Watch David Byrne Practice His Dance Moves for Stop Making Sense in Newly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

in Dance, Film, Music | October 19th, 2023

A new 4K restora­tion of Stop Mak­ing Sense debuted last month at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, then opened in the­aters around the world. The pro­mo­tion­al push for this cul­tur­al event start­ed ear­ly (as fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), and has involved the release of rarely-seen sup­ple­men­tary mate­ri­als cho­sen to delight Talk­ing Heads fans. Take the short video above, a com­pi­la­tion of video clips in which David Byrne rehears­es his dance moves in advance of the band’s 1983 Speak­ing in Tongues tour, four of whose shows would be com­bined, with the help of many col­lab­o­ra­tors includ­ing direc­tor Jonathan Demme, into a seam­less, still-beloved musi­cal-cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence.

In a film full of mem­o­rable ele­ments, from the Pablo Fer­ro titles to the lamp to the big suit, Byrne’s dis­tinc­tive way of car­ry­ing him­self stands out. “His wide-eyed stare, jerky move­ments and onstage cool remind­ed many com­men­ta­tors of Antho­ny Perkins, star of Hitchcock’s movie Psy­cho,” Col­in Larkin writes of ear­li­er Heads shows in The Ency­clo­pe­dia of Pop­u­lar Music.

This elab­o­rate awk­ward­ness, so thor­ough­ly delib­er­ate-look­ing that it comes around the oth­er side to suavi­ty, may seem like a nat­ur­al expres­sion of his artis­tic per­son­al­i­ty. But as revealed by the video he shot of him­self try­ing out dif­fer­ent chore­o­graph­ic ideas — and even more so by the full 25-minute ver­sion, which fea­tures not just numer­ous VHS glitch­es but also the band’s back­up singers — it took tri­al and error to devel­op.

“The film’s peak moments come through Byrne’s sim­ple phys­i­cal pres­ence,” Roger Ebert wrote of Stop Mak­ing Sense upon its ini­tial release in 1984. “He jogs in place with his side­men; he runs around the stage; he seems so hap­py to be alive and mak­ing music,” and even “serves as a reminder of how sour and weary and strung-out many rock bands have become.” Though, when rock bands may be less strung-out but are cer­tain­ly no less weary, his restored per­for­mance is remind­ing count­less Heads enthu­si­asts why they got into the band in the first place — and no doubt giv­ing hereto­fore unini­ti­at­ed new gen­er­a­tions a few para­noical­ly exu­ber­ant, rigid­ly unin­hib­it­ed, and smooth­ly un-smooth moves to try out on the dance floor them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

David Byrne Plays Sev­en Char­ac­ters & Inter­views Him­self in Fun­ny Pro­mo for Stop Mak­ing Sense

How Jonathan Demme Put Human­i­ty Into His Films: From The Silence of the Lambs to Stop Mak­ing Sense

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

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

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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The Physics of Playing a Guitar Visualized: Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” Seen from the Inside of a Guitar

in Music, Physics | October 6th, 2023

Give it a chance, you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed. While the first 30 sec­onds of the video above may resem­ble an ama­teur iPhone prank, it soon becomes some­thing unex­pect­ed­ly enchanting—a visu­al­iza­tion of the physics of music in real-time. The Youtu­ber places his phone inside an acoustic gui­tar, then plays Metallica’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters” against a back­drop of clouds and blue sky. Due to what Twist­ed Sifter iden­ti­fies as the phone camera’s rolling shut­ter effect, the actu­al waves of the vibrat­ing gui­tar strings are as clear­ly vis­i­ble as if they were on an oscil­lo­scope.

The com­par­i­son is an apt one, since we might use exact­ly such a device to mea­sure and visu­al­ize the acoustic prop­er­ties of stringed instru­ments. “A gui­tar string”—writes physi­cist and musi­cian Sam Hokin in his short explanation—is a com­mon exam­ple of a string fixed at both ends which is elas­tic and can vibrate.

The vibra­tions of such a string are called stand­ing waves, and they sat­is­fy the rela­tion­ship between wave­length and fre­quen­cy that comes from the def­i­n­i­tion of waves.”

Those with a physics back­ground might appre­ci­ate The Physics Class­room’s tech­ni­cal descrip­tion of gui­tar string vibra­tion, with sev­er­al tech­ni­cal dia­grams. For oth­ers, the video above by Youtube physics teacher Doc Shus­ter may be a bet­ter for­mat. Shus­ter explains such enti­ties as nodes and antin­odes (you’ll have to tell me if you get any of his jokes). And at about 2:25, he digress­es from his mus­ings on these phe­nom­e­na to talk about gui­tar strings specif­i­cal­ly, which “make one note for a giv­en tight­ness of the string, a giv­en weight of the string, and a giv­en length of the string.”

This is, of course, why chang­ing the length of the string by press­ing down on it changes the note the string pro­duces, and it applies to all stringed instru­ments and the piano. Oth­er fac­tors, says Shus­ter, like the body of the gui­tar, use of pick­ups, etc., have a much small­er effect on the fre­quen­cy of a gui­tar string than tight­ness, weight, and length. We see how the com­plex­i­ty of dif­fer­ent stand­ing wave forms relates to har­mon­ics (or over­tones). And when we return to the Metal­li­ca video at the top, we’ll have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how the strings vibrate dif­fer­ent­ly as they pro­duce dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies at dif­fer­ent har­mon­ics.

Shuster’s video quick­ly laps­es into cal­cu­lus, and you may or may not be lost by his expla­na­tions. The Physics Class­room has some excel­lent, free tuto­ri­als on var­i­ous types of waves, pitch fre­quen­cy, vibra­tion, and res­o­nance. Per­haps all we need to keep in mind to under­stand the very basics of the sci­ence is this, from their intro­duc­tion: “As a gui­tar string vibrates, it sets sur­round­ing air mol­e­cules into vibra­tional motion. The fre­quen­cy at which these air mol­e­cules vibrate is equal to the fre­quen­cy of vibra­tion of the gui­tar string.” The action of the string pro­duces an equal and oppo­site reac­tion in the air, which then cre­ates “a pres­sure wave which trav­els out­ward from its source.” The pres­sure waves strike our eardrums, our brains inter­pret sound, and there you have it.

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metal­li­ca Plays Antarc­ti­ca, Set­ting a World Record as the First Band to Play All 7 Con­ti­nents: Watch the Full Con­cert Online

Jazz Drum­mer Lar­nell Lewis Hears Metallica’s “Enter Sand­man” for the Very First Time, Then Plays It Near-Per­fect­ly

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Free Online Physics Cours­es

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

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A BBC Science Show Introduces the Moog Synthesizer in 1969

in History, Music, Television | October 4th, 2023

In the fall of 1969, there were still a great many peo­ple who’d nev­er heard a syn­the­siz­er. And even among those who had, few would have known how its unfa­mil­iar sounds were actu­al­ly made. Hence the impor­tance of the seg­ment from the BBC pro­gram Tomor­row’s World above, which intro­duced the Moog syn­the­siz­er (orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by Robert Moog) to view­ers across Britain. Hav­ing come on the mar­ket four years ear­li­er, it would go on to change the sound of music — a project, in fact, on which it had already made seri­ous inroads, with such Moog show­cas­es as the Doors’ “Strange Days” and Wendy Car­los’ Switched-on Bach hav­ing already become cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na unto them­selves.

Man­fred Mann would also do his part to make an impact with the Moog. Call­ing him “the Moog pio­neer of rock music,” Fideli­ty mag­a­zine’s Hans-Jür­gen Schaal writes that “Mann lent his instru­ment out to be used to pro­duce the first Moog solo on a record by Emer­son Lake & Palmer. He even did the key­board work him­self on the first Moog solo by Uri­ah Heep.”

It is Michael Vick­ers, a mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist vet­er­an of Man­n’s epony­mous band, who demon­strates the Moog for Tomor­row’s World by play­ing a vari­ety of melodies through it on a key­board — though not before plug­ging in a series of patch cords to cre­ate just the right elec­tron­ic sound.

Whether or not the BBC view­ers of 1969 had ever heard any­thing like the Moog before, they almost cer­tain­ly had­n’t seen any­thing like it before. Despite look­ing less like a musi­cal instru­ment than like a piece of mil­i­tary hard­ware, it actu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed, like most tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, a step for­ward in ease of use. As pre­sen­ter Derek Coop­er puts it, the Moog “pro­duces sounds in a mat­ter of min­utes which would nor­mal­ly take radio­phon­ic experts with their com­pli­cat­ed equip­ment,” like the BBC’s own Daphne Oram or Delia Der­byshire, “days of work and mul­ti­ple re-record­ings to achieve.” Not that the aver­age hob­by­ist could afford the Moog seen in this broad­cast back then — nor, for that mat­ter, can the aver­age hob­by­ist afford the $35,000 a faith­ful re-cre­ation of it costs now.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bob Moog Demon­strates His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Moog Mod­el D Syn­the­siz­er

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Hear Glenn Gould Cel­e­brate the Moog Syn­the­siz­er & Wendy Car­los’ Pio­neer­ing Album Switched-On Bach (1968)

Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Demon­strates the Moog Syn­the­siz­er on the BBC (1970)

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

Watch Com­pos­er Wendy Car­los Demo an Orig­i­nal Moog Syn­the­siz­er (1989)

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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Stream Hundreds of Hours of Studio Ghibli Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Simply Relax: My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away & More

in Animation, Film, Music | September 26th, 2023

The Boy and the Heron, the lat­est fea­ture from mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, opened in Japan this past sum­mer. In that it marks his lat­est emer­gence from his sup­posed “retire­ment,” we could label it not just as late Miyaza­ki, but per­haps even “post-late” Miyaza­ki. But the film nev­er­the­less shares sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­ties with his ear­li­er work, not least a score com­posed by Joe Hisaishi. Since Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind — which opened in 1984, even before the foun­da­tion of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li — Hisaishi’s music has done near­ly as much to estab­lish the sen­si­bil­i­ty of Miyaza­k­i’s films as their lav­ish, imag­i­na­tive ani­ma­tion, and you can stream hun­dreds of hours of it with this Youtube playlist.

Each of the playlist’s 121 two-hour videos offers musi­cal selec­tions from a mix of Ghi­b­li movies, includ­ing Miyaza­ki favorites like My Neigh­bor Totoro, Por­co Rosso, and Spir­it­ed Away, and also the works of oth­er direc­tors: Yoshi­fu­mi Kondō’s Whis­per of the Heart, Hiro­masa Yonebayashi’s Arri­et­ty,  Gorō Miyaza­k­i’s From Up on Pop­py Hill.

If you’ve seen those pic­tures, these qui­et, often min­i­mal ren­di­tions of their music will sure­ly bring their ani­mat­ed fan­tasies right back to mind. Even if you haven’t, they can still ful­fill the func­tion promised by the videos’ titles of set­ting a mood con­ducive to study, work, or sim­ple relax­ation.

So beloved are Hisaishi’s scores, for Miyaza­ki and oth­ers (most notably come­di­an-auteur Takeshi Kitano), that it’s pos­si­ble to know the music long before you’ve seen the movies. And even in per­for­mances con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent from the ver­sions heard on the actu­al sound­tracks, they always sound imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able as Hisaishi’s work. Shaped by an eclec­tic set of influ­ences (born Mamoru Fuji­sawa, he took on his pro­fes­sion­al name as an homage to Quin­cy Jones), he devel­oped a com­po­si­tion­al style nei­ther strict­ly East­ern nor West­ern. The same can be said about Ghi­b­li movies them­selves, which often pos­sess both fairy-tale Euro­pean set­tings and Japan­ese philo­soph­i­cal under­pin­nings. Wher­ev­er you place your­self on the cul­tur­al map, you’d do well to make their music the sound­track of your own life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Calm Down & Study with Relax­ing Piano, Jazz & Harp Cov­ers of Music from Hayao Miyaza­ki Films

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

The Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Cel­e­brat­ed in a Glo­ri­ous Con­cert Arranged by Film Com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

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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“Doctor, My Eyes” Performed by Jackson Browne & Musicians Around the World

in Music | September 14th, 2023

The music col­lec­tive Play­ing for Change is back. This time, they have Jack­son Browne per­form­ing his 1970s hit, “Doc­tor, My Eyes,” sup­port­ed by musi­cians from Brazil, Jamaica, India, Puer­to Rico, France and beyond. Browne is also joined by Leland Sklar and Russ Kunkel, who played on the orig­i­nal 1972 song, and they still sound amaz­ing. Enjoy.…

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 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

“When The Lev­ee Breaks” Per­formed by John Paul Jones & Musi­cians Around the World

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

 

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The 50 Greatest Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

in Film, Music | September 14th, 2023

It’s not an espe­cial­ly straight­for­ward mat­ter to pin down when music videos first emerged. In a sense, the Bea­t­les were already mak­ing them back in the late six­ties, but then, MTV, where the music video as we know it rapid­ly took shape, did­n’t start broad­cast­ing until 1981. The very first video aired on the chan­nel, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Bug­gles, had actu­al­ly been made almost two years ear­li­er, in 1979. But that did­n’t stop it from doing a good deal to define the form that would, itself, define the pop­u­lar cul­ture of the eight­ies. Nor did it stop it from appear­ing, 40-odd years lat­er, on The AV Club’s list of the 50 great­est music videos of all time. They’re view­able as a Youtube playlist here, or you can stream them all above.

Not that it ranks espe­cial­ly high. In fact, it comes in at num­ber 50, lead­ing into a selec­tion of videos from artists pop­u­lar in a range of sub­se­quent peri­ods: Talk­ing Heads, George Michael, Nir­vana, LL Cool J, Brit­ney Spears, Tay­lor Swift. As the artis­tic ambi­tions of the music video grew, it reflect­ed not just a song’s cul­tur­al moment, but put sev­er­al such moments in play at once.

In Son­ic Youth’s “Teen Age Riot,” “a clip of Elvis Pres­ley is fol­lowed by space-jazz pio­neer Sun Ra; a snatch of under­ground com­ic book auteur Har­vey Pekar on Late Night with David Let­ter­man flits by.” For the “high water mark for kitschy 1990s irony” that is Weez­er’s “Bud­dy Hol­ly,” “Spike Jonze sets the video in the 1950s… but it’s the ’50s as seen on Hap­py Days, a sit­com that paint­ed a rosy pic­ture of the Eisen­how­er years.”

Jonze also draws inspi­ra­tion from sev­en­ties tele­vi­sion for the Beast­ie Boys’ “Sab­o­tage,” a trib­ute to the cop shows of that era that makes up for an appar­ent lack of bud­get with sheer humor and ener­gy (a reminder of the direc­tor’s ori­gin in skate­board­ing videos). I remem­ber my mil­len­ni­al peers get­ting excit­ed about that video in the 90s, as, in the 200s, they’d get excit­ed about Michel Gondry’s all-LEGO ani­ma­tion of the White Stripes’ “Fell in Love with a Girl.” This was rough­ly when Brit­ney Spears was break­ing through to super­star­dom, thanks not least to videos like “Baby One More Time,” which com­bines the slick­ness of teen pop with the chintz of teen life. “The idea for Britney’s icon­ic school­girl uni­form and pig­tails came from the singer her­self: direc­tor Nigel Dick fol­lowed her lead, then had wardrobe buy every stitch of cloth­ing in the video from Kmart.”

This was also before Youtube, whose ascent made the music video more viable than it had been in years. The AV Club’s list does include a few videos from the past decade and a half— Bey­on­cé’s “Sin­gle Ladies,” Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” — but on the whole, it under­scores that there’s nev­er been anoth­er time like the eight­ies. That decade that went from “Ash­es to Ash­es” to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “Relax,” “Mon­ey for Noth­ing,” “Walk This Way,” “Take on Me,” and “Rhythm Nation” — to say noth­ing of insti­tu­tions like Duran Duran, Madon­na, and Michael Jack­son, all of whom make the list more than once, but none of whom take its top spot. That goes to Peter Gabriel, whose stop-motion fan­ta­sia “Sledge­ham­mer” is MTV’s all-time most-played music video. “If any­one wants to try and copy this video, good luck to them,” Gabriel once said. He meant its painstak­ing pro­duc­tion, but he could just as eas­i­ly have been talk­ing about the place it attained in pop cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Two Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

Michel Gondry’s Finest Music Videos for Björk, Radio­head & More: The Last of the Music Video Gods

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

Hans Zim­mer Was in the First-Ever Video Aired on MTV, The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star”

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & 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 or on Face­book.

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All This and World War II: The Forgotten 1976 Film That Mashed Up WWII Film Clips & Beatles Covers by Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Keith Moon & More

in Film, History, Music | September 6th, 2023

You may not hear the term mash-up very often these days, but the con­cept itself isn’t exact­ly the ear­ly-two-thou­sands fad that it might imply. It seems that, as soon as tech­nol­o­gy made it pos­si­ble for enthu­si­asts to com­bine osten­si­bly unre­lat­ed pieces of media — the more incon­gru­ous, the bet­ter — they start­ed doing so: take the syn­chro­niza­tion of The Wiz­ard of Oz and Pink Floy­d’s The Dark Side of the Moon, known as The Dark Side of the Rain­bow. But even back in the sev­en­ties, the art of the pro­to-mash-up was­n’t prac­ticed only by rogue pro­jec­tion­ists in altered states of mind, as evi­denced by the 1976 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox Release All This and World War II, which assem­bled real and dra­ma­tized footage of that epoch-mak­ing geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict with Bea­t­les cov­ers.

Upon its release, All This and World War II “was received so harsh­ly it was pulled from the­aters after two weeks and nev­er spo­ken of again,” as Kei­th Phipps writes at The Reveal.

Those who actu­al­ly seek it out and watch it today will find that it gets off to an even less aus­pi­cious start than they might imag­ine: “A clip of Char­lie Chan (Sid­ney Tol­er) skep­ti­cal­ly receiv­ing the news of Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ dec­la­ra­tion in the 1939 film City in Dark­ness gives way to a cov­er of ‘Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour’ by ’70s soft-rock giants Ambrosia. Accom­pa­ny­ing the song: footage of swasti­ka ban­ners, Ger­man sol­diers march­ing in for­ma­tion, and a cli­mac­tic appear­ance from a smil­ing Adolf Hitler, by impli­ca­tion the orga­niz­er of the ‘mys­tery tour’ that was World War II.”

The oth­er record­ing artists of the sev­en­ties enlist­ed to sup­ply new ver­sions of well-known Bea­t­les num­bers include the Bee Gees, Elton John, the Who’s Kei­th Moon, and Peter Gabriel, names that assured the sound­track album (which you can hear on this Youtube playlist) a much greater suc­cess than the film itself, with its fever-dream mix­ture of news­reels Axis and Allied with 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox war-pic­ture clips.

As for what every­one involved was think­ing in the first place, Phipps quotes an expla­na­tion that sound­track pro­duc­er Lou Reizn­er once pro­vid­ed to UPI: “It would have been easy to take the music of the era and dub it to match the action on screen. But we’d have lost the young audi­ence. We want all age groups to see this pic­ture because we think it makes a state­ment about the absur­di­ty of war. It is the defin­i­tive anti-war film” — or, as Phipps puts it, the defin­i­tive “cult film in search of cult.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

The Atom­ic Café: The Cult Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary Made Entire­ly Out of Nuclear Weapons Pro­pa­gan­da from the Cold War (1982)

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

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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Jimmy Buffett (RIP) Performs His New Song “Margaritaville,” Live in 1978: The Birth of a Song That Later Became a Business Empire

in Business, Life, Music | September 2nd, 2023

Jim­my Buf­fett wrote “Mar­gar­i­taville” in 1977.  It end­ed up being his only song to reach the pop Top 10. But the song car­ried him for the next 45 years. When you think Mar­gar­i­taville, you think of an easy-breezy way of life. And that sim­ple idea infused the brand of Buf­fet­t’s Mar­gar­i­taville busi­ness empire. Between the song’s birth and the singer’s death this week­end, Buf­fett cre­at­ed a Mar­gar­i­taville busi­ness empire that includ­ed bars, restau­rants, casi­nos, beach resorts, retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, cruis­es, pack­aged foods, appar­el, footwear, and beyond. This spring, Buf­fett improb­a­bly made Forbes’ list of bil­lion­aires. Above, you can watch a young Jim­my Buf­fet per­form “Mar­gar­i­taville” in 1978, right at the begin­ning of the song’s long jour­ney from hit, to brand, to com­mer­cial empire.

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