Jim Henson’s Farewell: Revisit the “Nice, Friendly” Memorial Service at St. John the Divine (1990)

in Television | September 30th, 2021

Please watch out for each oth­er and love and for­give every­body. It’s a good life, enjoy it. — Jim Hen­son

Born in Greenville, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Jim Hen­son spent his youth prac­tic­ing the tenets of Chris­t­ian Sci­ence, a faith he would offi­cial­ly renounce in 1975. But the pow­er of pos­i­tive think­ing his ear­ly reli­gion years instilled would per­sist, roman­ti­cized by his alter-ego, Ker­mit the Frog, and tem­pered by foils like the earthy, iras­ci­ble Ms. Pig­gy. For every foul-mouthed Oscar the Grouch, there was always a lov­able Big Bird, “Jim taught us many things: to save the plan­et, be kind to each oth­er, praise God, and be sil­ly,” said Mup­pet writer Jer­ry Juhl at Henson’s 1990 New York City memo­r­i­al ser­vice. “That’s how I’ll remem­ber him — as a man who was bal­anced effort­less­ly and grace­ful­ly between the sacred and the sil­ly.”

Henson’s first memo­r­i­al, held at the cav­ernous Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine bore wit­ness to Juhl’s por­trait of the late, bril­liant creator’s lega­cy. In true Hen­son fash­ion, the pup­peteer direct­ed the event him­self from beyond the grave, a final light­heart­ed joke, as he had writ­ten in a let­ter to his fam­i­ly four years ear­li­er: “It feels strange writ­ing this while I am still alive, but it wouldn’t be easy after I go …. This all may seem sil­ly to you guys, but what the hell, I’m gone and who can argue with me?”

By “this all,” Hen­son meant a funer­al ser­vice in which guests were for­bid­den to wear black and asked to mourn and cel­e­brate to the tunes of a Dix­ieland brass band: “A nice, friend­ly lit­tle ser­vice,” he wrote in his instruc­tions, with a “rous­ing” sound­track.

To the sounds of jazz, his friends and fam­i­ly added — of course — the songs that defined Henson’s career, includ­ing “Sun­ny Day,” the Sesame Street theme song, Mup­pets anthem “The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion,” and — in a sec­ond memo­r­i­al ser­vice held two months lat­er at St. Paul’s in Lon­don — Ker­mit the Frog’s anthem, “It’s Not Easy Being Green” (above) sung by Big Bird and Oscar pup­peteer Car­oll Spin­ney. (Spin­ney passed away in 2019.) Both Hen­son memo­ri­als were solemn (unavoid­able giv­en the occa­sion and the venues) but also decid­ed­ly sil­ly, as sto­ry after sto­ry about the man poured forth from those who knew him best.

In the Defunct­land video at the top, you can see Henson’s friend and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Juhl take the pul­pit at St. John the Divine to tell his favorite Hen­son sto­ry of work­ing on their first show in 1955, Sam and Friends, a local Wash­ing­ton, D.C. live-action/pup­pet pro­gram that gave birth to Ker­mit. Doubt­ing the joke at the heart of a sketch, Juhl went to Hen­son with his mis­giv­ings; and Hen­son replied, “It’s a ter­ri­ble joke, but it’s wor­thy of us.” The laugh­ter that rum­bles through the crowd is char­ac­ter­is­tic of both funer­al ser­vices, which feel far more inti­mate than they are. Or as Hen­son’s son Bri­an says in his trib­ute, “Sor­ry Dad. Lit­tle ser­vice, big place.” See the full New York funer­al ser­vice for Hen­son just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wit­ness the Birth of Ker­mit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

Jim Hen­son Cre­ates an Exper­i­men­tal Ani­ma­tion Explain­ing How We Get Ideas (1966)

The Cre­ative Life of Jim Hen­son Explored in a Six-Part Doc­u­men­tary Series

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

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Death of Soap Operas (Is Greatly Exaggerated) — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #105

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | September 22nd, 2021

Writ­ers Sarahlyn Bruck and Kay­la Dreysse join your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er to dis­cuss how this once very pop­u­lar TV show type has simul­ta­ne­ous­ly become niche, yet has had a tremen­dous influ­ence on cur­rent pres­tige TV as well as real­i­ty shows. We talk about soaps’ sto­ry and struc­ture con­ven­tions, the demands on soap actors and writ­ers, and how chang­ing mar­ket forces and tech­nol­o­gy have affect­ed the genre. How much of a role does sex­ism play in the crit­i­cal dis­missal of soaps?

In addi­tion to the day­time soaps like Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and The Bold and the Beau­ti­ful, we touch on night­time soaps like Dal­las, teen soaps like Bev­er­ly Hills 90210, Down­ton Abbey, White Orchid, Break­ing Bad, 24, Gray’s Anato­my, and more.

Get Sarahlyn’s nov­el Day­time Dra­ma and fol­low her at @sarahlynbruck.

We all watched the 2020 doc­u­men­tary The Sto­ry of Soaps, which is avail­able on YouTube. A fun pod­cast Mark lis­tened to some of is A Trip Down Soap Lane.

Oth­er sources that inspired us includ­ed:

Sam­ple the Mup­pets’ fake soap opera that Mark’s intro ref­er­ences.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Elvis Presley Gets the Polio Vaccine on The Ed Sullivan Show, Persuading Millions to Get Vaccinated (1956)

in Health, History, Television | September 15th, 2021

No one liv­ing has expe­ri­enced a viral event the size and scope of COVID-19. Maybe the unprece­dent­ed nature of the pan­dem­ic explains some of the vac­cine resis­tance. Dis­eases of such vir­u­lence became rare in places with ready access to vac­cines, and thus, iron­i­cal­ly, over time, have come to seem less dan­ger­ous. But there are still many peo­ple in wealthy nations who remem­ber polio, an epi­dem­ic that dragged on through the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry before Jonas Salk per­fect­ed his vac­cine in the mid-fifties.

Polio’s dev­as­ta­tion has been summed up visu­al­ly in text­books and doc­u­men­taries by the ter­ri­fy­ing iron lung, an ear­ly ven­ti­la­tor. “At the height of the out­breaks in the late 1940s,” Meilan Sol­ly writes at Smith­son­ian, “polio par­a­lyzed an aver­age of more than 35,000 peo­ple each year,” par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ing chil­dren, with 3,000 deaths in 1952 alone. “Spread viral­ly, it proved fatal for two out of ten vic­tims afflict­ed with paral­y­sis. Though mil­lions of par­ents rushed to inoc­u­late their chil­dren fol­low­ing the intro­duc­tion of Jonas Salk’s vac­cine in 1955, teenagers and young adults had proven more reluc­tant to get the shot.”

At the time, there were no vio­lent, orga­nized protests against the vac­cine, nor was resis­tance framed as a patri­ot­ic act of polit­i­cal loy­al­ty. But “cost, apa­thy and igno­rance became seri­ous set­backs to the erad­i­ca­tion effort,” says his­to­ri­an Stephen Mawd­s­ley. And, then as now, irre­spon­si­ble media per­son­al­i­ties with large plat­forms and lit­tle knowl­edge could do a lot of harm to the public’s con­fi­dence in life-sav­ing pub­lic health mea­sures, as when influ­en­tial gos­sip colum­nist Wal­ter Winchell wrote that the vac­cine “may be a killer,” dis­cour­ag­ing count­less read­ers from get­ting a shot.

When Elvis Pres­ley made his first appear­ance on Ed Sul­li­van’s show in 1956, “immu­niza­tion lev­els among Amer­i­can teens were at an abysmal 0.6 per­cent,” note Hal Her­sh­field and Ilana Brody at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. To counter impres­sions that the polio vac­cine was dan­ger­ous, pub­lic health offi­cials did not sole­ly rely on get­ting more and bet­ter infor­ma­tion to the pub­lic; they also took seri­ous­ly what Her­sh­field and Brody call the “cru­cial ingre­di­ents inher­ent to many of the most effec­tive behav­ioral change cam­paigns: social influ­ence, social norms and vivid exam­ples.” Sat­is­fy­ing all three, Elvis stepped up and agreed to get vac­ci­nat­ed “in front of mil­lions” back­stage before his sec­ond appear­ance on the Sul­li­van show.

Elvis could not have been more famous, and the cam­paign was a suc­cess for its tar­get audi­ence, estab­lish­ing a new social norm through influ­ence and exam­ple: “Vac­ci­na­tion rates among Amer­i­can youth sky­rock­et­ed to 80 per­cent after just six months.” Despite the threat he sup­pos­ed­ly posed to the estab­lish­ment, Elvis him­self was ready to serve the pub­lic. “I cer­tain­ly nev­er wan­na do any­thing,” he said, “that would be a wrong influ­ence.” See in the short video at the top how Amer­i­can pub­lic health offi­cials stopped mil­lions of pre­ventable deaths and dis­abil­i­ties by admit­ting a fact pro­pa­gan­dists and adver­tis­ers nev­er shy from — humans, on the whole, are eas­i­ly per­suad­ed by celebri­ties. Some­times they can even be per­suad­ed for the good.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Yo-Yo Ma Plays an Impromp­tu Per­for­mance in Vac­cine Clin­ic After Receiv­ing 2nd Dose

Dying in the Name of Vac­cine Free­dom

How Do Vac­cines (Includ­ing the COVID-19 Vac­cines) Work?: Watch Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tions

How Vac­cines Improved Our World In One Graph­ic

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

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

Prince’s First Tele­vi­sion Inter­view (1985)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Anthony Bourdain’s First Food-and-Travel Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

in Food & Drink, Television, Travel | August 24th, 2021

At the time of his death in 2018, Antho­ny Bour­dain was quite pos­si­bly the most famous cook in the world. With­out ques­tion he held the title of the most famous cook-trav­el­er, a sta­tus rest­ing pri­mar­i­ly on No Reser­va­tions and Parts Unknown, the tele­vi­sion shows he host­ed on the Trav­el Chanel and CNN, respec­tive­ly. But it all began with A Cook’s Tour, which the Food Net­work orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 2002 and 2003. That series, Bour­dain’s very first, took him from Japan to Moroc­co to Mex­i­co to Aus­tralia to Thai­land — and through many points in between — in search of the world’s most stim­u­lat­ing eat­ing expe­ri­ences.

Now A Cook’s Tour has come avail­able free to watch on Youtube, thanks to the stream­ing chan­nel GoTrav­el­er (who also offer the show through their own ser­vice).

A Por­tuguese slaugh­ter­ing-and-roast­ing par­ty; vod­ka-fueled ice fish­ing in St. Peters­burg; an explo­ration of the Amer­i­can “Bar­be­cue Tri­an­gle” con­sti­tut­ed by Kansas City, Hous­ton, and North Car­oli­na; and a best-faith effort to lose him­self in Chi­ang Mai: if you caught these or oth­er of Bour­dain’s ear­ly inter­na­tion­al culi­nary adven­tures those near­ly twen­ty years ago, you can relive them, and if you missed out, you can enjoy them for the first time.

Dur­ing the launch phase of his rise to fame (after decades of restau­rant work and years of writ­ing, an effort that first pro­duced a cou­ple of food-themed mur­der-mys­tery nov­els), Bour­dain man­aged to tap into a new wave of gas­tro­nom­ic inter­est then ris­ing in Amer­i­ca. He did so with a street-smart sense of humor that appealed even to view­ers with no par­tic­u­lar invest­ment in the world of cook­ing and din­ing, as long as they had an inter­est in the world itself. With A Cook’s Tour, he took food tele­vi­sion out of the kitchen — way out of the kitchen — and over the eigh­teen years since its con­clu­sion, the series’ influ­ence has become so per­va­sive as almost to be invis­i­ble. Antho­ny Bour­dain may be gone, but parts of his per­son­al­i­ty live on in every high-pro­file trav­el­er out there cook­ing, eat­ing, and get­ting lost today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show Raw Craft, Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Antho­ny Bour­dain Talks About the Big Break That Changed His Life — at Age 44

Life Lessons from Antho­ny Bour­dain: How He Devel­oped His Iron Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Achieved Cre­ative Free­dom & Learned from Fail­ure

Al Jazeera Trav­el Show Explores World Cities Through Their Street Food

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How Doctor Who First Started as a Family Educational TV Program (1963)

in Education, Sci Fi, Television | August 19th, 2021

Those who grew up with the BBC sci-fi series Doc­tor Who watched from “behind the sofa,” a pop­u­lar phrase asso­ci­at­ed with the show for the rub­bery, bug-eyed mon­sters it held in store each week for loy­al view­ers. Although it may be hard for those who didn’t expe­ri­ence it in their for­ma­tive years to under­stand, Doc­tor Who has fre­quent­ly been vot­ed the scari­est TV show of all time, over gris­li­er, big-bud­get series like The Walk­ing Dead, and has done so with­out los­ing its sense of humor, a tes­ta­ment to the con­ceit of “regen­er­a­tion” keep­ing things fresh by updat­ing the Doc­tor and his com­pan­ions every few years.

Space mon­sters, Daleks, Cyber­men, and a revolv­ing cast, how­ev­er, were not part of Doc­tor Who’s orig­i­nal remit. The show began as an edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram on the BBC, and this explains many of its inte­gral parts, which have remained through­out its first run from 1963 to 1989 and its revival from 2005 to the present. These ele­ments include the TARDIS, com­pan­ions of var­i­ous ages, the Coal Hill School, and the Doc­tor him­self, a Time Lord from the plan­et Gal­lifrey with inter­stel­lar tech­nol­o­gy and a dodgy mem­o­ry.

We find the core premise in the show’s pilot episode and orig­i­nal 4‑part series, An Unearth­ly Child, which intro­duced William Hart­nell as the Doc­tor, Car­ole Ann Ford as his grand­daugh­ter, Susan Fore­man (orig­i­nal­ly named Bar­bara, or “Bid­dy”), and Jaque­line Hill and William Rus­sell as school teach­ers Bar­bara Wright and Ian Chester­ton. BBC dra­ma head Syd­ney New­man had tasked writ­ers with cre­at­ing a fam­i­ly edu­ca­tion­al show to meet the network’s pub­lic ser­vice man­date, and came up with the idea of a sci­ence fic­tion show as a way to have char­ac­ters vis­it his­tor­i­cal peri­ods and talk about sci­ence in an enter­tain­ing way.

“Doc­tor Who’s ear­ly his­tor­i­cal sto­ries empha­size edu­ca­tion by down­play­ing the programme’s fan­ta­sy with min­i­mal sci­ence-fic­tion ele­ments,” writes Tom Stew­ard at Dele­tion. The idea of a time machine big­ger on the inside than the out­side came from New­man. Writer Antho­ny Coburn turned it into a police box after a note from New­man ask­ing for a “tan­gi­ble” sym­bol. New­man “instruct­ed writ­ers to ‘get across the basis of teach­ing of edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence.’ ” When they came back with a sto­ry about Daleks, he balked: “No bug-eyed mon­sters,” he wrote, no alien bad­dies, no actors in rub­ber suits. This was to be a seri­ous show about seri­ous edu­ca­tion­al sub­jects. Script changes and tech­ni­cal chal­lenges meant months of set­back and delays.

It was dif­fi­cult for some crit­ics to take the result­ing four episode arc par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous­ly. The first episode showed Bar­bara and Ian dis­cov­er­ing the TARDIS in a Lon­don junk­yard. Then they are all trans­port­ed to the pre­his­toric past, where they observe (and escape) a pow­er strug­gle among pre­his­toric cave peo­ple. (Guardian crit­ic Mary Crozi­er lament­ed that the “wigs and fur­ry pelts and clubs were all ludi­crous.”) The show’s debut was also inaus­pi­cious: Novem­ber 23, 1963, the day after John F. Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. The BBC reran the first episode the next week and picked up anoth­er 2 mil­lion view­ers.

Still, it had become clear after the first series that in order to sur­vive, Doc­tor Who would have “to give the pub­lic what they want­ed,” Stew­ard writes, “rather than what was good for them.” Thus, the Daleks debuted in the sec­ond sea­son, and by the mid-60s, his­tor­i­cal sto­ries were replaced with “fan­tasies in his­tor­i­cal cos­tume fea­tur­ing anachro­nis­tic vil­lains or mon­sters.” The show became a week­ly crea­ture fea­ture and intro­duced ter­ri­fy­ing vil­lains like Davros, the Daleks’ cre­ator, a cross between a Strangelove-like Nazi sci­en­tist and Star Wars’ clone-hap­py Emper­or Pal­pa­tine (Davros came first).

The cos­tumes may look sil­ly in hind­sight, but as child­hood Who fan Char­lie Jane Anders writes at io9, “those of us who are adults now did­n’t have huge screen HD tele­vi­sions when we were kids.” (And those of us who remem­ber it, remem­ber being ter­ri­fied by equal­ly goofy cos­tum­ing in The Land of the Lost.) Look past the low-bud­get effects and Doc­tor Who becomes pure hor­ror, explor­ing very dark ter­ri­to­ry with only a son­ic screw­driv­er, a few friends, and a quirky sense of humor — or 13 quirky sens­es of humor, includ­ing Jodie Whit­tak­er’s as the cur­rent Doc­tor and first woman to fill the role.

As you can see from the clips of the first episode above, Doc­tor Who estab­lished its weird air of exis­ten­tial dread from the start with Delia Der­byshire’s oth­er­world­ly theme and some avant-garde cam­era effects in lieu of big­ger-bud­get spec­ta­cles. The show did not retain much from its edu­ca­tion­al begin­nings aside from the key char­ac­ters and the look and feel of the TARDIS. It was “seen to have failed as ped­a­gogy,” writes Stew­ard, but as a body of sci­ence fic­tion lore that con­tin­ues to stay rel­e­vant, it has all sorts of lessons to teach about courage, com­pan­ion­ship, and the val­ue of the right tool for the right job.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

A Detailed, Track-by-Track Analy­sis of the Doc­tor Who Theme Music

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Hear 45 Minutes of Funky Old Soundtracks from 1960s-70s Japanese Films & TV Shows

in Film, Music, Television | August 17th, 2021

The life of a Japan­ese film com­pos­er in the 1960s and 70s was very dif­fer­ent from their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. “For Hol­ly­wood movies, there is a three-month peri­od to write the music after the film has been fin­ished,” says leg­endary film and tele­vi­sion com­pos­er Chumei Watan­abe. When Watan­abe first began work­ing for Shin­to­ho stu­dios, “at first, they gave us five days. Of course, it would usu­al­ly be short­ened…. One time, there was a Toei movie being filmed in Kyoto. The next day was the record­ing day for the music…. I had less than 24 hours to write the music!”

Despite the immense pres­sures on com­posers for films and TV shows, even those pri­mar­i­ly for chil­dren, “I kept in mind that I would not com­pose child­ish music,” says Watan­abe, who worked well into his 90s com­pos­ing for TV. “That’s why peo­ple in their 40s and 50s still lis­ten to my songs and sing them at karaoke.” His music is as wide­ly beloved as that of his pro­lif­ic con­tem­po­rary, Drag­on Ball Z com­pos­er Shun­suke Kikuchi, who passed away this year at 89.

“Over the course of his career,” writes Okay Play­er, “Kikuchi wrote the music for a num­ber of pop­u­lar ani­me series and live-action tele­vi­sion shows, includ­ing Abaren­bo Shogun (800 episodes over 30 years,) Dorae­mon (26 years on the air,) and Kamen Rid­er, Key Hunter, and G‑Men ’75.” So icon­ic was Kikuchi’s music that his “Ura­mi Bushi” — the theme for 1972 Japan­ese exploita­tion film Female Pris­on­er 701: Scor­pi­on — was giv­en pride of place in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 2.

If you aren’t famil­iar with the music of late-20th cen­tu­ry Japan­ese genre film and tele­vi­sion, you’ll be for­giv­en for think­ing the mix at the top of the post comes from Taran­ti­no’s films. Described by its YouTube poster Trip­mas­ter­monk as “45 min­utes of var­i­ous funky old japan­ese sound­track, sam­ples, breaks, and beats. (all killer, no filler),” it includes clas­sic com­po­si­tions from Watan­abe, Kikuchi, and many oth­er com­posers from the peri­od who worked as hard on ani­me series as they did on so-called “pink films” like the “Female Pris­on­er” series, a vehi­cle for Japan­ese star Meiko Kaji (of Lady Snow­blood fame), who sang “Ura­mi Bushi” and turned the song into a major hit.

Dig the funky music of Japan­ese action films from the 60s and 70s in the mix, full name: “Trip­mas­ter­monk — Knock­steady Zen­cast Vol. 2: Nin­ja Funk & Gang­ster Bal­lads: Ode to the Broth­er­land.” And find more of Tripmastermonk’s musi­cal con­coc­tions on Sound­cloud.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Dis­cov­er the Ambi­ent Music of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, the Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese Com­pos­er

Hear Enchant­i­ng Mix­es of Japan­ese Pop, Jazz, Funk, Dis­co, Soul, and R&B from the 70s and 80s

Son­ic Explo­rations of Japan­ese Jazz: Stream 8 Mix­es of Japan’s Jazz Tra­di­tion Free Online

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

1960s Schoolchildren Imagine Life in the Year 2000: Overpopulation, Mass Unemployment, Robot Courts, Rising Seas & Beyond

in History, Television | August 2nd, 2021

West­ern­ers today enter­tain noth­ing but grim, dystopi­an visions of the future. This in stark con­trast to the post­war decades when, as every­one knows, all was opti­mism. “In the year 2000, I think I’ll prob­a­bly be in a space­ship to the moon, dic­tat­ing to robots,” says an Eng­lish school­boy in the 1966 footage above. “Or else I may be in charge of a robot court, judg­ing some robots, or I may be at the funer­al of a com­put­er. Or if some­thing’s gone wrong with the nuclear bombs, I may be back from hunt­ing, in a cave.” Grant­ed, this was the mid­dle of the Cold War, when human­i­ty felt itself per­pet­u­al­ly at the brink of self-destruc­tion. How did oth­er chil­dren imag­ine the turn of the mil­len­ni­um? “I don’t like the idea of get­ting up and find­ing you’ve got a cab­bage pill to eat for break­fast.”

Inter­viewed for the BBC tele­vi­sion series Tomor­row’s World, these ado­les­cents paint a series of bleak pic­tures of the year 2000, some more vivid than oth­ers. “All these atom­ic bombs will be drop­ping around the place,” pre­dicts anoth­er boy. One will get near the cen­ter, because it will make a huge, great big crater, and the whole world will just melt.”

One girl sounds more resigned: “There’s noth­ing you can do to stop it. The more peo­ple get bombs — some­body’s going to use it one day.” But not all these kids envi­sion a nuclear holo­caust: “I don’t think there is going to be atom­ic war­fare,” says one boy, “but I think there is going to be all this automa­tion. Peo­ple are going to be out of work, and a great pop­u­la­tion, and I think some­thing has to be done about it.”

The idea that “com­put­ers are tak­ing over” now has great cur­ren­cy among pun­dits, but it seems school­girls were mak­ing the same point more than half a cen­tu­ry ago. “In the year 2000, there just won’t be enough jobs to go around,” says one of them. “The only jobs there will be, will be for peo­ple with high IQ who can work com­put­ers and such things.” Anoth­er con­tribut­ing fac­tor, as oth­er kids see it, is an over­pop­u­la­tion so extreme that “either every­one will be liv­ing in big domes in the Sahara, or they’ll be under­sea.” And there’ll be plen­ty of sea to live under, as one boy fig­ures it, when it ris­es to cov­er every­thing but “the high­lands in Scot­land, and some of the big hills in Eng­land and Wales.” Less dra­mat­i­cal­ly but more chill­ing­ly, some of these young stu­dents fear a ter­mi­nal bore­dom at the end of his­to­ry: “Every­thing will be the same. Peo­ple will be the same; things will be the same.”

Not all of them fore­see a whol­ly dehu­man­ized future. “Black peo­ple won’t be sep­a­rate, they’ll be all mixed in with the white peo­ple,” says one girl. “There will be poor and rich, but they won’t look down on each oth­er.” Her pre­dic­tion may not quite have come to pass even in 2021, but nor have most of her cohort’s more har­row­ing fan­tasies. If any­thing has col­lapsed since then, it’s stan­dards of ado­les­cent artic­u­la­cy. As Roger Ebert wrote of Michael Apt­ed’s Up series, which doc­u­ments the same gen­er­a­tion of Eng­lish chil­dren, these clips make one pon­der “the inar­tic­u­late murk­i­ness, self-help clichés, sports metaphors, and man­age­ment tru­isms that clut­ter Amer­i­can speech,” a con­di­tion that now afflicts even the Eng­lish. But then, not even the most imag­i­na­tive child could have known that the dystopia to come would be lin­guis­tic.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Duck and Cov­er: The 1950s Film That Taught Mil­lions of School­child­ren How to Sur­vive a Nuclear Bomb

Jean Cocteau Deliv­ers a Speech to the Year 2000 in 1962: “I Hope You Have Not Become Robots”

For­eign Exchange Stu­dents Debate Whether Amer­i­can Teenagers Have Too Much Free­dom (1954)

The Sum­mer­hill School, the Rad­i­cal Edu­ca­tion­al Exper­i­ment That Let Stu­dents Learn What, When, and How They Want (1966)

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.