Last year, Colin Marshall highlighted for you the music of Xiu Xiu, the experimental post-punk band, which has traveled the world, playing their own interpretation of the music Angelo Badalamenti wrote for David Lynch’s early 1990s series, Twin Peaks. Our original post featured some of those live performances, and now comes a studio recording of those Twin Peaks interpretations.
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American Bandstand is best remembered these days not for doing the job it set out to do–presenting safe pop stars in the company of a studio audience to move units–but for when it ran headlong into the changing culture around it. Or at least that’s what Open Culture thinks. We’ve seen the beginnings of the Summer of Love with Jefferson Airplane and chipper Dick Clark trying to figure out why hippies wouldn’t cut their hair. We’ve also seen a bemused Clark attempting to interact with David Byrne when the Talking Heads played the show. But nothing really tops the time Public Image Ltd. brought true chaos to the Bandstand.
Dick Clark called it the worst moment in Bandstand history; Lydon, in his autobiography, said the opposite, saying Clark told him it was one of the best performances in the show’s history. Somewhere in between lies the truth–no doubt Clark knew it was great television.
PIL was on American Bandstand to promote their album Second Edition, their dark dabbling into dub and post-punk. The first song may be called “Poptones” but there’s nothing poppy about it.
According to Cole Coonce in his book Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments, Lydon told Clark that he had a cold. “He said that because he wasn’t feeling well he was just going to go up there and take the piss out of me. So I said, ‘Go ahead.’ And he did.’”
Lydon’s account is different, saying the show’s producers cut down “Poptones” and “Careering” (a total of 13 some minutes) down to a manageable length.
“I don’t know where the vocals are going to drop. What are we supposed to do?” Lydon thought.
What PIL did is what was broadcast. Adrift from their own song, Lydon starts “Poptones” sitting on the front of the stage, then grabs the microphone and wanders into the audience. He makes no attempt to lip sync. The audience isn’t sure what to do. Lydon isn’t sure. There’s an element of danger and excitement. Lydon grabs audience members and takes them onto the stage to dance. By the end of the first song the audience has taken over the stage and then Dick Clark has to introduce the band. It doesn’t last long, and “Careering” begins.
The danger of punk and post-punk that evening wasn’t in the performance of the band or of a volatile audience. It was in the breaking down of a television show’s artifice and the separation of band and audience. Check it out.
Some great photos of the show can be viewed over at Flashbak.
Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.
The story has, over time, solidified into one of the columns of Steve Jobs lore: in the early 1970s, the man who would found Apple left for Reed College. But before long, not wanting to spend any more of his parents’ money on tuition (and perhaps not temperamentally compatible with the structure of higher education anyway), he officially dropped out, couch-surfed through friends’ pads, lived on free meals ladled out by Hare Krishnas, continued to audit a variety of classes, and generally lived the prototype techno-neo-hippie lifestyle Silicon Valley has continued relentlessly to refine.
Perhaps the least likely of those classes was one on calligraphy, taught by Trappist monk and calligrapher Robert Palladino. More than thirty years later, delivering a now-famous Stanford commencement speech, Jobs recalled his time in the calligraphy class: “None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography.”
And what of the calligraphy teacher who made that possible? “Palladino, who died in late February at 83, joined the Trappist order of monks in New Mexico in 1950, according to a 2003 profile in Reed Magazine,” writes the Washington Post’s Niraj Chokshi. “Just 17 at the time, his handwriting attracted the attention of the monastery scribe, who worked with him on his art. Five years later, Palladino moved to Lafayette, Ore., where local artists brought news of a skilled amateur to Lloyd Reynolds, an icon in the field and the creator of Reed’s calligraphy program.”
Now you, too, can receive instruction from Reynolds, who in 1968 starred in a series on the Oregon Education Television Service’s program Men Who Teach, shooting twenty half-hour broadcasts on italic calligraphy and handwriting. Eight years later — about the time Jobs co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak — he re-shot the series in color, and you can watch that version almost in its entirety with the playlist at the top of the post. (Reed has also made some related instructional materials available.) You may feel the temptation to turn all of Reynolds’ lessons on the art of writing toward your goal of becoming the next Steve Jobs. But try to resist that impulse and appreciate it for its own nature, which Jobs himself described as “beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture.”
“According to a study published Monday by researchers at Duke University’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, humans experience the most intense feelings of happiness when pressing the ‘skip ad’ button before watching a video on the internet.” That comes fromTheOnion, whose satirical reporting hits the mark as usual. If we know one thing about advertising for sure, we know that we don’t like it — or at least we don’t like many of its current manifestations, so much so that we willingly engage in the arms race of downloading special programs to block them, which advertisers soon find a way to defeat, requiring us to find new evasive tactics, which forces advertises to cut another path to us, and so on.
How has it come to this? You can learn exactly how from Sell & Spin, the 1999 television documentary above. “From ancient phrases etched in stone to today’s cutting-edge multimedia commercials, selling has always meant grabbing attention,” says its narrator, the respected talk-show host Dick Cavett. “The point? Moving the product. The means? Tapping into desire — creating need.” From the first known advertisement, a wine shop’s sign from ancient Babylon, to the eve of the high-tech 21st century, Cavett and a host of advertising experts tell the story of not just how advertising became an industry in the first place, but how it became the huge, shape-shifting industry we regard today as both wildly creative yet somehow sinister.
Even the most ad-loathing viewer will recognize many of the iconic examples of this ultra-commercial art form of the thousands this documentary includes: Burma-Shave roadsigns, the smoke-blowing Camel cigarettes billboard in Times Square, the Volkswagen Beetle touting itself as a “lemon” on a whole magazine page, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”; mascots from Tony the Tiger to the Marlboro Man (a symbol of freedom, we hear, for postwar office workers shackled to their desks) to the Taco Bell chihuahua; and of course Coca-Cola’s “I’d like to teach the world to sing,” whose conception the final episode of Mad Men fictionalized by putting into the mind of its protagonist, 1960s Madison Avenue “creative” Don Draper.
That acclaimed recent television drama both glamorized and criticized the culture of the 20th-century advertising industry, which may have operated as cynically and opportunistically as the businesses it worked for, but which nevertheless crafted some of the most enduring words and images in our modern culture. But what of the “mad men” of today, charged with the thankless (if often remunerative) task of coming up with those videos we get such a kick out of clicking past? Sell & Spin shows us the very beginning of their work, taking place on a now-quaint-looking cyberspace that had only just moved beyond Burma Shave-simple banner ads.
“Nobody quite knows how to use it effectively,” says Jay Chiat of the internet toward the documentary’s end. As the co-founder of Los Angeles’ formidable Chiat/Day advertising industry, he knew the mechanics of the craft well indeed, more than thoroughly enough to recognize both the medium’s potential and the extent to which nobody had yet tapped it. How we all use the internet has changed dramatically since Chiat died in 2002, but his words still ring true. It’s still early days for internet advertising, and its maddest men (and women) — the ones who fully reject the old industry commandment to “irritate your way into peoples’ consciousness — have yet to arrive on the scene.
A quick note: HBO recently premiered Vinyl, which takes a Goodfellas-style look at the seedy 1970s rock music and record-making scene. Here’s a quick snapshot of what the show’s all about:
Created by Mick Jagger & Martin Scorsese & Rich Cohen and Terence Winter, this new drama series is set in 1970s New York. A ride through the sex- and drug-addled music business at the dawn of punk, disco, and hip-hop, the show is seen through the eyes of a record label president, Richie Finestra, played by Bobby Cannavale, who is trying to save his company and his soul without destroying everyone in his path. Additional series regulars include Olivia Wilde, Ray Romano, Ato Essandoh, Max Casella, P.J. Byrne, J.C. MacKenzie, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Juno Temple, Jack Quaid, James Jagger and Paul Ben-Victor. Scorsese, Jagger and Winter executive produce along with Victoria Pearman, Rick Yorn, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, John Melfi, Allen Coulter and George Mastras. Winter serves as showrunner. The 10-episode first season debuts February 14th.
The first pilot episode–directly by Scorsese himself–is currently streaming free on HBO’s website. It runs two good hours. And if you want to watch the remaining episodes on the cheap, you can start a monthlong free trial of HBO NOW. Just look for the “Start Your Free Month” button at the top of HBO’s site.
Note: The video up top is only a trailer for Episode 1. To watch the complete episode, click here.
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Last year, we let you know that the first season of The Joy of Painting, the public-television paint-along show hosted by the neatly permed and persistently reassuring Bob Ross, had appeared free to watch online.
Produced by WNVC in Falls Church, Virginia, that season aired in 1983, and had some rough edges — the audible movements and murmurs of the crew in the background, the naturally improvisational Ross’ occasional stumble over one of his scripted lines — that would get thoroughly smoothed away as the program rapidly became an international TV institution, a process you can witness again for yourself now that Bob Ross’ Youtube channel has made available all 31 seasons free online.
Season Two
“Bob Ross died in 1995 at 52 after a battle with lymphoma,” writes the New York Times’ Foster Kamer, “but his cultural legacy has grown in his absence. He was around to witness the beginnings of his own cult status. In the early ’90s, he was big in Japan. And MTV, catering to the Gen X penchant for irony, ran a series of promotionaladvertisements that featured him.”
Gen Xers across America would surely all have caught glimpses of Ross — and more importantly, heard a few of his mesmerizingly delivered words — during late-night or midday channel-surfing sessions, but now, thanks to the increasing availability of The Joy of Painting’s archives on-demand and online, it’s made new fans even of those born after Ross had already departed.
Season Three
The show always made it easy for its viewers to paint as they watched, with Ross always taking the time to run down the short list of required tools, making tirelessly sure to emphasize that under no circumstances should they buy nylon brushes or clean those brushes with turpentine. As the production values increased, so did the number of colors on the palette, though they never expanded too far beyond the core set, which The Joy of Painting die-hards can rattle off like a mantra, of Bright Red, Phthalo Blue, Midnight Black, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Yellow, Van Dyke Brown, Titanium White, Sap Green — and, as Ross himself might say, the “almighty” canvas-covering Magic White, the foundation of the “wet-on-wet” technique he learned from mentor, and later bitter rival, Bill Alexander.
Season Four
The New York Times article quotes Annette Kowalski, a onetime student of Ross who now helps run the Bob Ross, Inc. empire, on the host’s enduring appeal as a teacher: “If you listen closely to Bob’s programs, he never says ‘I’m going to teach you this. He never assumes that he knows more than you do. He says: ‘We’ll learn this together.’ And I think — even though people don’t realize it — I think that’s what his big turn-on is.” But it almost goes without saying that not everyone fascinated by the show, and maybe not even most people fascinated by the show, actually have any desire to paint themselves.
Season Five
So why do they still tune in, on whatever platform they might tune in on, and in such large numbers? The key must have something to do with Ross’ oft-repeated reminders to his viewers that, when it comes to the landscapes on their own canvases, “this is your world, your creation,” and in your world, “there are no set, firm rules — you find what works for you, and that’s what you do.” On The Joy of Painting, Ross created a world, or perhaps a reality, of his own, one where “anybody can paint; all you need is a dream in your heart and a little practice,” where “there are no mistakes, just happy accidents” (plentifully inhabited, of course, by “happy little trees”), and one which many found they enjoyed living in, brush in hand or not, even if only for 26 minutes at a time.
Season Six
We will continuing adding seasons to this list as they become available.
Earlier this month, the world got news of the death of a man whose name many of us had never heard but whose act of innovation shaped what we do every day. “When historians of the future study the ways information technology affected people’s lives in the late 20th century,” said his Economist obituary, “they will surely recognise e‑mail as one of the most profound. Today, about 2.5m e‑mails are sent every second. The first e‑mail of all, though” — to be precise, “the first message between terminals attached to separate CPUs, albeit that these two computers stood side-by-side in the same room” — “was sent 45 years ago by Ray Tomlinson.”
Fifteen years after that quietly history-making transmission, e‑mail had evolved to the point that it had become a subject in the news. This 1984 segment of the Thames Television computer show Database shows how one early-adopting couple, Pat and Julian Green of north London, communicate with the world by connecting their computer to, of all things, the telephone line. “It’s simple, really,” says Julian, unplugging a British Telecom cable from one socket and plugging it into a modem, plugging a different wire from the modem into the first socket, switching on the modem, and then hand-dialing the number of a “main computer” — with his rotary phone. “Extremely simple,” he reiterates.
What can they do on Micronet, their service provider, once connected? They might read the news, have a look at “reviews of the software that’s currently available” and even download some of it, or use the feature that Pat (in addition to her use of the computer for “keeping household records, such as what I have in the freezer, and people’s telephone numbers and addresses,” as well as “a word processor for my letters, which always come out perfect now”) describes as most exciting of all: “the mailbox where I write to other people.” We see how she can use this new electronic mail to ask her doctor to refill a prescription, and even to send a message to the Database studio.
All this must have intrigued the viewers of the day, who, if they had their own computers at the ready, could even “download” software straight from the broadcast by recording the tone that plays over the show’s end credits. (As long as their computers were BBC Micros, that is, at least in this particular episode.) The past 32 years have seen enthusiasm for new technology spread all across the world, turning us all, in some sense, into Pat and Julian Greens. Today we marvel at all what we can do with our smartphones, devices that would’ve seemed magical in 1984, but in three decades from now, even our current technological lives will surely look quainter than anything in the Database archives.
“Now is the winter of our discontent….” If you know nothing else of Shakespeare’s Richard III, you’ll know this famous opening line, and it’s likely many of us know it through Laurence Olivier’s performance of Richard as a “melodramatic baddie” in the famous 1955 film. If not, take a look at the clip below to familiarize yourself with Olivier’s distinctive mannerisms and speech. The reference may largely be lost these days, but in 1965, at the very height of The Beatles’ fame, Olivier’s performance was still fresh in the minds of the TV viewing public. And the mercurial English comedian Peter Sellers put it to good use in a Beatles-tribute variety program called The Music of Lennon and McCartney that aired in the UK. In the clip above, Sellers recites the lyrics to “A Hard Day’s Night” in character as Olivier’s dandyish Richard.
Unsurprisingly, Sellers and the Beatles had hit it off right away when they were introduced by George Martin, and as we showed you in a recent post, the comedian milked their lyrics for more material, reading “She Loves You,” in a variety of accents. Sellers’ rendition of “A Hard Day’s Night” was hardly the first Shakespearean turn for the band.
The previous year, they appeared in another variety television special called Around the Beatles, “produced concurrently,” writes Dangerous Minds, “while A Hard Day’s Night was being shot.” (Around the Beatles was directed by producer and manager Jack Good, a “Shakespeare fan,” who also, it turns out, convinced rockabilly star Gene Vincent to dress up like Richard III.) In this earlier program, the band—always good sports about this kind of thing—dressed up in Shakespearean garb and staged a raucous performance of a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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