Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Versa (1967)

in Music | December 10th, 2021

In Decem­ber 1967, The Mon­kees blew their audi­ence’s minds by host­ing Frank Zap­pa, “par­tic­i­pant in and per­haps even leader of” the Moth­ers Of Inven­tion.

Or did they?

The tidal wave of affec­tion that com­pris­es twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Mon­kees mania makes us for­get that chil­dren were the pri­ma­ry audi­ence for The Mon­kees’ tit­u­lar sit­com. (One might also say that The Mon­kees were the sitcom’s tit­u­lar band.)

But even if the kids at home weren’t suf­fi­cient­ly con­ver­sant in the musi­cal under­ground to iden­ti­fy the spe­cial guest star of the episode, “The Mon­kees Blow Their Minds,” we are.

It’s a joy to see Zap­pa and The Mon­kees’ supreme­ly laid back Michael Nesmith (RIP) imper­son­at­ing each oth­er.

Zappa’s idea, appar­ent­ly. He’s in com­plete con­trol of the gim­mick from the get go, where­as Nesmith strug­gles to keep their names straight and his pros­thet­ic nose in place before get­ting up to speed.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that it’s not Frank, but Nesmith play­ing Frank who accus­es The Mon­kees’ music of being banal and insipid.

Zap­pa him­self was a great sup­port­er of The Mon­kees. “When peo­ple hat­ed us more than any­thing, he said kind things about us,” Nesmith recalled in Bar­ry Miles’ Zap­pa biog­ra­phy. Zap­pa attempt­ed to teach Nesmith how to play lead gui­tar, and offered drum­mer Micky Dolenz a post-Mon­kees gig with The Moth­ers of Inven­tion.

Their mutu­al warmth makes lines like “You’re the pop­u­lar musi­cian! I’m dirty gross and ugly” palat­able. It put me in mind of come­di­an Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis’ Between Two Ferns, and count­less oth­er loose­ly rehearsed web series.

After a cou­ple of min­utes, Nesmith gets his hat back to con­duct as Zap­pa smash­es up a car to the tune of the Moth­er’s Of Inven­tion’s “Moth­er Peo­ple.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Mon­kees Played Togeth­er Dur­ing Their 1960s Hey­day: It’s a Psy­che­del­ic Freak­out

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Punks, Goths, and Mods on TV (1983)

in Fashion, Music, Television | December 8th, 2021

The Riv­et­head pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with fash­ion is inescapably relat­ed to their anx­i­ety over being con­fused for sub­cul­tures they pro­fess to hate: Goths, Punks, Met­al­heads, Death Rock­ers… The fact that so many sub­cul­tures claim black as their col­or of choice con­tributes to the con­fu­sion.

There are two points upon which the­o­rists of post-indus­tri­al British sub­cul­tures gen­er­al­ly agree: 1) No mat­ter the music or the fash­ion, the bound­aries between one sub­cul­ture and anoth­er were rig­or­ous­ly, even vio­lent­ly, enforced (hence the wars between the mods and rock­ers), and; 2) The music and fash­ions of every sub­cul­ture were sub­ject to coop­ta­tion by the machin­ery of cap­i­tal­ism, to be mass pro­duced, pack­aged, and sold as off-the-rack com­mod­i­ty, a phe­nom­e­non that occurred almost as soon as punks, mods, rock­ers, goths, ted­dy boys, skin­heads, New Roman­tics, etc. began appear­ing on tele­vi­sion — as in the post-Grundy Irish TV appear­ance of four young indi­vid­u­als above from 1983.

The inter­view­er intro­duces these punks, goths, and mods by refer­ring first to their employ­ment — or lack of employ­ment — sta­tus, and then to the num­ber of chil­dren in their fam­i­ly. Com­ments drip­ping with class dis­dain sit along­side a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of var­i­ous sub­cul­tures as “gangs” — the Hell’s Angels thrown in among them just to dri­ve the point home. Of course, there’s more to say about the denizens of ear­ly-80s UK sub­cul­tur­al street cor­ners — more than these four rep­re­sen­ta­tives have to say them­selves. It is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through per­for­mance rather than ver­bal expo­si­tion, through the affil­i­a­tions of cloth­ing, music, and pose — as in the mini-his­tor­i­cal slideshow of late-20th cen­tu­ry British sub­cul­tures below, from the 50s to the 80s.

In 1979, British the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge pub­lished what many con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive analy­sis of these work­ing-class scenes, which fre­quent­ly cen­tered around forms of racial and cul­tur­al exchange — as with mods who loved jazz or punks who loved ska and dub reg­gae; or racial and cul­tur­al exclu­sion — as with fas­cist skin­heads and chau­vin­ist ted­dy boys who glo­ri­fied the past, while oth­er sub­cul­tur­al ide­olo­gies looked to the future (or, as the case may be, no future).

Hebdige’s Sub­cul­ture: the Mean­ing of Style begins with a sto­ry about French writer Jean Genet, humil­i­at­ed in prison by homo­pho­bic guards over his pos­ses­sion of a tube of Vase­line:

Like Genet, we are inter­est­ed in sub­cul­ture – in the expres­sive forms and rit­u­als of those sub­or­di­nate groups – the ted­dy boys and mods and rock­ers, the skin­heads and the punks – who are alter­nate­ly dis­missed, denounced and can­on­ized; treat­ed at dif­fer­ent times as threats to pub­lic order and as harm­less buf­foons.

The irony of sub­cul­tures is that they iden­ti­fy with social out­siders, while re-enforc­ing bound­aries that cre­ate exclu­siv­i­ty (cf. the quote at the top, from Heb­di­ge-inspired Sub­cul­tures List). When the nov­el­ty and shock recedes, they become ripe fod­der for com­mer­cial coop­ta­tion, even lux­u­ry brand­ing.

What we usu­al­ly don’t get from tame ret­ro­spec­tives, or from patron­iz­ing mass media of the time, are deviant out­siders like Genet who can­not be reab­sorbed into the sys­tem because their very exis­tence pos­es a threat to the social order as so con­strued. So much of the fash­ion and music of post-war Britain was direct­ly cre­at­ed or inspired by West Indi­an migrants of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion, for exam­ple. In too many pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions of post­war British sub­cul­tures, that essen­tial part of the work­ing class UK sub­cul­ture sto­ry has been entire­ly left out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 300 Tracks: A 13-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to Present

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

How Well Can You Move in Medieval Armor?: Medievalist Daniel Jaquet Gives It a Try in Real Life

in Design, History, Life, Sports | December 7th, 2021

If you’ve ever run a marathon in cos­tume, or for that mat­ter, board­ed pub­lic trans­porta­tion with a large musi­cal instru­ment or a bulky bag of ath­let­ic equip­ment, you know that gear can be a bur­den best shed.

But what if that gear is your first, nay, best line of defense against a fel­low knight fix­ing to smite you in the name of their liege?

Such gear is non-option­al.

Curi­ous about the degree to which 15th-cen­tu­ry knights were encum­bered by their pro­tec­tive plat­ing, medieval­ist Daniel Jaquet com­mis­sioned a top armor spe­cial­ist from the Czech Repub­lic to make a suit spe­cif­ic to his own per­son­al mea­sure­ments. The result is based on a 15th cen­tu­ry spec­i­men in Vien­na that has been stud­ied by the Wal­lace Col­lec­tion’s archaeomet­al­lur­gist Alan Williams. As Jaquet recalled in Sci­ences et Avenir:

We had to make com­pro­mis­es in the copy­ing process, of course, because what inter­est­ed me above all was to be able to do a behav­ioral study, to see how one moved with this equip­ment on the back rather than attach­ing myself to the num­ber of exact rivets…we knew the com­po­si­tion and the hard­ness of the parts that we could com­pare to our repli­ca.

The accom­plished mar­tial artist test­ed his mobil­i­ty in the suit with a vari­ety of high­ly pub­lic, mod­ern activ­i­ties: reach­ing for items on the high­est super­mar­ket shelves, jog­ging in the park, scal­ing a wall at a climb­ing gym, tak­ing the Metro …

It may look like show­boat­ing, but these move­ments helped him assess how he’d per­form in com­bat, as well as low­er stress activ­i­ties involv­ing sit­ting down or stand­ing up.

Out of his met­al suit, Jaquet has been known to amuse him­self by ana­lyz­ing the verisimil­i­tude of Game of Thrones’ com­bat scenes. (Con­clu­sion: some lib­er­ties were tak­en, armor-wise, in that grue­some face off between the Moun­tain and the Viper.)

An invi­ta­tion to trav­el to New York City to present at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art offered an unex­pect­ed test­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, com­pli­ments of the airline’s bag­gage restric­tions:

For rea­sons of weight, space and cost, the solu­tion to wear the armor over me was con­sid­ered the best.

(The TSA offi­cers at Newark were not amused...)

His armored expe­ri­ence sheds light on those of ear­ly 15th-cen­tu­ry knight Jean le Main­gre, aka Bouci­caut, whose impres­sive career was cut short in 1415, when he was cap­tured by the Eng­lish at the Bat­tle of Agin­court.

Bouci­caut kept him­self in tip top phys­i­cal con­di­tion with a reg­u­lar armored fit­ness reg­i­men. His chival­ric biog­ra­phy details gear­ing up for exer­cis­es that include run­ning, chop­ping wood, vault­ing onto a horse, and work­ing his way up a lad­der from the under­side, with­out using his feet.

Jaquet dupli­cates them all in the above video.

(Reminder to those who would try this at home, make sure you’re capa­ble of per­form­ing these exer­cis­es in light­weight shorts and t‑shirt before attempt­ing to do them in armor.)

Like Boucicault’s, Jaquet’s armor is bespoke. Those who’ve strug­gled to lift their arms in an off-the-rack jack­et will appre­ci­ate the trade off. It’s worth spend­ing more to ensure suf­fi­cient range of move­ment.

In Boucicault’s day, ready-made pieces of less­er qual­i­ty could be pro­cured at mar­kets, trad­ing fairs, and shops in pop­u­lous areas. You could also try your luck after bat­tle, by strip­ping the cap­tive and the dead of theirs. Size was always an issue. Too small and your move­ment would be restrict­ed. Too big, and you’d be haul­ing around unnec­es­sary weight.

Jaquet describes his load as being on par with the weight 21st-cen­tu­ry sol­diers are required to car­ry. Body armor is a life­saver, accord­ing to a 2018 study by the Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty, but it also reduces mobil­i­ty, increas­es fatigue, and reduces mis­sion per­for­mance.

Giz­mo­do’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette finds that medieval knights faced sim­i­lar chal­lenges:

The legs alone were car­ry­ing an extra 15 to 18 pounds, so the mus­cles had to work that much hard­er to over­come iner­tia to set the legs in motion. There is also evi­dence that the thin slits in the face mask, and tight chest plate, restrict­ed oxy­gen flow even fur­ther.

Read a detailed, schol­ar­ly account of Jaquet’s armor exper­i­ment in His­tor­i­cal Meth­ods: A Jour­nal of Quan­ti­ta­tive and Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary His­to­ry.

For those look­ing for a lighter read, here is Jaque­t’s account of tak­ing a com­mer­cial flight in armor (and some best prac­tice tips for those attempt­ing the same.)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What It’s Like to Actu­al­ly Fight in Medieval Armor

Watch Accu­rate Recre­ations of Medieval Ital­ian Longsword Fight­ing Tech­niques, All Based on a Man­u­script from 1404

How to Make and Wear Medieval Armor: An In-Depth Primer

When the Colosseum in Rome Became the Home of Hundreds of Exotic Plant Species

in Architecture, Biology, History | December 7th, 2021

The Colos­se­um is one of the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tions in Italy, and thus one of the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tions in all of Europe. But the nature of its appeal to its many vis­i­tors has changed over the cen­turies. In the Atlantic, nov­el­ist and pod­cast­er Paul Coop­er notes that, “the belief that Chris­t­ian mar­tyrs had once been fed to the lions in the are­na,” for exam­ple, once made it a renowned site of reli­gious pil­grim­age. (This “despite lit­tle evi­dence that Chris­tians were ever actu­al­ly killed in the are­na.”) But in that same era, the Colos­se­um was also a site of botan­ic pil­grim­age: amid its ruins grew “420 species of plant,” includ­ing some rare exam­ples “found nowhere else in Europe.”

Notable tourists who took note of the Colos­se­um’s rich plant life include Charles Dick­ens, who beheld its “walls and arch­es over­grown with green,” and Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley, who wrote of how “the copse­wood over­shad­ows you as you wan­der through its labyrinths, and the wild weeds of this cli­mate of flow­ers bloom under your feet.”

Coop­er quotes from these writ­ings in his Atlantic piece, and in an asso­ci­at­ed Twit­ter thread also includes plen­ty of ren­der­ings of the Colos­se­um as it then looked dur­ing the 18th and 19th cen­turies. He even select­ed images from Flo­ra of the Colos­se­um of Rome, or, Illus­tra­tions and descrip­tions of four hun­dred and twen­ty plants grow­ing spon­ta­neous­ly upon the ruins of the Colos­se­um of Rome (read­able free online at the Inter­net Archive), the 1855 work of a less well-known Eng­lish­man named Richard Deakin.

A botanist, Deakin did the hard work of cat­a­loging those hun­dreds of plant species grow­ing in the Colos­se­um back in the 1850s. The inter­ven­ing 170 or so years have tak­en their toll on this bio­di­ver­si­ty: as Nature report­ed it, only 242 of these species were still present in the ear­ly 2000s, due in part to “a shift towards species that pre­fer a warmer, dri­er cli­mate” and the growth of the sur­round­ing city. In its hey­day in the first cen­turies of the last mil­len­ni­um, the are­na lay on the out­skirts of Rome, where­as it feels cen­tral today. Pay it a vis­it, and you both will and will not see the Colos­se­um that Dick­ens and Shel­ley did; but then, they nev­er knew it as, say, Titus or Domit­ian did. In recent years there have been moves to restore and even improve ancient fea­tures like the retractable floor; why not dou­ble down on the exot­ic flo­ra while we’re at it?

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rome’s Colos­se­um Will Get a New Retractable Floor by 2023 — Just as It Had in Ancient Times

The Roman Colos­se­um Has a Twin in Tunisia: Dis­cov­er the Amphithe­ater of El Jem, One of the Best-Pre­served Roman Ruins in the World

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

With 9,036 Pieces, the Roman Colos­se­um Is the Largest Lego Set Ever

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

How Peter Jackson Used Artificial Intelligence to Restore the Video & Audio Featured in The Beatles: Get Back

in Artificial Intelligence, Film, Music, Technology | December 6th, 2021

Much has been made in recent years of the “de-aging” process­es that allow actors to cred­i­bly play char­ac­ters far younger than them­selves. But it has also become pos­si­ble to de-age film itself, as demon­strat­ed by Peter Jack­son’s cel­e­brat­ed new docu-series The Bea­t­les: Get Back. The vast major­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al that com­pris­es its near­ly eight-hour run­time was orig­i­nal­ly shot in 1969, under the direc­tion of Michael Lind­say-Hogg for the doc­u­men­tary that became Let It Be.

Those who have seen both Lin­day-Hog­g’s and Jack­son’s doc­u­men­taries will notice how much sharp­er, smoother, and more vivid the very same footage looks in the lat­ter, despite the six­teen-mil­lime­ter film hav­ing lan­guished for half a cen­tu­ry. The kind of visu­al restora­tion and enhance­ment seen in Get Back was made pos­si­ble by tech­nolo­gies that have only emerged in the past few decades — and pre­vi­ous­ly seen in Jack­son’s They Shall Not Grow Old, a doc­u­men­tary acclaimed for its restora­tion of cen­tu­ry-old World War I footage to a time-trav­el-like degree of verisimil­i­tude.

“You can’t actu­al­ly just do it with off-the-shelf soft­ware,” Jack­son explained in an inter­view about the restora­tion process­es involved in They Shall Not Grow Old. This neces­si­tat­ed mar­shal­ing, at his New Zealand com­pa­ny Park Road Post Pro­duc­tion, “a depart­ment of code writ­ers who write com­put­er code in soft­ware.” In oth­er words, a suf­fi­cient­ly ambi­tious project of visu­al revi­tal­iza­tion — mak­ing media from bygone times even more life­like than it was to begin with — becomes as much a job of tra­di­tion­al film-restora­tion or visu­al-effects as of com­put­er pro­gram­ming.

This also goes for the less obvi­ous but no-less-impres­sive treat­ment giv­en by Jack­son and his team to the audio that came with the Let It Be footage. Record­ed in large part monau­ral­ly, these tapes pre­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble pro­duc­tion chal­lenge. John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s instru­ments share a sin­gle track with their voic­es — and not just their singing voic­es, but their speak­ing ones as well. On first lis­ten, this ren­ders many of their con­ver­sa­tions inaudi­ble, and prob­a­bly by design: “If they were in a con­ver­sa­tion,” said Jack­son, they would turn their amps up loud and they’d strum the gui­tar.”

This means of keep­ing their words from Lind­say-Hogg and his crew worked well enough in the whol­ly ana­log late 1960s, but it has proven no match for the arti­fi­cial intelligence/machine learn­ing of the 2020s. “We devised a tech­nol­o­gy that is called demix­ing,” said Jack­son. “You teach the com­put­er what a gui­tar sounds like, you teach them what a human voice sounds like, you teach it what a drum sounds like, you teach it what a bass sounds like.” Sup­plied with enough son­ic data, the sys­tem even­tu­al­ly learned to dis­tin­guish from one anoth­er not just the sounds of the Bea­t­les’ instru­ments but of their voic­es as well.

Hence, in addi­tion to Get Back’s rev­e­la­to­ry musi­cal moments, its many once-pri­vate but now crisply audi­ble exchanges between the Fab Four. “Oh, you’re record­ing our con­ver­sa­tion?” George Har­ri­son at one point asks Lind­say-Hogg in a char­ac­ter­is­tic tone of faux sur­prise. But if he could hear the record­ings today, his sur­prise would sure­ly be real.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

Peter Jack­son Gives Us an Entic­ing Glimpse of His Upcom­ing Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Lennon or McCart­ney? Sci­en­tists Use Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Fig­ure Out Who Wrote Icon­ic Bea­t­les Songs

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

The Drugs Used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans

in History, Psychology | November 26th, 2021

Many of us liv­ing in the parts of the world where mar­i­jua­na has recent­ly been legal­ized may regard our­selves as par­tak­ing of a high­ly mod­ern plea­sure. And giv­en the ever-increas­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion of the grow­ing and pro­cess­ing tech­niques that under­lie what has become a for­mi­da­ble cannabis indus­try, per­haps, on some lev­el, we are. But as intel­lec­tu­al­ly avid enthu­si­asts of psy­choac­tive sub­stances won’t hes­i­tate to tell you, their use stretch­es far­ther back in time than his­to­ry itself. “For as long as there has been civ­i­liza­tion, there have been mind-alter­ing drugs,” writes Sci­ence’s Andrew Lawler. But was any­one using them in the pre­de­ces­sors to west­ern civ­i­liza­tion as we know it today?

For quite some time, schol­ars believed that unlike, say, Mesoamer­i­ca or north Africa, “the ancient Near East had seemed curi­ous­ly drug-free.” But now, “new tech­niques for ana­lyz­ing residues in exca­vat­ed jars and iden­ti­fy­ing tiny amounts of plant mate­r­i­al sug­gest that ancient Near East­ern­ers indulged in a range of psy­choac­tive sub­stances.”

The lat­est evi­dence sug­gests that, already three mil­len­nia ago, “drugs like cannabis had arrived in Mesopotamia, while peo­ple from Turkey to Egypt exper­i­ment­ed with local sub­stances such as blue water lily.” That these habits seem to have con­tin­ued in ancient Greece and Rome is sug­gest­ed by archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sum­ma­rized in the video above.

In 2019, archae­ol­o­gists unearthed a few pre­cious arti­facts from a fourth-cen­tu­ry Scythi­an bur­ial mound near Stavropol in Rus­sia. There were “gold­en arm­bands, gold­en cups, a heavy gold ring, and the great­est trea­sure of all, two spec­tac­u­lar gold­en ves­sels,” says nar­ra­tor Gar­rett Ryan, who earned a PhD in Greek and Roman His­to­ry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. The inte­ri­ors of those last “were coat­ed with a sticky black residue,” con­firmed in the lab to be opi­um with traces of mar­i­jua­na. “The Scythi­ans, in oth­er words, got high” — as did “their Greek and Roman neigh­bors.” Ryan, author of Naked Stat­ues, Fat Glad­i­a­tors, and War Ele­phants: Fre­quent­ly Asked Ques­tions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans, goes on to make intrigu­ing con­nec­tions between scat­tered but rel­e­vant pieces of archae­o­log­i­cal and tex­tu­al evi­dence. We know that some of our civ­i­liza­tion­al fore­bears got high; how many, and how high, are ques­tions for future scholas­tic inquiry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Pipes with Cannabis Traces Found in Shakespeare’s Gar­den, Sug­gest­ing the Bard Enjoyed a “Not­ed Weed”

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

The Secrets of Beethoven’s Fifth, the World’s Most Famous Symphony

in Animation, K-12, Music, TED Talks | November 24th, 2021

Revered by music lovers of tem­pera­ments as var­ied as Peanuts’ Schroed­er and A Clock­work Orange’s Alex, Lud­wig van Beethoven is one of the most cel­e­brat­ed com­posers in the West­ern clas­si­cal music canon.

Sym­pho­ny No. 5 in C minor is sure­ly one of his most rec­og­nized, and fre­quent­ly per­formed works, thanks in large part to its dra­mat­ic open­ing motif –

dun-dun-dun-DAH!

Music edu­ca­tor Hanako Sawa­da’s enter­tain­ing TED-Ed les­son, ani­mat­ed by Yael Reis­feld above, delves into the sto­ry behind this sym­pho­ny, “one of the most explo­sive pieces of music ever com­posed.”

Mid­dle and high school music teach­ers will be glad to know the cre­ators lean into the height­ened emo­tions of the piece, depict­ing the com­pos­er as a tor­tured genius whose pierc­ing gaze is bluer than Game of Thrones’ Night King.

Beethoven was already enjoy­ing a suc­cess­ful rep­u­ta­tion at the time of the symphony’s 1808 pre­miere, but not because he toiled in the ser­vice of reli­gion or wealthy patrons like his peers.

Instead, he was an ear­ly-19th cen­tu­ry bad ass, pri­or­i­tiz­ing self-expres­sion and pour­ing his emo­tions into com­po­si­tions he then sold to var­i­ous music pub­lish­ers.

With the Fifth, he real­ly shook off the rigid struc­tures of pre­vail­ing clas­si­cal norms, embrac­ing Roman­ti­cism in all its glo­ri­ous tur­moil.

The famous open­ing motif is repeat­ed to the point of obses­sion:

Through­out the piece, the motif is passed around the orches­tra like a whis­per, grad­u­al­ly reach­ing more and more instru­ments until it becomes a roar.

Besot­ted teenagers, well acquaint­ed with this feel­ing, are equipped with the inter­nal trom­bones, pic­co­los, and con­tra­bas­soons of the sort that make the piece even more urgent in feel.

Just wait until they get hold of Beethoven’s Immor­tal Beloved let­ters, writ­ten a few years after the sym­pho­ny, when the hear­ing loss he was wrestling with had pro­gressed to near total deaf­ness.

Whether or not it was the com­pos­er (and not his biog­ra­ph­er) who char­ac­ter­ized the cen­tral motif as the sound of “Fate knock­ing at the door,” it’s an apt, and riv­et­ing notion.

Take a quiz, par­tic­i­pate in a guid­ed dis­cus­sion, and cus­tomize Hanako Sawada’s les­son, “The Secrets of the World’s Most Famous Sym­pho­ny,” here.

Lis­ten to the sym­pho­ny in its entire­ty below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beethoven’s Unfin­ished Tenth Sym­pho­ny Gets Com­plet­ed by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Hear How It Sounds

Did Beethoven Use a Bro­ken Metronome When Com­pos­ing His String Quar­tets? Sci­en­tists & Musi­cians Try to Solve the Cen­turies-Old Mys­tery

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Beethoven’s 16 String Quar­tets: An Ear­ly Cel­e­bra­tion of the 250th Anniver­sary of His Birth

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday. 

Violinist Breaks a String While Performing Tchaikovsky in Concert, and Gracefully Recovers

in Music | November 10th, 2021

Hav­ing evolved over cen­turies — indeed, mil­len­nia — the for­mal ele­gance and son­ic beau­ty of stringed instru­ments con­tin­ue to inspire their play­ers toward ever-greater heights of vir­tu­os­i­ty. But of course, the attain­ment of vir­tu­os­i­ty itself does­n’t come easy, and what­ev­er alti­tude you reach, you’ll still be dogged by some of the same prob­lems you were as a novice. What vio­lin­ist, for instance, could ever ful­ly put out of their mind the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a string’s break­ing as they play, whether at home or in Carnegie Hall? Not celebri­ty play­er Ray Chen, sure­ly, giv­en that it’s hap­pened to him at least twice in the past five years.

Being a Youtu­ber as well, Chen has turned these onstage mis­for­tunes to his advan­tage. Just last week he put up “Vio­lin­ist string BREAKS dur­ing Tchaikovsky,” a video that cap­tures his lat­est such expe­ri­ence while play­ing with the Seat­tle Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra. Far from grind­ing to a halt, the per­for­mance con­tin­ues with only a minor hitch.

After mak­ing a valiant attempt to sol­dier on short an E string, Chen switch­es to what appears to be the back­up plan. With­out the option of singing the blues while chang­ing the string him­self, as B.B. King did at Farm Aid, he swaps his instru­ment with that of the con­cert­mas­ter, who pass­es it down the line. Unfazed, Chen con­tin­ues play­ing right where he left off.

Chen fol­lowed a sim­i­lar pro­ce­dure after a string break in 2017, while play­ing in Brus­sels with the Tai­wan Phil­har­mon­ic. Then, as now, he uploaded the footage to his Youtube chan­nel, where it has  racked up more than 1.6 mil­lion views. The brief clip also cap­tures his final toss onto the floor of the spare pack of strings he’d had the good sense to place in his pock­et before­hand. The acco­lades post­ed in the com­ments below bring to mind the sto­ry of 19th-cen­tu­ry vio­lin­ist Carl Her­man Unthan. Born with­out arms, Unthan became a vir­tu­oso by play­ing instead with his feet — which he also used to change a string that broke on him in con­cert. This proved aston­ish­ing enough that he’s said lat­er to have delib­er­ate­ly weak­ened strings in order to repeat the spec­ta­cle for oth­er audi­ences. Just imag­ine if he’d had Youtube.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Changes Bro­ken Gui­tar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, 1985 and Doesn’t Miss a Beat

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

The Art and Sci­ence of Vio­lin Mak­ing

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

A Gigan­tic Vio­lin Floats Down Venice’s Grand Canal with a String Quar­tet on Top

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 or on Face­book.

What Makes the Mona Lisa a Great Painting: A Deep Dive

in Art, History | November 5th, 2021

This past sum­mer we fea­tured a short video intro­duc­tion to the Mona Lisa here on Open Cul­ture. You’d think that if any paint­ing did­n’t need an intro­duc­tion, that would be the one. But the video’s cre­ator James Payne showed many of us just how much we still have to learn about Leonar­do’s most famous work of art — and indeed, per­haps the most famous work by any artist. On his Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained, Payne offers clear and pow­er­ful analy­ses of paint­ings from van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night and Hop­per’s Nighthawks to Warhol’s Mar­i­lyn Dip­tych and Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca. But there are some images to which a fif­teen-minute video essay can’t hope to do jus­tice.

In those cas­es, Payne has been known to fol­low up with a deluxe expand­ed edi­tion. Tak­ing on Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, he fol­lowed up three indi­vid­ual fif­teen-minute videos — for a trip­tych, a neat union of form and sub­stance — with a full-length treat­ment of the whole work.

Payne’s full-length ver­sion of his Mona Lisa video more than dou­bles the length of the orig­i­nal. “This is the more com­pre­hen­sive ver­sion I always want­ed to do,” he notes, adding that it “uses some of the infor­ma­tion from the first film (but in high­er res­o­lu­tion with bet­ter sound and with clear­er graph­ics), as well as answer­ing the hun­dreds of ques­tions: Why does­n’t she have eye­brows? Is it a self-por­trait? Is she only famous because she was stolen? How do we know what he was think­ing?”

This time around, Payne has more to say about how Leonar­do cre­at­ed such a com­pelling por­trait on a tech­ni­cal lev­el, but also why he came to paint it in the first place. On top of that, the expand­ed for­mat gives him time to exam­ine the much more con­ven­tion­al por­traits Leonar­do’s con­tem­po­raries were paint­ing at the time, as well as what’s known as the Pra­do Mona Lisa. A depic­tion of the same sit­ter that may even have been paint­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly by one of Leonar­do’s stu­dents, it makes for an illu­mi­nat­ing object of com­par­i­son. Payne also gets into the 1911 theft and recov­ery that ulti­mate­ly did a great deal for the paint­ing’s rep­u­ta­tion, as well as its 1963 exhi­bi­tion in Amer­i­ca that, thanks to tele­vi­sion, turned it into a mass-media icon. By now we’ve all had more glimpses of the Mona Lisa more times than we can remem­ber, but it takes enthu­si­asm like Payne’s to remind us of all the ways we can tru­ly see it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes

Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa

How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911)

Orig­i­nal Por­trait of the Mona Lisa Found Beneath the Paint Lay­ers of da Vinci’s Mas­ter­piece

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 or on Face­book.

Why Leonardo da Vinci’s Greatest Painting is Not the Mona Lisa

in Art | November 4th, 2021

Despite cre­at­ing two of the most famous paint­ings in the his­to­ry of West­ern art, The Last Sup­per and the Mona Lisa, Leonar­do da Vin­ci did not par­tic­u­lar­ly think of him­self as a painter. Sig­mund Freud may have devot­ed sev­er­al hun­dred words to show­ing that the Renais­sance man par excel­lence rarely fin­ished an art­work because of infan­tile psy­cho­sex­u­al con­flicts, but it seems more fit­ting to look at Leonardo’s approach to paint­ing as of a piece with his approach to every­thing: He was sim­ply far more inter­est­ed in process than prod­uct. Even when the prod­uct was a mas­ter­piece-in-the-mak­ing, and Leonar­do’s patrons await­ed, the artist’s rest­less mind was ready to move on before he fin­ished a com­mis­sion.

Such was the case with the Mona Lisa, which Leonar­do nev­er deliv­ered to his client and instead brought with him to France. This paint­ing, in all its unfin­ished mys­tery, may be Leonardo’s best-known work, but it is not — as Evan Puschak, a.k.a. The Nerd­writer, argues above — his best.

That hon­or should be reserved for a paint­ing Leonar­do began in the same year as the Mona Lisa, 1503: The Vir­gin and Child with St. Anne, which he worked on for sev­en years, nev­er deliv­ered to his client (most like­ly the King of France), and left unfin­ished at the time of his death in 1519.

The paint­ing depicts a group­ing of three fig­ures: the infant Christ, wrestling a lamb, his moth­er, attempt­ing to pull him away, and her moth­er, the apoc­ryphal St. Anne, form­ing the sta­ble base and apex of the tri­ad. Behind her head tow­ers a dense moun­tain range, a sym­bol of deep eco­log­i­cal time, says Puschak, just as the lamb in the fore­ground sym­bol­izes the Pas­sion to come. This tran­si­tion from a pre-his­toric past (one far more ancient than the Bib­li­cal sto­ries) to a redeemed future does not ter­mi­nate with the lamb, says Puschak, but with us, the view­er.

The pyra­mi­dal com­po­si­tion recalls Leonardo’s The Vir­gin of the Rocks from 1483. Such group­ings were com­mon in ear­ly Renais­sance paint­ings, but The Vir­gin and Child with St. Anne rep­re­sent­ed a mas­ter­ful refine­ment of the com­po­si­tion and of Leonar­do’s famed sfu­ma­to tech­nique. As Art­dai­ly notes:

In Flo­rence, where it was con­ceived, the Saint Anne quick­ly drew con­sid­er­able atten­tion and can be seen as a water­shed moment in the evo­lu­tion of artis­tic lan­guage, inspir­ing many dis­ci­ples and col­leagues who sought to emu­late Leonar­do’s style and tech­nique in this work. Flo­ren­tines were fas­ci­nat­ed by the var­i­ous car­toons exe­cut­ed by Leonar­do and by the paint­ed work, even in its rough out­lines.

One prepara­to­ry work, the so-called “Burling­ton House Car­toon” (below), shows “the full expres­sion of Leonar­do’s first vision of the Saint Anne theme upon being award­ed the com­mis­sion.”

Image via the Nation­al Gallery

The work also shows the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of a theme that absorbed the artist through­out his life, expressed in ear­li­er works such as The Vir­gin and Child with Cat and The Vir­gin of the Rocks. “These Vir­gin and Child com­po­si­tions tes­ti­fy to Leonar­do’s ques­tion to ren­der in the most com­pelling man­ner the ten­der­ness of the rela­tion­ship between Jesus and the Vir­gin Mary,” and thus, between moth­er and son. Most of Freud’s obser­va­tions in his Leonar­do essay are non­sense, based on a mis­trans­la­tion into Ger­man of the word “vul­ture” for a word that actu­al­ly means “kite” (an error he lat­er found par­tic­u­lar­ly embar­rass­ing). But his dis­cus­sion of Leonar­do’s child­hood and his best, unfin­ished paint­ing may strike us with par­tic­u­lar poignan­cy.

[T]he smile which is play­ing on the lips of both women, although unmis­tak­ably the same as in the pic­ture of Mona Lisa, has lost its sin­is­ter and mys­te­ri­ous char­ac­ter; it express­es a calm bliss­ful­ness.… Leonardo’s child­hood was pre­cise­ly as remark­able as this pic­ture. He has had two moth­ers, the first his true moth­er, Cate­ri­na, from whom he was torn away between the age of three and five years, and a young ten­der step-moth­er, Don­na Albiera, his father’s wife. By con­nect­ing this fact of his child­hood… and con­dens­ing them into a uni­form fusion, the com­po­si­tion of Saint Anne, Mary and the Child, formed itself in him.

Per­haps Freud was right, and The Vir­gin and Child with St. Anne was tru­ly Leonar­do’s most per­son­al work, the apoth­e­o­sis of a quest to inte­grate his per­son­al­i­ty through art. What­ev­er the case, we can say, along the psy­cho­an­a­lyst, that “on becom­ing some­what engrossed in this pic­ture it sud­den­ly dawns upon the spec­ta­tor that only Leonar­do could have paint­ed this pic­ture.”

On a side note, Nerd­writer, the cre­ator of the video above, has a new book com­ing out, Escape into Mean­ing: Essays on Super­man, Pub­lic Bench­es, and Oth­er Obses­sions. You can pre-order it now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Note­books Get Dig­i­tized: Where to Read the Renais­sance Man’s Man­u­scripts Online

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renais­sance Man

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Made His Mag­nif­i­cent Draw­ings Using Only a Met­al Sty­lus, Pen & Ink, and Chalk

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