Watch the Jackson 5’s First Appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1969)

in Animation, Music, Television | November 8th, 2021

Who dis­cov­ered the Jack­son 5?

Motown founder Berry Gordy?

Empress of Soul Gladys Knight?

Diva Diana Ross?

Every­one in atten­dance for Ama­teur Night at the Apol­lo on August 13, 1967?

For many unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­cans, the answer may as well have been tele­vi­sion host Ed Sul­li­van, who intro­duced the “sen­sa­tion­al group” of five young broth­ers from Gary, Indi­ana to view­ers in Decem­ber 1969, two years after their Ama­teur Night tri­umph. Thir­teen years ear­li­er, a wall of sound ema­nat­ing from a live in-stu­dio audi­ence of teenage girls told Sullivan’s home view­ers that anoth­er young sen­sa­tion — Elvis Pres­ley — must be some­thing spe­cial.

The Jack­son 5 need­ed no such help.

While there are many close-ups of their fresh young faces, the con­trol room wise­ly chose to zoom out much of the time, in appre­ci­a­tion of the broth­ers’ pre­ci­sion chore­og­ra­phy.

The bright­est star was the youngest, eleven-year-old Michael, tak­ing lead vocals in pur­ple fedo­ra and fringed vest on a cov­er of Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone’s “Stand.”

Jack­ie, Tito, Jer­maine, and Mar­lon pro­vide sup­port for a bit of hokum that posi­tions Michael at the cen­ter of an ele­men­tary school romance, by way of intro­duc­tion to a full throat­ed cov­er of Smokey Robinson’s “Who’s Lov­ing You”:

We toast­ed our love dur­ing milk break. I gave her my cook­ies! We fell out dur­ing fin­ger­paint­ing. 

Author Carvell Wal­lace reflects on this moment in his 2015 New York­er review of Steve Knopper’s biog­ra­phy MJ: The Genius of Michael Jack­son:

Halfway through, he for­gets his lines and freezes, look­ing back at his old­er broth­ers for help. It’s an alarm­ing­ly vul­ner­a­ble moment, one only pos­si­ble in the era of live tele­vi­sion. You feel bad for him. It sud­den­ly doesn’t seem right that a kid should be made to per­form live in front of an entire coun­try. Yet he some­how finds his way back and stum­bles through.

When the music starts, we see some­thing else entire­ly. The first note he sings is as con­fi­dent, sure, and pur­pose­ful as any adult could ever be. He trans­forms from ner­vous child at a tal­ent show into time­less embod­i­ment of long­ing. Not only does he sing exact­ly on key but he appears to sing from the very bot­tom of his heart. He stares into the cam­era, shakes his head, and blinks back tears in per­fect imi­ta­tion of a six­ties soul man. And it feels, for a moment, as though there are two dif­fer­ent beings here. One is a child—a smart kid, to be sure, and cute, but not more spe­cial than any oth­er child. He is sub­ject to the same laws of life—pain, age, con­fu­sion, fear—as we all are. The oth­er being seems to be a spir­it of sorts, one who knows only the truest expres­sion of human feel­ing. And this spir­it appears to have ran­dom­ly inhab­it­ed the body of this par­tic­u­lar mor­tal kid. In so doing, it has sen­tenced him to a life­time of inde­scrib­able enchant­ment and con­sum­mate suf­fer­ing.

Michael’s explo­sive per­for­mance of the Jack­son 5’s first nation­al sin­gle, “I Want You Back,” released just two months before their Sul­li­van Show appear­ance, gives us that “spir­it” in full force.

It’s also not hard to imag­ine that the broth­ers’ thrilling­ly exe­cut­ed chore­og­ra­phy is the result of a lit­er­al­ly pun­ish­ing rehearsal reg­i­men, a fac­tor of the King of Pop’s trou­bled lega­cy.

The Sul­li­van Show appear­ance ensured that there would be no stop­ping this train. Five months lat­er, when the Jack­sons returned to the Sul­li­van Show, “I Want You Back” had sold over a mil­lion copies, as had “ABC,” which they per­formed as a med­ley.

Boy­hood is fleet­ing, mak­ing Jack­son­ma­nia a carpe diem type sit­u­a­tion.

The peri­od from 1969 to 1972 saw an onslaught of Jack­son 5‑related merch and a funky Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon whose pilot tart­ed up the Diana Ross ori­gin sto­ry with an escaped pet snake.

It was good while it last­ed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Elvis’ Three Appear­ances on The Ed Sul­li­van Show: Watch His­to­ry in the Mak­ing and from the Waist Up (1956)

The Ori­gins of Michael Jackson’s Moon­walk: Vin­tage Footage of Cab Cal­loway, Sam­my Davis Jr., Fred Astaire & More

The Cho­rus Project Fea­tures Teenagers Per­form­ing Hits by the Kinks, David Byrne, the Jack­son 5 & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Wunderkind Musician Nandi Bushell Pays Tribute to Charlie Watts, Playing All of the Tracks on “Gimme Shelter”

in Music | November 7th, 2021

We’ve fea­tured 11-year-old Nan­di Bushell here before. Per­haps you’ll recall her epic drum bat­tle with Dave Grohl. Today she’s back, pay­ing trib­ute to Char­lie Watts and per­form­ing the indi­vid­ual tracks on the Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter.” First comes the gui­tar; then the bass, per­cus­sion and vocals; and next the drums–all the while she’s hav­ing fun. And you will too. Enjoy.

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.

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 Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Watch an Epic Drum Bat­tle, Pit­ting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

Mer­ry Clay­ton Tells the Sto­ry of Her Amaz­ing Back­ing Vocal on The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shel­ter”

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The Awe-Inspiring But Tragic Story of Africa’s Festival In The Desert (2001–2012)

in Music | November 3rd, 2021

“Mali’s gifts to the world of music are lav­ish and leg­endary,” Nenad Georgievs­ki writes at All About Jazz, though the world knew lit­tle about Malian music until Amer­i­can musi­cians began part­ner­ing with play­ers from West Africa. In the 1980s, Ste­vie Won­der began tour­ing with Amadou and Mari­am, help­ing to pop­u­lar­ize their form of Malian blues. In 1994, Ry Cood­er record­ed and released Talk­ing Tim­buk­tu with Malian gui­tarist Ali Far­ka Touré, whose “desert blues… was uncon­cerned with bound­aries,” freely mix­ing lan­guages and instru­men­ta­tion with play­ing that drew com­par­isons to John Lee Hook­er.

While audi­ences around the world encoun­tered West African music as “world music” on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, fans on the con­ti­nent knew it as home­grown tra­di­tion­al sounds and con­tem­po­rary African rock and pop. In 2001 they got the chance to gath­er for the first annu­al “Fes­ti­val in the Desert” (Fes­ti­val au désert) in Tin Essako, a rur­al vil­lage miles from the high­way, as the Band­splain­ing video above tells it. This brief explain­er of the Festival’s impact and its trag­ic end in 2012 begins with ref­er­ences to Bono. But his role in the sto­ry is rather small.

More cen­tral are the Tuareg, or Kel Tamashek, nomadic peo­ple of Berber ori­gin spread across sev­er­al West African coun­tries whose musi­cians have refined the sound of desert rock and turned it into rebel music. The sound was born in strug­gle, notes World of Music, in refugee camps and bat­tle­grounds. The band Tinari­wen — who formed in 1979 and have become “glob­al musi­cal nomads” since the first Fes­ti­val —  met in “mil­i­tary camps set up in Libya by Colonel Ghaddafi to train young Tamashek men how to fight. Dur­ing the [Tuareg] rebel­lion Tinari­wen became the pied pipers of the rebel move­ment, and their songs gal­va­nized the young dis­pos­sessed Tamashek youth.” Then they turned to seek­ing peace at the Fes­ti­val in 2001.

Put togeth­er by Tuareg orga­niz­er Man­ny Ansar, the Fes­ti­val was “based on a cen­turies-old tra­di­tion,” notes Pea­cePrints, “a meet­ing where the Tuareg tribes of the region meet once a year to play and share music.” By con­trast, the mod­ern Fes­ti­val includ­ed eth­nic and trib­al groups from all over the coun­try, and the world, and “focused on bridg­ing the gap between tra­di­tion and moder­ni­ty and also between local cus­tom and inter­na­tion­al come­to­geth­er.” It was the only fes­ti­val of its kind in Africa and attract­ed thou­sands of African atten­dees and a few hun­dred vis­i­tors each year.

Trag­i­cal­ly, the fes­ti­val came to an end in 2012 when Tuareg rebels took con­trol of North­ern Mali, renam­ing it Aza­wad, and were over­run by Islam­ic sep­a­ratist groups. The coun­try was placed under Shari­ah Law, and Ansar was exiled to Burk­i­na Faso for a time. Out­side of his own coun­try, he con­tin­ued to pro­mote peace by co-found­ing a trav­el­ing fes­ti­val called Car­a­van cul­turelle pour la paix.

The artists rep­re­sent­ed at Fes­ti­val in the Desert tell sto­ries of the fusion of tra­di­tion and moder­ni­ty, of bru­tal con­flict and the hope for peace through the shar­ing and fus­ing of cul­tures. Mali may be one of the poor­est coun­tries in the world when it comes to mate­r­i­al resources, but it is one of the most musi­cal­ly rich. “Mali has many peo­ple, liv­ing in their dis­tricts,” say one musi­cian in the trail­er above for the doc­u­men­tary film The Last Song Before the War, “but every­one comes togeth­er in this fes­ti­val.”

Or, at least, they did until 2012. The film­mak­ers unwit­ting­ly cap­tured the very last Fes­ti­val in the Desert before it was shut down by mil­i­tants who “ruined the mate­r­i­al, plun­dered the stage, burned instru­ments,” says Ansar. “I had to go on.… It was no longer a ques­tion of fes­tiv­i­ty, but about the sur­vival of a cul­ture.” See his state­ment at the time in the “Fes­ti­val in the Desert — In Exile” video fur­ther up. For a total­ly dif­fer­ent view of the Fes­ti­val, read for­mer MTV exec Tom Fre­ston’s account of trav­el­ing there with Jim­my Buf­fett, Chris Black­well (founder of Island Records), and a hand­ful of oth­er indus­try big­wigs scout­ing the next West African sen­sa­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Rad­i­cal Niger­ian Band­leader, Polit­i­cal Hero, and Cre­ator of Afrobeat

Zam­rock: An Intro­duc­tion to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psy­che­del­ic Rock Scene

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

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

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Watch Wes Anderson’s Animated Music Video for The French Dispatch, Featuring a Track by Jarvis Cocker

in Animation, Film, Music | November 3rd, 2021

The French Dis­patch came out near­ly two weeks ago, after hav­ing been pushed back more than a year by COVID-19. But delay­ing the release of a Wes Ander­son movie sure­ly counts among the least regret­table harms of the pan­dem­ic, which has caused mil­lions of deaths world­wide. Among the lives lost was that of Daniel Bevilac­qua, known in France as the chan­son singer Christophe. Set in that coun­try — and more specif­i­cal­ly, the fic­tion­al city of Ennui-sur-Blasé — in the 1960s, The French Dis­patch fea­tures a rein­ter­pre­ta­tion of Christophe’s 1965 hit “Aline” that now plays as some­thing of a trib­ute to the late pop-cul­tur­al icon. Sung by Pulp front­man Jarvis Cock­er, it comes accom­pa­nied by the Ander­son-direct­ed ani­mat­ed music video above.

Cock­er has worked with Ander­son before. In the direc­tor’s 2009 stop-motion adap­ta­tion of Roald Dahl’s The Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox he pro­vid­ed the voice of a singing farmer named Petey; in The French Dis­patch he does the same for a pop star called Tip-Top, and has even record­ed a full-length album in char­ac­ter.

Released on the very same day as The French Dis­patch, Chan­sons d’En­nui Tip-Top con­tains a dozen cov­ers of songs orig­i­nal­ly pop­u­lar­ized by the likes of Serge Gains­bourg, Brigitte Bar­dot, Jacques Dutronc, and Françoise Hardy. (Atten­tive cinephiles, the core audi­ence for all things Ander­son, will also note the pres­ence on the track list of Claude Channes’ “Mao Mao,” first heard in Jean-Luc Godard­’s La Chi­noise.)

Chan­sons d’En­nui Tip-Top exudes the retro-mind­ed Cock­er’s love of 1960s French pop music, just as The French Dis­patch exudes Ander­son­’s love of… well, every­thing Ander­son loves, much of which appears in the “Aline” music video. Its metic­u­lous­ly hand-drawn look comes from Javi Aznarez, who’d orig­i­nal­ly been hired to apply his art to the sets of the film itself. Fol­low­ing Tip-Top as he dances through an elab­o­rate two-dimen­sion­al ren­di­tion of Ennui-sur-Blasé, it intro­duces not only the set­ting (in a stark cut­away man­ner rem­i­nis­cent of The Life Aquat­ic) but all the major char­ac­ters and the actors who play them. Owen Wil­son, Anjel­i­ca Hus­ton, Edward Nor­ton, Bill Mur­ray: the gang, it seems, is all here — “here” being a cer­tain idea of post­war France best real­ized, per­haps, by imag­i­na­tions like Ander­son and Cock­er’s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son Releas­es the Offi­cial Trail­er for His New Film, The French Dis­patch: Watch It Online

Watch the New Trail­er for Wes Anderson’s Stop-Motion Film Isle of Dogs, Inspired by Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Wes Anderson’s Ani­mat­ed Books

Wes Anderson’s Shorts Films & Com­mer­cials: A Playlist of 8 Short Ander­son­ian Works

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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Behold 84 Great Novels Reinterpreted as Modernist Postage Stamps

in Design, Education, K-12, Literature, Music | November 2nd, 2021

Ali John­son and Jim Quail of Liv­er­pool-based design stu­dio Dorothy had a hit with their music-based graph­ics, which recast sem­i­nal alter­na­tive, psy­che­del­ic, elec­tron­ic, and post-punk albums as over­sized postage stamps.

Now, they’ve turned their atten­tion and knack for high­ly con­densed visu­al respons­es to the realms of lit­er­a­ture.

Their Mod­ern Clas­sics col­lec­tion, above, syn­the­sizes 42 titles into some­thing emblem­at­ic and essen­tial.

How many have you read?

How many would you be able to iden­ti­fy based on image alone?

It’s easy to grasp why the hori­zon fig­ures promi­nent­ly in On The Road, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Road.

And under­stand­ably, the eyes have it when it comes to 1984, A Clock­work Orange, and Slaugh­ter­house-Five.

Else­where, the visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions cre­ate con­nec­tions that may take read­ers by sur­prise.

(Stay tuned for a mas­ter’s the­sis that teas­es out the­mat­ic par­al­lels between The Col­or Purple’s quilts and Hold­en Caulfield’s red hunt­ing hat in The Catch­er in the Rye.)

Accord­ing to John­son, she and Quail, avid read­ers both, fell out sev­er­al times over which titles to include (and, by exten­sion, exclude).

Eng­lish teach­ers at mid­dle and high school lev­el will rejoice at the num­ber of syl­labus favorites that made the cut.

Poten­tial stamp-themed cre­ative assign­ments abound.

The conch may be an obvi­ous choice for Lord of the Flies, but what of The Great Gats­by’s green light?

Why not the eyes of Doc­tor T. J. Eck­le­burg?

A swim­ming pool?

Or one of those beau­ti­ful shirts?

Dis­cuss!

Then make your own stamp!

Stu­dents are far less like­ly to be con­ver­sant in the 42 ear­li­er works com­pris­ing Dorothy’s lit­er­ary Clas­sics stamps, though musi­cal and movie adap­ta­tions of Lit­tle Women, Drac­u­la, and Les Mis­er­ables should pro­vide a toe­hold.

Our igno­rance is such, we may need to reread Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jane Eyre … or at least Google the sig­nif­i­cance of a spoon and all those orange and red tri­an­gles.

(Back in our pre-dig­i­tal youth, Cliff’s Notes were the pre­ferred Philis­tine option…)

Dorothy’s stamp prints of Clas­sics and Mod­ern Clas­sics are avail­able for pur­chase on their web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Good Movies as Old Books: 100 Films Reimag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers

157 Ani­mat­ed Min­i­mal­ist Mid-Cen­tu­ry Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers Dur­ing Our Trou­bled Times: “Under Pres­sure,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” “Shel­ter from the Storm” & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Hear Brian Eno’s Contribution to the Soundtrack of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

in Film, Music, Sci Fi | November 2nd, 2021

Though released just a few weeks ago, Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune seems already to have gar­nered more crit­i­cal acclaim than David Lynch’s 1984 adap­ta­tion of the same mate­r­i­al. This com­par­i­son is, of course, unfair: Lynch was work­ing under dif­fer­ent con­di­tions in a dif­fer­ent time, not to men­tion with a marked­ly dif­fer­ent cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. And in fact, Lynch’s ver­sion of the ambi­tious, saga-launch­ing nov­el by Frank Her­bert does have its fans, or at least view­ers will­ing to praise cer­tain of its aspects. Lovers of 1980s music, for exam­ple, val­ue its score com­posed by the vir­tu­osic rock band Toto — with the excep­tion, that is, of a track from Bri­an Eno, Roger Eno, and Daniel Lanois.

Bri­an Eno in par­tic­u­lar is cred­it­ed with pop­u­lar­iz­ing ambi­ent music, and “Prophe­cy Theme,” heard on the Dune sound­track album as well as in the film itself, con­jures up an atmos­phere as effec­tive­ly as any oth­er piece of his work in the genre. “David flew me to Los Ange­les to see Dune,” Eno recalls in a New York Times inter­view about his recent­ly released com­pi­la­tion Bri­an Eno (Film Music, 1976–2020), which includes the track.

“It wasn’t fin­ished then. And I don’t know whether his inten­tion or his hope was that I would do the whole sound­track, but I didn’t want to, any­way. It was a huge project, and I just didn’t feel like doing it. But I did feel like mak­ing one piece for it, so that’s what I did.”

Dune was indeed a for­mi­da­ble under­tak­ing, and one that ulti­mate­ly proved too big for Lynch. Some fans would argue, even after the suc­cess­ful first install­ment from Vil­leneuve, that it’s too big for any film­mak­er. But the world Her­bert cre­at­ed, one both sweep­ing and uncom­mon­ly detailed, has inspired many a cre­ator to pro­duce impres­sive work for projects both real­ized and unre­al­ized. Per­haps it counts as a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty that the lat­est Dune film, with its appar­ent clean-slate approach to pre­vi­ous attempts at adap­ta­tion, did­n’t com­mis­sion a score from Eno, whose sig­na­ture son­ic tex­tures could nice­ly have com­pli­ment­ed Vil­leneu­ve’s instinct for the sub­lime. But then, a stu­dio can’t go far wrong with Hans Zim­mer either.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Hans Zimmer’s Exper­i­men­tal Score for the New Dune Film

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

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

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

Bri­an Eno Reveals His Favorite Film Sound­tracks

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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Watch the Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up” Music Video Re-Enacted by Robots

in Music, Technology | November 1st, 2021

When Microsoft released Win­dows 95, they did­n’t skimp on the pub­lic­i­ty. Their pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for the oper­at­ing sys­tem even includ­ed tele­vi­sion spots sound­tracked with the Rolling Stones’ hit “Start Me Up.” The lyrics of its cho­rus neat­ly suit­ed the prod­uct, which came with a re-engi­neered inter­face fea­tur­ing a then-nov­el fea­ture called the Start menu. Though hard­ly new even then, the song did also car­ry faint asso­ci­a­tions with inno­va­tion, hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly been released on August 14, 1981, just two weeks after the launch of a cable chan­nel called MTV. Its music video thus received a great deal of air­play, prov­ing to the pub­lic that the Stones could stay on the cut­ting edge.

By the 1980s, rel­e­vance was by no means guar­an­teed to any band formed in the 1960s. More than proven though the point may be today, the Michael Lind­say-Hogg-direct­ed music video for “Start Me Up” demon­strat­ed that even a group of rock­ers in or near their for­ties could per­form with the same uncon­tain­able vital­i­ty they always had.

Even now, forty years after that, the group’s sur­viv­ing mem­bers show no incli­na­tion to retire, and the high­est tech­nol­o­gy has only just begun to catch up to them. I refer, of course, to Spot, the mod­el of robot dog pre­vi­ous­ly seen here on Open Cul­ture moon­walk­ing and twerk­ing to Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk.” In the years since then, it seems he’s learned to move like Jag­ger — as well as Richards, Wyman, Wood, and Watts.

In “Spot Me Up,” four Spot mod­els togeth­er repli­cate about a minute of the “Start Me Up” video. That each robot real­ly does seem to con­vey traces of the per­son­al­i­ty of its par­tic­u­lar Stone — even the one tasked with repli­cat­ing a glance from the late Char­lie Watts, a force of sub­tle­ty behind the drum kit for more than half a cen­tu­ry — speaks to the engi­neer­ing skill mar­shaled by Boston Dynam­ics, the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy spin­off where Spot was invent­ed. Not every­one has warmed to the life­like move­ments of their robots, a line­up that also includes the for­mi­da­ble humanoid Atlas. But dance videos like these serve as a form of pub­lic rela­tions for its prod­ucts, which were designed for not the stage but fac­to­ries, mines, and pow­er plants — places where they can do what any fan of the Stones in the 80s would sure­ly call the dirty work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kei­th Richards Demon­strates His Famous 5‑String Tech­nique (Used on Clas­sic Stones Songs Like “Start Me Up,” “Honky Tonk Women” & More

Watch the Rolling Stones Play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

The Rolling Stones Release a Time­ly Track, “Liv­ing in a Ghost Town”: Their First New Music in Eight Years

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

Twerk­ing, Moon­walk­ing AI Robots — They’re Now Here

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

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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Hear Hans Zimmer’s Experimental Score for the New Dune Film

in Film, Music | November 1st, 2021

If you have not yet seen the first install­ment of Denis Villeneuve’s reimag­in­ing of Dune, you will find no spoil­ers here, though if you’ve read Frank Herbert’s cult clas­sic nov­el and/or seen David Lynch’s film adap­ta­tion (or even the for­get­table TV minis­eries from 20 years ago), you are famil­iar with the sto­ry. You can, how­ev­er, hear Hans Zim­mer’s com­plete sound­track above. If you love it, and if film crit­ic Mick LaSalle is right, you’re in for a treat: “If you like the music here, you’ll prob­a­bly like the movie,” LaSalle writes in a San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle review. “If you hate it, you can’t pos­si­bly enjoy Dune.”

The film’s music is relent­less and cre­ates a “sense of some­thing strange and unfa­mil­iar,” mak­ing sure “we nev­er for­get we’re watch­ing an entire­ly alien uni­verse.” Vet­er­an block­buster com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer cre­at­ed this son­ic atmos­phere with stu­dio effects and non­tra­di­tion­al instru­men­ta­tion, though one famil­iar ele­ment remains, as he tells Indiewire:

I kept think­ing, wher­ev­er you are in the future, the instru­ments will change due to tech­nol­o­gy, and we could be far more exper­i­men­tal, but the one thing that remains is the human voice, which there is a lot of.

Those voic­es include that of singer Lisa Ger­rard, for­mer­ly of Dead Can Dance, who “came up with this lan­guage that is all her own. It could be from the future, it could be from a dif­fer­ent world.”

Zimmer’s approach almost mir­rors that of his first big break, the score for 1988’s Rain Man, of which he said in 2008, “The Ray­mond char­ac­ter does­n’t actu­al­ly know where he is. The world is so dif­fer­ent to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don’t we just invent our own world music for a world that does­n’t real­ly exist?” Villeneuve’s Dune gives us an entire inter­plan­e­tary civ­i­liza­tion for which to invent music that did­n’t exist before. “I felt like there was a free­dom to get away from a West­ern Orches­tra,” Zim­mer told The New York Times, in a major under­state­ment.

One piece of music, played as the Atrei­des fam­i­ly arrives on Arrakis, involved 30 bag­pipers, record­ed togeth­er in Edin­burgh while social­ly dis­tanced. “Along with syn­the­siz­ers,” writes The New York Times’ Dar­ryn King, “you can hear scrap­ing met­al, Indi­an bam­boo flutes, Irish whis­tles, a jud­der­ing drum phrase that Zim­mer calls an ‘anti-groove,’ seis­mic rum­bles of dis­tort­ed gui­tar” and “a war for that is actu­al­ly a cel­lo.” The result “might be one of Zimmer’s most unortho­dox and most provoca­tive” pieces of work, and a far cry from the music that accom­pa­nied David Lynch’s beau­ti­ful fail­ure of a film in 1984.

Zim­mer claims nev­er to have seen Lynch’s film nor heard the sound­track by soft-rock super­stars Toto, unwill­ing to com­pro­mise the Dune he’d been imag­in­ing since he first read the book. “I’ve been think­ing about Dune for near­ly 50 years,” he says. Lynch has been try­ing to for­get his film for almost as long. The dense, com­pli­cat­ed mess of an adap­ta­tion so con­fused film execs and test audi­ences that the stu­dio added intro­duc­to­ry expo­si­tion, above, and hand­ed out glos­saries to audi­ences at the first screen­ings (though not, pre­sum­ably, flash­lights).

The choice of super­stars Toto, of “Africa” fame, brought audi­ences of Lynch’s film a “lux­u­ri­ant and pecu­liar sound­track,” sup­ple­ment­ed by the Vien­na Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and a com­po­si­tion by Bri­an Eno. But it also inte­grat­ed famil­iar 80’s rock touch­es (as in “Desert Theme,” above), giv­ing the alien world Lynch imag­ined both a famil­iar son­ic tex­ture and a dat­ed sound. Thir­ty-sev­en years lat­er, sci­ence fic­tion films need no such com­fort­ing appa­ra­tus to make them palat­able. As both Vil­leneuve and Zim­mer real­ized in their work on Dune, a film about a total­ly unfa­mil­iar future civ­i­liza­tion — even one filled with humans who look like us — can look and sound as strange as tech­nol­o­gy and imag­i­na­tion will allow.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

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

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

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

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

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