Prize-Winning Animation Lets You Fly Through 17th Century London

in Animation, History | November 1st, 2013

Six stu­dents from De Mont­fort Uni­ver­si­ty have cre­at­ed a stel­lar 3D rep­re­sen­ta­tion of 17th cen­tu­ry Lon­don, as it exist­ed before The Great Fire of 1666. The three-minute video pro­vides a real­is­tic ani­ma­tion of Tudor Lon­don, and par­tic­u­lar­ly a sec­tion called Pud­ding Lane where the fire start­ed. As Lon­don­ist notes, “Although most of the build­ings are con­jec­tur­al, the stu­dents used a real­is­tic street pat­tern [tak­en from his­tor­i­cal maps] and even includ­ed the hang­ing signs of gen­uine inns and busi­ness­es” men­tioned in diaries from the peri­od.

For their efforts, the De Mont­fort team was award­ed first prize in the Off the Map con­test, a com­pe­ti­tion run by The British Library and video game devel­op­ers GameCity and Cry­tek.

Com­ment­ing on the video, one judge from the esteemed British Library had this to say:

Some of these vis­tas would not look at all out of place as spe­cial effects in a Hol­ly­wood stu­dio pro­duc­tion. The haze effect lying over the city is bril­liant, and great atten­tion has been giv­en to key fea­tures of Lon­don Bridge, the wood­en struc­ture of Queen­shithe on the riv­er, even the glit­ter­ing win­dow case­ments. I’m real­ly pleased that the Pud­ding Lane team was able to repur­pose some of the maps from the British Library’s amaz­ing map col­lec­tion – a store­house of vir­tu­al worlds – in such a con­sid­ered way.

You can find more infor­ma­tion about how the ani­ma­tion came togeth­er over at the ani­ma­tors’ blog, plus at The British Library’s Dig­i­tal Schol­ar­ship blog.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

His­to­ry: Free Online Cours­es

Rome Reborn – An Amaz­ing Dig­i­tal Mod­el of Ancient Rome

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

A Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of Wash­ing­ton D.C. in 1814

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Watch Goethe’s Haunting Poem, “Der Erlkönig,” Presented in an Artful Sand Animation

in Music, Poetry | November 1st, 2013

Back in col­lege, I took a fall-quar­ter intro­duc­to­ry music course. We hap­pened to have class on Hal­loween (an event quite seri­ous­ly tak­en around the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Bar­bara, in case you did­n’t know), and the pro­fes­sor held an espe­cial­ly mem­o­rable lec­ture that day. He had us study “Der Erlkönig,” music by Franz Schu­bert, words by none oth­er than Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. While I will not claim that this tale of the haunt­ing of a mori­bund child, even with its dri­ving score, gen­uine­ly fright­ened me, I will say that it put the fear into me in a more exis­ten­tial way, a blow which only a sim­ple sto­ry can land effec­tive­ly.

“Who rides, so late, through night and wind?” asks Goethe’s poem, trans­lat­ed from the Ger­man. “It is the father with his child. He has the boy well in his arm. He holds him safe­ly, he keeps him warm.” The man feels con­cern for his ail­ing son, but the boy has trou­bles of his own: “Father, do you not see the Erlk­ing?” The father explains his son’s vision of this men­ac­ing­ly regal fig­ure away as the fog, as the wind, as the trees. But the child insists: “My father, my father, he’s grab­bing me now! The Erlk­ing has done me harm!” By the time their horse reach­es home, indeed, the Erlk­ing — or some obscure agent of mor­tal­i­ty — has him. Hear this fable sung, and watch it vivid­ly ani­mat­ed with sand on glass (no doubt a painstak­ing process) by Ben Zelkow­icz above. Hal­loween itself may have just passed, but “Der Erlkönig” remains time­less­ly haunt­ing.

We’ll add “Der Erlkönig” to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via NFB

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladis­las Starevich’s Ani­ma­tion of Goethe’s Great Ger­man Folk­tale (1937)

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky and Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

World War II Reliv­ed through Sand Paint­ing

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

Watch Rare Film of Richard Pryor Singing the Blues: No Joke, All Heart

in Comedy, Music | November 1st, 2013

With the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Bey­once as Etta James in Cadil­lac Records, no onscreen por­tray­al of a female jazz singer tops Diana Ross as Bil­lie Hol­i­day in Lady Sings the Blues. She is so mes­mer­iz­ing, in fact, that it’s easy to for­get, if you haven’t seen the movie recent­ly, that Ross is flanked by two oth­er excel­lent per­form­ers in Bil­ly Dee Williams as Louis McK­ay, a com­pos­ite stand-in for Holiday’s three hus­bands, and Richard Pry­or as the “Piano Man,” Ross’s accom­pa­nist. It was a role that “pro­pelled him into star­dom” and kept Pry­or out in front of an audi­ence as a movie actor. Watch a clip from the film below, with Ross’s Hol­i­day and Pry­or’s surly Piano Man togeth­er at 3:39.

Odd as it seems that a dra­mat­ic role would be Pryor’s break­out per­for­mance, unex­pect­ed still per­haps is the video at the top of Pry­or singing the blues him­self. None of his raunchy or self-dep­re­cat­ing wit here, just a gen­uine, heart­felt ren­di­tion of Jim­my Cox’s 1924 “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” Accord­ing to eOne Music’s Eric Alper, Pry­or not only start­ed per­form­ing com­e­dy after he moved to New York City in 1963, he also sang, open­ing for such soon-to-be-greats as Nina Simone and Bob Dylan. Pry­or in fact got his start on the club cir­cuit as a drum­mer, so “he was famil­iar with the scene.” Movies.com recounts a poignant sto­ry from Simone’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy about Pryor’s intense stage fright before one of these ear­ly gigs:

He shook like he had malar­ia, he was so ner­vous. I couldn’t bear to watch him shiv­er so I put my arms around him there in the dark and rocked him like a baby until he calmed down. The next night was the same, and the next, and I rocked him each time.

As a singer, Pry­or doesn’t chan­nel and focus his anx­i­ety so much as he slow­ly mas­ters it, appear­ing a lit­tle stiff at first but even­tu­al­ly knock­ing it out with a sur­pris­ing­ly good per­for­mance that well deserves a lis­ten. The prove­nance of the clip isn’t exact­ly clear, and some intro mate­r­i­al marks it as part of a doc­u­men­tary, maybe. Please weigh in if you know or sus­pect the film clip’s source.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Pry­or Does Ear­ly Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine in New York, 1964

Nina Simone Per­forms Six Songs in 1968 TV Spe­cial, The Sound of Soul

Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing the Bawdy Prison Blues Song “Uncle Bud” (1940)

Watch the Only Known Footage of the Leg­endary Blues­man Lead Bel­ly (1935 and 1945)

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

10 Figures of Speech Illustrated by Monty Python: Paradiastole, Epanorthosis, Syncatabasis & More

in Comedy, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry | October 31st, 2013

Ah, the ancient art of rhetoric. There’s no escap­ing it. Var­i­ous­ly defined as “the art of argu­men­ta­tion and dis­course” or, by Aris­to­tle in his frag­ment­ed trea­tise, as “the means of per­sua­sion [that] could be found in the mat­ter itself; and then styl­is­tic arrange­ment,” rhetoric is com­pli­cat­ed. Aristotle’s def­i­n­i­tion fur­ther breaks down into three dis­tinct types, and he illus­trates each with lit­er­ary exam­ples. And if you’ve ever picked up a rhetor­i­cal guide—ancient, medieval, or mod­ern—you’ll be famil­iar with the lists of hun­dreds of unpro­nounce­able Greek or Latin terms, each one cor­re­spond­ing to some quirky fig­ure of speech.

Well, as usu­al, the inter­net pro­vides us with an eas­i­er way in the form of the video above of 10 fig­ures of speech “as illus­trat­ed by Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus,” one of the most lit­er­ate of pop­u­lar arti­facts to ever appear on tele­vi­sion. There’s “para­di­as­tole,” the fan­cy term for euphemism, demon­strat­ed by John Cleese’s over­ly deco­rous news­cast­er. There’s “epanortho­sis,” or “imme­di­ate and emphat­ic self-cor­rec­tion, often fol­low­ing a slip of the tongue,” which Eric Idle over­does in splen­did fash­ion. Every pos­si­ble poet­ic fig­ure or gram­mat­i­cal tic seems to have been named and cat­a­logued by those philo­soph­i­cal­ly resource­ful Greeks and Romans. And it’s like­ly that the Pythons have uti­lized them all. I await a fol­low-up video in lieu of read­ing any more rhetor­i­cal text­books.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

The Mon­ty Python Phi­los­o­phy Foot­ball Match: The Greeks v. the Ger­mans

Clas­sic Mon­ty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilar­i­ous Bat­tle of Wits

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

American Filmmakers in Japanese Ads: Quentin Tarantino Sells Cell Phones, Orson Welles Hawks Whisky

in Film, Television | October 31st, 2013

Amer­i­can movie stars have long found work across the pacif­ic in Japan­ese tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials: Nico­las Cage, Paul New­man, Den­nis Hop­per, Har­ri­son Ford, Jodie Fos­ter — the list goes on. If their spots aired state­side, we’d prob­a­bly buy what they sell too, but celebri­ties in their image-pro­tec­tive league have thus far shown a reluc­tance to endorse prod­ucts in their own coun­try. Japan’s ad indus­try has­n’t only sought the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Amer­i­ca’s big-name actors, though; it’s also gone after the direc­tors. At the top, you’ll see one fea­tur­ing a film­mak­er nev­er afraid of expo­sure: Pulp Fic­tion auteur Quentin Taran­ti­no tak­ing a turn in local cos­tume (and along­side a talk­ing dog) in a com­mer­cial for Japan­ese cell phone ser­vice provider Soft­bank. Just below, we have Orson Welles, he of Cit­i­zen Kane and British frozen-peas nar­ra­tion alike, in a spot for G&G Whisky.

“I direct films and act in them,” Welles says by way of intro­duc­tion. “What we’re always try­ing for is per­fec­tion, but of course, that’s only a hope. But with G&G, you can rely on it.” It may put you in the mind of Sofia Cop­po­la’s Lost in Trans­la­tion, where­in Bill Mur­ray’s char­ac­ter famous­ly turns up in Japan to shoot a whisky com­mer­cial of his own. Mak­ers of that bev­er­age have shown quite an inter­est in the impri­matur of cin­e­ma’s lumi­nar­ies, East­ern as well as West­ern.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a Sun­to­ry com­mer­cial includ­ing not just The Gofa­ther and Apoc­a­lypse Now direc­tor Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, but Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, the mak­er of Rashomon and Sev­en Samu­rai, known in his home­land as “the Emper­or.” It makes you won­der: do we in Amer­i­ca know our direc­tors well enough that they could sell us things? Then again, the Japan­ese did enjoy all those old Woody Allen Seibu spots when most of them still had­n’t a clue about the beloved film­mak­er’s iden­ti­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nico­las Cage, Paul New­man & Den­nis Hop­per Bring Their Amer­i­can Style to Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

The Best Japan­ese Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup

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

Mark Twain Writes a “Gushing,” “Self-Deprecating” Wedding Announcement to His Family (1869)

in Letters | October 31st, 2013

I am of the rather uncon­tro­ver­sial opin­ion that any mar­riage is what any two peo­ple make of it them­selves. I’m also of the opin­ion that no mat­ter how many peo­ple may pub­licly dis­agree with that idea, in pri­vate, peo­ple make their own rules. Nonethe­less, the less out­spo­ken among us often respond to moral­ists and scolds in our lives with the live-and-let live atti­tude expressed by a char­ac­ter in E.M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread: “Let Philip say what he likes, and he will let us do what we like.”

Such pas­sive-aggres­sive arrange­ments can be alien­at­ing, an opin­ion Mark Twain seemed to hold when he announced to his fam­i­ly the upcom­ing nup­tials to his future wife of 34 years, Olivia Lang­don. In a dis­play of what Book­tryst calls “the sort of sen­ti­ment deeply appre­ci­at­ed by a prospec­tive spouse,” Twain wrote his fam­i­ly in 1869 to tell them the news, and he tried to win them over. His announce­ment is a “gush­ing, self-dep­re­cat­ing dec­la­ra­tion of intent.” One, more­over, that pre­sumes his audience’s con­trari­ness. The then 34-year-old Twain antic­i­pates and address­es what seems his family’s pri­ma­ry objec­tion to his mar­riage in gen­er­al: he details his finan­cial plans and express­es his inten­tion to pro­ceed “unaid­ed.”

Twain then mounts his best per­sua­sive case to sway his readers—Mother & Broth­er & Sis­ters & Nephew & Niece, & Margaret—in Langdon’s favor. He says that every­one who knows her “nat­u­ral­ly” loves her. He also goes so far as to say that Lang­don “set her­self the task of mak­ing a Chris­t­ian of me” and that “she would suc­ceed.” Any­one who knows Twain’s atti­tudes toward reli­gion, and Chris­tian­i­ty in par­tic­u­lar, may see some hyper­bole, or even disin­gen­u­ous­ness, here, but per­haps it’s a sin­cere expres­sion of how far he was will­ing to go for the woman who stood by his side as he lost his for­tune and hers in scheme after failed get-rich-quick scheme. As Book­tryst nice­ly puts it, “Aside from pen & paper, the only invest­ment that ever paid off for him was his effort to win the heart of Olivia Lang­don.”

Read a full tran­script of the let­ter below.

via Book­tryst

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mark Twain Drafts the Ulti­mate Let­ter of Com­plaint (1905)

Mark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Writ­ten With a Type­writer

Mark Twain Shirt­less in 1883 Pho­to

Run Vintage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Software in Your Web Browser, Thanks to Archive.org

in Archives, Internet Archive, Software, Technology, Video Games | October 30th, 2013

Note: If you’re hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting this soft­ware run­ning in your brows­er give Fire­fox a try. It seems to work the best.

Movies, com­mer­cials, radio shows, even books: we’ve enjoyed the abil­i­ty to effort­less­ly pull up things we remem­ber from our child­hood on the inter­net just long enough that it feels strange and uncom­fort­able when we can’t. Up until now, though, we haven’t had an easy way to re-expe­ri­ence the com­put­er soft­ware we remem­ber using in decades past. In my case, of course — and like­ly in a fair few of yours as well — I spent most of my com­put­er time in decades past play­ing games and not, say, build­ing bal­ance sheets. But whichev­er you did, the Inter­net Archive’s new­ly opened His­tor­i­cal Soft­ware Archive makes it easy to re-live those old days at the key­board with­out hav­ing to buy a vin­tage com­put­er on eBay, track down its soft­ware, remem­ber all its required com­mands and key­strokes, and hope the flop­py discs — or, heav­en help us, cas­sette tapes — boot up cor­rect­ly. They’ve made these wealth of games, appli­ca­tions, and odd­i­ties freely avail­able with the devel­op­ment of JMESS, a Javascript-pow­ered ver­sion of the Mul­ti Emu­la­tor Super Sys­tem, “a mature and breath­tak­ing­ly flex­i­ble com­put­er and con­sole emu­la­tor that has been in devel­op­ment for over a decade and a half by hun­dreds of vol­un­teers.”

They say a bit more about the tech­nol­o­gy behind all this on the Inter­net Archive Blog, and the His­tor­i­cal Soft­ware Archive’s front page offers rec­om­men­da­tions for which “ground-break­ing and his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant soft­ware prod­ucts” to try first, includ­ing 1.) Jor­dan Mech­n­er’s Karate­ka (top), a hot game in 1980 and the most pop­u­lar item in the archive today; 2) Sier­ra On-Line’s Mys­tery House (above), which gave rise more or less by itself to a vast genre of graph­ic adven­tures; 3) three adap­ta­tions of Nam­co’s Pac-Man (one for the Atari 2600, one remade for that same con­sole, one law­suit-induc­ing knock­off for the less­er-known Odyssey2); 4) E.T. the Extra-Ter­res­tri­al, a “1982 adven­ture video game devel­oped and pub­lished by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game con­sole;” and 5) Dan Brick­lin and Bob Frankston’s Visi-Calc (below), the grand­dad­dy of all spread­sheet pro­grams, and arguably the sin­gle appli­ca­tion that turned com­put­ing from hob­by into neces­si­ty. Or how about 6) Word­Star, the ear­ly word pro­cess­ing pro­gram? Just click on the “Run an in-brows­er emu­la­tion of the pro­gram” link to fire up any of these and, if you’re under about 30, expe­ri­ence just what com­put­er users of the late sev­en­ties and ear­ly eight­ies had to deal with — and how much fun they had.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Indie Video Game Mak­ers Are Chang­ing the Game

The Great Gats­by and Wait­ing for Godot: The Video Game Edi­tions

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

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

Charlie Parker Plays with Jazz Greats Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Rich, Lester Young & Ella Fitzgerald (1950)

in Music | October 30th, 2013

In a post ear­li­er this year, we show­cased one of the few known sound films of Char­lie Park­er per­form­ing live. Above, we have anoth­er very rare clip, from 1950, with Park­er, young upstart alto, trad­ing lines with vet­er­an tenor Cole­man Hawkins. Bud­dy Rich plays drums, and Hank Jones and Ray Brown play piano and bass.

Park­er looks char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cool between the dis­tin­guished poise of Hawkins and the boy­ish exu­ber­ance of nat­ur­al band­leader Bud­dy Rich who, in the sec­ond tune, exudes much goofy enthu­si­asm as he destroys the snare drum. This take may be hard bop at its hard­est, which makes Parker’s under­stat­ed con­test with Hawkins all the more vital, pro­pelled by some of the most fre­net­ic rhythms in jazz his­to­ry.

There is much more after the first two takes, as a voiceover seg­ment announces. The rhythm sec­tion gets a lit­tle time, then they’re joined by Bill Har­ris and Lester Young. And then, at 12:18, the already all-star cast gets round­ed out by a scat­ting Ella Fitzger­ald off stage left, leaned over Hank Jones’ piano. This is a hell of a fun per­for­mance to watch, whether you’re a stu­dent of bop, have a music-his­tor­i­cal bent, or just love see­ing live jazz at the top of its game.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

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

The Case for Studying Physics in a Charming Animated Video

in Animation, Physics | October 29th, 2013

Xiangjun Shi, oth­er­wise known as Shix­ie, stud­ied ani­ma­tion at RISD and physics at Brown. Then, she har­nessed her train­ing in both dis­ci­plines to cre­ate an ani­ma­tion explain­ing the virtue of study­ing physics. Pret­ty quick­ly, it gets to the crux of the mat­ter: Study­ing physics will change how you see the world and how you under­stand your place in it, all while let­ting you wrap your mind around some pret­ty elec­tri­fy­ing con­cepts. I think I’m sold!

You can find more videos by Shix­ie here.

H/T to Gareth for send­ing this video our way.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Physics Intro­duces the Dis­cov­er­ies of Galileo, New­ton, Maxwell & Ein­stein

The Hig­gs Boson, AKA the God Par­ti­cle, Explained with Ani­ma­tion

The Famous Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics: The New Online Edi­tion (in HTML5)

In One of his Final Interviews, Frank Zappa Pronounces Himself “Totally Unrepentant”

in Music | October 29th, 2013

In a year that marks some sig­nif­i­cant pop cul­ture 20^th anniver­saries—Wired mag­a­zine, Nirvana’s In Utero, The X‑Files–one in par­tic­u­lar may get some­what less press. This com­ing Decem­ber will be twen­ty years since Frank Zap­pa died of prostate can­cer at age 52, after achiev­ing infamy, noto­ri­ety, and final­ly, actu­al, run-of-the-mill fame. The lat­ter he didn’t seem to cher­ish as much, and cer­tain­ly not dur­ing his sick­ness. Nev­er­the­less, Zap­pa sat for a Today Show inter­view, one of his last, and dis­cussed his cur­rent work and fail­ing health. A young chip­per Katie Couric gives Zap­pa an ambiva­lent intro as the “bizarre per­former with a pen­chant for las­civ­i­ous lyrics.” “What few know,” she goes on to say, “is that he’s also a seri­ous and respect­ed clas­si­cal com­pos­er.” Zappa’s bona fides as a “seri­ous” artist seem to grant him a pass, at least for a bit, from inter­view­er Jamie Gan­gel, who begins ask­ing about the suc­cess­ful per­for­mances of his work in Europe, where he “sells out con­cert halls.”

Zap­pa responds respect­ful­ly, but is obvi­ous­ly quite bored and in pain. He’s sub­dued, down­beat, guard­ed. Then the inevitable grilling begins. “How much do you think you did for the sound and how much for the humor?” asks Gan­gel. “Both,” answers Zap­pa, “The goal here is enter­tain­ment.” Zap­pa pro­nounces him­self “total­ly unre­pen­tant” for his life. In answer to the ques­tion “is there any­thing you’ve done that you felt sor­ry for?” he sim­ply says, “No.”

And why should he con­fess on nation­al tele­vi­sion? There are many more inter­est­ing things to dis­cuss, such as Zappa’s stand against Tip­per Gore’s Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC) dur­ing the leg­endary 1985 Sen­ate Hear­ings (along with Dee Snider and, of all peo­ple, John Den­ver). When the con­ver­sa­tion turns to that his­to­ry, Zap­pa learns a fun fact about Gore that gen­uine­ly catch­es him off-guard. The inter­view goes to some very sad places, and while Zap­pa hangs in there, it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly enter­tain­ing to see him staunch­ly refuse to view his con­di­tion through Gan­gel’s lens­es. He clear­ly doesn’t see his ill­ness as the­ater and won’t play pen­i­tent or vic­tim.

A much more live­ly inter­view, by a much bet­ter informed inter­view­er, six months before Zap­pa’s death, is with Ben Wat­son for Mojo. In both of these moments, how­ev­er, Zap­pa insists on the only label he ever applied to him­self: he’s an enter­tain­er, noth­ing more. Whether tout­ed as a “clas­si­cal com­pos­er” (a phrase he doesn’t use) or thought of as an artist, Zap­pa to the very end dodged any hint of seri­ous moral inten­tions in his music, which per­haps makes him one of the most hon­est musi­cians in all of pop cul­ture his­to­ry. He saved the seri­ous inten­tions for an are­na much more in need of them. His PMRC hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny con­tains an elo­quent state­ment of his ethos: “Bad facts make bad laws. And peo­ple who write bad laws are, in my opin­ion, more dan­ger­ous that song­writ­ers who cel­e­brate sex­u­al­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Frank Zap­pa Reads NSFW Pas­sage From William Bur­roughs’ Naked Lunch (1978)

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