Discover the Church of St. John Coltrane, Founded on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme

in Jazz, Music, Religion | December 18th, 2014

For some time now, peo­ple like poet Robert Graves and coun­ter­cul­tur­al guru Tim­o­thy Leary have assumed that ancient reli­gion and mys­ti­cism were the prod­ucts of mind-alter­ing drugs. But in the case of one mod­ern reli­gious experience—the inspi­ra­tion behind John Coltrane’s holy four-part suite, A Love Supreme—it was the dis­tinct absence of drugs that lit the flame. Like many recov­er­ing addicts, Coltrane found God in 1957, after hav­ing what he called in the album’s lin­er notes “a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing.” Sev­en years lat­er, he ded­i­cat­ed his mas­ter­piece, “a hum­ble, offer­ing,” to the deity he cred­it­ed with “a rich­er, fuller, more pro­duc­tive life.” No rote hym­nal, chant, or psalter, A Love Supreme offers itself up to the lis­ten­er as the prod­uct of intense­ly per­son­al devo­tion. And like the ecsta­t­ic rev­e­la­tions of many a saint, Coltrane’s work has inspired its own devo­tion­al cult—The Church of St. Coltrane.

Presided over by Bish­op Fran­zo King and his wife Rev­erend Moth­er Mari­na King, the Saint John Coltrane African Ortho­dox Church in San Fran­cis­co reminds peo­ple, says Bish­op King in the short doc­u­men­tary at the top of the post, “that God is nev­er with­out a wit­ness. St. John Coltrane is that wit­ness for this time and this age.” Dig. The vibe of the Coltrane con­gre­ga­tion is “a rap­tur­ous out-of-your-head-ness” writes Aeon mag­a­zine in their intro­duc­tion to anoth­er short film about the church. And just above, you can meet more of the worshippers—of the music, its cre­ator, and his god—in “The Sax­o­phone Saint,” yet anoth­er pro­file of St. Coltrane’s prodi­gious reli­gious influ­ence. The con­gre­ga­tion, NPR tells us, “mix­es African Ortho­dox litur­gy with Coltrane’s quotes” and of course music, and A Love Supreme is “the cor­ner­stone of the [Bish­op King’s] 200-mem­ber church.”

King cites the titles of the suite’s four movements—“Acknowledgement,” “Res­o­lu­tion,” “Pur­suance,” and “Psalm”—as the basis for his form of wor­ship: “It’s like say­ing, ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ It’s like say­ing Melody, har­mo­ny and rhythm.’ In oth­er words, you have to acknowl­edge and then you resolve and then you pur­sue, and the man­i­fes­ta­tion of it is a love supreme.” The Kings found­ed the church in 1969, but their intro­duc­tion to the pow­er of Coltrane came four years ear­li­er when they saw him per­form at the San Fran­cis­co Jazz Work­shop, an expe­ri­ence they describe on their web­site as a “sound bap­tism.” Since its incep­tion, they tell us, the church “has grown beyond the con­fines of San Fran­cis­co to include the whole globe. Every Sun­day, the con­gre­ga­tion includes mem­bers and vis­i­tors from through­out the world.”

That diverse assem­bly recent­ly filled the sanc­tu­ary of San Francisco’s Grace Cathe­dral for a ser­vice in cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme on Mon­day, Decem­ber 8th. Just above you can see Bish­op King open the ser­vice. His inspired deliv­ery should con­vince you, as it did New York Times reporter Samuel Freed­man, that “the Coltrane church is not a gim­mick or a forced alloy of night­club music and ethe­re­al faith. Its mes­sage of deliv­er­ance through divine sound is actu­al­ly quite con­sis­tent with Coltrane’s own expe­ri­ence and mes­sage.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Watch John Coltrane Turn His Hand­writ­ten Poem Into a Sub­lime Musi­cal Pas­sage on A Love Supreme

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

Noam Chomsky Almost Appeared on Saturday Night Live During the 90s

in Comedy, Politics | December 18th, 2014

Image by jean­bap­tis­teparis

There are those guest hosts on Sat­ur­day Night Live who imme­di­ate­ly become exem­plary cast mem­bers they fit in so well. I’m think­ing most­ly of Alec Bald­win. Then there are those—certain pop stars and athletes—who are too awk­ward even to make for unin­ten­tion­al humor. Some­times the show will choose a host for obvi­ous cul­tur­al or polit­i­cal rea­sons, whether or not that per­son has any sense of humor what­so­ev­er. Lorne Michaels even once con­sid­ered ask­ing noto­ri­ous­ly stiff then-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney to host in 2012, a prospect that excit­ed no one except maybe Rom­ney.

Giv­en the show’s many ques­tion­able choic­es, it’s maybe not too sur­pris­ing that it would con­sid­er ask­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic to host. Some extro­vert­ed pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als, like Cor­nell West and Slavoj Zizeck, are nat­ur­al enter­tain­ers. But that they would think of Noam Chom­sky—known for his rum­pled sweaters and inci­sive, unspar­ing geopo­lit­i­cal analy­sis, deliv­ered in the dri­est monot­o­ne this side of Ben Stein’s Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off char­ac­ter—is, well, pret­ty odd.

It does make a lit­tle bit more sense con­sid­er­ing that they only asked Pro­fes­sor Chom­sky to play him­self on the show, not deliv­er a mono­logue or do imper­son­ations. Accord­ing to his assis­tant Bev Stohl, the show called some­time in the late 90s and told her that the “writ­ers had writ­ten a loose script for Noam. The only thing he need­ed to do was show up on the set and play it straight, answer­ing the ques­tions that were put to him. Sort of like, ‘I’m Noam Chom­sky, and I play myself on TV.’” Most­ly, writes Stohl on her blog, “I liked the idea of Noam appear­ing in main­stream media, some­thing that was just begin­ning to hap­pen in small ways in the 1990’s.”

And how did Chom­sky him­self feel about the request? It seems he was vague­ly famil­iar with the show and open to the idea. His wife, on the oth­er hand, was not. “After a brief exchange” with her, writes Crit­i­cal The­o­ry, “he informed Stohl that ‘Car­ol says no.’” We’ll nev­er know if we were “robbed of either the great­est SNL skit ever” or spared “anoth­er ter­ri­bly unfun­ny seg­ment,” but the ques­tion of whether Chom­sky can be fun­ny is still an open one. Matthew Alford at The Guardian writes that dur­ing the Q&A after a lec­ture he attend­ed, “Chom­sky was suc­cess­ful not only at con­vey­ing his rad­i­cal polit­i­cal mes­sage but also at rais­ing bel­ly laughs from the audi­ence with dark-laced, insight­ful humour about his pol­i­tics.” Alford says he mea­sured “a laugh every cou­ple of minutes—very high for a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al but of course not close to the pro­fes­sion­al comic’s bench­mark of one gag every 20 sec­onds.” He offers some typ­i­cal Chom­sky-an one-lin­ers, such as:

“[The Bush administration’s] moral val­ues are very explic­it: shine the boots of the rich and pow­er­ful, kick every­one else in the face, and let your grand­chil­dren pay for it.”

“If you’ve resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to tell the teacher ‘you’re an ass­hole’ which maybe he or she is, and if you don’t say ‘that’s idi­ot­ic’ when you get a stu­pid assign­ment… you will end up at a good col­lege and even­tu­al­ly with a good job.”

And “It’s to the point where Ronald Rea­gan could put on his cow­boy boots and cow­boy hat and declare a nation­al emer­gency because the nation­al secu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States was in dan­ger from the gov­ern­ment of Nicaragua… whose troops were two days from Texas.”

Above, you can catch a glimpse of the lighter side of Chom­sky.

via Crit­i­cal The­o­ry

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Went Gang­nam Style … Ever So Briefly?

Film­mak­er Michel Gondry Presents an Ani­mat­ed Con­ver­sa­tion with Noam Chom­sky

Noam Chom­sky Spells Out the Pur­pose of Edu­ca­tion

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

John Cage Performs Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

in Art, Music, Television | December 18th, 2014

Back in 2011, we fea­tured John Cage’s 1960 tele­vi­sion per­for­mance of his piece Water Walk. Its video qual­i­ty may have left some­thing to be desired, but now, thanks to the YouTube chan­nel of Bard Col­lege’s Richard B. Fish­er Cen­ter for the Per­form­ing Arts, you can watch the entire ten-minute seg­ment in much crisper qual­i­ty than most sur­viv­ing pro­grams from that era. This unlike­ly hap­pen­ing occurred on I’ve Got a Secret, the long-run­ning occu­pa­tion-guess­ing game show whose guest ros­ter also includ­ed chess prodi­gy Bob­by Fis­ch­er, “fifth Bea­t­le” Pete Best, and fried-chick­en icon Colonel Har­land Sanders. For this par­tic­u­lar episode, we wrote in our ear­li­er post, “the TV show offered Cage some­thing of a teach­able moment, a chance to intro­duce the broad­er pub­lic to his brand of avant-garde music.”

For Water Walk, Cage round­ed up a vari­ety of “instru­ments” all to do with that liq­uid — a bath­tub, a pitch­er, ice cubes in a mix­er — and the uncon­ven­tion­al sym­pho­ny they pro­duce cul­mi­nates in the Rube Gold­ber­gian mix­ing of a drink, the sip­ping of which the com­po­si­tion dic­tates about two and a half min­utes in. Nat­u­ral­ly, Cage being Cage, the piece incor­po­rates audi­ence reac­tion nois­es; when host Gary Moore warns him that cer­tain mem­bers of the stu­dio audi­ence will laugh, Cage responds, “I con­sid­er laugh­ter bet­ter than tears.”

You can learn more about this inter­sec­tion of far for­ward-think­ing artistry and the mid­cen­tu­ry tele­vi­su­al main­stream in Lau­ra Paolin­i’s piece “John Cage’s Secret,” avail­able at johncage.org. “At that moment in 1960, a rup­ture was being deep­ened,” Paoli­ni writes. “High art and low were becom­ing more and more com­fort­able with one anoth­er over the air­waves. At this moment, as the screens glow their blue auras into the homes of North Amer­i­ca, every­one sees some­thing they haven’t seen before. And every­one has an opin­ion about it.” And those opin­ions, I like to think Cage would have said, only extend the art fur­ther.

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:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on “I’ve Got a Secret” (1960)

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Defeat the US with Math: An Animated North Korean Propaganda Film for Kids

in Animation, Current Affairs, History | December 18th, 2014

Yes, North Korea won yes­ter­day. Threat­en­ing 9/11-like vio­lence, the DPRK scared Sony and Amer­i­ca’s four largest the­ater chains into pulling the plug on the release of The Inter­view. And, just like that, Amer­i­cans lost their right to watch their own pro­pa­gan­da films — even dumb fun­ny ones — in their own the­aters. But, don’t despair, we can still watch pro­pa­gan­da films from North Korea on YouTube — like the vin­tage ani­ma­tion for chil­dren above. You don’t need to under­stand what’s being said to get the gist. Take your school­work seri­ous­ly, bone up on your geom­e­try, and you can launch enough mis­siles to force Amer­i­ca into sub­mis­sion. True, geom­e­try does­n’t put you in a good posi­tion to hack cor­po­rate com­put­ers. But seem­ing­ly you can get that help from Chi­na.

via The Week

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Don­ald Duck’s Bad Nazi Dream and Four Oth­er Dis­ney Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons from World War II

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film, Rea­son and Emo­tion

How the CIA Turned Doc­tor Zhiva­go into a Pro­pa­gan­da Weapon Against the Sovi­et Union

Watch Adam Savage Build Barbarella’s Space Rifle in One Day

in Design, Film | December 18th, 2014

In a new video by Test­ed, Adam Sav­age (mod­el mak­er, indus­tri­al design­er and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty) shows you how to build a repli­ca of the space rifle from the 1968 sci-fi film Bar­barel­la. To design the repli­ca, Sav­age had only one doc­u­ment to work with — a pho­to­graph show­ing Jane Fon­da hold­ing the gun, which orig­i­nal­ly appeared on the cov­er of a 1968 issue of LIFE Mag­a­zine. The 77-minute video above takes you inside Sav­age’s build process, mov­ing from start to fin­ish. If DIY is your thing, you won’t want to miss it.

via Digg

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Lennon or McCartney? 550 Artists Answer the Essential, Timeless Question

in Music | December 17th, 2014

Lennon & McCart­ney — the two musi­cians came togeth­er and com­posed the most impor­tant song­book of the last 50 years. Ear­ly on, John and Paul wrote many of their songs togeth­er — songs like “She Loves You” and “Eight Days a Week.” Lat­er, as they describe it here, the dynam­ic changed: one would write the bulk of a song; the oth­er would give it a lis­ten and work out the kinks, adding the right melody, or remov­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly corny verse. Although the two shared writ­ing cred­its for all Bea­t­les songs, Lennon prin­ci­pal­ly wrote “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” “Nor­we­gian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” and “Come Togeth­er.” McCart­ney gave us “Eleanor Rig­by,” “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be,” and “Pen­ny Lane.” Depend­ing on which you like, you might put your­self in the Lennon or the McCart­ney camp.

Along the way, we’ve all been asked to take a side, and that applies to musi­cians too. Above, you can find a 34 minute com­pi­la­tion where musi­cians and artists — from Lady GaGa to David Byrne — make their pick. And below, in the com­ments, you’re invit­ed to tell us where you fall — with John or Paul, and why?

Or who is going to offer up George, who, for my mon­ey, released the best of the Bea­t­les’ solo albums?

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

The Last Time Lennon & McCart­ney Played Togeth­er Cap­tured in the Boot­leg A Toot And a Snore in ’74

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

Patti Smith’s Musical Tributes to the Russian Greats: Tarkovsky, Gogol & Bulgakov

in Literature, Music, Poetry | December 17th, 2014

In 2010, Pat­ti Smith won a Nation­al Book Award for her mem­oir Just Kids, mak­ing her, by my count, the only Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mem­ber to land that prize. Of course, she’s also the only per­son I can think of who has appeared in both a movie by Jean-Luc Godard (Film Social­isme) and an episode of Law and Order. And she’s def­i­nite­ly the only rock­er out there who has a per­son­al invite from the Pope to play at the Vat­i­can.

Back in the mid-‘70s, Smith fused the noise and urgency of punk rock with spo­ken word poet­ry and cre­at­ed some­thing unlike any­thing before or since. She per­formed with such inten­si­ty on stage that she looked like a mod­ern day shaman in the midst of an ecsta­t­ic rev­el­ry. Yet she had a lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ty that made her stand apart from most of her fel­low pro­to-punks at CBG­Bs. (The Ramones are awe­some but no one is going to parse the lyrics of “Beat on the Brat with a Base­ball Bat.”) The B‑side track of Smith’s first sin­gle, “Piss Fac­to­ry,” describes the unre­lent­ing tedi­um she expe­ri­enced work­ing at a fac­to­ry before she swiped a copy of Illu­mi­na­tions by French poet Arthur Rim­baud.

While mak­ing Film Social­isme with Godard, she con­ceived of her lat­est album, Ban­ga, released in 2012. When she start­ed writ­ing songs, she was, as she said in an inter­view, very inter­est­ed in Russ­ian cul­ture.

I like my trav­els to be akin with my stud­ies, and so when I start­ed being smit­ten with Bul­gakov and start­ed read­ing a lot of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture and then watch­ing a lot of Tarkovsky, being very immersed in Russ­ian cul­ture, I got some jobs in Rus­sia. … But I’ve always done that. We have very idio­syn­crat­ic tours – I always make sure that the band does well finan­cial­ly, but a lot of our tours are based on things that I’m study­ing, and I’ll make choic­es as to where we go so that I can see some­thing spe­cial.

The title track of the work, Ban­ga, is tak­en from a minor char­ac­ter in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta – Pon­tus Pilate’s extreme­ly loy­al dog who wait­ed cen­turies for his mas­ter to come to heav­en. Fun fact: John­ny Depp played drums on this track.

Accord­ing to the lin­er notes, the album’s first sin­gle, “April Fool” was inspired by nov­el­ist Niko­lai Gogol. As John Free­man notes in the Moscow Times, a num­ber of lines from the song evoke the writer.

We’ll race through alley­ways in tat­tered coats” is a fair­ly clear ref­er­ence to Gogol’s short sto­ry “The Over­coat,” while “we’ll burn all of our poems” begs to be con­sid­ered a nod to the fact that Gogol famous­ly burned the sec­ond vol­ume of his great nov­el “Dead Souls.” That work, one of Rus­si­a’s fun­ni­est and dark­est, is con­jured in the lines, “We’ll tramp through the mire when our souls feel dead. With laugh­ter we’ll inspire them back to life again.

And the track “Tarkovsky (The Sec­ond Stop Is Jupiter)”, not sur­pris­ing­ly, evokes images from the films of cin­e­mat­ic auteur Andrei Tarkovsky – specif­i­cal­ly, his meta­phys­i­cal sci-fi epic Solaris along with Ivan’s Child­hood. Hear the track at the top of this post, and watch Tarkovsky’s films online here.

In case you thought that the album was just about Rus­sians, her song “This is the Girl” is about the life and death of Amy Wine­house, “Fuji-San” is a trib­ute to the mas­sive 2011 Tohoku earth­quake, and “Nine” is a birth­day present to John­ny Depp.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Pat­ti Smith Read from Vir­ginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Sur­viv­ing Record­ing of Woolf’s Voice

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

Pat­ti Smith Plays Songs by The Ramones, Rolling Stones, Lou Reed & More on CBGB’s Clos­ing Night (2006)

Pat­ti Smith Doc­u­men­tary Dream of Life Beau­ti­ful­ly Cap­tures the Author’s Life and Long Career (2008)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Johnny Cash’s Christmas Specials, Featuring June Carter, Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman & More (1976–79)

in Music, Television | December 17th, 2014

John­ny Cash, out­law coun­try singer and defi­ant man in black, comes care­ful­ly pack­aged for many peo­ple through the mer­chan­dis­ing of his life and image. From t‑shirts to posters, doc­u­men­taries to award-win­ning biopics, we know about his ornery prison con­certs, drug use and arrests, noble cham­pi­oning of the dis­en­fran­chised, and dra­mat­ic sto­ry of pain and redemp­tion. We mar­veled at the mys­tique around the aged Cash in his late-life revival. But many of us know lit­tle about anoth­er side of the man—Johnny Cash, genial TV per­son­al­i­ty.

If you hap­pened to have been glued to the tube dur­ing the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, how­ev­er, you would know this John­ny Cash well from his cameo appear­ances on Colum­bo and Lit­tle House on the Prairie. You’d have seen him shilling for Amo­co dur­ing the gas cri­sis of the ear­ly 70s—a gig he took on dur­ing a seri­ous career slump. You’d have maybe caught his recur­ring role on Dr. Quinn Med­i­cine Woman, his turn on 1985 mini-series North and South (as John Brown, nat­u­ral­ly), as well as a num­ber of film appear­ances. And that’s not to men­tion Cash’s own, short-lived vari­ety show, which ran from 1969–71.

If this rather com­mer­cial, main­stream Cash seems at odds with the leg­end, wait till you see The John­ny Cash & Fam­i­ly Christ­mas Show, which ran each year from 1976–79. Here, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “Cash game­ly refash­ioned him­self as a fam­i­ly-friend­ly coun­try music TV host” in the vein of Porter Wag­oner. It is decid­ed­ly “far from the mid­dle-fin­ger John­ny Cash or Fol­som Prison Blues”—closer instead to Hee Haw’s Buck Owens and Roy Clark (who appears in the first spe­cial at the top). After his mar­riage to June Carter in 1968, many of his ven­tures fea­tured the two as a singing duo. Here, they aren’t just man and wife, but “fam­i­ly,” mean­ing “many of June and Johnny’s wide-rang­ing clan of rel­a­tives are fea­tured.

We’re also treat­ed to appear­ances from Tony Orlan­do and Cash’s spir­i­tu­al men­tor Bil­ly Gra­ham (’76), Jer­ry Lee Lewis (’77), Kris Kristofer­son and Steve Mar­tin (’78), and even Andy Kauf­man, in char­ac­ter as Taxi’s Lat­ka Gravas (’79). Yes, these may be coun­try corny as all get-out, but they’re also real­ly fun. We get charm­ing, infor­mal goof-offs with June and John­ny, lots of Vegas style com­e­dy bits and lounge rou­tines, and, of course, some stel­lar musi­cal per­for­mances. After his dra­mat­ic late-six­ties con­ver­sion, Cash remained staunch­ly evan­gel­i­cal to the end of his days. (Hear him read The New Tes­ta­ment here.) But rather than rail at sec­u­lar­ists in his Christ­mas spe­cials, he treats the hol­i­day as a laid-back occa­sion for food (“snake ‘n’ pota­toes”), laughs, friends and fam­i­ly, and all-star sing alongs by the fire. Hop on over to Dan­ger­ous Minds to see all four spe­cials.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show, Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

The First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show, Fea­tur­ing Bob Dylan & Joni Mitchell (1969)

John­ny Cash Reads the Entire New Tes­ta­ment

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

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

in Film, Music | December 16th, 2014

David Lynch gets sound like few oth­er direc­tors. There’s an unfor­get­table scene in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me where Lau­ra Palmer leads her best friend Don­na Hay­ward into what looks like a den of iniq­ui­ty for lum­ber­jacks. It’s filled with burly men and cheap women grind­ing to music blar­ing from the speak­ers. Lynch lets the music roll right over top the dia­logue. It was a shock­ing choice back in 1992 but it was the right one. The ban­ter was inten­tion­al­ly banal and obscure. The grotesque faces, the omi­nous crim­son light­ing and, most of all, that utter­ly hyp­not­ic music are all you need to tell the sto­ry, cre­at­ing a mood of dread and deca­dence. The scene is a stun­ning fusion of image, sound and edit­ing in an oth­er­wise flawed work.

Since that movie, Lynch became more and more inter­est­ed in the pos­si­bil­i­ties of sound design. He even­tu­al­ly ditched film alto­geth­er for a career in music. So per­haps it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise that, along with cre­at­ing at least three cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces, one of the most influ­en­tial TV series ever made, and a string of tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials, Lynch has also made a hand­ful of music videos. You can watch them above and below.

Lynch’s first music video was for “I Pre­dict” by the band The Sparks. It was made back in 1982 when MTV was still in its infan­cy and Lynch’s career was just tak­ing off. Per­haps for that rea­son, the video has lit­tle of the styl­is­tic obses­sions that mark his lat­er work. No weird flash­ing lights. No smoke or fire. No hol­low-eyed mod­els. Instead Lynch goes for a more direct, if sil­ly, form of sur­re­al­ism – a guy (band mem­ber Ron Mael) with a Hitler mus­tache in drag doing a striptease. Does it feel Lynchi­an? No, not real­ly. But it’s still kind of dis­tress­ing.

There are two videos for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games.” One, which was on heavy rota­tion on MTV, was shot by Herb Ritts and fea­tured Isaak and super­mod­el Hele­na Chris­tensen rolling around half-naked in the Hawai­ian surf. And then there is Lynch’s video made as a tie-in to his strange, Wiz­ard of Oz obsessed noir Wild at Heart, which has much less nudi­ty – which is odd con­sid­er­ing the movie is pret­ty much non-stop boink­ing. Instead, the video is pret­ty straight­for­ward – just Isaaks and the band play­ing the tune inter­cut with shots from the flick.

After Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, Lynch turned his back on cel­lu­loid film, pre­fer­ring the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal. His enthu­si­asm for this new tech­nol­o­gy result­ed in a flur­ry of projects includ­ing Dum­b­land, a crude­ly ani­mat­ed series pre­sent­ed in stark black and white. The video of Moby’s “Shot in the Back of the Head” is a mood­i­er ani­mat­ed work but it is def­i­nite­ly in the same vein. Check it out above.

Lynch’s video for Nine Inch Nail’s “Came Back Haunt­ed” can quite lit­er­al­ly mess with your head. The piece is packed with flash­ing red and white lights and as a result comes with the fol­low­ing warn­ing: “This video has been iden­ti­fied by Epilep­sy Action to poten­tial­ly trig­ger seizures for peo­ple with pho­to­sen­si­tive epilep­sy. View­er dis­cre­tion is advised.” You have been warned.

And final­ly here’s a music video for Lynch’s own song called appro­pri­ate­ly “Crazy Clown Time.” Not only is the video a cat­a­logue Lynch’s obses­sions – Amer­i­cana, naked women, fire – but it also fea­tures Lynch singing, who, after a bunch of effects, sounds like a cas­trat­ed Kee­bler Elf.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

Moviedrome: Filmmaker Alex Cox Provides Video Introductions to 100+ Classic Cult Films

in Film | December 16th, 2014

If you hap­pened to pass the 1990s in Britain as a cer­tain sort of alter­na­tive and/or obscu­ran­tist cinephile, you know BBC2’s Moviedrome, which, albeit belong­ing to the proud old tra­di­tion of the tele­vi­sion movie show, showed pri­mar­i­ly cult films. But what makes for a cult film, any­way? A cult film “has a pas­sion­ate fol­low­ing, but does not appeal to every­one.” Yet cult film sta­tus “does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly guar­an­tee qual­i­ty,” nor does the box office mon­ey a pic­ture either made or failed to make. But we can cat­e­go­rize all cult films under cer­tain gen­res, and often more than one, giv­en their “ten­den­cy to slosh over from one genre into anoth­er, so that a sci­ence fic­tion film might also be a detec­tive movie, or vice ver­sa,” all shar­ing the com­mon themes of “love, mur­der and greed.”

Those words come straight from Repo Man, Walk­er, and Sid & Nan­cy direc­tor Alex Cox, a cult film­mak­er of no small renown. He also host­ed Moviedrome, pro­vid­ing much more than the stan­dard movie-show fram­ing of and intro­duc­tion to the night’s fea­ture. At the top of the post, we have his open­ing seg­ment for Edward G. Ulmer’s cheap but aston­ish­ing­ly endur­ing 1945 film noir Detour, which you can chase with the film itself just above. You may also remem­ber Car­ni­val of Souls, which we fea­tured in full as one of Time Out Lon­don’s 1oo best hor­ror films — well, Cox ably gave a Moviedrome primer on that one as well, describ­ing it as one of the most influ­en­tial cult movies of its kind ever made.

But Cox talked about a lot more than film­mak­ers some might describe as schlocky and exploita­tive; he also talked about the likes of Alfred Hitch­cock, who took schlock and exploita­tion to its high­est point of cin­e­mat­ic artistry. Last year, we fea­tured an exam­i­na­tion of Hitch­cock­’s sleight-of-hand in the mak­ing of Rope, the sus­pense mas­ter’s sup­pos­ed­ly cut-free tale of killing and decep­tion. Just above, in Cox’s intro for the film, you can hear more about why this film made the cut, as it were, into Moviedrome’s league of “cult and weirdo type movies.” You can learn about many more such dis­rep­utable-yet-rep­utable pic­tures through Cox’s many seg­ments post­ed to Youtube, as well as in the full text of his Moviedrome Guide avail­able on his “free stuff” page. The Moviedrome faith­ful might also con­sid­er hav­ing a look at this gallery of films from the show’s Alex Cox years, and the exegetic Tum­blr blog Moviedromer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Detour: The Cheap, Rushed Piece of 1940s Film Noir Nobody Ever For­gets

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.