Lou Reed Turns Rock Critic, Sizing Up Everyone from the “Amazingly Talented” Beatles to the “Two Bit, Pretentious” Frank Zappa

in Magazines, Music | January 25th, 2022

A sig­nal char­ac­ter­is­tic of pow­er­ful crit­i­cism is that it keeps peo­ple talk­ing years after the death of the crit­ic him­self. Think, for exam­ple, of Lester Bangs, who despite hav­ing been gone for near­ly 40 years left behind judg­ments that still res­onate through the halls of rock and roll. The vital­i­ty of his work was­n’t hurt by a ten­den­cy to get unusu­al­ly close to some of his sub­jects, espe­cial­ly Lou Reed. “The things he wrote and sang and played in the Vel­vet Under­ground were for me part of the begin­ning of a real rev­o­lu­tion in the whole scheme between men and women, men and men, women and women, humans and humans,” Bangs wrote in 1980.

Five years ear­li­er, Bangs had called Reed “a com­plete­ly depraved per­vert and pathet­ic death dwarf,” as well as “a liar, a wast­ed tal­ent, an artist con­tin­u­al­ly in flux, and a huck­ster sell­ing pounds of his own flesh. A pan­der­er liv­ing off the dumb­bell nihilism of a sev­en­ties gen­er­a­tion that doesn’t have the ener­gy to com­mit sui­cide.”

All this he meant, of course, in praise. Reed, for his part, dis­played such elab­o­rate dis­dain for Bangs that it could only have been moti­vat­ed by respect. “What oth­er rock artist would put up with an inter­view by the author of this arti­cle,” Bangs rhetor­i­cal­ly asked, “read the resul­tant vicious vit­ri­ol-spew with approval, and then invite me back for a sec­ond round because of course he’s such a masochist he loved the hatch­et in his back?”

A mag­a­zine page now cir­cu­lat­ing on Twit­ter col­lects Reed’s own opin­ions on a vari­ety of oth­er rock acts and coun­ter­cul­tur­al fig­ures of the 1960s and 70s. The Bea­t­les, who’d just bro­ken up? “The most incred­i­ble song­writ­ers ever” (though Reed’s judg­ment of the Fab Four would change with time). The Rolling Stones? “If I had to pick my top ten, they’ve got at least five songs.” Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival? “I like them a lot.” David Bowie? “The kid’s got every­thing… every­thing.” Fel­low Vel­vets Doug Yule (“so cute”), Nico (“the kind of per­son that you meet, and you’re not quite the same after­wards”), and John Cale (“the next Beethoven or some­thing”) get com­pli­ments; as for Andy Warhol, out of whose “fac­to­ry” the band emerged, “I real­ly love him.” (“Lou learned a lot from Andy,” wrote Bangs, “main­ly about becom­ing a suc­cess­ful pub­lic per­son­al­i­ty by sell­ing your own pri­vate quirks to an audi­ence greedy for more and more geeks.”)

But as a con­nois­seur of the hatch­et, Reed also plants a few him­self. Of “Cal­i­for­nia bands” like Jef­fer­son Air­plane and the Grate­ful Dead, he said “they can’t play and they cer­tain­ly can’t write.” Nor, evi­dent­ly, could the Who’s Pete Town­shend: “as a lyri­cist he’s so pro­found­ly untal­ent­ed and, you know, philo­soph­i­cal­ly bor­ing to say the least.” Reed does “get off” on the Kinks, “then I just get bored after a while.” Alice Coop­er rep­re­sents “the worst, most dis­gust­ing aspect of rock music”; Roxy Music “don’t know what they’re talk­ing about.” Frank Zap­pa is “the sin­gle most untal­ent­ed per­son I’ve heard in my life. He’s two-bit, pre­ten­tious, aca­d­e­m­ic, and he can’t play his way out of any­thing.” Yet at Zap­pa’s posthu­mous induc­tion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, the lauda­to­ry speech was deliv­ered by none oth­er than… Lou Reed. In rock, as in the oth­er arts, resent­ment can become the seed of admi­ra­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

An Ani­mat­ed Lou Reed Explains The Vel­vet Underground’s Artis­tic Goals, and Why The Bea­t­les Were “Garbage”

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

The Out­siders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thomp­son, and Frank Zap­pa Reveal Them­selves in Cap­ti­vat­ing­ly Ani­mat­ed Inter­views

Lou Reed Curates an Eclec­tic Playlist of His Favorite Songs Dur­ing His Final Days: Stream 27 Tracks Lou Was Lis­ten­ing To

Ing­mar Bergman Eval­u­ates His Fel­low Film­mak­ers — The “Affect­ed” Godard, “Infan­tile” Hitch­cock & Sub­lime Tarkovsky

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

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 Queen’s Guard Pays Tribute to Meatloaf, Playing a Brass Version of “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”

in Life, Music | January 24th, 2022

Mar­vin Lee Aday, aka Meat­loaf, died late last week, report­ed­ly after falling ill with Covid. At Buck­ing­ham Palace, the Queen’s Guard paid trib­ute to the musi­cian and his 1993 hit “I’d Do Any­thing for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” on Sun­day. It’s a nice touch.

How French Music Teacher Nadia Boulanger Raised a Generation of Composers: Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Quincy Jones, Philip Glass & More

in Music | January 24th, 2022

One of my favorite quotes about cre­ativ­i­ty comes from 20th-cen­tu­ry elec­tric bass vir­tu­oso Jaco Pas­to­rius: “You don’t get bet­ter, you grow.” The aspi­ra­tion to get “bet­ter” implies a cat­e­go­ry of “best” – a height artists fre­quent­ly despair of ever reach­ing. Pas­to­rius reject­ed a state of per­fec­tion, which would mean stop­ping, going no fur­ther, freez­ing in place. “One can always learn more. One can always under­stand more. The ques­tion is to pro­vide your­self with con­fi­dence.” That wis­dom comes not from Jaco Pas­to­rius but from 20th cen­tu­ry French music teacher and com­pos­er Nadia Boulanger, who might not have approved of the lib­er­tine jazz phe­nom’s life, giv­en her aris­to­crat­ic con­ser­vatism, but hearti­ly endorsed his wis­dom about con­tin­u­ous cre­ative growth.

Although deeply root­ed in a clas­si­cal tra­di­tion which strove for per­fec­tion, Boulanger taught, influ­enced, and cham­pi­oned some of the cen­tu­ry’s most avant-garde com­posers, such as Igor Stravin­sky, who broke vio­lent­ly with the past, as well as jazz greats like Quin­cy Jones, who took her lessons in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent mod­ern pop direc­tion.

Indeed, Boulanger presided over “one of the most expan­sive  peri­ods in music his­to­ry, par­tic­u­lar­ly for Amer­i­ca,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Inside the Score doc­u­men­tary above, “How Nadia Boulanger Raised a Gen­er­a­tion of Com­posers.” Aaron Cop­land, Leonard Bern­stein, Charles Strauss, and even min­i­mal­ists like Philip Glass… all stud­ied with Boulanger at some point in their career.

Boulanger also took on many female stu­dents, like com­pos­er Lousie Tal­ma, but she pre­ferred to work with men. (The famous­ly stern teacher once com­pli­ment­ed a female stu­dent by call­ing her “Mon­sieur”). She had lit­tle regard for Roman­tic ideas about “genius,” and cer­tain­ly not all of her stu­dents were as tal­ent­ed as the list of famous names asso­ci­at­ed with her, but for those with aspi­ra­tions in the clas­si­cal world, a vis­it to Boulanger’s Paris apart­ment con­sti­tut­ed a rite of pas­sage. “Aaron Cop­land and Vir­gil Thom­son led the way in the ’20s,” notes Red Bull Music Acad­e­my, “trans­form­ing Boulanger’s clear, tart tonal exact­ness into a new ver­sion of hardy Amer­i­cana.” She became such a stal­wart pres­ence in the world of 20th cen­tu­ry com­po­si­tion that com­pos­er Ned Rorem once joked, “Myth cred­its every Amer­i­can town with two things: a 10-cent store and a Boulanger stu­dent.”

At age 90, in 1977, Boulanger was well known as the most famous music teacher in the world when direc­tor Bruno Mon­sain­geon caught up with her for the near­ly hour-long inter­view above. See the aged but still incred­i­bly sharp (no pun intend­ed) leg­end still teach­ing, and strug­gling to put into words exact­ly how it is that music keeps us grow­ing past math­e­mat­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions. “Can one actu­al­ly define that?” she asks mid-sen­tence while instruct­ing a stu­dent. “I am using words such as ten­der­ness or ten­sion. It’s all wrong. It is what the music itself is.…”

Learn much more about Boulanger’s extra­or­di­nary life and work as a music teacher and com­pos­er in the doc­u­men­tary Madamoi­selle: A Por­trait of Nadia Boulanger, fur­ther up, and in our pre­vi­ous post at the link below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Nadia Boulanger, “The Most Influ­en­tial Teacher Since Socrates,” Who Men­tored Philip Glass, Leonard Bern­stein, Aaron Cop­land, Quin­cy Jones & Oth­er Leg­ends

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

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

New Study Finds That Humans Are 33,000 Years Older Than We Thought

in History, Science | January 24th, 2022

pho­to by Céline Vidal

“Where’re you from?” one char­ac­ter asks anoth­er on the Fire­sign The­atre’s clas­sic 1969 album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Any­where at All. “Nairo­bi, ma’am,” the oth­er replies. “Isn’t every­body?” Like most of the count­less mul­ti-lay­ered gags on their albums, this one makes a cul­tur­al ref­er­ence, pre­sum­ably to the dis­cov­er­ies made by famed pale­oan­thro­pol­o­gists Louis and Mary Leakey over the pre­vi­ous 20 years. Their dis­cov­ery of fos­sils in Kenya and else­where did much to advance the the­sis that humankind evolved in Africa, and that the process was hap­pen­ing more than 1.75 mil­lion years before.

Like all sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs, the Leakeys’ work only prompt­ed more ques­tions — or rather, cre­at­ed more oppor­tu­ni­ties for refin­ing and adding detail to the rel­e­vant body of knowl­edge. Sub­se­quent digs all over Africa have pro­duced fur­ther evi­dence of how far our species and its pre­de­ces­sors go back, and where exact­ly the evo­lu­tion­ary progress hap­pened.

Just this month, Nature pub­lished a new paper on the “age of the old­est known Homo sapi­ens from east­ern Africa.” These new find­ings about known fos­sils, orig­i­nal­ly dis­cov­ered in south­west­ern Ethiopia in 1967, sug­gest that the time has come for anoth­er revi­sion of the long pre-his­to­ry of human­i­ty.

pho­to by Céline Vidal

The paper’s authors, writes Reuters’ Will Dun­ham, “used the geo­chem­i­cal fin­ger­prints of a thick lay­er of ash found above the sed­i­ments con­tain­ing the fos­sils to ascer­tain that it result­ed from an erup­tion that spewed vol­canic fall­out over a wide swathe of Ethiopia rough­ly 233,000 years ago.” These fos­sils “include a rather com­plete cra­nial vault and low­er jaw, some ver­te­brae and parts of the arms and legs.” After their ini­tial dis­cov­ery by the late Richard Leakey, son of Louis and Mary (and a man gen­uine­ly from Nairo­bi, born and raised), the fos­sils buried by this pre­his­toric Vesu­vius were pre­vi­ous­ly believed to be “no more than about 200,000 years old.”

Dun­ham quotes the paper’s lead author, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge vol­ca­nol­o­gist Celine Vidal, as say­ing this dis­cov­ery aligns with “the most recent sci­en­tif­ic mod­els of human evo­lu­tion plac­ing the emer­gence of Homo sapi­ens some­time between 350,000 to 200,000 years ago.” Though Vidal and her team’s analy­sis of the ash’s geo­chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion has deter­mined the min­i­mum age of Omo I, as these fos­sils are known, the max­i­mum age remains an open ques­tion. Or at least, it awaits the efforts of researchers to date the “ash lay­er below the sed­i­ment con­tain­ing the fos­sils” and ren­der a more pre­cise esti­mate. And when that’s estab­lished, it will then, ide­al­ly, become mate­r­i­al for the next big absur­dist com­e­dy troupe.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in Six Min­utes

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

How Humans Migrat­ed Across The Globe Over 200,000 Years: An Ani­mat­ed Look

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er the World’s First “Art Stu­dio” Cre­at­ed in an Ethiopi­an Cave 43,000 Years Ago

The Life & Dis­cov­er­ies of Mary Leakey Cel­e­brat­ed in an Endear­ing Cutout Ani­ma­tion

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 to Open a Door: A Finnish Instructional Video from 1979

in Random | January 24th, 2022

Before you get start­ed, turn on the sub­ti­tles by click­ing the “CC” but­ton on the low­er right side of the video.

Did you know that one out of every three peo­ple opens a door incor­rect­ly. You–yes, you–might be doing it all wrong. But this Finnish instruc­tion­al video from 1979 has you cov­ered. Watch and learn. This clip will–as they say–open so many doors to you…

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!

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Fin­land & Den­mark Are Hap­pi­er Than the Unit­ed States

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

The Great Chicago Book Sale: Get Up to 90% Off Books from UChicago Press

in Deals | January 24th, 2022

FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press is run­ning a big sale. They write:

Now through June 15th, 2022 you can get thought-pro­vok­ing, inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished books for up to 90% off with code AD1958.

Our annu­al sale is one of the biggest uni­ver­si­ty press book sales in the coun­try. Every year we go through our over­stock inven­to­ry and offer deep dis­counts on hun­dreds of books in sub­jects like his­to­ry, fic­tion, art, sci­ence, trav­el, cook­ing, and more. Shop below or down­load a copy of our PDF cat­a­log to get these amaz­ing deals on schol­ar­ly and trade titles from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press and our dis­trib­uted pub­lish­ers. Hur­ry! Sup­plies are lim­it­ed on some books.

Enter the sale here and remem­ber to use code AD1958 …

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Craft of Writ­ing Effec­tive­ly: Essen­tial Lessons from the Long­time Direc­tor of UChicago’s Writ­ing Pro­gram

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Hear Benedict Cumberbatch Reading Letters by Kurt Vonnegut, Alan Turing, Sol LeWitt, and Others

in Literature | January 21st, 2022

Many know Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch as neu­ro­sur­geon-turned-Mas­ter of the Mys­tic Arts Doc­tor Strange. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed in the 1960s by Mar­vel Comics artist and writer Steve Ditko, the char­ac­ter has gained a new fan fol­low­ing through the films of the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse. In 2016’s Doc­tor Strange, the upcom­ing Doc­tor Strange in the Mul­ti­verse of Mad­ness, and sev­er­al oth­er MCU pic­tures besides, he’s been played by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch. Open Cul­ture read­ers may know Cum­ber­batch bet­ter as the 21st-cen­tu­ry detec­tive pro­tag­o­nist of the BBC series Sher­lock — or, even more like­ly, as a read­er-out-loud of his­tor­i­cal and lit­er­ary let­ters.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Cum­ber­batch’s onstage ren­di­tions of every­thing from Albert Camus’ thank-you note to his ele­men­tary school teacher to Kurt Von­negut’s advice to the peo­ple of the year 2088 to Franz Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis. Now we’ve round­ed up more let­ter-read­ings in the ten-video playlist above.

Begin­ning with Sol LeWit­t’s let­ter of advice to Eva Hesse, it con­tin­ues on to Cum­ber­batch’s read­ings of oth­er such works as “the best cov­er let­ter ever writ­ten,” more than one mis­sive by the pio­neer­ing and per­se­cut­ed com­put­er sci­en­tist Alan Tur­ing, a “let­ter about crabs (not the kind you eat)” by Patrick Leigh Fer­mor, and a Richard Nixon’s William Safire-com­posed speech to be read in the event that Apol­lo 11 did­n’t return to Earth.

The mate­r­i­al in this cor­re­spon­dence, all of which Cum­ber­batch reads aloud for Let­ters of Note’s Let­ters Live project, varies con­sid­er­able in both tone and con­tent. Lit­tle of it resem­bles the com­ic-book or detec­tive-nov­el mate­r­i­al with which he has won main­stream fame. But like any good actor, Cum­ber­batch knows how to tai­lor his per­for­ma­tive per­sona to each new con­text with­out los­ing the innate sen­si­bil­i­ty that sets him apart. At the same time, he clear­ly under­stands how to inter­pret not just dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, real­is­tic as well as fan­tas­ti­cal, but also the per­son­al­i­ties of real human beings who actu­al­ly lived. What­ev­er oth­er plea­sures it offers, hear­ing Cum­ber­batch read let­ters under­scores the fact that we could all do much worse than to be played by him in the movie of our life.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads “the Best Cov­er Let­ter Ever Writ­ten”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter of Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing in the Year 2088

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

“Stop It and Just DO”: Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Advice on Over­com­ing Cre­ative Blocks, Writ­ten by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightin­gale” and Oth­er Great Works by Shake­speare, Dante & Coleridge

Hear Moby-Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, Til­da Swin­ton, John Waters, Stephen Fry & More

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 a Fake Cartoon Band Made “Sugar Sugar” the Biggest Selling Hit Single of 1969

in Music | January 21st, 2022

Rock crit­ic Lester Bangs described bub­blegum pop as “the basic sound of rock ’n’ roll – minus the rage, fear, vio­lence and anomie.” The short-lived genre had its roots in the Please Please Me era of the Bea­t­les’ minus the sex and the sar­casm. But from the Bea­t­les we can trace a pret­ty sol­id path to the Archies. Not that we deserved this band as an inevitabil­i­ty, but the car­toon con­coc­tion is one of a thou­sand vari­ants from that infec­tious strain of post-war pop.

The Archie’s last­ing lega­cy is one sin­gle: the bonafide ear­worm, “Sug­ar Sug­ar.” Writ­ten by Jeff Bar­ry and Andy Kim, it was a real num­ber one sin­gle (it knocked the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman” off the throne in 1969) sung by a com­plete­ly fake band, name­ly the cast of Archie Comics, the five or six per­pet­u­al teenagers that have been around since 1941.

How we got there, we must go back to the Bea­t­les. Once the Fab Four had start­ed to quick­ly out­grow their inno­cent image, King Fea­tures turned the four into a Sat­ur­day Morn­ing car­toon show in 1965 so their Richard Lester-inspired antics could con­tin­ue apace. This then led pro­duc­ers Bob Rafel­son and Bert Schnei­der to ask them­selves: why use the Bea­t­les when Amer­i­ca could man­u­fac­ture its own? The Mon­kees were born in 1966: three Amer­i­cans and one Brit sor­ta-mop­tops who starred in a sit­com based around their own hilar­i­ous, failed attempts to be as good as John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Music Super­vi­sor Don Kir­sh­n­er came from a career at the Brill Build­ing, launch­ing the careers of Neil Dia­mond, Car­ole King, and Tony Orlan­do, and on the Mon­kees, he was in charge of seek­ing out song­writ­ers for the group, along with stu­dio musi­cians, call­ing in the band to sing only when nec­es­sary. This led to “Last Train to Clarksville” (Boyce and Hart), “Day­dream Believ­er” (John Stew­art) and “I’m a Believ­er” (Dia­mond), all sol­id hits. But that dis­mis­sive­ness of the actors’ own tal­ents led to ten­sions in the band, espe­cial­ly Michael Nesmith, who had his own coun­try-lean­ing inter­ests. Upon hear­ing “Sug­ar, Sug­ar” as a pos­si­ble Mon­kees song, Nesmith absolute­ly refused. “It’s a piece of junk,” he told Kir­sh­n­er. “I’m not doing it.”

Kir­sh­n­er returned home know­ing that the song could be a hit. His son Ricky was read­ing Archie com­ic books, and the idea formed-—why not turn the com­ic into a band, and have them per­form the sin­gle. (The rights for the Archie char­ac­ters at that time were very afford­able.)

So take a reject­ed Mon­kees song, add a bit of Bea­t­les-style, cheapo ani­ma­tion, and a guar­an­teed pro­mo­tion machine (tele­vi­sion) and “Sug­ar, Sug­ar” turned into a hit. Ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to play a fake band, pop radio start­ed play­ing the sin­gle two months after its ini­tial release, from May to July, and it would go on to spend 22 weeks in the chart, four of them at Num­ber One. It was Billboard’s Num­ber One song of the year for 1969, a year bet­ter known for the crum­bling of the Sum­mer of Love. Rape, mur­der, it was just a shot away. But so was that “can­dy girl” and that “hon­ey, hon­ey” and why would­n’t peo­ple choose the lat­ter?

The Archies released five albums in total, only the first fea­tur­ing the com­ic char­ac­ters on the cov­er. But they all con­tin­ued in the bub­ble gum vein, writ­ten by a small sta­ble of song­writ­ers such as Ritchie Adams, Jeff Bar­ry, Robert Levine, Gene Allen, and oth­ers. Rob Dante sang the lead vocals; Toni Wine sang both Bet­ty and Veron­i­ca (the lat­ter had the high­er reg­is­ter).

Unlike the Mon­kees, who embraced the pop psy­che­delia in the cul­ture and put out a grand fol­ly of a movie called Head (with Frank Zap­pa! and Ringo Starr!), the Archies just kept bang­ing out bub­blegum until it turned into sun­shine (the name of their third album) and the fad had passed. Fifty years lat­er, “Sug­ar, Sug­ar,” remains a good pop song. Wil­son Pick­ett even cov­ered it, inject­ing some much need­ed soul into the pro­ceed­ings.

The idea of a fake, car­toon pop group has nev­er gone away. In fact, Damon Albarn’s Goril­laz project (which has been around for some 20 years now!) showed the ben­e­fits that can be had when car­toons take over the image and let the musi­cians work in the back­ground. Can we give the Archies some of the cred­it? Chew on that, why don’t ya.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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

The Bea­t­les Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Car­toon Show (1965–1969)

Sal­vador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Short Ani­mat­ed Film, Des­ti­no, Set to the Music of Pink Floyd

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

A New Album of Goth-Folk Songs Inspired by the Life of Marie Curie

in Animation, Chemistry, History, Life, Music, Science | January 21st, 2022

After sev­er­al years of writ­ing and per­form­ing songs influ­enced by such sources as authors Edward Gorey and Ray­mond Chan­dler, film­mak­er Tim Bur­ton, and mur­der bal­lads in the Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tion, Ellia Bisker and Jef­frey Mor­ris, known col­lec­tive­ly as Charm­ing Dis­as­ter, began cast­ing around for a sin­gle, exist­ing nar­ra­tive that could sus­tain an album’s worth of orig­i­nal tunes.

An encounter with Lau­ren Red­nis­s’s graph­ic nov­el Radioac­tive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fall­out spurred them to look more deeply at the Nobel Prize-win­ning sci­en­tist and her pio­neer­ing dis­cov­er­ies.

The result is Our Lady of Radi­um, a nine song explo­ration of Curie’s life and work.

The crowd­fund­ed album, record­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, is so exhaus­tive­ly researched that the accom­pa­ny­ing illus­trat­ed book­let includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy with titles rang­ing from David I. Harvie’s tech­ni­cal­ly dense Dead­ly Sun­shine: The His­to­ry and Fatal Lega­cy of Radi­um to Deb­o­rah Blum’s The Poi­son­er’s Hand­book, described by The New York Observ­er as “a vicious, page-turn­ing sto­ry that reads more like Ray­mond Chan­dler than Madame Curie.”

A chap­ter in the The Poi­son­er’s Hand­book intro­duced Bisker and Mor­ris to the Radi­um Girls, young work­ers whose pro­longed expo­sure to radi­um-based paint in ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry clock fac­to­ries had hor­rif­ic con­se­quences.

In La Porte v. Unit­ed States Radi­um Cor­po­ra­tion (1935) pros­e­cu­tors detailed the con­di­tions under which the lumi­nous dials of inex­pen­sive watch faces were pro­duced:

Each girl pro­cured a tray con­tain­ing twen­ty-four watch dials and the mate­r­i­al to be used to paint the numer­als upon them so that they would appear lumi­nous. The mate­r­i­al was a pow­der, of about the con­sis­ten­cy of cos­met­ic pow­der, and con­sist­ed of phos­pho­res­cent zinc sul­phide mixed with radi­um sulphate…The pow­der was poured from the vial into a small porce­lain cru­cible, about the size of a thim­ble. A quan­ti­ty of gum ara­bic, as an adhe­sive, and a thin­ner of water were then added, and this was stirred with a small glass rod until a paint­like sub­stance result­ed. In the course of a work­ing week each girl paint­ed the dials con­tained on twen­ty-two to forty-four such trays, depend­ing upon the speed with which she worked, and used a vial of pow­der for each tray. When the paint-like sub­stance was pro­duced a girl would employ it in paint­ing the fig­ures on a watch dial. There were four­teen numer­als, the fig­ure six being omit­ted. In the paint­ing each girl used a very fine brush of camel’s hair con­tain­ing about thir­ty hairs. In order to obtain the fine lines which the work required, a girl would place the bris­tles in her mouth, and by the action of her tongue and lips bring the bris­tles to a fine point. The brush was then dipped into the paint, the fig­ures paint­ed upon the dial until more paint was required or until the paint on the brush dried and hard­ened, when the brush was dipped into a small cru­cible of water. This water remained in the cru­cible with­out change for a day or per­haps two days. The brush would then be repoint­ed in the mouth and dipped into the paint or even repoint­ed in such man­ner after being dipped into the paint itself, in a con­tin­u­ous process.

The band found them­selves haunt­ed by the Radi­um Girls’ sto­ry:

Part­ly it’s that it seemed like a real­ly good job — it was clean work, it was less phys­i­cal­ly tax­ing and paid bet­ter than fac­to­ry or mill jobs, the work­ing envi­ron­ment was nice — and the work­ers were all young women. They were excit­ed about this sweet gig, and then it betrayed them, poi­son­ing them and cut­ting their lives short in a hor­ri­ble way. 

There were all these details we learned that we could­n’t stop think­ing about. Like the fact that radi­um gets tak­en up by bone, which then starts to dis­in­te­grate because radi­um isn’t as hard as cal­ci­um. The Radi­um Girls’ jaw bones were crum­bling away, because they (were instruct­ed) to use their lips to point the brush­es when paint­ing watch faces with radi­um-based paint. 

The radi­um they absorbed was irra­di­at­ing them from inside, from with­in their own bones. 

Radi­um decays into radon, and it was even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered that the radi­um girls were exhal­ing radon gas. They could expose a pho­to­graph­ic plate by breath­ing on it. Those images—the bones and the breath—stuck with us in par­tic­u­lar.

Fel­low musi­cian, Omer Gal, of the “the­atri­cal freak folk musi­cal menagerie” Cook­ie Tongue, height­ens the sense of dread in his chill­ing stop-motion ani­ma­tion for Our Lady of Radi­um’s first music video, above. There’s no ques­tion that a trag­ic fate awaits the crum­bling, uncom­pre­hend­ing lit­tle work­er.

Before their phys­i­cal symp­toms start­ed to man­i­fest, the Radi­um Girls believed what they had been told — that the radi­um-based paint they used on the time­pieces’ faces and hands posed no threat to their well being.

Com­pound­ing the prob­lem, the paint’s glow-in-the-dark prop­er­ties proved irre­sistible to high-spir­it­ed teens, as the niece of Mar­garet “Peg” Looney — 17 when she start­ed work at the Illi­nois Radi­um Dial Com­pa­ny (now a Super­fund Site) — recount­ed to NPR:

I can remem­ber my fam­i­ly talk­ing about my aunt bring­ing home the lit­tle vials (of radi­um paint.) They would go into their bed­room with the lights off and paint their fin­ger­nails, their eye­lids, their lips and then they’d laugh at each oth­er because they glowed in the dark.

Looney died at 24, hav­ing suf­fered from ane­mia, debil­i­tat­ing hip pain, and the loss of teeth and bits of her jaw. Although her fam­i­ly har­bored sus­pi­cions as to the cause of her bewil­der­ing decline, no attor­ney would take their case. They lat­er learned that the Illi­nois Radi­um Dial Com­pa­ny had arranged for med­ical tests to be per­formed on work­ers, with­out truth­ful­ly advis­ing them of the results.

Even­tu­al­ly, the mount­ing death toll made the con­nec­tion between work­ers’ health and the work­place impos­si­ble to ignore. Law­suits such as La Porte v. Unit­ed States Radi­um Cor­po­ra­tion led to improved indus­tri­al safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and oth­er labor reforms.

Too late, Charm­ing Dis­as­ter notes, for the Radi­um Girls them­selves:

(Our song) Radi­um Girls is ded­i­cat­ed to the young women who were unwit­ting­ly poi­soned by their work and who were ignored and maligned in seek­ing jus­tice. Their plight led to laws and safe­guards that even­tu­al­ly became the occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty pro­tec­tions we have today. Of course that is still a bat­tle that’s being fought, but it start­ed with them. We want­ed to pay trib­ute to these young women, hon­or their mem­o­ry, and give them a voice.  

Pre­order Charm­ing Disaster’s Our Lady of Radi­um here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioac­tive 100+ Years Lat­er

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Work of Marie Curie, the First Female Nobel Lau­re­ate

Marie Curie Became the First Woman to Win a Nobel Prize, the First Per­son to Win Twice, and the Only Per­son in His­to­ry to Win in Two Dif­fer­ent Sci­ences

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.

How Karl Marx Influenced Abraham Lincoln and His Position on Slavery & Labor

in History | January 20th, 2022

If resis­tance to the Slave Pow­er was the reserved watch­word of your first elec­tion, the tri­umphant war cry of your re-elec­tion is Death to Slav­ery.

In 1864, Karl Marx and his Inter­na­tion­al Work­ing Men’s Asso­ci­a­tion (the “First Inter­na­tion­al”) sent an address to Abra­ham Lin­coln, con­grat­u­lat­ing “the Amer­i­can peo­ple upon your re-elec­tion by a large major­i­ty.” As his­to­ri­an Robin Black­burn writes, “The US ambas­sador in Lon­don con­veyed a friend­ly but brief response from the pres­i­dent. How­ev­er, the antecedents and impli­ca­tions of this lit­tle exchange are rarely con­sid­ered.” It was not the first time Marx and Lin­coln had encoun­tered each oth­er. They nev­er met per­son­al­ly, but their affini­ties led to what Black­burn calls an “unfin­ished rev­o­lu­tion” — not a com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion in the U.S.; but a poten­tial rev­o­lu­tion for democ­ra­cy.

Lin­coln and Marx became mutu­al admir­ers in the ear­ly 1860s due to the lat­ter’s work as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent for The New York Dai­ly Tri­bune. From 1852 until the start of the Civ­il War, Marx, some­times with Engels, wrote “over five hun­dred arti­cles for the Tri­bune,” Black­burn notes. Fierce­ly anti-slav­ery, Marx com­pared South­ern planters to the Euro­pean aris­toc­ra­cy, “an oli­garchy of 300,000 slave­hold­ers.” Ear­ly in the war, he cham­pi­oned the Union cause, even before Lin­coln decid­ed on eman­ci­pa­tion as a course of action. Marx believed, writes Black­burn, that end­ing slav­ery “would not destroy cap­i­tal­ism, but it would cre­ate con­di­tions far more favor­able to orga­niz­ing and ele­vat­ing labor, whether white or black.”

“Marx was intense­ly inter­est­ed in the plight of Amer­i­can slaves,” Gillian Brock­ell writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post. “In Jan­u­ary 1860, he told Engels that the two biggest things hap­pen­ing in the world were ‘on the one hand the move­ment of the slaves in Amer­i­ca start­ed by the death of John Brown, and on the oth­er the move­ment of serfs in Rus­sia.’ ” Lin­coln was an “avid read­er” of the Tri­bune and Marx’s arti­cles. The paper’s man­ag­ing edi­tor, Charles A. Dana, an Amer­i­can social­ist flu­ent in Ger­man who met Marx in 1848, would go on to become “Lin­col­n’s ‘eyes and ears’ as a spe­cial com­mis­sion­er in the War Depart­ment” and lat­er the Depart­men­t’s Assis­tant Sec­re­tary.

Lin­coln was not, of course, a Com­mu­nist. And yet some of the ideas he absorbed from Marx’s Tri­bune writ­ings — many of which would lat­er be adapt­ed for the first vol­ume of Cap­i­tal – made their way into the Repub­li­can Par­ty of the 1850s and 60s. That par­ty, writes Brock­ell, was “anti-slav­ery, pro-work­er and some­times overt­ly social­ist,” cham­pi­oning, for exam­ple, the redis­tri­b­u­tion of land in the West. (Marx even con­sid­ered emi­grat­ing to Texas him­self at one time.) And at times, Lin­coln could sound like a Marx­ist, as in the clos­ing words of his first annu­al mes­sage (lat­er the State of the Union ) in 1861.

“Labor is pri­or to and inde­pen­dent of cap­i­tal,” the country’s 16th pres­i­dent con­clud­ed in the first speech since his inau­gu­ra­tion. “Cap­i­tal is only the fruit of labor, and could nev­er have exist­ed if labor had not first exist­ed. Labor is the supe­ri­or of cap­i­tal, and deserves much the high­er con­sid­er­a­tion.” That full, 7,000 word address appeared in news­pa­pers around the coun­try, includ­ing the Con­fed­er­ate South. The Chica­go Tri­bune sub­ti­tled its clos­ing argu­ments “Cap­i­tal vs. Labor.”

Lin­col­n’s own posi­tion on abo­li­tion evolved through­out his pres­i­den­cy, as did his views on the posi­tion of the for­mer­ly enslaved with­in the coun­try. For Marx, how­ev­er, the ques­tions of total abo­li­tion and full enfran­chise­ment were set­tled long before the coun­try entered the Civ­il War. The demo­c­ra­t­ic rev­o­lu­tion that might have begun under Lin­coln end­ed with his assas­si­na­tion. In the sum­mer after the pres­i­den­t’s death, Marx received a let­ter from his friend Engels about the new pres­i­dent, Andrew John­son: “His hatred of Negroes comes out more and more vio­lent­ly… If things go on like this, in six months all the old vil­lains of seces­sion will be sit­ting in Con­gress at Wash­ing­ton. With­out col­ored suf­frage, noth­ing what­ev­er can be done there.” Hear the address Marx draft­ed to Lin­coln for his 1865 re-elec­tion read aloud at the top of the post, and read it your­self here.

For more on this sub­ject, you can read Black­burn’s book, An Unfin­ished Rev­o­lu­tion: Karl Marx and Abra­ham Lin­coln.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Karl Marx

5 Free Online Cours­es on Marx’s Cap­i­tal from Prof. David Har­vey

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

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