Watch 11-Year-Old Billy Preston Duet with Nat King Cole: A Star is Born (1957)

in Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | December 13th, 2021

The Bea­t­les aren’t the only fab tal­ents caus­ing a stir in the recent­ly released Bea­t­les doc­u­men­tary, Get Back.

As has been wide­ly not­ed, soul singer Bil­ly Pre­ston lights up every scene he’s in.

One of the 60’s finest ses­sion key­boardists, Pre­ston con­tributed to the Bea­t­les’ Let It Be and Abbey Road albums, and joined them for their famous final gig on the roof of Apple Records.

He also served as a lev­el­ing influ­ence when ten­sions with­in the band fre­quent­ly explod­ed into fits of tem­per.

“It’s inter­est­ing to see how nice­ly peo­ple behave when you bring a guest in,” George Har­ri­son observed.

In addi­tion to his suc­cess­ful solo career, with a num­ber of funk and R&B hits, Pre­ston gigged for a host of all time greats: Ray Charles, Lit­tle Richard, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones…the list goes on.

A child­hood prodi­gy who nev­er took a music les­son, by 10, he was back­ing gospel lumi­nar­ies like Mahalia Jack­son, James Cleve­land, and Andraé Crouch.

A year lat­er, he entered America’s liv­ing rooms, when he appeared on The Nat King Cole Show, above, to duet with TV’s first nation­al Black vari­ety show host on “Blue­ber­ry Hill,” a 40s tune Fats Domi­no had pop­u­lar­ized ear­li­er in the decade.

“You have a very excel­lent career ahead of you,” Cole pre­dicts, fol­low­ing their per­for­mance.

Daugh­ter Natal­ie Cole lat­er enthused that the cel­e­brat­ed croon­er “lets this kid have all the glo­ry,” though the self-pos­sessed pre-teen holds his own ably, alter­nat­ing between organ and his own impres­sive pipes.

With­in the year, Cole and Pre­ston shared the big screen, and a mem­o­rable part, when they were cast as “The Father Of The Blues” W.C. Handy, as a child and adult, in the 1958 movie St Louis Blues.

As an adult, Pre­ston’s star was tar­nished by addic­tion, arrests and self-sab­o­tag­ing behav­ior that his man­ag­er, Joyce Moore, and half-sis­ter Let­tie, said was most deeply root­ed in his mother’s refusal to believe that he was being sex­u­al­ly abused by the pianist of a sum­mer tour­ing com­pa­ny, and lat­er a local pas­tor.

It’s part of a lurid, longer tale, call­ing to mind oth­er promis­ing, oft-prodi­gious young tal­ents who nev­er man­aged to get out from under dam­age inflict­ed by adults when they were chil­dren.

He was 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

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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Punks, Goths, and Mods on TV (1983)

in Fashion, Music, Television | December 8th, 2021

The Riv­et­head pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with fash­ion is inescapably relat­ed to their anx­i­ety over being con­fused for sub­cul­tures they pro­fess to hate: Goths, Punks, Met­al­heads, Death Rock­ers… The fact that so many sub­cul­tures claim black as their col­or of choice con­tributes to the con­fu­sion.

There are two points upon which the­o­rists of post-indus­tri­al British sub­cul­tures gen­er­al­ly agree: 1) No mat­ter the music or the fash­ion, the bound­aries between one sub­cul­ture and anoth­er were rig­or­ous­ly, even vio­lent­ly, enforced (hence the wars between the mods and rock­ers), and; 2) The music and fash­ions of every sub­cul­ture were sub­ject to coop­ta­tion by the machin­ery of cap­i­tal­ism, to be mass pro­duced, pack­aged, and sold as off-the-rack com­mod­i­ty, a phe­nom­e­non that occurred almost as soon as punks, mods, rock­ers, goths, ted­dy boys, skin­heads, New Roman­tics, etc. began appear­ing on tele­vi­sion — as in the post-Grundy Irish TV appear­ance of four young indi­vid­u­als above from 1983.

The inter­view­er intro­duces these punks, goths, and mods by refer­ring first to their employ­ment — or lack of employ­ment — sta­tus, and then to the num­ber of chil­dren in their fam­i­ly. Com­ments drip­ping with class dis­dain sit along­side a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of var­i­ous sub­cul­tures as “gangs” — the Hell’s Angels thrown in among them just to dri­ve the point home. Of course, there’s more to say about the denizens of ear­ly-80s UK sub­cul­tur­al street cor­ners — more than these four rep­re­sen­ta­tives have to say them­selves. It is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through per­for­mance rather than ver­bal expo­si­tion, through the affil­i­a­tions of cloth­ing, music, and pose — as in the mini-his­tor­i­cal slideshow of late-20th cen­tu­ry British sub­cul­tures below, from the 50s to the 80s.

In 1979, British the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge pub­lished what many con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive analy­sis of these work­ing-class scenes, which fre­quent­ly cen­tered around forms of racial and cul­tur­al exchange — as with mods who loved jazz or punks who loved ska and dub reg­gae; or racial and cul­tur­al exclu­sion — as with fas­cist skin­heads and chau­vin­ist ted­dy boys who glo­ri­fied the past, while oth­er sub­cul­tur­al ide­olo­gies looked to the future (or, as the case may be, no future).

Hebdige’s Sub­cul­ture: the Mean­ing of Style begins with a sto­ry about French writer Jean Genet, humil­i­at­ed in prison by homo­pho­bic guards over his pos­ses­sion of a tube of Vase­line:

Like Genet, we are inter­est­ed in sub­cul­ture – in the expres­sive forms and rit­u­als of those sub­or­di­nate groups – the ted­dy boys and mods and rock­ers, the skin­heads and the punks – who are alter­nate­ly dis­missed, denounced and can­on­ized; treat­ed at dif­fer­ent times as threats to pub­lic order and as harm­less buf­foons.

The irony of sub­cul­tures is that they iden­ti­fy with social out­siders, while re-enforc­ing bound­aries that cre­ate exclu­siv­i­ty (cf. the quote at the top, from Heb­di­ge-inspired Sub­cul­tures List). When the nov­el­ty and shock recedes, they become ripe fod­der for com­mer­cial coop­ta­tion, even lux­u­ry brand­ing.

What we usu­al­ly don’t get from tame ret­ro­spec­tives, or from patron­iz­ing mass media of the time, are deviant out­siders like Genet who can­not be reab­sorbed into the sys­tem because their very exis­tence pos­es a threat to the social order as so con­strued. So much of the fash­ion and music of post-war Britain was direct­ly cre­at­ed or inspired by West Indi­an migrants of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion, for exam­ple. In too many pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions of post­war British sub­cul­tures, that essen­tial part of the work­ing class UK sub­cul­ture sto­ry has been entire­ly left out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 300 Tracks: A 13-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to Present

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

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Watch Hilarious Spoofs of Classic Film Genres: Film Noir, Spaghetti Westerns, Scandinavian Crime Dramas, Time Travel Films & More

in Comedy, Film, Podcasts, Television | November 29th, 2021

Come­di­an Alas­dair Beck­ett-King has a keen ear for enter­tain­ment tropes and sub­scribes to the belief that “putting too much effort into things makes them fun­nier.”

The result is a series of one-minute videos in which he spoofs the con­ven­tions of a par­tic­u­lar genre or long run­ning series, with per­fect visu­als, meta dia­logue, and faith­ful­ly ren­dered per­for­mance styles.

Beck­ett-King put his Lon­don Film School train­ing to use with this project dur­ing lock­down, spend­ing “absolute­ly ages putting togeth­er some­thing very tiny.”

Wit­ness his take on every episode of Star Trek: The Next Gen­er­a­tion, in which the cap­tain of the ship, a Patrick Stew­art dop­pel­gänger and “veg­e­tar­i­an space social­ist who is always right” nego­ti­ates with a “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a kind of iffy alien race not nec­es­sar­i­ly based on a spe­cif­ic human eth­nic­i­ty.” As Beck­ett-King told Eric John­son, host of Fol­low Fri­day pod­cast:

That one was very, very hard work because I had to do a CGI bald cap for myself because I have long, long flow­ing hair. I had to try and do an impres­sion of Cap­tain Picard of the Star­ship Enter­prise… it’s not that good. There’s so much work that went into it.

Before I post­ed it, I was con­vinced I’d wast­ed my time. Then luck­i­ly it did quite well and peo­ple real­ly liked it. Peo­ple kept say­ing, “When are you doing Cap­tain Picard again?” I’m like, “I’m not! because it took ages to do the bald head, and you’ve seen it now.” I think what’s nice about it though, is you get to try some­thing, com­mit to it and then see if it’s fun­ny after­wards. It’s quite like doing live standup.

(Beckett-King’s part­ner Rachel Anne Smith gets cred­its for the non-CGI cos­tumes.)

Some oth­er favorites:

Every Sin­gle Scan­di­na­vian Crime Dra­ma: The killer could be any­one in Hel­ga­sund. That’s over sev­en peo­ple.

Every Sin­gle Spooky Pod­cast: The frozen soil was lit­tered with what appeared to be dis­card­ed Casper mat­tress­es and Bom­bas socks.

Every Sin­gle Spaghet­ti West­ern: Yeah, well your lips don’t synch…

Every Haunt­ed House Movie: It’s the per­fect place for me to quit drink­ing, fin­ish my nov­el, and real­ly come to terms with that deer we hit on the way over.

Every Episode of Pop­u­lar Time Trav­el Show: Help us, Doc­tor. The intran­si­gent Implaca­blons are poised to destroy us.

How Every Film Noir Ends: Talk your way out of a snub nosed pis­tol held at waist height.

Should you find your­self at loose ends, wait­ing for the next Beck­ett-King “every sin­gle…” episode to drop, try  bid­ing your time with his Art House Movie Spoil­ers and North East of Eng­land spin on Jaws.

Buy a Cof­fee for Alas­dair Beck­ett-King here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Down­load a Com­plete, Cov­er-to-Cov­er Par­o­dy of The New York­er: 80 Pages of Fine Satire

The Time When Nation­al Lam­poon Par­o­died Mad Mag­a­zine: A Satire of Satire (1971)

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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Jazz Virtuoso Oscar Peterson Gives Dick Cavett a Dazzling Piano Lesson (1979)

in Jazz, Music, Television | November 24th, 2021

Duke Elling­ton once called Oscar Peter­son the “Mahara­ja of the Key­board” for his vir­tu­os­i­ty and abil­i­ty to play any style with seem­ing ease, a skill he first began to learn as a clas­si­cal­ly trained child prodi­gy. Peter­son was intro­duced to Bach and Beethoven by his musi­cian father and old­er sis­ter Daisy, then drilled in rig­or­ous fin­ger exer­cis­es and giv­en six hours a day of prac­tice by his teacher, Hun­gar­i­an pianist Paul de Marky. “I only first real­ly heard jazz some­where between the ages of sev­en and 10,” said the Cana­di­an jazz great. “My old­er broth­er Fred, who was actu­al­ly a bet­ter pianist than I was, start­ed play­ing var­i­ous new tunes — well they were new for me, any­way…. Duke Elling­ton and Art Tatum, who fright­ened me to death with his tech­nique.”

Despite his own prodi­gious tal­ent, Peter­son found Tatum “intim­i­dat­ing,” he told Count Basie in a 1980 inter­view. He respond­ed to the fear by learn­ing how to play like Tatum, and like every­one else he admired, while adding his own melod­ic twists to stan­dards and orig­i­nals. At 14, he won a nation­al Cana­di­an music com­pe­ti­tion and left school to become a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian.

He record­ed his first album in 1945 at age 20. “Since his ‘dis­cov­ery’ in 1947 by Nor­man Granz,” wrote Inter­na­tion­al Musi­cian in 2002, five years before the pianist’s death, “Peter­son has amassed an incred­i­ble lega­cy of record­ed work with Louis Arm­strong, Ella Fitzger­ald, Count Basie, Fred Astaire, Dizzy Gille­spie, Cole­man Hawkins, and Char­lie Park­er, among count­less oth­er greats.”

In the video at the top of the post from the Dick Cavett Show in 1979, Peter­son shows off his ele­gant tech­nique and demon­strates the “styl­is­tic trade­marks” of the greats he admired, and that oth­ers have heard expressed in his own style. He begins with his alba­tross, Tatum’s “stride piano,” a style that requires a good deal of left hand artic­u­la­tion and which, done right, can “put the rhythm sec­tion out of busi­ness,” Cavett jokes. Peter­son then shows off the “the two-fin­gered per­cus­sive­ness of Nat Cole,” the “lyric octave work of Erroll Gar­ner,” and dou­ble octave melody lines, a very dif­fi­cult two-hand maneu­ver.

It’s a daz­zling les­son that shows, in just a few short min­utes, why Peter­son became known for his “stun­ning vir­tu­os­i­ty as a soloist,” as one biog­ra­phy notes. In the video above, pro­duc­er and YouTube per­son­al­i­ty Rick Beato explains why he thinks Peter­son played the “Great­est Solo of All Time” in the 1974 ren­di­tion of “Boo­gie Blues Study” fur­ther up. As David Funk, who post­ed the Cavett video clip to YouTube, puts it, “What more can you say?” To under­stand why Louis Arm­strong called Peter­son “the man with four hands,” we sim­ply need to watch him play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Music Unites Us All: Her­bie Han­cock & Kamasi Wash­ing­ton in Con­ver­sa­tion

Decon­struct­ing Ste­vie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Elling­ton: A Great Break­down of “Sir Duke”

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

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

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8 Hours of David Bowie’s Historic 1980 Floor Show: Complete & Uncut Footage

in Music, Television | November 19th, 2021

Bowie com­pletists rejoice. Eight hours of footage from his 1973 tele­vi­sion pro­gram “The 1980 Floor Show,” have found their way to YouTube, includ­ing, Boing Boing notes, “uncut footage… mul­ti­ple takes, back­stage moments, and all of the dance rehearsals.” The show — actu­al­ly an episode of the NBC series The Mid­night Spe­cial curat­ed by Bowie — lived up to its title (itself a pun on “1984,” the open­ing song of the broad­cast), with elab­o­rate dance num­bers, major cos­tume changes, and sev­er­al guest per­form­ers: The Trog­gs, Aman­da Lear, Car­men, and — most impor­tant­ly — Mar­i­anne Faith­full, in career free-fall at the time but also in top form for this cabaret-style vari­ety show.

When Mid­night Spe­cial pro­duc­er Burt Sug­ar­man approached Bowie about doing the hour-long show, the singer agreed on the con­di­tion that he could have com­plete cre­ative con­trol. He chose to hold rehearsals and per­for­mances at London’s Mar­quee Club. The audi­ence con­sist­ed of 200 young fans drawn from the Bowie fan club. Faith­full was “actu­al­ly invit­ed as one of the reserve acts,” notes Jack What­ley at Far Out, “ready to be called upon should some­one else drop out.”

“The show was heav­i­ly adver­tised in the US press in the run up to the broad­cast,” not­ed Bowie 75 in 2018, “but has nev­er been shown out­side the US or offi­cial­ly released,” though bootlegs cir­cu­lat­ed for years. Shoot­ing took place over three days in late Octo­ber, just a few months after Bowie played his final show as Zig­gy Star­dust at the Ham­mer­smith Odeon The­atre, cryp­ti­cal­ly announc­ing at the end, “not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do.” Bowie then went on to release Aladdin Sane and his cov­ers record Pin-Ups the fol­low­ing year, drop­ping the Zig­gy char­ac­ter entire­ly.

But Bowie brought Zig­gy back, at least in cos­tume, for one last gig in “The 1980 Floor Show,” wear­ing some of the out­fits Kan­sai Yamamo­to designed for the Zig­gy Star­dust tours and still sport­ing the sig­na­ture spiked red mul­let he would con­tin­ue to wear as his dystopi­an Hal­loween Jack per­sona on 1974’s Dia­mond Dogs. “The 1980 Floor Show” pro­mot­ed songs from Aladdin Sane and Pin-Ups while visu­al­ly rep­re­sent­ing the tran­si­tion from Bowie’s space alien vis­i­tor per­sona to a dif­fer­ent kind of out­sider — an alien in exile, just like the char­ac­ter he played a few years lat­er in Nicholas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. As Maria Math­eos writes at Has­ta:

Zig­gy no longer played gui­tar: Bowie had meta­mor­phosed into Aladdin Sane. Parad­ing across the stage in red plat­form boots and a patent-leather black and white bal­loon leg jump­suit, referred to by design­er Yamamo­to as the ‘Tokyo pop’ jump­suit, Bowie sought to assault the sens­es of his audi­ence. Com­plete­ly over the top? Yes. Verg­ing on a par­o­dy of excess? Pos­si­bly. Would he have want­ed us to take him seri­ous­ly? He cer­tain­ly did not (take him­self seri­ous­ly).

With Aladdin Sane, Bowie gave us a hyper­bol­ic exten­sion of his pri­or alien dop­pel­ganger; adding that his char­ac­ter, a pun on ‘A Lad Insane’, rep­re­sent­ed “Zig­gy under the influ­ence of Amer­i­ca.”

See how Bowie con­struct­ed that new, and short-lived, per­sona from the mate­ri­als of his for­mer glam super­star char­ac­ter, and see the rev­e­la­tion that was Mar­i­anne Faith­full. The singer per­formed her 1964 hit, writ­ten by The Rolling Stones, “As Tears Go By,” solo. But the high­light of the show, and of her mid-sev­en­ties peri­od, was the duet of Son­ny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe” with which she and Bowie closed the show. “The cos­tumes of the pair are mag­i­cal.” What­ley writes,” with Bowie “in full Zig­gy attire… aka his ‘Angel of Death’ costume—while Faith­full has on a nun’s habit that was open at the back.”

Bowie report­ed­ly intro­duced the song with the tossed-off line, “This isn’t any­thing seri­ous, it’s just a bit of fun. We’ve hard­ly even rehearsed it.” You can scroll through the 8 hours of footage at the top to see those rehearsals, and so many more pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able Bowie moments caught on film.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

David Bowie on Why It’s Crazy to Make Art–and We Do It Any­way (1998)

 

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

 

 

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Carl Sagan Warns Congress about Climate Change (1985)

in Current Affairs, Nature, Television | November 18th, 2021

With­out cli­mate change, we could­n’t inhab­it the Earth as we do today. The green­house effect, by which gas­es in a plan­et’s atmos­phere increase the heat of that plan­et’s sur­face, “makes life on Earth pos­si­ble.” So says Carl Sagan in the video above. He adds that with­out it, the tem­per­a­ture would be about 30 degrees centi­grade cool­er: “That’s well below the freez­ing point of water every­where on the plan­et. The oceans would be sol­id.” A lit­tle of the cli­mate change induced by the green­house effect, then, is a good thing, but “here we are pour­ing enor­mous quan­ti­ties of CO2 and these oth­er gas­es into the atmos­phere every year, with hard­ly any con­cern about its long-term and glob­al con­se­quences.”

It’s fair to say that the lev­el of con­cern has increased since Sagan spoke these words in 1985, when “cli­mate change” was­n’t yet a house­hold term. But even then, his audi­ence was Con­gress, and his fif­teen-minute address, pre­served by C‑SPAN, remains a suc­cinct and per­sua­sive case for more research into the phe­nom­e­non as well as strate­gies and action to mit­i­gate it.

What audi­ence would expect less from Sagan, who just five years ear­li­er had host­ed the hit PBS tele­vi­sion series Cos­mos, based on his book of the same name. Its broad­cast made con­ta­gious his enthu­si­asm for sci­en­tif­ic inquiry in gen­er­al and the nature of the plan­ets in par­tic­u­lar. Who could for­get, for exam­ple, his intro­duc­tion to the “thor­ough­ly nasty place” that is Venus, research into whose atmos­phere Sagan had con­duct­ed in the ear­ly 1960s?

Venus is “the near­est plan­et — a plan­et of about the same mass, radius, den­si­ty, as the Earth,” Sagan tells Con­gress, but it has a “sur­face tem­per­a­ture about 470 degrees centi­grade, 900 Fahren­heit.” The rea­son? “A mas­sive green­house effect in which car­bon diox­ide plays the major role.” As for our plan­et, esti­mates then held that, with­out changes in the rates of fos­sil fuel-burn­ing and “infrared-absorb­ing” gas­es released into the atmos­phere, there will be “a sev­er­al-centi­grade-degree tem­per­a­ture increase” on aver­age “by the mid­dle to the end of the next cen­tu­ry.” Giv­en the poten­tial effects of such a rise, “if we don’t do the right thing now, there are very seri­ous prob­lems that our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren will have to face.” It’s impos­si­ble to know how many lis­ten­ers these words con­vinced at the time, though they cer­tain­ly seem to have stuck with a young sen­a­tor in the room by the name of Al Gore.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

Watch “Degrees of Uncer­tain­ty,” an Ani­mat­ed Doc­u­men­tary about Cli­mate Sci­ence, Uncer­tain­ty & Know­ing When to Trust the Experts

Bill Gates Lets Col­lege Stu­dents Down­load a Free Dig­i­tal Copy of His Book, How to Avoid a Cli­mate Dis­as­ter

Carl Sagan Pre­dicts the Decline of Amer­i­ca: Unable to Know “What’s True,” We Will Slide, “With­out Notic­ing, Back into Super­sti­tion & Dark­ness” (1995)

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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When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Documentary

in Film, Music, Television | November 16th, 2021

Like many famous episodes in the lives of famous peo­ple, Andy Warhol’s 15 min­utes quote turns out to be a gar­bling of what hap­pened. Warhol sim­ply said that every­body wants to be famous (and by impli­ca­tion, famous for­ev­er). To which the Factory’s “court pho­tog­ra­ph­er” Nat Finkel­stein replied, “yeah, for 15 min­utes.” Giv­en the way the idea has come down to us, we’ve missed the ambi­gu­i­ty in this exchange. Do we all want to be famous for 15 min­utes (and only 15 min­utes), or do we only spend 15 min­utes want­i­ng to be famous before we move on and accept it as a suck­er’s game?

Finkel­stein him­self might have felt the lat­ter as he watched “pop die and punk being born” (he said in a 2001 inter­view). It was the death of Warhol’s fame ide­al, and the birth of some­thing new: music that loud­ly declared open hos­til­i­ties against the gate­keep­ers of pop­u­lar cul­ture. Not every punk band reserved its punch­es for those above them. Cal­i­for­nia hard­core leg­ends Fear — led by con­fronta­tion­al satirist Lee Ving — swing wild­ly in every direc­tion, hit­ting their audi­ence as often as the pow­ers that be.

When their first taste of Warho­lian fame came around — in Pene­lope Spheeris’ 1981 doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion — Ving used the moment in front of the cam­eras to taunt and abuse audi­ence mem­bers until a few of them rushed the stage to fight him. Had NBC exec­u­tives seen this footage casu­al vio­lence, pro­fan­i­ty, and wor­ri­some ebul­lience, it’s unlike­ly they would have let return­ing guest John Belushi book Fear on Hal­loween night of that same year.

The SNL appear­ance — for which Fear proud­ly earned a per­ma­nent ban — became the stuff of leg­end. Not only did Ving and band get up to their usu­al antics onstage, but the show brought in a crew of about 80 DC punks (includ­ing Dischord Records/Fugazi founder Ian MacK­aye), who smashed up the set and joined the band in sol­i­dar­i­ty against New York and its sax­o­phones. The net­work cut the broad­cast short when one punk (iden­ti­fied as either MacK­aye or John Bran­non of the band Neg­a­tive Approach) yelled “F*ck New York!” into an open mic dur­ing the last song, “Let’s Start a War.” NBC shelved the footage for years.

Although well-known in fan com­mu­ni­ties, the appear­ance might have fad­ed from mem­o­ry were it not for the inter­net, which not only has the Warho­lian pow­er to make any­one famous (or “inter­net famous”) for no rea­son, but also rou­tine­ly res­ur­rects lost moments of fame and makes them last for­ev­er. Just so, the leg­end of Fear on SNL has grown over time on YouTube. It now war­rants a short doc­u­men­tary — one made, no less, by Jeff Kru­lik, a film­mak­er who, five years after the Fear appear­ance, doc­u­ment­ed anoth­er bur­geon­ing Fear-like fan­dom in his cult short, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot.”

“Fear on SNL,” above, includes sev­er­al inter­view clips from first­hand wit­ness­es. DC “punk super­fan” Bill MacKen­zie lis­tens to an old inter­view he gave about the show, in which he says the band asked him to come to the tap­ing. As Ian MacK­aye tells it, Lorne Michaels him­self placed the call. (He must mean pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol, as Michaels left the show in 1980 and wouldn’t return until 1985.) But both MacK­aye and Ving remem­ber that it was Belushi who real­ly round­ed up the audi­ence of authen­tic punks, lever­ag­ing his own hard-won celebri­ty to stick it to the fac­to­ry that made his fame.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

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

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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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