Ryuichi Sakamoto died last March, three months after his final live performance, and two months after the release of his final album 12. It’s safe to say that life, for him, was more or less synonymous with music, and indeed he prepared music to extend even beyond his life’s end. A prolific recording artist, both solo and in collaboration, he no doubt left a great deal of unreleased material in the vault (or so his fans all hope). He also curated the music of others, an occasional pursuit that culminated in the newly released playlist that Sakamoto created to be played at his own funeral.
“The 33-track playlist features some of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s favorite music,” writes NME’s Surej Singh, “including works from Bach, Debussy and Ravel, and opens with an 11-minute piece ‘Haloid Xerrox Copy 3 (Paris)’ from Sakamoto’s frequent collaborator Alva Noto.”
Its two and a half hours of music also include the work of others with whom Sakamoto worked in life, like David Sylvian, as well as other composers and performers spanning various eras and genres: Ennio Morricone, Bill Evans, Laurel Halo, Nino Rota, and Erik Satie.
Whatever the obvious differences between all the pieces Sakamoto chose to play for those who came to pay their respects, the serious listener can hear resonances both between them and with Sakamoto’s own oeuvre. As those who’ve listened to his discography understand, Sakamoto worked in an ever-widening range of forms — pop, dance, ambient, orchestral, and many more besides — yet always came up with music that was immediately recognizable as his own. While he lived, he never stopped assimilating new influences. Even though he’s now gone, the influence of his work will exert itself for generations to come, as will its power as a gateway to vast and diverse musical realms.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks 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.
Thanks to James Brown’s official YouTube channel, you can now watch a remastered and restored version of a historic concert. The channel prefaces the concert with these words:
On April 5th 1968, James Brown gave a free concert at The Boston Garden which became a thing of legend. Only 24 hours earlier civil rights activist Dr Martin Luther King had been assassinated resulting in widespread violence across the United States. The mayor of Boston was persuaded to let the concert go ahead and it was broadcast live across the city by WGBH-TV. Featuring inspiring speeches and legendary performances, James Brown’s concert is said to have contributed majorly to maintaining calm and peace throughout the city that night.
The setlist, complete with time stamps, appears below:
00:00 Intro
01:57 If I Ruled The World
05:40 James Brown Speech
12:55 Tom Atkins Speech
17:45 Kevin White Speech
20:59 That’s Life
24:22 Kansas City
28:45 Soul Man (Bobby Byrd)
31:08 You’ve Got To Change Your Mind (feat. Bobby Byrd)
35:51 I’m In Love (Bobby Byrd)
38:22 Sweet Soul Music (Bobby Byrd)
40:23 Mustang Sally (Bobby Byrd)
43:36 Medley: It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World / Lost Someone / Bewildered
57:30 Tell Mama (Marva Whitney)
59:36 Check Yourself (Marva Whitney)
01:05:02 Chain Of Fools (Marva Whitney)
01:07:38 I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Marva Whitney)
01:10:24 Maceo Parker Comedy Routine
01:20:20 Get It Together
01:27:30 There Was A Time
01:38:40 I Got The Feelin’
01:42:40 Try Me
01:45:35 Medley: Cold Sweat / Ride The Pony / Cold Sweat
01:57:20 Maybe The Last Time
02:01:32 I Got You (I Feel Good)
02:02:04 Please, Please, Please
02:04:34 I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)
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In his role as a kind of classical music professor to the television audiences of America, Leonard Bernstein came across as supremely genial and patient. But that doesn’t mean he dedicated his own career as a conductor to agreeableness above all. Here on Open Culture, we’ve previously featured the occasion in 1962 when he conducted Glenn Gould’s performance of Brahm’s First Piano Concerto, but not before officially declaring his lack of “total agreement with Mr. Gould’s conception” of the piece. Another notable moment of discord arose a decade later, between Bernstein and the late mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, and it, too, has been preserved for all time.
It happened during rehearsals for Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. “Ludwig, seen in this clip in her first rehearsal, begins to sing a verse from the fiendish fourth section, ‘Von der Schönheit’ (Of Beauty), but struggles to fit in all the words at Bernstein’s breakneck tempo,” writes Classic FM’s Maddy Shaw Roberts.
“She shakes her head and walks over to his stand, telling the maestro: ‘I can’t keep up.’ The pair then launch into a delightfully awkward, bilingual disagreement. ‘This is so much slower than I ever do it,’ Bernstein retorts. They try one more time, but Ludwig is still forced to stop as she runs out of breath.”
Whatever difficulties arose in the preparation, Bernstein and Ludwig more than acquitted themselves in the final performance, which you can see in full in the video just above. (The key moment comes at the 26:15 minute mark.) And according to Ludwig, their artistic relationship was far from difficult. “With Bernstein it was true love, I must confess,” she told the Italian magazine Musica. “When singing with Lenny there seemed to be an electric current coming from the orchestra, the conductor and the singers on the stage which went out into the public, forming a circle in which love, sensuality and eroticism became mixed. Bernstein didn’t just conduct the music but he seemed to live it physically as though he was composing it at that moment.” It could hardly be much of a stretch to suppose that, on the deepest level, she agreed with him that there are times — as in Das Lied von der Erde— when clarity must give way to passion.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks 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.
On September 5, 1980, David Bowie performed for a delighted studio audience on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. First came “Life on Mars?”, and then his newly-released song, “Ashes to Ashes.” As his website (DavidBowie.com) describes it, the musician cobbled together a one-off band for the performance, ran through several rehearsals, and then taped the show at NBC Studios in LA. All of this came days before the release of his 14th studio album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and Bowie’s triumphant debut in The Elephant Man on Broadway. Enjoy!
Of the original members of the Stooges, only Iggy Pop still lives. He has by now survived a great many other cultural figures who came up from the underground and into prominence through rock music in the nineteen-seventies. And not only is he still alive, he’s still putting out albums: his most recent, Every Loser, came out just this past January. It followed Free, from 2019, which includes his reading of Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” — an idea, Amanda Petrusich notes in a contemporary NewYorker profile, that came “after an advertising agency asked him to read the poem for a commercial voice-over.”
“At first, I resisted,” Pop says to Petrusich. “I’m not in junior high.” Indeed, as a vehicle for the expression of one’s own worldview, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” feels about one rung up from “The Road Not Taken.”
Petrusich acknowledges that “the poem has grown increasingly meaningless over time, having been repeated and adapted to so many inane circumstances. Yet if you can shake off its familiarity the central idea — that a person should live vigorously, unapologetically — remains germane.” Pop’s distinctive Midwestern voice, made haggard but resonant by decade after decade of punk-rock rigors, also imbues it with an unexpected vitality.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks 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.
Colin Browning, assistant editor of The Bluff, a Loyola Marymount University student newspaper, has some kopasetic casting suggestions for a hypothetical feature adaptation of the “Merriam-Webster classic.”
He’s just muggin’, of course. Still, he seems like a young man who’s got his boots on.
Dig?
…no?
In that case, you’d best acquaint yourself with the only cinematic dictionary adaptation we’re aware of, the Mr. Hepcat’s Dictionary number from Sensations of 1945, above.
Musical team Al Sherman & Harry Tobias drew directly from Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dictionary, a lexicon of Harlem jazz musicians’ slang originally published in 1938 ’ when choosing terms for Calloway to define for a young protégée, eager to be schooled in “the lingo all the jitterbugs use today.”
In between, Calloway, lays some iron in white tie and tails.
By the time the film came out, Calloway’s Hepster Dictionary was in its seventh edition, and had earned its place as the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library.
As Calloway wrote in the foreword to the sixth edition:
“Jive talk” is now an everyday part of the English language. Its usage is now accepted in the movies, on the stage, and in the song products of Tin Pan Alley. It is reasonable to assume that jive will find new avenues in such hitherto remote places as Australia, the South Pacific, North Africa, China, Italy, France, Sicily, and inevitably Germany and wherever our Armed Forces may serve.
I don’t want to lend the impression here that the many words contained in this edition are the figments of my imagination. They were gathered from every conceivable source. Many first saw the light of printer’s ink in Billy Rowe’s widely read column “The Notebook,” in the Pittsburgh Courier.
And now to enrich our vocabularies…
HEPSTER’S DICTIONARY
A
A hummer (n.): exceptionally good. Ex., “Man, that boy is a hummer.”
Ain’t coming on that tab (v.): won’t accept the proposition. Usually abbr. to “I ain’t coming.”
Alligator (n.): jitterbug.
Apple (n.): the big town, the main stem, Harlem.
Armstrongs (n.): musical notes in the upper register, high trumpet notes.
B
Barbecue (n.): the girl friend, a beauty.
Barrelhouse (adj.): free and easy.
Battle (n.): a very homely girl, a crone.
Beat (adj.): (1) tired, exhausted. Ex., “You look beat” or “I feel beat.” (2) lacking anything. Ex, “I am beat for my cash”, “I am beat to my socks” (lacking everything).
Beat it out (v.): play it hot, emphasize the rhythm.
Beat up (adj.): sad, uncomplimentary, tired.
Beat up the chops (or the gums) (v.): to talk, converse, be loquacious.
Beef (v.): to say, to state. Ex., “He beefed to me that, etc.”
Bible (n.): the gospel truth. Ex., “It’s the bible!”
Black (n.): night.
Black and tan (n.): dark and light colored folks. Not colored and white folks as erroneously assumed.
Blew their wigs (adj.): excited with enthusiasm, gone crazy.
Blip (n.): something very good. Ex., “That’s a blip”; “She’s a blip.”
Blow the top (v.): to be overcome with emotion (delight). Ex., “You’ll blow your top when you hear this one.”
Boogie-woogie (n.): harmony with accented bass.
Boot (v.): to give. Ex., “Boot me that glove.”
Break it up (v.): to win applause, to stop the show.
Bree (n.): girl.
Bright (n.): day.
Brightnin’ (n.): daybreak.
Bring down ((1) n. (2) v.): (1) something depressing. Ex., “That’s a bring down.” (2) Ex., “That brings me down.”
Buddy ghee (n.): fellow.
Bust your conk (v.): apply yourself diligently, break your neck.
C
Canary (n.): girl vocalist.
Capped (v.): outdone, surpassed.
Cat (n.): musician in swing band.
Chick (n.): girl.
Chime (n.): hour. Ex., “I got in at six chimes.”
Clambake (n.): ad lib session, every man for himself, a jam session not in the groove.
Chirp (n.): female singer.
Cogs (n.): sun glasses.
Collar (v.): to get, to obtain, to comprehend. Ex., “I gotta collar me some food”; “Do you collar this jive?”
Come again (v.): try it over, do better than you are doing, I don’t understand you.
Comes on like gangbusters (or like test pilot) (v.): plays, sings, or dances in a terrific manner, par excellence in any department. Sometimes abbr. to “That singer really comes on!”
Cop (v.): to get, to obtain (see collar; knock).
Corny (adj.): old-fashioned, stale.
Creeps out like the shadow (v.): “comes on,” but in smooth, suave, sophisticated manner.
Crumb crushers (n.): teeth.
Cubby (n.): room, flat, home.
Cups (n.): sleep. Ex., “I gotta catch some cups.”
Cut out (v.): to leave, to depart. Ex., “It’s time to cut out”; “I cut out from the joint in early bright.”
Cut rate (n.): a low, cheap person. Ex., “Don’t play me cut rate, Jack!”
D
Dicty (adj.): high-class, nifty, smart.
Dig (v.): (1) meet. Ex., “I’ll plant you now and dig you later.” (2) look, see. Ex., “Dig the chick on your left duke.” (3) comprehend, understand. Ex., “Do you dig this jive?”
Dim (n.): evening.
Dime note (n.): ten-dollar bill.
Doghouse (n.): bass fiddle.
Domi (n.): ordinary place to live in. Ex., “I live in a righteous domi.”
Doss (n.): sleep. Ex., “I’m a little beat for my doss.”
Down with it (adj.): through with it.
Drape (n.): suit of clothes, dress, costume.
Dreamers (n.): bed covers, blankets.
Dry-goods (n.): same as drape.
Duke (n.): hand, mitt.
Dutchess (n.): girl.
E
Early black (n.): evening
Early bright (n.): morning.
Evil (adj.): in ill humor, in a nasty temper.
F
Fall out (v.): to be overcome with emotion. Ex., “The cats fell out when he took that solo.”
Fews and two (n.): money or cash in small quantity.
Final (v.): to leave, to go home. Ex., “I finaled to my pad” (went to bed); “We copped a final” (went home).
Fine dinner (n.): a good-looking girl.
Focus (v.): to look, to see.
Foxy (v.): shrewd.
Frame (n.): the body.
Fraughty issue (n.): a very sad message, a deplorable state of affairs.
Freeby (n.): no charge, gratis. Ex., “The meal was a freeby.”
Frisking the whiskers (v.): what the cats do when they are warming up for a swing session.
Frolic pad (n.): place of entertainment, theater, nightclub.
Fromby (adj.): a frompy queen is a battle or faust.
Front (n.): a suit of clothes.
Fruiting (v.): fickle, fooling around with no particular object.
Fry (v.): to go to get hair straightened.
G
Gabriels (n.): trumpet players.
Gammin’ (adj.): showing off, flirtatious.
Gasser (n, adj.): sensational. Ex., “When it comes to dancing, she’s a gasser.”
Gate (n.): a male person (a salutation), abbr. for “gate-mouth.”
Get in there (exclamation.): go to work, get busy, make it hot, give all you’ve got.
Gimme some skin (v.): shake hands.
Glims (n.): the eyes.
Got your boots on: you know what it is all about, you are a hep cat, you are wise.
Got your glasses on: you are ritzy or snooty, you fail to recognize your friends, you are up-stage.
Gravy (n.): profits.
Grease (v.): to eat.
Groovy (adj.): fine. Ex., “I feel groovy.”
Ground grippers (n.): new shoes.
Growl (n.): vibrant notes from a trumpet.
Gut-bucket (adj.): low-down music.
Guzzlin’ foam (v.): drinking beer.
H
Hard (adj.): fine, good. Ex., “That’s a hard tie you’re wearing.”
Hard spiel (n.): interesting line of talk.
Have a ball (v.): to enjoy yourself, stage a celebration. Ex., “I had myself a ball last night.”
Hep cat (n.): a guy who knows all the answers, understands jive.
Hide-beater (n.): a drummer (see skin-beater).
Hincty (adj.): conceited, snooty.
Hip (adj.): wise, sophisticated, anyone with boots on. Ex., “She’s a hip chick.”
Home-cooking (n.): something very dinner (see fine dinner).
Hot (adj.): musically torrid; before swing, tunes were hot or bands were hot.
Hype (n, v.): build up for a loan, wooing a girl, persuasive talk.
I
Icky (n.): one who is not hip, a stupid person, can’t collar the jive.
Igg (v.): to ignore someone. Ex., “Don’t igg me!)
In the groove (adj.): perfect, no deviation, down the alley.
J
Jack (n.): name for all male friends (see gate; pops).
Jam ((1)n, (2)v.): (1) improvised swing music. Ex., “That’s swell jam.” (2) to play such music. Ex., “That cat surely can jam.”
Jeff (n.): a pest, a bore, an icky.
Jelly (n.): anything free, on the house.
Jitterbug (n.): a swing fan.
Jive (n.): Harlemese speech.
Joint is jumping: the place is lively, the club is leaping with fun.
Jumped in port (v.): arrived in town.
K
Kick (n.): a pocket. Ex., “I’ve got five bucks in my kick.”
Kill me (v.): show me a good time, send me.
Killer-diller (n.): a great thrill.
Knock (v.): give. Ex., “Knock me a kiss.”
Kopasetic (adj.): absolutely okay, the tops.
L
Lamp (v.): to see, to look at.
Land o’darkness (n.): Harlem.
Lane (n.): a male, usually a nonprofessional.
Latch on (v.): grab, take hold, get wise to.
Lay some iron (v.): to tap dance. Ex., “Jack, you really laid some iron that last show!”
Lay your racket (v.): to jive, to sell an idea, to promote a proposition.
Lead sheet (n.): a topcoat.
Left raise (n.): left side. Ex., “Dig the chick on your left raise.”
Licking the chops (v.): see frisking the whiskers.
Licks (n.): hot musical phrases.
Lily whites (n.): bed sheets.
Line (n.): cost, price, money. Ex., “What is the line on this drape” (how much does this suit cost)? “Have you got the line in the mouse” (do you have the cash in your pocket)? Also, in replying, all figures are doubled. Ex., “This drape is line forty” (this suit costs twenty dollars).
Lock up: to acquire something exclusively. Ex., “He’s got that chick locked up”; “I’m gonna lock up that deal.”
M
Main kick (n.): the stage.
Main on the hitch (n.): husband.
Main queen (n.): favorite girl friend, sweetheart.
Man in gray (n.): the postman.
Mash me a fin (command.): Give me $5.
Mellow (adj.): all right, fine. Ex., “That’s mellow, Jack.”
Melted out (adj.): broke.
Mess (n.): something good. Ex., “That last drink was a mess.”
Meter (n.): quarter, twenty-five cents.
Mezz (n.): anything supreme, genuine. Ex., “this is really the mezz.”
Mitt pounding (n.): applause.
Moo juice (n.): milk.
Mouse (n.): pocket. Ex., “I’ve got a meter in the mouse.”
Muggin’ (v.): making ’em laugh, putting on the jive. “Muggin’ lightly,” light staccato swing; “muggin’ heavy,” heavy staccato swing.
Nicklette (n.): automatic phonograph, music box.
Nickel note (n.): five-dollar bill.
Nix out (v.): to eliminate, get rid of. Ex., “I nixed that chick out last week”; “I nixed my garments” (undressed).
Nod (n.): sleep. Ex., “I think I’l cop a nod.”
O
Ofay (n.): white person.
Off the cob (adj.): corny, out of date.
Off-time jive (n.): a sorry excuse, saying the wrong thing.
Orchestration (n.): an overcoat.
Out of the world (adj.): perfect rendition. Ex., “That sax chorus was out of the world.”
Ow!: an exclamation with varied meaning. When a beautiful chick passes by, it’s “Ow!”; and when someone pulls an awful pun, it’s also “Ow!”
P
Pad (n.): bed.
Pecking (n.): a dance introduced at the Cotton Club in 1937.
Peola (n.): a light person, almost white.
Pigeon (n.): a young girl.
Pops (n.): salutation for all males (see gate; Jack).
Pounders (n.): policemen.
Q
Queen (n.): a beautiful girl.
R
Rank (v.): to lower.
Ready (adj.): 100 per cent in every way. Ex., “That fried chicken was ready.”
Ride (v.): to swing, to keep perfect tempo in playing or singing.
Riff (n.): hot lick, musical phrase.
Righteous (adj.): splendid, okay. Ex., “That was a righteous queen I dug you with last black.”
Rock me (v.): send me, kill me, move me with rhythm.
Ruff (n.): quarter, twenty-five cents.
Rug cutter (n.): a very good dancer, an active jitterbug.
S
Sad (adj.): very bad. Ex., “That was the saddest meal I ever collared.”
Sadder than a map (adj.): terrible. Ex., “That man is sadder than a map.”
Salty (adj.): angry, ill-tempered.
Sam got you: you’ve been drafted into the army.
Send (v.): to arouse the emotions. (joyful). Ex., “That sends me!”
Set of seven brights (n.): one week.
Sharp (adj.): neat, smart, tricky. Ex., “That hat is sharp as a tack.”
Signify (v.): to declare yourself, to brag, to boast.
Skins (n.): drums.
Skin-beater (n.): drummer (see hide-beater).
Sky piece (n.): hat.
Slave (v.): to work, whether arduous labor or not.
Slide your jib (v.): to talk freely.
Snatcher (n.): detective.
So help me: it’s the truth, that’s a fact.
Solid (adj.): great, swell, okay.
Sounded off (v.): began a program or conversation.
Spoutin’ (v.): talking too much.
Square (n.): an unhep person (see icky; Jeff).
Stache (v.): to file, to hide away, to secrete.
Stand one up (v.): to play one cheap, to assume one is a cut-rate.
To be stashed (v.): to stand or remain.
Susie‑Q (n.): a dance introduced at the Cotton Club in 1936.
T
Take it slow (v.): be careful.
Take off (v.): play a solo.
The man (n.): the law.
Threads (n.): suit, dress or costume (see drape; dry-goods).
Tick (n.): minute, moment. Ex., “I’ll dig you in a few ticks.” Also, ticks are doubled in accounting time, just as money is doubled in giving “line.” Ex., “I finaled to the pad this early bright at tick twenty” (I got to bed this morning at ten o’clock).
Timber (n.): toothpick.
To dribble (v.): to stutter. Ex., “He talked in dribbles.”
Togged to the bricks: dressed to kill, from head to toe.
Too much (adj.): term of highest praise. Ex., “You are too much!”
Trickeration (n.): struttin’ your stuff, muggin’ lightly and politely.
Trilly (v.): to leave, to depart. Ex., “Well, I guess I’ll trilly.”
Truck (v.): to go somewhere. Ex., “I think I’ll truck on down to the ginmill (bar).”
Trucking (n.): a dance introduced at the Cotton Club in 1933.
Twister to the slammer (n.): the key to the door.
Two cents (n.): two dollars.
U
Unhep (adj.): not wise to the jive, said of an icky, a Jeff, a square.
V
Vine (n.): a suit of clothes.
V‑8 (n.): a chick who spurns company, is independent, is not amenable.
W
What’s your story?: What do you want? What have you got to say for yourself? How are tricks? What excuse can you offer? Ex., “I don’t know what his story is.”
Whipped up (adj.): worn out, exhausted, beat for your everything.
Wren (n.): a chick, a queen.
Wrong riff: the wrong thing said or done. Ex., “You’re coming up on the wrong riff.”
Y
Yarddog (n.): uncouth, badly attired, unattractive male or female.
Yeah, man: an exclamation of assent.
Z
Zoot (adj.): exaggerated
Zoot suit (n.): the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit.
That’s solid murder, gate!
If you’re not too beat, Jazz Night In America builds on Calloway’s dictionary with some additional vocabulary in the video below. Watch it for the meanings of stank, ictus, swoop, and scoop, defined collectively by drummer Ali Jackson as the sort of colloquialisms you use when you “don’t want everyone to know what you’re saying, but you want to express a point.”
Listen to poet Lemn Sissay’s BBC history of Cab Calloway’s Hepster’s Dictionaryhere.
Even if you don’t think you know “Enter Sandman,” you know “Enter Sandman.” For more than thirty years it’s been the signature song of Metallica, the best-known heavy metal band in the world, and as such practically unavoidable — unavoidable, that is, unless you’re jazz drummer Larnell Lewis. Previously featured here on Open Culture for his demonstration of the thirteen levels of drumming difficulty, Lewis is most closely associated with the fusion band Snarky Puppy, and has, fair to say, spent his professional life outside the realm of metal. Hence the intrigue of the challenge he takes on in the video above: can he play through “Enter Sandman” after hearing it just once?
Metallica die-hards know how formidable a task this is. Recording the song in the first place took the band’s drummer Lars Ulrich more than one take — in fact, it took him nearly fifty takes, in each of which he played just one section of the song, never the whole thing straight through.
The final mix edits together all of the most precise and intense pieces of his performance into one seemingly impossible-to-replicate whole. But for Lewis, learning a song by ear and then playing it perfectly is all in a day’s work, a process he demonstrates in the earlier video just below, talking his listeners through his mental process of active listening to a percussion-free song, then coming up with all the drum parts on the fly.
Watching Lewis actively listen to “Enter Sandman” has the appeal of those viral videos in which Youtubers hear hit songs for the first time — but even more so, since Lewis knows his craft backwards and forwards, and doesn’t hesitate to express his own reactions and perceptions. He notes a few tricky shifts into half time, and even one especially dramatic shot that he foresees missing when he tries his own hand at the song. Apart from that, however, he then plays the song himself with an accuracy that astonishes even the Metallica fans in the comments. As one says, it’s hard to say which is more unbelievable: Lewis’ extraordinary talent or the fact that he’d never heard ‘Enter Sandman’ before. The man must never have set foot in a gym — but then, he probably gets more than enough of a workout at the drum kit.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks 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.
Before Foo Fighters, before Nirvana, before even Dain Bramage, Scream and other bands, Dave Grohl played in the Springfield, Virginia punk band Mission Impossible. Above, we have footage of Grohl, only 16 years old, giving us a preview of performances to come. The camera puts Grohl center stage around the 1:30 mark.
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