Watch Prince Appear on the Muppets Tonight Show & Reveal His Humble, Down-to-Earth Side (1997)

in Comedy, Music, Television | September 7th, 2021

From Frog to Prince: We will always love your music and you. Our hearts are yours. Thanks for being a friend.
– Ker­mit the Frog, April 21, 2016

There was a time when shar­ing the screen with the Mup­pets was the ulti­mate celebri­ty sta­tus sym­bol.

Prince nev­er appeared on The Mup­pet Show – 1999, the 1982 album that made him a house­hold name, was released the year after the series con­clud­ed its run — but he got his chance fif­teen years lat­er, with an appear­ance on the short­er lived Mup­pets Tonight.

In a trib­ute writ­ten short­ly after Prince’s death, Mup­pets Tonight writer Kirk Thatch­er recalled:

We were very excit­ed that Prince had agreed to do our Mup­pet com­e­dy and vari­ety show but had been told by his man­agers and sup­port staff before we met with him that we must nev­er look at him direct­ly or call him any­thing but, “The Artist” or just, “Artist”. As the writ­ers of the show, we were won­der­ing how we were going to work or col­lab­o­rate with some­one you can’t even look at, espe­cial­ly while try­ing to cre­ate com­e­dy with pup­pets!

His staff sent an advance team to make sure the work­ing envi­ron­ment would be to his lik­ing, spe­cial food and drink was laid in at his request, and the scripts of sketch­es that had been writ­ten for him were sent ahead for his approval. 

The Mup­pets’ crew grew even more ner­vous when Prince asked for a meet­ing the night before the sched­uled shoot day. Thatch­er had “visions of him trash­ing every­thing and forc­ing us to start over,” adding that it would not have been the first time a guest star would have insist­ed on a total over­haul at zero hour.

Instead of the mon­ster they’d been brac­ing for, Prince — who Thatch­er described as “only half again big­ger than most of the Mup­pets” —  proved a game if some­what “bemused” and “qui­et” col­lab­o­ra­tor:

He had fun addi­tions and improvs and loved play­ing and ad-lib­bing with the pup­pets and was very easy to talk to and work with. The whole sit­u­a­tion with his advance team and man­age­ment remind­ed me of the rela­tion­ship I had cre­at­ed between Ker­mit and Sam the Eagle in Mup­pet Trea­sure Island. Sam had con­vinced every­one that Ker­mit, play­ing Cap­tain Smol­let, was a furi­ous and angry tyrant, beset by inner demons and out­er tirades. But when we meet him, he was just good, old, sweet-natured Ker­mit the Frog… just in a cap­tains out­fit. The same for Prince. He was just a nice, fun, cre­ative guy who had built this per­sona around him­self, and had a team there to rein­force it, prob­a­bly to pro­tect his art, his per­son­al life and even his san­i­ty.

The episode riffed on his estab­lished image, shoe­horn­ing Mup­pets into a “leather and lace” look that Prince him­self had moved on from, and crack­ing jokes relat­ed to the unpro­nounce­able “Love Sym­bol” to which he’d changed his name four years ear­li­er.

Nat­u­ral­ly, they plumbed his cat­a­logue for musi­cal num­bers, hav­ing par­tic­u­lar fun with “Starfish and Cof­fee,” which fea­tures a pro­to-Prince Mup­pet and an alter­nate ori­gin sto­ry.

(The actu­al ori­gin sto­ry is pret­ty great, and pro­vides anoth­er tiny glimpse of this mys­te­ri­ous artist’s true nature.)

The show also afford­ed Prince the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chart some unex­pect­ed ter­ri­to­ry with Hoo Haw, a spoof of the coun­tri­fied TV vari­ety show Hee Haw.

If you’ve ever won­dered how The Pur­ple One would look in over­alls and a plaid but­ton down, here’s your chance to find out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blis­ter­ing “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” Gui­tar Solo (2004)

Prince’s First Tele­vi­sion Inter­view (1985)

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

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RIP Jean-Paul Belmondo: The Actor Who Went from the French New Wave to Action Superstardom

in Film | September 7th, 2021

For quite a stretch, the late Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do was France’s biggest movie star. He also, in what now looks like the greater achieve­ment, stub­born­ly remained the most French of all movie stars. In France of the 1960s, an actor of Bel­mon­do’s gen­er­a­tion and lev­el of suc­cess would have been expect­ed to try mak­ing a go of it in Hol­ly­wood. And as he him­self admit­ted at the time, “every French­man dreams of mak­ing a West­ern.” But “Amer­i­ca has plen­ty of good actors. I’m not being false­ly mod­est, but why would they need me? I pre­fer a nation­al film to an inter­na­tion­al film.” When a cin­e­ma detach­es from its coun­try, “some­thing is lost. Look at what hap­pened to Italy when they went inter­na­tion­al.”

Though he nev­er did time as Hol­ly­wood’s token French­man, Bel­mon­do did appear in a few Ital­ian pic­tures (includ­ing the work of such mas­ters as Vit­to­rio De Sica and Mau­ro Bologni­ni) ear­ly in the 1960s, right after he shot to star­dom. His launch vehi­cle was, of course, Jean-Luc Godard­’s Breath­less, a har­bin­ger of La Nou­velle Vague and its exhil­a­rat­ing­ly delib­er­ate break­age of cin­e­ma’s rules.

Bel­mon­do would go on to make two more fea­tures with Godard: A Woman Is a Woman and Pier­rot le Fou, in both of which he starred along­side Anna Kari­na (anoth­er of the French New Wave icons we’ve lost in this decade). Oth­er auteurs also came call­ing: François Truf­faut, Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Melville.

Melville sits along­side Bel­mon­do in the 1962 inter­view clip above to dis­cuss their col­lab­o­ra­tion Le Dou­los, “a good old gang­ster film.” But Bel­mon­do’s pro­tag­o­nist, the tit­u­lar police informer, is hard­ly a con­ven­tion­al gang­ster. “He’s an ele­gant guy,” says the actor. “He’s ele­gant in every­thing he does, in his ges­tures and actions, despite appear­ances to the con­trary.” The same could be said of many of the char­ac­ters Bel­mon­do played through­out his career, even dur­ing his time as a Burt Reynolds-style action hero in the 1970s and 80s (dur­ing which, it must be not­ed, he did all his own stunts). We’re unlike­ly to see his like of nation­al super­star again — and cer­tain not to see anoth­er with such savoir-faire.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

How Anna Kari­na (RIP) Became the Mes­mer­iz­ing Face of the French New Wave

How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revis­it the Influ­en­tial Music He Com­posed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

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

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Meet Brushy One String, the One String Guitar Player Who Will Blow Your Mind

in Music | September 6th, 2021

When Jamaican musi­cian Andrew Chin, bet­ter known as Brushy One String first told friends about his vision — “a dream in which he was told to play the one-string gui­tar” — they respond­ed with mock­ery — all but one, who “insist­ed it was fate,” writes Play­ing for Change, “and that he had to make that dream come true.” So Brushy set out to do just that, play­ing on street­corners and in the mar­ket, “in a big broad hat and sun­glass­es,” he says. The music came to him nat­u­ral­ly. He is no ordi­nary street musi­cian, how­ev­er, and his one-string gui­tar is not a gim­mick. Brushy is a tal­ent­ed singer-song­writer, with a pow­er­ful voice and a musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty that tran­scends his bare-bones min­i­mal­ism.

He does­n’t look par­tic­u­lar­ly flashy, perched on the street with his beat-up gui­tar in the video at the top for “Chick­en in the Corn.” Brushy came of age in a scene “where most per­form­ers long to be hip-hop MCs or dance­hall style DJs.”

Brushy’s one-string tech­nique reach­es back to the ori­gins of the blues in the Did­dley Bow (from which Bo Did­dley took his name), and even fur­ther back into musi­cal his­to­ry, recall­ing what musi­col­o­gists would call a “mono­chord zither.” One-string play­ers in his­to­ry have includ­ed Mis­sis­sip­pi blues­man Eddie “One String” Jones, Lon­nie Pitch­ford, and Willie Joe Dun­can, who invent­ed the Uni­tar, an elec­tri­fied one-string gui­tar and scored a hit in the 1950s.

Whether or not Brushy fits him­self into this tra­di­tion, he “came by his musi­cal abil­i­ties hon­est­ly,” play­ing a reg­gae infused soul-meets-Delta Blues inspired by his par­ents. His father was Jamaican soul singer Fred­dy McK­ay and his moth­er, Bev­er­ly Fos­ter, toured as a back­up singer with Tina Turn­er. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, he was orphaned at a young age and unable to fin­ish his edu­ca­tion. He did­n’t learn to read at all until he became an adult. Brushy tried to learn gui­tar, but “I did­n’t real­ly know how to play,” he says, “and I played so hard, all the strings broke. So the gui­tar went under the bed” until his one string epiphany. As he began to sing and play, his one, low‑E string and the wood­en body of his acoustic gui­tar became a rhythm sec­tion, his expan­sive voice ris­ing up between beats, “a voice so rich and full,” NPR writes, “all it wants is a bit of rhyth­mic and melod­ic under­pin­ning.”

Brushy names both soul leg­end Ted­dy Pen­der­grass and dance­hall leg­end Shab­ba Ranks as influ­ences, a key to the range of his song­writ­ing, which comes “from the sit­u­a­tions I’m in,” he says. “It’s like mag­ic: From the sit­u­a­tion, I don’t search for some­thing, not in my head or nowhere else. The song just comes.” He had some ear­ly mod­est suc­cess, did a tour of Japan, then returned to his home­town of Ochoa Rios to kick around and play local­ly. It was then that film­mak­er Luciano Blot­ta encoun­tered him while fin­ish­ing the 2007 Jamaican music doc­u­men­tary, Rise Up. “Chick­en in the Corn” made the sound­track, and it turned into Brushy’s big break.

He’s since played South by South­west, New Orleans House of Blues, and the New Orleans Jazz & Her­itage Fes­ti­val, had a doc­u­men­tary made about him — The King of One String (2014) — and released three stu­dio albums and a live album. It’s well deserved suc­cess for a musi­cian who was ready to quit music until he had a dream — and who then found the courage (and the good luck) to make it real.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kei­th Richards Shows Us How to Play the Blues, Inspired by Robert John­son, on the Acoustic Gui­tar

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

The Ency­clo­pe­dia Of Alter­nate Gui­tar Tun­ings

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

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Hear Charlie Watts Inimitable Isolated Drum Tracks on “Gimme Shelter,” “Beast of Burden,” and “Honky Tonk”

in Music | September 6th, 2021

When I was a kid in New Jer­sey, if you were look­ing for work, there’d be ads for musi­cians. In the mid-60s and 70s, they would invari­ably say: “Want­ed: Char­lie Watts type drum­mer” — Max Wein­berg

Since Char­lie Watts passed away last month, trib­ute upon trib­ute has poured in to cel­e­brate his style, his aus­tere sim­plic­i­ty, his role as the calm, steady eye of the Rolling Stones’ roil­ing storm. “Drum­ming is often ugly,” Aman­da Petru­sich wrote at The New York­er, “but Watts looked so beau­ti­ful when he played … His pos­ture alone sug­gest­ed a preter­nat­ur­al ele­gance … there is always poet­ry in restraint.”

This is the way Watts’ play­ing looks to non-musi­cians, and most Rolling Stones fans are not musi­cians, and do not lis­ten to rock drum­ming alone. “It’s pos­si­ble to find Watts’s iso­lat­ed drum tracks online,” Petru­sich writes, “If you’re into that sort of thing. They’re not always per­fect in the tech­ni­cal sense, but they are deeply per­fect in oth­er, less quan­tifi­able ways.” Watts him­self described his drum­ming as non-tech­ni­cal and decried his lack of train­ing. It was all about the band, he said repeat­ed­ly.

But ask oth­er drum­mers to quan­ti­fy Watts’ per­fec­tion and they’ll do so hap­pi­ly. Watts taught him­self to play by lis­ten­ing to his favorite jazz drum­mers, writes Max Wein­berg, “among them the great Eng­lish jazz drum­mer Phil Sea­men, and Dave Tough, an Amer­i­can drum­mer who even looked like Char­lie: a fas­tid­i­ous dress­er, appar­ent­ly with the most incred­i­ble groove and sound.” Wein­berg, who incor­po­rat­ed Watts’ influ­ence on Spring­steen songs like “Born to Run,” elab­o­rates fur­ther.

One way Watts com­mand­ed a room, he says, was as a pro­po­nent “of a style of rock drum­ming pop­u­lar­ized by the late, great Al Jack­son, the famous Stax drum­mer, where you delib­er­ate­ly play behind the direct back­beat. The way you do that — which is a lit­tle tech­ni­cal — is not by focus­ing on the two and the four beat, but the one and the three. Anoth­er exam­ple is James Brown’s music, which is heav­i­ly focused on land­ing on the one. It takes a long time to be able to do that.” He devel­oped the skill as a blues and jazz drum­mer even before Mick and Kei­th seduced him to the Stones.

Anoth­er drum celebri­ty admir­er, Stew­art Copeland, writes about Watts’ unique dynam­ics. As a rock drum­mer trained on jazz, he “went for groove, and derived pow­er from relax­ation. Most rock drum­mers are try­ing to kill some­thing; they’re chop­ping wood. Jazz drum­mers instead tend to be very loose to get that jazz feel, and he had that qual­i­ty.” While Mick strut­ted and dripped across the stage, Char­lie “hard­ly broke a sweat.” From this, Copeland learned that “you can actu­al­ly get a bet­ter sound out of your drums, and a bet­ter groove, if you relax.”

In the clas­sic drum tracks here, lis­ten for some of Watts’ dis­tinc­tive, sub­tle moves, and read more about his tech­nique in Copeland and Weinberg’s rem­i­nisces here. It’s fair to say that every rock drum­mer who came after Char­lie Watts learned some­thing from Char­lie Watts, whether they knew it or not. But while “you can ana­lyze Char­lie Watts,” Copeland writes, “that still won’t get you to his feel and his dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ty. It’s an X‑factor, it’s a charis­ma, it’s an unde­fin­able gift of God.” Petru­sich con­cludes her trib­ute with a sim­i­lar expres­sion of non-tech­ni­cal awe: “Watch­ing Watts play is still one of the best ways I know to check in with the rid­dle and thrill of art — to wit­ness some­thing mirac­u­lous but not to under­stand it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Say­ing Good­bye to Char­lie Watts (RIP), the Engine of the Rolling Stones for Half a Cen­tu­ry

A Char­lie Watts-Cen­tric View of the Rolling Stones: Watch Mar­tin Scorsese’s Footage of Char­lie & the Band Per­form­ing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “All Down the Line”

Rolling Stones Drum­mer Char­lie Watts Writes a Children’s Book Cel­e­brat­ing Char­lie Park­er (1964)

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

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100 Days of Dante: Join the Largest Divine Comedy Reading Group in the World (Starts September 8)

in History, Literature, Religion | September 6th, 2021

This year marks the 700th anniver­sary of Dante Alighier­i’s death — which means it also marks the 701st anniver­sary of his great work the Div­ina Com­me­dia, known in Eng­lish as the Divine Com­e­dy. We’ve all got to go some time, and it’s some­how suit­able that Dante went not long after telling the tale of his own jour­ney through the after­life, com­plete with stops in Hell, Pur­ga­to­ry, and Par­adise. It remains a jour­ney we can all take and re-take — and inter­pre­tive­ly grap­ple with — still these sev­en cen­turies lat­er. Start­ing this month, you can take it as a group tour, so to speak, by join­ing 100 Days of Dante, the largest Dante read­ing group in the world.

A project of Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty’s Hon­ors Col­lege (with sup­port from sev­er­al oth­er Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions), 100 Days of Dante has launched a web site “through which mod­ern seek­ers and pil­grims can fol­low the great epic poem with free video pre­sen­ta­tions three times a week.”

So writes Aleteia’s John Burg­er, who explains that “the three books of the Divine Com­e­dy, known in Ital­ian as Infer­no, Pur­ga­to­rio, and Par­adiso, are divid­ed into 33 chap­ters known as can­tos. [Infer­no actu­al­ly had 34.] Each video will present one can­to, with com­men­tary on it from lead­ing experts in Dante stud­ies.” You can also read the entire work on 100 Days of Dan­te’s web site, in Eng­lish or Ital­ian — a lan­guage Dan­te’s own poet­ry did much to shape.

Nobody inter­est­ed in the lan­guage of Italy, let alone the coun­try’s his­to­ry and cul­ture, can do with­out expe­ri­enc­ing the Divine Com­e­dy. One of 100 Days of Dante’s aims is a re-empha­sis of its nature as a thor­ough­ly reli­gious work, one that ren­ders in vivid, some­times har­row­ing detail the world­view held by Chris­tians of Dan­te’s place and time. But believ­er or oth­er­wise, you can join in the read­ing from when it begins on Sep­tem­ber 8, to when it con­cludes on East­er 2022. You may well find, as the long Italy-res­i­dent Eng­lish writer and trans­la­tor Tim Parks observes, that Dante has a way of slip­ping through con­ve­nient inter­pre­ta­tive frame­works cul­tur­al, his­tor­i­cal, and even reli­gious. “Long after the fires of Hell have burned them­selves out,” he writes, “the debate about the Div­ina Com­me­dia rages on.” Find more edu­ca­tion­al resources on Dante and The Divine Com­e­dy below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Free Online Course on Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

An Illus­trat­ed and Inter­ac­tive Dante’s Infer­no: Explore a New Dig­i­tal Com­pan­ion to the Great 14th-Cen­tu­ry Epic Poem

A Dig­i­tal Archive of the Ear­li­est Illus­trat­ed Edi­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy (1487–1568)

Visu­al­iz­ing Dante’s Hell: See Maps & Draw­ings of Dante’s Infer­no from the Renais­sance Through Today

Explore Divine Com­e­dy Dig­i­tal, a New Dig­i­tal Data­base That Col­lects Sev­en Cen­turies of Art Inspired by Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

Why Should We Read Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

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

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Google Data Analytics Certificate: 8 Courses Will Help Prepare Students for an Entry-Level Job in 6 Months

in Data, Education, Online Courses, Technology | September 5th, 2021

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Google launched a series of Career Cer­tifi­cates that will “pre­pare learn­ers for an entry-lev­el role in under six months.” The new career ini­tia­tive includes cer­tifi­cates con­cen­trat­ing on Project Man­age­ment and UX Design. And now also Data Ana­lyt­ics, a bur­geon­ing field that focus­es on “the col­lec­tion, trans­for­ma­tion, and orga­ni­za­tion of data in order to draw con­clu­sions, make pre­dic­tions, and dri­ve informed deci­sion mak­ing.”

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, the Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate con­sists of eight cours­es, includ­ing “Foun­da­tions: Data, Data, Every­where,” “Pre­pare Data for Explo­ration,” “Data Analy­sis with R Pro­gram­ming,” and “Share Data Through the Art of Visu­al­iza­tion.” Over­all this pro­gram “includes over 180 hours of instruc­tion and hun­dreds of prac­tice-based assess­ments, which will help you sim­u­late real-world data ana­lyt­ics sce­nar­ios that are crit­i­cal for suc­cess in the work­place. The con­tent is high­ly inter­ac­tive and exclu­sive­ly devel­oped by Google employ­ees with decades of expe­ri­ence in data ana­lyt­ics.”

Upon com­ple­tion, students–even those who haven’t pur­sued a col­lege degree–can direct­ly apply for jobs (e.g., junior or asso­ciate data ana­lyst, data­base admin­is­tra­tor, etc.) with Google and over 130 U.S. employ­ers, includ­ing Wal­mart, Best Buy, and Astreya. You can start a 7‑day free tri­al and explore the cours­es here. If you con­tin­ue beyond the free tri­al, Google/Coursera will charge $39 USD per month. That trans­lates to about $235 after 6 months, the time esti­mat­ed to com­plete the cer­tifi­cate.

Explore the Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate by watch­ing the video above. Learn more about the over­all Google career cer­tifi­cate ini­tia­tive here. And find oth­er Google pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cates here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Google Intro­duces 6‑Month Career Cer­tifi­cates, Threat­en­ing to Dis­rupt High­er Edu­ca­tion with “the Equiv­a­lent of a Four-Year Degree”

Cours­era and Google Launch an Online Cer­tifi­cate Pro­gram to Help Stu­dents Become IT Pro­fes­sion­als & Get Attrac­tive Jobs

Google’s UX Design Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate: 7 Cours­es Will Help Pre­pare Stu­dents for an Entry-Lev­el Job in 6 Months

Become a Project Man­ag­er With­out a Col­lege Degree with Google’s Project Man­age­ment Cer­tifi­cate

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ABBA Set to Release Their First Album in 40 Years: Hear Two New Tracks, and Get a Glimpse of Their Digital Live Show

in Music, Technology | September 3rd, 2021

45 years ago, ABBA’s music was inescapable. 25 years ago, it had become a seem­ing­ly unwel­come reminder of the inani­ties of the 1970s in gen­er­al and the days of dis­co in par­tic­u­lar. But now, it’s revered: rare is the 21st-cen­tu­ry music crit­ic who absolute­ly refus­es to acknowl­edge the Swedish four­some’s mas­tery of pure pop song­writ­ing and stu­dio pro­duc­tion. With cur­rent musi­cians, too, nam­ing ABBA among their inspi­ra­tions with­out embar­rass­ment, the time has sure­ly come for ABBA them­selves to return to the spot­light — a spot­light that first illu­mi­nat­ed them for the world in 1974, when their per­for­mance of “Water­loo” won the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test.

ABBA’s streak last­ed until the ear­ly 1980s, end­ing in a hia­tus that ulti­mate­ly stretched out to some 40 years. Pop cul­ture has changed quite a bit in that time, but tech­nol­o­gy much more so. The band have thus put togeth­er a thor­ough­ly mod­ern come­back involv­ing not just a new album, but also a live show star­ring com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed ver­sions of mem­bers Björn Ulvaeus, Ben­ny Ander­s­son, Agnetha Fält­skog, and Anni-Frid Lyn­gstad — “Abbatars,” as Ulvaeus calls them.

Begin­ning next year, they’ll play ABBA’s hits in a cus­tom-built 3,000-seat are­na in Lon­don’s Olympic park, engi­neered to accom­pa­ny each song with their own elab­o­rate light show. Ani­mat­ed with motion-cap­tured per­for­mances by the real ABBA, their appear­ance has been mod­eled after the way the band looked in the 1970s (if not quite the way they dressed).

Titled Voy­age, this dig­i­tal ABBA expe­ri­ence will open in 2022, thus solv­ing the prob­lem of tour­ing that had long dis­cour­aged a reunion. “We would like peo­ple to remem­ber us as we were,” Ulvaeus said in the late 2000s. “Young, exu­ber­ant, full of ener­gy and ambi­tion.” But with all four now-sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an mem­bers still alive and able to make music, remain­ing whol­ly inac­tive seems to have start­ed feel­ing like a shame. They made their return to the stu­dio in 2018, record­ing the new songs “I Still Have Faith in You” and “Don’t Shut Me Down,” both of which will appear on the new album, also called Voy­age, com­ing out in Novem­ber. All this will bring back mem­o­ries for long­time fans, as well as pro­vide a thrilling expe­ri­ence for their many lis­ten­ers too young to have expe­ri­enced an ABBA show or album release before. But I can’t be the only mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion won­der­ing if, twen­ty years from now, we’ll be buy­ing tick­ets for a dig­i­tal­ly re-cre­at­ed Ace of Base.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How ABBA Won Euro­vi­sion and Became Inter­na­tion­al Pop Stars (1974)

When ABBA Wrote Music for the Cold War-Themed Musi­cal, Chess: “One of the Best Rock Scores Ever Pro­duced for the The­atre” (1984)

Lis­ten to ABBA’s “Danc­ing Queen” Played on a 1914 Fair­ground Organ

This Man Flew to Japan to Sing ABBA’s “Mam­ma Mia” in a Big Cold Riv­er

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

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How Mushroom Time-Lapses Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pioneering Time-Lapse Cinematography Behind the Netflix Documentary Fantastic Fungi

in Biology, Film, K-12, Nature, Photography, Science | September 3rd, 2021

Mush­rooms are hav­ing a moment, thanks in part to pio­neer­ing time-lapse cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Louie Schwartzberg’s doc­u­men­tary Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi.

Now stream­ing on Net­flix, the film has giv­en rise to a bumper crop of funghi fantat­ics, who sprang up like, well, mush­rooms, to join the exist­ing ranks of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, culi­nary fans, week­end for­agers, ama­teur grow­ers, and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers.

Schwartzberg, who ear­li­er visu­al­ized pol­li­na­tion from the flower’s point of view in the Meryl Streep-nar­rat­ed Wings of Life, is a true believ­er in the pow­er of mush­rooms, cit­ing funghi’s role in soil cre­ation and health, and their poten­tial for rem­e­dy­ing a num­ber of press­ing glob­al prob­lems, as well as a host of human ail­ments.

Fan­tas­tic Funghi focus­es on sev­en pil­lars of ben­e­fits brought to the table by the fun­gal king­dom and its Inter­net-like under­ground net­work of myceli­um:

  1. Bio­di­ver­si­ty

A num­ber of projects are explor­ing the ways in which the myceli­um world can pull us back from the bring of  deser­ti­za­tion, water short­age, food short­age, bee colony col­lapse, tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants, nuclear dis­as­ters, oil spills, plas­tic pol­lu­tion, and glob­al warm­ing.

  1. Inno­va­tion

Mush­room-relat­ed indus­tries are eager to press funghi into ser­vice as envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able faux leather, build­ing mate­ri­als, pack­ag­ing, and meat alter­na­tives.

  1. Food

From fine din­ing to for­ag­ing off-the-grid, mush­rooms are prized for their culi­nary and nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits.

  1. Phys­i­cal Health and Well­ness

Will the hum­ble mush­room prove mighty enough to do an end run around pow­er­ful drug com­pa­nies as a source of inte­gra­tive med­i­cine to help com­bat dia­betes, liv­er dis­ease, inflam­ma­tion, insom­nia and cog­ni­tive decline?

  1. Men­tal Health

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins, UCLA, and NYU are run­ning clin­i­cal tri­als on the ben­e­fits of psy­che­del­ic psilo­cy­bin mush­rooms as a tool for treat­ing addic­tion, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, PTSD and sui­ci­dal ideation.

  1. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty

Of course, there’s also a rich tra­di­tion of reli­gions and indi­vid­ual seek­ers deploy­ing mind alter­ing psy­choac­tive mush­rooms as a form of sacra­ment or a tool for plumb­ing the mys­ter­ies of life.

  1. The Arts

Direc­tor Schwartzberg under­stand­ably views mush­rooms as muse, a fit­ting sub­ject for pho­tog­ra­phy, music, film, poet­ry, art and oth­er cre­ative endeav­ors.

 

With regard to this final pil­lar, many view­ers may be sur­prised to learn how much of the 15 years Schwartzberg ded­i­cat­ed to cap­tur­ing the exquis­ite cycle of fun­gal regen­er­a­tion and decom­po­si­tion took place indoors.

As he explains in the Wired video above, his pre­ci­sion equip­ment excels at cap­tur­ing devel­op­ment that’s invis­i­ble to the human eye, but is no match for such nat­ur­al world dis­rup­tions as insects and wind.

Instead, he and his team built con­trolled grow­ing envi­ron­ments, where high­ly sen­si­tive time lapse cam­eras, dol­lies, timed grow lights, and more cin­e­mat­ic light­ing instru­ments could be left in place.

Set dress­ings of moss and logs, cou­pled with a very short depth of field helped to bring the Great Out­doors onscreen, with occa­sion­al chro­makeyed panora­mas of the nat­ur­al world fill­ing in the gaps.

Even in such lab-like con­di­tions, cer­tain ele­ments were nec­es­sar­i­ly left to chance. Mush­rooms grow noto­ri­ous­ly quick­ly, and even with con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and cal­cu­la­tions, there was plen­ty of poten­tial for one of his stars to miss their mark, shoot­ing out of frame.

Just one of the ways that mush­rooms and humans oper­ate on rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent time­lines. The direc­tor bowed to the shrooms, return­ing to square one on the fre­quent occa­sions when a sequence got away from him.

Pro­vid­ing view­ers an immer­sive expe­ri­ence of the under­ground myceli­um net­work required high pow­ered micro­scopes, a sol­id cement floor, and a bit of movie mag­ic to finesse. What you see in the final cut is the work of CGI ani­ma­tors, who used Schwartzberg’s footage as their blue­print.

Net­flix sub­scribers can stream Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi for free.

From Octo­ber 15 — 17, film­mak­er Louie Schwartzberg is host­ing a free, vir­tu­al Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi Glob­al Sum­mit. Reg­is­ter here.

You can also browse his col­lec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty mush­room recipes and sub­mit your own, down­load Fan­tas­tic Fungi’s Stoned Ape poster, or have a ram­ble through a trove of relat­ed videos and arti­cles in the Mush Room.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cage Had a Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Dis­cov­er the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

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

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