Lost Depeche Mode Documentary Is Now Online: Watch Our Hobby is Depeche Mode

Like bud­ding ten-year-old pale­on­tol­o­gists with their dinosaur guides, music nerds who came of age in the 80s and 90s might spend whole days read­ing about obscure one-off bands and indie, punk, and alter­na­tive giants from all over the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in Ira Rob­bins’ ency­clo­pe­dic Trouser Press Record Guide ref­er­ence books. Their crit­i­cal entries were notable espe­cial­ly for what they were not: fan trib­utes.

Just the oth­er day, for exam­ple, I was brows­ing through the Trouser Press Guide to ‘90s Rock and was star­tled to read that Depeche Mode’s 101, a live album I lis­tened to repeat­ed­ly in my moody mid­dle school years, offered “per­ma­nent evi­dence of the band’s—a pitch-impaired singer cru­ci­fied on racks of keyboards—concert inad­e­qua­cy.”

This, I protest­ed, is too much.

But, I admit, that album, played at full vol­ume in head­phones, once car­ried me as an ado­les­cent through a grim three-day trek across the coun­try, in a van with my frac­tious fam­i­ly, dri­ving the entire length of Arkansas in sub-zero late Decem­ber and spend­ing New Years’ Eve in a motel room in a des­o­late nowheresville out­side Pine Bluff, AR.

My sense that there might be a roman­ti­cal­ly gloomy, weird­ly seduc­tive world beyond the frost­ed win­dows of our shab­by Ford Club Wag­on is what I will always asso­ciate with the album, its musi­cal mer­its aside. (That and a seri­ous crush on some­one who real­ly loved Depeche Mode.) I can’t remem­ber if I’ve lis­tened to it since.

It’s true Depeche Mode got a lot of mileage out of a lim­it­ed range of skills and musi­cal ideas, but that seems to be no valid crit­i­cism in pop music. The best pop songs are those peo­ple expe­ri­ence as oper­at­ic state­ments of their own emo­tion­al lives. As we see in the open­ing scenes of the Depeche Mode doc­u­men­tary above, Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode, their most fer­vent Eng­lish fans believe that they too might be Depeche Mode.

U.S., Mex­i­can, and Russ­ian fans roman­ti­ciz­ing Basil­don, Depeche Mode’s home­town, as a placid Eng­lish vil­lage say more about their own long­ings than about the band’s sound. Depeche Mode may have looked like a New Wave boy band in the 80s, but that was also the decade in which they were at their nois­i­est and most exper­i­men­tal, “seam­less­ly blend­ing con­crète sounds—factory din, clank­ing chains and so forth—into the music,” writes Trouser Press.

The sound—says one Eng­lish fan of “Depeche” from its beginnings—“came from the bricks” of Basil­don, a grit­ty place with fre­quent fight­ing in the streets. The bulk of the dense­ly crowd­ed town’s con­crete blocks, and fac­to­ries sprang up after WWII, a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty cre­at­ed to house the Lon­don pop­u­la­tion dis­placed by the bomb­ings. What set Depeche Mode apart from their syn­th­pop peers and inspi­ra­tions (aside from Siouxsie Sioux and Damned-inspired fetish cos­play) was the indus­tri­al noise that pop­u­lat­ed their sac­cha­rine off-key bal­lads and naughty S&M tracks.

The sound of work­ing-class streets embed­ded in their music drew fans from Moscow—where singer Dave Gahan’s birth­day has become an unof­fi­cial hol­i­day. Their music is “tech­nol­o­gy, the sounds of life, of real­i­ty,” says one Mus­covite fan above. Depeche Mode bootlegs, which spread over the Sovi­et world, get par­tial cred­it for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fans in Tehran risk severe pun­ish­ment from the Islam­ic author­i­ties for lis­ten­ing to illic­it copies of their albums.

They became gloomi­er, more navel-gaz­ing and “dis­mal,” our Trouser Press crit­ic writes, and the quirky sounds of Basil­don seemed to fade away, replaced by the cav­ernous reverb and goth-blues gui­tar riffs of their 90s apoth­e­o­sis. Their appeal to sen­si­tive and trou­bled kids every­where remained as pow­er­ful, if not more so. Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode doc­u­ments the band’s spread around the world in ded­i­cat­ed fan com­mu­ni­ties. Made in 2007, the film mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared and has only just resur­faced recent­ly, as Dan­ger­ous Minds reports. “No one’s quite sure what hap­pened there.”

It will be inter­est­ing to com­pare this redis­cov­ered doc­u­ment with a new Depeche Mode movie, Spir­its in the For­est, get­ting a the­atri­cal release Novem­ber 21st. Shot by Anton Cor­bi­jn, the film, as you can see from trail­er (above), also keeps its focus on the fans, mix­ing six sto­ries, writes Rolling Stone, “shot in each of their home­towns, with footage of the con­cert” in Berlin pro­mot­ing the band’s newest album Spir­it.

They may nev­er have been the great­est live band or most accom­plished of musi­cians, but Depeche Mode has always known how to work a crowd, and how to speak to the pri­vate long­ings of every indi­vid­ual fan. What more can one ask of inter­na­tion­al pop stars? Gahan says in a state­ment about the new con­cert film, a tra­di­tion that reached its apex with the 101 doc­u­men­tary com­pan­ion to the album, “It’s amaz­ing to see the very real ways that music has impact­ed the lives of our fans.” He’s talk­ing about an evi­dent con­nec­tion that spans gen­er­a­tions and cross­es many unlike­ly cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, and nation­al bound­aries.

Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries.

The film by  Jere­my Deller & Nicholas Abra­hams is host­ed on Abra­hams’ Vimeo chan­nel.

via The Qui­etus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

The Cure Per­formed the Entire “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” Album on the 30th Anniver­sary of Its Release: Watch The Com­plete Con­cert Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

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

Hear a Full-Cast Reading of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, the Sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

A good heads up from Metafil­ter. They write:

Avail­able for a lim­it­ed time, BBC Radio 4 has a full-cast abridged read­ing of Mar­garet Atwood’s new nov­el, The Tes­ta­ments. This sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale picks up 15 years after the events in the pre­vi­ous book (very mild­ly reveal­ing review of The Tes­ta­ments by Anne Enright). All 14-minute episodes have now been released: The first episode is avail­able until Oct. 15, 2019; the fif­teenth and final episode is avail­able until Oct. 30.

Stream it all here. And find more audio books in our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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:

Mar­garet Atwood Offers a New Online Class on Cre­ative Writ­ing

Pret­ty Much Pop #10 Exam­ines Mar­garet Atwood’s Night­mare Vision: The Handmaid’s Tale

Hear Mar­garet Atwood’s Sto­ry “Stone Mat­tress,” Read by Author A. M. Homes

See Why Ginger Baker (RIP) Was One of the Greatest Drummers in Rock & World Music

When talk of clas­sic rock drum­mers turns to Kei­th Moon and John Bon­ham, I smile and nod. What’s the point in argu­ing? They were both, in their dis­tinc­tive ways, incredible—and in their ear­ly deaths, immor­tal leg­ends. Who knows what their careers would have looked like had either lived past 32? But tru­ly, for the all-around breadth of his influ­ence, for the amount of respect he gained in musi­cal cir­cles around the world, no greater clas­sic rock drum­mer ever lived, in my opin­ion, than Gin­ger Bak­er, may he final­ly rest in peace.

The famous­ly rest­less, vio­lent­ly can­tan­ker­ous drum­mer died yes­ter­day at age 80, out­liv­ing most of his peers, despite liv­ing twice as hard for well over twice as long as many of them—a feat of strength we might impute to his ath­let­ic phys­i­cal sta­mi­na and fright­en­ing will.

Like Moon and Bon­ham, he com­bined raw pow­er with seri­ous jazz chops. (Bak­er insist­ed he nev­er played rock drums at all.) After his polyrhyth­mic pum­mel­ing defined the sound of super­groups Cream and Blind Faith, he burned out and moved to Africa to find sobri­ety and new sounds.

Bak­er trav­eled the con­ti­nent with Fela Kuti to learn its rhythms, record­ing live with Kuti’s band in ’71. Afrobeat drum­mer Tony Allen remarked that he under­stood “the African beat more than any oth­er West­ern­er.” (See him jam­ming in Lagos fur­ther down.) Baker’s discog­ra­phy includes clas­sic records with Eric Clap­ton and Jack Bruce, Kuti, Hawk­wind, and oth­er leg­ends. He trav­eled the world play­ing drums for over fifty years. Why, then, did he have such a low pro­file for much of his lat­er life? A 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er, based on a 2009 Rolling Stone arti­cle, offers some answers.

Baker’s seri­ous drug addic­tion and ter­ri­fy­ing per­son­al­i­ty alien­at­ed near­ly every­one around him. The doc­u­men­tary opens with an endorse­ment from anoth­er prick­ly and unlik­able red-haired char­ac­ter, John Lydon (for­mer­ly John­ny Rot­ten), whose Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed is yet anoth­er project Bak­er ele­vat­ed with his play­ing. “He helped me rise,” says Lydon, and Bak­er would no doubt agree. He was not a mod­est man. He was, by most accounts, a right bas­tard, through and through, all of his life.

But he was too con­trar­i­an to be dis­missed as a mere nar­cis­sist. As a musi­cian, for exam­ple, he always thought of him­self as a sup­port­ing play­er. “I nev­er had a style,” he said in 2013. “I play to what I hear, so who­ev­er I’m play­ing with, what they play has a great influ­ence on what I play, because I lis­ten to what peo­ple are play­ing.” His skill at destroy­ing per­son­al rela­tion­ships was matched by his abil­i­ty for form­ing deep, awe-inspir­ing, if short-lived, musi­cal con­nec­tions. It’s a dichoto­my many drum­mers inspired by him have strug­gled to reconcile—taking lessons from Bak­er the drum­mer but not from Bak­er the man.

How do we sep­a­rate the man from his art? Why try? His mad pirate life makes for an epic saga, and Bak­er is a wild­ly excit­ing main char­ac­ter. He had ear­ly ambi­tions of becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al cyclist. Though they didn’t pan out, he always retained the char­ac­ter­is­tics: he was both fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive and fierce­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Lat­er he picked up an even more rar­i­fied team sport—polo—keeping a sta­ble of hors­es on his gat­ed South African ranch, where he lived in his old age like a colo­nial ex-baron in a Nadine Gordimer nov­el. (He even­tu­al­ly had to sell the spread and move back to Lon­don.)

Bak­er was nev­er one to make apolo­gies, so his fans need not make any on his behalf. See him in some clas­sic per­for­mances above—at the top, solo­ing after an inter­view, at Cream’s Roy­al Albert Hall farewell con­cert; then play­ing a solo in a Cream reunion in that same venue almost forty years lat­er. After footage of him jam­ming in Lagos in 1971, we see what the inter­net calls the “BEST DRUM SOLO EVER,” fur­ther up. Just above, meet the man him­self, in all his unre­pen­tant glo­ry, and hear from those who knew him best, in the full doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Who Are the Best Drum Soloists in Rock? See Leg­endary Per­for­mances by John Bon­ham, Kei­th Moon, Neil Peart, Ter­ry Bozzio & More

Kei­th Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zep­pelin in What Would Be His Last Live Per­for­mance (1977)

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

Do Octopi Dream? An Astonishing Nature Documentary Suggests They Do

With regard to the sleep­ing and wak­ing of ani­mals, all crea­tures that are red-blood­ed and pro­vid­ed with legs give sen­si­ble proof that they go to sleep and that they wak­en up from sleep; for, as a mat­ter of fact, all ani­mals that are fur­nished with eye­lids shut them up when they go to sleep. 

Fur­ther­more, it would appear that not only do men dream, but hors­es also, and dogs, and oxen; aye, and sheep, and goats, and all vivip­a­rous quadrupeds; and dogs show their dream­ing by bark­ing in their sleep. With regard to oviparous ani­mals we can­not be sure that they dream, but most undoubt­ed­ly they sleep. 

And the same may be said of water ani­mals, such as fish­es, mol­luscs, crus­taceans, to wit craw­fish and the like. These ani­mals sleep with­out doubt, although their sleep is of very short dura­tion. The proof of their sleep­ing can­not be got from the con­di­tion of their eyes-for none of these crea­tures are fur­nished with eyelids—but can be obtained only from their motion­less repose.

-Aris­to­tle, The His­to­ry of Ani­mals, Book IV, Part 10,350 B.C.E

2,369 years lat­er, Marine Biol­o­gist David Scheel, a pro­fes­sor at Alas­ka Pacif­ic Uni­ver­si­ty, wit­nessed a star­tling event, above, that allowed him to expand on Aristotle’s obser­va­tions, at least as far as eight-armed cephalo­pod mollusks—or octopi—are con­cerned

Appar­ent­ly, they dream.

Scheel, whose spe­cial­ties include preda­tor-prey ecol­o­gy and cephalo­pod biol­o­gy, is afford­ed an above-aver­age amount of qual­i­ty time with these alien ani­mals, cour­tesy of Hei­di, an octo­pus cyanea (or day octo­pus) who inhab­its a large tank of salt water in his liv­ing room.

Scheel’s usu­al beat is cold water species such as the giant Pacif­ic octo­pus. Hei­di, who earned her name by shy­ly stick­ing to the far­thest recess­es of her arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment upon arrival, belongs to a warmer water species who are active dur­ing the day. Very active. Once she real­ized that Scheel and his 16-year-old daugh­ter, Lau­rel, were instru­ments of food deliv­ery, she came out of her shell, so to speak.

The hours she keeps affords her plen­ty of stim­u­lat­ing play­time with Lau­rel, who’s thrilled to have an ani­mal pal who’s less ambiva­lent than her pet gold­fish and out­door rab­bit.

Mean­while, the co-hous­ing arrange­ment pro­vides Pro­fes­sor Scheel with an inti­ma­cy that’s impos­si­ble to achieve in the lab.

He was not expect­ing the aston­ish­ing noc­tur­nal behav­ior he record­ed, above, for the hour-long PBS Nature doc­u­men­tary Octo­pus: Mak­ing Con­tact.

As Hei­di slept, she changed col­ors, rapid­ly cycling through pat­terns that cor­re­spond to her hunt­ing prac­tices. Scheel walks view­ers through:

So, here she’s asleep, she sees a crab, and her col­or starts to change a lit­tle bit.

Then she turns all dark.

Octo­pus­es will do that when they leave the bot­tom.

This is a cam­ou­flage, like she’s just sub­dued a crab and now she’s going to sit there and eat it and she does­n’t want any­one to notice her.

It’s a very unusu­al behav­ior to see the col­or come and go on her man­tel like that.

I mean, just to be able to see all the dif­fer­ent col­or pat­terns just flash­ing, one after anoth­er.

You don’t usu­al­ly see that when an ani­mal is sleep­ing.

This real­ly is fas­ci­nat­ing.

But, yeah, if she’s dream­ing, that’s the dream.

As dreams go, the nar­ra­tive Scheel sup­plies for Hei­di seems extreme­ly mun­dane. Per­haps some­where out on a coral reef, anoth­er octo­pus cyanea is dream­ing she’s trapped inside a small glass room, feast­ing on eas­i­ly got­ten crab and occa­sion­al­ly crawl­ing up a teenaged human’s arm.

Watch the full episode for free through Octo­ber 31 here.

via Laugh­ing Squid/This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent with an Octo­pus on His Head: Kick­start The Veep­to­pus Book

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

Envi­ron­ment & Nat­ur­al Resources: Free Online Cours­es 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC tonight, Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Watch Animated Scores of Beethoven’s 16 String Quartets: An Early Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of His Birth

Two years ago we post­ed about a music lover’s life’s work–Stephen Mali­nows­ki aka sma­lin on YouTube–and how he has pro­duced ani­mat­ed, side-scrolling scores to clas­si­cal music. Old­er folks will liken them to neon piano rolls. Youngun’s will see a bit of Gui­tar Hero or Rock Band game design in their march of col­or­ful shapes danc­ing to every­thing from Bach to Debussy.

Mali­nows­ki let us know that he just recent­ly com­plet­ed a major work: adapt­ing all of Beethoven’s String Quar­tets into his par­tic­u­lar, always evolv­ing style. And for this he turned to San Francisco’s Alexan­der String Quar­tet for their record­ings. Says the ani­ma­tor:

I made my first graph­i­cal scores in the 1970s, my first ani­mat­ed graph­i­cal score in 1985, and the first of these for a move­ment of a Beethoven string quar­tet in 2010. In 2014 I began col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Alexan­der String Quar­tet on select­ed move­ments of Beethoven string quar­tets, and in the ear­ly months of 2019 we decid­ed to hon­or the 250th anniver­sary of Beethoven’s birth by extend­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion to the full set. [Note: that anniver­sary will offi­cial­ly take place next year.]

One impor­tant point: Mali­nows­ki does not choose col­ors ran­dom­ly or because they are pret­ty. Instead, he uses “Har­mon­ic Col­or­ing”:

I’ve assigned blue to be the “home pitch” (the ton­ic, notataed Roman numer­al “I”) because that seemed the most “set­tled,” and cho­sen the blue-toward-red direc­tion as the I‑toward‑V direc­tion because motion toward the dom­i­nant (“V”) seems more “active” com­pared with motion toward the sub­dom­i­nant (“IV”).

This might not make sense just by read­ing it, but head to this page to see how the col­or wheel looks. There you can see how clas­si­cal music has evolved from the Renais­sance (most­ly stay­ing with the sev­en pitch­es in an octave) to the rad­i­cal changes of Brahms and then through Debussy to Stravin­sky, where it is a riot of col­or.

Beethoven wrote 16 string quar­tets between 1798 and 1826, as well as a Große Fuge includ­ed here that only had one move­ment, and gained a noto­ri­ety in its day as being a chaot­ic, inac­ces­si­ble mess. (They were wrong). The last five, known at the Late Quar­tets, were writ­ten in the last three years of his life. He was com­plete­ly deaf by this time, suf­fer­ing from all sorts of med­ical issues, recov­er­ing from brush­es with death, and yet… the Late Quar­tets are con­sid­ered by many to be his mas­ter­pieces, even more notable giv­en that he had come to the quar­tet form lat­er than oth­er com­posers and wracked with doubt about his tal­ents.

The final move­ment of his final string quar­tet (No. 16) was the last com­plete work Beethoven would ever write. At the top of the score he wrote “Must it be? It must be!” Death was at the door.

For those ready to learn or ready to revis­it these chal­leng­ing works, Mali­nows­ki has made it a treat for the eyes as well as the ears. See the com­plete playlist of ani­mat­ed string quar­tets here. Or stream them all, from start to fin­ish, below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did Beethoven Com­pose His 9th Sym­pho­ny After He Went Com­plete­ly Deaf?

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Patti Smith Sings “People Have the Power” with a Choir of 250 Fellow Singers

…peo­ple have the pow­er

To redeem the work of fools

—Pat­ti Smith

As protest songs go, “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” by God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith and her late hus­band Fred Son­ic Smith is a true upper.

The goal was to recap­ture some of the ener­gy they’d felt as youth activists, com­ing togeth­er to protest the Viet­nam War. As Pat­ti declared in an NME Song Sto­ries seg­ment:

… what we want­ed to do was remind the lis­ten­er of their indi­vid­ual pow­er but also of the col­lec­tive pow­er of the peo­ple, how we can do any­thing. That’s why at the end it goes, “I believe every­thing we dream can come to pass, through our union we can turn the world around, we can turn the earth’s rev­o­lu­tion.” We wrote it con­scious­ly togeth­er to inspire peo­ple, to inspire peo­ple to come togeth­er.

Sad­ly, Fred Smith, who died in 1994, nev­er saw it per­formed live. But his wid­ow has car­ried it around the world, and wit­nessed its joy­ful trans­for­ma­tive pow­er.

Wit­ness the glow­ing faces of 250 vol­un­teer singers who gath­ered in New York City’s Pub­lic The­ater lob­by to per­form the song as part of the Onas­sis Fes­ti­val 2019: Democ­ra­cy Is Com­ing last spring.

The event was staged by Choir! Choir! Choir!, a Cana­di­an orga­ni­za­tion whose com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty build­ing vis-à-vis week­ly drop-in singing ses­sions at a Toron­to tav­ern has grown to include some star­ry names and world-renowned venues, rais­ing major char­i­ta­ble funds along the way.

As per Choir! Choir! Choir!’s oper­at­ing instruc­tions, there were no audi­tions. The singers didn’t need to know how to read music, or even sing par­tic­u­lar­ly well, as par­tic­i­pant Elyse Orec­chio described in a blog post:

The man behind me exu­ber­ant­ly deliv­ered his off-pitch notes loud­ly into my ear. But to whine about that sort of thing goes against the spir­it of the night. This was a democ­ra­cy: the people’s cho­rus.

Direc­tor Sarah Hugh­es had been hav­ing “one of those the­ater nerd Sat­ur­days,” and was grab­bing a post-Pub­lic-mati­nee sal­ad pri­or to an evening show uptown, when she bumped into friends who asked if she want­ed to sing with Pat­ti Smith and a com­mu­ni­ty choir:

I’m work­ing on play­wright Chana Porter and com­pos­er Deepali Gupta’s Dear­ly Beloved, a med­i­ta­tion on pro­duc­tive despair for com­mu­ni­ty choir, and have been hav­ing beau­ti­ful, enlight­en­ing expe­ri­ences mak­ing music with large groups of non-singers, so I was curi­ous about what this might be like. 

And it was love­ly. Just singing at all is always very great, even though I am not “good at it.” Singing along with all the oth­er peo­ple in the room felt espe­cial­ly good. 

The Choir! Choir! Choir! lead­ers were gen­er­ous, had a sense of humor, and weren’t afraid to tell us when we sound­ed ter­ri­ble, which was refresh­ing. 

We learned our parts and then I ate my sal­ad stand­ing in the Pub­lic lob­by while we wait­ed for Pat­ti. She took a longer time to arrive than they’d planned for, I think, but it was because she was at a cli­mate cri­sis ral­ly so we weren’t mad. And she was just very ful­ly her­self. 

I’m not like a die-hard Pat­ti Smith fan, but I sort of fell in love with her after read­ing her beau­ti­ful recount­ing of mess­ing up while singing “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” at Dylan’s Nobel Prize cer­e­mo­ny. This expe­ri­ence made me appre­ci­ate her even more—her human­i­ty, her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, the strange­ness of being famous or rec­og­nized or hero­ic to many many peo­ple. And she real­ly did lead us, in this very spe­cial, sim­ple, real way. It remind­ed me of how lit­tle we real­ly need in the way of mon­ey or pro­duc­tion val­ues or even tal­ent for a per­for­mance or pub­lic event to feel worth our time.

The film reflects that sense of the extra­or­di­nary co-exist­ing glo­ri­ous­ly with the ordi­nary:

An unim­pressed lit­tle girl eats a peach.

Two young staffers in Pub­lic The­ater t‑shirts seem both sheep­ish and thrilled when the film crew zeroes in on them singing along.

Gui­tarist and Choir! Choir! Choir! co-founder Dav­eed Gold­man near­ly bonks Pat­ti in the head with the neck of his instru­ment.

Also? That’s the Police’s Stew­art Copeland play­ing the fry­ing pan.

Next up on Choir! Choir! Choir!’s agen­da is an Octo­ber 13th con­cert at California’s Board­er Field State Park, with some 300 peo­ple on the Tijua­na side and 500 on the San Diego side rais­ing their voic­es togeth­er on Lennon and McCartney’s “With a Lit­tle Help from My Friends.” More infor­ma­tion on that, and oth­er stops on their fall tour, here.

Sign up to be noti­fied next time Choir! Choir! Choir! is look­ing for singers in your area here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith, The God­moth­er of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pic­tures on Insta­gram

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Octo­ber 7 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domaincel­e­brates the art of Aubrey Beard­s­ley. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

When Ted Turner Tried to Colorize Citizen Kane: See the Only Surviving Scene from the Great Act of Cinematic Sacrilege

Could there be a greater act of cin­e­mat­ic sac­ri­lege than col­oriz­ing Cit­i­zen Kane? For most of the past 78 years since its pre­miere, Orson Welles’ debut fea­ture has been wide­ly con­sid­ered the great­est motion pic­ture ever made: wit­ness, for instance, its dom­i­na­tion of Sight & Sound mag­a­zine’s crit­ics poll from 1962 until its slip to sec­ond place under Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Ver­ti­go in 2012. Artis­ti­cal­ly inno­v­a­tive in ways that still influ­ence movies today, it would seem that Cit­i­zen Kane requires no help from sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions. But that did­n’t stop Ted Turn­er, the media mogul whose pre­vi­ous col­oriza­tions of Casablan­caKing Kong, and The Philadel­phia Sto­ry had already dis­heart­ened not just lovers of clas­sic Hol­ly­wood films but those films’ sur­viv­ing mak­ers as well.

“Turn­er Enter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny, which had obtained the home video rights to Cit­i­zen Kane in 1986, announced with much fan­fare on Jan­u­ary 29, 1989 its plans to col­orize Welles’ first Hol­ly­wood movie,” writes Ray Kel­ly at Wellesnet. “There was an imme­di­ate back­lash with the Welles estate and Direc­tors Guild of Amer­i­ca threat­en­ing legal action.”

Welles him­self had died in 1985, but the film­mak­er Hen­ry Jaglom quot­ed the direc­tor of Cit­i­zen Kane as impor­tun­ing him not to “let Ted Turn­er deface my movie with his crayons.” Ulti­mate­ly Turn­er’s crayons were indeed stayed, but for legal rea­sons: a review of Welles’ ini­tial con­tract with RKO “revealed he had been giv­en absolute artis­tic con­trol over his first Hol­ly­wood film, which it spec­i­fied would be a black-and-white pic­ture” — an odd spec­i­fi­ca­tion to declare back in 1940, but declared nonethe­less.

Before that dis­cov­ery, “a team at Col­or Sys­tems Tech­nol­o­gy Inc. in Mari­na del Rey, Cal­i­for­nia” had already “secret­ly col­orized a por­tion of Orson Welles’ land­mark black and white film”: its final ten min­utes, Rose­bud and all. The only known sur­viv­ing footage of this project — which took Cit­i­zen Kane and not just col­orized it but also, of course, reduced it to the res­o­lu­tion and aspect ratio of 1980s tele­vi­sion — is includ­ed in the BBC Are­na doc­u­men­tary The Com­plete Cit­i­zen Kane, the rel­e­vant clip of which appears at the top of the post. Kel­ly quotes William Scha­ef­fer, assis­tant art direc­tor at CST at the time, as remem­ber­ing the results fond­ly: “I thought it looked fine.” Then again, Scha­ef­fer had nev­er actu­al­ly seen the real Cit­i­zen Kane — and as for the rest of us, we per­haps breathe a lit­tle eas­i­er know­ing that Ver­ti­go is already in col­or.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Jorge Luis Borges Reviews Cit­i­zen Kane — and Gets a Response from Orson Welles

Don­ald Decon­structs Cit­i­zen Kane

Watch the New Trail­er for Orson Welles’ Lost Film, The Oth­er Side of the Wind: A Glimpse of Footage from the Final­ly Com­plet­ed Film

Metrop­o­lis Remixed: Fritz Lang’s Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Sci-Fi Clas­sic Gets Ful­ly Col­orized and Dubbed

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 or on Face­book.

The Morals That Determine Whether We’re Liberal, Conservative, or Libertarian

An old friend once wrote a line I’ll nev­er for­get: “There are two kinds of peo­ple in the world, then there are infi­nite­ly many more.” It always comes to mind when I con­front bina­ry gen­er­al­iza­tions that I’m told define two equal­ly oppos­ing posi­tions, but rarely cap­ture, with any accu­ra­cy, the com­plex­i­ty and con­trari­ness of human beings—even when said humans live inside the same coun­try.

Vot­ing pat­terns, social media bub­bles, and major net­work info­tain­ment can make it seem like the U.S. is split in two, but it is split into, if not an infin­i­ty, then a plu­ral­i­ty of dis­parate ide­o­log­i­cal dis­po­si­tions. But let’s say, for the sake of argu­ment, that there are two kinds of peo­ple. Let’s say the U.S. divides neat­ly into “lib­er­als” and “con­ser­v­a­tives.” What makes the dif­fer­ence between them? Fis­cal pol­i­cy? Edu­ca­tion? Views on “law and order,” social wel­fare, sci­ence, reli­gion, pub­lic ver­sus pri­vate good? Yes, but….

Best-sell­ing NYU psy­chol­o­gist Jonathan Haidt has con­tro­ver­sial­ly claimed that morality—based in emotion—really dri­ves the wedge between com­pet­ing “tribes” engaged in pitched us-ver­sus-them war. The real con­test is gut-lev­el, most­ly cen­tered on dis­gust these days, one of the most prim­i­tive of emo­tion­al respons­es (we learn in the hand-drawn ani­ma­tion of a Haidt lec­ture below). Haidt argues that our sense of us and them is root­ed, irrev­o­ca­bly, in our ear­li­est cog­ni­tions of phys­i­cal space.

Haidt sit­u­ates his analy­sis under the rubric of “moral foun­da­tions the­o­ry,” a school of thought “cre­at­ed by a group of social and cul­tur­al psy­chol­o­gists to under­stand why moral­i­ty varies so much across cul­tures yet still shows so many sim­i­lar­i­ties and recur­rent themes.” Anoth­er moral foun­da­tions the­o­rist, Peter Dit­to, pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy and Social Behav­ior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, uses his research to draw sim­i­lar con­clu­sions about “hyper­par­ti­san­ship” in the U.S. Accord­ing to Dit­to, as he describes in the short video at the top, “morals influ­ence if you’re lib­er­al or con­ser­v­a­tive.”

How? Dit­to iden­ti­fies five broad, uni­ver­sal moral cat­e­gories, or “pil­lars,” that pre­dict polit­i­cal thought and behav­ior: harm reduc­tion, fair­ness, loy­al­ty, authority/tradition, and puri­ty. These con­cerns receive dif­fer­ent weight­ing between self-iden­ti­fied lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives in sur­veys, with lib­er­als valu­ing harm reduc­tion and fair­ness high­ly and gen­er­al­ly over­look­ing the oth­er three, and con­ser­v­a­tives giv­ing equal weight to all five (on paper at least). Dit­to does step out­side the bina­ry in the last half of the seg­ment, not­ing that his stud­ies turned up a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple who iden­ti­fied as lib­er­tar­i­ans.

He takes a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in this cat­e­go­ry. Lib­er­tar­i­ans, says Dit­to, don’t rank any moral val­ue high­ly, mark­ing their world­view as “prag­mat­ic” and strik­ing­ly amoral. They appear to be intense­ly self-focused and lack­ing in empa­thy. Oth­er strains—from demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism to anar­chism to fascism—that define Amer­i­can pol­i­tics today, go unmen­tioned, as if they didn’t exist, though they are arguably as influ­en­tial as lib­er­tar­i­an­ism in the strange flow­er­ings of the Amer­i­can left and right, and inar­guably as deserv­ing of study.

The idea that one’s morals define one’s pol­i­tics doesn’t seem par­tic­u­lar­ly nov­el, but the research of psy­chol­o­gists like Haidt and Dit­to offers new ways to think about moral­i­ty in pub­lic life. It also rais­es per­ti­nent ques­tions about the gulf between what peo­ple claim to val­ue and what they actu­al­ly, con­sis­tent­ly, sup­port, and about how the evo­lu­tion of moral sen­si­bil­i­ties seems to sort peo­ple into groups that also share his­tor­i­cal iden­ti­ties, zip codes, and eco­nom­ic inter­ests. Nor can we can­not dis­count the active shap­ing of pub­lic opin­ion through extra-moral means. Final­ly, in a two-par­ty sys­tem, the options are as few as they can be. Polit­i­cal alle­giance can be as much con­ve­nience, or reac­tion, as con­vic­tion. We might be right to sus­pect that any seem­ing political—or moral—unity on one side or the oth­er could be an effect of ampli­fied over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yale’s Free Course on The Moral Foun­da­tions of Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy: Do Gov­ern­ments Deserve Our Alle­giance, and When Should They Be Denied It?

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Do Ethi­cists Behave Any Bet­ter Than the Rest of Us?: Here’s What the Research Shows

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

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