A Vintage Advertising Film Intelligently Satirizes the Selling of the American Dream: Watch The Your Name Here Story (1960)

in Film, History | April 15th, 2020

When did the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca attain peak earnest­ness? It had to have hap­pened some­time in the long 1950s, begin­ning with vic­to­ry in the Sec­ond World War and end­ing with the cul­tur­al shifts of the ear­ly 60s. Though indi­vid­ual Amer­i­cans back then might express dis­con­tent and even cyn­i­cism about the nation, U.S. mass cul­ture kept the dial set to tri­umphant opti­mism. And in mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca there was no cul­tur­al force quite as mass as adver­tis­ing, which broad­cast its mes­sages in not just the media of print, radio, tele­vi­sion, and bill­board, but film as well. This gold­en age of Amer­i­can earnest­ness coin­cides with the gold­en age of the Calvin Com­pa­ny, once the coun­try’s dom­i­nant mak­er of adver­tis­ing, edu­ca­tion­al, and indus­tri­al films.

Found­ed in Kansas City in 1931, the Calvin Com­pa­ny cap­i­tal­ized ear­ly on the adver­tis­ing poten­tial of 16-mil­lime­ter film. At first con­sid­ered suit­able only for “home movies,” the for­mat turned out to be ide­al for sales pitch­es, cor­po­rate train­ing ses­sions, and class­room screen­ings. Calv­in’s client list soon grew to include Gen­er­al Mills, Goodyear, Mon­san­to, West­ing­house, and Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, as well as the Navy, the Air Force, and the Office of Edu­ca­tion.

That we can still watch some of the com­pa­ny’s many pro­duc­tions today we owe to the efforts of Rick Prelinger, whose epony­mous film archives we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. At the Inter­net Archive you can watch such Calvin clas­sics as Cof­fee Break, Forty Bil­lion Ene­mies, Fifty Years of Pow­ered Flight, The Bright Young New­com­er, and Enforc­ing Rules and Pro­ce­dures.

None have the rep­u­ta­tion of The Your Name Here Sto­ry, pro­duced by Calvin in 1960 as “the first tru­ly all-pur­pose film.” While pre­vi­ous jobs were made to order, painstak­ing­ly tai­lored by an ever-expand­ing staff of film­mak­ers to the needs the com­mis­sion­ing clients, The Your Name Here Sto­ry is com­plete­ly gener­ic. “From the dawn of human his­to­ry, a bet­ter way of life has been man’s dream,” booms its nar­ra­tor, launch­ing into an open­ing whose epic form will be famil­iar to any­one who’s put off writ­ing a term paper until the night before. After telling the sto­ry of civ­i­liza­tion — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can civ­i­liza­tion — in a brisk two min­utes, the film arrives in high-tech moder­ni­ty. Alas, “despite the world’s high­est liv­ing stan­dards, the aver­age Amer­i­can remained vague­ly dis­con­tent, aware that his goal of a bet­ter way of life had still not been ful­ly real­ized. There was some­thing miss­ing.”

“Gad, it’s iron­ic,” says a pro­to­typ­i­cal Amer­i­can hus­band of the day, lying awake along­side his wife, both of them sleep­less with dis­sat­is­fac­tion. “With all our tech­nol­o­gy and indus­tri­al know-how, we still don’t have the one thing that could give us a bet­ter way of life.” That “one thing” is any­thing the com­pa­ny that licens­es The Your Name Here Sto­ry hap­pens to make, footage of which they can eas­i­ly insert into the var­i­ous spaces pro­vid­ed through­out the film. “In count­less ways, direct­ly and indi­rect­ly, YOUR PRODUCT HERE serves the nation and its cit­i­zens,” says the nar­ra­tor, cred­it­ing what­ev­er it may be with play­ing a vital role in help­ing them to “achieve suc­cess,” “enjoy health­ful recre­ation,” “grow big­ger crops,” “strength­en our nation­al defense,” and of course “get real smok­ing sat­is­fac­tion.”

Some may now watch most of The Your Name Here Sto­ry before catch­ing on to the film’s satir­i­cal intent. That owes to the fact that the Calvin Com­pa­ny itself defined the look and feel of the orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture of the 1950s, at least as it remains in cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. Orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed as a bit of fun for the “Calvin Work­shop,” the com­pa­ny’s annu­al gath­er­ing of indus­tri­al film pro­duc­ers and tech­ni­cians, the film’s spoofs of what Sapi­ens author Yuval Noah Harari has termed the “mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-sci­en­tif­ic com­plex” almost feel made for audi­ences of the future. Among the Calvin Com­pa­ny’s sur­viv­ing films we also find 1956’s A Mag­ic Bond, direct­ed by no less notable a son of Kansas City than Robert Alt­man. Know­ing what we now do of its self-aware cor­po­rate cul­ture, does it comes as a sur­prise that Calvin would have been the train­ing ground for Hol­ly­wood’s pre-emi­nent smart-aleck?

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Eisen­how­er Answers Amer­i­ca: The First Polit­i­cal Adver­tise­ments on Amer­i­can TV (1952)

Before Mad Men: Famil­iar and For­got­ten Ads from 1950s to 1980s Now Online

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Sell & Spin: The His­to­ry of Adver­tis­ing, Nar­rat­ed by Dick Cavett (1999)

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curated Playlists of Arabic, Brazilian, Bollywood, Soviet & Turkish Music

in Music | April 14th, 2020

Just as the cat­e­go­ry of “For­eign Lan­guage Film” has seri­ous prob­lems, so too does that of “World Music,” which names so many kinds of music that it names noth­ing at all. World music “might best be described by what it is not,” not­ed a 1994 Music Library Asso­ci­a­tion report. “It is not West­ern art music, nei­ther it is main­stream West­ern folk or pop­u­lar music.” The report adds some vague qual­i­fi­ca­tions about “eth­nic or for­eign ele­ments” then gives away the game: “It is sim­ply not our music, it is their music, music which belongs to some­one else.”

Per­haps one can see why the idea is now regard­ed by some as “out­dat­ed and offen­sive.” As the Uni­ver­si­ty of Minnesota’s Tim­o­thy Bren­nan argues in a his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the term, “world music does not exist” except “as an idea in the mind of jour­nal­ists, crit­ics, and the buy­ers of records.”

But to whom can music belong? If Japan­ese musi­cians play jazz, are they play­ing Amer­i­can-owned music? Is it “Japan­ese jazz” or just jazz? Must it have Japan­ese instru­ments for it to be “World Music”?

How these ques­tions get answered can deter­mine whether most lis­ten­ers ever encounter the record­ed out­put of jazz musi­cians from Japan, such as that in an excel­lent thir­ty-minute sam­pler from the 1970s that we fea­tured just a few days back. In this mix, DJ Zag Erlat show­cas­es names that “will sound famil­iar,” wrote Open Culture’s Col­in Mar­shall, “to those of us who’ve spent years dig­ging crates around the world for Japan­ese jazz on vinyl.” That’s a select group, indeed, and one you may be inspired to join once you’ve heard Erlat’s mix.

The Turk­ish DJ has fur­ther done his part to dis­am­biguate World Music on his YouTube chan­nel My Ana­log Jour­nal. Here, you’ll find Erlat spin­ning sets of “Brazil­ian Grooves,” “Ara­bic Grooves,” “African Grooves,” “Bol­ly­wood Grooves,” and so much more—including a set of Jazz from the USSR in his tenth episode that is quite a reveal­ing lis­ten. Who knew such music exist­ed in the Sovi­et Union? Well, except for those Sovi­et jazz crate-dig­gers.

Now you know too, and you’ll learn a lot more about what the world’s been up to, music-wise. These are also, obvi­ous­ly, very broad cat­e­gories, and one might rea­son­ably object to them. But it’s a great start for get­ting to know some clas­sic pop sounds from spe­cif­ic regions in the world. Erlat does get more spe­cif­ic in some sets, as in his Japan­ese jazz from the 70s. (I’d espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend his “Turk­ish Female Singers from the 70s” mix.)

This is music of the mod­ern world—not “ours” or “theirs”—its basic ele­ments embed­ded in a glob­al cul­tur­al mar­ket­place. “It is 25 years since the con­cept of world music was cre­at­ed by enthu­si­asts in a north Lon­don pub,” wrote The Guardian’s Ian Bir­rell in 2012. “Per­haps it made sense then, as a mar­ket­ing device to pro­mote the sounds of the world that were lost in record shops and on the radio. But not now. Not in this mixed-up, messy and shrunk­en world.” Per­haps it did­n’t make sense then, when artists like Fela Kuti or Os Mutantes made music that was as much “West­ern” as it was African or South Amer­i­can.

It becomes increas­ing­ly impos­si­ble to seg­re­gate artists from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Genre mashups rule, and the more furi­ous­ly artists from around the world pick up and put down glob­al styles, the more they attract the pos­i­tive notice of fans and crit­ics in pop music. But per­haps we’ll con­tin­ue to refer to indige­nous folk tra­di­tions as “World Music,” and per­haps that’s what the label has always been meant to describe. In that case, as one writer for the Grammy’s offi­cial blog put it, “some­thing tells me that the rest of the world has a dif­fer­ent def­i­n­i­tion.”

Get famil­iar with sev­er­al oth­er groovy musics from else­where at Erlat’s My Ana­log Jour­nal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 30-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Jazz from the 1970s: Like Japan­ese Whisky, It’s Under­rat­ed, But Very High Qual­i­ty

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

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

Why is Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring” Considered a Masterpiece?: An Animated Introduction

in Art, History | April 14th, 2020

Long­time Open Cul­ture read­ers will have encoun­tered Johannes Ver­meer here in var­i­ous forms: his paint­ings have appeared as ani­ma­tions, as the sub­ject of a doc­u­men­tary, and even free for the down­load in high res­o­lu­tion as well as view­able in aug­ment­ed real­i­ty. Though paint­ed in the mid-17th-cen­tu­ry Nether­lands, the Dutch mas­ter’s work now appeals to mod­ern view­ers every­where. Most who enter Ver­meer’s world pass through the gate­way of Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, his 1665 por­trait of just that. What is it about that young lady against a plain black back­ground, so much sim­pler an image than the detailed domes­tic inte­ri­ors that con­sti­tute most of Ver­meer’s oeu­vre, that cap­ti­vates us?

In the TED-Ed les­son above, art his­to­ri­an James Ear­le places Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring in con­text with the rest of Ver­meer’s work, reveal­ing how it fits in as well as how it stands apart. “Instead of being like a set piece in a the­atri­cal nar­ra­tive scene, she becomes a psy­cho­log­i­cal object,” Ear­le says. “Her eye con­tact and slight­ly part­ed lips, as if she is about to say some­thing, draw us into her gaze” — one aspect of what’s made the paint­ing’s rep­u­ta­tion as “the Mona Lisa of the North.”

Though not a mem­ber of the nobil­i­ty or cler­gy, the tra­di­tion­al sources for sub­jects of por­trai­ture in Ver­meer’s day, this “anony­mous girl” is enno­bled by how the artist depicts her. This reflects the chang­ing polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic real­i­ties of the Nether­lands at the time, a coun­try that had “turned against the rul­ing aris­toc­ra­cy and the Catholic Church.”

Cities like Ver­meer’s home­town of Delft, Ear­le tells us, “were unsu­per­vised by kings or bish­ops, so many artists like Ver­meer were left with­out tra­di­tion­al patrons.” But the ascen­dant mer­chant class, dri­ven by the inno­va­tion of the Dutch East India Com­pa­ny, pro­duced new ones. These mid­dle-class patrons pre­ferred to be depict­ed with sym­bols of their own world­li­ness: maps hang­ing on the wall in domes­tic inte­ri­ors, or more osten­ta­tious­ly the “ori­en­tal tur­ban” worn by the sub­ject of Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. They also tend­ed to appear with sym­bols of wealth of the kind almost par­o­died by the implau­si­bly large pearl ear­ring itself. “Like­ly just a glass or tin drop var­nished to look like a pearl,” the object nonethe­less appears to poss­es con­sid­er­able shape and weight” — at least before “a detailed view shows that it’s just a float­ing smudge of paint.” But what a smudge, in the behold­ing of which “we are remind­ed of Ver­meer’s pow­er as an illu­sion-mak­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Paint­ings by Car­avag­gio, Ver­meer, & Oth­er Great Mas­ters Come to Life in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

Inge­nious Impro­vised Recre­ations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring, Using Mate­ri­als Found Around the House

Meet Noto­ri­ous Art Forg­er Han Van Meegeren, Who Fooled the Nazis with His Coun­ter­feit Ver­meers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Free Books About Pandemic & Contagion from Duke University Press

in Books, Health | April 14th, 2020

From Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press comes free books on pan­demics and con­ta­gion. They write: “Amid the world­wide spread of COVID-19, it’s a chal­leng­ing time, and our thoughts are with those affect­ed by this dis­ease. In sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty, we are pro­vid­ing free access to the fol­low­ing books and jour­nal arti­cles to help build knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of how we nav­i­gate the spread of com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. List­ed books are free to read online until June 1, 2020, and jour­nal arti­cles are free until Octo­ber 1.” Titles include: Con­ta­gious: Cul­tures, Car­ri­ers, and the Out­break Nar­ra­tive; Vir­u­lent Zones: Ani­mal Dis­ease and Glob­al Health at China’s Pan­dem­ic Epi­cen­ter; Red State, Blue State, Flu State: Media Self-Selec­tion and Par­ti­san Gaps in Swine Flu Vac­ci­na­tions; and more. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

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!

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Houses Offer Virtual Tours: Hollyhock House, Taliesin West, Fallingwater & More

in Architecture | April 13th, 2020

One might, it seems, be almost any­where in the U.S. and only a few hours dri­ve from a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The “Wis­con­sin-born Wright’s port­fo­lio,” writes Jess Hof­fert at Mid­west Liv­ing, con­sists “of about 500 struc­tures, a good por­tion of which still stand in the Mid­west.” Wright hous­es span the West Coast and nes­tle in the sub­urbs of Wash­ing­ton, DC. As mil­lions of vis­i­tors see up close every year at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Frank Lloyd Wright Room, Wright’s style per­me­at­ed every part of his designs, inside and out.

But there’s no talk of trav­el these days. The Wright-designed homes and muse­um exhi­bi­tions that were open to the pub­lic have closed their doors to vis­i­tors “just when they were gear­ing up for the spring tour­ing sea­son to begin,” announced the Frank Lloyd Wright Build­ing Con­ser­van­cy. To make sure the pub­lic still has access to twelve of those famous works, the Conservancy—along with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion and the Uni­ty Tem­ple Restora­tion Foun­da­tion—have launched #WrightVir­tu­alVis­its, which offers vir­tu­al tours of 12 icon­ic hous­es.

The deliv­ery method is “a touch con­fus­ing,” Matt Hick­man com­ments at The Architect’s News­pa­per. Tours kick off at 12:00 Cen­tral every Thurs­day “for six weeks (and maybe more). Each week, the con­ser­va­tors of a spe­cif­ic Wright site will share a short yet inti­mate video tour on its web­site and asso­ci­at­ed media pages of anoth­er Wright site…. Each week, two fresh Wright prop­er­ties will par­take in this vir­tu­al tour swap.” This does require a close read­ing of the instruc­tions, and requires one to keep a date, as it were, for a Wright tour.

Giv­en the hous­es on dis­play, you might not find this too trou­ble­some.

Build­ings that have been fea­tured already or are up to bat in the com­ing weeks include the Uni­ty Tem­ple in Oak Park, Illi­nois; the Hol­ly­hock House, recent­ly named as the first UNESCO World Her­itage Site in Los Ange­les; Chicago’s Prairie School stun­ner, the Emil Bach House; Tal­iesin West, home of the (pos­si­bly) defunct School of Archi­tec­ture at Tal­iesin, in Scotts­dale, Ari­zona; the stun­ning yet often-over­looked Gray­cliff estate out­side of Buf­fa­lo, New York; Sama­ra, a pris­tine Uson­ian design in West Lafayette, Indi­ana; the Gor­don House, the only Wright build­ing in Ore­gon, and, of course, Falling­wa­ter.

That last house must sure­ly be Wright’s most famous, an exem­plar of his “Uson­ian” style. But no mat­ter what par­tic­u­lar idiom he chose, the Mid­west­ern aes­thet­ic val­ues that shaped his ear­ly Prairie Style car­ried through into all of his lat­er work. In her short guide to ten of the most well-known Prairie Hous­es, Wright expert Car­la Lind describes his visu­al phi­los­o­phy as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “ideals in which mid­west­ern­ers believed.”

The seeds of the Prairie Style were root­ed in an appre­ci­a­tion for nature and a ded­i­ca­tion to the free­dom and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty inher­ent in democ­ra­cy. To that Wright added his own expe­ri­ences and influ­ences: his mother’s teach­ing via the Froebel gifts, that nat­ur­al law could be under­stood through geo­met­ric abstrac­tions; his father’s pas­sion for music, which intro­duced him to com­po­si­tion and har­mo­ny; the lit­er­a­ture of the day that informed him about the Aes­thet­ic and Arts and Crafts move­ments and tran­scen­den­tal writ­ers such as Whit­man, Emer­son, and Thore­au… the Japan­ese art and archi­tec­ture at the World’s Columbian Expo­si­tion….

The price of admission—free for as long as it lasts—makes this oppor­tu­ni­ty to see, from a safe social dis­tance, how Wright bal­anced these influ­ences well worth the vir­tu­al trip.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­pieces, Tal­iesin & Tal­iesin West

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

Vis­it the Homes That Great Archi­tects Designed for Them­selves: Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Cor­busier, Wal­ter Gropius & Frank Gehry

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

Watch Full Productions of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Musicals, Streaming Free for 48 Hours Every Weekend

in Music, Theatre | April 13th, 2020

Writer and the­ater­mak­er Nicholas Berger’s recent polemic, “The For­got­ten Art of Assem­bly: Or, Why The­atre Mak­ers Should Stop Mak­ing,” touched a whole plexus of nerves, by posit­ing that the fran­tic rush to approx­i­mate live per­for­mance in iso­la­tion, using non-broad­cast qual­i­ty home equip­ment and a live-stream­ing plat­form, is an imi­ta­tion so poor it should cease and desist.

Acknowl­edg­ing the scary eco­nom­ic real­i­ty that dri­ves many of these hasti­ly assem­bled online read­ings, solo shows, brand new 24-hour plays, mono­logues, and inex­pert­ly shot Off-Off-Broad­way footage did not get Berg­er a pass from the the­ater com­mu­ni­ty.

Nor did attempt­ing to head ‘em off at the pass by fret­ting that his “cyn­i­cism for this emer­gency style of dig­i­tal per­for­mance will be labeled as pes­simism or defeatism” and insist­ing that it’s his “love for the­atre that cringes when (he sees) it inch clos­er and clos­er to becom­ing a Tik­Tok.”

We acknowl­edge the like­li­hood that the gen­er­al pub­lic has as much appetite for this sort of the­ater com­mu­ni­ty infight­ing as it does for the bur­geon­ing Covid-19 era vir­tu­al the­ater scene, espe­cial­ly if the play­ers are unfa­mil­iar from film or TV.

Not so the free Andrew Lloyd Web­ber buf­fet being served up every week­end in the recent­ly hatched The Shows Must Go On YouTube chan­nel.

Here, the excel­lent pro­duc­tion val­ues, famous names, and brand name tunes add up to a gen­uine tele­vi­sion event, espe­cial­ly since each offer­ing sticks around just 48 hours before turn­ing back into a pump­kin.

You’ve already missed come­di­an Tim Minchin’s unfor­get­table street punk turn as Judas in 2012’s Jesus Christ Super­star, expert­ly filmed at London’s cav­ernous con­cert venue The O2. (Have a look at the above clip for a taste of what you missed—in addi­tion to the Victoria’s Secret-style angels and mega church-style light­ing dis­plays, this pro­duc­tion fea­tured pole danc­ing, Anony­mous masks, a for­mer Spice Girl, and a close enough Shep­ard Fairey trib­ute poster for a Jesus who won the cov­et­ed role in a TV tal­ent show.

Regret to inform, you’ve also missed for­mer teen idol Don­ny Osmond as the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter in the 1999 remount of Joseph and the Amaz­ing Tech­ni­col­or Dream­coat. (Or not, if Lloyd-Weber takes mer­cy on hoards of dev­as­tat­ed view­ers flock­ing to the YouTube com­ments sec­tion to beg him to air it again, hav­ing just dis­cov­ered that they missed it the first time.)

What’s next? You’ll have to ask the Mag­ic 8 ball, or wait for an announce­ment, though in the video below, Lloyd Web­ber pledges that his failed adap­ta­tion of author P.G. Wode­house’s beloved series, By Jeeves, will for sure be a fea­ture of the line up. Oth­er titles in his oeu­vre include Cats, Starlight Express, Sun­set Boule­vard, The Phan­tom of the Opera, and Evi­ta (the lat­ter with lyrics by Tim Rice, Lloyd Webber’s col­lab­o­ra­tor on Jesus Christ Super­star, Joseph and the Amaz­ing Tech­ni­col­or Dream­coat, and sev­er­al oth­er shows).

Each week’s fea­ture-length show streams free on YouTube for 48 hours, begin­ning at 2 PM EST.

As with much of the thrown-togeth­er pro­gram­ming Berg­er decries in “The For­got­ten Art of Assem­bly,” view­ers of these not-quite-live per­for­mances are encour­aged to cap things off with a dona­tion to a the­ater char­i­ty, with sug­gest­ed links for giv­ing in the US, the UK, and Aus­tralia.

For those who’ve nev­er caught an episode of Great Per­for­mances and thus find the con­cept of watch­ing taped the­ater “a bit of a head­fuck,” to quote Minchin, the advice he gave to Time Out (tem­porar­i­ly rebrand­ed as Time In) is:

You’ve just got to get through the first ten min­utes, and then it’s an extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ence – because you’re actu­al­ly watch­ing peo­ple in real time.

Sub­scribe to The Shows Must Go On here.

#WithMe

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Minchin Presents “9 Rules to Live By” in a Fun­ny and Wise Com­mence­ment Speech (2013)

Sooth­ing, Uplift­ing Resources for Par­ents & Care­givers Stressed by the COVID-19 Cri­sis

Live Per­form­ers Now Stream­ing Shows, from their Homes to Yours: Neil Young, Cold­play, Broad­way Stars, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Operas & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her unprompt­ed con­tri­bu­tion to the Off-Off-Broad­way in Iso­la­tion scene is a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

in Music | April 13th, 2020

Force thou­sands of musi­cians to stay home in their stu­dios and what do you get? There’ll be an album boom for sure, just as there’s been an explo­sion of direct-to-you online live per­for­mances, inter­views, and social media mes­sages. Most recent­ly, Richard D. James, aka elec­tron­ic leg­end Aphex Twin, shared six new songs on Sound­cloud. And Radiohead—a band with an equal­ly loy­al fan­base and as much longevi­ty and exper­i­men­tal nerve—announced they’re “doing their bit,” as Dazed reports, “by upload­ing the best of their con­certs to their YouTube chan­nel.”

“Now that you have no choice whether or not you fan­cy a qui­et night in,” the band wrote on Insta­gram, “we here­by present the first of sev­er­al LIVE SHOWS from the Radio­head Pub­lic Library,” their new­ly-debuted, exten­sive online archive. The first con­cert uploaded, Live From a Tent in Dublin, cap­tures an Octo­ber 2000 per­for­mance just days after the release of Kid A. “The 23-song set includ­ed sev­er­al album tracks includ­ing ‘Opti­mistic,’ ‘Morn­ing Bell,’ ‘The Nation­al Anthem,’ and ‘In Lim­bo,’” notes Con­se­quence of Sound. That’s a piv­otal moment in the band’s his­to­ry, for sure. Maybe the shock of that album is hard to feel 20 years on, but imme­di­ate­ly after its release, Kid A shat­tered ideas of what rock bands were allowed to do.

There are many more clas­sic shows to come—some of them doc­u­ments of events that stand as music his­to­ry at this point and most evi­dence of what an incred­i­ble live band Radio­head has been, their com­mand of atmos­phere and dynam­ics eerie in its seem­ing near-effort­less­ness. Like so much of their out­put from OK Com­put­er on, these songs sound as rel­e­vant as ever, espe­cial­ly Thom Yorke’s anguished vocal in the open­er, above, “The Nation­al Anthem.” “Every­one is so near,” he wails, “Every­one has got the fear/It’s hold­ing on,” a lyric that neat­ly sums up his sense of a dystopi­an post-modernity’s dou­ble edge.

In our iso­la­tion, Yorke con­stant­ly sug­gests, we can feel so uncom­fort­ably, claus­tro­pho­bi­cal­ly shut in with each oth­er. Like the damned in No Exit, there’s nowhere else to go. So, stay home with Radio­head shows. “We will be releas­ing one a week until either the restric­tions result­ing from the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion are eased, or we run out of shows,” the band writes. “Which will be first? No-one knows.” Will there be a new album? Unlike­ly. The band’s embrace of their roles as active, pub­lic cura­tors of their lega­cy seems like a sig­nal of Radio­head­’s emer­i­tus sta­tus.

But they’ve spent the last sev­er­al years giv­ing away exclu­sive new songs, live stream­ing shows, releas­ing their entire stu­dio cat­a­logue on YouTube, and com­mu­ni­cat­ing direct­ly with fans, so nei­ther is their Radio­head Pub­lic Library a depar­ture. At Con­se­quence of Sound you can also hear recent pod­cast inter­views with Radio­head gui­tarist Ed O’Brien (whose first solo album comes out this month) and long­time Radio­head pro­duc­er and per­haps sixth mem­ber of the band, Nigel Godrich.

Check the band’s YouTube chan­nel each week for the lat­est uploaded con­cert and enjoy it while it lasts!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

Radio­head Puts Every Offi­cial Album on YouTube, Mak­ing Them All Free to Stream

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

Japanese Buddhist Monk Covers Ramones’ “Teenage Lobotomy,” “Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” & More

in Music | April 13th, 2020

The music of the Bea­t­les, the most influ­en­tial band of all time, has endured for more than five decades now. It also seems to have crossed all cul­tur­al bound­aries: how many peo­ple around the world can lis­ten to the record­ings made togeth­er by John Lennon, Paul McCart­ney, George Har­ri­son, and Ringo Starr, and claim to be hear­ing some­thing alien? The sheer adapt­abil­i­ty of the Bea­t­les’ songs sure­ly also has some­thing to do with their stay­ing pow­er: they’re rec­og­niz­able when played more or less as the Fab Four played them, and they’re just as rec­og­niz­able when sung by com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent voic­es, played by com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent instru­ments, and set in com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts.

Take the cov­er of “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” at the top of the post, per­formed not by Ringo Starr but by a Japan­ese Bud­dhist monk who calls him­self Kos­san. Accom­pa­ny­ing him­self only with the kinds of drums and gongs one would hear in a tem­ple, Kos­san makes the Bea­t­les’ musi­cal tale of life beneath the waves his own.

Crit­ic Ian Mac­Don­ald calls the orig­i­nal “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” a “sparkling nov­el­ty song impos­si­ble to dis­like,” and view­ers on Youtube have found this more monk­ish ver­sion equal­ly irre­sistible. Kos­san’s cov­er of the Ramones’ “Teenage Lobot­o­my” just above, whose dis­tort­ed gui­tars sound both incon­gru­ous and very con­gru­ous indeed, has also begun to attract atten­tion.

The orig­i­nal New York punk rock­ers may seem an even odd­er choice than the Bea­t­les for a Bud­dhist monk, but not for this Bud­dhist monk, who’s put in his own time on the streets of the Big Apple. “Every week­end, Kazu­ta­ka Yama­da straps on his blue Rollerblades and heads from his Chelsea apart­ment to the Upper East Side,” writes Corey Kil­gan­non in a 2007 post at The New York Times, refer­ring to Kos­san monk by his real name. “After nav­i­gat­ing the city’s streets and glid­ing through Cen­tral Park, he stops in front of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art,” where he “puts on black shoes and a large, cone-shaped straw hat, then holds out a wood­en bowl and for hours on end, chants in Japan­ese the same four lines of a Bud­dhist prayer.” The Times also pro­duced a video of Kos­san’s pub­lic chant­i­ng, which includes a brief inter­view with the man him­self.

More in-depth is this Eng­lish-trans­lat­ed con­ver­sa­tion at My Eyes Tokyo, in which Kos­san tells of how his musi­cal career began in Cen­tral Park: “When I was play­ing the san­shin on a bench, a guy gave me a dol­lar. I was sur­prised because I did­n’t expect that at all. I was play­ing it there only because it was a nice day.” Thir­teen years lat­er he plays from his home­land to inter­net audi­ences around the world, per­form­ing not just hit songs from the West (and it would be hard to get more west­ern than “We Will Rock You”), but East­ern rock as well, like “Lin­da Lin­da Lin­da” by Japan­ese punk icons The Blue Hearts. Even in this way, Kos­san remains in a New York of the mind: “I’m total­ly Japan­ese and came from Japan so I stick to being a ‘100% pure Japan­ese’ here in New York,” as he told My Eyes Tokyo. “I believe that is a real New York­er.”

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Punk Dul­cimer: The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Sedat­ed” Played on the Dul­cimer

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Watch the Bud­dhism-Inspired Video for Leonard Cohen’s New­ly-Released Song, “Hap­pens to the Heart”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Nikon Offers Free Online Photography Courses in April

in Online Courses, Photography | April 12th, 2020

A quick heads up. Through the end of April, Nikon has made its cur­ricu­lum of online pho­tog­ra­phy cours­es free. Nor­mal­ly priced at $15-$50 per course, this 10-course offer­ing cov­ers Fun­da­men­tals of Pho­tog­ra­phy, Dynam­ic Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­phy, Macro Pho­tog­ra­phy, Pho­tograph­ing Chil­dren and Pets, and more. Sign up for the cours­es here.

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 The Verge

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Annie Lei­bovitz Teach­es Pho­tog­ra­phy in Her First Online Course

Take a Free Course on Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy from Stan­ford Prof Marc Lev­oy

Learn Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy with Har­vard University’s Free Course

A 30-Minute Introduction to Japanese Jazz from the 1970s: Like Japanese Whisky, It’s Underrated, But Very High Quality

in Music | April 10th, 2020

“Jazz and Japan shouldn’t mix,” says All-Japan: The Cat­a­logue of Every­thing Japan­ese. “After all, the essence of jazz lies in impro­vi­sa­tion — a con­cept large­ly absent from both tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese music and Japan­ese soci­ety as a whole. Japan may adapt, but it does not impro­vise.” And yet, as the book goes on to tell, jazz and Japan do indeed mix, and they began doing so even before the Sec­ond World War. Japan­ese jazz dates back to the 1920s, when it drew inspi­ra­tion from vis­it­ing Fil­ipino bands who had picked the music up from their Amer­i­can occu­piers. In the cen­tu­ry since then, devot­ed Japan­ese play­ers (and their even more devot­ed Japan­ese lis­ten­ers) have devel­oped per­haps the most robust jazz cul­ture in the world.

But please, don’t believe me: have a lis­ten to the mix of 1970s Japan­ese jazz on vinyl above. Spun by Turk­ish DJ Zag Erlat on his Youtube chan­nel My Ana­log Jour­nal, it show­cas­es such musi­cians as trom­bon­ist Hiroshi Suzu­ki, sax­o­phon­ist Mabu­mi Yam­aguchi, and gui­tarist Kiyoshi Sug­i­mo­to. These names will sound famil­iar — though not over-famil­iar — to those of us who’ve spent years dig­ging crates around the world for Japan­ese jazz on vinyl.

Thanks to Youtube, they’re now becom­ing bet­ter-known among jazz fans of all stripes: just like the 1980s Japan­ese high-tech dis­co-funk now known as city pop, Japan­ese jazz owes much of its mod­ern recog­ni­tion to the algo­rithm. As a result, actu­al Japan­ese jazz albums like the ones non­cha­lant­ly dis­played by Erlat in the video have become a hot­ter com­mod­i­ty than they used to be.

Like all of Erlat’s “cof­fee break ses­sions” (oth­ers of which focus on Japan­ese dra­ma funk, Turk­ish female singers from the 70s, and “USSR grooves”), this mix runs a brisk 33 min­utes. If you enjoy the taste enough to go back for more, allow me to sug­gest the work of such Japan­ese jazzmen as Teruo Naka­mu­ra, Masayoshi Takana­ka, and Teru­masa Hino — much of which comes from the 1970s, an era that enthu­si­asts across the world now see as some­thing of a gold­en age. You’ll still only have skimmed the sur­face of Japan­ese jazz, one of the many West­ern inven­tions tak­en to anoth­er lev­el of mas­tery, and exhil­a­rat­ing new direc­tions, in the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. As one com­menter on Youtube puts it, “Japan­ese Jazz is like Japan­ese whisky: under­rat­ed, but very high qual­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Acclaimed Japan­ese Jazz Pianist Yōsuke Yamashita Plays a Burn­ing Piano on the Beach

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

Stream Loads of “City Pop,” the Elec­tron­ic-Dis­co-Funk Music That Pro­vid­ed the Sound­track for Japan Dur­ing the Roar­ing 1980s

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.