre is Bri­an Eno’s 1978 Music for Air­ports, the first album released as an “Ambi­ent” record and imag­ined as music made for a wait­ing room. Eno’s spir­i­tu­al fore­fa­ther, Erik Satie, famous­ly called his min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tions “fur­ni­ture music” and also thought of them as accom­pa­ni­ment to mun­dane tasks.

Through these con­cep­tu­al reduc­tions of music to its most util­i­tar­i­an function—creating a mild­ly pleas­ant atmosphere—ambient explores the space of day­dream­ing and the vague emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with it. Few com­posers of ambi­ent have pur­sued the genre’s osten­si­ble pur­pose with as much prac­ti­cal­i­ty and direct appli­ca­tion as in Japan, where “the influ­ence of min­i­mal­ist com­posers like Philip Glass and Ter­ry Riley met a gold­en era for elec­tron­ics” in the 1980s, Jack Need­ham writes at The Guardian.

Japan­ese com­posers adapt­ed cen­turies of tra­di­tion to dizzy­ing mod­ern­iza­tion:

Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese music has mir­rored its sur­round­ings for cen­turies – the shakuhachi, a sev­enth-cen­tu­ry bam­boo flute, was designed to play all 12 tones of the west­ern chro­mat­ic scale as a way to give voice to nature’s diver­si­ty. So in Japan’s 1980s eco­nom­ic boom, when cities like Tokyo were mutat­ing at warp speed and Roland syn­the­sis­ers replaced the clas­si­cal instru­ment, ambi­ent was reflect­ing these new, hyper-advanced land­scapes.

The music they made was “unabashed­ly cor­po­rate,” becom­ing big busi­ness when Takashi Kokubo’s 1987 album Get at the Wave was “giv­en away with Sanyo air con­di­tion­ing units.” Andy Beta at Vul­ture details how Japan­ese ambi­ent music became big in the U.S. through a com­pi­la­tion called Kankyō Ongaku: Japan­ese Envi­ron­men­tal, Ambi­ent & New Age Music 1980–1990. The title means “envi­ron­men­tal music,” and it was also referred to as “back­ground music,” or BGM by indus­try insid­ers (and Yel­low Mag­ic Orches­tra). But what­ev­er we call it, we can­not dis­cuss Japan­ese ambi­ent with­out ref­er­ence to the pio­neer­ing work of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra.

Yoshimura’s Green “is an exam­ple of Japan­ese min­i­mal­ism at its finest,” writes Vivian Yeung at Crack, “with the meld­ing of nat­ur­al sounds—via birds, run­ning water and crickets—to the arti­fi­cial­i­ty of arpeg­giat­ing synths and soft min­i­mal notes deployed to poignant effect.” Wet Land, from 1993, deploys soft synths in min­i­mal­ist melodies that recall Satie’s few, well-cho­sen notes. Yoshimu­ra’s music has spread far beyond Japan through the same mech­a­nism as the recent boom in Japan­ese “city pop”—through YouTube algo­rithms.

After dis­cov­er­ing Yoshimu­ra online, SPIN’s Andy Cush wrote, “Now, I lis­ten to Yoshimura’s music almost every day, both because I find it tremen­dous­ly mov­ing and because YouTube won’t stop play­ing it.” But there’s far more to the recent pop­u­lar­i­ty of Japan­ese ambi­ent music than algo­rithms, Beta argues, not­ing that the “Satie boom” in post­war Japan led to a musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion that is per­haps par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing to West­ern ears. In any case, as one of Yoshimura’s new “acci­den­tal fans” writes, his inter­net fame has far eclipsed his fame in life.

When he died in 2003, Yoshimu­ra “was a foot­note in music his­to­ry…. His work most­ly end­ed up as back­ground noise in muse­ums, gal­leries or show homes.” Beau­ti­ful back­ground noise, how­ev­er, was exact­ly the pur­pose of kankyō ongaku, and com­posers like Yoshimu­ra did not exceed the brief. Instead, he per­fect­ed the form con­ceived by Eno as “ignor­able as it is inter­est­ing,” music made to “induce calm and a space to think.” If you’re crav­ing such an atmos­phere, you may need to look no far­ther. You can sam­ple Yoshimura’s key albums here, and find more of his works (where else?) on YouTube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Hear the Very First Pieces of Ambi­ent Music, Erik Satie’s Fur­ni­ture Music (Cir­ca 1917)

Decon­struct­ing Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports: Explore the Tape Loops That Make Up His Ground­break­ing Ambi­ent Music

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

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

Salman Rushdie and Jeff Koons Teach New Courses on Art, Creativity & Storytelling for MasterClass

If Mas­ter­Class comes call­ing, you know you’ve made it. In the five years since its launch, the online learn­ing plat­form has brought on such instruc­tors as Mar­tin Scors­ese, Helen Mir­ren, Steve Mar­tin, Annie Lei­bovitz, and Mal­colm Glad­well, all of whom bring not just knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence of a craft, but the glow of high-pro­file suc­cess as well. Though Mas­ter­Class’ line­up has expand­ed to include more writ­ers, film­mak­ers, and per­form­ers (as well as chefs, design­ers, CEOs, and pok­er play­ers) it’s long been light on visu­al artists. But it may sig­nal a change that the site has just released a course taught by Jeff Koons, pro­mot­ed by its trail­er as the most orig­i­nal and con­tro­ver­sial Amer­i­can artist — as well as the most expen­sive one.

Just last year, Koons’ sculp­ture Rab­bit set a new record auc­tion price for a work by a liv­ing artist: $91.1 mil­lion, which breaks the pre­vi­ous record of $58.4 mil­lion that hap­pened to be held by anoth­er Koons, Bal­loon Dog (Orange). This came as the cul­mi­na­tion of a career that began, writes crit­ic Blake Gop­nik, with “tak­ing store-bought vac­u­um clean­ers and pre­sent­ing them as sculp­ture,” then cre­at­ing  “full-size repli­cas of rub­ber dinghies and aqualungs, cast in Old Mas­ter-ish bronze” and lat­er “giant hard-core pho­tos of him­self hav­ing sex with his wife, the famous Ital­ian porn star known as La Cic­ci­oli­na (“Chub­by Chick”)” and “sim­u­lacra of shiny blow-up toys and Christ­mas orna­ments and gems, enlarged to mon­u­men­tal size in gleam­ing stain­less steel.”

With such work, Gop­nik argues, Koons has “rewrit­ten all the rules of art — all the tra­di­tions and con­ven­tions that usu­al­ly give art order and mean­ing”; his ele­va­tion of kitsch allows us to “see our world, and art, as pro­found­ly oth­er than it usu­al­ly is.” Not that the artist him­self puts it in quite those words. In his well-known man­ner — “like a space alien who has spent long years study­ing how to be the per­fect, harm­less Earth­ling, but can’t quite get it right” — Koons uses his Mas­ter­Class to tell the sto­ry of his artis­tic devel­op­ment, which began in the show­room of his father’s Penn­syl­va­nia fur­ni­ture store and con­tin­ued into a rev­er­ence for the avant-garde in gen­er­al and Sal­vador Dalí in par­tic­u­lar. From his life he draws lessons on turn­ing every­day objects into art, using size and scale, and liv­ing life with “the con­fi­dence in your­self to fol­low your inter­ests.”

Also new for this hol­i­day sea­son is a Mas­ter­Class on sto­ry­telling and writ­ing taught by no less renowned a sto­ry­teller and writer than Salman Rushdie. The author of Mid­night’s Chil­dren and The Satan­ic Vers­es thus joins on the site a group of nov­el­ists as var­ied as Neil Gaiman, Joyce Car­ol Oates, Dan Brown, Mar­garet Atwood, and Judy Blume, but he brings with him a much dif­fer­ent body of work and life sto­ry. “I’ve been writ­ing, now, for over 50 years,” he says in the course’s trail­er just above. “There’s all this stuff about three-act struc­ture, exact­ly how you must allow a sto­ry to unfold. My view is it’s all non­sense.” Indeed, by this point in his cel­e­brat­ed career, Rushdie has nar­rowed the rules of his craft down to just one: Be inter­est­ing.

Eas­i­er said than done, of course, which is why Rushdie’s Mas­ter­Class comes struc­tured in nine­teen prac­ti­cal­ly themed lessons. In these he deals with such lessons as build­ing a sto­ry’s struc­ture, open­ing with pow­er­ful lines, draw­ing from old sto­ry­telling tra­di­tions, and rewrit­ing — which, he argues, all writ­ing is. To make these fic­tion-writ­ing con­cepts con­crete, Rushdie offers exer­cis­es for you, the stu­dent, to work through, and he also takes a crit­i­cal look back at the failed work he pro­duced in his ear­ly twen­ties. But though his tech­niques and process have great­ly improved since then, his resolve to cre­ate, and to do so using his own dis­tinc­tive sets of inter­ests and expe­ri­ences, has wavered no less than Koons’. At the moment you can learn from both of them (and Mas­ter­Class’ 100+ oth­er instruc­tors) if you take advan­tage of Mas­ter­Class’ hol­i­day 2‑for‑1 deal. For $180, you can buy an annu­al sub­scrip­tion for your­self, and give one to a friend/family mem­ber for free. Sign up here.

Note: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Artist Jeff Koons, Nar­rat­ed by Scar­lett Johans­son

Christo­pher Hitchens Remem­bers Aya­tol­lah Khomeini’s Fat­wa Against His Friend Salman Rushdie, 2010

Hear Salman Rushdie Read Don­ald Barthelme’s “Con­cern­ing the Body­guard”

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

Neil Gaiman Teach­es the Art of Sto­ry­telling in His New Online Course

Mar­garet Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Cre­ative Writ­ing

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

A Free Online Course from Yale University Explains How the World Lapsed into the Politics of Fear & Resentment

“How did we get from the huge eupho­ria that fol­lowed the fall of com­mu­nism in the ear­ly 1990s to our present pol­i­tics of fear and resent­ment, and what are the prospects going for­ward?” These ques­tions and more get answered in Yale’s free course, “Pow­er and Pol­i­tics in Today’s World.”  Taught by Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Ian Shapiro, the course “pro­vides an exam­i­na­tion of polit­i­cal dynam­ics and insti­tu­tions over this past tumul­tuous quar­ter cen­tu­ry, and the impli­ca­tions of these changes for what comes next. Among the top­ics cov­ered are the decline of trade unions and the enlarged role of busi­ness as polit­i­cal forces, chang­ing atti­tudes towards par­ties and oth­er polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions amidst the growth of inequal­i­ty and mid­dle-class inse­cu­ri­ty, the emer­gence of new forms of author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and the char­ac­ter and dura­bil­i­ty of the unipo­lar inter­na­tion­al order that replaced the Cold War.”

You can watch the lec­tures on Youtube, or stream them all above. The syl­labus and read­ing list can be found here.

“Pow­er and Pol­i­tics in Today’s World” will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale

Mod­ern Poet­ry: A Free Course from Yale

Take Free Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

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What Makes for a Beloved Bad Film? Jackey Neyman Jones (Manos: The Hands of Fate) Talks to Pretty Much Pop (ep. 73)

While there have of course been numer­ous attempts at movie mag­ic that have result­ed in some­thing less than audi­ence pleas­ing, only a few demon­strate such bold inep­ti­tude as to become “so bad that they’re good.” Such a film requires a strong sense of vision cou­pled with a com­plete inabil­i­ty to real­ize that vision in a coher­ent way, and it must dis­play real charm, as we see through the pre­sen­ta­tion to behold real human beings cap­tured in the poignan­cy of their doomed filmic endeav­or.

Some often cit­ed can­di­dates for this new kind of film canon include the clas­sic Plan 9 from Out­er Space, whose cre­ation was dra­ma­tized in Tim Bur­ton’s film Ed Wood; Tom­my Wiseau’s The Room, chron­i­cled by the book and film The Dis­as­ter Artist; Troll 2, a film that has no busi­ness or cre­ative rela­tion to the already dubi­ous film Troll that was doc­u­ment­ed in Best Worst Movie; and the an up-and-com­er Bir­d­em­ic: Shock and Ter­ror, self-financed by James Nguyen, whose pop­u­lar­i­ty great­ly increased through the treat­ment of his films by Riff­trax, one of the TV show Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000’s Inter­net suc­ces­sors.

And then there’s Manos: The Hands of Fate, laud­ed as one of the most trip­py finds of the orig­i­nal 1993 MST3K. It’s a film writ­ten, direct­ed by, and star­ring (lit­er­al) fer­til­iz­er sales­man Harold P. War­ren about a fam­i­ly (on their “first vaca­tion”) get­ting lost in West­ern Texas and end­ing up stay­ing the night at a house with a reli­gious cult. Jack­ey Ney­man Jones played the six-year-old girl in the film who even­tu­al­ly (spoil­er!) ends up tied to a stake as the cult lead­er’s sev­enth wife. Her father played the cult leader and cre­at­ed much of the art for the show, her moth­er sewed the cos­tumes, and her voice was dubbed over by a ful­ly grown woman who was not at all warned that she’d be hav­ing to imi­tate a child’s voice.

Jack­ey wrote a mem­oir about the expe­ri­ence, and here joins your Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca, Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about the ongo­ing inter­est in the film despite its ini­tial, com­plete dis­missal as well as the dynam­ics and per­ils of work­ing with a supreme­ly con­fi­dent “auteur.”

The dis­cus­sion also touch­es on oth­er bad films like Cat­woman, The Hap­pen­ing, and Bat­tle­ship. Are these con­tem­po­rary, big-bud­get flops wor­thy of such can­on­iza­tion? What about films made inten­tion­al­ly to be cheesy, whether by auteurs like Veloci­pas­tor or pumped out by a com­pa­ny like Syfy’s Shark­na­do series?

You can watch Jack­ey read her entire book online. See her art. Read her inter­viewed in Cracked, Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, and the AV Club. Check out her IMDB page and her short-lived Hand of Hor­ror pod­cast. Manos: The Hands of Fate is in the pub­lic domain, so watch it unriffed if you dare, or check out the clas­sic MST3K episode or the more recent Riff­trax treat­ment. See also the warped stage ver­sion with pup­pets: Manos: The Hands of Felt.

To think more gen­er­al­ly about this top­ic, we con­sult­ed some lists of bad (or “so-bad-they’re-good”) films by The Ringer,  Thril­list, Screen­rant, Yard­bark­er, and Wikipedia.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

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

The Dune Graphic Novel: Experience Frank Herbert’s Epic Sci-Fi Saga as You’ve Never Seen It Before

Like so many major motion pic­tures slat­ed for a 2020 release, Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune has been bumped into 2021. But fans of Frank Her­bert’s epic sci­ence-fic­tion saga haven’t had to go entire­ly with­out adap­ta­tions this year, since last month saw the release of the first Dune graph­ic nov­el. Writ­ten by Kevin J. Ander­son and Frank Her­bert’s son Bri­an Her­bert, co-authors of twelve Dune pre­quel and sequel nov­els, this 160-page vol­ume con­sti­tutes just the first part of a tril­o­gy intend­ed to visu­al­ly retell the sto­ry of the first Dune book. This tri­par­tite break­down seems to have been a wise move: the many adap­tors (and would-be) adap­tors of the lin­guis­ti­cal­ly, mytho­log­i­cal­ly, and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly com­plex nov­el have found out over the decades, it’s easy to bite off more Dune than you can chew.

Audi­ences, too, can only digest so much Dune at a sit­ting them­selves. “The par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge to adapt­ing Dune, espe­cial­ly the ear­ly part, is that there is so much infor­ma­tion to be con­veyed — and in the nov­el it is done in prose and dia­log, rather than action — we found it chal­leng­ing to por­tray visu­al­ly,” says Ander­son in an inter­view with the Hol­ly­wood Reporter.

“For­tu­nate­ly, the land­scape is so sweep­ing, we could show breath­tak­ing images as a way to con­vey that back­ground.” This is the land­scape of the desert plan­et Arrakis, source of a sub­stance known as “spice.” Used as a fuel for space trav­el, spice has become the most pre­cious sub­stance in the galaxy, and its con­trol is bit­ter­ly strug­gled over by numer­ous roy­al hous­es. (Any resem­blance to Earth­’s petro­le­um is, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.)

The main nar­ra­tive thread of the many run­ning through Dune fol­lows Paul Atrei­des, scion of the House Atrei­des. With his fam­i­ly sent to run Arrakis, Paul finds him­self at the cen­ter of polit­i­cal intrigue, plan­e­tary rev­o­lu­tion, and even a clan­des­tine scheme to cre­ate a super­hu­man sav­ior. Though Her­bert and Ander­son have pro­duced a faith­ful adap­ta­tion, the graph­ic nov­el “trims the sto­ry down to its most icon­ic touch­stone scenes,” as Thom Dunn puts it in his Boing Boing review (adding that it hap­pens to focus in “a lot of the same scenes as David Lynch did with his glo­ri­ous­ly messy film adap­ta­tion”). This stream­lin­ing also employs tech­niques unique to graph­ic nov­els: to retain the book’s shift­ing omni­scient nar­ra­tion, for exam­ple, “differ­ent­ly col­ored cap­tion box­es present inner mono­logues from dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters like voiceovers so as not to inter­rupt the scene.”

As if telling the sto­ry of Dune at a graph­ic nov­el­’s pace was­n’t task enough, Ander­son, Her­bert and their col­lab­o­ra­tors also have to con­vey its unusu­al and rich­ly imag­ined world — in not just words, of course, but images. “Dune has had a lot of visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions over the years, from Lynch’s bizarre pseu­do-peri­od piece treat­ment to the mod­ern tele­vised mini-series’ more grit­ty inter­pre­ta­tion,” writes Poly­gon’s Char­lie Hall. While “Villeneuve’s vibe appears to take its inspi­ra­tion from more futur­is­tic sci­ence fic­tion — all angles and chunky armor,” the graph­ic nov­el­’s artists Raúl Allén and Patri­cia Martín “opt for some­thing a bit more steam­punk.” These choic­es all fur­ther what Bri­an Her­bert describes as a mis­sion to “bring a young demo­graph­ic to Frank Herbert’s incred­i­ble series.” Such read­ers have shown great enthu­si­asm for sto­ries of teenage pro­tag­o­nists who grow to assume a cen­tral role in the strug­gle between good and evil — not that, in the world of Dune, any con­flict is quite so sim­ple.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Trail­er for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s Adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Nov­el

A Side-by-Side, Shot-by-Shot Com­par­i­son of Denis Villeneuve’s 2020 Dune and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune

Why You Should Read Dune: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Frank Herbert’s Eco­log­i­cal, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci-Fi Epic

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

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

Get Inside the Head of a New York City Christmas Tree: A Gonzo Short Film from Artist Nina Katchadourian

For every year this Christ­mas tree

Brings to us such joy and glee

O Christ­mas tree, O Christ­mas tree

Such plea­sure do you bring me…

All over New York City, tree stands are spring­ing up like mush­rooms.

Unlike the fan­ci­ful win­dows lin­ing 5th avenue, the Union Square hol­i­day mar­ket, or Rock­e­feller Center’s tree and skat­ing rink, this sea­son­al plea­sure requires no spe­cial trip, no threat of crowds.

You could bat­tle traf­fic, and lose half a day, drag­ging the kids to a cut-your-own farm on Long Island or in New Jer­sey, but why, when the side­walk stands are so fes­tive, so con­ve­nient, so quin­tes­sen­tial­ly New York?

The ven­dors hail from as far away as Ver­mont and Cana­da, shiv­er­ing in lawn chairs and mobile homes 24–7.

What befalls the unsold trees on Christ­mas Eve?

No one knows. They van­ish along with the ven­dors by Christ­mas morn­ing.

The spon­ta­neous coop­er­a­tion of two such ven­dors was crit­i­cal to artist Nina Katchadourian’s “Tree Shove,” above.

Katchadouri­an, who may look famil­iar to you from Lava­to­ry Self-Por­traits in the Flem­ish Style, recalls:

My friend Andrew had been hear­ing me say for years that I want­ed to be shoved through one of those things and he found two friend­ly Cana­di­ans sell­ing Christ­mas trees in a Brook­lyn super­mar­ket park­ing lot and worked it out with them.

The result is high­ly acces­si­ble, gonzo per­for­mance art from an artist who always lets the pub­lic in on the joke.

Add it to your annu­al hol­i­day spe­cial playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Artist Nina Katchadouri­an Cre­ates Flem­ish Style Self-Por­traits in Air­plane Lava­to­ry

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed Christ­mas Cards That Were Too Avant Garde for Hall­mark (1960)

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

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cover 8 Songs by Famous Jewish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beastie Boys, Velvet Underground & More

What­ev­er you say to peo­ple this hol­i­day sea­son, whether it involves a “hap­py” or a “mer­ry” or a noth­ing at all, maybe we can agree: win­ter hol­i­days can bright­en up a dark time of the year, even if they’re also fraught with fam­i­ly ten­sion and oth­er stress­es. Maybe not everyone’s great at dec­o­rat­ing or singing hol­i­day songs, but we can all appre­ci­ate a job well done. Hol­i­day lights shine like bea­cons on dark, cold win­ter nights… we swoon to the sounds of the Beast­ie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage,” Mountain’s “Mis­sis­sip­pi Queen,” and Peach­es’ “Fuck the Pain Away”.…

Well, I don’t know what your hol­i­days are like, but those all work for me.

There are plen­ty of great Christ­mas songs—many writ­ten and record­ed by Jew­ish song­writ­ers, Andrew Frisi­cano points out at Time Out—and many a great Hanukkah song, some writ­ten by gen­tiles.

But when Dave Grohl and Foo Fight­ers pro­duc­er Greg Kurstin decid­ed to cel­e­brate the Fes­ti­val of Lights and chase away the dark­ness of a par­tic­u­lar­ly dark win­ter, they went with stan­dards you won’t find in any song­book. Their lat­est Hanukkah cov­er, Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” maybe comes clos­est to that oth­er big hol­i­day.

After his con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty, Dylan went wild for Christ­mas, host­ing a “Yule­tide extrav­a­gan­za” on his Theme Time Radio Hour. In their cel­e­bra­tions this year, Grohl and Kurstin decid­ed “instead of doing a Christ­mas song,” as the Foo Fight­ers’ singer said in their announce­ment video at the top, they would “cel­e­brate Hanukkah by record­ing eight songs by eight famous Jew­ish artists and releas­ing one song each night of Hanukkah.” In addi­tion to those named above, they’ve also cov­ered Drake’s “Hot­line Bling,” a favorite of Jew­ish grand­par­ents every­where over the hol­i­days.

Grohl him­self is not Jew­ish, but Kurstin is. In any case, they’ve both thrown them­selves whole­heart­ed­ly into the endeav­or. What would you like to see next up on the setlist? I don’t think they’re tak­ing requests, but a lit­tle “Heaven’s on Fire” might be nice, or a nice long cov­er of “Sis­ter Ray”? Just throw­ing that out there.

The dynam­ic Hanukkah duo have giv­en us a way to reimag­ine hol­i­day music, and with “all the mishe­gas of 2020,” as they write in their Twit­ter announce­ment for the Hanukkah Ses­sions, I think we might as well say why not and seize the moment. See the full playlist of Grohl and Kurstin’s Hanukkah Ses­sions here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Eclec­tic Music for the Hol­i­days: Stream It Free Online

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

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

A Brief History of Talking Heads: How the Band Went from Scrappy CBGB’s Punks to New Wave Superstars

We could split hairs all day. Are Talk­ing Heads punk? Are they New Wave? Are they “art rock”? Why not all of the above. Con­sid­er their cred. Two art stu­dents, David Byrne and Chris Frantz, move to New York in the late 70 with their three-chord, two-piece band The Artis­tics. With min­i­mal musi­cal abil­i­ty and no expe­ri­ence in the music busi­ness, they thought, said Byrne, “we’d have a seri­ous try at a band.” Unable to recruit new mem­bers in the city, they asked Frantz’s girl­friend, fel­low art stu­dent Tina Wey­mouth, who did not play bass, to be their bassist. Soon enough, they’re play­ing their first show as Talk­ing Heads at CBGB’s in 1975, open­ing for the Ramones and Tele­vi­sion.

What could be more of a pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly punk ori­gin sto­ry? But then there’s the evo­lu­tion of Talk­ing Heads from jan­g­ly, ner­vous art rock­ers to con­fi­dent re-inter­preters of funk, dis­co, and polyrhyth­mic Afrobeat in their 80s New Wave epics. Their abil­i­ty to absorb so many influ­ences from out­side of punk’s nar­row reper­toire made them one of the best live bands of the decade, and Frantz and Wey­mouth one of the most for­mi­da­ble rhythm sec­tions in mod­ern rock. Their exper­i­ments with Bri­an Eno, Adri­an Belew, and Robert Fripp lent them a pro­gres­sive edge that made Remain in Light an unlike­ly New Wave clas­sic among Phish fans; they made one of the most beloved con­cert films of all time with Jonathan Demme in 1984….

How did all this come about? You’ll get a very good expla­na­tion in “A Brief His­to­ry of Talk­ing Heads,” above. Suf­fice to say they were an instant hit, arriv­ing in “the right place at the right time,” a still-aston­ished Byrne remem­bers years lat­er in an inter­view clip. After their first gig, they appeared on the cov­er of The Vil­lage Voice, in a 1975 arti­cle by James Wol­cott call­ing punk “a con­ser­v­a­tive impulse in the New Rock Under­ground.”

See­ing them for the first time is trans­fix­ing: Frantz is so far back on drums that it sounds as if he’s play­ing in the next room; Wey­mouth, who could pass as Suzy Quatro’s soror­i­ty sis­ter, stands root­ed to the floor, her head doing an oscil­lat­ing-fan swiv­el; the object of her swiv­el is David Byrne, who has a lit­tle-boy-lost-at-the-zoo voice and the demeanor of some­one who’s spent the last half hour whirling around in a spin dry­er. When his eyes start Ping-Pong­ing in his head, he looks like a car­toon of a chip­munk from Mars. The song titles aren’t teth­ered to con­ven­tion­al­i­ty either: “Psy­cho Killer” (which goes “Psy­cho Killer, qu’est-ce c’est? Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa”), “The Girls Want to Be With the Girls,” “Love is Like a Build­ing on Fire,” plus a cov­er ver­sion of that schlock clas­sic by ? and the Mys­te­ri­ans, “96 Tears.”

Wol­cott would go on to iden­ti­fy all of the qual­i­ties that made them “such a cen­tral ‘70s band,” includ­ing Weymouth’s bass play­ing pro­vid­ing “hook as well as bot­tom” and the “banal facade under which run rip­ples of vio­lence and squalls of frus­tra­tion.” As for what they should have been called, Byrne is mat­ter of fact, as always. “I don’t think any­one liked being called ‘punk rock­ers,’” he says, “even though being lumped togeth­er and hav­ing this kind of han­dle made it eas­i­er for us all to be thought of as a move­ment.”

It was a move­ment of bands all decid­ing to do their own thing in their own way, but to do it togeth­er, restor­ing what Wol­cott called the “effi­ca­cious beau­ty” of rock as a “com­mu­nal activ­i­ty.” The crit­ic won­dered at the time whether “any of the bands who play [CBGB’s] will ever amount to any­thing more than a cheap evening of rock and roll?” Learn above how one of the “most intrigu­ing­ly off-the-wall bands in New York” in the mid-70s exceed­ed the expec­ta­tions of even the most devot­ed of ear­ly punk con­nois­seurs.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Chris Frantz Breaks Down How He Craft­ed Songs for Talk­ing Heads & Tom Tom Club: A Naked­ly Exam­ined Music Inter­view

Watch Phish Play the Entire­ty of the Talk­ing Heads’ Remain in Light (1996)

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

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