David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Commercials from the 1960s Through 2013

in Music | January 14th, 2016

As the mourn­ing peri­od for David Bowie con­tin­ues this week, for which I am very much tak­ing part (my favorite Bowie is the Berlin tril­o­gy Bowie in case you’re inter­est­ed), the Inter­net con­tin­ues through its own stages of grief. First brief news sto­ries and anec­dotes from fel­low artists, then long think-pieces (some very good), then to best-of lists, and now to inter­est­ing ephemera.

For an artist who saw both sides of com­mer­cial suc­cess, Bowie’s tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial appear­ances num­ber less than a dozen over his life. Part of that comes from his mas­tery and con­trol over his image–he knew when to go out, and when to stay in, to get things done, you might say–and part may come from his ear­ly his­to­ry behind the scenes where the com­mer­cial sausage gets made.

In 1963, Bowie left school to go work at Nevin D. Hirst Adver­tis­ing on London’s Bond Street, where he worked as a sto­ry­board artist for about a year, a job he took to please his father. Although he was dis­mis­sive of that time doing his 9‑to‑5, it was lat­er clear to friends, band mates, and biog­ra­phers that he had picked up a lot from advertising–how to pack­age him­self, how to manip­u­late feel­ing, the pow­er of image and words.

Jump for­ward to 1967 and a long haired Davy Jones makes one of his ear­li­est appear­ances in this ice cream ad for Luv “The Pop Ice Cream,” direct­ed by anoth­er up-and-com­er, Rid­ley Scott, who had recent­ly made his first short film, “A Boy and a Bicy­cle.” It’s groovy, but, as Luv’s not around any more, appar­ent­ly didn’t move enough units.

And then Davy Jones turns into Major Tom and the ‘70s belonged to him. He final­ly agrees in 1980 to do a com­mer­cial, but only in Japan. In this min­i­mal ad for Crys­tal Jun Rock Sake, Bowie looks beau­ti­ful, hand­some, and sleek, right at the height of his sophis­ti­cat­ed Lodger-era glam­our. He plays a piano, gazes at a post-mod­ern Mt. Fuji, and utters one word: “Crys­tal.” Bowie wrote the music, an out­take from the Lodger ses­sions, and it was released as a sin­gle in Japan, and a b‑side in the West. Bowie com­ment­ed that “the mon­ey is a use­ful thing” for doing ads like this, out of sight from the West.

The next time Bowie appears is in 1983, call­ing out for Amer­i­cans to demand their MTV in a series of roto­scoped and col­orized ads near the dawn of the net­work. (This is a bad­ly edit­ed com­pi­la­tion of Bowie’s spots).

If Bowie had yet to “sell out” it was only four years lat­er, dur­ing the Glass Spi­der Tour, that he did, with this re-word­ed, re-record­ed ver­sion of “Mod­ern Love,” duet­ting with Tina Turn­er. At the time it felt like the end of a career that had turned Bowie into an over­ly coiffed par­o­dy of him­self. In ret­ro­spect, if you can look past the soda, it’s a cute com­mer­cial, with the star look­ing a bit like “Blind­ed by Science”-era Thomas Dol­by.

Then more silence and, by the time Bowie reap­pears in 2001, it is lit­er­al­ly as the man who falls to earth in an ad for XM satel­lite radio. (Bowie made yet anoth­er appear­ance in an XM ad in 2005.)

In 2004, he appears again, shilling Vit­tel water. Here Bowie’s in full career ret­ro­spec­tive mode, mak­ing peace with his chameleon self and appre­ci­at­ing it all. Set to the Real­i­ty track “Nev­er Get Old” (our dear wish that was not to be), it fea­tures Bowie trib­ute per­former David Brighton try­ing on every out­fit from the Starman’s crowd­ed wardrobe in a house filled with incar­na­tions.

That leaves us with his final tele­vi­sion ad appear­ance in 2013, seen at the top of this post, still look­ing fit, and per­form­ing a baroque ver­sion of The Next Day track “I’d Rather Be High” for a Venet­ian ball-set ad for Louis Vuit­ton. Fit­ting to go out sur­round­ed by beau­ty and glam­or, but check those lyrics:

I stum­ble to the grave­yard and I
Lay down by my par­ents, whis­per
Just remem­ber duck­ies
Every­body gets got

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How David Bowie, Kurt Cobain & Thom Yorke Write Songs With William Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Tech­nique

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recre­ate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

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

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All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Complete Works Online: 253 Done, 827 to Come

in Music | January 12th, 2016

Mem­o­rably syn­the­sized by Wendy Car­los (and mem­o­rably beloved by A Clock­work Orange’s Alex DeLarge), J.S. Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­tos epit­o­mize the play­ful verve of so much Baroque music. The Con­cer­tos “dis­play the lighter side of Bach’s imper­ish­able genius,” writes NPR; “few musi­cal works are as loved—and as often per­formed” as the six spright­ly instru­men­tal pieces. And of those six works, the fourth, Con­cer­to in G major, is per­haps the most beloved, and most rec­og­niz­able, of all. Thus it makes a fit­ting ear­ly entry in the expand­ing archive that is (or will be) All of Bach, a site intend­ing to fea­ture live per­for­mances of all 1080 of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s works, per­formed by the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety. We’ve drawn your atten­tion to the admirable effort before, and we hap­pi­ly do so again to cel­e­brate their 150th offer­ing, a per­for­mance of Was Gott tut, das ist wohlge­tan (see a short, cel­e­bra­to­ry video announce­ment below).

The last time we checked in with All of Bach back in April, the site had uploaded only 53 per­for­mances. Since that time, they’ve added oth­er pop­u­lar favorites like The Well-Tem­pered Clavier (a “mael­strom in a minor key”—also beau­ti­ful­ly adapt­ed to the Moog by Wendy Car­los), and the glo­ri­ous Mag­ni­fi­cat, Bach’s first large choral work after his 1723 appoint­ment in Leipzig (hear “Depo­suit” below).

The Con­cer­to in G major, which you can see and hear per­formed at the top of the post, shows us the com­pos­er “con­tin­u­al­ly mis­lead­ing us” as to “which instru­ments are the real soloists.” Two recorders ini­tial­ly take the lead, then a vio­lin, then the recorders again until “they are soon trumped by the vio­lin, which steals the show in a whirl­wind of dizzy­ing notes…. The roles are always ambigu­ous,” and our atten­tion always riv­et­ed on the vir­tu­oso inter­play. “Bach delib­er­ate­ly obscures the usu­al­ly clear con­trast between soloists and ensem­ble,” All of Bach observes, and “his play on the char­ac­ter­is­tic ele­ments of the con­cer­to form draws to a close in a suit­ably sub­ver­sive and bound­ary-blur­ring way.”

The site also fea­tures extras such as inter­views with musi­cians. (See Harp­si­chordist Fred­er­ick Haas dis­cuss The Well-Tem­pered Clavier here, or watch vio­lin­ist Shunske Sato and recorder play­er Heiko ter Shegget talk about the Con­cer­to in G major’s com­plex­i­ty here.) You’ll also find plen­ty of his­tor­i­cal and musi­co­log­i­cal con­text for each piece. New per­for­mances are uploaded to the site every Fri­day. To keep up with All of Bach, fol­low them on Face­book or Twit­ter, or sign up for email updates on their site. Or just vis­it their web site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online: Watch the First 53 Record­ings and the St. Matthew Pas­sion

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

JS Bach’s The Well-Tem­pered Clavier Artis­ti­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed with Puls­ing Neon Lights

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

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David Bowie Gives Graduation Speech At Berklee College of Music: “Music Has Been My Doorway of Perception” (1999)

in Life, Music | January 11th, 2016

I have lit­tle to add to the tidal wave of remem­brances and trib­utes in the wake of David Bowie’s death. Seems near­ly every­one has a sto­ry about how his music, his per­sis­tence, his gen­eros­i­ty, his genius, his unabashed weird­ness changed their lives. What he taught me as a young teenag­er was that the phrase “just be your­self” can just as well mean “be who­ev­er you can dream up,” and damn the pre­de­ter­mined roles and mean­ing­less stig­ma. Hard­er than it sounds, but Bowie pulled it off like no one before or since.

Bowie was, writes Sara Ben­in­casa, the “patron saint of… weirdos of all stripes, and that most dan­ger­ous crea­ture of all: the artist.” He did not shy away from pre­tense; he embraced it as his spe­cial méti­er. In 1999, Bowie deliv­ered the com­mence­ment address at Boston’s Berklee Col­lege of Music, where he received an hon­orary doc­tor­ate along with Wayne Short­er. In his speech, he says, he learned ear­ly on that “authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion wasn’t going to be my forte.”

In fact, what I found that I was good at doing, and what I real­ly enjoyed the most, was the game of “what if?” What if you com­bined Brecht-Weill musi­cal dra­ma with rhythm and blues? What hap­pens if you trans­plant the French chan­son with the Philly sound? Will Schoen­berg lie com­fort­ably with Lit­tle Richard? Can you put hag­gis and snails on the same plate? Well, no, but some of the ideas did work out very well.

Thus began his exper­i­ments with iden­ti­ty that first took shape in the fan­tas­tic crea­ture, Zig­gy Star­dust, his “cru­sade,” as he calls it, “to change the kind of infor­ma­tion that rock music con­tained.” Speak­ing of Zig­gy, Bowie tells a sto­ry about play­ing “grot­ty… workingman’s clubs” in “full, bat­tle fin­ery of Tokyo-space­boy and a pair of shoes high enough that it induced nose bleeds.”

Informed by the pro­mot­er at one such bar that the only bath­room was a filthy sink at the end of the hall, Bowie balked. “Lis­ten son,” said the pro­mot­er, “If its good enough for Shirley Bassey, it’s good enough for you.” From this expe­ri­ence, he says, he learned that “mix­ing ele­ments of bad taste with good would often pro­duce the most inter­est­ing results.”

The speech is packed with wit­ty anec­dotes like this and self-dep­re­cat­ing asides. Most of the sto­ries, as you can hear in the video excerpt at the top of the post, are about Bowie’s “great­est men­tor,” John Lennon. Lennon, says Bowie, “defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fab­ric of pop and imbue it with ele­ments from oth­er art­forms, often pro­duc­ing some­thing extreme­ly beau­ti­ful, very pow­er­ful and imbued with strange­ness.” Indulging his love for high and low cul­ture, Bowie under­cuts his ele­vat­ed talk of art-pop by describ­ing his and Lennon’s con­ver­sa­tions as “Beav­is and Butthead on ‘Cross­fire.’”

Bowie ends his speech with a heart­felt, and dare I say, authen­tic sum­ma­ry of his life in music. His only piece of advice, writes Boston.com: he urges the Berklee grad­u­ates to “pur­sue their musi­cal pas­sion as if it were a sick­ness.”

Music has giv­en me over 40 years of extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences. I can’t say that life’s pains or more trag­ic episodes have been dimin­ished because of it. But it’s allowed me so many moments of com­pan­ion­ship when I’ve been lone­ly and a sub­lime means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion when I want­ed to touch peo­ple. It’s been both my door­way of per­cep­tion and the house that I live in.

I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it gra­cious­ly offered me. Thank you very much and remem­ber, if it itch­es, play it.

Read the full tran­script of the speech here, or below the jump:

(more…)

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David Bowie as Tilda Swinton, and Vice Versa

in Music | January 11th, 2016

Just a great pho­to on Twit­ter via @ThatEricAlper and had to share :)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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Björk Takes Us Inside Her Creative Process and Explains How She Writes a Song

in Life, Music, Podcasts | January 11th, 2016

Some songs are so straight­for­ward there’s no need to debate their mean­ings with friends and Red­dit users. Oth­ers remain opaque, despite fans’ best attempts to crack lyri­cal codes.

“Stone­milk­er,” the first track on Björk’s self-described “com­plete heart­break album” Vul­ni­cu­ra, seems to fall into the for­mer cat­e­go­ry:

Show me emo­tion­al respect, oh respect, oh respect

And I have emo­tion­al needs, oh needs, oh ooh

I wish to syn­chro­nize our feel­ings, our feel­ings, oh ooh

“Prob­a­bly the most obvi­ous lyrics I’ve ever writ­ten” she remarks in her above appear­ance on Hrishikesh Hir­way’s Song Exploder, a pod­cast where­in musi­cians decon­struct a song’s mean­ing, ori­gin, and record­ing process.

Björk was walk­ing on a beach when the sim­ple lyrics of “Stone­milk­er” popped into her head. She quick­ly real­ized that she should steer clear of the impulse to make them more clever, and chose the pri­mal over the poet­ic.

As to its inspi­ra­tion, she diplo­mat­i­cal­ly refrains from nam­ing her ex-hus­band, film­mak­er Matthew Bar­ney, on the pod­cast, say­ing only that “Stonemilker”’s nar­ra­tor has achieved emo­tion­al clar­i­ty, unlike “the per­son” to whom she is singing, some­one who prefers for things to stay fog­gy and com­plex.

She strove for arrange­ments that would sup­port that feel­ing of clar­i­ty, wait­ing for the right micro­phone, ham­mer­ing out every beat with pro­duc­er Ale­jan­dro “Arca” Gher­si, and releas­ing a sec­ond, strings only ver­sion.

“I decid­ed to become a vio­lin nerd,” she told Pitch­fork:

 I had like twen­ty tech­no­log­i­cal threads of things I could have done, but the album couldn’t be futur­is­tic. It had to be singer/songwriter. Old-school. It had to be blunt. I was sort of going into the Bergman movies with Liv Ull­mann when it gets real­ly self-pity­ing and psy­cho­log­i­cal, where you’re kind of per­form­ing surgery on your­self, like, What went wrong? 

The accom­pa­ny­ing 360-degree vir­tu­al real­i­ty music video, above, can now be viewed online as well as with Ocu­lus Rift. Every instru­ment was miked and if you can’t get clear on an Ice­landic beach, well then…

As for those plain­tive, crys­talline vocals, Björk inten­tion­al­ly held off, wait­ing for the sort of day when impul­sive­ness reigns. (I know she’s a clas­si­cal­ly trained musi­cian, but isn’t that pret­ty much every day when you’re Björk?)

Hav­ing some insights into what the artist was aim­ing for can guide lis­ten­ers toward deep­er appre­ci­a­tion. Björk oblig­ing­ly offers Song Exploder lis­ten­ers a vast buf­fet. Sure­ly some­thing will res­onate:

A tow­er of equi­lib­ri­um…

Smooth cream-like per­fec­tion…

A net…

A cra­dle…

Com­pare those sim­ple goals to Fla­vor­wire’s Moze Halperin’s analy­sis of  what he calls “Vulnicura’s most trag­ic track — and per­haps the sad­dest Björk has ever writ­ten”:

“Stone­milk­er” has the grandiose sound of hav­ing been sung in a cathe­dral, but like one tiny per­son con­front­ed by the large­ness of ideas of God or the archi­tec­tur­al com­plex­i­ty of one such struc­ture, Björk’s voice sounds dis­tant, echo­ing, fight­ing not to get sucked in by the threat of a vast abyss. When, in the com­ing songs, she actu­al­ly con­fronts the abyss, her voice becomes stronger. The crush­ing sad­ness of this song is that it’s the begin­ning of the end, and in lis­ten­ing to it, we feel at once clos­est to the love that was recent­ly lost, while also being aware of the tur­moil ahead.

The song’s near-non­cha­lant melan­choly — its false impres­sion that it can afford non­cha­lance because the lovers’ dis­con­nect is just a bump in the road — makes it more unbear­ably sad than the rest of the album. In this song, she car­ries all of her pre­vi­ous work on her back like arrows in a quiver, pulling ref­er­ences out one by one and shoot­ing them at lis­ten­ers to remind them of the man­i­fold ways she once doc­u­ment­ed the com­plex­i­ties of her love. For now, she’s about to doc­u­ment the com­plex­i­ties of its dis­ap­pear­ance. 

Basi­cal­ly, if you wind up feel­ing like you’re “lying at home in the moss look­ing at the sky,” Björk’s mis­sion has been accom­plished.

Want more? You can unpack oth­er artists’ defin­i­tive mean­ings and song mid­wifery by sub­scrib­ing to Song Exploder.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Album Björk Record­ed as an 11-Year-Old: Fea­tures Cov­er Art Pro­vid­ed By Her Mom (1977)

A Young Björk Decon­structs (Phys­i­cal­ly & The­o­ret­i­cal­ly) a Tele­vi­sion in a Delight­ful Retro Video

Watch Björk’s 6 Favorite TED Talks, From the Mush­room Death Suit to the Vir­tu­al Choir

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

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David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Performance, 2006

in Life, Music | January 10th, 2016

Note: This post was pub­lished on our site less than two weeks ago–December 29, 2015–when we had no idea that David Bowie was in the final days of an 18 month bat­tle with can­cer. In the post, Josh Jones won­dered whether the video fea­tured above would be Bowie’s last live per­for­mance. And, alas, tonight we dis­cov­er that it’s appar­ent­ly so. David Bowie’s offi­cial Twit­ter and Face­book accounts, not to men­tion major news­pa­pers, have just report­ed that David Bowie has died, only two days after his 69th birth­day and the release of his new album Black­star. We’ll have more to say about Bowie, a hero of ours, in the com­ing days. But, for now, we leave you with the sad news and this now his­toric per­for­mance caught on lam­en­ta­bly grainy video. –D.C

The man of a thou­sand hair­cuts, David Bowie has been the van­guard for cre­ative rein­ven­tion for longer than many of his fans have been alive. As soon as he’s made us think he’s exhaust­ed his imag­i­na­tion, he reap­pears with yet anoth­er album, anoth­er look, anoth­er the­atri­cal tour. Except that last bit isn’t like­ly to hap­pen again. We may have seen the end of Bowie the per­former some time ago, accord­ing to such sources as long­time Bowie pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti (who worked with him on 2013’s The Next Day) and British con­cert pro­mot­er John Gid­dings.

“David is one of the best artists I’ve ever worked with,” said Gid­dings in Octo­ber, ”but every time I see him now, before I even speak to him, he goes, ‘I’m not tour­ing.’” Does this rule out the odd one-off appear­ance? Who knows. Noth­ing is for cer­tain with Bowie. But it may well be that the per­for­mance above, a duet of “Changes” with Ali­cia Keys from 2006, rep­re­sents the leg­endary shape shifter’s last gig. (And if so, we hope some bet­ter-qual­i­ty video of it sur­faces.)

Bowie appeared with Keys, Dami­an Mar­ley, and come­di­an Wan­da Sykes at New York’s Ham­mer­stein Ball­room for a fundrais­er and sang Sta­tion to Sta­tion’s “Wild is the Wind” and Lodger’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” in addi­tion to “Changes,” all fit­ting notes to end on, if this is indeed the end of his live per­form­ing career. He had rarely tak­en the stage since his 2004 heart attack dur­ing the Real­i­ty tour, but, Rolling Stone points out, “that didn’t stop him from play­ing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the fol­low­ing year.”

But that was ten years ago. Dur­ing the record­ing of The Next Day, Vis­con­ti report­ed that Bowie insist­ed there would be no live shows, and there weren’t. Now, Bowie’s sur­prised us again with a new album, Black­star, and a ten-minute video, above, that looks like all the para­noid dystopi­an visions in 90s albums like Out­side, Earth­ling, and Hea­then come ter­ri­fy­ing­ly true. I can imag­ine this most recent, per­haps final, entry in the Bowie canon would make for a hell of a stage show, but it looks like he will pass that torch to the younger artists who con­tin­ue to inspire him as he ages grace­ful­ly. Black­star will be released on Jan­u­ary 8th, Bowie’s 69th birth­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979; Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust

Ricky Ger­vais Cre­ates Out­landish Com­e­dy with David Bowie

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

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The Memorial Service & Celebration of “Lemmy” Kilmister, Motörhead Frontman, is Now Streaming Live

in Music | January 9th, 2016

Note: Though the ser­vice came to an end ear­li­er today, it looks like you can now watch a record­ing of the farewell cer­e­mo­ny above. If you make it to the end, you’ll notice that there was an issue with the audio when Dave Grohl began speak­ing. You can hear a slight­ly touched-up ver­sion here.

Just a quick note: “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice is now stream­ing live on Youtube. Click play above. Ian Fras­er Kilmis­ter was an Eng­lish musi­cian, singer and song­writer who found­ed and front­ed the rock band Motör­head. He died on Decem­ber 29th, at the age of 70.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite Introduces America to Underground Films and the Velvet Underground (1965)

in Film, Music, Television | January 6th, 2016


“Not every­one ‘digs’ under­ground movies, but those who do can ‘dig’ ’em here.” Now imag­ine those words spo­ken in the arche­typ­al so-square-it’s-cool con­sum­mate mid­cen­tu­ry news­cast­er voice — or actu­al­ly watch them enun­ci­at­ed in just that man­ner out on the steps of New York’s The Bridge, “one of sev­er­al small the­aters around the coun­try where ‘under­ground’ films are shown.” The report, which aired on CBS Evening News with Wal­ter Cronkite on Decem­ber 31st, 1965, intro­duced to main­stream Amer­i­cans such avant-garde film­mak­ers as Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol — as well as a cer­tain band called the Vel­vet Under­ground.

This six-minute seg­ment spends some time with Piero Helicz­er, film­mak­er, poet, and “once the Jack­ie Coogan of Italy.” As Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Mar­tin Schnei­der writes, “When CBS came a‑callin’ to do its sto­ry, Helicz­er was shoot­ing a 12-minute short called Dirt, fea­tur­ing the Vel­vet Under­ground, and that was the scene Helicz­er hap­pened to be shoot­ing that day. (For some rea­son none of the fel­lows in the band are wear­ing a shirt.)” Schnei­der also quotes Vel­vet Under­ground found­ing mem­ber Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, who cred­its play­ing in Helicz­er’s “hap­pen­ings” with show­ing him the pos­si­bil­i­ties of exper­i­men­tal music: “The path ahead became sud­den­ly clear — I could work on music that was dif­fer­ent from ordi­nary rock & roll since Piero had giv­en us a con­text to per­form.”

I can only imag­ine how the view­ers of fifty years and one week ago must have react­ed to hear­ing these cut­ting-edge film­mak­ers dis­cussing “the nar­ra­tive aspect and the poet­ic aspect” of cin­e­ma, let alone see­ing clips of their works them­selves, right down to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive twen­ty sec­onds of Andy Warhol’s Sleep. It even includes a clip from Brakhage’s Two: Creeley/McClure which must have made more than a few of them won­der if their set had sud­den­ly gone on the blink. But even the most staid of CBS’s audi­ence must have come away with a nov­el idea or two worth think­ing about, such as Brakhage’s stat­ed aim of mak­ing movies “for view­ing in a liv­ing room, rather than in a the­ater.” That, per­haps, they could dig.

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via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

New Wave Music–DEVO, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie, Elvis Costello–Gets Intro­duced to Amer­i­ca by ABC’s TV Show, 20/20 (1979)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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