Watch Metallica Play “Enter Sandman” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Million in Moscow, During the Final Days of the Soviet Union (1991)

in Music | April 21st, 2021

In the years fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union a “tri­umphal­ist dis­course” arose in the U.S., writes his­to­ri­an Richard Sak­wa, “which sug­gests that the Sovi­et demise was a delib­er­ate act plot­ted and exe­cut­ed by pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan” with mas­sive mil­i­tary bud­gets and nuclear threats. This nar­ra­tive has less exclu­sive cur­ren­cy today. There are as many the­o­ries as the­o­rists of Sovi­et demise, among them the “com­pelling argu­ment,” says Jim Brown, pro­duc­er of a doc­u­men­tary called Free to Rock, “that rock and roll was a fac­tor — a con­tribut­ing fac­tor of many — in end­ing the Cold War.”

It’s not a face­tious claim and may have lit­tle to do, as some allege, with the CIA spread­ing for­eign influ­ence in the U.S.S.R. dur­ing the 1980s. A home­grown “rock sub­cul­ture,” writes Carl Schreck at The Atlantic, “had been per­co­lat­ing in the Sovi­et Union for decades by the time Gor­bachev came to pow­er in 1985.”

As Metal­li­ca came to pow­er in 1991 with The Black Album, their best-sell­ing record — and one of the biggest sell­ing albums of all time, world­wide — young Rus­sians did not need to be instruct­ed in the fin­er points of rock­ing out against author­i­tar­i­an­ism and gov­ern­ment con­trol.

Nev­er before, how­ev­er, had Russ­ian rock­ers gath­ered in the open as they did in ‘91, when the heavy met­al fes­ti­val Mon­sters of Rock stopped in Moscow for the first time since its found­ing in 1980, attract­ing a report­ed 1.6 mil­lion fans — one of the largest con­certs in his­to­ry — to see head­lin­ers AC/DC, Metal­li­ca, and Pan­tera. The show “was not the first time West­ern heavy-met­al acts have played Moscow,” wrote The New York Times. “In 1989, Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi and Mot­ley Crue filled Lenin Sta­di­um for two days to help raise mon­ey for Sovi­et char­i­ties.” But Mon­sters of Rock was some­thing dif­fer­ent.

Pro­mot­ed as a “cel­e­bra­tion of democ­ra­cy and free­dom” by its cor­po­rate spon­sor, Time Warn­er, and arriv­ing just a month after a failed coup attempt by Sovi­et hard­lin­ers, the con­cert was some­thing of a suc­cess­ful coup for AC/DC, who “until a few years ago… were for­mal­ly banned in the Sovi­et Union.” (One 1985 list com­piled by the Young Com­mu­nist League said they pro­mot­ed “neo­fas­cism” and “vio­lence.”) Sovi­et music crit­ic and writer Andrei Orlov ges­tured toward realpoli­tik in a remark on the sub­ject: “Look at the graf­fi­ti in the city. AC/DC is writ­ten on every wall.”

Even more rev­o­lu­tion­ary, in heavy met­al terms, was the appear­ance of Metal­li­ca at sec­ond billing on the tour. It would prove to be one of sev­er­al “ live coups,” for the band, K.J. Daughton writes. After their mas­sive suc­cess on MTV with “Enter Sand­man,” “Unfor­giv­en,” and “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters,” the band played sev­er­al major con­certs, includ­ing their “his­toric musi­cal tour de force” at Tushi­no Air­field in Moscow. “In a video of the set,” writes Didi­er Cade­na (watch it in full above), “one can see the ocean of peo­ple mov­ing around and singing along, even though the major­i­ty of the crowd only knew Eng­lish through the music.”

The con­cert was not with­out its moments of vio­lence. “The bru­tal inter­ven­tion of Sovi­et police left 53 peo­ple injured,” writes Daughton (see some of the offi­cial over­re­ac­tion above). But these were the rat­tles of a dying police state. Just a few months lat­er in Decem­ber, the Sovi­et Union offi­cial­ly dis­solved.

Can AC/DC or Metal­li­ca take cred­it? No, but they were impor­tant sym­bols for a wave of dis­af­fect­ed Russ­ian youth the Sovi­et leader him­self had no desire to hold back. Gor­bachev, after all, was “a fan of Elvis Pres­ley,” says Brown. “He liked rock and roll… And I think he takes pride in the fact that after wast­ing, you know, tril­lions of dol­lars on weapons, that words and actions and cul­ture brought these two coun­tries togeth­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The His­to­ry of Sovi­et Rock: From the 70s Under­ground Rock Scene, to Sovi­et Punk & New Wave in the 1980s

The Sovi­et Union Cre­ates a List of 38 Dan­ger­ous Rock Bands: Kiss, Pink Floyd, Talk­ing Heads, Vil­lage Peo­ple & More (1985)

Metal­li­ca Plays Antarc­ti­ca, Set­ting a World Record as the First Band to Play All 7 Con­ti­nents: Watch the Full Con­cert Online

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

Watch the “Greatest Juggler of the Ages,” Frances Brunn, Perform His “Painfully Exciting” Juggling Routine (1969)

in Creativity, Dance, Television | April 21st, 2021

When John Rin­gling North, then pres­i­dent of Rin­gling Bros. and Bar­num & Bai­ley Cir­cus, saw a pair of Ger­man  jug­glers and acro­bats per­form in Spain, he imme­di­ate­ly invit­ed them to join “the Great­est Show on Earth.” A broth­er and sis­ter team, Fran­cis and Lot­tie Brunn would aston­ish audi­ences. In 1950, the­ater crit­ic Brooks Atkin­son called Fran­cis “the great­est jug­gler of the ages. Not many peo­ple in the world are as per­fect­ly adjust­ed as Mr. Brunn is. He will nev­er have to vis­it a psy­chi­a­trist.” If phys­i­cal grace and bal­ance are reflec­tive of one’s state of mind, maybe he was right.

When Lot­tie left the act in 1951, Fran­cis went on to pop­u­lar fame and even more hyper­bol­ic acclaim. “After he per­formed before the queen of Eng­land in 1963, The Evening Stan­dard called his show ‘almost painful­ly excit­ing,’” Dou­glas Mar­tin writes at The New York Times.

“Try­ing to describe Brunn’s act is like try­ing to describe the flight of a swal­low,” writes Fran­cis­co Alvarez in Jug­gling: Its His­to­ry and Great­est Per­form­ers. He became a reg­u­lar per­former on The Ed Sul­li­van Show, “played the Palace with Judy Gar­land,” notes Mar­tin, “and went twice to the White House, where Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er pro­claimed him the best jug­gler he had ever seen.”

None of this should bias you toward the tele­vi­sion per­for­mance, above, of course. (How many jug­glers could Eisen­how­er have seen, any­way?) Judge for your­self. By way of fur­ther con­text, we should note that Brunn was known for per­fect­ing “an aus­tere but demand­ing min­i­mal­ism. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by con­trol­ling just one ball, and vir­tu­al­ly com­pelled audi­ences to share this fas­ci­na­tion.” Or as Brunn put it, “it sounds like noth­ing, but it is quite dif­fi­cult to do prop­er­ly.” As any­one (or vir­tu­al­ly every­one) who has tried and failed to jug­gle can attest, this descrip­tion fits the art of jug­gling in gen­er­al all too well.

Brunn made it look laugh­ably easy: “Large num­bers of objects posed scant prob­lem. He was believed to be the first jug­gler in the world to put up 10 hoops,” Mar­tin writes. He also liked to incor­po­rate fla­men­co into his act to com­pound the dif­fi­cul­ty and the grace. “I do not con­sid­er myself doing tricks,” he said in 1983. “There is one move­ment for eight min­utes. It’s sup­posed to be, let’s say, like a bal­let…. I would love if the audi­ence is so fas­ci­nat­ed that nobody applauds in the end.” Brunn, I sus­pect, nev­er got to hear the sound of stunned silence after his act.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

Dis­cov­er Alexan­der Calder’s Cir­cus, One of the Beloved Works at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art

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

Amazon Is Giving Away 10 Free Kindle eBooks for World Book Day (Until April 24)

in Deals, e-books | April 20th, 2021

FYI: You can down­load 10 free inter­na­tion­al ebooks as part of Ama­zon’s free give­away for World Book Day. Writes CNET:

World Book Day is on April 23 and to cel­e­brate the day, alter­na­tive­ly referred to as World Book and Copy­right Day or Inter­na­tion­al Day of the Book, Ama­zon is giv­ing away 10 Kin­dle ebooks from around the world. You must have an Ama­zon account to down­load them and a Kin­dle, Ama­zon Fire tablet or the Kin­dle app on a smart­phone, tablet or PC to read them, but there don’t appear to be any restric­tions or spe­cial mem­ber­ships (like Prime) required to down­load them. The 10 ebooks are free through April 24.

Get the free ebooks here. If you could use a Kin­dle, snag one here.

Also, please feel free to explore our col­lec­tions of free audio books, free online cours­es, ebooks, and movies you can watch online.

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:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

“Library Exten­sion” Helps You Find Books At Your Local Library While You Shop for Books Online

The Beautiful, Innovative & Sometimes Dark World of Animated Soviet Propaganda (1925–1984)

in Animation, Film, History, Politics | April 20th, 2021

Grow­ing up, we assem­bled our world­view from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent sources: par­ents, sib­lings, class­mates. But for most of us, wher­ev­er and when­ev­er we passed our for­ma­tive years, noth­ing shaped our ear­ly per­cep­tions of life as vivid­ly, and as thor­ough­ly, as car­toons — and this is just as Lenin knew it would be. “With the estab­lish­ment of the Sovi­et Union in 1922,” writes New York Times film crit­ic Dave Kehr, “Lenin pro­claimed the cin­e­ma the most impor­tant of all the arts, pre­sum­ably for its abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with the oppressed and wide­ly illit­er­ate mass­es.”

Lenin cer­tain­ly did­n’t exclude ani­ma­tion, which assumed its role in the Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da machine right away: Sovi­et Toys, the first U.S.S.R.-made car­toon, pre­miered just two years lat­er. It was direct­ed by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, the inno­v­a­tive film­mak­er best known for 1929’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, a thrilling artic­u­la­tion of the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of doc­u­men­tary. Ver­tov stands as per­haps the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure of Sovi­et cin­e­ma’s ear­ly years, in which tight polit­i­cal con­fines nev­er­the­less per­mit­ted a free­dom of  artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion lim­it­ed only by the film­mak­er’s skill and imag­i­na­tion.

This changed with the times: the 1940s saw the ele­va­tion of skilled but West-imi­ta­tive ani­ma­tors like Ivan Ivanov-Vano, whom Kehr calls the “Sovi­et Dis­ney.” That label is suit­able enough, since an Ivanov-Vano short like Some­one Else’s Voice from 1949 “could eas­i­ly pass for a Dis­ney ‘Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny,’ ” if not for its un-Dis­ney­like “threat­en­ing under­tone.” (Not that Dis­ney could­n’t get dark­ly pro­pa­gan­dis­tic them­selves.)

With its mag­pie who “returns from a flight abroad and dares to war­ble some of the jazz music she has heard on her trav­els” only to have “the hearty peas­ant birds of the for­est swoop down and rip her feath­ers out,” Some­one Else’s Voice tells a more alle­gor­i­cal sto­ry than those in most of the shorts gath­ered in this Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da ani­ma­tion playlist.

The playlist’s selec­tions come from the col­lec­tion Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da: From the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion to Per­e­stroi­ka; “work­ers are strong-chinned, noble, and gener­ic,” writes the A.V. Club’s Tasha Robin­son. “Cap­i­tal­ists are fat, pig­gish cig­ar-chom­pers, and for­eign­ers are ugly car­i­ca­tures sim­i­lar to those seen in Amer­i­can World War II pro­pa­gan­da.” With their strong “anti-Amer­i­can, anti-Ger­man, anti-British, anti-Japan­ese, anti-Cap­i­tal­ist, anti-Impe­ri­al­ist, and pro-Com­mu­nist slant,” as Kehr puts it, they would require an impres­sion­able audi­ence indeed to do any con­vinc­ing out­side Sovi­et ter­ri­to­ry. But they send an unmis­tak­able mes­sage to view­ers back in the U.S.S.R.: you don’t know how lucky you are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Inter­plan­e­tary Rev­o­lu­tion (1924): The Most Bizarre Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Pro­pa­gan­da Film You’ll Ever See

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

When Sovi­et Artists Turned Tex­tiles (Scarves, Table­cloths & Cur­tains) into Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da in the 1920s & 1930s

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

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.

Watch 4 Music Videos That Bring to Life Songs from Leonard Cohen’s Final Album, Thanks for the Dance

in Music | April 20th, 2021

Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Dark­er is a bleak mas­ter­piece. Released just 19 days before his death, the album sounds like a warn­ing from beyond, one Cohen seemed to know we’d nev­er heed. His sym­pa­thy for human fail­ure reached its denoue­ment in the posthu­mous Thanks for the Dance, a project “much less apoc­a­lyp­tic” in tone than its pre­de­ces­sor, writes Thomas Hobbs at NME. Unlike many a posthu­mous album, “this point of dif­fer­ence more than jus­ti­fies the record’s release,” even if the mate­r­i­al can “sound a lit­tle scrap­py” at times.

The posthu­mous album’s exis­tence is also jus­ti­fied by the fact that Cohen want­ed it released. He turned that respon­si­bil­i­ty over to his son, Adam, who also pro­duced You Want It Dark­er and who recruit­ed Beck, Feist, Bryce Dess­ner of the Nation­al, Damien Rice, Richard Reed Par­ry of Arcade Fire, and “long-time Cohen col­lab­o­ra­tors Javier Mas and Jen­nifer Warn­er” to fin­ish Thanks for the Dance.

Many of the songs began as strained vocal read­ings Adam record­ed, then lat­er craft­ed arrange­ments around, as he tells NPR.

I begged him, often “Just record this lyric. Let me sketch some­thing and based on your reac­tion, we’ll adapt.” I was very, very lucky to get him to have these read­ings. Some­times they were read­ings with no metro­nom­ic sig­na­tures, it was just a read­ing of poet­ry. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, on a few occa­sions, that’s all I was left with — just bare musi­cal sketch­es. But they were also so laden with instruc­tion.

Cohen was a lit­er­ary per­fec­tion­ist. “He’s sort of the oppo­site of Dylan, who had this from the hip [song­writ­ing process],” says his son. “My father was much more method­i­cal, he had a chis­el… there were big, big pieces at which he’d been at work for years.” That Cohen would leave work behind for oth­ers to fin­ish, how­ev­er, is ful­ly in keep­ing with his biggest themes: noth­ing is ever per­fect.

In my opin­ion, there’s some­thing about the the­sis of this man’s work, which is about bro­ken­ness. One of the main points of inter­est was this idea of “the bro­ken hal­lelu­jah,” or “the crack in every­thing, that’s how the light gets in.” I think I’m not trans­gress­ing by say­ing one of the posi­tions of what “Hap­pens to the Heart” is bleak, that it breaks. But it’s how one sees one’s own heart break­ing: if you see it as every­one’s heart break­ing, it recon­tex­tu­al­izes it. 

“Hap­pens to the Heart” is also the first posthu­mous film in a “new series of artis­tic respons­es to Leonard Cohen’s posthu­mous album,” curat­ed by Now­ness who “invit­ed a glob­al ros­ter of film­mak­ers and artists to present visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions of Leonard Cohen’s life and lyrics.”

Four of those short films are avail­able on YouTube, and you can watch them here. In addi­tion to “Hap­pens to the Heart,” they include “Mov­ing On,” “Thanks for the Dance,” and “The Hills.” They do not include “The Goal,” but you can stream three dif­fer­ent ver­sions on the Now­ness site. One of these uses “footage from NOWNESS’s exten­sive film archive” in a “visu­al elab­o­ra­tion on the album’s sixth track,” the site notes, “which evolved from a 1998 Cohen poem of the same name” — a quin­tes­sen­tial Cohen lyric filled with wry, mor­bid humor and com­pas­sion for uni­ver­sal human suf­fer­ing.

I can’t leave my house
Or answer the phone
I’m going down again
But I’m not alone

Set­tling at last
Accounts of the soul
This for the trash
That paid in full

As for the fall, it began long ago
Can’t stop the rain
Can’t stop the snow

I sit in my chair
I look at the street
The neigh­bor returns
My smile of defeat

I move with the leaves
I shine with the chrome
I’m almost alive
I’m almost at home

No one to fol­low
And noth­ing to teach
Except that the goal
Falls short of the reach

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Leonard Cohen’s Last Work, The Flame Gets Pub­lished: Dis­cov­er His Final Poems, Draw­ings, Lyrics & More

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

New Ani­ma­tion Brings to Life a Lost 1974 Inter­view with Leonard Cohen, and Cohen Read­ing His Poem “Two Slept Togeth­er”

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

How Pixar’s Movement Animation Became So Realistic: The Technological Breakthroughs Behind the Animation

in Animation, Film | April 20th, 2021

More than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, Toy Sto­ry made Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios into a house­hold name. Nobody had ever seen a com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture of such high qual­i­ty before — indeed, nobody had ever seen a com­put­er-ani­mat­ed fea­ture at all. Though the movie suc­ceed­ed on many more lev­els than as a proof of tech­no­log­i­cal con­cept, it also showed great inge­nu­ity in find­ing nar­ra­tive mate­ri­als suit­ed to the capa­bil­i­ties of CGI at the time, which could ren­der fig­ures of plas­tic and cloth (or, as oth­er stu­dios had demon­strat­ed slight­ly ear­li­er, dinosaurs and liq­uid-met­al cyborgs) much more real­is­ti­cal­ly than human beings. Ever since, Pixar has been a byword for the state of the art in com­put­er-ani­mat­ed cin­e­ma.

An enor­mous and ever-grow­ing fan base around the world shows up for each of Pixar’s movies, one of two of which now appear per year, with great expec­ta­tions. They want to see not just a sto­ry solid­ly told, but the lim­its of the under­ly­ing tech­nol­o­gy pushed as well.

“How Pixar’s Move­ment Ani­ma­tion Became So Real­is­tic,” the Movies Insid­er video above, works its way through the stu­dio’s films, com­par­ing the then-ground­break­ing visu­al intri­ca­cy of its ear­li­er releas­es like Toy Sto­ry and Find­ing Nemo to much more com­plex pic­tures like Coco and Soul. Not only do these recent projects fea­ture human char­ac­ters — not action fig­ures or mon­sters or fish or cars, but human beings — they fea­ture human char­ac­ters engag­ing in such quin­tes­sen­tial­ly human actions as play­ing music.

What’s more, they por­tray it with a lev­el of real­ism that will shock any­one who has­n’t made it out to a Pixar film since the 1990s. Achiev­ing this has neces­si­tat­ed such efforts as equip­ping Soul’s piano-play­ing main char­ac­ter with 584 sep­a­rate con­trol para­me­ters in his hands alone, about as many as Toy Sto­ry’s cow­boy-doll star had in his entire body. But though ever-more-real­is­tic visu­als will pre­sum­ably always remain a goal at Pixar, the mag­ic lies in the accom­pa­ny­ing dose of unre­al­ism: mytho­log­i­cal visions, trips to the spir­it world, and super­hu­man acts (or attempts at them) also count among Pixar fans’ demands. Ambi­tious ani­ma­tors push their tools to the lim­it in pur­suit of real­i­ty, but tru­ly ambi­tious ani­ma­tors push them past the lim­it in pur­suit of imag­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Free Online Course on Mak­ing Ani­ma­tions from Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my

Pixar & Khan Acad­e­my Offer a Free Online Course on Sto­ry­telling

A Free Short Course on How Pixar Uses Physics to Make Its Effects

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling

A Rare Look Inside Pixar Stu­dios

The Beau­ty of Pixar

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.

Watch Blondie’s Debbie Harry Perform “Rainbow Connection” with Kermit the Frog on The Muppet Show (1981)

in Comedy, K-12, Music, Television | April 19th, 2021

Do you dig songs about rain­bows?

The host of one of the very last episodes of The Mup­pet Show — Deb­bie Har­ry, lead singer of Blondie — does, and in 1981, she seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to duet with Ker­mit the Frog on his sig­na­ture tune, “The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion” — its only per­for­mance in the series’ five sea­son run.

Many of us asso­ciate the folksy num­ber with The Mup­pet Movie’s pas­toral open­ing scene. This ren­di­tion trans­fers the action back­stage to the kimono-clad Harry’s dress­ing room.

Who knew her sweet sopra­no would pair so nice­ly with a ban­jo?

She also exhibits a game will­ing­ness to lean into Mup­pet-style ham­mi­ness, respond­ing to the lyric “Have you heard voic­es?” with an expres­sion that verges on psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror.

Mid­way through, the two are joined by a cho­rus of juve­nile frogs in scout­ing uni­forms.

A lit­tle con­text — these young­sters spend the episode try­ing to earn their punk mer­it badge.

No won­der. By 1981, when the episode aired, Blondie had achieved mas­sive main­stream suc­cess, with such hits as “One Way or Anoth­er” and “Call Me,” both of which were shoe­horned into the episode.

As cre­ator Jim Henson’s son, Bri­an, recalled in a brief intro­duc­tion to its video release:

…I was in high school and my father knew that Deb­bie Har­ry was, like, the biggest thing in the world to me. And he booked her to be on The Mup­pet Show dur­ing a vaca­tion week from school and he did­n’t tell me. We went out to din­ner the night before shoot­ing and they made me sit next to Deb­bie Har­ry at this fan­cy restau­rant. And I just remem­ber this whole din­ner I was just end­less­ly sweat­ing and all I knew was that I was aware of Deb­bie Har­ry sit­ting on the side of me. I don’t think I ever said a word to her, I don’t think I ever looked at her, but she did a great episode, she’s a great per­former and she’s a love­ly lady.

With punk per­me­at­ing the air­waves, the fan site Tough Pigs, Mup­pet Fans Who Grew Up laments oth­er guest hosts who might have been booked before the show end­ed its run:

It’s a shame Deb­bie Har­ry was the only mem­ber of her scene to make it to The Mup­pet Show. Can you imag­ine spe­cial guest stars, The Ramones, The B‑52’s or even Talk­ing Heads? … Harry’s guest stint reveals that the Mup­pets’ chaot­ic and tex­tured world has more in com­mon with the punk scene than one would ini­tial­ly expect.

The finale finds the Frog Scouts mosh­ing to “Call Me,” with a rea­son­ably “punk” look­ing, rain­bow-clad back­ing Mup­pets band (Dr. Teeth and the Elec­tric May­hem sat this one out due to their pre-exist­ing asso­ci­a­tions with Motown, jazz, and a more clas­sic rock sound.)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Mup­pets Sing the First & Sec­ond Acts of Hamil­ton

Wit­ness the Birth of Ker­mit the Frog in Jim Henson’s Live TV Show, Sam and Friends (1955)

When Deb­bie Har­ry Com­bined Artis­tic Forces with H.R. Giger

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

Time-Lapse Video Reveals Humanity’s Impact on the Earth Since 1984

in Environment | April 19th, 2021

Google has worked with experts at Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty’s CREATE Lab to devel­op a time-lapse fea­ture with­in Google Earth, which allows you to see first­hand the changes to our plan­et since 1984.

In the biggest update to Google Earth since 2017, you can now see our plan­et in an entire­ly new dimen­sion — time. With Time­lapse in Google Earth, 24 mil­lion satel­lite pho­tos from the past 37 years have been com­piled into an inter­ac­tive 4D expe­ri­ence. Now any­one can watch time unfold and wit­ness near­ly four decades of plan­e­tary change.…

To explore Time­lapse in Google Earth, go to g.co/Timelapse — you can use the handy search bar to choose any place on the plan­et where you want to see time in motion…

As we looked at what was hap­pen­ing, five themes emerged: for­est change, urban growth, warm­ing tem­per­a­tures, sources of ener­gy, and our world’s frag­ile beau­ty. Google Earth takes you on a guid­ed tour of each top­ic to bet­ter under­stand them.

You can get a feel for the relent­less change in the short video above, and learn more about the new iter­a­tion of Google Earth over at the Google blog.

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:

Envi­ron­ment & Nat­ur­al Resources: Free Online Cours­es

Dr. Jane Goodall Will Teach an Online Course About Con­serv­ing Our Envi­ron­ment

A Cen­tu­ry of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in a 35 Sec­ond Video

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

Watch Radiohead Perform In Rainbows & The King of Limbs in Intimate Live Settings, with No Host or Audience

in Music | April 19th, 2021

Over the past twen­ty years Radio­head man­aged to achieve some­thing no oth­er rock band ever has: endur­ing out­sider art rock cred­i­bil­i­ty that shield­ed them from the media machin­ery they came to loathe at the end of the mil­len­ni­um, and endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty that meant they could drop their last, 2016 LP, A Moon Shaped Pool “with­out doing a sin­gle inter­view and it still topped the charts all over the world,” Rolling Stone writes,” even if Drake and Bey­once kept them stuck at Num­ber Three in Amer­i­ca.” How did they do it?

Twen­ty years ago, New York­er music writer Alex Ross described pop music as “in a state of sus­pense. On the one hand, the Top Forty chart is over­run with dancers, mod­els, actors, and the like; on the oth­er hand, there are signs that pop music is once again becom­ing a safe place for cre­ative musi­cians. The world fame of Radio­head is a case in point.” Do we still see a dichoto­my between “dancers, mod­els, actors” and “cre­ative musi­cians” like Radio­head in pop music? Per­haps it was a false one to begin with.

Despite their ambiva­lence about pop (and halls of fame), Radio­head hasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want­ed to be pegged as stan­dard bear­ers of the avant garde either. As drum­mer Phil Sel­way put it in the year they released Amne­sia, the sec­ond of two of the most baf­fling­ly oblique, yet strange­ly dance­able rock albums in pop­u­lar music: “we don’t want peo­ple twid­dling their goa­tees over our stuff. What we do is pure escapism.” Yet after OK Com­put­er, they emerged sound­ing like a band try­ing to escape itself.

They nev­er want­ed to be a col­lec­tion of celebri­ties. They were hap­pi­est in the base­ment, co-cre­at­ing a sound that is cer­tain­ly greater than the sum of its parts but is also very much, Ross writes, the sum of its parts: “Take away any one ele­ment — Selway’s flick­er­ing rhyth­mic grid, for exam­ple, fierce in exe­cu­tion and trip­py in effect — and Radio­head are a dif­fer­ent band.” Even their pro­grammed, elec­tron­ic beats sound like Selway’s play­ing. “The five togeth­er form a sin­gle mind, with its own habits and tics — the Radio­head Com­pos­er.”

After det­o­nat­ing expec­ta­tions that they’d con­tin­ue on as a typ­i­cal are­na rock band, they were free to make music that met no one’s expec­ta­tions but their own. That cre­ative free­dom unleashed in the next two decades a hand­ful of albums solid­i­fy­ing their sta­tus as “Knights Tem­plar of rock and roll” because of their will­ing­ness to change and adapt, while always play­ing to their strengths: their sin­gle-mind­ed­ness when play­ing togeth­er and the refined song­writ­ing of Thom Yorke, show­cased solo in the first episode of their pro­duc­er Nigel Godrich’s “From the Base­ment” series. As men­tioned in anoth­er recent post, the series fea­tured inti­mate live music per­for­mances of bands, with­out a host or audi­ence.

In lat­er episodes, how­ev­er, from 2008 and 2011, respec­tive­ly, fur­ther up, the band played the full albums In Rain­bows and The King of Limbs to per­fec­tion. Under the for­mer video, on their YouTube page, one com­menter jokes, “what a great band. I hope they can get out of the base­ment some­day.” It’s fun­ny because it seems like that’s exact­ly where they’d rather be. See more live per­for­mances from the “From the Base­ment” series here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Inti­mate Live Per­for­mances of Radio­head, Son­ic Youth, the White Stripes, PJ Har­vey & More: No Host, No Audi­ence, Just Pure Live Music

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Per­forms Songs from His New Sound­track for the Hor­ror Film, Sus­piria

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

Watch Home, Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Environmentalist Documentary Featuring Aerial Shots of Earth, Narrated by Glenn Close

in | April 18th, 2021

Home is a 2009 doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by French pho­tog­ra­ph­er, reporter and envi­ron­men­tal­ist Yann Arthus-Bertrand and pro­duced by Luc Besson. The film is almost entire­ly com­posed of aer­i­al shots of var­i­ous places on Earth. It shows how tight­ly linked Man and nature are, and how human­i­ty is threat­en­ing the eco­log­i­cal bal­ance of the plan­et. The Eng­lish ver­sion of the film is nar­rat­ed by Glenn Close.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is espe­cial­ly known for his book Earth from Above, pub­lished in 1999. As an aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the main goal of his work is to help peo­ple see how beau­ti­ful Earth is and to raise aware­ness of the neg­a­tive impact of human activ­i­ties on our ecosys­tem.

Home will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.