How Much Would It Cost to Build the Colosseum Today?

in Architecture, History | May 25th, 2022

Last year we told you about the plan to install a retractable floor in the Colos­se­um, thus restor­ing a fea­ture it boast­ed in its ancient glo­ry days. Though the state pledged €10 mil­lion, the bud­get of an ambi­tious ren­o­va­tion will sure­ly come to many times that — but still, we may imag­ine, only a frac­tion of the mon­ey it took to build the Colos­se­um in the first place. In fact we have to imag­ine it, since we have no records of what that icon of Rome actu­al­ly cost. In the video above, his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan, cre­ator of the chan­nel Told in Stone, does so by not just mar­shal­ing all his knowl­edge of the ancient world but also crowd­sourc­ing oth­ers’ knowl­edge of mod­ern con­struc­tion tech­niques and expens­es.

First, Ryan must reck­on the cost of the Colos­se­um in ses­ter­tii, the “big brass coins” com­mon in Rome of the first cen­tu­ry AD. “At the time the Colos­se­um was built,” he says, “one ses­ter­tius could buy two loaves of bread, four cups of cheap wine, or a sin­gle cup of good wine.”

The aver­age unskilled labor­er could expect to earn around four ses­ter­tii per day, and this project need­ed thou­sands of such labor­ers to exca­vate its foun­da­tion trench alone. Then came the lay­ing of the foun­da­tion itself, fol­lowed by the build­ing of the super­struc­ture, which remains for­mi­da­ble even in the ruined state we know today. Its mate­ri­als includ­ed 100,000 cubic meters of traver­tine — “rough­ly one-fifti­eth, inci­den­tal­ly, of all traver­tine ever quar­ried by the Romans.”

A good deal of traver­tine also went into the Get­ty Cen­ter, per­haps the clos­est thing to a Colos­se­um-scale con­struc­tion project in mod­ern-day Amer­i­ca. The Get­ty’s total cost came to $733 mil­lion, a price tag befit­ting the wealth syn­ony­mous with its name. But it still came cheap­er than the Colos­se­um by Ryan’s esti­mate, or at least by most of the esti­mates at which he arrives. Con­sult­ing with sev­er­al of his view­ers expe­ri­enced in archi­tec­ture and con­struc­tion, he cal­cu­lates that build­ing an exact repli­ca of the Colos­se­um in today’s Unit­ed States — tak­ing into account the much greater effi­cien­cy of cur­rent tools, as well as the much greater cost of labor — rough­ly equiv­a­lent to $150,000,000 to more than $1 bil­lion. That amount of mon­ey obvi­ous­ly exists in our world; whether we pos­sess the nec­es­sary ambi­tion is less clear. Then again, ancient Rome did­n’t have Lego.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

When the Colos­se­um in Rome Became the Home of Hun­dreds of Exot­ic Plant Species

Rome’s Colos­se­um Will Get a New Retractable Floor by 2023 — Just as It Had in Ancient Times

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

The Roman Colos­se­um Has a Twin in Tunisia: Dis­cov­er the Amphithe­ater of El Jem, One of the Best-Pre­served Roman Ruins in the World

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.

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How Korean Things Are Made: Watch Mesmerizing Videos Showing the Making of Traditional Clothes, Teapots, Buddhist Instruments & More

in History, Technology | May 25th, 2022

It would be awful­ly clichéd to call Seoul, where I live, a place of con­trasts between old and new. And yet that tex­ture real­ly does man­i­fest every­where in Kore­an life, most pal­pa­bly on the streets of the cap­i­tal. In my favorite neigh­bor­hoods, one pass­es through a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent eras walk­ing down a sin­gle alley. “Third-wave” cof­fee shops and “newtro” bars coex­ist with fam­i­ly restau­rants unchanged for decades and even small indus­tri­al work­shops. Those work­shops pro­duce cloth­ing, plumb­ing fix­tures, print­ed mat­ter, elec­tron­ics, and much else besides, in many cas­es late into the night. For all its rep­u­ta­tion as a high-tech “Asian Tiger,” this remains, clear­ly and present­ly, a coun­try that makes things.

You can see just how Korea makes things on the Youtube chan­nel All Process of World, which has drawn tens of mil­lions of views with its videos of fac­to­ries: fac­to­ries mak­ing forks, bricks, sliced tuna, sheep­skin jack­ets, bowl­ing balls, humanoid robots. The scale of these Kore­an indus­tri­al oper­a­tions ranges from the mas­sive to the arti­sanal; some prod­ucts are unique to twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry life, and oth­ers have been in use for cen­turies.

On the tra­di­tion­al side, All Process of World has pro­vid­ed close-up views of the mak­ing of ceram­ic teapots, wood­en win­dow frames (as you would see in a clas­si­cal Kore­an hanok), hand­held per­cus­sive mok­tak to aid Bud­dhist monks in their chants, and even jeogori, the dis­tinc­tive jack­ets worn with han­bok dress­es.

Judg­ing by the com­ments, All Process of World’s many view­ers hail from around the globe. This should­n’t come as a sur­prise, giv­en Kore­a’s new­found world­wide pop­u­lar­i­ty. But that so-called “Kore­an wave” owes less to the appeal of Kore­a’s tra­di­tion­al cul­ture than its mod­ern one, less to its rus­tic yet ele­gant pot­tery and bril­liant­ly col­or­ful for­mal­wear than to BTS and “Gang­nam Style,” Par­a­site and Squid Game — whose “robot girl” appears on a rug made in one All Process of World video. Anoth­er shows us the pro­duc­tion of an equal­ly mod­ern item, the face masks seen every­where in Korea dur­ing the past two years. Just a few weeks ago, the gov­ern­ment gave us the okay to take those masks off out­doors. While hop­ing for the arrival of ful­ly post-COVID era, we’d do well to keep in mind how the past always seems to find its way into the present.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch a Kore­an Mas­ter Crafts­man Make a Kim­chi Pot by Hand, All Accord­ing to Ancient Tra­di­tion

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

How a Kore­an Pot­ter Found a “Beau­ti­ful Life” Through His Art: A Short, Life-Affirm­ing Doc­u­men­tary

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

Mod­ern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vas­es & Arti­sanal Glass

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

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.

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Behold the Augsburg Book of Miracles, a Brilliantly-Illuminated Manuscript of Supernatural Phenomena from Renaissance Germany

in Books, History | May 24th, 2022

When we speak of a “lost art,” we do not always mean that humans have for­got­ten cer­tain pro­duc­tion meth­ods. Mod­ern crafts­peo­ple can recov­er or rea­son­ably approx­i­mate old tech­niques and mate­ri­als, and pro­duce arti­facts that can be passed off as authen­tic by the unscrupu­lous. The spir­it of the thing, how­ev­er, can nev­er be recov­ered. Try as they might, schol­ars and con­ser­va­tors will nev­er be able to enter the mind of a Medieval scribe or man­u­script illu­mi­na­tor. Their social world has dis­ap­peared into a dis­tant mist; we can only dim­ly guess at what their lives were like.

Thus, for many years, the recep­tion of Hierony­mus Bosch — the bizarre fan­ta­sist from the Nether­lands whose visions of Earth, Heav­en, and Hell have amused and ter­ri­fied view­ers — stressed the pro­to-Sur­re­al­ism of his work, assum­ing he must have had oth­er inten­tions than pros­e­ly­tiz­ing.

Most recent inter­pre­ta­tion, how­ev­er, has pulled in the oth­er direc­tion, stress­ing the degree to which Bosch and his con­tem­po­raries believed in a uni­verse that was exact­ly as weird as he depict­ed it, no exag­ger­a­tion nec­es­sary; empha­siz­ing how Bosch felt an urgent need to spare view­ers of his work from the fates he showed in his art.

What passed through the mind of the illu­mi­na­tor of the man­u­script shown here, the Augs­burg Book of Mirac­u­lous Signs? We can nev­er know. At best, schol­ars have set­tled on a name — artist and print­mak­er Hans Burgk­mair the Younger — though lit­tle is known about him And we have a date, 1552, when this “curi­ous and lav­ish­ly illus­trat­ed man­u­script appeared in the Swabi­an Impe­r­i­al Free city of Augs­burg, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire, locat­ed in present-day Ger­many,” Maria Popo­va writes at the Mar­gin­a­lian. In the video at the top from Hochela­ga, you can learn more about the “bizarre text” and the “mean­ing behind its unique con­tents” and “scenes of calami­ty and chaos.”

The strange book presents “in remark­able detail and wild­ly imag­i­na­tive art­work, Medieval Europe’s grow­ing obses­sions with signs sent from ‘God,’ ” Popo­va writes, “a tes­ta­ment to the basic human propen­si­ty for mag­i­cal think­ing.” More specif­i­cal­ly, The Book of Mir­a­cles recounts a host of Bib­li­cal signs and won­ders in chrono­log­i­cal order: from the first book of the Old Tes­ta­ment to the spec­tac­u­lar end of the New. In-between are “hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry accounts of clas­si­cal and con­tem­po­rary celes­tial phe­nom­e­na,” Tim Smith-Laing writes at Apol­lo. “The man­u­script com­pris­es noth­ing less than a pic­ture chron­i­cle of the world’s past, present and future, in 192 mir­a­cles.”

While Protes­tant Chris­tian­i­ty con­demned Medieval mag­ic, “the recur­rence of mir­a­cles in the Bible meant that the Protes­tant reform­ers of the six­teenth cen­tu­ry could not reject such won­ders as super­sti­tions in the way they scorned Catholic beliefs,” Mari­na Warn­er writes at The New York Review of Books. Ger­man reform­ers were on high alert for the mirac­u­lous and omi­nous: “The six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Zwinglian cler­gy­man Johann Jakob Wick filled twen­ty-four albums with reports of such won­ders in broad­sheets and pam­phlets,” see­ing signs in the birth of a two-head­ed calf or “an unfor­tu­nate, flip­per-hand­ed infant.”

All of which is to say that we have lit­tle rea­son to doubt that the cre­ator of The Book of Mir­a­cles meant the work as an earnest warn­ing to its read­ers, although its won­drous images might look to us like pro­to-fan­ta­sy or sci-fi illus­tra­tion. The book illus­trates 1533 reports of fly­ing drag­ons in Bohemia, an event, notes The Guardian, that “went on for sev­er­al days, with over four hun­dred of them, both big and small, fly­ing togeth­er.” It shows a comet appear­ing in 1506, one that stayed for sev­er­al days and nights “and turned its tail towards Spain.” There­by fol­lowed “a lot of fruit,” which was then “com­plete­ly destroyed by cater­pil­lars or rats,” then a vio­lent earth­quake in Con­stan­tino­ple.

The very ten­u­ous con­nec­tion between dis­parate nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na, the hearsay reports of mag­i­cal hap­pen­ings, you can read about all of these signs and won­ders in a repub­lished ver­sion by Taschen, in Eng­lish, French, and Ger­man. It is, Popo­va writes, “a sin­gu­lar shrine to some of the most eter­nal of human hopes and fears, and, above all, our immutable long­ing for grace, for mer­cy, for the mirac­u­lous.” See more images from The Book of Mir­a­cles at The Guardian.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Dig­i­tal Archive of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Com­plete Works: Zoom In & Explore His Sur­re­al Art

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

The Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts of Medieval Europe: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado

160,000+ Medieval Man­u­scripts Online: Where to Find Them

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

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The Scream Explained: What’s Really Happening in Edvard Munch’s World-Famous Painting

in Art, History | May 23rd, 2022

The Scream is not scream­ing. “One of the famous in the images of art,” Edvard Munch’s most wide­ly seen paint­ing “has become, for us, a uni­ver­sal sym­bol of angst and anx­i­ety.” Munch paint­ed it in 1893, when “Europe was at the birth of the mod­ern era, and the image reflects the anx­i­eties that trou­bled the world.” How­ev­er many fin-de-siè­cle Euro­peans felt like scream­ing for one rea­son or anoth­er, the cen­tral fig­ure of The Scream isn’t one of them: “rather, it is hold­ing its hands over its ears, to block out the scream.” So gal­lerist and Youtu­ber James Payne reveals on the lat­est episode of his series Great Art Explained, which does­n’t just exam­ine Munch’s icon­ic work of art, but places it in the con­text of his career and his time.

Dur­ing most of Munch’s life, “Euro­pean cities were going through tru­ly excep­tion­al changes. Indus­tri­al­iza­tion and eco­nom­ic shifts brought fear, obses­sions, dis­eases, polit­i­cal unrest, and rad­i­cal­ism. Ques­tions were being raised about soci­ety, and the chang­ing role of man with­in it: about our psy­che, our social respon­si­bil­i­ties, and most rad­i­cal of all, about the exis­tence of God.” It was hard­ly the most suit­able time or place for the men­tal­ly trou­bled, but then, Munch seems to have pos­sessed more psy­cho­log­i­cal for­ti­tude than he let the pub­lic know. A savvy self-pro­mot­er, he under­stood the val­ue of liv­ing like some­one whose ter­ri­ble per­cep­tions keep him on the brink of total break­down.

But then, Munch nev­er did have it easy. “His moth­er and his sis­ter both died of tuber­cu­lo­sis. His father and grand­fa­ther suf­fered from depres­sion, and anoth­er sis­ter, Lau­ra, from pneu­mo­nia. His only broth­er would lat­er die of pneu­mo­nia.” He found solace in art, a pur­suit strong­ly opposed by his reli­gious father, and even­tu­al­ly joined the bohemi­an world, a milieu that encour­aged him to let his inner world shape his aes­thet­ic. Draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from the French Impres­sion­ists and the dra­ma of August Strind­berg, Munch even­tu­al­ly found his way to start­ing a cycle of paint­ings called The Frieze of Life.

It was dur­ing his work on The Frieze of Life that, accord­ing to a diary entry of Jan­u­ary 22nd, 1892, Munch found him­self walk­ing along a fjord. “I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord — the sun was set­ting, and the clouds turn­ing blood red. I sensed a scream pass­ing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I paint­ed this pic­ture, paint­ed the clouds as actu­al blood. The col­or shrieked.” The fjord was on the way back from the asy­lum to which his beloved younger sis­ter had recent­ly been con­fined; Payne imag­ines that her “screams of ter­ror must have haunt­ed him as he walked away.” From these grim ori­gins, The Scream emerged to become an oft-ref­er­enced and high­ly relat­able image — even to those who see in it noth­ing more than their own frus­tra­tion at receiv­ing too much e‑mail.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Edvard Munch Sig­naled His Bohemi­an Rebel­lion with Cig­a­rettes (1895): A Video Essay

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

The Life & Work of Edvard Munch, Explored by Pat­ti Smith and Char­lotte Gains­bourg

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing “The Scream” Ani­mat­ed to Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

The Edvard Munch Scream Action Fig­ure

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

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.

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Jean-Paul Sartre & Albert Camus: Their Friendship and the Bitter Feud That Ended It

in History, Philosophy | May 20th, 2022

At the end of World War II, as Europe lay in ruins, so too did its “intel­lec­tu­al land­scape,” notes the Liv­ing Phi­los­o­phy video above. In the midst of this “intel­lec­tu­al crater” a num­ber of great thinkers debat­ed “the blue­print for the future.” Fem­i­nist philoso­pher and nov­el­ist Simone de Beau­voir put it blunt­ly: “We were to pro­vide the post­war era with its ide­ol­o­gy.” Two names — De Beau­voir’s part­ner Jean-Paul Sartre and his friend Albert Camus — came to define that ide­ol­o­gy in the phi­los­o­phy broad­ly known as Exis­ten­tial­ism.

The two first met in Paris in 1943 dur­ing the Nazi occu­pa­tion. They were already “deeply acquaint­ed” with one another’s work and shared a mutu­al respect and admi­ra­tion as crit­ics and review­ers of each oth­er and as fel­low resis­tance mem­bers. Both “intel­lec­tu­al giants” were tar­get­ed by the FBI, and both would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture (though Sartre reject­ed his). Their fame would con­tin­ue into the post­war years, despite Camus’ retreat from philo­soph­i­cal writ­ing after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Rebel.

While we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly brought you sto­ries of their friend­ship, and its bit­ter end, the video above digs deep­er into the Sartre-Camus rival­ry, with crit­i­cal his­tor­i­cal con­text for their think­ing. Their ini­tial falling out took place over The Rebel, which cham­pi­oned an eth­i­cal indi­vid­u­al­ism and cri­tiqued the moral­i­ty of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vio­lence. Instead of explor­ing sui­cide, as he had done in The Myth of Sisy­phus, here Camus explores the prob­lem of mur­der, con­clud­ing that — out­side of extreme cir­cum­stances like a Nazi inva­sion — vio­lent polit­i­cal means do not jus­ti­fy their ends.

The book pro­voked Sartre, a doc­tri­naire Marx­ist, who had issued what Camus con­sid­ered fee­ble defens­es for Joseph Stal­in’s purges and gulags. A series of scathing reviews and angry ripostes fol­lowed. The per­son­al tone of these attacks chilled what lit­tle warmth remained between them. When the Alger­ian war for inde­pen­dence erupt­ed a few years lat­er, the staunch­ly anti-colo­nial­ist Sartre took the side of Alge­ri­a’s Nation­al Lib­er­a­tion Front (FLN), excus­ing acts of vio­lence against civil­ians and rival fac­tions as jus­ti­fied by French oppres­sion. Such events “were beyond jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in the mind of Camus.”

While Sartre belit­tled Camus as “a crook,” the “acute­ness of the sit­u­a­tion was all the stronger for Camus since Alge­ria was his home­land. He could not see it in the ide­o­log­i­cal warped black and white of Sartre’s cir­cle or the con­ser­v­a­tive French gov­ern­ment.” The state­ment might sum up all of Camus’ thought. As Sartre final­ly con­ced­ed in a posthu­mous trib­ute; he “rep­re­sent­ed in our time the lat­est exam­ple of that long line of moral­istes whose works con­sti­tute per­haps the most orig­i­nal ele­ment in French let­ters.… he reaf­firmed… against the Machi­avel­lians and against the Idol of real­ism, the exis­tence of the moral issue,” in all its com­plex ambi­gu­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sartre Writes a Trib­ute to Camus After His Friend-Turned-Rival Dies in a Trag­ic Car Crash: “There Is an Unbear­able Absur­di­ty in His Death”

The Exis­ten­tial­ism Files: How the FBI Tar­get­ed Camus, and Then Sartre After the JFK Assas­si­na­tion

Albert Camus Writes a Friend­ly Let­ter to Jean-Paul Sartre Before Their Per­son­al and Philo­soph­i­cal Rift

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

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Meet the Variophone, the Early Soviet Synthesizer that Made Music with a Film Projector (1932)

in History, Music | May 19th, 2022

The ear­ly days of elec­tron­ic instru­ments lacked com­mon­ly accept­ed ideas about what an elec­tron­ic instru­ment was, much less how it should be used. No one asso­ci­at­ed elec­tron­ics with tech­no or new wave or hip hop or pop, giv­en that none of these exist­ed. Every sound made by exper­i­ments in syn­the­sis in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry was by its nature exper­i­men­tal, and most elec­tron­ic instru­ments were one of a kind. It did not even seem obvi­ous that elec­tron­ic instru­ments had to be machines that were pur­pose built for sound.

In 1930, at the very dawn of sound on film, Evge­ny Sholpo invent­ed the Var­io­phone — or “Auto­mat­ed Paper Sound with sound­tracks in both trans­ver­sal and inten­sive form.” It was, in sim­pler terms, a pho­to­elec­tric audio syn­the­siz­er that made use of a film pro­jec­tor and spin­ning card­board discs with sound waves cut into them in var­i­ous pat­terns. When ampli­fied, the device could turn the pat­terns into sounds. It also cre­at­ed “abstract spi­ral ani­ma­tion,” notes Boing Boing. Both “were way ahead of their time.”

If you’re think­ing such a machine might be used to make film sound­tracks, it was. But it was also “a con­tin­u­a­tion of research that Sholpo had been con­duct­ing since the 1910s,” the blog Beyond the Coda writes, “when he was work­ing on per­former­less music.”

Sholpo want­ed a device that would replace musi­cians and allow com­posers to turn com­plex musi­cal ideas into record­ed sounds them­selves. He was aid­ed in the endeav­or by Geor­gy Rim­sky-Kor­sakov (grand­son of Russ­ian com­pos­er Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov), who helped him build the pro­to­type at Lenfilm Stu­dios in 1931.

The two pro­duced their first film sound­track for the pro­pa­gan­da film The Year 1905 in Bour­geoisie Satire, in 1931, and then the fol­low­ing year cre­at­ed “a syn­the­sized sound­track for A Sym­pho­ny of Peace and many oth­er sound­tracks for films and car­toons through­out the thir­ties,” notes 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music. The Var­io­phone was destroyed dur­ing the Siege of Leningrad, but Sholpo built two more, con­tin­u­ing to record sound­tracks through the for­ties. Unlike the first mono­phon­ic ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers built a cou­ple of decades lat­er, the Var­io­phone could cre­ate and repli­cate poly­phon­ic com­po­si­tions, since tones could be lay­ered atop each oth­er, as in mul­ti­track record­ing.

You can hear sev­er­al exam­ples of the Var­io­phone here, and see it synched to ani­ma­tion — both from its own sound waves and from hand-drawn films like “The Dance of the Crow,” below. What does it sound like? The tones and tim­bres vary some­what among record­ings. There’s clear­ly been some degra­da­tion in qual­i­ty over time, and the tech­nol­o­gy of record­ing sound on film was only in its infan­cy at the time, in any case. But, in cer­tain moments, the Var­io­phone can sound like the ear­ly Moog that Wendy Car­los used to syn­the­size clas­si­cal music and record film scores almost 40 years after Sholpo patent­ed his machine.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

Leon Theremin Adver­tis­es the First Com­mer­cial Pro­duc­tion Run of His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment (1930)

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

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

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The Rolling Stones Play a Gig in Communist Warsaw and a Riot Ensues (1967)

in History, Music, Politics | May 17th, 2022

My Name is called Dis­tur­bance.… – “Street Fight­ing Man”

More than two decades before Ger­man band the Scor­pi­ons blew their alleged­ly CIA-penned “Wind of Change” over the end of the Cold War; before the “hard rock Wood­stock” in Moscow; before Bruce Spring­steen rocked East Berlin and rang the “Chimes of Free­dom,” anoth­er band took the stage behind the Iron Cur­tain: one not par­tic­u­lar­ly well-known at the time for mak­ing geopo­lit­i­cal state­ments.

In 1967, the Rolling Stones record­ed and released Between the But­tons and major hits “Ruby Tues­day” and “Let’s Spend the Night Togeth­er.” They tried to com­pete with the Bea­t­les with stabs at psy­che­delia on Their Satan­ic Majesties Request. They did­n’t record what is some­times con­sid­ered their most polit­i­cal song, “Street Fight­ing Man,” for anoth­er two years, and that song — with its options of street fight­ing or singing for a rock and roll band — has nev­er been mis­tak­en for a peace anthem.

It was­n’t peace the band court­ed in their orig­i­nal plan to play Moscow. “They start­ed toy­ing with the idea of per­form­ing in Moscow and becom­ing the most con­tro­ver­sial rock band to play on the oth­er side of the Iron Cur­tain,” writes Woj­ciech Olek­si­ak at Culture.pl. “Both the Sovi­et Union and the UK denied their requests. How is it, Olek­si­ak asks, “that in 1967 — the mid­dle of the Cold War — Mick, Kei­th, Bri­an, Bill, and Char­lie came to Poland and per­formed in War­saw, at a huge hall known for being tra­di­tion­al­ly used for the Com­mu­nist Par­ty’s ple­nary con­gress­es?” You’ll find the answer in the video at the top from Band­splain­ing.

Just above, see footage of the con­cert itself, culled from news­reel footage and TV broad­casts. The uploader has done us the kind­ness of putting time­stamps in the video for the three songs shown here:

00:00 — Paint It Black

00:43 — 19th Ner­vous Break­down

01:06 — (I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion

The Stones were “by no means the first west­ern group to play in com­mu­nist Poland,” writes Pol­ish musi­cian and jour­nal­ist Paweł Brodowsky, who was in the audi­ence. “By that time I had already seen The Ani­mals, The Hol­lies, Lulu, and Cliff Richard and the Shad­ows.” It did­n’t hurt that Władysław Jakubows­ki, the deputy direc­tor of Pagart — “a state-owned con­cert agency,” writes Sam Kemp at Far Out — “had some sym­pa­thy for Poland’s young music fans” (just as Gor­bachev would in the time of glas­nost). None of the oth­er acts caused any­thing like the chaos that would ensue when the Stones came to War­saw.

Bands allowed into the coun­try came from a list of names Jakubows­ki col­lect­ed from young Pol­ish jour­nal­ists. How Jakubows­ki achieved the required per­mis­sions from his high­er-ups is some­thing of a mys­tery, Olek­siek writes. Why the deputy direc­tor let the Stones into the coun­try even more so. Their rep­u­ta­tion for destruc­tion pre­ced­ed them: “He must have heard about The Rolling Stones’ wreck­ing of the Olympia, the most famous con­cert hall in Paris. He was a close friend of Bruno Coqua­trix, its direc­tor.” At any rate, the War­saw con­cert turned into a riot. The band could not be blamed, entire­ly.

Hear­ing about the Stones’ arrival, thou­sands of young fans lined up for tick­ets. “What most of them did­n’t know,” Kemp writes, “was that the bulk of them had already been reserved for com­mu­nist par­ty mem­bers and their fam­i­lies.” The hall was also packed beyond capac­i­ty, “with fans hang­ing off the edge of bal­conies.” Police fought to keep fans away from the stage and the seat­ed crowds of dour bureau­crats. Richards and Jag­ger antag­o­nized the cops with obscen­i­ties, mak­ing tick­et­less fans who’d breached the doors even more rabid.

Out­side, as you can see in the short Pol­ish doc­u­men­tary above, a full-blown riot with tear gas and dogs had bro­ken out. This was a time when riots seemed to break out every­where. (Mick Jag­ger has cit­ed the Paris upris­ings of 1968 as a source for “Street Fight­ing Man.”) But at the end of the six­ties, few oth­er bands could boast not only of play­ing the com­mu­nist East­ern Bloc, but of inspir­ing may­hem from the stage on both sides of the Cold War lines.

And yet, this is not the end of the sto­ry. The Stones returned to War­saw over fifty years lat­er, in 2018, this time with a point­ed polit­i­cal state­ment made at the behest of Lech Wałęsa, in oppo­si­tion to a rule lim­it­ing the age of judges to 65. “I am too old to be a judge but not too old to sing,” Jag­ger shout­ed in Pol­ish from the stage. He then launched into the band’s first song on the setlist. And, yes, it was my favorite and maybe yours too: “Street Fight­ing Man.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Rolling Stones: A Selec­tion of Doc­u­men­taries on the Quin­tes­sen­tial Rock-and-Roll Band

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”

The Rolling Stones Jam with Mud­dy Waters for the First and Only Time at Chicago’s Leg­endary Checker­board Lounge (1981)

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

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The White House’s Forgotten 1970s Vinyl Record Collection: Talking Heads, Sex Pistols, Captain Beefheart, Donna Summer & More

in History, Music | May 16th, 2022

Though it may not be for every­one, the job of Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca does have its perks. Take, for exam­ple, the abil­i­ty to screen any film you like at the White House: here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured lists of movies watched by Richard Nixon, Jim­my Carter, and Ronald Rea­gan. But for Carter in par­tic­u­lar, music seems to have been even more impor­tant than cin­e­ma. So explains John Chuldenko, step­son of that for­mer pres­i­den­t’s son Jack, in the episode of The 1600 Ses­sions above. In it, he tells of his redis­cov­ery of an insti­tu­tion cre­at­ed under Nixon, great­ly expand­ed under Carter, and packed away under Rea­gan: the White House Record Library.

“The Library, begun by First Lady Pat Nixon, was curat­ed by a vol­un­teer com­mis­sion of not­ed music jour­nal­ists, schol­ars, and oth­er experts,” says the White House His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. When it came time to update it at the end of the nine­teen-sev­en­ties, writes Wash­ing­to­ni­an’s Rob Brun­ner, “the selec­tion process would be head­ed by John Ham­mond, a huge­ly influ­en­tial fig­ure who had signed Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Bruce Spring­steen.” Ham­mond also enlist­ed genre experts like “Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet pianist John Lewis, who was respon­si­ble for jazz, and Boston music crit­ic Bob Blu­men­thal, who led the pop picks.”

The result­ing col­lec­tion of more than 2,000 LPs con­tains more than a few albums you would­n’t expect to hear at the White House. These include Van Mor­rison’s Astral Weeks, Randy New­man’s Good Old Boys (which con­tains “one of the great­est cri­tiques of both South­ern and North­ern racism,” as Blu­men­thal recalls), Talk­ing Heads’ More Songs About Build­ings and Food, Cap­tain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Repli­ca, and Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s the Sex Pis­tols. On the more dance­able end of the spec­trum, the White House Record Library also includes Funkadelic’s, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Don­na Sum­mer — all of their work select­ed express­ly for pres­i­den­tial use.

Hav­ing last been updat­ed in 1981 and sum­mar­i­ly cart­ed off to “a secure undis­closed stor­age facil­i­ty,” the Library remains a musi­cal time cap­sule of that era. So Chuldenko dis­cov­ered when, fol­low­ing a thread of fam­i­ly lore, he man­aged to track down a cura­tor who could arrange a lis­ten­ing ses­sion for him. “There is no rap or hip-hop in there,” he said to Wash­ing­ton­ian. “There’s no elec­tron­ic music. There are no boy bands, no Madon­na or Brit­ney Spears. No Michael Jack­son!” Hav­ing suc­ceed­ed in his mis­sion of find­ing the White House Record Library, he’s set for him­self the even more for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge of bring­ing it up to date. Cer­tain­ly its geo­graph­i­cal purview will have to widen, giv­en how Amer­i­ca now lis­tens to so much music from beyond its bor­ders. Would the White House care to hear any K‑pop rec­om­men­da­tions?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Announces an Archive That Will House His Man­u­scripts, Let­ters & Col­lec­tion of 10,000+ Vinyl Records

Google Gives 360° Tour of the White House

Lis­ten to James Baldwin’s Record Col­lec­tion in a 478-track, 32-Hour Spo­ti­fy Playlist

The Library of Con­gress Makes Its Archives Free for DJs to Remix: Intro­duc­ing the “Cit­i­zen DJ” Project

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

The Inter­net Archive Is Dig­i­tiz­ing & Pre­serv­ing Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full Albums Now

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.

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