Watch David Bowie Star in His First Film Role, a Short Horror Flick Called The Image (1967)

in Film, Music | March 15th, 2016

Rock stars who became respect­ed actors… the pool is a small one, per­haps out­num­bered by the many musi­cians who have made less suc­cess­ful attempts at movie star­dom. But with­out a doubt, the for­mer cat­e­go­ry includes David Bowie. In his var­i­ous musi­cal guis­es, Bowie the cracked actor put to use the skills he honed for decades on movie after movie. Not every film is worth watch­ing, but near­ly every per­for­mance con­tains seeds of great­ness.

What you may not know is that Bowie the actor and Bowie the musi­cian grew up togeth­er. He had always been both, tak­ing his first film role in a short hor­ror flick, The Image, back in 1967, the same year he released his first, self-titled album. You can be for­giv­en for nev­er hear­ing about either. Nei­ther one made much of an impres­sion (and Bowie more or less dis­avowed the album). But the movie did have the rare dis­tinc­tion at the time of receiv­ing an X rat­ing. “I think it was the first short that got an X‑certificate,” says writer and direc­tor Michael Arm­strong, “for its vio­lence, which in itself was extra­or­di­nary.”

Tame by today’s stan­dards, the movie fea­tures 20-year-old Bowie as a paint­ing come to life. He got the part not because Armstrong—a fan of his first album—considered him “per­fect for the role. It was real­ly to give him a job.” Arm­strong described his star to The Wall Street Jour­nal as “very pret­ty” and “flir­ta­tious” and remem­bers Bowie’s impres­sive Elvis imper­son­ation. Bowie seems to have found the whole thing very fun­ny. On set, there were “a lot of issues with corpsing—bursting into laugh­ter dur­ing a take,” writes Metro.co.uk. When the film appeared in the­aters, view­ers expect­ed to see porn—not only because of its X‑rating but also because, writes Rolling Stone, it “briefly screened between two porn films at a Lon­don the­ater.” (The film’s star saw the movie by him­self in a the­ater filled with lone men in rain­coats.) Bowie, says Arm­strong, “thought it was hilar­i­ous.”

The Image has only recent­ly appeared online thanks to the WSJ, who received per­mis­sion from the David Bowie Archive to show it. You can watch the almost 14-minute film up top. (You can see a Youtube ver­sion below it.) Like Bowie’s first album, it may not her­ald the birth of a new star—his abil­i­ties as an actor may not have been ful­ly evi­dent until his first fea­ture-length star­ring part in The Man Who Fell to Earth. But as with music, so with act­ing: Bowie nev­er stopped work­ing at the craft, and the films that fell flat seemed only to inspire him to work hard­er and cre­ate even more ambi­tious char­ac­ters.

The Image will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via The Wall Street Jour­nal/Metro

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

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

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Download the Foo Fighters’ EP Saint Cecilia Free: MP3, FLAC, WAV, iTunes & Other Formats

in Music | March 15th, 2016

saint cecilia

This one slipped by me some­how. So let me flag it, in case it slipped by you too. Late last year, The Foo Fight­ers released online a free EP called Saint Cecil­ia, part­ly as a way to thank their fans for their stead­fast sup­port, and part­ly to help raise mon­ey for the vic­tims of the hor­rif­ic attacks in Paris. Record­ed over the course of 11 days at the Hotel Saint Cecil­ia in Austin, Texas–a hotel named after the patron saint of musicians–the EP just became avail­able in vinyl. Spin mag­a­zine calls Saint Cecil­ia the “Foo Fight­ers’ best record in years.” You can down­load it in MP3, Flac, WAV, and iTunes for­mats here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Dave Grohl Shows How He Plays the Gui­tar As If It Were a Drum Kit

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly” in Uni­son in Italy; Dave Grohl Responds in Ital­ian

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

 

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Hear the Musical Evolution of Frank Zappa in 401 Songs

in Music | March 15th, 2016

zappa evolution

Image by Helge Øverås, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“In spite of your insis­tence that you are not into Frank Zap­pa, avid fan Roger Von Lee believes that you would change your mind if you heard the right album. ‘You’re prej­u­diced, because the only Zap­pa you know is “Val­ley Girl” and “Don’t Eat The Yel­low Snow,“ ’ Von Lee says. ‘Seri­ous­ly, you need to check out Hot Rats or Absolute­ly Free. Zap­pa and the Moth­ers were at their peak, and Zap­pa’s jazz-rock fusion exper­i­ments pre­date Bitch­es Brew. That’ll total­ly con­vince you that Zap­pa’s the shit.’ ” Or so reports a brief dis­patch from The Onion, “Frank Zap­pa Fan Thinks You Just Haven’t Heard The Right Album,” which, like all their best work, res­onat­ed strong­ly with a cer­tain seg­ment of read­ers every­where.

Like any artist who cre­ates their own genre, Frank Zap­pa built up both a deeply loy­al fan fol­low­ing and almost as deep a resis­tance among those who nev­er found a way in. Or giv­en Zap­pa’s pro­lifi­ca­cy, which result­ed in more than six­ty albums record­ed with his band The Moth­ers of Inven­tion and oth­er­wise, maybe we should say he cre­at­ed sev­er­al of his own gen­res. And while this vast­ness and vari­ety makes Zap­pa’s body of work that much rich­er and more reward­ing to true believ­ers, it also makes it even more intim­i­dat­ing to the neo­phyte. If you want a sin­gle expe­ri­ence that will give you a strong sense of just what makes Zap­pa’s musi­cal jour­ney so weird and won­der­ful — and what keeps fans com­ing back more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after the man’s death — have a lis­ten to this Spo­ti­fy playlist, Frank Zap­pa’s Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion (and if you don’t have Spo­ti­fy, you can down­load and reg­is­ter free):

The playlist first appeared as a guest post on Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal, whose feats of musi­cal cura­tion we’ve fea­tured before. “I assem­bled this playlist of 401 Zap­pa tracks that, for me, rep­re­sent his best and most acces­si­ble musi­cal com­po­si­tions,” writes cre­ator Kris Herb­st, adding a bit about his own musi­cal jour­ney: “I became a Zap­pa fan in 1969, at the age of 13, when I was turned on to the We’re Only In It For The Mon­ey album by my Boy Scout troop­mas­ter. Two years lat­er, I went to my first Zap­pa con­cert, when the band includ­ed Flo and Eddie and Ian Under­wood. Lis­ten­ing to Zap­pa helped open my mind to explor­ing a wide range of music, espe­cial­ly jazz.”

Feel free, as you lis­ten to these 401 songs, to browse all the Zap­pa-relat­ed mate­r­i­al we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured linked below. And if you want to get a lit­tle more con­text, read the A.V. Club’s Frank Zap­pa primer, in which John Sem­ley writes that, “like most of the things that attract and nur­ture the atten­tion of pop-cul­ture obses­sives, Frank Zappa’s music is excep­tion­al­ly reward­ing. Zap­pa con­ceived of every­thing he did as part of a grand artis­tic mis­sion,” a “com­pre­hen­sive, total­iz­ing con­cept of art that ranged between albums, con­cert films, and even inter­views. Musi­cal phras­es, ideas, and even char­ac­ters reap­pear across albums, pro­vid­ing the­o­ret­i­cal and atti­tu­di­nal con­nec­tive tis­sue.”

And if that does­n’t intrigue you, well, just flip back to The Onion: “Von Lee added that if those two don’t get under your skin, he can rec­om­mend anoth­er 15 to 20 albums that will for sure.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who the F*@% is Frank Zap­pa?: Kick­start the Mak­ing of the Defin­i­tive Frank Zap­pa Doc­u­men­tary

Stream 82 Hours of Frank Zap­pa Music: Free Playlists of Songs He Com­posed & Per­formed

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

Frank Zappa’s Exper­i­men­tal Adver­tise­ments For Luden’s Cough Drops, Rem­ing­ton Razors & Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969)

The Night John Lennon & Yoko Ono Jammed with Frank Zap­pa at the Fill­more East (1971)

When Frank Zap­pa & Miles Davis Played a Drug Deal­er and a Pimp on Mia­mi Vice

 

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhythmicon from 1931, and the Modern Drum Machines That Followed Decades Later

in Music | March 14th, 2016

When I think of ear­ly drum machines, I think of the Roland TR-808, the machine that changed pop music in 1980. I also think of its sib­ling, the Boss DR-55, rivals like the E‑Mu Dru­mu­la­tor, and pre­de­ces­sors from the 60s and 70s like the Mae­stro Rhythm King. I do not think of the Rhyth­mi­con, nor did I know it had exist­ed until very recent­ly. I doubt many peo­ple have ever heard of it, yet it can prob­a­bly claim the title of the first drum machine—or at least first rhythm machine—ever built.

The machine came into being in 1931 when Amer­i­can com­pos­er Hen­ry Cow­ell—in search of a means of trans­lat­ing his increas­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed rhyth­mic pieces—contracted Leon Theremin, inven­tor of the musi­cal device that bears his name. Theremin came up with the Rhyth­mi­con, “a quirky, clunky, key­board-based machine that was able to play com­plex polyrhythms in pre­cise loops,” writes Peter Hol­slin at the Red Bull Music Acad­e­my Dai­ly.

Although only three mod­els of the machine were ever produced—one now lost—and Cow­ell only wrote a cou­ple of pieces for the machine before los­ing inter­est, it remains, as musi­col­o­gist Mar­garet Schedel has point­ed out, “a con­cep­tu­al leap” in instru­ment design and a direct ances­tor of today’s rhythm and sequenc­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The Rhyth­mi­con was the first for­ay into what Schedel calls “inter­ac­tiv­i­ty,” mean­ing, Hol­slin writes that “you sim­ply press a key to acti­vate a sequence—much like you can do today with the arpeg­gia­tor of a key­board….” The Rhyth­mi­con used pho­to­elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy:

The keys were each con­nect­ed to a light that turned on when you pressed them. The lights then shined through a sequence of holes punched into two discs that rotat­ed via a motor. On the oth­er side of the discs was a pho­to­elec­tric sen­sor that, when acti­vat­ed by the pat­terns of light, sent the Rhythmicon’s unique sig­nals to a tube amp and thus to a speak­er and out to daz­zled audi­ences.

Audi­ences may have been impressed by the oper­a­tion, but they were con­sid­er­ably less daz­zled by the sound of the thing. One review­er in 1932 described its range of tones as “a cross between a grunt and a snort” up to “an Indi­an war whoop.” As the video above shows, the third ver­sion of the machine—built by Theremin in the 60s from junk parts—“sounds like it’s mak­ing geese calls.”

Oth­er, lat­er rhythm machines were designed specif­i­cal­ly to recre­ate live drums, rather than sim­ply make rhyth­mic sounds. One notable entry in the his­to­ry of drum machines is the Cham­ber­lin Rhyth­mate, a tape loop drum machine designed in 1949 by Har­ry Chamberlin’s key­board com­pa­ny. Meant to accom­pa­ny an organ play­er, the device con­sist­ed of 14 tape loop record­ings of real acoustic jazz drum kits, along with per­cus­sion instru­ments like claves, cas­tanets, and bon­gos. If you’re famil­iar with the work­ings of anoth­er ear­ly elec­tron­ic instrument—one that caught on in pop music thanks to the Bea­t­les—you’ll rec­og­nize the mech­a­nism here as near­ly iden­ti­cal to that of the Mel­lotron. Cham­ber­lin invent­ed that strange, lat­er elec­tron­ic instru­ment using the same tech­nol­o­gy as he had for the Rhyth­mate.

After the Rhyth­mate came the Wurl­itzer Side­man, designed for the same purpose—to give organ­ists a rhythm sec­tion. Cre­at­ed ten years lat­er in 1959, the Side­man is known as the first mass-pro­duced drum machine. (The Rhyth­mate sold at most 100 mod­els in the six­ties.) Its tech­nol­o­gy recalls that of the Rhythmicon—it uses a series of vac­u­um tubes that pro­duce a “sequenced” sound as a rotat­ing met­al disc makes con­tact with them. And as you can hear in the demo above, the Side­man hard­ly seems to be an improve­ment on Chamberlain’s tape loop machine; though its con­trols have much more vari­a­tion, the machine’s oper­a­tion is also much nois­i­er, in an almost indus­tri­al way. We’ve like­ly all seen vari­a­tions on this design in old organs from the 60s and 70s, which began to come stan­dard with some form of elec­tro-mechan­i­cal drum machine built in.

It would take near­ly a decade after the Side­man for the devel­op­ment of drum machines that musi­cians deemed wor­thy of using as fea­tured instru­ments. One such, the Vox Per­cus­sion King from 1966, became inte­gral to one of the defin­ing moments in elec­tron­ic pop, Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” (above) from 1974. By the ear­ly eight­ies, the flood­gates of drum machine tech­nol­o­gy had opened, and dozens of com­mer­cial mod­els burst onto the scene. But despite all its short­com­ings, that very first rhythm machine, the home­ly Rhyth­mi­con, set mod­ern music on the road to “inter­ac­tiv­i­ty,” as Schedel writes, extend­ing “performer’s musi­cal capac­i­ties” and “antic­i­pat­ing the inter­ac­tive com­put­er music move­ment by sev­er­al decades.” Yet anoth­er rea­son to remem­ber the genius of Leon Theremin.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

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

 

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Some Joy for Your Ears: New Orleans Brass Band Plays Life-Affirming Cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”

in Music | March 14th, 2016

As the title sug­gests and the lyrics con­firm, Mar­vin Gaye’s 1982 R&B hit “Sex­u­al Heal­ing” had but one thing on its mind.

The Hot 8 Brass Band, above, brings an added dimen­sion to this—forgive me—seminal song, trans­form­ing it into some­thing joy­ous and life affirm­ing.

They deserve it. In their 20-year career, the band has weath­ered a stag­ger­ing array of hard­ships. Sev­er­al mem­bers have died unex­pect­ed­ly and way too soon, includ­ing 17-year-old trum­pet play­er, Jacob John­son, exe­cut­ed dur­ing a home inva­sion, and a 22-year-old trom­bon­ist, Joseph Williams, who was shot by the New Orleans police offi­cers who stopped him en route to play a church funer­al. Anoth­er band mem­ber lost both of his legs in a hor­rif­ic acci­dent. The group was dis­placed by Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na, which dam­aged their homes, killed one member’s grand­moth­er and brought a halt to pay­ing gigs.

Brass has heal­ing pow­ers too, to a degree that became appar­ent when the band returned to New Orleans, play­ing free, spur-of-the-moment shows for Kat­ri­na evac­uees still stew­ing in shel­ters around the city. The media took note, set­ting off a chain reac­tion that led to an appear­ance in Spike Lee’s doc­u­men­tary, When The Lev­ees Broke. Their UK record label, Tru Thoughts, signed them on the strength of their “Sex­u­al Heal­ing” cov­er.

As Ben­nie Pete, Hot 8’s band leader and tuba play­er, told Esquire:

When real­i­ty strikes like that you can’t real­ly do noth­in’ but be stronger. We got stronger from it. We leaned on each oth­er. The music has been there to help us. You have to rise to the occa­sion. And then you keep answer­ing ques­tions, being inter­viewed about it. You got­ta keep reliv­ing it. But on the oth­er side, you under­stand that peo­ple who aren’t from New Orleans wan­na know what we’re going through, they’re con­cerned. So it’s our duty, part of our job to be able to suck it up and deal with it, and spread it to the world. It hurts you on the inside to keep on reliv­ing these sit­u­a­tions but you owe it to your mates, to get their life sto­ries out there as far as you can.

I expe­ri­enced some queasi­ness mid­way through the video, when the band leaves their sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed out­door rehearsal area for a more pub­lic thor­ough­fare. I saw plen­ty of enthu­si­asm among the gath­ered crowd, but no black faces out­side of the band’s.

Uh…

A lit­tle research reveals that the video was shot not in New Orleans (where I have nev­er been), but while the band’s 20th Anniver­sary tour paused in Brighton (Eng­land) where Tru Thoughts is based.

Not want­i­ng to be guilty I checked the cen­sus records. In 2011, Brighton was 94.3% white, with the Black and Black British com­mu­ni­ty con­sti­tut­ing just 0.8% of the non-white pop­u­la­tion. And while geo­graph­i­cal­ly, it’s not exact­ly the oppo­site end of the earth from New Orleans, it is far enough that Pete can claim the video as a metaphor for how far the band has come:

It is a great moment cap­tured, and it also shows as a band we are deter­mined to live out our dreams and for­tu­nate enough to be able to share them with the world; a lot of brass bands, and oth­er musi­cians for that mat­ter, for some rea­son or anoth­er do not get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so.… And the ulti­mate to top it off is to be trav­el­ling inter­na­tion­al­ly while doing it, you know, being a few black kids from a lit­tle town down south in New Orleans, to go from prac­tis­ing our music in a local park to trav­el­ling abroad play­ing sold out shows is a beau­ti­ful thing to say the least.

To round off the anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, Tru Thoughts recent­ly released an album of “Sex­u­al Heal­ing” Hot 8 remix­es. It’s a love­ly idea, this trib­ute, but for me, Hot 8’s posi­tion is secure. So for that mat­ter Gaye’s (whose orig­i­nal video is below).

Spo­ti­fy users can lis­ten to the “Sex­u­al Heal­ing Remix­es” for free here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­vin Gaye’s Clas­sic Vocals on ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’: The A Cap­pel­la Ver­sion

Guns N’ Ros­es “Sweet Child O’ Mine” Retooled as 1920s New Orleans Jazz

Miles Davis Cov­ers Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” (1983)

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

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Free: Download 500+ Rare Music Manuscripts by Mozart, Bach, Chopin & Other Composers from the Morgan Library

in Creativity, Museums, Music, Opera | March 14th, 2016

mozart 1

When my son first start­ed play­ing the piano, I lost sev­er­al evenings chas­ing the holy grail of free online sheet music. Sad­ly, most of what we were inter­est­ed in down­load­ing wasn’t real­ly free… just the first page.

It’s hard to ratio­nal­ize drop­ping five bucks on one song, when the New York Pub­lic Library for the Per­form­ing Arts is a short sub­way ride away. The prob­lem is, I’m not much of a musi­cian, and while there are scores and scores of scores upon their shelves, I rarely under­stood what it was I was check­ing out. Often I’d come home with the sought after piece, only to real­ize that I’d inad­ver­tent­ly checked out a vocal selec­tion, or the chord-rich equiv­a­lent of a cock­tail pianist’s fake book.

With the Mor­gan Library’s Music Man­u­scripts Online project, there’s no guar­an­tee my son or I will be able to play it, but I do know exact­ly what I’m get­ting.

The hand­writ­ten man­u­script of Mozart’s com­ic singspiel, Der Schaus­pieldirek­tor,  above, for instance, auto­graphed by the com­pos­er him­self. 84 pages worth, not count­ing cov­ers and end­pa­pers, all free for the down­load­ing!

Put that on your iPad, Mr. Salieri!

The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly offers dig­i­tized ver­sions of upwards of 500 musi­cal man­u­scripts, with more to come as the review­ing process con­tin­ues.

It’s search­able by com­pos­er, and big names abound.

bach 2

Per­haps you’d like to warm up the Wurl­tiz­er with Bach’s Toc­ca­ta and Fugue for Organ, BWV 538, in D minor…

puccini

Or let all your opera singing, bal­let danc­ing friends know you’re avail­able to accom­pa­ny them with Puccini’s auto­graphed man­u­script for Le Vil­li…

chopin

Or cir­cum­nav­i­gate the scrib­bled out boo boos, while attempt­ing Chopin’s Polon­ais­es, Piano, Op. 26. Chopin’s John Han­cock is the reward.

The hits just keep com­ing: Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Fau­ré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Schu­bert, Schu­mann…

Mendelssohn

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, female com­posers are gross­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed, but there are a few gems, such as Mendelssohn’s sis­ter Fan­ny Hensel’s auto­graphed man­u­script of the song Sel­mar und Sel­ma, dec­o­rat­ed with a pret­ty pen­cil and wash draw­ing by her hus­band

The Mor­gan has plans to add essays about the man­u­scripts by lead­ing schol­ars. In the mean­time, pick a piece and start prac­tic­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

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

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Who’s Out There?: Orson Welles Narrates a Documentary Asking Whether There’s Extraterrestrial Life in the Universe (1975)

in Science, Television | March 14th, 2016

Does intel­li­gent life exist else­where in the uni­verse? The ques­tion has cap­ti­vat­ed humankind for cen­turies upon cen­turies; long before the X‑Files pop­u­lar­ized the dec­la­ra­tion, we’ve want­ed to believe. But this curios­i­ty-dri­ven desire goes hand-in-hand with mor­tal fear: what if intel­li­gent life does exist else­where in the uni­verse, and it decides to come to Earth and exter­mi­nate us? Turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry sci-fi mas­ter H.G. Wells tapped into that emo­tion­al cur­rent with The War of the Worlds; forty years lat­er, Orson Welles tapped it deep­er still with his adap­ta­tion of Wells’ nov­el, “a cer­tain noto­ri­ous radio broad­cast which some of you may remem­ber.”

That’s how Welles puts it from the nar­ra­tor’s seat of Who’s Out There?, a half-hour tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1971. “It starts off strong with its Doc­tor Who-esque cred­its sequence,” writes io9’s Katharine Tren­da­cos­ta. “Then Welles talks about becom­ing friends with H.G. Wells after his infa­mous War of the Worlds radio play. Then they inter­view peo­ple who had been scared by the broad­cast. It gets bare­ly more nor­mal as it goes on. Once Carl Sagan showed up, my head explod­ed.”

I lis­tened to Welles’ War of the Worlds over and over again on tape as a kid, but by that time it had already passed into the realm of his­tor­i­cal arti­fact. When Who’s Out There? debuted, how­ev­er, that infa­mous Hal­loween broad­cast had aired less than 35 years before (Who’s Out There? itself, by com­par­i­son, aired 45 years ago), so the fright it caused remained in liv­ing mem­o­ry. Even more recent­ly, David Bowie had cap­i­tal­ized artis­ti­cal­ly on a new wave of out­er-space fas­ci­na­tion with “Space Odd­i­ty” in 1969 and, more direct­ly, “Life on Mars?” two years lat­er.

“Life on Mars?” acts as more or less the ani­mat­ing ques­tion of this doc­u­men­tary, which both exam­ines the then-cur­rent evi­dence for such a phe­nom­e­non, on the Red Plan­et or else­where, and pon­ders why we so often assume that vis­i­tors from out­er space will come with malev­o­lent inten­tions. (Welles won­ders aloud if it has to do with our hav­ing named Mars after the Roman god of war, and I sup­pose he has a point.) Still, our curios­i­ty has­n’t gone away, as evi­denced by Exo­Mars, the joint mis­sion of the Euro­pean Space Agency and the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Space Agency which today launch­es probes out to search for, yes, life on mars. If who­ev­er’s out there won’t come to us, well then, we’ll just have to go to them.

Find more doc­u­men­taries in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

Leonard Nimoy Nar­rates Short Film About NASA’s Dawn: A Voy­age to the Ori­gins of the Solar Sys­tem

The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Sem­i­nal Sci-Fi Nov­el The War of the Worlds

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

Free NASA eBook The­o­rizes How We Will Com­mu­ni­cate with Aliens

Future Shock: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1972 Film About the Per­ils of Tech­no­log­i­cal Change

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” a Quote Falsely Attributed to Edmund Burke

in History, Politics | March 13th, 2016

edmund burke

“The only thing nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil is for good men to do noth­ing.” It’s a quote rou­tine­ly attrib­uted to Edmund Burke. But it turns out false­ly so. Appar­ent­ly, he nev­er uttered these words. At best, the essence of the quote can be traced back to the util­i­tar­i­an philoso­pher John Stu­art Mill, who deliv­ered an 1867 inau­gur­al address at the Uni­ver­si­ty of St. Andrews and stat­ed: “Let not any one paci­fy his con­science by the delu­sion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opin­ion. Bad men need noth­ing more to com­pass their ends, than that good men should look on and do noth­ing. He is not a good man who, with­out a protest, allows wrong to be com­mit­ted in his name, and with the means which he helps to sup­ply, because he will not trou­ble him­self to use his mind on the sub­ject.”

If you came to this page look­ing for Burke to help sup­port ideas of social upheaval, we’d sug­gest watch­ing the video below, or bet­ter yet read­ing Reflec­tions on the Rev­o­lu­tion in France, a fun­da­men­tal text in the canon of con­ser­v­a­tive lit­er­a­ture where Burke cau­tioned against abrupt or vio­lent social change.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

A His­to­ry of Ideas: Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain The­o­ries of Simone de Beau­voir, Edmund Burke & Oth­er Philoso­phers

What Books Did Wun­derkind Philoso­pher J.S. Mill Read Between Ages 3 and 7?: Plato’s Apol­o­gy (in Ancient Greek), Cer­vantes’ Don Quixote & Much More

Jere­my Bentham’s Mum­mi­fied Body Is Still on Display–Much Like Oth­er Aging British Rock Stars

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