John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd Get Brian Wilson Out of Bed and Force Him to Go Surfing, 1976

in Comedy, Music, Television | April 25th, 2013

There are cer­tain leg­ends sur­round­ing Bri­an Wil­son, the trou­bled genius behind the Beach Boys. One is that he hates going to the beach. He nev­er went surf­ing, even though he wrote clas­sic songs like “Surfer Girl,” “Surfin’ Safari,” and “Surfin’ USA.” Anoth­er is that he basi­cal­ly stayed in bed for two or three years in the ear­ly 1970s, weight­ed down by drugs and depres­sion.

In this clas­sic com­e­dy sketch from the sum­mer of 1976, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd play a pair of Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol offi­cers who burst into the bed­room of Wilson’s Bel Air home and force the reclu­sive musi­cian to get up and go surf­ing. “Bri­an,” says Aykroyd, “we have a cita­tion here for you sir under Sec­tion 936A of the Cal­i­for­nia Catch a Wave Statute. Bri­an, you’re in vio­la­tion of Para­graph 12: fail­ing to surf, neglect­ing to use a state beach for surf­ing pur­pos­es, and oth­er­wise avoid­ing surf­boards, surf­ing and surf.”

The scene is from the NBC tele­vi­sion spe­cial It’s OK, which was pro­duced by Sat­ur­day Night Live cre­ator Lorne Michaels dur­ing the break between SNL’s first and sec­ond sea­sons. It was direct­ed by the show’s res­i­dent flm­mak­er Gary Weis. The one-hour spe­cial was orga­nized to cel­e­brate the Beach Boys’ 15th anniver­sary and to pro­mote their album, 15 Big Ones. Wil­son had just rejoined the group, and the spe­cial was part of the “Bri­an’s Back” pub­lic­i­ty cam­paign. The pro­gram, which is cur­rent­ly avail­able on Euro­pean-for­mat­ted DVD as The Beach Boys: Good Vibra­tions Tour,  includes an inter­view of Wil­son in bed, comedic scenes of band mem­bers doing off­beat things, and live footage from a July 3, 1976 Beach Boys con­cert at Ana­heim Sta­di­um. In the two inter­cut scenes above, Mike Love leads the Beach Boys onstage in a per­for­mance of “Surfin’ USA” as Wil­son is forced into the ocean in his bath robe. “Okay, Mr. Wil­son,” says Aykroyd. “Here’s your wave.”

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds: A Video Break­down

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

John Belushi’s Impro­vised Screen Test for Sat­ur­day Night Live (1975)

The Mak­ing of The Blues Broth­ers: When Belushi and Aykroyd Went on a Mis­sion for Com­e­dy & Music

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Led Zeppelin Plays One of Its Earliest Concerts (Danish TV, 1969)

in Music, Television | April 24th, 2013

Here’s a great record of what Led Zep­pelin looked and sound­ed like in the first year of the band’s exis­tence. The date was March 17, 1969. The group’s debut album, Led Zep­pelin, had been out in Amer­i­ca for almost three months but would not be released in the UK for a cou­ple more weeks. Led Zep­pelin was on a tour of the UK and Scan­di­navia when they stopped by the TV-Byen stu­dios in Glad­saxe, Den­mark, a sub­urb of Copen­hagen, to play four songs from the new album:

  1. “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Break­down”
  2. “Dazed and Con­fused”
  3. “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”
  4. “How Many More Times”

Zep­pelin had only been togeth­er a lit­tle more than half a year when the TV show was record­ed (the band’s first gig, on Sep­tem­ber 7, 1968, also hap­pened to have been in Glad­saxe) but they sound tight. Some of the band’s trade­mark the­atrics are already in place, includ­ing Jim­my Page’s ethe­re­al vio­lin-bow gui­tar solo. Page is play­ing his clas­sic 1959 Fend­er Tele­cast­er, a gift from Jeff Beck that Page had paint­ed a drag­on on and used as his main gui­tar dur­ing his days with the Yard­birds. Only a month before this broad­cast, dur­ing Zep­pelin’s kick­off tour of Amer­i­ca, Joe Walsh had giv­en Page a Gib­son Les Paul. By the time Led Zep­pelin II was fin­ished, Page had switched to the Les Paul and basi­cal­ly retired the Tele­cast­er, though he played it on his famous 1971 solo in “Stair­way to Heav­en.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of Kash­mir

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Inside Breaking Bad: Watch Conan O’Brien’s Extended Interview with the Show’s Cast and Creator

in Television | April 24th, 2013

“The Mad Men col­lec­tion at Banana Repub­lic is okay,” joked a com­e­dy-writer friend of mine, “but the Break­ing Bad col­lec­tion at TJ Maxx is to die for.” A fan­tas­tic line, for sure — though I would argue that Banana Repub­lic’s Mad Men col­lec­tion is not, in fact, okay — and one that high­lights just how wide a spec­trum of sen­si­bil­i­ty and set­ting this new wave of crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed cable tele­vi­sion offers us. Over the past half-decade, these two dra­mas, Mad Men set in the ear­ly six­ties’ high-fly­ing adver­tis­ing indus­try and Break­ing Bad set on the con­tem­po­rary New Mex­i­can meth-cook­ing scene, have togeth­er drawn the lion’s share of this acclaim. What’s more, they’ve both done it on AMC, the chan­nel whose pre­vi­ous ser­vice con­sist­ed pri­mar­i­ly of Audrey Hep­burn movies, served to your great aunt. Sure, maybe you’d expect from them a peri­od series some­thing like Mad Men. But the grit­ti­er, more trou­bling Break­ing Bad? How did all involved pull it off?

In the hour-long video above, the astute inves­ti­ga­tor known as Conan O’Brien leads a pan­el dis­cus­sion about the show fea­tur­ing, among sev­er­al oth­ers, cre­ator Vince Gilli­gan and star Bryan Cranston. From his web series Seri­ous Jib­ber-Jab­ber, on which he’s held in-depth con­ver­sa­tions with the likes of his­to­ri­an Edmund Mor­ris and sta­tis­ti­cian Nate Sil­ver, we’ve learned that Conan can do long-form inter­views and get answers to the impor­tant ques­tions. Here we have the impor­tant ques­tion — not least, nat­u­ral­ly, to AMC itself — of how Break­ing Bad became, in the words of var­i­ous crit­ics, a “taut exer­cise in with­held dis­as­ter,” a “feel-good show about feel­ing real­ly bad,” a “superla­tive­ly fresh metaphor for a mid­dle-age cri­sis” and a “com­bi­na­tion of stag­ger­ing and trans­fix­ing weird­ness” that “ele­vates the artis­tic achieve­ments of the medi­um,” ulti­mate­ly becom­ing “one of tele­vi­sion’s finest dra­mat­ic accom­plish­ments.” If these words strike you as hyper­bol­ic, watch the com­pi­la­tion just above that pro­files the long-term trans­for­ma­tion of Bryan Cranston’s pro­tag­o­nist Wal­ter White. Then you’ll want to watch the series, which ends this sum­mer, and add some words of your own.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

A Very Young Marianne Faithfull Sings Her First Hit, ‘As Tears Go By’ (1965)

in Music, Television | April 15th, 2013

On Fri­day we fea­tured a 1973 video of Mar­i­anne Faith­full and David Bowie dressed as a nun and a trans­ves­tite, mak­ing a bur­lesque of Son­ny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” Today we thought we’d roll back the clock a bit fur­ther, to when Faith­full was a bright-eyed 18-year-old singing her debut sin­gle, “As Tears Go By.”

The per­for­mance was broad­cast on Jan­u­ary 19, 1965 on the NBC pro­gram Hul­la­baloo, an Amer­i­can musi­cal vari­ety show that aired in 1965 and 1966. Each week­ly episode was host­ed by a guest artist who would at some point ask for the cam­eras to be switched over to Lon­don, where the Bea­t­les’ man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein would intro­duce an artist from Eng­land. On this occa­sion Faith­full appeared ner­vous as she sang “As Tears Go By,” which had been released the pre­vi­ous sum­mer in Eng­land but more recent­ly in Amer­i­ca.

Faith­ful­l’s record­ing of the song peaked at num­ber nine on the British charts and num­ber 22 on the Bill­board Hot 100 in the Unit­ed States. It was one of the first songs writ­ten by Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards of the Rolling Stones, along with their man­ag­er Andrew Loog Old­ham. The Stones them­selves did­n’t release a record­ing of it until Decem­ber 1965, a year and a half after Faith­ful­l’s ver­sion came out. In a brief inter­view at the end of the Hul­la­baloo seg­ment, Epstein asks Faith­full how she came to record the song:

“I met Andrew Old­ham at a par­ty,” she says, “and he asked me if I’d like to make a record, because he thought I had a face that could sell.”

“And what did you think?” says Epstein.

“I thought, ‘This is fine. Per­haps I have. Let’s sell it.’ ”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Rolling Stones Live in Hyde Park, 1969: The Com­plete Film

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

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

in Music, Television | April 12th, 2013

Here’s a won­der­ful­ly weird per­for­mance by David Bowie, dressed in drag for his last appear­ance as Zig­gy Star­dust, and Mar­i­anne Faith­full as a way­ward nun, singing the mawk­ish Son­ny & Cher tune, “I Got You Babe.”

The duet was record­ed for Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion on Octo­ber 19, 1973 at the Mar­quee Club in Lon­don. The pro­duc­er Burt Sug­ar­man had approached Bowie about appear­ing on his late-night NBC pro­gram The Mid­night Spe­cial. Accord­ing to the Zig­gy Star­dust Com­pan­ion, Bowie agreed to appear on the show after being grant­ed com­plete artis­tic con­trol for a one-hour spe­cial. He put togeth­er a cabaret-style show fea­tur­ing him­self and a cou­ple of acts from the 1960s, per­form­ing on a futur­is­tic set. Bowie called it “The 1980 Floor Show,” as a pun on the title of his song “1984,” which was played dur­ing the open­ing title sequence.

Film­ing took place over two days. The audi­ences were com­posed of Bowie fan club mem­bers and oth­er spe­cial guests. Due to the cramped quar­ters in the night­club, the cam­era crew was­n’t able to cov­er more than two angles at any moment, so Bowie and the oth­ers had to play the same songs over and over. On the day “I Got You Babe” was filmed, the musi­cians and crew worked for ten straight hours.

Faith­full was invit­ed to appear on the show as one of the back-up acts, along with The Trog­gs and the “fla­men­co rock” group Car­men. At the very end of the evening, Bowie and Faith­full appeared onstage together–he in a red PVC out­fit with black ostrich plumes (he called it his “Angel of Death” cos­tume) and she in a nun’s habit that was, by more than one account, open in the back. “This isn’t any­thing seri­ous,” Bowie report­ed­ly told the audi­ence. “It’s just a bit of fun. We’ve hard­ly even rehearsed it.”

The Mid­night Spe­cial appear­ance marked a momen­tary reunion of Bowie’s band, The Spi­ders from Mars, which had dis­solved three months ear­li­er, after Bowie’s sur­prise announce­ment that he was retir­ing. The line­up includ­ed Mick Ron­son on lead gui­tar, Trevor Bold­er on bass, Mike Gar­son on piano, Mark Carr Pritchard on rhythm gui­tar and Ayns­ley Dun­bar on drums. Back­ing vocals were pro­vid­ed by The Astronettes: Ava Cher­ry, Jason Guess and Geof­frey Mac­Cor­ma­ck. As the final per­for­mance of “The 1980 Floor Show,” Bowie’s duet with Faith­full turned out to be the very last appear­ance of Zig­gy Star­dust.

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:

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

The Two Roger Eberts: Emphatic Critic on TV; Incisive Reviewer in Print

in Film, Television | April 5th, 2013


“It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.” Words of writer­ly wis­dom from the late Roger Ebert, whom sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans came to rec­og­nize not just as a film crit­ic, but as the very per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of film crit­i­cism. He earned this place in the coun­try’s zeit­geist by mas­ter­ing two stark­ly dis­parate types of media: the medi­um-length but always sub­stan­tial review writ­ten for news­pa­pers, and the short con­ver­sa­tion­al review broad­cast on tele­vi­sion. The for­mer we read in the form of his syn­di­cat­ed film pieces for the Chica­go Sun-Times; the lat­ter we watched on Siskel and Ebert at the Movies. After his co-host Gene Siskel’s pass­ing in 1999, Ebert con­tin­ued with Roger Ebert and the Movies, fol­lowed by Ebert and Roeper and the Movies. But long­time fans of his film crit­i­cism on tele­vi­sion, and new fans dis­cov­er­ing the show’s old episodes on the inter­net, will always look back to Ebert’s on-air debates — which some­times devolved, sim­ply, into fights — as the peak of the form, at least in terms of enter­tain­ment val­ue. Above you’ll find a clas­sic exam­ple in Siskel and Ebert’s tiff over the fire­fight in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Full Met­al Jack­et. “I have nev­er felt a kill in a movie quite like that,” insists Siskel. “Not in Apoc­a­lypse Now? Not in The Deer Hunter? Not in Pla­toon?” Ebert asks before his riposte: “In that case, you’re going to love the late show, because they have kills like that every night in black and white star­ring John Wayne.” (BTW, we have a col­lec­tion of John Wayne films here.)

Ebert knew how to deliv­er that metaphor­i­cal punch (and, when nec­es­sar­i­ly, to approach the edge of actu­al fisticuffs) on tele­vi­sion. In print, he knew how to remain curi­ous and thought­ful even when served each week’s heap­ing help­ing of stu­dio medi­oc­rity. This milder, more com­pli­cat­ed, vast­ly knowl­edge­able crit­i­cal per­sona comes through in his 1996 con­ver­sa­tion with Char­lie Rose (part one, part two) just above. Though he could cel­e­brate and dis­miss with the utmost con­vic­tion, he also under­stood that the film crit­ic has high­er duties than eval­u­a­tion. He demon­strates this under­stand­ing all through­out his review archive, which, embrac­ing the web before most crit­ics of his gen­er­a­tion, he’d put online by the mid-nineties. Back then, I spent an hour or two every day after school in the library, plow­ing through his back pages. I thought I was learn­ing about the movies, as indeed I was, and I was cer­tain­ly learn­ing a thing or two about review­ing the movies, but I was above all learn­ing about the whole craft of writ­ing, and thus about approach­ing the world, cin­e­mat­ic and oth­er­wise. We won’t remem­ber Roger Ebert for the stars he doled out and with­held, nor for the angle of his thumbs; we’ll remem­ber him for his abil­i­ty to, through the lens of the movies, con­sid­er life itself. 

Relat­ed con­tent:

Roger Ebert Talks Mov­ing­ly About Los­ing and Re-Find­ing His Voice (TED 2011)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Borges: Profile of a Writer Presents the Life and Writings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges

in Literature, Television | April 3rd, 2013

“Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocur­ren las cosas,” begins the very short sto­ry “Borges y yo”. That trans­lates to “It’s to the oth­er man, to Borges, that things hap­pen” in Eng­lish. The tale’s author, Jorge Luis Borges, lived his life between Eng­lish and his native Span­ish, just as he lived between his pub­lic and pri­vate per­sonas. No sur­prise, then, that his writ­ing gen­er­ates so much ener­gy from mat­ters of iden­ti­ty, lan­guage, and thought, and thus makes you want to learn more about the mind behind it. Here at Open Cul­ture, we par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoy doing our learn­ing through Are­na, the BBC’s intel­lec­tu­al­ly omniv­o­rous and artis­ti­cal­ly lib­er­at­ed tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series. The 1983 broad­cast above, takes as its sub­ject the imag­i­na­tive Argen­tine mas­ter of the short sto­ry. The show has always done well by what we might call cult writ­ers (see also its episode on the no less imag­i­na­tive Philip K. Dick), and the cult of Borges now seems broad­er and more enthu­si­as­tic than ever. If you count your­self as a mem­ber, this episode “Borges and I” makes for required view­ing.

Sit­ting down with Are­na, the elder­ly Borges speaks with­out hes­i­ta­tion on his rela­tion­ship to lan­guage, his dis­cov­ery of his own lim­i­ta­tions as a writer, the regimes that have ruled his home­land, his pro­fes­sion­al life spent at libraries (includ­ing his time as direc­tor of Argenti­na’s Bib­liote­ca Nacional), and his accel­er­at­ing blind­ness. We see scenes of life in Borges’ beloved Buenos Aires. We see the writer step­ping care­ful­ly through the city streets, cane in one hand, feel­ing the build­ings with the oth­er. We see, per­haps most fas­ci­nat­ing­ly of all, dra­ma­tized pas­sages of Borges’ most famous sto­ries: “Funes the Mem­o­ri­ous”, about a peas­ant con­demned to remem­ber every­thing per­fect­ly, los­ing his abil­i­ty to gen­er­al­ize, and thus to think; “The Cir­cu­lar Ruins”, about a man attempt­ing to dream anoth­er human being into exis­tence, detail by minute detail; “Death and the Com­pass”, about a detec­tive who either acci­den­tal­ly or delib­er­ate­ly walks straight into a vil­lain’s elab­o­rate, tetra­gram­ma­ton-based trap. Borges’ fans tend to think of his sto­ries as thor­ough­ly wrapped up in, and insep­a­ra­ble from, the text that con­sti­tute them, but some of these seg­ments con­vince me that, as movies, they would­n’t turn out half-bad.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Borges: The Task of Art

Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Tom Waits, Playing the Down-and-Out Barfly, Appears in Classic 1978 TV Performance

in Music, Television | March 25th, 2013

Musi­cal­ly, Tom Waits has come a long way since the 1970s. Absorb­ing a range of influ­ences, Waits has rein­vent­ed him­self sev­er­al times over to become one of the most influ­en­tial writ­ers and per­form­ers of our time.

Along the way he has also made his mark as a char­ac­ter actor. But “par­al­lel career” would be the wrong phrase to describe Wait­s’s film and tele­vi­sion work, for his music and act­ing have always inter­sect­ed. Nev­er was this more appar­ent than in the 1970s, when Waits cul­ti­vat­ed the per­sona of a down-and-out barfly with the soul of a Beat poet.

That ear­ly phase of Wait­s’s career is pre­served in this high­ly the­atri­cal 54-minute tele­vi­sion per­for­mance. It was record­ed on Decem­ber 5, 1978 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas for a March 24, 1979 broad­cast of Austin City Lim­its. The pro­gram was lat­er released on DVD as Bur­ma Shave. Waits is joined by Her­bert Hard­esty on trum­pet and tenor sax­o­phone, Arthur Richards on gui­tar, Greg Cohen on bass, and Big John Thomassie on drums. Here’s the set list:

  1. Sum­mer­time Blues
  2. Bur­ma Shave
  3. Annie’s Back in Town
  4. I Wish I Was in New Orleans
  5. Ain’t Gonna Rain
  6. Bul­lets
  7. On the Nick­el
  8. Romeo is Bleed­ing
  9. Silent Night
  10. Christ­mas Card from a Hook­er in Min­neapo­lis
  11. Small Change
  12. Hey Big Spender
  13. Small Change

Relat­ed con­tent:

Tom Waits Makes Com­ic Appear­ance on Fer­n­wood Tonight (1977)

Tom Wait­s’s Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richard Sing Sea Song ‘Shenan­doah’ for New Pirate-Themed CD

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast