RIP D.A. Pennebaker: Watch Scenes from His Groundbreaking Bob Dylan Documentary Dont Look Back

in Film, Music | August 5th, 2019

Some­thing hap­pened to pop­u­lar cul­ture in the late 1960s, and we who seek to under­stand exact­ly what owe a debt of grat­i­tude to the doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er D.A. Pen­nebak­er, who died last week. That goes for those us who nev­er expe­ri­enced those heady times our­selves; those of us who did (and may have found the times a bit too heady to recall with any clar­i­ty); and even those of us not quite young enough to fath­om what was going on at the time, such as those already in mid­dle age by the Sum­mer of Love. Pen­nebak­er was him­self a mem­ber of that gen­er­a­tion, but the films that came out of his cov­er­age of the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val — whose per­form­ers includ­ed Janis Joplin, Ravi Shankar, Jef­fer­son Air­plane, The Who, and Jimi Hen­drix — reveal that he could see some­thing big was hap­pen­ing.

Pen­nebak­er’s film­mak­ing also brought him into con­tact with the likes of John Lennon, David Bowie, Otis Red­ding, and Bob Dylan, the lat­ter being the star of Pen­nebak­er’s first music film Dont Look Back [sic]. Released in 1967 but shot in 1965, it observes the singer’s tour of Eng­land that year as well as the events sur­round­ing it, offer­ing what Roger Ebert called, when the film first came out, “a fas­ci­nat­ing exer­cise in self-rev­e­la­tion car­ried out by Bob Dylan and friends,” a group that includes such gen­er­a­tional icons as Joan Baez and Dono­van.

Alas, “the por­trait that emerges is not a pret­ty one,” ren­dered as it is by the ciné­ma vérité style Pen­nebak­er had been devel­op­ing for more than a decade. That was made pos­si­ble in part by the advent of syn­chro­nous-sound cam­eras that could cap­ture real speech on loca­tion — “what peo­ple said to each oth­er,” in Pen­nebak­er’s words, as opposed to “what you thought up on a yel­low pad.”

All this exposed Dylan, in Ebert’s eyes, as “imma­ture, pet­ty, vin­dic­tive, lack­ing a sense of humor, over­ly impressed with his own impor­tance and not very bright.” In both his orig­i­nal review of Dont Look Back and his revis­i­ta­tion in 1998, when the film was select­ed for preser­va­tion in the U.S. Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Film Reg­istry, he high­lights the scene of Dylan’s inter­view with Time Lon­don cor­re­spon­dent Horace Free­land Jud­son. Then, as now, a per­former who prefers to be pub­li­cized on his own terms, Dylan push­es back against any per­ceived attempt to define or explain him, espe­cial­ly by a rel­a­tive­ly old-school insti­tu­tion like Time. In this young Bob Dylan we have an embod­i­ment of the late-60s youth spir­it: amus­ing­ly defi­ant and pro­lif­i­cal­ly cre­ative, if also irre­spon­si­ble and arro­gant. (As Ebert wrote in 1998, “Did we actu­al­ly once take this twirp as our folk god?”)

Pen­nebak­er dis­cuss­es Dylan and Dont Look Back in the clip at the top of the post, which comes from a longer inter­view avail­able here. He also gets into 1966’s Eat the Doc­u­ment, the nev­er-offi­cial­ly-released fol­low-up to Dont Look Back pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. In the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion video just above, Pat­ti Smith — some­how nev­er the sub­ject of a Pen­nebak­er film her­self — reflects on the role Dylan played in her life. “He was like my imag­i­nary boyfriend,” Smith says of the singer. “The first time I saw Dont Look Back, I had just come to New York to live.” She describes the inter­sec­tion of the move and the movie as “a piv­otal moment, because it encom­passed every­thing for me: it encom­passed the hubris of youth, it encom­passed art, poet­ry, the per­fect sun­glass­es, every­thing.” She saw the film so many times that she “knew all the dia­logue” — dia­logue that Pen­nebak­er just hap­pened to cap­ture, but which has long since become part of the cul­ture.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Do Look Back: Pen­nebak­er and Mar­cus Talk Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Shares a Drug-Hazed Taxi Ride with John Lennon (1966)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Watch the First Trail­er for Mar­tin Scorsese’s New Film, Rolling Thun­der Revue: A Bob Dylan Sto­ry

Andy Warhol’s ‘Screen Test’ of Bob Dylan: A Clas­sic Meet­ing of Egos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Authentic Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: Watch a Performance Based on Original Manuscripts & Played with 18th-Century Instruments

in Music | August 5th, 2019

Last week we fea­tured a per­for­mance of Pachel­bel’s Canon as faith­ful as pos­si­ble to how Pachel­bel orig­i­nal­ly com­posed it, as well as to the instru­ments and play­ing styles of the era in which he lived. Today we offer anoth­er per­for­mance by the same ensem­ble, San Fran­cis­co’ Voic­es of Music, this one of an even more beloved piece: Anto­nio Vivaldi’s The Four Sea­sons. In the video above, vio­lin­ist Cyn­thia Miller Freivo­gel joins Voic­es of Music to play the suit­e’s “Win­ter” con­cer­to on such gen­uine­ly ear­ly 18th-cen­tu­ry instru­ments as the baroque organ, the Ital­ian sin­gle man­u­al harp­si­chord, and the arch­lute.

“Of the many com­posers who helped to bring the Ital­ian Baroque style to its zenith at the begin­ning of the 18th cen­tu­ry, Anto­nio Vival­di stands out as per­haps the most cre­ative,” says the web site of the Red­lands Sym­pho­ny. “Like Bach, his ener­gy was pri­mar­i­ly direct­ed toward per­fect­ing exist­ing forms rather than cre­at­ing new ones. With­in the works of Vival­di, we see a per­fec­tion of the 17th cen­tu­ry Ital­ian con­cer­to and opera forms.”

And in the case of The Four Sea­sons, made up as it is of one con­cer­to rep­re­sent­ing each quar­ter of the year accom­pa­nied by a son­net on the spir­it of that sea­son, Vival­di made “a con­scious attempt to write pro­gram­mat­ic works. They are, in fact, one of the ear­li­est attempts to com­pose music of this type.”

For this video, Voic­es of Music’s offi­cial notes explain, a “new edi­tion” of The Four Sea­sons “was pre­pared from the orig­i­nal sources, prints and man­u­scripts for Vivaldi’s music. In addi­tion, a dig­i­tal over­lay has been cre­at­ed for Vivaldi’s son­nets which were inlaid into the orig­i­nal engrav­ing: click the CC but­ton to view the son­net and the gear icon to choose your pre­ferred lan­guage.” This per­for­mance of one part of Vivaldi’s best-known com­po­si­tions, sound­ing as close as we can pos­si­bly get today to the way Vival­di him­self must have heard it, will be sea­son­al­ly appro­pri­ate for south­ern-hemi­sphere Open Cul­ture read­ers now in the mid­dle of their own win­ter. As for read­ers in the sum­mer­time of the north­ern hemi­sphere — well, nine and a half min­utes of 17th-cen­tu­ry win­ter­time may be just what they need to cool down.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons”: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Brought to Life in Sand Ani­ma­tions by the Hun­gar­i­an Artist Fer­enc Cakó

The Recorder Played Like You’ve Nev­er Heard it Before: Hear a Stun­ning Solo from Vivaldi’s Recorder Con­cer­to in C Major

14-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

The Authen­tic Pachelbel’s Canon: Watch a Per­for­mance Based on the Orig­i­nal Man­u­script & Played with Orig­i­nal 17th-Cen­tu­ry Instru­ments

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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An Artist Crochets a Life-Size, Anatomically-Correct Skeleton, Complete with Organs

in Art, Biology, Creativity, Science | August 5th, 2019

How to make a life-sized fac­sim­i­le of a human skele­ton:

  1. Down­load files pub­lished under a Cre­ative Com­mons license, and arrange to have them 3‑D print­ed.

or

  1. Do as artist Shanell Papp did, above, and cro­chet one.

The lat­ter will take con­sid­er­ably more time and atten­tion on your part. Papp gave up all extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties for four months to hook the woolen skele­ton around her work and school sched­ule. Equip­ping it with inter­nal organs ate up anoth­er four.

To ensure accu­ra­cy, Papp armed her­self with anatom­i­cal text­books and an actu­al human skele­ton on loan from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leth­bridge, where she was an under­grad. The brain has gray and white mat­ter, there’s mar­row in the bones, the stom­ach con­tains half-digest­ed wool food, and the intestines can be unspooled to a real­is­tic length.

The gru­el­ing 2006 project did not exhaust her fas­ci­na­tion for the intri­ca­cies of human anato­my. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Saskatchewan grant­ed her open access to draw in the gross anato­my lab while she pur­sued her MFA.

 

As she told MICE mag­a­zine:

I want­ed this work to illus­trate all of the organs and bones every­one shares and to not high­light dif­fer­ences. Much of anatom­i­cal his­to­ry is about defin­ing dif­fer­ence, by com­par­a­tive analy­sis. This can set up strange tax­onomies and hier­ar­chies. I was­n’t inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in that; I want­ed to expose the frag­ile, com­mon, and unseen things in all of us.  

The fin­ished piece, which is dis­played supine on a gur­ney she nabbed for free dur­ing a mor­tu­ary ren­o­va­tion, incor­po­rates many of Papp’s oth­er abid­ing inter­ests: hor­ror, med­ical his­to­ry, Franken­stein, crime inves­ti­ga­tion, and mor­tu­ary prac­tices.

Papp, who taught her­self how to cro­chet from books as a child, using what­ev­er yarn found its way to her grandma’s junk shop, appre­ci­ates how her cho­sen medi­um adds a lay­er of homey soft­ness and famil­iar­i­ty to the macabre.

It’s also not lost on her that fiber arts, often dis­missed as too “crafty” by the estab­lish­ment, were an impor­tant com­po­nent of 70s-era fem­i­nist art, though in her view, her work is more of a state­ment on the his­to­ry of tex­tile man­u­fac­tur­ing, which is to say the his­to­ry of labor and class strug­gle.

See more of Shanell Papp’s work here.

All images in this post by Shanell Papp.

via design­boom/Mymod­ern­met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Dr. Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral & Cro­chet

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why a Cat Always Lands on Its Feet: How a French Scientist Used Photography to Solve the Problem in 1894

in Biology, Film, History, Photography, Science | August 2nd, 2019

In the era of the CATS trail­er and #cat­sofin­sta­gram, it’s easy to for­get that sci­en­tif­ic research is what orig­i­nal­ly con­vinced our feline friends to allow their images to be cap­tured and dis­sem­i­nat­ed.

An anony­mous white French pussy took one for the team in 1894, when scientist/inventor Éti­enne-Jules Marey dropped it from an unspec­i­fied height in the Bois de Boulogne, film­ing its descent at 12 frames per sec­ond.

Ulti­mate­ly, this brave and like­ly unsus­pect­ing spec­i­men fur­thered the cause of space explo­ration, though it took over 50 years for NASA-backed researchers T.R. Kane and M.P. Sch­er to pub­lish their find­ings in a paper titled “A Dynam­i­cal Expla­na­tion of the Falling Cat Phe­nom­e­non.”

As the Vox Dark­room episode above makes clear, Marey’s obses­sion was lofti­er than a fond­ness for Stu­pid Pet Tricks and the mis­chie­vous impulse to drop things off of tall build­ings that moti­vat­ed TV host David Let­ter­man once upon a time.

Marey’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the mechan­ics of organ­ic loco­mo­tion extend­ed to hors­es and humans. It prompt­ed him to invent pho­to­graph­ic tech­niques that pre­fig­ured cin­e­matog­ra­phy, and, more dark­ly, to sub­ject oth­er, less-cat­like crea­tures to dead­falls from sim­i­lar heights.

(Chil­dren and ani­mal rights activists, con­sid­er this your trig­ger warn­ing.)

The white cat sur­vived its ordeal by arch­ing its back mid-air, effec­tive­ly split­ting its body in two to har­ness the iner­tia of its body weight, much like a fig­ure skater con­trol­ling the veloc­i­ty of her spin by the posi­tion of her arms.

Why waste a sin­gle one of your nine lives? Physics is your friend, espe­cial­ly when falling from a great height.

See one of Marey’s pio­neer­ing falling cat chronopho­tographs below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thomas Edison’s Box­ing Cats (1894), or Where the LOL­Cats All Began

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

Explo­sive Cats Imag­ined in a Strange, 16th Cen­tu­ry Mil­i­tary Man­u­al

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Library of Congress Digitizes Over 16,000 Pages of Letters & Speeches from the Women’s Suffrage Movement, and You Can Help Transcribe Them

in Archives, Gender, History, Politics | August 2nd, 2019

“Democ­ra­cy may not exist,” Astra Tay­lor declares in the title of her new book, “but we’ll miss it when it’s gone.” This inher­ent para­dox, she argues, is not fatal, but a ten­sion with which each era’s demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments must wres­tle, in messy strug­gles against inevitable oppo­si­tion. “Per­fect democ­ra­cy… may not in fact exist and nev­er will, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make progress toward it, or that what there is of it can’t dis­ap­pear.”

Tay­lor is upfront about “democracy’s dark his­to­ry, from slav­ery and colo­nial­ism to facil­i­tat­ing the emer­gence of fas­cism.” But she is equal­ly cel­e­bra­to­ry of its successes—moments when those who were denied rights mar­shaled every means at their dis­pos­al, from lob­by­ing cam­paigns to con­fronta­tion­al direct action, to win the vote and bet­ter the lives of mil­lions. For all its imper­fec­tions, the women’s suf­frage move­ment of the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry did just that.

It did so—even before elec­tron­ic mass com­mu­ni­ca­tion systems—by build­ing inter­na­tion­al activist net­works and form­ing nation­al asso­ci­a­tions that took high­ly-vis­i­ble action for decades until the 19th Amend­ment passed in 1920. We can learn how this all came about from the sources them­selves, through the “let­ters, speech­es, news­pa­per arti­cles, per­son­al diaries, and oth­er mate­ri­als from famed suf­frag­ists like Susan B. Antho­ny and Eliz­a­beth Cady Stan­ton.”

So reports Men­tal Floss, describ­ing the Library of Con­gress’ dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of suf­frag­ist papers, which includes dozens of famous and less famous activist voic­es. In one exam­ple of both inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion and inter­na­tion­al ten­sion, Car­rie Chap­man Catt, Anthony’s suc­ces­sor (see a pub­lished excerpt of one of her speech­es below), describes her expe­ri­ence at the Con­gress of the Inter­na­tion­al Woman Suf­frage Alliance in Rome. “A more unpromis­ing place for a Con­gress I nev­er saw,” she wrote, dis­mayed. Maybe despite her­self she reveals that the dif­fer­ences might have been cul­tur­al: “The Ital­ian women could not com­pre­hend our dis­ap­proval.”

The frac­tious, often dis­ap­point­ing, rela­tion­ships between the larg­er inter­na­tion­al women’s suf­frage move­ment, the African Amer­i­can women’s suf­frage move­ment, and most­ly male Civ­il Rights lead­ers in the U.S. are rep­re­sent­ed by the diaries. let­ters, note­books, and speech­es of Mary Church Ter­rell, “a founder of the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Col­ored Women. These doc­u­ments shed light on minori­ties’ labo­ri­ous suf­frage strug­gles and her own deal­ings with Civ­il Rights fig­ures like W.E.B. Du Bois.” (Ter­rell became an activist in 1892 and lived to fight against Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion in the ear­ly 1950s.)

The col­lec­tion includes “some 16,000 his­toric papers relat­ed to the women’s rights move­ment alone.” All of them have been dig­i­tal­ly scanned, and if you’re eager to dig into this for­mi­da­ble archive, you’re in luck. The Library of Con­gress is ask­ing for help tran­scrib­ing so that every­one can read these pri­ma­ry sources of demo­c­ra­t­ic his­to­ry. So far, reports Smith­son­ian, over 4200 doc­u­ments have been tran­scribed, as part of a larg­er, crowd­sourced project called By the Peo­ple, which has pre­vi­ous­ly tran­scribed papers from Abra­ham Lin­coln, Clara Bar­ton, Walt Whit­man, and oth­ers.

Rather than focus­ing on an indi­vid­ual, this project is inclu­sive of what is arguably the main engine of democ­ra­cy: large-scale social movements—paradoxically the most demo­c­ra­t­ic means of claim­ing indi­vid­ual rights. Enter the impres­sive dig­i­tal col­lec­tion “Suf­frage: Women Fight for the Vote” here, and, if you’re moved by civic duty or schol­ar­ly curios­i­ty, sign up to tran­scribe.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

The Women’s Suf­frage March of 1913: The Parade That Over­shad­owed Anoth­er Pres­i­den­tial Inau­gu­ra­tion a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Odd Vin­tage Post­cards Doc­u­ment the Pro­pa­gan­da Against Women’s Rights 100 Years Ago

The Library of Con­gress Makes Thou­sands of Fab­u­lous Pho­tos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

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

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The Unexpected Ways Eastern Philosophy Can Make Us Wiser, More Compassionate & Better Able to Appreciate Our Lives

in Philosophy, Religion | August 2nd, 2019

I feel com­pelled to start this post with a dis­claimer: do not take the eight-and-a-half-minute video above, “Six Ideas from East­ern Phi­los­o­phy” from Alain de Botton’s School of Life series, as an author­i­ta­tive state­ment on East­ern Phi­los­o­phy.

Not that you would, or that de Bot­ton makes such a claim, but in an age of uncrit­i­cal over­con­sump­tion, infi­nite scrolling, and indi­vid­u­al­ly-wrapped explain­ers, it seems worth the reminder. No tradition—and cer­tain­ly not one as incal­cu­la­bly rich, deep, and ancient as the schools of thought summed up as “East­ern Philosophy”—can be para­phrased in an ani­mat­ed list.

Think of “Six Ideas from East­ern Phi­los­o­phy” as a teas­er. If you’ve resigned your­self to the fact that suf­fer­ing is ever-present and universal—the first idea on de Botton’s list and the Buddha’s first Noble Truth—you might love… or make a good faith effort to appre­ci­ate… The Mid­dle Length Dis­cours­es, the Shobo­gen­zo, the poet­ry and songs of Han Shan and Milarepa, or the thou­sands of trans­la­tions, com­men­taries, adap­ta­tions, and etcetera about them.

But the video isn’t about famous texts. The logo­cen­tric char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of phi­los­o­phy as only writ­ing per­sists, despite its seri­ous lim­i­ta­tions. In many East­ern tra­di­tions, writ­ing and study are only one part of com­plex reli­gious prac­tices. The first two ideas on de Botton’s list come from ear­ly Indi­an Bud­dhism; the third from Chi­nese Chan Bud­dhism, the fourth and fifth are Daoist con­cepts; and the sixth, kintsu­gi, comes from Japan­ese Zen.

De Botton’s title is mis­lead­ing. As he goes on to show, in brief, but with vivid exam­ples and com­par­isons, these are not “ideas” in the broad­ly Pla­ton­ic sense of pure abstrac­tions but for­mal­ized ways of being with oth­ers and being alone, of being with objects and nat­ur­al for­ma­tions that embody eth­i­cal ideals of bal­ance, equa­nim­i­ty, con­tent­ment, kind­ness, care, and deep appre­ci­a­tion for art and nature, with all their imper­fec­tions and dis­ap­point­ments.

Can we make much sense of the ado­ra­tion of the bod­hisatt­va Guanyin (whom de Bot­ton com­pares to the Vir­gin Mary) if we nev­er vis­it one of her tem­ples or call for her com­pas­sion­ate aid? Can we study the sub­tleties of bam­boo with­out bam­boo? Can we grasp the Four Noble Truths if we can’t sit still long enough for seri­ous self-reflec­tion? Some­times the prac­tices, land­scapes, and icono­gra­phies of East­ern phi­los­o­phy do not seem sep­a­ra­ble from ideas about them.

If there’s a bow to tie on de Botton’s sum­ma­ry, maybe it’s this: from these Bud­dhist and Daoist per­spec­tives, the end­less bifur­ca­tions of West­ern thought are illu­so­ry. Pain, imper­fec­tion, and uncer­tain­ly are inevitable and not to be feared but com­pas­sion­ate­ly accept­ed. And phi­los­o­phy is some­thing that hap­pens in the body and mind togeth­er, an idea cer­tain­ly not alien to the walk­ing thinkers of the West.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

East­ern Phi­los­o­phy Explained with Three Ani­mat­ed Videos by Alain de Botton’s School of Life

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy: Watch the 1960 TV Show, East­ern Wis­dom and Mod­ern Life

What Is a Zen Koan? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to East­ern Philo­soph­i­cal Thought Exper­i­ments

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

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Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” Sung in the Style of David Bowie

in Music | August 2nd, 2019

If you like what Antho­ny Vin­cent has to offer here, there’s more where that came from. Don’t miss his oth­er viral video, “Enter Sand­man in 20 Styles,” which fea­tures Metal­li­ca’s 1998 hit sung in the style of Ste­vie Won­der, The Police, The Doors and much more.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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!

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Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #4 — HBO’s “Chernobyl”: Why Do We Enjoy Watching Suffering?

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | August 2nd, 2019

On the HBO mini-series Cher­nobyl. Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt first get into the var­i­ous degrees of loose­ness in something’s being “based on a true sto­ry.” Does it mat­ter if it’s been changed to be more dra­mat­ic? We then con­sid­er the show as enter­tain­ment: Why do peo­ple enjoy wit­ness­ing suf­fer­ing? Why might a dra­ma work (or not) for you?

We also touch on Game of Thrones, The Killing, God Is Dead, It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia, Big Lit­tle Lies, Schindler’s List, Vice, Ip Man, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare:

Our Lucy Law­less inter­view will be out next week! Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is a mem­ber of the The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work.

Get more at prettymuchpop.com. Sub­scribe on Apple Pod­casts, Stitch­er, or Google Play. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is pro­duced by the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work. This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

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The Authentic Pachelbel’s Canon: Watch a Performance Based on the Original Manuscript & Played with Original 17th-Century Instruments

in Music | August 1st, 2019

Even if we don’t know its name, we’ve all heard Johann Pachel­bel’s Canon in D, bet­ter known sim­ply as Pachel­bel’s Canon — and prob­a­bly more than once at a wed­ding. But though Pachel­bel com­posed the piece in the late 17th or ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry, it has­n’t enjoyed a con­sis­tent pres­ence in the world of music: the ear­li­est man­u­scripts we know date from the 19th cen­tu­ry, and its lat­est peri­od of pop­u­lar­i­ty began just over fifty years ago, with an arrange­ment and record­ing by the Jean-François Pail­lard cham­ber orches­tra.

And so, no mat­ter how many times we’ve heard Pachel­bel’s Canon, and no mat­ter how many ver­sions we’ve heard, we might well ask our­selves: have we real­ly heard Pachel­bel’s Canon? In the video above, San Fran­cis­co ear­ly-music ensem­ble Voic­es of Music — here Kather­ine Kyme, Car­la Moore, and Cyn­thia Freivo­gel on vio­lin, Tanya Tomkins on cel­lo, Han­neke van Proos­dij on baroque organ, and David Tayler on the the­o­r­bo — per­form what many enthu­si­asts would con­sid­er a defin­i­tive Pachel­bel’s Canon. Not only do they play that ear­li­est of its known man­u­scripts, they play it using instru­ments from the time of Pachel­bel, and with the kind of play­ing tech­niques pop­u­lar back then.

“The string instru­ments are not only baroque, but they are in baroque set­up,” notes the video’s descrip­tion. “This means that the strings, fin­ger­board, bridge and oth­er parts of the vio­lin appear just as they did in Pachel­bel’s time.” The video shows that “no met­al hard­ware such as chin­rests, clamps or fine tuners are used on the vio­lins, allow­ing the vio­lins to vibrate freely.” As for the organ, it’s “made entire­ly of wood, based on Ger­man baroque instru­ments, and the pipes are voiced to pro­vide a smooth accom­pa­ni­ment to the strings, instead of a more solois­tic sound.”

Just as van Proos­di­j’s tech­nique might look slight­ly unfa­mil­iar to a mod­ern organ­ist, so might Kyme, Moore and Freivo­gel’s to a mod­ern vio­lin­ist: “All three are play­ing baroque vio­lins with baroque bows, yet each per­son has her own dis­tinct sound and bow­ing style — each bow has a dif­fer­ent shape and bal­ance.” Their play­ing dif­fers in the way, the notes add, that musi­cians’ play­ing appears to dif­fer in paint­ings from the 17th cen­tu­ry, a time when “indi­vid­u­al­i­ty of sound and tech­nique was high­ly val­ued,” and none of it was over­seen by that most 19th-cen­tu­ry of musi­cal fig­ures, the con­duc­tor. How many his­tor­i­cal­ly-aware brides and grooms — with the means, of course, to hire not­ed ear­ly-music ensem­bles — will it take to bring those val­ues back into the main­stream?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

How the Clavi­chord & Harp­si­chord Became the Mod­ern Piano: The Evo­lu­tion of Key­board Instru­ments, Explained

Mashup Weaves Togeth­er 57 Famous Clas­si­cal Pieces by 33 Com­posers: From Bach to Wag­n­er

Pachelbel’s Music Box Canon

Pachelbel’s Chick­en: Your Favorite Clas­si­cal Pieces Played Mas­ter­ful­ly on a Rub­ber Chick­en

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Mont Saint-Michel Beautifully Viewed from a Drone

in Photography, Travel | August 1st, 2019

This short film was an award win­ner at the 2015 Drone Film fes­ti­val held in Cabourg, France. Enjoy the ride.

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How the Yamaha DX7 Digital Synthesizer Defined the Sound of 1980s Music

in Music | August 1st, 2019

There is a lot of cre­ative­ly revised his­to­ry in the Net­flix hit show Stranger Things, and I’m not just talk­ing about extra-dimen­sion­al mon­sters and Sovi­et sci­en­tists under shop­ping malls. There’s also the puls­ing synth score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. Deserv­ing of all its praise, the music nonethe­less gives the impres­sion that the sound of the 1980s was made by instru­ments of the 60s and 70s—analog syn­the­siz­ers like the Min­i­Moog Mod­el D and effects like the Roland Space Echo.

Such clas­sic instru­men­ta­tion does cre­ate the per­fect weird, fuzzy, wob­bly, lush accom­pa­ni­ment to the show’s com­pelling mix of sci-fi body hor­ror and cud­dly nos­tal­gia. But the 80s was the gold­en age of new sound tech­nol­o­gy, dig­i­tal, and the dawn of syn­the­siz­ers like the Yama­ha DX7, released in 1983, the year the saga of the Upside-Down begins. Along­side mas­sive­ly-pop­u­lar dig­i­tal synths like the Roland Juno-60, the DX7 defined the 80s like few oth­er elec­tron­ic instru­ments, quick­ly ris­ing “to take over the air­waves,” as the Poly­phon­ic video above explains.

Bri­an Eno, Ken­ny Log­gins, Whit­ney Hous­ton, Her­bie Han­cock, Depeche Mode, Hall & Oates, Van­ge­lis, Steve Win­wood, Phil Collins, The Cure… one could go on and on, nam­ing a major­i­ty of the artists on the charts through­out the decade. Why was the DX7 more appeal­ing than the ana­logue sounds we now asso­ciate with the height of synth qual­i­ty? Poly­phon­ic explains how the DX7 used an algo­rithm called FM (fre­quent­ly mod­u­lat­ed) syn­the­sis, which allowed for more refined con­trol and mod­u­la­tion than the sub­trac­tive syn­the­sis of ana­log synths built by Moog, ARP, Buch­la, and oth­er spe­cial­ized mak­ers in the 70s.

That meant dig­i­tal key­boards had a wider range of tim­bres and could con­vinc­ing­ly sim­u­late real instru­ments, like the marim­bas in Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F.” Dig­i­tal synths were pre­dictable, and could be pro­grammed and cus­tomized, or used for their many already excel­lent pre­sets. And just as Fal­ter­mey­er’s Bev­er­ly Hills Cop theme was inescapable in the mid-80s, so too was the sound of the DX7. It was “damned near ubiq­ui­tous,” writes Music Radar. “After years of exclu­sive­ly ana­logue synths, musi­cians embraced the DX7’s smooth, crys­talline tones and for a while the air­waves were rife with FM bells, dig­i­tal Rhodes emu­la­tions and edgy bass­es.”

Though it’s hard­ly as well known, the DX7 may be as influ­en­tial in 80s music as the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Yama­ha’s dig­i­tal synth was so pop­u­lar that it “almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly spawned the third-par­ty sound design indus­try, and forced oth­er syn­the­siz­er man­u­fac­tur­ers to take a hard look at how they were build­ing their own instru­ments.” Learn about the his­to­ry, ver­sa­til­i­ty, and cus­tomiza­tion of the DX7 from Poly­phon­ic in the video above. And stream a playlist of songs fea­tur­ing the DX7 below. While our 80s nos­tal­gia moment favors the rich­ly har­mon­ic tones of ana­log synths from ear­li­er decades, you’ll learn why the real 1980s belonged to the dig­i­tal DX7 and its many com­peti­tors and suc­ces­sors.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

The Roland TR-808, the Drum Machine That Changed Music For­ev­er, Is Back! And It’s Now Afford­able & Com­pact

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

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