Kate Bush Enjoys a (Long-Overdue) Revival, Sparked by Season 4 of Stranger Things

in Music, Television | June 7th, 2022

There’s nev­er been a bad time for a Kate Bush revival. Those who lived through the 1980s may always asso­ciate her biggest songs with their mem­o­ries. Fans who only know the 80s by way of Net­flix know it by proxy and don’t suf­fer from nos­tal­gia. But what­ev­er Kate’s big, reverb-soaked drums, big Fairlight synths, big hair, and enor­mous vocals evoke for audi­ences now, one thing is cer­tain: Kate Bush’s music is time­less.

Rebec­ca Nichol­son sums up the sen­ti­ment in a Guardian post on the renais­sance Bush is now enjoy­ing, thanks to the use of her 1985 hit, “Run­ning Up That Hill (Deal With God)” in the new sea­son of Net­flix hit series, Stranger Things: “If any song can steel itself against over famil­iar­i­ty, it’s ‘Run­ning Up That Hill.’ Whether it is for the first time or the 500th time, you still hear it now and think, what the hell was that? And then you play it again.”

Not to spoil, but the love of a per­fect pop song after innu­mer­able rep­e­ti­tions plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the plot of Stranger Things’ Sea­son 4, just one of the wink­ing crit­i­cal touch­es in the show’s use of 80s cul­ture as com­men­tary on the present. (If you haven’t seen the show yet, maybe skip the clip below.) Can we find the same com­forts in our dis­pos­able pop cul­ture, the show seems to ask? Maybe we need musi­cal guid­ance from an icon like Kate Bush now more than ever.

When the show’s pro­duc­ers approached Bush about using the song, she dis­played her usu­al ret­i­cence. Since her break­out debut sin­gle, “Wuther­ing Heights” and the result­ing album and tour, she has shunned the press and stage, pre­fer­ring to com­mu­ni­cate with videos and tak­ing sev­er­al years off, only to return onstage recent­ly after 35 years, to the delight of stal­wart fans world­wide. Now, since Stranger Things’ new release, “a new gen­er­a­tion is tap­ping ‘who is Kate Bush?’ into the search bar,” Nichol­son writes.

The song is already back in the UK top 10 (where it hit no. 3 orig­i­nal­ly), and it should “at least give its orig­i­nal chart peak a run for its mon­ey” in the US, where it only reached no. 30, Bill­board com­ments. For those who need an intro­duc­tion, the Trash The­o­ry video at the top, “Run­ning Up That Hill: How Kate Bush Became the Queen of Alt-Pop,” will get you caught up on one of the most bril­liant — and under­rat­ed, in the US — pop stars of the past forty years.

Despite show­ing her usu­al cau­tion, how­ev­er, when the show’s pro­duc­ers sent Bush a script and an expla­na­tion of how “Run­ning Up That Hill” would be used, she revealed that she was already a fan of the show and agreed to the song’s licens­ing, some­thing the 63-year-old singer almost nev­er does. Then, she made a rare pub­lic state­ment on her web­site:

  You might’ve heard that the first part of the fan­tas­tic, grip­ping new series of  ‘Stranger Things’  has recent­ly been released on Net­flix. It fea­tures the song, ‘Run­ning Up That Hill’  which is being giv­en a whole new lease of life by the young fans who love the show — I love it too! Because of this, Run­ning Up That Hill is chart­ing around the world and has entered the UK chart at No. 8. It’s all real­ly excit­ing! Thanks very much to every­one who has sup­port­ed the song.
    I wait with bat­ed breath for the rest of the series in July.  
         Best wish­es,
            Kate

Fans of the show all wait, with Kate, for its return, but not near­ly as eager­ly as fans of Kate Bush await­ed a sign from their idol for decades, a self-made artist who defined her era by nev­er bow­ing to its dic­tates. Now, we hope, she’s come back to stay for a while.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Revis­it Kate Bush’s Pecu­liar Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing Peter Gabriel (1979)

Watch a Tow­er­ing Orches­tral Trib­ute to Kate Bush: A 40th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion of Her First Sin­gle, “Wuther­ing Heights”

The Largest Ever Trib­ute to Kate Bush’s “Wuther­ing Heights” Chore­o­graphed by a Flash­mob in Berlin

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

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Watch Ella Fitzgerald Put Her Extraordinary Vocal Agility on Display, in a Live Rendition of “Summertime” (1968)

in Music | June 7th, 2022

“I nev­er knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzger­ald sing them.” — Ira Gersh­win

No one ever gave Ella Fitzger­ald faint praise. We could point to cuts from near­ly any one of her over 200 albums as evi­dence for why she is the undis­put­ed “Queen of Jazz,” a title for which she worked hard in her near­ly 60-year career. But she’s bet­ter known by anoth­er name, “The First Lady of Song,” for defin­i­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of Cole Porter, Duke Elling­ton, Irv­ing Berlin, and, of course, George and Ira Gersh­win. Fitzger­ald’s record­ings of their songs played “an essen­tial role in the broad­er trans­for­ma­tion of the Gersh­win’s music from show tunes to Amer­i­can Song­book stan­dards,” writes the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan’s Gersh­win Ini­tia­tive.

What’s fas­ci­nat­ing about that trans­for­ma­tion is the way in which Fitzger­ald’s ren­di­tions of pop­u­lar songs ele­vat­ed them to eter­nal main­stream sta­tus by draw­ing on the rhyth­mic and melod­ic resources of jazz, a dis­tinct­ly Black Amer­i­can music some­times cast as a threat to the U.S. estab­lish­ment when Fitzger­ald began her career. (We need look no fur­ther than the vicious per­se­cu­tion of Bil­lie Hol­i­day by the coun­try’s first drug czar, Hen­ry Anslinger, as case in point.) Amer­i­ca may not always have been eager to embrace Fitzger­ald, but she was hap­py nonethe­less to gift the coun­try its great­est music.

Fitzger­ald’s 5‑LP set of Gersh­win songs, pro­duced by Nor­man Granz in 1959, con­tin­ues to be “the most ambi­tious of the cel­e­brat­ed song books record­ed by Ella,” Jazz Mes­sen­gers writes, “and one of the best vocal jazz albums ever made.” Record­ed two years ear­li­er by Granz in Los Ange­les, her Por­gy and Bess with Louis Arm­strong “remains one of the true gems in jazz his­to­ry.” Fitzger­ald’s voice is unpar­al­leled. She could do almost any­thing with it, from reach­ing down low to imi­tate Arm­strong’s growl to break­ing a glass with her high C for a Mem­o­rex ad twen­ty years lat­er.

Dizzy Gille­spie once said that Fitzger­ald could sing back any­thing he played for her, and she cit­ed horns as her pri­ma­ry vocal inspi­ra­tion. “She sang like an instru­ment,” says pianist Bil­ly Tay­lor, who played with her in the 1940s, “like a clar­inet or like a trom­bone or like a what­ev­er.” The irony, of course, is that horns and many oth­er melod­ic instru­ments achieved their tim­bre by try­ing to imi­tate the human voice. Fitzger­ald had the orig­i­nal; she need­ed no accom­pa­ni­ment — she was the music, with “impec­ca­ble tim­ing and per­fect pitch,” NPR writes. “In fact, band musi­cians said they would tune up to her voice.”

In the video at the top from a per­for­mance in Berlin in 1968, you can see Fitzger­ald “destroy” the har­mon­ic minor scale, as the YouTube uploader puts it, while pianist Tee Car­son looks on in awe. The song, from Por­gy and Bess (see the full per­for­mance fur­ther up), is just one of many writ­ten by the Gersh­wins that “tran­scends its musi­cal the­atre ori­gins” due to Fitzger­ald’s impro­visato­ry bril­liance and musi­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty. Just above, you can hear that live vocal track stripped of instru­men­ta­tion except Ella’s voice in a Wings of Pega­sus analy­sis video of the “depth of her expres­sion” and vocal per­fec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ella Fitzgerald’s Lost Inter­view about Racism & Seg­re­ga­tion: Record­ed in 1963, It’s Nev­er Been Heard Until Now

How Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Helped Break Ella Fitzger­ald Into the Big Time (1955)

Women of Jazz: Stream a Playlist of 91 Record­ings by Great Female Jazz Musi­cians

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

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

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The Vincent van Gogh “Starry Night” LEGO Set Is Now Available: It’s Created in Collaboration with MoMA

in Art, Creativity, Design, Museums | June 6th, 2022

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s The Star­ry Night is one of the most pop­u­lar and eas­i­ly rec­og­nized paint­ings on earth. If you haven’t seen it per­son, you’ve prob­a­bly seen it repro­duced on a post­card, a tote bag, or a t‑shirt.

Musi­cian Shel­don Clarke was a Star­ry Night vir­gin when he start­ed work­ing as a secu­ri­ty offi­cer at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art:

I knew noth­ing about Vin­cent or Star­ry Night before I start­ed work­ing here. And I remem­ber the first time I stood at that painting…first of all, I was so amazed at the reac­tion of the pub­lic. There was always a group of peo­ple just fight­ing to look at it or take pic­tures or take self­ies and I was just curi­ous to know like, who is this painter and why is every­one so excit­ed to see this piece?

Now, Clarke is suf­fi­cient­ly well versed to hold forth on both the nature of the art­work and cir­cum­stances in which the artist cre­at­ed it. He is, with Senior Paint­ings Con­ser­va­tor Anny Avi­ram,  Asso­ciate Cura­tor Cara Manes, and Robert Kastler, direc­tor of Imag­ing and Visu­al Resources, one of four MoMA staffers to give some con­text, while try­ing their hands at the new Star­ry Night LEGO set.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion between MoMA and LEGO, the set rein­ter­prets Van Gogh’s thick impas­to brush­work in 2316 tiny plas­tic bricks, includ­ing a mini fig­ure of the artist, equipped with paint­brush, palette, easel, and an adjustable arm for posi­tion­ing him at suf­fi­cient dis­tance to gain per­spec­tive on his world famous work.

The set is the win­ning entry in a LEGO Ideas com­pe­ti­tion. Design­er Tru­man Cheng, a 25-year-old LEGO fan and PhD can­di­date focus­ing on  med­ical robot­ics and mag­net­ic con­trolled sur­gi­cal endo­scopes. He had long want­ed to ren­der The Star­ry Night in LEGO, bu its exe­cu­tion required a light­bulb moment:

One day, I was just play­ing with LEGO parts, and I real­ized that stack­ing LEGO plates togeth­er at ran­dom inter­vals looks a lot like van Gogh’s icon­ic brush strokes. I couldn’t help but won­der what the full paint­ing would look like with this build style.

As Avi­ram and Kastler point out, the set cleaves faith­ful­ly to Van Gogh’s lim­it­ed palette. Some LEGO fans report that build­ing up the blue back­ground lay­ers is the most chal­leng­ing aspect of assem­bling the 11”x14.5” kit:

I’m 54 and the col­ors, being kind of close, were play­ing games with my eyes. LOL This is my favorite LEGO of all time! In clos­ing, if you haven’t heard the song, Vin­cent  by Don McLean, I sug­gest you take a lis­ten to this song as you stare at this LEGO mas­ter­piece.

Order LEGO’s Vin­cent van Gogh - The Star­ry Night set from Ama­zon.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Vin­cent Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”: Why It’s a Great Paint­ing in 15 Min­utes

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”

Zoom Into a Super High Res­o­lu­tion Pho­to of Van Gogh’s “The Star­ry Night”

1,000+ Art­works by Vin­cent Van Gogh Dig­i­tized & Put Online by Dutch Muse­ums: Enter Van Gogh World­wide

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ray Liotta (RIP) Talks About His Most Memorable Performances: Something Wild, Goodfellas, Field of Dreams, and More

in Film | June 6th, 2022

Over the near­ly four decades he act­ed in motion pic­tures, Ray Liot­ta worked with auteurs from Jonathan Demme to Mar­tin Scors­ese to Noah Baum­bach — and also appeared in the likes of Oper­a­tion Dum­bo Drop, and Mup­pets from Space, and Street Kings 2: Motor City. But whether in an acclaimed Hol­ly­wood mas­ter­work, a goofy com­e­dy, or a direct-to-video thriller, Liot­ta’s char­ac­ters always seem whol­ly to belong there, exud­ing his sig­na­ture mix­ture of half-bluff­ing grav­i­tas and errat­i­cal­ly mag­net­ic suavi­ty. His death last month has sent many of us back to his var­ied fil­mog­ra­phy, some high­lights of which the man him­self dis­cuss­es in the GQ video above.

After a few years in the soap-opera trench­es, Liot­ta became a star in 1986 with his por­tray­al of a rough-hewn ex-con­vict in Dem­me’s mod­ern screw­ball com­e­dy Some­thing Wild. But the chance to play that break­out part, as he explains in the video, only came his way after he worked up the nerve to ask Melanie Grif­fith — a con­nec­tion he’d made in act­ing class­es — to get him into the audi­tion.

“I was just ready and want­i­ng it,” he remem­bers, and sure­ly these feel­ings stoked the char­ac­ter­is­tic inten­si­ty, some­times men­ac­ing and some­times com­ic, that would come through in that role, and for which he would soon become well known. Just three years lat­er, Liot­ta was play­ing Shoe­less Joe Jack­son in Field of Dreams (a beloved pic­ture he admits to nev­er hav­ing seen).

The year after that, Liot­ta put in per­haps his best-known per­for­mance as the eager but doomed mafia asso­ciate Hen­ry Hill in Scors­ese’s Good­fel­las. Though he could play every­one from a bar­tender to a com­mer­cial jin­gle-writer to Frank Sina­tra, his roles there­after would include no small num­ber of crim­i­nals, police offi­cers, mil­i­tary men, and spe­cial agents: each an author­i­ty fig­ure in his way, each made vivid by Liot­ta’s para­dox­i­cal air of unsta­ble solid­i­ty. It seems that he espe­cial­ly savored the recent NBC crime dra­ma Shades of Blue, in which he played “a bisex­u­al cop that is on the take, but also loves his group of cops that he works with.” With Liot­ta’s death, we lost one of the very few work­ing per­form­ers who could bring such a char­ac­ter to leer­ing, con­vinc­ing life.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Mar­tin Scors­ese Directs a Movie: The Tech­niques Behind Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, and More

Orson Welles on the Art of Act­ing: “There is a Vil­lain in Each of Us”

A Vir­tu­al Table Read of Fast Times at Ridge­mont High, Fea­tur­ing Jen­nifer Anis­ton, Mor­gan Free­man, Shia LaBeouf, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, John Leg­end & More

14 Actors Act­ing: A Gallery of Clas­sic Screen Types

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Susan Sontag’s Commencement Address Advice: “Pay Attention. It Connects You With Others. It Makes You Eager. Stay Eager.”

in Life | June 6th, 2022

Image by Lynn Gilbert, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“The times we live in are indeed alarm­ing. It is a time of the most appalling esca­la­tion of vio­lence — vio­lence to the envi­ron­ment, both ‘nature’ and ‘cul­ture’; vio­lence to all liv­ing beings.” But “it is also a time of a ver­tig­i­nous drop in cul­tur­al stan­dards, of vir­u­lent anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, and of tri­umphant medi­oc­rity.” You may, at this point, already find your­self in agree­ment with these words. But they’re the words of Susan Son­tag, now sev­en­teen years dead, and as such can’t actu­al­ly be describ­ing our present moment. In fact she spoke them in, and about, 1983, dur­ing her first com­mence­ment address at Welles­ley Col­lege.

Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly unspar­ing, Son­tag extend­ed her charge of medi­oc­rity even to “the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem that you have just passed through, or has passed you through.” In her view, “triv­i­al­iz­ing stan­dards, using as their jus­ti­fi­ca­tion the ide­al of democ­ra­cy, have made the very idea of a seri­ous human­ist edu­ca­tion vir­tu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble to most peo­ple.” If it is to hap­pen at all, resis­tance to this medi­oc­rity must hap­pen at the lev­el of the indi­vid­ual. “Per­haps the most use­ful sug­ges­tion I can make on the day when most of you are ceas­ing to be stu­dents,” Son­tag says, “is that you go on being stu­dents — for the rest of your lives. Don’t move to a men­tal slum.”

This point returned, some­what altered, in Son­tag’s last com­mence­ment address, deliv­ered twen­ty years lat­er at Vas­sar Col­lege. “Try not to live in a lin­guis­tic slum,” she advised the class of 2003. Indeed, “try to imag­ine at least once a day that you are not an Amer­i­can,” or “that you belong to the vast, the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of peo­ple on this plan­et who don’t have pass­ports, don’t live in dwellings equipped with both refrig­er­a­tors and tele­phones, who have nev­er even once flown in a plane.” Though cel­e­brat­ed pri­mar­i­ly as a crit­ic, Son­tag was also a nov­el­ist, and like Vladimir Nabokov under­stood full well the neces­si­ty of imag­i­na­tion to a prop­er intel­lec­tu­al life.

Else­where in her Vas­sar address, Son­tag also makes the high­ly Nabo­kov­ian point that “no book is worth read­ing that isn’t worth re-read­ing.” Though the full text of the speech isn’t online, you’ll find these and oth­er choice quotes from it at Vas­sar Quar­ter­ly. Son­tag’s key theme seems to have been atten­tion. “Pay atten­tion,” she says in a pas­sage still cir­cu­lat­ed on social media today. “It’s all about pay­ing atten­tion. Atten­tion is vital­i­ty. It con­nects you with oth­ers. It makes you eager. Stay eager. (Two years lat­er, David Fos­ter Wal­lace would make a sim­i­lar point about being ” “con­scious and aware enough to choose what you pay atten­tion to” in his famous 2005 com­mence­ment address at Keny­on Col­lege.)

When we devel­op and retain the habit of pay­ing atten­tion, we see things oth­ers don’t, espe­cial­ly those truths that run counter even to our own pro­fessed beliefs. “Our soci­ety does not cen­sor as total­i­tar­i­an soci­eties do; on the con­trary, our soci­ety promis­es lib­er­ty, self-ful­fill­ment, and self-expres­sion,” Son­tag says. But pay atten­tion, and you’ll notice that “many fea­tures of our so-called cul­ture have as their goal and result the reduc­tion of our men­tal life, or our men­tal oper­a­tion; and this is pre­cise­ly, I would argue, what cen­sor­ship is about.” Near­ly two decades have passed since Son­tag said this, and as she might have expect­ed, we tune out at greater per­il than ever.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Berg­er (RIP) and Susan Son­tag Take Us Inside the Art of Sto­ry­telling (1983)

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Susan Sontag’s List of 10 Par­ent­ing Rules

Toni Mor­ri­son Lists the 10 Steps That Lead Coun­tries to Fas­cism (1995)

David Fos­ter Wallace’s Famous Com­mence­ment Speech “This is Water” Visu­al­ized in a Short Film

‘Nev­er Be Afraid’: William Faulkner’s Speech to His Daughter’s Grad­u­at­ing Class in 1951

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Play “Artle,” an Art History Version of Wordle: A New Game from the National Gallery of Art

in Art, Games, How to Learn for Free, Museums | June 3rd, 2022

Are you one of the hun­dreds of thou­sands who’ve got­ten them­selves hooked on Wor­dle, the free online game that gives play­ers six chances to guess a five-let­ter word of the day?

Its pop­u­lar­i­ty has spawned a host of imi­ta­tors, includ­ing Quor­dle, Cross­wor­dle, Absur­dle and Lew­dle, which has carved itself a niche in the vul­gar and pro­fane.

Even the Nation­al Gallery of Art is get­ting in on the action with Artle, where­in play­ers get four attempts to cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fy an artist du jour by exam­in­ing four of their pieces, drawn from its vast col­lec­tion of paint­ings, pho­tographs, sculp­tures and oth­er works.

The Gallery pro­vides a bit of an assist a few let­ters into every guess, espe­cial­ly help­ful to those tak­ing wild shots in the dark.

Before you com­mit to Geor­gia O’Keeffe, you may want to con­sid­er some 80 oth­er George and Georges vari­ants who pop up as you type, includ­ing  Georges Braque, George Grosz, Georgine E. Mason, George Joji Miyasa­ki, George Segal, Georges Seu­rat, and Georg Andreas Wolf­gang the Elder.

Hats off if you can read­i­ly iden­ti­fy all of these artists’ work on sight. That’s an impres­sive com­mand of art his­to­ry you’ve got there!

As with Wor­dle, a but­ton pro­vides a stream­lined invi­ta­tion to boast about your prowess on social media after you’ve com­plet­ed your dai­ly Artle. Return vis­i­tors can keep track of their stats in the upper right hand cor­ner.

There’s no shame in fail­ing to iden­ti­fy an artist in four tries, just a free oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther your edu­ca­tion a bit with titles and links to the four works you just spent time view­ing.

The exam­ples we’ve includ­ed from Thurs­day, June 2’s puz­zle are Free Space (Deluxe), pink, The Civet, Imper­a­tive, and Cobalt Night by….

Your guess?

Play Artle here — like Wor­dle and mul­ti­vi­t­a­mins, just one a day.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Google App Uses Machine Learn­ing to Dis­cov­er Your Pet’s Look Alike in 10,000 Clas­sic Works of Art

Google’s Free App Ana­lyzes Your Self­ie and Then Finds Your Dop­pel­ganger in Muse­um Por­traits

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

A Gallery of 1,800 Gigapix­el Images of Clas­sic Paint­ings: See Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Ear­ring, Van Gogh’s Star­ry Night & Oth­er Mas­ter­pieces in Close Detail

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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1,000 Musicians Perform “My Hero” in a Moving Tribute to Foo Fighters’ Drummer Taylor Hawkins

in Music | June 3rd, 2022

If you fol­low music news, or just scan enter­tain­ment head­lines, you might have noticed that a few weeks after his death, beloved Foo Fight­ers’ drum­mer Tay­lor Hawkins’ final days became a con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject. Accord­ing to a Rolling Stone arti­cle quot­ing Pearl Jam drum­mer Matt Cameron and Red Hot Chili Pep­pers drum­mer Chad Smith, Hawkins was exhaust­ed by the Foo Fight­ers’ tour­ing sched­ule. He need­ed a break, and he did­n’t get one. Both drum­mers have issued state­ments dis­avow­ing the arti­cle. Mean­while, as GQ not­ed, a Rolling Stone “Insta­gram post high­light­ing the arti­cle is being slammed by crit­i­cal fans in the com­ments.”

Argu­ing over hearsay about a musi­cian’s state of mind before his death seems like a poor way to remem­ber him soon after he’s gone. If you’d rather steer clear of this scene, the orig­i­nal Rolling Stone piece is still worth check­ing out for its intro­duc­tion: a feel­go­od sto­ry from three days before Hawkins, 50, was found in his Bogotá hotel room.

After Foo Fight­ers can­celed a head­lin­ing con­cert in Asun­ción, the cap­i­tal city of Paraguay, due to weath­er, Hawkins end­ed up hang­ing out with nine-year-old drum­mer Emma Sofía Per­al­ta out­side the Sher­a­ton. She’d brought her drum kit and played for him. He posed for a pho­to with her, “crouch­ing next to her and flash­ing the sort of warm, toothy smile that estab­lished him as one of the most beloved drum­mers in rock.”

More details of Hawkins’ death may become pub­lic, or they may not. But they should­n’t obscure the rea­son he was famous in life. Like every­one else in the band, but most espe­cial­ly his “twin” Dave Grohl, Hawkins always looked like he was hav­ing the time of his life, whether onstage or meet­ing fans. The band won mass devo­tion not only through stel­lar song­writ­ing and per­for­mances but through sheer, unbri­dled enthu­si­asm: the kind of spir­it that drove 1000 musi­cians to stage a con­cert cov­er­ing “Learn to Fly” in 2015, in a bid to bring the Foo Fight­ers to the town of Cese­na, Italy. It worked, and thus was born the Rockin’ 1000 con­cept.

Get­ting a hand­ful of rock musi­cians to show up on time is a feat in itself, much less 1000 of them, all play­ing not only on time but in time as well. Rockin’ 1000 has pulled this off con­sis­tent­ly since they start­ed, and their trib­ute above to Hawkins above is no dif­fer­ent — a sta­di­um-sized cov­er ver­sion of “My Hero” that con­veys all the emo­tion of the orig­i­nal while mul­ti­ply­ing it by the ampli­tude of a hun­dred march­ing bands. A fit­ting remem­brance of what Hawkins meant to his fans if ever there was one.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Foo Fight­ers’ Tay­lor Hawkins (RIP) Give a Drum­ming Mas­ter­class

Watch 1,000 Musi­cians Play the Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” and The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”

Dave Grohl Falls Off­stage & Breaks His Leg, Then Con­tin­ues the Show as The Foo Fight­ers Play Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (2015)

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

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What Is Batman? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #124 Debates the Character, the Legacy, and the New Film

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | June 3rd, 2022

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In light of the recent release of Matt Reeves’ film The Bat­man, we con­sid­er the strange alter­na­tion of dark­ness and camp that is Bat­man. Is he even a super hero? What’s with his rogues’ gallery? What’s with DC’s anti-world-build­ing?

Your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by phi­los­o­phy prof/NY Times enter­tain­ment writer Lawrence Ware, improv comedian/educator Antho­ny LeBlanc, and Mar­ket­ing Over Cof­fee host John J. Wall, all of whom are deeply immersed in the comics, and we touch on oth­er recent shows in the Bat­man uni­verse.

Some rel­e­vant arti­cles include:

Fol­low us @law_writes, @anthonyleblanc, @johnjwall, and @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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