Tina Turner (RIP) Delivers a Blistering Live Performance of “Proud Mary” on Italian TV (1971)

in Life, Music | May 24th, 2023

Note: The great Tina Turn­er passed away today at her home in Switzer­land. She was 83. From our archive, we’re bring­ing back an elec­tric 1971 per­for­mance, a reminder of what made her … sim­ply the best. The post below first appeared on our site in April 2021.

John Foger­ty once said that he con­ceived the open­ing bars of “Proud Mary” in imi­ta­tion of Beethoven’s Fifth sym­pho­ny. It’s an unusu­al asso­ci­a­tion for a song about a steam­boat, but it works as a clas­sic blues rock hook. Most peo­ple would say, how­ev­er, that the song didn’t tru­ly come into its own until Tina Turn­er began cov­er­ing it in 1969.

“Proud Mary” helped Turn­er come back after a sui­cide attempt the pre­vi­ous year. Her ver­sion, released as a sin­gle in Jan­u­ary 1971, “plant­ed the seeds of her lib­er­a­tion as both an artist and a woman,” Jason Heller writes at The Atlantic, bring­ing Ike and Tina major crossover suc­cess. Their ver­sion of the CCR song “rose to No.4 on Bill­board’s pop chart, sold more than 1 mil­lion copies, and earned Turn­er the first of her 12 Gram­my Awards.” See her, Ike, and the Ikettes per­form it live on Ital­ian TV, above.

It’s a sad­ly iron­ic part of her sto­ry that the suc­cess of “Proud Mary” also helped keep Turn­er in an abu­sive rela­tion­ship with her musi­cal part­ner and hus­band Ike for anoth­er five years until she final­ly left him in 1976. She spent the next sev­er­al decades telling her sto­ry as she rose to inter­na­tion­al fame as a solo artist, in mem­oirs, inter­views, and in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do With It.

The new HBO doc­u­men­tary, Tina, tells the sto­ry again but also includes Turner’s weary response to it. Asked in 1993 why she did not go see What’s Love Got to Do With It, Turn­er replied, “the sto­ry was actu­al­ly writ­ten so that I would no longer have to dis­cuss the issue. I don’t love that it’s always talked about… this con­stant reminder, it’s not so good. I’m not so hap­py about it.”

Like all musi­cians, Turn­er liked to talk about the music. “Proud Mary,” the sec­ond sin­gle from Ike and Tina’s Workin’ Togeth­er, came about when they heard an audi­tion tape of the song, which they’d been cov­er­ing on stage. “Ike said, ‘You know, I for­got all about that tune.’ And I said let’s do it, but let’s change it. So in the car Ike plays the gui­tar, we just sort of jam. And we just sort of broke into the black ver­sion of it.”

She may have giv­en Ike cred­it for the idea, but the exe­cu­tion was all Tina (and the extra­or­di­nary Ikettes), and the song became a sta­ple of her solo act for decades. Now, with Tina, it seems she may be leav­ing pub­lic life for good. “When do you stop being proud? How do you bow out slow­ly — just go away?” she says.

It’s a ques­tion she’s been ask­ing with “Proud Mary” for half a cen­tu­ry — onstage work­ing day and night — a song, she said last year, that could be summed up in a sin­gle word, “Free­dom.”

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: 

How Aretha Franklin Turned Otis Redding’s “Respect” Into a Civ­il Rights and Fem­i­nist Anthem

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

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

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Helen Keller Writes a Letter to Nazi Students Before They Burn Her Book: “History Has Taught You Nothing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

in Books, History | May 24th, 2023

Helen Keller achieved noto­ri­ety not only as an indi­vid­ual suc­cess sto­ry, but also as a pro­lif­ic essay­ist, activist, and fierce advo­cate for poor and mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple. She “was a life­long rad­i­cal,” writes Peter Dreier at Yes! mag­a­zine, whose “inves­ti­ga­tion into the caus­es of blind­ness” even­tu­al­ly led her to “embrace social­ism, fem­i­nism, and paci­fism.” Keller sup­port­ed the NAACP and ACLU, and protest­ed strong­ly against patron­iz­ing calls for her to “con­fine my activ­i­ties to social ser­vice and the blind.” Her crit­ics, she wrote, mis­char­ac­ter­ized her ideas as “a Utopi­an dream, and one who seri­ous­ly con­tem­plates its real­iza­tion indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.”

Twen­ty years lat­er she found a dif­fer­ent set of read­ers treat­ing her ideas with con­tempt. This time, how­ev­er, the crit­ics were in Nazi Ger­many, and instead of sim­ply dis­agree­ing with her, they added her col­lec­tion of essays, How I Became a Social­ist, to a list of “degen­er­ate” books to be burned on May 10, 1933. Such was the date cho­sen by Hitler for “a nation­wide ‘Action Against the Un-Ger­man Spir­it,’” writes Rafael Med­off, to take place at Ger­man Universities—“a series of pub­lic burn­ings of the banned books” that “dif­fered from the Nazis’ per­spec­tive on polit­i­cal, social, or cul­tur­al mat­ters, as well as all books by Jew­ish authors.”

Books burned includ­ed works by Ein­stein and Freud, H.G. Wells, Hem­ing­way, and Jack Lon­don, Stu­dents hauled books out of the libraries as part of the spec­ta­cle. “The largest of the 34 book-burn­ing ral­lies, held in Berlin,” Med­off notes, “was attend­ed by an esti­mat­ed 40,000 peo­ple.”

Not only were these demon­stra­tions of anti-Semi­tism, but their con­tempt for ideas appealed broad­ly to the Nazi phi­los­o­phy of “Blood and Soil,” a nation­al­ist car­i­ca­ture of rur­al val­ues over a sup­pos­ed­ly “degen­er­ate,” poly­glot urban­ism. “The soul of the Ger­man peo­ple can again express itself,” declared Joseph Goebbels omi­nous­ly at the Berlin ral­ly. “These flames not only illu­mi­nate the final end of an old era; they also light up the new.”

“Some Amer­i­can edi­to­r­i­al respons­es” before and after the burn­ings, “made light of the event,” remarks the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Muse­um, call­ing it “sil­ly” and “infan­tile.”  Oth­ers fore­saw much worse to come. In one very explic­it expres­sion of the ter­ri­ble pos­si­bil­i­ties, artist and polit­i­cal car­toon­ist Jacob Bur­ck drew the image above, evok­ing the obser­va­tion of 19th cen­tu­ry Ger­man writer Hein­rich Heine: “Where one burns books, one will soon burn peo­ple.” Newsweek described the events as “’a holo­caust of books’… one of the first instances in which the term ‘holo­caust’ (an ancient Greek word mean­ing a burnt offer­ing to a deity) was used in con­nec­tion with the Nazis.”

The day before the burn­ings, Keller also dis­played a keen sense for the grav­i­ty of book burn­ings, as well as a “notable… ear­ly con­cern,” notes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate—out­side the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, that is—for what she called the “bar­bar­i­ties to the Jews.” On May 9, 1933, Keller pub­lished a short but point­ed open let­ter to the Nazi stu­dents in The New York Times and else­where, abjur­ing them to stop the pro­posed burn­ings. She wrote in a reli­gious idiom, invok­ing the “judg­ment” of God and para­phras­ing the Bible. (Not a tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian, she belonged to a mys­ti­cal sect called Swe­den­bor­gian­ism.) At the top of the post, you can see the type­script of her let­ter, with cor­rec­tions and anno­ta­tions by Pol­ly Thomp­son, one of her pri­ma­ry aides. Read the full tran­script below:

To the stu­dent body of Ger­many:

His­to­ry has taught you noth­ing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.

You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a mil­lion chan­nels and will con­tin­ue to quick­en oth­er minds. I gave all the roy­al­ties of my books for all time to the Ger­man sol­diers blind­ed in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and com­pas­sion for the Ger­man peo­ple.

I acknowl­edge the griev­ous com­pli­ca­tions that have led to your intol­er­ance; all the more do I deplore the injus­tice and unwis­dom of pass­ing on to unborn gen­er­a­tions the stig­ma of your deeds.

Do not imag­ine that your bar­bar­i­ties to the Jews are unknown here. God sleep­eth not, and He will vis­it His judg­ment upon you. Bet­ter were it for you to have a mill-stone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hat­ed and despised of all men.

Keller added the penul­ti­mate para­graph of the pub­lished text lat­er. (See the hand­writ­ten addi­tion at the bot­tom of the typed draft.) Her con­cern for the “griev­ous com­pli­ca­tions” of the Ger­man peo­ple was cer­tain­ly gen­uine. The expres­sion also seems like a tar­get­ed rhetor­i­cal move for a stu­dent audi­ence, con­ced­ing the sit­u­a­tion as “com­plex,” and appeal­ing in more philo­soph­i­cal lan­guage to “jus­tice” and “wis­dom.” The Nazis ignored her protest, as they did the “mas­sive street demon­stra­tions” that took place on the 10th “in dozens of Amer­i­can cities,” the Holo­caust Muse­um writes, “skill­ful­ly orga­nized by the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Con­gress” and spark­ing “the largest demon­stra­tion in New York City his­to­ry up to that date.”

Five years lat­er, how­ev­er, anoth­er planned book burning—this time in Aus­tria before its annexation—was pre­vent­ed by stu­dents at Williams Col­lege, Yale, and oth­er uni­ver­si­ties in the U.S., where pro- and anti-Nazi par­ti­sans fought each oth­er on sev­er­al Amer­i­can cam­pus­es. U.S. stu­dents were able to push the Aus­tri­an Nation­al Library to lock the books away rather than burn them. Keller “is not known to have com­ment­ed specif­i­cal­ly” on these stu­dent protests, writes Med­off, “but one may assume she was deeply proud that at a time when too many Amer­i­cans did not want to be both­ered with Europe’s prob­lems, these young men and women under­stood the mes­sage of her 1933 letter—that the prin­ci­ples under attack by the Nazis were some­thing that should mat­ter to all mankind.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2017.

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 

The Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library Gives Every Teenag­er in the U.S. Free Access to Books Get­ting Cen­sored by Amer­i­can Schools

The 850 Books a Texas Law­mak­er Wants to Ban Because They Could Make Stu­dents Feel Uncom­fort­able

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

America’s First Banned Book: Dis­cov­er the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puri­tans

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John Singer Sargent’s Scandalous Paintings: An Introduction to Madame X and Dr. Pozzi at Home

in Art, History | May 24th, 2023

Hen­ry James, per­haps the most famous Amer­i­can expa­tri­ate nov­el­ist of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, won a great deal of his fame with The Por­trait of a Lady. John Singer Sar­gent, per­haps the most famous Amer­i­can expa­tri­ate painter of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, won a great deal of his fame with a por­trait of a lady — but not before it seemed to kill his illus­tri­ous career at a stroke. When it was first shown to the pub­lic at the Paris Salon of 1884, Sar­gen­t’s Por­trait of Madame X drew a range of reac­tions from bit­ter dis­missal to near-vio­lent anger. But today, as Great Art Explained host James Payne says in the new video above, “it is gen­uine­ly hard to see what the fuss was about.”

“Twen­ty years before, in 1865, Manet had shown Olympia at the Salon, to a scan­dal­ized Paris. So why the shock now? The dif­fer­ence was that Manet’s Olympia was a pros­ti­tute, like the women in Toulouse-Lautrec’s paint­ing also on dis­play in 1884. But Madame X was part of French high soci­ety.” She was, all those first view­ers would have known, the socialite, banker’s wife, and “pro­fes­sion­al beau­ty” Vir­ginie Amélie Aveg­no Gautreau. Her rumored pen­chant for infi­deli­ties would­n’t have been unusu­al for her par­tic­u­lar place and time, but her back­ground as the New Orleans-born daugh­ter of a Euro­pean Cre­ole fam­i­ly cer­tain­ly would have.

Behold­ing Madame X, “Parisians were forced to con­front their own deca­dence, which they pre­ferred not to acknowl­edge, and this was where Sar­gent went wrong. The salons were a sacro­sanct part of French cul­ture, and he, a for­eign­er, was flaunt­ing immoral­i­ty in their faces with a paint­ing of anoth­er for­eign­er, an exot­ic one at that.” He’d already stirred up a cer­tain amount of con­tro­ver­sy three years ear­li­er with Dr. Pozzi at Home, anoth­er full-length por­trait that por­trayed its sub­ject – the high­ly accom­plished and noto­ri­ous­ly hand­some gyne­col­o­gist Samuel-Jean Pozzi — in a man­ner whose sheer infor­mal­i­ty verges on the con­cu­pis­cent.

Payne thus regards Dr. Pozzi and Madame X as “male-female ver­sions of the same type. They are both flam­boy­ant pea­cock fig­ures, with a streak of van­i­ty and a knack for seduc­tion. There is some­thing in the way they are posed which is uncon­ven­tion­al. They have an indi­rect gaze, and they both have supreme con­fi­dence verg­ing on arro­gance.” That only Sar­gent could have — or, at least, would have — cap­tured and trans­mit­ted those qual­i­ties with such direct­ness was­n’t appre­ci­at­ed quite so much at the time. Ostra­cized in Paris, where he’d been a sought-after por­traitist to the wealthy, he packed up Madame X and set off for Lon­don, where he soon rebuilt his career. The advice to do so came from none oth­er than Hen­ry James, who knew a thing or two about advan­ta­geous relo­ca­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How John Singer Sar­gent Became the Great­est Por­traitist Who Ever Lived — by Paint­ing “Out­side the Lines”

When John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X” Scan­dal­ized the Art World in 1884

The Scan­dalous Paint­ing That Helped Cre­ate Mod­ern Art: An Intro­duc­tion to Édouard Manet’s Olympia

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Art His­to­ry School: Learn About the Art & Lives of Toulouse-Lautrec, Gus­tav Klimt, Frances Bacon, Edvard Munch & Many More

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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Considering Rocky/Creed, Our Most Successful Sports Film Franchise — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #149

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sports | May 24th, 2023

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Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Bak­er talk through the ups and downs of this nine-film fran­chise that start­ed with Rocky, the high­est gross­ing film of 1976 and win­ner of that year’s Acad­e­my Award for Best Pic­ture. We’re espe­cial­ly con­cerned with this year’s Creed III, direct­ed by its star Michael B. Jor­dan, which is the first entry in the fran­chise that’s entire­ly free of Sylvester Stal­lone.

How can such an appar­ent­ly sim­ple for­mu­la (start as an under­dog, train, and win at least a moral vic­to­ry) stay fresh? Why was there a robot in Rocky IV? Is there any ratio­nale for an extend­ed, con­tin­u­ing Rocky-verse? Does enjoy­ing these films involve approv­ing of box­ing as a sport, or the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of fic­tion­al sports heroes over real-life ones?

For var­i­ous arti­cles about things going on in the fran­chise, check out totalrocky.com. Sarahlyn men­tions the NPR pod­cast The Stat­ue.

Fol­low us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @ixisnox, @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. If you’re not sub­scribed to the pod­cast, you’re miss­ing lots of good episodes. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode 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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Watch Ben Kingsley Play Salvador Dalí in the Trailer for the New Film, Dalíland

in Art, Film | May 23rd, 2023

By itself, the prospect of see­ing Sir Ben Kings­ley play Sal­vador Dalí would be enough to get more than a few movie­go­ers into the the­ater (or onto their couch­es, stream­ing). But then, so would the prospect of see­ing him play prac­ti­cal­ly any­one: Mahat­ma Gand­hi (as the Acad­e­my acknowl­edged), or Georges Méliès, or Dmitri Shostakovich, or a foul­mouthed Lon­don gang enforcer. Dalí­land, which comes out next month, promis­es a rich por­tray­al of Dalí not just by Kings­ley, but by also Ezra Miller, an actor pos­sessed of a phys­i­cal resem­blance to the artist in his youth as well as a pub­lic life seen as scan­dalous and occa­sion­al­ly crim­i­nal.

This choice of cast­ing, with the trou­bled Miller play­ing the young Dalí and the ultra-respectable Kings­ley play­ing the old, reflects a cer­tain intent to cap­ture the dual­i­ty of the char­ac­ter him­self. Kings­ley has spo­ken of devel­op­ing his inter­pre­ta­tion of Dalí “based on his lan­guage; his behav­ior; his taste in love, life, food, wine, and every­thing; and also his dar­ing to break so many rules.”

You can hear him reflect more on the expe­ri­ence in the Dead­line Hol­ly­wood video just below. “I love his work,” he says. “I love his fear­less­ness, and he was exhil­a­rat­ing and exhaust­ing to play, as I antic­i­pat­ed he would be.” He also has high praise for direc­tor Mary Har­ron, who’s known for her adap­ta­tion of Bret Eas­t­on Ellis’ Amer­i­can Psy­cho.

Har­ron’s first fea­ture was I Shot Andy Warhol, about Warhol’s near-mur­der­er Valerie Solanas, and her most recent, Char­lie Says, tells the sto­ry of Leslie Van Houten and the Man­son fam­i­ly. Such pic­tures demon­strate her facil­i­ty with bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma, as well as her invest­ment in the cul­ture of post­war Amer­i­ca and the eccen­tric per­son­al­i­ties that both enlivened and dark­ened it. Dalí­land takes place in the win­ter of 1974, which Dalí and his wife Gala spent at the St. Reg­is Hotel in New York. Its pro­tag­o­nist, a young gallery employ­ee played by Christo­pher Briney, gets pulled into Dalí’s world and becomes respon­si­ble for mak­ing sure the artist has all the work ready for his fast upcom­ing show.

“The film’s sev­en­ties set­ting allows it to be a por­trait of the moment when the art world under­went its tec­ton­ic shift, fus­ing with the mon­ey cul­ture, becom­ing a kind of pig­gy bank for the wealthy,” writes Vari­ety’s Owen Gleiber­man. “Dalí and Gala have, in their way, played into this. They’re exploiters of Dalí’s leg­end who have, in turn, been exploit­ed.” At that time Dalí still had about fif­teen years to go, but Kings­ley sees the peri­od as “pos­si­bly the clos­ing chap­ters of Dalí’s life,” the set­ting of “his com­ing to terms with mor­tal­i­ty, a sub­ject with which he strug­gled dread­ful­ly.” The phe­nom­e­non wit­nessed by Briney’s char­ac­ter, and thus the audi­ence, is “how a genius leaves the world” — and, in this par­tic­u­lar case, leaves it con­sid­er­ably more sur­re­al than he found it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dalí, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

Sir Ben Kings­ley Reads a Let­ter Writ­ten by Gand­hi to Hitler (in the Voice of Mahat­ma Gand­hi)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

Watch: New Film by Roman Polan­s­ki, Star­ring Hele­na Bon­ham Carter, Sir Ben Kings­ley & Pra­da Shoes

Sal­vador Dalí on What’s My Line?

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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Neil Gaiman Speaks at the Alternative Graduation Held at a College Resisting Ron DeSantis’ Hostile Takeover

in Current Affairs, Education | May 23rd, 2023

His pres­i­den­tial cam­paign has end­ed before it start­ed. But Ron DeSan­tis is the last to know it. And so he con­tin­ues pan­der­ing to Trump’s base. After ship­ping migrants to Martha’s Vine­yard, the Flori­da gov­er­nor now picks cost­ly fights with Dis­ney, his state’s sec­ond largest employ­er; bans books in Flori­da pub­lic schools; and exerts polit­i­cal pres­sure on the state’s pub­lic col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties.

At the New Col­lege of Flori­da, DeSan­tis is using the cud­gel of gov­ern­ment to trans­form a tra­di­tion­al lib­er­al arts col­lege into a con­ser­v­a­tive-lean­ing insti­tu­tion. If you’re not fol­low­ing what’s hap­pen­ing at New Col­lege, read this pro­file in The New York­er. The arti­cle will help set the stage for the video above.

There, you will see author Neil Gaiman speak­ing at an alter­na­tive grad­u­a­tion arranged by New Col­lege stu­dents. Not want­i­ng to par­tic­i­pate in the offi­cial grad­u­a­tion archi­tect­ed by the school’s new con­ser­v­a­tive boss­es (the event fea­tured Scott Atlas, the radi­ol­o­gist who became Trump’s con­tro­ver­sial Covid “expert,” how inspir­ing!), the stu­dents arranged an alt grad­u­a­tion and invit­ed Gaiman to speak via video. Through a per­son­al sto­ry, The Sand­man author remind­ed the stu­dents of the lib­er­al arts val­ues that under­gird the school, and left stu­dents with some time­ly advice: “You must fight for what you believe to be right while nev­er los­ing your sense of humor or your sense of pro­por­tion.” Here’s to hop­ing that New Col­lege out­lasts the erst­while pres­i­den­tial con­tender.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Neil Gaiman Gives Grad­u­ates 10 Essen­tial Tips for Work­ing in the Arts

John Waters’ RISD Grad­u­a­tion Speech: Real Wealth Is Life With­out A*Holes

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

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Watch the Original Schoolhouse Rock Composers Sing “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill” Live in Concert

in Education, English Language, Jazz, K-12 | May 22nd, 2023

At first blush, School­house Rock!, the inter­sti­tial ani­ma­tions air­ing between ABC’s Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon line up from 1973 to 1984, may seem like a catchy, edu­ca­tion­al equiv­a­lent of sneak­ing spinach into pan­cakes (and a major Gen X touch­stone.)

Not so fast! It’s also jazz, baby!

Jazz pianist Bob Dor­ough recalled how an ad exec at a New York ad agency pitched the idea:

My lit­tle boys can’t mem­o­rize their times tables, but they sing along with Jimi Hen­drix and the Rolling Stones, so why don’t you put it to rock music and we’ll call it Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion Rock?

Dor­ough, whose com­po­si­tion­al pref­er­ences ran to “extrav­a­gant love songs” and vocal chal­leng­ing num­bers, real­ized that his first order of busi­ness would be to write a good song:

I hit upon the idea, let’s pick a num­ber. Three! That’s a good num­ber. And I sat down at the piano and start­ed fool­ing around. It took me 2 weeks.

In his hands, three became a mag­ic num­ber, an ear worm to bring even the most reluc­tant ele­men­tary math­e­mati­cians up to speed in no time.

Even­tu­al­ly, Dor­ough was able to bring many of his jazz world friends into the fold, includ­ing, most famous­ly, trum­peter and Merv Grif­fin Show side­kick Jack Shel­don, whose one-of-a-kind deliv­ery is the hands down high­light of “Con­junc­tion Junc­tion.”

(Many School­house Rock! fans, view­ing the excerpt of the duo’s mid-90’s live appear­ance on the KTLA Morn­ing Show, above, pro­fessed dis­be­lief that Sheldon’s soul was of the blue-eyed vari­ety, even though the ani­mat­ed engi­neer who serves as his avatar in that three minute episode is white.)

In an inter­view with the direc­tor of the Fil­lius Jazz Archive at Hamil­ton Col­lege, Shel­don agreed that the series owed a major debt to jazz:

When we made Con­junc­tion Junc­tion, it was me and Ted­dy Edwards and Nick Ceroli and Leroy Vine­gar and Bob Dor­ough played the piano. That’s a jazz band…it was real­ly noth­ing to do with rock. It was always jazz, but we said rock and roll, so every­body loved it for rock and roll.

Anoth­er mem­o­rable col­lab­o­ra­tion between Shel­don and Dor­ough is the much par­o­died “I’m Just a Bill,” in which a weary scroll loi­ters on the steps of the Cap­i­tal Build­ing, explain­ing to a wide eyed young­ster (voiced by his son) the process by which a bill becomes law.

Dor­oughs’ School­house Rock! con­tri­bu­tions include the haunt­ing Fig­ure Eight, the folky Lucky Sev­en Samp­son, whose sen­ti­ments Dor­ough iden­ti­fied with most close­ly, and Naughty Num­ber Nine, which his pro­tégé, singer-song­writer Nel­lie McK­ay sin­gled out for spe­cial praise, “cause it was kind of weird and sub­ver­sive:”

(It) made me want to gam­ble and win. I got hooked when I heard Bob’s jazzy rasp of a voice break­ing the rules even as he explained them… this guy had a wild mind, which I fig­ured out lat­er equaled cre­ativ­i­ty.

She also paid the per­pet­u­al­ly sun­ny Dor­ough, whom she first encoun­tered “glow(ing) with health and good cheer, spread­ing sun­shine wher­ev­er he went on the cam­pus of East Strouds­burg Uni­ver­si­ty, the supreme com­pli­ment:

Lou Reed’s idea of hell would be to sit in heav­en with Bob Dor­ough.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

School­house Rock: Revis­it a Col­lec­tion of Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Edu­ca­tion­al Videos

I’m Just a Pill: A School­house Rock Clas­sic Gets Reimag­ined to Defend Repro­duc­tive Rights in 2017

Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry Rock: The School­house Rock Par­o­dy Sat­ur­day Night Live May Have Cen­sored

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

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Martin Amis (RIP) Explains Why American Populism Is a Con

in Literature, Politics, Writing | May 22nd, 2023

In the lat­er decades of his 50-year-long career as a nov­el­ist, the late Mar­tin Amis had a rep­u­ta­tion as some­thing of a con­tro­ver­sial­ist. This made more sense in his native Eng­land than in the Amer­i­ca to which he lat­er relo­cat­ed, and whose large­ly non-lit­er­ary provo­ca­teurs tend to an aggres­sive plain­spo­ken­ness bor­der­ing on — and more recent­ly, dri­ving well into the ter­ri­to­ry of — vul­gar­i­ty. “Intel­lec­tu­al snob­bery has been much neglect­ed,” says Amis in the Big Think inter­view clip above. His plea is for “more care about how peo­ple express them­selves and more rev­er­ence, not for peo­ple of high social stand­ing, but for peo­ple of decent edu­ca­tion and train­ing.”

This against pop­ulism, which “relies on a sen­ti­men­tal and very old-fash­ioned view that the une­d­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion knows bet­ter, in its instincts, than the over-refined elite, that leads to anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, which is self-destruc­tive for every­one”: the lion­iza­tion, in oth­er words, of the kind of fig­ure giv­en to dec­la­ra­tions like “I go with my gut.”

In every oth­er land, as Amis sees it, “brain has won over gut, but in Amer­i­ca it still splits the nation.” It would be one thing if the vis­cera-trust­ing rab­ble-rousers actu­al­ly worked to fur­ther the inter­ests of the com­mon man, but in every real-world sce­nario it turns out to be quite anoth­er. “It’s an act, pop­ulism. It’s always an act.”

An admir­er of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy, Amis acknowl­edged the right to free speech as a vital ele­ment of that sys­tem. “You’ve got it or you haven’t,” he says in the clip just above, “and every diminu­tion of free­dom of speech dimin­ish­es every­one, and lessens the cur­ren­cy of free­dom of speech.” But he also lays down a caveat: “The con­tro­ver­sial state­ment has to be earned. It can’t just be tossed off. You have to be able to back it up.” He even describes him­self as “a fan of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” — of not “the out­er fringe P.C., but rais­ing the stan­dards about what can be said.” This process comes with its own chal­lenges, and “you have to sort of work round it a bit.” But since greater restric­tions demand, and reward, more skill­ful sub­tle­ty, an adept writer will always be of two minds about free speech. It will sure­ly be a while before we see anoth­er writer quite as adept as Mar­tin Amis.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Amis Explains His Method for Writ­ing Great Sen­tences

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

Mar­tin Amis Explains How to Use a The­saurus to Actu­al­ly Improve Your Writ­ing

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­tin Amis, No Strangers to Con­tro­ver­sy, Talk in 1991

P. J. O’Rourke (RIP) Explains Why You Can Nev­er Win Over Your Polit­i­cal Adver­saries by Mock­ing Them

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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