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)

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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The Life and Controversial Work of Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe Profiled in 1988 Documentary

in Photography, Television | March 18th, 2013

In March 1988, the BBC’s Are­na turned its lens toward pho­tog­ra­ph­er Robert Map­plethor­pe. The tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary series had already spent well over a decade cul­ti­vat­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for cov­er­ing every­thing—Super­man, Philip K. Dick, the fall­en Sovi­et empire, the Ford Cortina—but some view­ers must still have felt a bit star­tled by the choice of such a con­tro­ver­sial artist, let alone by how mild and non-threat­en­ing he ulti­mate­ly seems. Map­plethor­pe had made his name both in por­trai­ture, espe­cial­ly of musi­cians, and in high­ly charged erot­ic imagery. This lat­ter cur­rent in his work, did not, of course, please every­body. By the time the Are­na pro­file aired, Map­plethor­pe, suf­fer­ing from AIDS, would have only one year of life remain­ing, with the worst of the high-pro­file bat­tles over his artis­tic val­ue and/or “obscen­i­ty” still to come.

Though wary of extin­guish­ing the mys­tery of his pho­tographs by say­ing too much about them, Map­plethor­pe does reveal what sounds like an impor­tant ele­ment of his moti­va­tion, espe­cial­ly in the face of the obscen­i­ty charges: “I want­ed to retain the for­bid­den feel­ing of pornog­ra­phy and make an art state­ment, to make some­thing unique­ly my own.” We see the man at work, and we hear a good deal more from him in an on-cam­era inter­view. Nov­el­ist Edmund White appears to pro­vide con­text and com­men­tary, as do sev­er­al of the peo­ple Map­plethor­pe pho­tographed, both those who sought fame and those who oth­er­wise avoid­ed it. Cov­er­ing Map­plethor­pe’s life as much as it does his work, the broad­cast nat­u­ral­ly includes a con­ver­sa­tion with Pat­ti Smith, not­ed rock­er and per­haps the pho­tog­ra­pher’s clos­est friend. For ide­al sup­ple­men­tary read­ing, have a look at Smith’s Map­plethor­pe-cen­tric mem­oir Just Kids, about which we’ve post­ed before.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Remem­bers Robert Map­plethor­pe

Pat­ti Smith Reads Her Final Words to Robert Map­plethor­pe

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.

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Charlie Parker Plays with Dizzy Gillespie in the Only Footage Capturing the “Bird” in True Live Performance

in Music, Television | March 8th, 2013

Here’s a his­toric TV broad­cast of the found­ing fathers of bebop, Char­lie Park­er and Dizzy Gille­spie, play­ing togeth­er in 1952. It’s one of only two known sound films of Park­er playing–and the only one of him play­ing live, rather than synch­ing to a pre­re­cord­ed track.

The per­for­mance is from a Feb­ru­ary 24, 1952 broad­cast on the pio­neer­ing DuMont Tele­vi­sion Net­work. The full seg­ment begins with a brief cer­e­mo­ny in which Park­er and Gille­spie receive awards from Down Beat mag­a­zine, but the clip above cuts straight to the music: a per­for­mance of the bebop stan­dard “Hot House,” com­posed by Tad Dameron around the har­mon­ic struc­ture of Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love?.”

The quin­tet includes Park­er on alto sax­o­phone, Gille­spie on trum­pet, Sandy Block on bass, Char­lie Smith on drums and Dick Hyman on piano.

It was Hyman, who had played with Park­er and had his own night­ly show on the DuMont net­work, who helped orga­nize the appear­ance. In a 2010 inter­view with Jazz­Wax, Hyman talked about what it was like play­ing on the show with Park­er and Gille­spie. “It was togeth­er,” he said. “Those guys played with such a good time and feel. It’s a ter­rif­ic per­for­mance con­sid­er­ing it was a pop show with just two cam­eras.”

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:

Jean-Paul Sartre on How Amer­i­can Jazz Lets You Expe­ri­ence Exis­ten­tial­ist Free­dom & Tran­scen­dence

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking & Arthur C. Clarke Discuss God, the Universe, and Everything Else

in Astronomy, Science, Television | March 6th, 2013

Name the three fig­ures, liv­ing or dead, with whom you would most like to sit down to din­ner. Though per­haps a lit­tle tired, the chal­lenge still reveals some­thing worth know­ing about the respon­den­t’s per­son­al­i­ty. If I know the per­son­al­i­ties of Open Cul­ture read­ers at all, I’d wager that more than a few of you would choose to set places at the table for Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing, and Arthur C. Clarke. Any­one inter­est­ed in ask­ing the big, exis­ten­tial ques­tions and under­stand­ing the sci­ence under­neath them would have the time of their lives at such a meal, espe­cial­ly if astro­phys­i­cal­ly inclined. But until a genie grants you this wish, may we offer God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else?

Pre­sent­ed by Mag­nus Mag­nus­son, long­time host of the BBC’s Mas­ter­mind, this pro­gram brings the three togeth­er to dis­cuss “the Big Bang the­o­ry, God, our exis­tence as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of extrater­res­tri­al life.” Hawk­ing, of course, talks through his sig­na­ture speech syn­the­siz­er, and Sagan joins up through a satel­lite link — beamed through, yes, the very sort of float­ing mir­a­cles of engi­neer­ing that Clarke wrote about in his nov­els. With minds like these, you can rest assured that the con­ver­sa­tion won’t stray far from what Sagan calls “the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions,” nor will it come unteth­ered from estab­lished human knowl­edge and float into the realms of wild spec­u­la­tion and wish­ful think­ing. And of course, in such con­ver­sa­tions, a sense of humor like Hawk­ing’s — a man who, not expect­ed to reach age thir­ty, would nev­er­the­less live to see more advance­ment in human knowl­edge than any­one else on the broad­cast — nev­er goes amiss.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawk­ing Remixed

Watch Errol Mor­ris’ Trib­ute to Stephen Hawk­ing, A Brief His­to­ry of Time

Sev­en Ques­tions for Stephen Hawk­ing: What Would He Ask Albert Ein­stein & More

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.

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