How Looney Tunes & Other Classic Cartoons Helped Americans Become Musically Literate

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | March 9th, 2021

Dis­tance learn­ing exper­i­ments on tele­vi­sion long pre­date the medium’s use as a con­duit for adver­tis­ing and mass enter­tain­ment. “Before it became known as the ‘idiot box,’” writes Matt Novak at Smith­son­ian, “tele­vi­sion was seen as the best hope for bring­ing enlight­en­ment to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment made way for edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming dur­ing TV’s ear­li­est years when the FCC reserved 242 non­com­mer­cial chan­nels “to encour­age edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming.”

Fund­ing did not mate­ri­al­ize, but the nation’s spir­it was will­ing, Life mag­a­zine main­tained: “the hunger of our cit­i­zen­ry for cul­ture and self-improve­ment has always been gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed.” Was this so? Per­haps. At the medium’s very begin­nings as stan­dard appli­ance in many Amer­i­can homes, there was Leonard Bern­stein. His Omnibus series debuted in 1952, “the first com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion out­let for exper­i­men­ta­tion in the arts,” notes Schuyler G. Chapin. Six years lat­er, he debuted his Young People’s Con­certs, spread­ing musi­cal lit­er­a­cy on TV through the for­mat for the next 14 years.

“It was to [Bernstein’s] — and our — good for­tune that he and the Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion grew to matu­ri­ty togeth­er,” wrote crit­ic Robert S. Clark in well-deserved trib­ute. Much the same could be said of some unlike­ly can­di­dates for TV musi­cal edu­ca­tors: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and oth­er clas­sic ani­ma­tors, who did as much, and maybe more, to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­can view­ers with clas­si­cal music as per­haps all of Bernstein’s for­mi­da­ble efforts com­bined.

But Jones and his fel­low ani­ma­tors have not been giv­en their prop­er due, car­toon­ist and ani­ma­tor Vin­cent Alexan­der sug­gest­ed in a recent Twit­ter thread. Aim­ing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, Alexan­der post­ed a wealth of exam­ples from Bugs Bun­ny & company’s con­tri­bu­tions to Amer­i­cans’ musi­cal lit­er­a­cy. Grant­ed, many of these car­toons start­ed as short films in the­aters, but they spent many more decades on TV, enter­tain­ing mil­lions of all ages while expos­ing them to a wide vari­ety of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions.

Alexan­der points out how car­toons like the first Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheep­dog (1953) set a prece­dent for using Mendelssohn’s “Früh­lingslied (Spring Song)” in lat­er ani­mat­ed favorites like Ren & Stimpy and Sponge­bob Squarepants. He gives oblig­a­tory nods to Dis­ney and cites sev­er­al oth­er non-Looney Tunes exam­ples like Popeye’s “Spinach Over­ture,” based on Franz von Suppé’s “The Poet and Peas­ant Over­ture.” But on the whole, the thread focus­es on Warn­er Bros. clas­sics, espe­cial­ly those in which Bugs Bun­ny demon­strates his tal­ents as a con­duc­tor, pianist, and bar­ber to the bald Elmer Fudd.

“I don’t know who can lis­ten to the famous opera The Bar­ber of Seville by Gioachi­no Rossi­ni with­out think­ing of Bugs Bun­ny,” writes Alexan­der. “The way direc­tor Chuck Jones syn­chro­nizes the slap­stick action to the sound­track is flat-out mas­ter­ful.” There are fair ques­tions to be asked here — and Bern­stein would sure­ly ask them: How many of those peo­ple can appre­ci­ate Rossi­ni with­out the slap­stick? How many have heard, and seen, a full per­for­mance of his work sans Fudd?

Who can hear Wag­n­er with­out want­i­ng to sing at the top of their lungs, “Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit!” Good­ness knows, I can’t. Nonethe­less, Chuck Jones’ What’s Opera, Doc? has been rec­og­nized for its major con­tri­bu­tions to “Amer­i­can enlight­en­ment” — deemed “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Library of Con­gress and pre­served in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry. This, Alexan­der sug­gests, is as it should be. (Just con­sid­er the opera singers Bugs inspired). We should hon­or ani­ma­tion’s major con­tri­bu­tions to our cul­ture lit­er­a­cy: a mass musi­cal edu­ca­tion by car­toon. See many more clas­sic clips in Alexander’s Twit­ter thread here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

 

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John Cleese’s Very Favorite Comedy Sketches

in Comedy, Television | March 9th, 2021

Asked by Time mag­a­zine to name his favorite sketch­es among all those he has writ­ten or per­formed in, John Cleese delib­er­ate­ly exclud­ed most of his Mon­ty Python work. Instead he turned deep­er into his back pages, all the way to At Last the 1948 Show, which orig­i­nal­ly aired on ITV in 1967. (Its title ref­er­enced the long delays inflict­ed by tele­vi­sion’s exec­u­tive deci­sion-mak­ing process­es.) The pro­gram was con­ceived at the behest of broad­cast­er David Frost, who’d pre­vi­ous­ly engaged Cleese and fel­low Cam­bridge Foot­lights alum­nus (and future Python) Gra­ham Chap­man to write and per­form on The Frost Report, one of the major fruits of the “satire boom” in mid-1960s Britain.

“We would come up with crazy ideas, and all the writ­ers would roar with laugh­ter at the table,” Cleese remem­bered of his Frost Report expe­ri­ence in a 2014 Q&A at the British Film Insti­tute. But how­ev­er hilar­i­ous, these ideas would inevitably be reject­ed for the rea­son that “they won’t get it in Brad­ford.”

The late-night 1948 Show let Cleese and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing come­di­an Mar­ty Feld­man, take a few more chances: “We knew that not every­one in Brad­ford would get it, so were tak­ing a lit­tle bit of a bet that enough peo­ple would get it.” This result­ed in sketch­es like “The Book­shop,” in which Feld­man’s cus­tomer makes a series of impos­si­ble demands of Cleese’s shop­keep­er, allow­ing the lat­ter to show­case his already well-honed abil­i­ty to per­form frus­tra­tion boil­ing over into derange­ment.

Cleese, who still gets comedic mileage out of his upright “estab­lish­ment” appear­ance, seems to have spe­cial­ized in play­ing such absurd­ly bur­dened busi­ness­men. His most icon­ic role must be the clenched, boor­ish hote­lier Basil Fawl­ty, played in the post-Python series Fawl­ty Tow­ers, but he was essay­ing such fig­ures long before. Take the far­ci­cal sketch about a hard-of-hear­ing eye­wear deal­er, which lat­er evolved into a seg­ment of the Ger­man spe­cial Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus from 1972. Ear­li­er that year, Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus put Cleese on the cus­tomer’s side of the counter, oppo­site Michael Pal­in’s cheese shop own­er who evi­dent­ly refus­es to stock all known vari­eties of cheese. Though it did­n’t orig­i­nate on the 1948 Show, the now-immor­tal “cheese shop sketch” was writ­ten as anoth­er Cleese-Chap­man col­lab­o­ra­tion — and one that dis­plays a firm com­mit­ment to cus­tomer ser­vice, or the lack there­of, as com­ic mate­r­i­al.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Plays the Dev­il, Makes a Spe­cial Appeal for Hell, 1966

John Cleese’s Advice to Young Artists: “Steal Any­thing You Think Is Real­ly Good”

Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese Cre­ates Ads for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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A Starling Murmuration Magically Makes the Shape of a Bird

in Nature | March 9th, 2021

“After months of chas­ing these birds around Lough Ennell, Co. West­meath [a lake in Ire­land], James Crom­bie and I cap­tured a unique dis­play, writes Col­in Hogg on YouTube. He’s refer­ring to the video above, which–for one ever-brief moment–captures a mur­mu­ra­tion of star­lings form­ing the shape of a giant bird. It’s a pret­ty meta con­cept.

Crom­bie also cap­tured the moment with a pho­to­graph that graced the cov­er of The Irish Times. View it here. The news­pa­per pro­vides some inter­est­ing back­sto­ry on the video and pho­to­graph here.

Find more mur­mu­ra­tion moments in the Relat­eds below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fal­con and the Mur­mu­ra­tion: Nature’s Aer­i­al Bat­tle Above Rome

A Stun­ning, Chance Encounter With Nature

Watch “The “Art of Fly­ing,” a Short Film Cap­tur­ing the Won­drous Mur­mu­ra­tions of the Com­mon Star­ling

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Compare the Original Trailers of Classic Films with Their Modern Updates: Casablanca, Dog Day Afternoon & The Exorcist

in Film | March 9th, 2021

You must remem­ber this, a kiss is just a kiss and audi­ences’ taste in film trail­ers evolves, just like movies do.

HBO Max is cap­i­tal­iz­ing on these shifts by releas­ing a series of Mod­ern Trail­ers for some of the clas­sic (and not so clas­sic… look­ing at you, Grem­lins) films stream­ing on its plat­form.

Take the recut trail­er for 1944’s Oscar win­ning Best Pic­ture, Casablan­ca, above.

Rather than using a nar­ra­tor to deliv­er expo­si­tion, it’s sup­plied by dia­logue, super­im­posed over moody shots of Humphrey Bog­a­rt’s Rick, smok­ing, lev­el­ing a pis­tol, and sur­vey­ing his bar. We’re giv­en just enough of it to pique our inter­est.

When Ingrid Bergman makes her first entrance, halfway through, the com­pos­er pulls out the Pavlov­ian stops.

At sev­en­ty-five, Casablan­ca is such a part of the canon, even those who haven’t seen it can savor the  mod­ern trailer’s ban­quet of time­less lines, with the most cel­e­brat­ed saved for dessert.

By con­trast, the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er took a max­i­mal­ist approach, employ­ing an urgent male nar­ra­tor, hyper­bol­ic title cards, and exot­ic trav­el­ogue. There’s heavy empha­sis on dan­ger, romance, and the pres­ence of big name stars. The music is as thun­der­ous as the sales pitch.

As Katie Kilken­ny notes in a 2014 essay on movie trail­er fatigue for The Atlantic:

In the 1940s and ’50s, pre­views tried to per­suade the view­er of the movie’s superla­tive qual­i­ties with caps-locked plac­ards and nar­ra­tion (“A mad adven­ture fraught with bold intrigue!” “The most excit­ing movie ever screened!” “The most mem­o­rable event in the annals of the motion pic­tures!”).

Now images and music do the heavy lift­ing. In an inter­view with Wired, Dan­ish film­mak­er and trail­er guru Nico­las Wind­ing Refn explains:

Direc­tors talk about how it’s all about cast­ing for them—when they get the right actors, their jobs are eas­i­er. For us, that’s true of music. Some­times 70, 80 per­cent of the job can be try­ing to find that per­fect piece. Trail­ers are all about rhythm, pac­ing, and feel­ing… I’ll watch the whole movie with­out sound, just look­ing for visuals—that lit­tle head turn, that glimpse, that spark of some­thing. Then I’ll watch the movie just for dia­log. I can get down to about 10 to 15 min­utes and from there start craft­ing and mak­ing con­nec­tions.

If you had zero pre-exist­ing knowl­edge of Dog Day After­noon and the more rec­og­niz­able mem­bers of its cast — Al Paci­no, the late Charles Durn­ing, and the incom­pa­ra­ble John Caza­le, HBO Max’s trail­er might fool you into think­ing it’s a new release from a direc­tor who wor­shipped at the altar of the great, grit­ty NYC films of the 70s as an alter­na­tive to film school. They cer­tain­ly got the peri­od details right!

The orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er from 1975 fea­tured an info-heavy voiceover, chop­pi­er edit­ing, and a lot more screen time for Judith Mali­na, co-founder of the Liv­ing The­ater, as Paci­no’s moth­er.

The mod­ern trail­er for The Exor­cist, wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the scari­est movies of all time, embraces a 21st-cen­tu­ry pro­mo­tion­al trope of hor­ror films in which chil­dren play a cen­tral role: lean into the inno­cence before unleash­ing the hounds.

Extra points for black and pur­ple text cards in Friz Quadra­ta font, and an extreme­ly zing‑y but­ton.

The dis­turb­ing orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er by edi­tor Bud Smith, below, was banned upon its release. Whether this is because its black-and-white flash­es of a young Lin­da Blair and the demon­ic Pazuzu induced seizures, or because the stu­dio was spooked by its arty sen­si­bil­i­ties is up for debate.

Direc­tor William Fried­kin, who called it “the best trail­er ever made about The Exor­cist,” reck­ons it was the lat­ter.

***Pho­to­sen­si­tive Epilep­sy Warn­ing*** (no joke.)

Smith’s dis­turb­ing vision was quick­ly replaced by the more con­ven­tion­al trail­er, below. It gave away more shocks, but lacks the abil­i­ty to bur­row into your dreams, caus­ing you to recheck the locks and go to bed with all the lights on.

Read­ers, do you have an all-time favorite movie trail­er? Let us know in the com­ments.

Watch a playlist of HBO Max’s Mod­ern Trail­ers here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Watch the 7 Hour Trail­er for the 720 Hour Film, Ambiancé, the Longest Movie in His­to­ry

Casablanca’s Hilar­i­ous Alter­na­tive Final Scene Fea­tur­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Kate McK­in­non: Prag­ma­tism Car­ries the Day!

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Alexander Calder’s Archive Goes Online: Explore 1400 Works of Art by the Modernist Sculptor

in Archives, Art | March 8th, 2021

Like all great artists, Alexan­der Calder left his medi­um quite unlike he found it. Near­ly 45 years after his death, Calder’s expan­sion of the realm of sculp­ture in new direc­tions of form, col­or, and engi­neer­ing remains a sub­ject of volu­mi­nous dis­cus­sion, includ­ing crit­ic Jed Per­l’s Calder: The Con­quest of Time and Calder: The Con­quest of Space, a two-part biog­ra­phy pub­lished in full last year. More recent­ly, a wealth of mate­r­i­al has come avail­able that enables us to con­duct Calder­ian inves­ti­ga­tions of our own: the Calder Foun­da­tion’s online research archive, which as Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Valenti­na Di Lis­cia reports includes “over 1,300 Calder works across dif­fer­ent media.”

But wait, there’s more: the archive also offers “1,000 pho­tographs and archival doc­u­ments,” “48 his­toric and recent texts by the artist, his con­tem­po­raries, and present-day schol­ars,” and “over 40 microsites explor­ing Calder’s exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry.” (This in addi­tion to the Calder Foun­da­tion’s Vimeo chan­nel, where you’ll find the films seen here.)

Pace Gallery, which rep­re­sents Calder, high­lights the “new inter­ac­tive map fea­ture called ‘Calder Around the World,’ which allows view­ers to find pub­lic instal­la­tions of his mon­u­men­tal sculp­ture in 20 states domes­ti­cal­ly and 21 coun­tries inter­na­tion­al­ly, includ­ing muse­ums with impor­tant Calder hold­ings and per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the artist.”

As that map reveals, much of Calder’s work cur­rent­ly resides in his home­land of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, pri­mar­i­ly in the north­east where he spent most of his life, but also the Cal­i­for­nia in which he did some grow­ing up — not to men­tion the Paris where he lived for a time and met fel­low artists like Mar­cel Duchamp and Fer­nand Léger, infor­ma­tion about whom also appears in the online archive. You may locate a Calder near you, even if you live in anoth­er region of the world, entire­ly: liv­ing in Seoul as I do, I now see I’ll have to pay a vis­it to 1963’s Le Cèpe and 1971’s Grand Crinkly. Though this ever-more-exten­sive Calder Archive can help us under­stand this most opti­mistic of all Mod­ernists, there’s noth­ing quite like being in the pres­ence of one of his sculp­tures.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Alexan­der Calder’s Cir­cus, One of the Beloved Works at the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art

Watch Alexan­der Calder Per­form His Cir­cus, a Toy The­atre Piece Filled With Amaz­ing Kinet­ic Wire Sculp­tures

Watch Dreams that Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

178 Beau­ti­ful­ly-Illus­trat­ed Let­ters from Artists: Kahlo, Calder, Man Ray & More

The Guggen­heim Puts 109 Free Mod­ern Art Books Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

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B.B. King Plays “The Thrill is Gone” with Slash, Ron Wood & Other Legends

in Music | March 8th, 2021

How many gen­er­a­tions of gui­tarists have come and gone since B.B. King emerged on the Beale Street blues scene in the late 1940s?

60s blues-rock giants, 70s hard rock­ers, 80s met­al shred­ders… at least two gen­er­a­tions between B.B. and Slash, who is prob­a­bly him­self a gui­tar grand­fa­ther by now. Whether they know it or not, every rock and blues play­er descends from the Kings of the blues (B.B., Albert, Fred­die, and gui­tarists who bore the title but not the sur­name). Slash knows it well.

We have three gen­er­a­tions of gui­tar greats, and Sim­ply Red’s Mick Huck­nall, join­ing an 86-year-old King in the live per­for­mance above from 2011 at Roy­al Albert Hall with Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, the Rolling Stones’ Ron Wood, and Slash, who sits next to the great man and lends him his top hat for a few bars.

The Guns n Ros­es lead gui­tarist named B.B. his favorite blues­man when King died in 2015 and put “The Thrill is Gone” in an ulti­mate gui­tar mix he com­piled for Q mag­a­zine in 2004. At the live jam ses­sion above, he gets to play it with his hero, “the only hit I ever had,” says King by way of self-dep­re­cat­ing intro­duc­tion.

Slash keeps a low pro­file, fit­ting him­self into the mix of six gui­tars onstage (see the longer jam ses­sion fur­ther up). Anoth­er gui­tarist, John May­er, maybe three gen­er­a­tions of play­ers removed from King, got to spread out a bit more in his jam with B.B. at the Gui­tar Cen­ter King of the Blues event in 2006. “It’s like steal­ing some­thing from some­one right in front of them,” he says. It’s a good joke, and it’s the truth.

Musi­cians have been fol­low­ing in B.B. King’s wake for over 60 years now. The best learn the same hum­bling les­son U2’s Bono did after his 1988 duet with King on “When Love Comes to Town” — “We had learned and absorbed, but the more we tried to be like B.B., the less con­vinc­ing we were.” See more of King and May­er just below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

How B.B. King & Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an Dealt With Break­ing Strings Onstage Mid-Song: A Mas­ter­class in Han­dling Onstage Mishaps

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

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Metallica Plays Antarctica, Setting a World Record as the First Band to Play All 7 Continents: Watch the Full Concert Online

in Music | March 8th, 2021

Unless they’ve got fans among pen­guins, there’s no prac­ti­cal rea­son for a band to make the jour­ney to Antarc­ti­ca to play. So why did Metal­li­ca do exact­ly that in 2013? Because they could, and because it made them the first musi­cal act to play all sev­en con­ti­nents — a Guin­ness World Record — doing it all in the same cal­en­dar year, no less. They’re also the only rock band to trav­el to Antarc­ti­ca. (With the excep­tion of Nunatak, an indie rock band made up of British cli­mate sci­en­tists, who played a “sold-out” show to 17 peo­ple at the Rothera Research Sta­tion where they worked in 2007.)

If those aren’t rea­sons enough, the con­cert was a dream real­ized for the 120 fans in atten­dance, includ­ing research sta­tion sci­en­tists and Coca Cola con­test win­ners from all over Latin Amer­i­ca who were able to see Metal­li­ca in a trans­par­ent dome near the heli­port of Argentina’s Car­li­ni Base after a week-long cruise. “Due to the continent’s frag­ile envi­ron­ment,” notes Guin­ness, the band’s amps were placed in “iso­la­tion cab­i­nets” and the audi­ence heard every­thing through head­phones, sort of like a silent rave. Called “Freeze ‘Em All,” the show was live-streamed and is now ful­ly avail­able online (see it above).

“The ener­gy in the lit­tle dome was amaz­ing!” the band writes on their Face­book page. “Words can not describe how hap­py every­one was.” But how cold were they? More spon­sor­ship, in the form of out­er­wear from snow­board and ski giant Bur­ton, kept the band bun­dled up through­out. Metal­li­ca has uploaded the audio of “Freeze ‘Em All” in MP3 and var­i­ous high-end loss­less for­mats at LiveMetallica.com. It’s a very cool idea, but is the con­cert video an hour-long Coke Zero ad? I don’t know.… I am a lit­tle curi­ous about what might have hap­pened if their amps had been at full blast in the Antarc­tic wild….

Here’s the full setlist, with time­stamps, of the record-set­ting gig:

Creep­ing Death (1:25​)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (7:47​)
Sad But True (12:28​)
Wel­come Home (San­i­tar­i­um) (18:58​)
Mas­ter of Pup­pets (25:58​)
One (34:12​)
Black­ened (41:58​)
Noth­ing Else Mat­ters (50:01​)
Enter Sand­man (55:06​)
Seek & Destroy (1:02:20​)

You too, like many a com­ment­ing fan, may feel betrayed by the lack of “Trapped Under Ice” in the setlist. Maybe too on-the-nose, they thought, too cute. But sure­ly a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty that won’t come again. Fill in the gap your­self with the live take below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Metal­li­ca Is Putting Free Con­certs Online: 6 Now Stream­ing, with More to Come

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

Bud­dhist Monk Cov­ers Metallica’s ”Enter Sand­man,” Then Med­i­tates

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

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A Short Biography of Keith Haring Told with Comic Book Illustrations & Music

in Art, History, Museums, Music, Travel | March 8th, 2021

Singer-song­writer-car­toon­ist Jef­frey Lewis is a wor­thy exem­plar of NYC street cred.

Born, raised, and still resid­ing on New York City’s Low­er East Side, he draws comics under the “judg­men­tal” gaze of The Art of Daniel Clowes: Mod­ern Car­toon­ist and writes songs beneath a poster of The Ter­mi­na­tor onto which he graft­ed the face of Lou Reed from a stolen Time Out New York pro­mo.

Billing him­self as “among NYC’s top slingers of folk / garage­rock / antifolk,” Lewis pairs his songs with comics dur­ing live shows, pro­ject­ing orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions or flip­ping the pages of a sketch­book large enough for the audi­ence to see, a prac­tice he refers to as “low bud­get films.”

He’s also an ama­teur his­to­ri­an, as evi­denced by his eight-minute opus The His­to­ry of Punk on the Low­er East Side, 1950–1975 and  a series of extreme­ly “low bud­get films” for the His­to­ry chan­nel, on top­ics such as the French Rev­o­lu­tion, Mar­co Polo, and the fall of the Sovi­et Union.

His lat­est effort is a 3‑minute biog­ra­phy of artist Kei­th Har­ing, above, for the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art Mag­a­zine’s new Illus­trat­ed Lives series.

While Lewis isn’t a con­tem­po­rary of Haring’s, they def­i­nite­ly breathed the same air:

While Har­ing was spend­ing a cou­ple of for­ma­tive years involved with Club 57 and PS 122, there was lit­tle six-year-old me walk­ing down the street, so I can remem­ber and draw that ear­ly ’80s Low­er East Side/East Vil­lage with­out much stretch. My whole brain is made out of fire escapes and fire hydrants and ten­e­ment cor­nices.

Lewis gives then-ris­ing stars Jean-Michel Basquiat and per­for­mance artist Klaus Nomi cameo appear­ances, before escort­ing Har­ing down into the sub­way for a lit­er­al light­bulb moment.

In Haring’s own words:

…It seemed obvi­ous to me when I saw the first emp­ty sub­way pan­el that this was the per­fect sit­u­a­tion. The adver­tise­ments that fill every sub­way plat­form are changed peri­od­i­cal­ly. When there aren’t enough new ads, a black paper pan­el is sub­sti­tut­ed. I remem­ber notic­ing a pan­el in the Times Square sta­tion and imme­di­ate­ly going above­ground and buy­ing chalk. After the first draw­ing, things just fell into place. I began draw­ing in the sub­ways as a hob­by on my way to work. I had to ride the sub­ways often and would do a draw­ing while wait­ing for a train. In a few weeks, I start­ed to get respons­es from peo­ple who saw me doing it.

After a while, my sub­way draw­ings became more of a respon­si­bil­i­ty than a hob­by. So many peo­ple wished me luck and told me to “keep it up” that it became dif­fi­cult to stop. From the begin­ning, one of the main incen­tives was this con­tact with peo­ple. It became a reward­ing expe­ri­ence to draw and to see the draw­ings being appre­ci­at­ed. The num­ber of peo­ple pass­ing one of these draw­ings in a week was phe­nom­e­nal. Even if the draw­ing only remained up for only one day, enough peo­ple saw it to make it eas­i­ly worth my effort.

Towards the end of his jam-packed, 22-page “low bud­get film,” Lewis wan­ders from his tra­di­tion­al approach to car­toon­ing, reveal­ing him­self to be a keen stu­dent of Haring’s bold graph­ic style.

The final image, to the lyric, “Keith’s explo­sive short life­time and gen­er­ous heart speak like an infi­nite foun­tain from some deep well­spring of art,” is breath­tak­ing.

Spend time with some oth­er New York City icons that have cropped up in Jef­frey Lewis’ music, includ­ing the Chelsea Hotel, the sub­way, the bridges, and St. Mark’s Place.

Watch his low bud­get films for the His­to­ry Chan­nel here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kei­th Haring’s Eclec­tic Jour­nal Entries Go Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Dogs, Inspired by Kei­th Har­ing

The Sto­ry of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Rise in the 1980s Art World Gets Told in a New Graph­ic Nov­el

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

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