Optical Poems by Oskar Fischinger: Discover the Avant-Garde Animator Despised by Hitler & Dissed by Disney

in Animation, Art, History | February 19th, 2025

At a time when much of ani­ma­tion was con­sumed with lit­tle anthro­po­mor­phized ani­mals sport­ing white gloves, Oskar Fischinger went in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. His work is all about danc­ing geo­met­ric shapes and abstract forms spin­ning around a flat fea­ture­less back­ground. Think of a Mon­dri­an or Male­vich paint­ing that moves, often in time to the music. Fischinger’s movies have a mes­mer­iz­ing ele­gance to them. Check out his 1938 short An Opti­cal Poem above. Cir­cles pop, sway and dart across the screen, all in time to Franz Liszt’s 2nd Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody. This is, of course, well before the days of dig­i­tal. While it might be rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to manip­u­late a shape in a com­put­er, Fischinger’s tech­nique was decid­ed­ly more low tech. Using bits of paper and fish­ing line, he indi­vid­u­al­ly pho­tographed each frame, some­how doing it all in sync with Liszt’s com­po­si­tion. Think of the hours of mind-numb­ing work that must have entailed.

(Note: The copy of the film above has become fad­ed, dis­tort­ing some of the orig­i­nal vibrant col­ors used in Fischinger’s films. Nonethe­less it gives you a taste of his cre­ative work–of how he mix­es ani­ma­tion with music. The clips below give you a more accu­rate sense of Fischinger’s orig­i­nal col­ors.)

Born in 1900 near Frank­furt, Fischinger trained as a musi­cian and an archi­tect before dis­cov­er­ing film. In the 1930s, he moved to Berlin and start­ed pro­duc­ing more and more abstract ani­ma­tions that ran before fea­ture films. They proved to be pop­u­lar too, at least until the Nation­al Social­ists came to pow­er. The Nazis were some of the most fanat­i­cal art crit­ics of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, and they hat­ed any­thing non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al. The likes of Paul Klee, Oskar Kokosch­ka and Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky among oth­ers were writ­ten off as “degen­er­ate.” (By stark con­trast, the CIA report­ed­ly loved Abstract Expres­sion­ism, but that’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.) Fischinger fled Ger­many in 1936 for the sun and glam­our of Hol­ly­wood.

The prob­lem was that Hol­ly­wood was real­ly not ready for Fischinger. Pro­duc­ers saw the obvi­ous tal­ent in his work, and they feared that it was too ahead of its time for broad audi­ences. “[Fischinger] was going in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion than any oth­er ani­ma­tor at the time,” said famed graph­ic design­er Chip Kidd in an inter­view with NPR. “He was real­ly explor­ing abstract pat­terns, but with a pur­pose to them — pio­neer­ing what tech­ni­cal­ly is the music video.”

Fischinger’s most wide­ly seen Amer­i­can work was his short con­tri­bu­tion to Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. Fischinger cre­at­ed con­cept draw­ings for Fan­ta­sia, but most were not used, and only one short scene fea­tures his actu­al draw­ings. “The film is not real­ly my work,” he lat­er recalled. “Rather, it is the most inartis­tic prod­uct of a fac­to­ry. …One thing I def­i­nite­ly found out: that no true work of art can be made with that pro­ce­dure used in the Dis­ney stu­dio.” Fischinger didn’t work with Dis­ney again and instead retreat­ed into the art world.

There he found admir­ers who were recep­tive to his vision. John Cage, for one, con­sid­ered the Ger­man animator’s exper­i­ments to be a major influ­ence on his own work. Cage recalled his first meet­ing with Fischinger in an inter­view with Daniel Charles in 1968.

One day I was intro­duced to Oscar Fischinger who made abstract films quite pre­cise­ly artic­u­lat­ed on pieces of tra­di­tion­al music. When I was intro­duced to him, he began to talk with me about the spir­it, which is inside each of the objects of this world. So, he told me, all we need to do to lib­er­ate that spir­it is to brush past the object, and to draw forth its sound. That’s the idea which led me to per­cus­sion.

You can find excerpts of oth­er Fischinger films over at Vimeo.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Sep­tem­ber, 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Avant-Garde Ani­mat­ed Films of Wal­ter Ruttmann, Still Strik­ing­ly Fresh a Cen­tu­ry Lat­er (1921–1925)

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece (1933)

The Nazi’s Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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Hear the Jazz-Funk Musical Adaptation of Dune by David Matthews (1977)

in Music, Sci Fi | February 19th, 2025

Even if you’ve nev­er read Frank Her­bert’s Dune, you may well have encoun­tered its adap­ta­tions to a vari­ety of oth­er media: com­ic books, video games, board games, tele­vi­sion series, and of course films, David Lynch’s 1984 ver­sion and Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s two-parter ear­li­er this decade. But before any of those came Dune, the jazz-funk album by key­boardist and band­leader David Matthews. Released in 1977 on the pop­u­lar jazz label CTI Records, it devotes its entire first side to a 20-minute suite osten­si­bly inspired by Her­bert’s nov­el, con­sist­ing of the pieces “Arrakis,” “Sand­worms,” “Song of the Bene Gesser­it,” and “Muad’dib.”

You’ll notice that the typog­ra­phy on the cov­er of Matthews’ Dune seems awful­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Star Wars, a film that had come out the very same year. It’s not exact­ly false adver­tis­ing, since the album clos­es with ver­sions of both Star Wars’ main theme and Princess Leia’s theme, sup­ple­ment­ed by the theme from Dou­glas Trum­bul­l’s Silent Run­ning and even David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” Accord­ing to jazz his­to­ri­an Doug Payne, the con­cept was the idea of CTI founder Creed Tay­lor.

Tay­lor had orig­i­nal­ly hired Matthews as CTI’s chief arranger, the lat­ter’s years of expe­ri­ence as James Brown’s musi­cal direc­tor hav­ing promised the poten­tial to imbue the label’s releas­es with dis­co appeal. In addi­tion to Matthews on the key­boards, Dune also fea­tures heavy-hit­ting ses­sion play­ers from the late-sev­en­ties jazz world like Randy Breck­er, Steve Gadd, Grover Wash­ing­ton, Jr., Hiram Bul­lock, and David San­born. Fans of obscu­ran­tist hip-hop may also rec­og­nize Matthews’ “Space Odd­i­ty” cov­er as a sam­ple source for MF DOOM’s “Rapp Snitch Knish­es.”

Much like Bob James, his fel­low mas­ter­mind of dis­co-inflect­ed jazz, Matthews has cre­at­ed a body of work that lives on a hip-hop gold­mine: his oth­er sam­plers include Method Man, Red­man, and The Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. But it was in Japan that he found his most enthu­si­as­tic lis­ten­er­ship. After leav­ing CTI in 1978, Payne writes, “Matthews went onto record a slew of records for most­ly Japan­ese labels under a vari­ety of guis­es includ­ing Japan’s num­ber one sell­ing jazz group, the Man­hat­tan Jazz Quin­tet.” If you vis­it Japan, you may well hear Matthews’ music play­ing in a local jazz bar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hans Zim­mer Cre­at­ed the Oth­er­world­ly Sound­track for Dune

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sound­track of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, that Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

Great Mix­tapes of 1970s Japan­ese Jazz: 4 Hours of Funky, Groovy, Fusion‑y Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch David Byrne Lead a Massive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

in Music | February 19th, 2025

Through­out the years, we’ve fea­tured per­for­mances of Choir!Choir!Choir!–a large ama­teur choir from Toron­to that meets week­ly and sings their hearts out. You’ve seen them sing Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Soundgar­den’s “Black Hole Sun” (to hon­or Chris Cor­nell) and Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah.”

If you dig through their Youtube archive, you can also revis­it per­for­mances of two Talk­ing Heads classics–“Psycho Killer” and “Burn­ing Down the House.” (Both below.) Which brings us to the video above. Accord­ing to Con­se­quence of Sound, Talk­ing Heads front­man David Byrne has long been a big fan of Choir!Choir!Choir!. He writes on his web site:

I’ve sat mes­mer­ized watch­ing online videos of the Cana­di­an group Choir! Choir! Choir! They some­how man­age to get hun­dreds of strangers to sing beau­ti­ful­ly together—in tune and full-voiced—with rich har­monies and detailed arrange­ments. With almost no rehearsal—how do they do it??

They man­age to achieve lift off—that feel­ing of sur­ren­der when groups sing together—when we all become part of some­thing larg­er than our­selves.

And back in 2018, Byrne got to expe­ri­ence some of that lift off first­hand. Hear him sing a mov­ing ver­sion of David Bowie’s “Heroes” with Choir!Choir!Choir! Enjoy.

Psy­cho Killer

Burn­ing Down the House

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Per­forms an Ethe­re­al Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

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Why Are the Names of British Towns & Cities So Hard to Pronounce?: A Humorous But Informative Primer

in History, Language, Travel | February 18th, 2025

When they make their first transocean­ic voy­age, more than a few Amer­i­cans choose to go to Eng­land, on the assump­tion that, what­ev­er cul­ture shock they might expe­ri­ence, at least none of the dif­fi­cul­ties will be lin­guis­tic. Only when it’s too late do they dis­cov­er the true mean­ing of the old line about being sep­a­rat­ed by a com­mon lan­guage. Take place names, not just in Eng­land but even more so across the whole of Great Britain. How would you pro­nounce, for instance, Beaulieu, Ramp­isham, Mouse­hole, Tow­ces­ter, Gotham, Quern­more, Alnwick, or Frome?

There’s a good chance that you got most of those wrong, even if you’re not Amer­i­can. But as explained in the Map Men video above, bona fide Brits also have trou­ble with some of them: a few years ago, the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward-look­ing Frome came out on top of a domes­tic sur­vey of the most mis­pro­nounced names. If you’re keen on mak­ing your expe­ri­ence in Great Britain some­what less embar­rass­ing, what­ev­er your nation­al­i­ty, the Map Men have put togeth­er a humor­ous guide to the rules of “prop­er” place-name pro­nun­ci­a­tion — such as they exist — as well as an expla­na­tion of the his­tor­i­cal fac­tors that orig­i­nal­ly made it so coun­ter­in­tu­itive.

The evo­lu­tion of the Eng­lish lan­guage itself has some­thing to do with it, involv­ing as it does “a base of Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on,” a “healthy dash of Old Norse,” a “huge dol­lop of Nor­man French,” and “just a fair­ly detectable hint of Celtic.” British place names reflect its his­to­ry of set­tle­ment and inva­sion, the old­est of them being Celtic in ori­gin (the dread­ed Frome, for exam­ple), fol­lowed by Latin, then Ger­man­ic Anglo-Sax­on (result­ing in cities with names like Nor­wich, whose silent W I nev­er seem to pro­nounce silent­ly enough to sat­is­fy an Eng­lish­man), then Norse.

After cen­turies and cen­turies of sub­se­quent shifts in pro­nun­ci­a­tion with­out cor­re­spond­ing changes in spelling, you arrive in a coun­try “lit­tered with pho­net­ic boo­by traps.” It could all seem like a reflec­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tic British anti-log­ic diag­nosed, not with­out a note of pride, by George Orwell. But trav­el­ing Amer­i­cans gassed up on their per­cep­tions of their own rel­a­tive prac­ti­cal­i­ty should take a long, hard look at a map of the Unit­ed States some time. Hav­ing grown up in Wash­ing­ton State, I ask this: who among you dares to pro­nounce the names of towns like Marysville, Puyallup, Yaki­ma, or Sequim?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wel­come to Llan­fair­p­wll­gwyn­gyll­gogerych­wyrn­drob­wl­l­l­lan­tysil­i­o­gogogoc, the Town with the Longest Name in Europe

The Growth of Lon­don, from the Romans to the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Visu­al­ized in a Time-Lapse Ani­mat­ed Map

How Lon­dini­um Became Lon­don, Lute­tia Became Paris, and Oth­er Roman Cities Got Their Mod­ern Names

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of the Lon­don Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

The Atlas of True Names Restores Mod­ern Cities to Their Mid­dle Earth-ish Roots

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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When William S. Burroughs Appeared on Saturday Night Live: His First TV Appearance (1981)

in Comedy, Literature, Television | February 17th, 2025

Though he nev­er said so direct­ly, we might expect that Sit­u­a­tion­ist Guy Debord would have includ­ed Sat­ur­day Night Live in what he called the “Spec­ta­cle”—the mass media pre­sen­ta­tion of a total­iz­ing real­i­ty, “the rul­ing order’s non­stop dis­course about itself, its nev­er-end­ing mono­logue of self-praise.” The slick­ness of TV, even live com­e­dy TV, masks care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed maneu­vers on the part of its cre­ators and adver­tis­ers. In Debor­d’s analy­sis, noth­ing is exempt­ed from the spec­ta­cle’s con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er; it co-opts every­thing for its pur­pos­es. Even seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions with­in the spectacle—the skew­er­ing of polit­i­cal fig­ures, for exam­ple, to their seem­ing displeasure—serve the pur­pos­es of pow­er: The spec­ta­cle, wrote Debord, “is the oppo­site of dia­logue.”

So I won­der, what he might have made of the appear­ance of cult writer and Beat pio­neer William S. Bur­roughs on the com­e­dy show in 1981? Was Burroughs—a mas­ter­mind of the counterculture—co-opted by the pow­ers that be? The author of Junkie, Naked Lunch, and Cities of the Red Night also appeared in a Nike ad and sev­er­al films and music videos, becom­ing a “pres­ence in Amer­i­can pop cul­ture,” writes R.U. Sir­ius in Every­body Must Get Stoned.

David Seed notes that Bur­roughs “is remem­bered by many mem­bers of the intel­li­gentsia and glit­terati as din­ner part­ner for the likes of Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Mick Jag­ger,” though he had “been a mod­el for the polit­i­cal and social left.” Had he been neutered by the 80s, his out­ra­geous­ly anar­chist sen­ti­ments turned to rad­i­cal kitsch?

Or maybe Bur­roughs dis­rupt­ed the spec­ta­cle, his dron­ing, monot­o­nous deliv­ery giv­ing view­ers of SNL exact­ly the oppo­site of what they were trained to expect. The appear­ance was his widest expo­sure to date (imme­di­ate­ly after­ward, he moved from New York to Lawrence, Kansas). One of the show’s writ­ers con­vinced pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol to put Bur­roughs on. In rehearsal, writes Bur­roughs’ biog­ra­ph­er Ted Mor­gan, Eber­sol “found Bur­roughs ‘bor­ing and dread­ful,’ and ordered that his time slot be cut from six to three and a half min­utes. The writ­ers, how­ev­er, con­spired to let his per­for­mance stand as it was, and on Novem­ber 7, he kicked off the show sit­ting behind a desk, the light­ing giv­ing his face a sepul­chral gaunt­ness.”

In the grainy video above, Bur­roughs reads from Naked Lunch and cut-up nov­el Nova Express, bring­ing the sadis­tic Dr. Ben­way into Amer­i­ca’s liv­ing rooms, as the audi­ence laughs ner­vous­ly. Sound effects of bombs and strains of the nation­al anthem play behind him as he reads. It stands as per­haps one of the strangest moments in live tele­vi­sion. “Bur­roughs had posi­tioned him­self as the Great Out­sider,” writes Mor­gan, “but on the night of Novem­ber 7 he had reached the posi­tion where the actress Lau­ren Hut­ton could intro­duce him to an audi­ence of 100 mil­lion view­ers as Amer­i­ca’s great­est liv­ing writer.” I’m sure Bur­roughs got a kick out of the descrip­tion. In any case, the clip shows us a SNL of bygone days that occa­sion­al­ly dis­rupt­ed the usu­al state of pro­gram­ming, as when it had punk band Fear on the show.

Per­haps Bur­roughs’ com­mer­cial appear­ances also show us how the coun­ter­cul­ture gets co-opt­ed and repack­aged for mid­dle-class tastes. Then again, one of the great ironies of Bur­roughs’ life is that he both began and end­ed it as “a true mem­ber of the mid­west­ern tax-pay­ing mid­dle class.” The fol­low­ing year in Lawrence, Kansas, he “caught up on his cor­re­spon­dence.” One stu­dent in Mon­tre­al wrote, imag­in­ing him in “a male whore­house in Tang­i­er.” Bur­roughs replied, “No… I live in a small house on a tree-lined street in Lawrence, Kansas, with my beloved cat Rus­ki. My hob­bies are hunt­ing, fish­ing, and pis­tol prac­tice.” Did Bur­roughs, who spent his life destroy­ing mass cul­ture with cut-ups and curs­es, sell out—as he once accused Tru­man Capote of doing—by becom­ing a celebri­ty?

Per­haps we should let him answer the charge. In answer to a fan from Eng­land who called him “God,” Bur­roughs wrote, “You got me wrong, Ray­mond, I am but a hum­ble prac­ti­tion­er of the scriven­er’s trade. God? Not me. I don’t have the qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Old Sarge told me years ago: ‘Don’t be a vol­un­teer, kid.’ God is always try­ing to foist his lousy job not some­one else. You got­ta be crazy to take it. Just a Tech Sergeant in the Shake­speare Squadron.” Bur­roughs may have used his celebri­ty sta­tus to his lit­er­ary advan­tage, and used it to pay the bills and work with artists he admired and vice-ver­sa, but he nev­er saw him­self as more than a writer (and per­haps lay magi­cian), and he abjured the hero wor­ship that made him a cult fig­ure.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

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

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

The “Priest” They Called Him: A Dark Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Kurt Cobain & William S. Bur­roughs

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Brian Eno Explores What Art Does in a New Book Co-Written with Artist Bette A

in Art, Books | February 17th, 2025

Bri­an Eno was think­ing about the pur­pose of art a decade ago, as evi­denced by his 2015 John Peel Lec­ture (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture). But he was also think­ing about it three decades ago, as evi­denced by A Year with Swollen Appen­dices, his diary of the year 1995 pub­lished by Faber & Faber. This year, that same house is bring­ing out What Art Does: An Unfin­ished The­o­ry, a new book on that very sub­ject writ­ten by Eno, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the artist and nov­el­ist Bette Adri­aanse, bet­ter known as Bette A. It deals with the ques­tions Eno lays out in the video above: “What does art do for us? Why does it exist? Why do we like art?”

These mat­ters turn out to have pre­oc­cu­pied Eno “since I was a kid, real­ly,” when he first got curi­ous about a “bio­log­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal expla­na­tion for the exis­tence of art” — a dri­ve not so read­i­ly fol­lowed, it seems, by young peo­ple today. Eno relates a con­ver­sa­tion he had with an acquain­tance’s fif­teen-year-old daugh­ter, who said to him, “I want­ed to go to art school, actu­al­ly, because I real­ly love doing art, but my teacher said I was too bright for that, so I should go for sci­ence sub­jects.” He sees it as “the death of a cul­ture, when you take the bright­est young peo­ple and stop them from think­ing about a huge area of human activ­i­ty.”

Clear­ly times have changed since Eno’s youth, when art school could be a gate­way to mak­ing a per­ma­nent mark on the cul­ture. With What Art Does, Eno and Adri­aanse set about cre­at­ing a book that could eas­i­ly be read by a bright teenag­er — or even her teacher — and con­se­quent­ly clar­i­fy that read­er’s think­ing about the impor­tance of art. Eno has been dis­cussing that sub­ject for quite some time, and to Adri­aanse fell the “thank­less task” of read­ing through his many writ­ings, lec­tures, and inter­views in search of mate­r­i­al that could be dis­tilled into a sin­gle, pock­et-sized book.

Eno clar­i­fies that What Art Does is not an expla­na­tion of the whole of art, nor does it rep­re­sent a defin­i­tive answer to the ques­tion implied by its title. It’s more impor­tant to him that the book expands the swath of human endeav­or that its read­ers con­sid­er to be art. “Cre­ativ­i­ty is some­thing that is born into humans,” he says, and the goal is “reawak­en­ing that, say­ing to peo­ple, ‘You can actu­al­ly do it. What­ev­er it is, it’s your thing, you can do it.’ I like to say, it’s every­thing from Cézanne to cake dec­o­ra­tion.” As “the place where peo­ple exper­i­ment with their feel­ings about things” and come to under­stand those feel­ings, art can hap­pen any­where, from the painter’s ate­lier or musi­cian’s stu­dio to the hair salon and the bak­ery: all set­tings, Eno’s fans would sure­ly agree, that could ben­e­fit from the occa­sion­al Oblique Strat­e­gy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Eno: The New “Gen­er­a­tive Doc­u­men­tary” on Bri­an Eno That’s Nev­er the Same Movie Twice

Bri­an Eno’s Beau­ti­ful New Turntable Glows & Con­stant­ly Changes Col­ors as It Plays

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch the Historic First Episode of Saturday Night Live with Host George Carlin (1975)

in Comedy, Television | February 17th, 2025

50 years of Sat­ur­day Night Live. It all start­ed here with this first episode, aired on Octo­ber 11, 1975. George Car­lin host­ed the show. Bil­ly Pre­ston and Janis Ian served up the music. Jim Hen­son staged an elab­o­rate pup­pet show. And “the Not Ready for Prime Time Play­ers” (Belushi, Aykroyd, Gil­da, Jane, Chevy, Gar­rett, Laraine and the rest) pro­vid­ed the com­e­dy, per­form­ing the first of 10,000 sketch­es that have since aired over SNL’s long his­to­ry. SNL added the com­plete episode to its YouTube chan­nel, and you can now watch how it all began. Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

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

 

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Inside SNL: Al Franken Reveals How Saturday Night Live Is Crafted Every Week

in Comedy, Television | February 16th, 2025

As Sat­ur­day Night Live cel­e­brates its 50th anniver­sary, Al Franken takes you inside the mak­ing of an SNL episode. He should know a thing or two about the sub­ject. Part of the orig­i­nal SNL writ­ing team, Franken spent 15 years writ­ing and per­form­ing for the show. (Any­one remem­ber Stu­art Smal­l­ey giv­ing a moti­va­tion­al pep talk to Michael Jor­dan?) On his pod­cast, Franken walks you through what a typ­i­cal week on Sat­ur­day Night Live looks like. The week begins with the kick­off meet­ing on Mon­day, then moves mid-week to the writ­ing and selec­tion of sketch­es, and ends with dress rehearsals, the live show, and after-par­ty on Sat­ur­day. Above, Franken also talks about the role of the host and which ones excelled, and which ones flopped. If you would enjoy know­ing how the SNL sausage gets made, the 60-minute con­ver­sa­tion is well worth your while.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

Gil­da Rad­ner Does a Com­ic Imper­son­ation of Pat­ti Smith: Watch the Clas­sic SNL Skit, “Rock Against Yeast” (1979)

Every­thing You Need to Know About Sat­ur­day Night Live: A Deep Dive into Every Sea­son of the Icon­ic Com­e­dy Show

When Was the Pin­na­cle of Sat­ur­day Night Live? A YouTu­ber Watch­es One Episode from Each Sea­son & Reports Back

Clas­sic Punk Rock Sketch­es from Sat­ur­day Night Live, Cour­tesy of Fred Armisen

 

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Meet Jesse Welles, the Folk Singer Who Turns News into Folk Music, Writing Songs on Elections, Plane Crashes, Ozempic & More

in Current Affairs, Music | February 14th, 2025

At first glance, Jesse Welles resem­bles noth­ing so much as a time trav­el­er from the year 1968. That’s how I would open a pro­file about him, but The New York Times’ David Peis­ner takes a dif­fer­ent approach, describ­ing him record­ing a song in his home stu­dio. “Welles, a singer-song­writer with a shag­gy, dirty-blond mane and a sand­pa­pery voice, has risen to recent promi­nence post­ing videos to social media of him­self alone in the woods near his home in north­west Arkansas, per­form­ing wry­ly fun­ny, polit­i­cal­ly engaged folk songs,” Peis­ner con­tin­ues. This prac­tice has pro­duced “viral hits on Tik­Tok and Insta­gram, build­ing an audi­ence of more than 2 mil­lion fol­low­ers on those plat­forms.”

Welles’ sub­jects have includ­ed “the war in Gaza, the rise of the weight-loss drug Ozem­pic, and the rapa­cious­ness of Unit­ed Healthcare’s busi­ness mod­el.” You can hear his musi­cal takes on these news-pegged sub­jects on his YouTube chan­nel, along with such oth­er much-viewed, ripped-from-the-head­lines songs as “Fen­tanyl,” “Wal­mart,” “Whis­tle Boe­ing,” and “We’re All Gonna Die.”

For his younger lis­ten­ers, his sub­ject mat­ter (and his per­spec­tive on it) have a kind of cur­ren­cy much inten­si­fied by life on social media; for his old­er lis­ten­ers, his man­ner and musi­cian­ship recall a gold­en age of the protest singer that many would have assumed a whol­ly closed chap­ter of cul­tur­al his­to­ry.

It will, per­haps, dis­ap­point both rel­e­vant demo­graph­ics that Welles’ forth­com­ing debut album Mid­dle includes none of these viral hits, nor any­thing much like them. “The only fil­ter placed on it was I wasn’t doing top­i­cal songs for this project,” Peis­ner quotes him as say­ing, lat­er writ­ing that the album “surfs between sur­re­al­is­tic fan­ta­sy worlds and Welles’s own inner life.” This coun­ter­in­tu­itive move is under­stand­able: giv­en his obvi­ous chops honed with the inspi­ra­tion of Bob Dylan, Tom Pet­ty, and John Prine, being pigeon­holed as a singer of the news on Tik­Tok has prob­a­bly nev­er been his ulti­mate goal. A cou­ple of decades from now, music crit­ics may declare that Oliv­er Antho­ny walked so that Jesse Welles could run.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

The Acoustic Gui­tar Project Gives Song­writ­ers World­wide a Gui­tar and One Week to Write a Song

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Writ­ten Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online

John Prine’s Last Song Was Also His First to Go No. 1: Watch Him Per­form “I Remem­ber Every­thing”

The Effi­ca­cy of Protest Songs — Four Song­writ­ers Dis­cuss on Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #121

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Flannery O’Connor: Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Ayn Rand

in Literature | February 14th, 2025


In a let­ter dat­ed May 31, 1960, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, the author best known for her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (lis­ten to her read the sto­ry here) penned a let­ter to her friend, the play­wright Mary­at Lee. It begins rather abrupt­ly, like­ly because it’s respond­ing to some­thing Mary­at said in a pre­vi­ous let­ter:

I hope you don’t have friends who rec­om­mend Ayn Rand to you. The fic­tion of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fic­tion. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the sub­way and threw it in the near­est garbage pail. She makes Mick­ey Spillane look like Dos­to­evsky.

The let­ter, which you can read online or find in the book The Habit of Being, then turns to oth­er mat­ters.

O’Con­nor’s crit­i­cal appraisal of Ayn Rand’s books is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But here’s one fac­toid worth know­ing. Mick­ey Spillane (ref­er­enced in O’Con­nor’s let­ter) was a huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer, who sold some 225 mil­lion books dur­ing his life­time. Accord­ing to his Wash­ing­ton Post obit, “his spe­cial­ty was tight-fist­ed, sadis­tic revenge sto­ries, often fea­tur­ing his alco­holic gumshoe Mike Ham­mer and a cast of evil­do­ers.” Crit­ics, appalled by the sex and vio­lence in his books, dis­missed his writ­ing. But Ayn Rand defend­ed him. In pub­lic, she said that Spillane was under­rat­ed. In her book The Roman­tic Man­i­festo, Rand put Spillane in some unex­pect­ed com­pa­ny when she wrote: “[Vic­tor] Hugo gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cathedral–Dostoevsky gives me the feel­ing of enter­ing a cham­ber of hor­rors, but with a pow­er­ful guide–Spillane gives me the feel­ing of lis­ten­ing to a mil­i­tary band in a pub­lic park–Tolstoy gives me the feel­ing of an unsan­i­tary back­yard which I do not care to enter.”

All of this goes to show that _____. We’ll let you fill in the blank.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Should We Read Flan­nery O’Connor? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­miss­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Need to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Among Human Beings; It Requires No Rein­force­ment”

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Hear Flan­nery O’Connor Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

Ayn Rand Issues 13 Com­mand­ments to Film­mak­ers for Mak­ing Good Cap­i­tal­ist Movies (1947)

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

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How the Fairlight CMI Synthesizer Revolutionized Music

in History, Music, Technology | February 13th, 2025

In the cred­its of Phil Collins’ No Jack­et Required appears the dis­claimer that “there is no Fairlight on this record.” Cryp­tic though it may have appeared to most of that album’s many buy­ers, tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed musi­cians would’ve got it. In the half-decades since its intro­duc­tion, the Fairlight Com­put­er Musi­cal Instru­ment, or CMI, had reshaped the sound of pop music — or at least the pop music cre­at­ed by acts who could afford one. The device may have cost as much as a house, but for those who under­stood the poten­tial of play­ing and manip­u­lat­ing the sounds of real-life instru­ments (or of any­thing else besides) dig­i­tal­ly, mon­ey was no object.

The his­to­ry of the Fairlight CMI is told in the video above from the Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald and The Age, incor­po­rat­ing inter­views from its Aus­tralian inven­tors Peter Vogel and Kim Ryrie. Accord­ing to Ryrie, No Jack­et Required actu­al­ly did use the Fairlight, in the sense that one of its musi­cians sam­pled a sound from the Fairlight’s library. To musi­cians, using the tech­nol­o­gy not yet wide­ly known as dig­i­tal sam­pling would have felt like mag­ic; to lis­ten­ers, it meant a whole range of sounds they’d nev­er heard before, or at least nev­er used in that way. Take the “orches­tra hit” orig­i­nal­ly sam­pled from a record of Stravin­sky’s The Fire­bird (and whose sto­ry is told in the Vox video just above), which soon became prac­ti­cal­ly inescapable.

We might call the orches­tra hit the Fairlight’s “killer app,” though its breathy, faint­ly vocal sam­ple known as “ARR1” also saw a lot of action across gen­res. A desire for those par­tic­u­lar effects brought a lot of musi­cians and pro­duc­ers onto the band­wag­on through­out the eight­ies, but it was the ear­ly adopters who used the Fairlight most cre­ative­ly. The ear­li­est among them was Peter Gabriel, who appears in the clip from the French doc­u­men­tary above gath­er­ing sounds to sam­ple, blow­ing wind through pipes and smash­ing up tele­vi­sions in a junk­yard. Kate Bush embraced the Fairlight with a spe­cial fer­vor, using not just its sam­pling capa­bil­i­ties but also its ground­break­ing sequenc­ing soft­ware (includ­ed from the Series II onward) to cre­ate her 1985 hit “Run­ning Up That Hill,” which made a sur­prise return to pop­u­lar­i­ty just a few years ago.

The Fairlight’s high-pro­file Amer­i­can users includ­ed Ste­vie Won­der, Todd Rund­gren, and Her­bie Han­cock, who demon­strates his own mod­el along­side the late Quin­cy Jones in the doc­u­men­tary clip above. With its green-on-black mon­i­tor, its gigan­tic flop­py disks, and its futur­is­tic-look­ing “light pen” (as nat­ur­al a point­ing device as any in an era when most of human­i­ty had nev­er laid eyes on a mouse), it resem­bles less a musi­cal instru­ment than an ear­ly per­son­al com­put­er with a piano key­board attached. It had its cum­ber­some qual­i­ties, and some leaned rather too heav­i­ly on its packed-in sounds, but as Han­cock points out, a tool is a tool, and it’s all down to the human being in con­trol to get pleas­ing results out of it: “It does­n’t plug itself in. It does­n’t pro­gram itself… yet.” To which the always-pre­scient Jones adds: “It’s on the way, though.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Her­bie Han­cock Demo a Fairlight CMI Syn­the­siz­er on Sesame Street (1983)

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

Thomas Dol­by Explains How a Syn­the­siz­er Works on a Jim Hen­son Kids Show (1989)

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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