The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Classic Album

Record­ed at Abbey Road stu­dios by Alan Par­sons, who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked on The Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road and Let It Be, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon broke almost as much son­ic ground as those albums. “The band chose the world-renowned stu­dio, as it was home to, at the time, some of the most advanced record­ing tech­nol­o­gy ever pro­duced – includ­ing the EMI TG12345 mix­ing con­sole,” writes Antho­ny Sfirse at Enmore Audio.

Par­sons made taste­ful yet total­ly spaced-out use, as the Poly­phon­ic video above shows, of syn­the­siz­ers, stereo mul­ti­track record­ing, and tape loops. Then there’s David Gilmour’s leg­endary gui­tar tone—so essen­tial to a cer­tain kind of music (and to Pink Floyd cov­er bands) that gui­tar ped­al design­er Robert Kee­ley has built an entire “work­sta­tion” around the gui­tar sounds on the album, even though most play­ers, includ­ing Gilmour, will tell you that tone lives in the fin­gers.

The album is a per­fect syn­the­sis of the band’s strengths: epic song­writ­ing meets epic exper­i­men­ta­tion meets epic musicianship—three musi­cal direc­tions that don’t always play well togeth­er. The late six­ties and sev­en­ties brought increas­ing com­plex­i­ty and the­atri­cal­i­ty to rock and roll, but Pink Floyd did some­thing extra­or­di­nary with Dark Side. They wrote acces­si­ble, riff-heavy, blues-based tunes that also set the bar for philo­soph­i­cal­ly exis­ten­tial, wist­ful, melan­choly, sar­don­ic, funky, soul­ful, psy­che­delia, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing one for the oth­er.

How the band went from cul­ti­vat­ing a cult under­ground to spend­ing 741 weeks—or 14 years—at the top of Billboard’s albums chart after the release of their “high con­cept lyri­cal mas­ter­piece” in 1973 is the sub­ject of a series of eight videos pro­duced by Poly­phon­ic. See the first, which cov­ers “Speak to Me/Breath,” at the top, and oth­ers below. New videos will be released on the Poly­phon­ic YouTube chan­nel soon.

The approach is an admirable one. Too often the great­ness of clas­sic albums like Dark Side of the Moon is tak­en for grant­ed and glossed too quick­ly. The album’s mas­sive com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess seems proof enough. We may not know much about Pink Floyd our­selves, but we acknowl­edge they’ve been thor­ough­ly vet­ted by the experts.

But if we want to know our­selves why crit­ics, musi­cians, and fans alike have heaped so much praise on the 1973 album—and shelled out hard-earned cash by the mil­lions for records, con­certs, and merchandise—we might learn quite a lot from this series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

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

Deconstructing Bach’s Famous Cello Prelude–the One You’ve Heard in Hundreds of TV Shows & Films

There may be no instru­ment in the clas­si­cal reper­toire more mul­ti­di­men­sion­al than the cel­lo. Its deep silky voice mod­u­lates from moans to exal­ta­tions in a sin­gle phrase—conveying dig­ni­fied melan­choly and a pro­found sense of awe. Hear­ing a skilled cel­list inter­pret great solo music for cel­lo can approach the feel­ing of a reli­gious expe­ri­ence. And no piece of solo music for cel­lo is greater, or more pop­u­lar­ly known, than Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s Cel­lo Suite No. 1 in G Major. Bet­ter known as the “Pre­lude,” the first of six Baroque suites Bach com­posed between 1717 and 1723, the piece has appeared, notes the Vox Ear­worm video above, “in hun­dreds of TV shows and films.”

You’ve heard it at wed­ding and funer­als, in restau­rants, in the lob­bies of hotels. “It’s so famous, that if you don’t remem­ber its title, “you can just google ‘that famous cel­lo song’ and it will invari­ably pop up.” What is it about this piece that so appeals? Its con­stant, rhyth­mic move­ment con­ceals “what’s most com­pelling about it”—its sim­plic­i­ty. “The whole thing just takes up two pages of music, and it’s com­posed for an instru­ment with only four strings.” The Ear­worm video goes on to explain why this enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, decep­tive­ly sim­ple piece is “con­sid­ered a mas­ter­piece that world-class cel­lists… have revered for years.”

Bach’s cel­lo suites “are the Ever­est of [the cello’s] reper­to­ry,” writes Zachary Woolfe at The New York Times, “offer­ing a guide to near­ly every­thing a cel­lo can do—as well as, many believe, chart­ing a remark­ably com­plete anato­my of emo­tion and aspi­ra­tion.” World-class cel­list Yo-Yo Ma has in fact been trav­el­ing the world play­ing these pieces to bring peo­ple togeth­er in his “Days of Action.” He recent­ly released the video below of the Pre­lude, demon­strat­ing the out­come of a life­time of engage­ment with Bach’s cel­lo music.

Ma plays this piece as “the musi­cian of our civic life,” writes Woolfe, appear­ing at col­lec­tive moments of both grief and cel­e­bra­tion, “to make us cry and then soothe us.” What we learn in the Vox video is that the cel­lo suites come from music designed to lit­er­al­ly move its lis­ten­ers. “With­in each suite are var­i­ous move­ments named for dances.” Cel­list Alisa Weil­er­stein demon­strates the Prelude’s beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty and helps “decon­struct” the piece’s ide­al suit­abil­i­ty for the instru­ment “clos­est in range and abil­i­ty to express to the human voice.”

What’s inter­est­ing about Bach’s six cel­lo suites is that they were writ­ten by a non-cel­list, “the first non-cel­list com­pos­er to give the cel­lo its first big break as a lead actor,” writes musi­col­o­gist Ann Wittstruck. He drew on Baroque social dances for the form of the pieces, which increase in com­plex­i­ty as they go. The pre­lude is loos­er, with arpeg­gios cir­cling around an open bass note that gives the first half “grav­i­tas.”

As the piece shifts away to the dom­i­nant D major, then to “cloudy” dimin­ished and minor chords, its mood shifts too; with­in sim­ple har­monies play a com­plex of emo­tion­al ten­sions. Its sec­ond half wan­ders through an impro­visato­ry, dis­so­nant pas­sage on its way back to D major. Weil­er­stein walks through each tech­nique, includ­ing a dis­ori­ent­ing run down the cello’s neck called “bar­i­o­lage,” which, she says, is meant to cre­ate a “feel­ing of dis­or­der.”

Per­haps that’s only one of the rea­sons Bach’s Pre­lude res­onates with us so deeply in a frag­ment­ed world, and fits Ma’s har­mo­nious inten­tions so well. It’s a piece that acknowl­edges dis­so­nance and dis­or­der even as it sur­rounds them with the joy­ful, styl­ized move­ments of social dances. Music crit­ic Wil­frid Mellers described Bach’s cel­lo suites as “mono­phon­ic music where­in a man has cre­at­ed a dance of God.” But they were not rec­og­nized by his con­tem­po­raries with such high praise.

Com­posed “just before Bach moved to Leipzig,” Woolfe writes, “the cel­lo suites, now musi­cal and emo­tion­al touch­stones, were lit­tle known until the 1900s. It was thought, even by some who knew of them, that they were mere­ly études, noth­ing you’d want to per­form in pub­lic.” Now, the most famous cellist—and per­haps most famous clas­sic icon—in the world is trav­el­ing to six con­ti­nents, play­ing Bach’s cel­lo suites in 36 very pub­lic con­certs. Learn more about his Bach project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

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

How Walter Murch Revolutionized the Sound of Modern Cinema: A New Video Essay Explores His Innovations in American Graffiti, The Godfather & More

Wal­ter Murch, per­haps the most famed film edi­tor alive, is acclaimed for the work he’s done for direc­tors like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, George Lucas, and Antho­ny Minghel­la. As inno­v­a­tive and influ­en­tial as his ways for putting images togeth­er have been, Murch has done just as much for cin­e­ma as a sound design­er. In the video above Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, exam­ines Murch’s sound­craft through what Murch calls “worldiz­ing,” which Filmsound.org describes as “manip­u­lat­ing sound until it seemed to be some­thing that exist­ed in real space.” This involves “play­ing back exist­ing record­ings through a speak­er or speak­ers in real-world acoustic sit­u­a­tions,” record­ing it, and using that record­ing on the film’s sound­track.

In oth­er words, Murch pio­neered the tech­nique of not just insert­ing music into a movie in the edit­ing room, but re-record­ing that music in the actu­al spaces in which the char­ac­ters hear it. Mix­ing the orig­i­nal, “clean” record­ing of a song with that song as re-record­ed in the movie’s space — a dance hall, an out­door wed­ding, a dystopi­an under­ground war­ren — has giv­en Murch a greater degree of con­trol over the view­er’s lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. In some shots he could let the view­er hear more of the song itself by pri­or­i­tiz­ing the orig­i­nal song; in oth­ers he could pri­or­i­tize the re-record­ed song and let the view­er hear the song as the char­ac­ters do, with all the son­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics con­tributed by the space — or, if you like, the world — around them.

Puschak uses exam­ples of Murch’s worldiz­ing from Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti and The God­fa­ther, and notes that he first used it in Lucas’ debut fea­ture THX 1138. But he also dis­cov­ered an ear­li­er attempt by Orson Welles to accom­plish the same effect in Touch of Evil, a film Murch re-edit­ed in 1998. What Welles had not done, says Murch in an inter­view with Film Quar­ter­ly, “was com­bine the orig­i­nal record­ing and the atmos­pher­ic record­ing. He sim­ply posi­tioned a micro­phone, sta­t­ic in an alley­way out­side Uni­ver­sal Sound Stu­dios, re-record­ing from a speak­er to the micro­phone through the alley­way. He did­n’t have con­trol over the bal­ance of dry sound ver­sus reflect­ed sound, and he did­n’t have the sense of motion that we got from mov­ing the speak­er and mov­ing the micro­phone rel­a­tive to one anoth­er.”

Doing this, Murch says, “cre­ates the son­ic equiv­a­lent of depth of field in pho­tog­ra­phy. We can still have the music in the back­ground, but because it’s so dif­fuse, you can’t find edges to focus on and, there­fore, focus on the dia­logue which is in the fore­ground.” In all ear­li­er films besides Welles’, “music was just fil­tered and played low, but it still had its edges,” mak­ing it hard to sep­a­rate from the dia­logue. These days, as Puschak points out, any­one with the right sound-edit­ing soft­ware can per­form these manip­u­la­tions with the click of a mouse. No such ease in the 1970s, when Murch had to not only exe­cute these thor­ough­ly ana­log, labor-inten­sive process­es, but also invent them in the first place. As any­one who’s looked and lis­tened close­ly to his work knows, that audio­vi­su­al strug­gle made Murch expe­ri­ence and work with cin­e­ma in a rich­ly phys­i­cal way — one that, as gen­er­a­tions of edi­tors and sound design­ers come up in whol­ly dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, may not exist much longer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

Hear Dzi­ga Vertov’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Exper­i­ments in Sound: From His Radio Broad­casts to His First Sound Film

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

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.

Radical Women: Stream the Getty’s Podcast That Features Six Major 20th-Century Artists, All Female


Only recent­ly has “actor” become an accept­able gen­der-neu­tral term for per­form­ers of stage and screen.

Pri­or to that, we had “actor” and “actress,” and while there may have been some prob­lem­at­ic assump­tions con­cern­ing the type of woman who might be drawn to the pro­fes­sion, there was arguably lin­guis­tic par­i­ty between the two words.

Not so for artists.

In the not-so-dis­tant past, female artists invari­ably found them­selves referred to as “female artists.”

Not great, when male artists were referred to as (say it with me) “artists.”

The new sea­son of the Getty’s pod­cast Record­ing Artists pays trib­ute to six sig­nif­i­cant post-war artists—two Abstract Expres­sion­ists, a por­traitist, a per­for­mance artist and exper­i­men­tal musi­cian, and a print­mak­er who pro­gressed to assem­blage and col­lage works with an overt­ly social mes­sage.

Hope­ful­ly you won’t need to reach for your smelling salts upon dis­cov­er­ing that all six artists are female:

Alice Neel

Lee Kras­ner

Betye Saar

Helen Franken­thaler

Yoko Ono

and Eva Hesse

Host Helen Molesworth is also female, and up until recent­ly, served as the much admired Chief Cura­tor of LA’s Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. (Accord­ing to artist Lor­na Simp­son’s take on Molesworth’s abrupt dis­missal: “Women who have a point of view and stand by it are often pun­ished. Just because you get rid of Helen Molesworth doesn’t mean you have solved ‘the prob­lem.’)

Molesworth, who is joined by two art world guests per episode—some of them (gasp!) non-female—is the per­fect choice to con­sid­er the impact of the Rad­i­cal Women who give this sea­son its sub­ti­tle.

We also hear from the artists them­selves, in excepts from taped ’60s and ’70s-era inter­views with his­to­ri­ans Cindy Nemser and Bar­bara Rose.

Their can­did remarks give Molesworth and her guests a lot to con­sid­er, from the dif­fi­cul­ties of main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent artis­tic prac­tice after one becomes a moth­er to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. A lot of atten­tion is paid to his­tor­i­cal con­text, even when it’s warts and all.

The late Alice Neel, a white artist best remem­bered for her por­traits of her black and brown East Harlem neigh­bors and friends, cracks wise about butch les­bians in Green­wich Vil­lage, prompt­ing Molesworth to remark that she thinks she—or any artist of her acquaintance—could have “eas­i­ly” swayed Neel to can the homo­pho­bic remarks.

It’s also pos­si­ble that Neel, who died in 1984, would have kept step with the times and made the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion unprompt­ed, were she still with us today.


A cou­ple of the sub­jects, Yoko Ono and Betye Saar, are alive …and active­ly cre­at­ing art, though it’s their past work that seems to be the source of great­est fas­ci­na­tion.

When New York City’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art reopened its doors fol­low­ing a major phys­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal reboot, vis­i­tors were treat­ed to The Leg­ends of Black Girl’s Win­dow, an exhi­bi­tion of the 94-year-old Saar’s work from the ‘60s and ‘70s. New York­er crit­ic Doreen St. Félix bemoaned the “absence of explic­it­ly black-fem­i­nist works,” par­tic­u­lar­ly The Lib­er­a­tion of Aunt Jemi­ma, a mixed media assem­blage, Molesworth dis­cuss­es at length in the pod­cast episode ded­i­cat­ed to Saar.

MoMA also played host to a mas­sive exhi­bi­tion of Ono’s ear­ly work in 2015, prompt­ing the New York Times crit­ic Hol­land Cot­ter to pro­nounce her “imag­i­na­tive, tough-mind­ed and still under­es­ti­mat­ed.”

This is a far cry bet­ter than New York Times crit­ic Hilton Kramer’s dis­missal of Neel’s 1974 ret­ro­spec­tive at the Whit­ney, when the artist was 74 years old:

… the Whit­ney, which can usu­al­ly be count­ed on to do the wrong thing, devot­ed a solo exhi­bi­tion to Alice Neel, whose paint­ings (we can be rea­son­ably cer­tain) would nev­er have been accord­ed that hon­or had they been pro­duced by a man. The pol­i­tics of the sit­u­a­tion required that a woman be giv­en an exhi­bi­tion, and Alice Neel’s paint­ing was no doubt judged to be suf­fi­cient­ly bizarre, not to say inept, to qual­i­fy as some­thing ‘far out.’”

Twen­ty six years lat­er, his opin­ion of Neel’s tal­ent had not mel­lowed, though he had the polit­i­cal sense to dial down the misog­y­ny in his scathing Observ­er review of Neel’s third show at the Whit­ney…or did he? In cit­ing cura­tor Ann Temkin’s obser­va­tion that Neel paint­ed “with the eye of a car­i­ca­tur­ist” he makes sure to note that Neel’s sub­ject Annie Sprin­kle, “the porn star who became a per­for­mance artist, is her­self a car­i­ca­ture, no mock­ery was need­ed.”

One has to won­der if he would have described the artist’s nude self-por­trait at the age of 80 as that of “a geri­atric ruin” had the artist been a man.

Lis­ten to all six episodes of Record­ing Artists: Rad­i­cal Women and see exam­ples of each subject’s work here.

And while nei­ther Saar nor Ono added any cur­rent com­men­tary to the pod­cast, we encour­age you to check out the inter­views below in which they dis­cuss their recent work in addi­tion to reflect­ing on their long artis­tic careers:

“‘It’s About Time!’ Betye Saar’s Long Climb to the Sum­mit” (The New York Times, 2019)

“The Big Read – Yoko Ono: Imag­ine The Future” (NME, 2018)

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

Women Who Draw: Explore an Open Direc­to­ry That Show­cas­es the Work of 5,000+ Female Illus­tra­tors

A New Archive Tran­scribes and Puts Online the Diaries & Note­books of Women Artists, Art His­to­ri­ans, Crit­ics and Deal­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

These Boots Are Made for Walkin’: The Story Behind Nancy Sinatra’s Enduring #1 Hit (1966)

You put on your boots
And I’ll put on mine
And we’ll sell a mil­lion records
Any old time
- Lee Hazle­wood

Musi­cians!

Look­ing to increase your chances of a hit song, one that will worm its way into the public’s hearts and ears, earn­ing fat roy­al­ty checks for half a cen­tu­ry or more?

Try start­ing with a killer bass line.

Accord­ing to singer Nan­cy Sina­tra, song­writer Lee Hazle­wood and arranger Bil­ly Strange swung by her par­ents’ liv­ing room to pre­view a selec­tion of tunes they thought she might want to record.

The moment she heard “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ”s mem­o­rable lick, she knew it was a win­ner.

(As did her famous father, who looked up from his news­pa­per after Hazle­wood and Strange depart­ed, to remark, “The song about the boots is best.”)

Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of as a song from the male POV, the 25-year-old, just-divorced Sina­tra felt its mes­sage would be less “harsh and abu­sive” deliv­ered by a “lit­tle girl.”

Hazle­wood agreed, but hedged his bets by direct­ing engi­neer Eddie Brack­ett to beef up Sinatra’s vocals with some light reverb.

As biog­ra­ph­er James Kaplan describes in Sina­tra: The Chair­manHazle­wood also offered some dis­creet direc­tion, insin­u­at­ing that the vibe to strive for was that of “a 14-year-old girl in love with a 40-year-old man.”

When Sina­tra failed to receive his mean­ing, he shucked all pre­tense of del­i­ca­cy. Nan­cy shared his march­ing orders in her 1985 biog­ra­phy Frank Sina­tra, My Father:

…I was still singing like Nan­cy Nice­La­dy. Lee hit the talk-back switch in the booth and his deep voice blew my ears off. ‘For chris­sake, you were a mar­ried woman, Nasty, you’re not a vir­gin any­more. Let’s do one for the truck dri­vers. Say some­thing tough at the end of this one… Bite the words.’

Or some­thing to that effect…

Kaplan includes how sev­er­al sources claim that Hazlewood’s actu­al instruc­tion was to sing it like “a six­teen-year-old girl who f**ks truck dri­vers.”

(Editor’s note: instruct­ing a young woman to do that in 2020 is far like­li­er to result in a law suit than a hit record.… and giv­en that most of the sources who abide by this ver­sion of Boots’ cre­ation myth pref­ace their state­ments with the word “appar­ent­ly,” it may not have flown in 1966 either.)

The song’s immense pop­u­lar­i­ty was giv­en an assist by the 1966 Col­or-Son­ics film, above, shot in 16mm for the public’s enjoy­ment on 26-inch Sco­pi­tone juke­box screens.

It also put a match to the Amer­i­can tin­der where go-go boots were con­cerned. Young women in Britain had already adopt­ed them as the per­fect footwear to accom­pa­ny Youthquake design­er Mary Quant’s miniskirts and hot pants. Sina­tra and her maxi sweater-wear­ing back up dancers get the bulk of the cred­it on this side of the pond.

While “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” has been cov­ered by every­one from Ella Fitzger­ald and Duke Elling­ton to Bil­ly Ray Cyrus and Megadeth, the sweet­est cov­er remains song­writer Hazlewood’s, below, in which he namechecks the col­lab­o­ra­tors of his most famous hit with nary a men­tion of truck­ers or teenaged girls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

The Sex Pis­tols’ Sid Vicious Sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: Is Noth­ing Sacred?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC TONIGHT, Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, as her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Monty Python Pays Tribute to Terry Jones: Watch Their Montage of Jones’ Beloved Characters in Action

The actor, come­di­an, direc­tor, and medieval his­to­ri­an Ter­ry Jones passed away last week, but Mr. Cre­osote will nev­er die. Nor will any of the oth­er char­ac­ters por­trayed by Jones in his work with Mon­ty Python, the cul­ture-chang­ing com­e­dy troupe he co-found­ed with Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Gra­ham Chap­man, and Ter­ry Gilliam. You can get a sense of Jones’ range as a comedic per­former in the three-minute com­pi­la­tion above, which fea­tures a range of Jones’ char­ac­ters includ­ing the crunchy frog-deal­ing can­dy-shop own­er, the avi­a­tor-hel­met­ed Span­ish Inquisi­tor, one of the four York­shire­men, and of course, the Bish­op.

My own intro­duc­tion to Jones’ work came through the Spam wait­ress, a Mon­ty Python char­ac­ter beloved of many chil­dren not yet born when Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, the troupe’s BBC series, first ran in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s.

Set in a din­er where near­ly every dish involves Spam as at least one ingre­di­ent, the sketch pokes fun at the cheap tinned meat’s per­sis­tence on British tables well after the aus­ter­i­ty of the Sec­ond World War, and more sub­tly at the even deep­er and longer-last­ing per­sis­tence of the British wartime mind­set. I nat­u­ral­ly knew lit­tle of all this when first I saw the Spam sketch, and had nev­er once tast­ed Spam itself, but Jones’ com­mit­ment to his char­ac­ter — and that char­ac­ter’s blithe seri­ous­ness about the word “Spam” — got me laugh­ing.

Gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and adults alike will con­tin­ue to enjoy the Spam wait­ress, as well as all of Jones’ oth­er char­ac­ters and their often absurd inter­ac­tions with those played by the rest of the Pythons. And the more they learn about the troupe and its work, the more they’ll appre­ci­ate Jones’ spe­cial con­tri­bu­tions to its lega­cy. After co-direct­ing Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail with Gilliam, he sin­gle­hand­ed­ly direct­ed the next two Python fea­tures, Life of Bri­an and The Mean­ing of Life. It was in that last film that Jones man­aged to bal­ance his direc­to­r­i­al duties with those of play­ing the colos­sal­ly obese, fre­quent­ly vom­it­ing Mr. Cre­osote, whose sheer glut­tony results in his explo­sion. So yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Mr. Cre­osote did die — but every time we watch The Mean­ing of Life he lives, and we laugh, once again.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones (RIP) Was a Come­di­an, But Also a Medieval His­to­ri­an: Get to Know His Oth­er Side

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match,” “Philosopher’s Drink­ing Song” & More

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

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.

Take an Aerial Tour of Medieval Paris

Paris is named after the Parisii, a tribe of Celts who set­tled on a very strate­gic island in the mid­dle of the Seine some­time around 250 BC. With a wall and two bridges in and out, the set­tle­ment grew and–though con­quered by Romans, and threat­ened by all sorts includ­ing Atti­la the Hun–it evolved into the city of romance and rev­o­lu­tion.

This fas­ci­nat­ing fly-through of Paris cir­ca 1550 AD shows a city in tran­si­tion. Still very much a medieval town in cer­tain respects, it already has many of the land­marks tourists flock to even now.

It begins just out­side the abbey of Saint-Ger­main-des-Prés, found­ed in the 6th Cen­tu­ry, and goes down the Seine towards the Palais de la Cité, and under the Pont Saint-Michel. Hous­es were built along the bridges like this until the 18th and 19th cen­turies.

There’s time to linger on Notre Dame cathe­dral, and to note that the famed flèche, the spire that was lost in 2019’s fire, had yet to be built. (There is debate in the com­ments about whether the spire in the video is his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate, whether there was any spire at that time, or whether the spire depict­ed is the cor­rect one.) Anoth­er cir­cle of the Palais and past Sainte-Chapelle until a street lev­el diver­sion into the bustling Right Bank along the Pont aux Meu­niers, a bridge that no longer exists (it col­lapsed in 1596, was rebuilt, and dis­ap­peared one final time in a 1621 fire).

The Renais­sance was just around the cor­ner, and this glimpse of Paris on the cusp of urban­iza­tion is fas­ci­nat­ing in its CGI-gen­er­at­ed fin de siè­cle (to bor­row a phrase).

The city has always been evolving–for those inter­est­ed, there is a longer 3‑D tour of Paris through its his­to­ry. While this Mid­dle Ages excur­sion con­tains some famil­iar archi­tec­ture, the Roman years (when Paris was known as Lute­tia) fea­ture many large struc­tures that sim­ply do not exist any more. It is yet anoth­er reminder that noth­ing lasts for­ev­er, not even build­ings made of the finest stone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Paris in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, The Pan­théon, and More (1890)

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

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.

Crowd Breaks into Singing Bon Jovi in the Park: The Power of Music in 46 Seconds

Hope you enjoy your week­end…

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via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Ital­ian Street Musi­cian Plays Amaz­ing Cov­ers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pan­theon in Rome

Icon­ic Songs Played by Musi­cians Around the World: “Stand by Me,” “Redemp­tion Song,” “Rip­ple” & More

 

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