Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Performed by German 1st Graders in Cute Cardboard Robot Costumes

in Music, Random | May 31st, 2023

“Teach your chil­dren well” sang Cros­by, Stills and Nash once upon a long ago, and that adage could be para­phrased as “make sure your stu­dents don’t grow up learn­ing sub­stan­dard pop songs. Give them a real edu­ca­tion.” An enter­pris­ing ele­men­tary school teacher in Mom­bach, a dis­trict of the Rhineland city of Mainz, did so in 2015, dress­ing up his stu­dents from Lemm­chen Ele­men­tary in their own hand­made robot out­fits and teach­ing them to sing the clas­sic 1978 Kraftwerk hit “The Robots” (or “Robot­er” if you own the Ger­man ver­sion, which you can hear below).

While the orig­i­nal prog-rock­ers turned elec­tron­ic demigods tried to strip away as much of their human­i­ty when play­ing live, you just can’t do it with kids. They’re just too cute, and their wob­bly, shuf­fling attempts to be machines only warms the heart more. (Could their par­ents tell who was who, I won­der?) Their ver­sion of the music is sim­i­lar­ly charm­ing and pret­ty faith­ful, though it’s pos­si­bly played by instruc­tor Lars Reimer. (An old­er class shows their faces and plays instru­ments in a more recent video, a cov­er of “Tanz” by Stop­pok.) So yes, Mr. Reimer, you’re pass­ing on some good musi­cal taste.

Though Kraftwerk was often thought of as cold and arti­fi­cial when they first arrived on the inter­na­tion­al music scene, the inter­ven­ing years have only empha­sized the roman­tic beau­ty of their (most­ly major key) melodies. (See for exam­ple the Bal­anes­cu Quartet’s ren­di­tion of the same song below.)

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ele­men­tary School Kids Sing David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” & Oth­er Rock Hits: A Cult Clas­sic Record­ed in 1976

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

One Man Shows You How to Play Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” with Just One Syn­the­siz­er

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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The Art Collection of David Bowie: An Introduction

in Art, Music | May 29th, 2023

Today, it hard­ly sur­pris­es us when a suc­cess­ful, wealthy, and influ­en­tial rock star has a large art col­lec­tion. But David Bowie, ahead of the cul­ture even at the out­set of his career, began accru­ing art well before suc­cess, wealth, or influ­ence. He put out his debut album when he was twen­ty years old, in 1967, and did­n’t hes­i­tate to cre­ate a “rock star” lifestyle as soon as pos­si­ble there­after. As the world now knows, how­ev­er, rock star­dom meant some­thing dif­fer­ent to Bowie than it did to the aver­age man­sion-hop­ping, hotel room-trash­ing Con­corde habitué. When he bought art, he did so not pri­mar­i­ly as a finan­cial invest­ment, nor as a bid for high-soci­ety respectabil­i­ty, but as a way of con­struct­ing his per­son­al aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al real­i­ty.

Bowie kept that project going until the end, and it was only in 2016, the year he died, that the pub­lic got to see just what his art col­lec­tion includ­ed. The occa­sion was Bowie/Collector, a three-part auc­tion at Sothe­by’s, who also pro­duced the new video above. It exam­ines Bowie’s col­lec­tion through five of its works that were par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant to the man him­self, begin­ning with Head of Ger­da Boehm by Frank Auer­bach, about which he often said — accord­ing to his art buy­er and cura­tor Beth Greenacre — “I want to sound like that paint­ing looks.” Then comes Por­trait of a Man by Erich Heck­el, whose paint­ings inspired the record­ings of Bowie’s acclaimed “Berlin peri­od”: Low, “Heroes,” Lodger, and even Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, which Bowie pro­duced.

As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Bowie also loved fur­ni­ture, none more so than the work of the Ital­ian design col­lec­tive known as Mem­phis. This video high­lights his red Valen­tine type­writer, a pre-Mem­phis 1969 cre­ation of the group’s co-founder Ettore Sottsass. “I typed up many of my lyrics on that,” Bowie once said. “The pure gor­geous­ness of it made me type.” Much lat­er, he and Bri­an Eno were look­ing for ideas for the album that would become Out­side, a jour­ney that took them to the Gug­ging Insti­tute, a Vien­na psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal that encour­aged its patients to cre­ate art. He end­ed up pur­chas­ing sev­er­al pieces by one patient in par­tic­u­lar, a for­mer pris­on­er of war named Johann Fis­ch­er, enchant­ed by “the sense of explo­ration and the lack of self-judg­ment” in those and oth­er works of “out­sider” art.

The video ends with a mask titled Alexan­dra by Beni­nese artist Romuald Hazoum, whom Bowie encoun­tered on a trip to Johan­nes­burg with his wife Iman. Like many of the artists whose work Bowie bought, Hazoumè is now quite well known, but was­n’t when Bowie first took an inter­est in him. Made of found objects such as what looks like a tele­phone hand­set and a vinyl record, Alexan­dra is one of a series of works that “play on expec­ta­tions and stereo­types of African art, and are now high­ly sought after.” Bowieol­o­gists can hard­ly fail to note that the piece also shares its name with the daugh­ter Bowie and Iman would bring into the world a few years lat­er. That could, of course, be just a coin­ci­dence, but as Bowie’s col­lec­tion sug­gests, his life and his art — the art he acquired as well as the art he made — were one and the same.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold the Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

96 Draw­ings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beat­on & More

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

How Aladdin Sane Became the Most Expen­sive Album Cov­er Ever — and David Bowie’s Defin­ing Image

“David Bowie Is” — The First Major Exhib­it Ded­i­cat­ed to Bowie Spans 50 Years & Fea­tures 300 Great Objects

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

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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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. 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!

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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A Brief History of the Concept Album: From Woody Guthrie, to the Beatles and Pink Floyd, to Taylor Swift

in History, Music | May 19th, 2023

Though Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band holds some­thing of an hon­orary cul­tur­al posi­tion as “the first con­cept album,” the Bea­t­les them­selves did­n’t hear it that way. The term “con­cept album,” as defined by Poly­phon­ic host Noah Lefevre in his new video above, denotes “a set of tracks which hold a larg­er mean­ing when togeth­er than apart, usu­al­ly achieved through adher­ence to a cen­tral theme.” Despite being one of the finest col­lec­tions of songs com­mit­ted to a sin­gle vinyl disc in the nine­teen-six­ties, Sgt. Pep­per’s does — apart from its open­ing and clos­ing tracks — reflect few pains tak­en to assure a the­mat­ic uni­ty.

Oth­er con­tenders for the first con­cept album, in Lefevre’s telling, include Woody Guthrie’s 1940 Dust Bowl Bal­lads, Frank Sina­tra’s 1955 In the Wee Small Hours, John­ny Cash’s 1959 Songs of Our Soil, and The Ven­tures’ 1964 The Ven­tures in Space. Part of the ques­tion of des­ig­na­tion has to do with tech­nol­o­gy: we asso­ciate the album with the twelve-inch long-play­ing record, which did­n’t come on the mar­ket until 1948. (Dust Bowl Bal­lads had to sprawl across two 78 rpm three-disc sets.)

And even then, it was almost two decades before the LP “caught on as the default for­mat for musi­cal releas­es, allow­ing musi­cians to have more scope and vision for their albums” — that, thanks to expan­sive gate­fold sleeves, could lit­er­al­ly be made vis­i­ble. There began what I’ve come to think of as the hero­ic era of the album as an art form.

This era was marked by releas­es like The Moth­ers of Inven­tion’s Freak Out!, The Who’s Tom­my, Mar­vin Gaye’s What’s Going On, David Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, Pink Floy­d’s The Dark Side of the Moon and lat­er The Wall. “The sev­en­ties were a gold­en age for the con­cept album,” Lefevre adds. “It was a time when musi­cians had the space and bud­get to exper­i­ment, and when new tech­nolo­gies were push­ing music into entire­ly unex­pect­ed places.” Par­tial­ly demol­ished by punk and majes­ti­cal­ly revived by hip-hop, the con­cept album remains a viable form today, essayed by major twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry pop artists from The Week­nd and Kendrick Lamar to Tay­lor Swift and BTS — none of whom have quite man­aged to cap­ture the entire zeit­geist in the man­ner of Sgt. Pep­per’s, grant­ed, but cer­tain­ly not for lack of try­ing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Pink Floyd Built The Wall: The Album, Tour & Film

How Pat­ti Smith “Saved” Rock and Roll: A New Video Makes the Case

When David Bowie & Bri­an Eno Made a Twin Peaks-Inspired Album, Out­side (1995)

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Turns 50: Hear It Get Psy­cho­an­a­lyzed by Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin

What Makes a Cov­er Song Great?: Our Favorites & Yours

The True Mean­ing of Queen’s Rock Epic “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”

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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DJ Cummerbund’s Astonishing Mashups Create Unexpected Collaborations Between Rock, Soul & Hip Hop Icons

in Comedy, Creativity, Music, Technology | May 17th, 2023

“His­to­ry in the mak­ing,” Jay‑Z calls out a few bars into Beyoncé’s debut solo sin­gle “Crazy in Love.”

The sen­ti­ment may be even more ger­mane, when he does it in remix mas­ter DJ Cum­mer­bund’s irre­sistible mashup “Crazy Togeth­er,” above.

The recent assem­blage finds Queen Bey split­ting screen time with The Bea­t­les, as DJ Cum­mer­bund weaves “Crazy in Love” togeth­er with “Come Togeth­er.”

The video is as much fun as the seam­less audio, with a ham­my cameo from Ringo Starr, cour­tesy of the 1981 com­e­dy Cave­man, and Yoko Ono and James Brown doing some heavy lift­ing.

John Lennon’s take as Brown fires up his Sex Machine is price­less. It real­ly feels as if these unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tors were active, rather than pas­sive con­trib­u­tors.

Here’s a peek into how DJ Cum­mer­bund arranged the audio clips.

Asked in a 2020 inter­view with Dig­i­tal Jour­nal about the source of his inspi­ra­tion, he respond­ed:

I’m not sure if you can call it inspi­ra­tion exact­ly, but I have a neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tion that caus­es me to hear and feel melodies and fre­quen­cies where most can­not (in the wind, the soil, celes­tial bod­ies, etc.) This ulti­mate­ly caus­es me to con­stant­ly hear songs on top of oth­er songs to the point of extreme frus­tra­tion and the only way to sub­due that is to actu­al­ly cre­ate what I’m hear­ing in my head. It’s almost ther­a­peu­tic for me, and I was even told I could die if I don’t con­tin­ue to cre­ate my works. It’s def­i­nite­ly like a curse some­times but can also be a bless­ing as my music seems to bring a great deal of joy to mil­lions of peo­ple.

An under­sung ele­ment of these crowd pleas­ing remix­es is how skill­ful­ly DJ Cum­mer­bund ties things togeth­er by record­ing sup­ple­men­tal vocals and instru­men­tals.

Ozzy Osbourne fronts “Earth, Wind and Ozzys,” which mar­ries his 1980 solo hit “Crazy Train” with Earth Wind & Fire’s ever­green “Sep­tem­ber” so suc­cess­ful­ly, it’s a let down to remem­ber that a gor­geous, har­mo­nized “I’m going off the rails on a crazy train” is an invent­ed, not sam­pled dis­co cho­rus.

The com­bi­na­tions the DJ comes up with can’t help but force a fresh per­spec­tive on artists who would nev­er in a mil­lion years have shared a stage or fan­base.

Step into a no man’s land where the rapid fire punk brat­ti­ness of the Ramones can coex­ist with the Han­son broth­ers’ lemon fresh, Tul­sa whole­some­ness, and Cot­ton Eye Joe comes in out of nowhere.

When a title like “Me and Coo­lio Down by the School­yard” pops into your head, it arrives as a self-thrown gaunt­let. You can’t not see it through to fruition.

The late rapper’s “Fan­tas­tic Voy­age” infus­es Paul Simon’s gen­tly nos­tal­gic “Me And Julio Down By The School Yard” with some NSFW lyrics and a much hard­er out­look.

The lo-fi joys of dou­ble dutch and play­ground hoops from the orig­i­nal Julio video present a plau­si­ble  vision of a “place where (Coo­lio’s) kids can play out­side with­out livin’ in fear of a dri­ve-by.”

This being a DJ Cum­mer­bund pro­duc­tion, base­ball Hall of Famer, Mick­ey Man­tle and foot­ball coach John Mad­den, who were on hand for Julio, have to make room for his ever present muse, the late wrestling super­star Randy “Macho Man” Sav­age.

DJ Cum­mer­bund is will­ing to con­sid­er requests, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you do a bit of home­work to ensure that your cho­sen songs’ keys match up and their BPMs inhab­it the same realm.

See more of his mash ups, includ­ing Shaxi­c­u­la, the MTV Video Music Award-win­ning B‑52s/Britney Spears remix here.

In recent weeks, DJ Cum­mer­bund has been open­ing for the B‑52s dur­ing their res­i­den­cy at the Venet­ian.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

50 Songs from a Sin­gle Year, Mixed Togeth­er Into One 3‑Minute Song (1979–89)

The Peanuts Gang Per­forms Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Rock Opera in the Mashup “Char­lie Brown vs. The Wall“

The His­to­ry of Rock Told in a Whirl­wind 15-Minute Video

– 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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Hear Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Last Playlist,” Which He Created for His Own Funeral: Erik Satie, Bill Evans, Debussy, Ravel & More

in Music | May 16th, 2023

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.

You can hear the playlist above, or via this Spo­ti­fy playlist.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ryuichi Sakamo­to, RIP: Watch Him Cre­ate Ground­break­ing Elec­tron­ic Music in 1984

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances by Yel­low Mag­ic Orches­tra, the Japan­ese Band That Became One of the Most Inno­v­a­tive Elec­tron­ic Music Acts of All Time

Infi­nite Esch­er: A High-Tech Trib­ute to M.C. Esch­er, Fea­tur­ing Sean Lennon, Nam June Paik & Ryuichi Sakamo­to (1990)

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

62 Psy­che­del­ic Clas­sics: A Free Playlist Cre­at­ed by Sean Lennon

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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James Brown’s Historic Concert, Staged 24 Hours After Martin Luther King’s Assassination, Is Now Restored and Free to Watch Online

in History, Music | May 15th, 2023

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.

To learn more about the per­for­mance, see our sep­a­rate post: James Brown Saves Boston After Mar­tin Luther King’s Assas­si­na­tion, Calls for Peace Across Amer­i­ca (1968)

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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Relat­ed Con­tent 

When James Brown Played Rik­ers Island Prison 50 Years Ago (1972)

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

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Leonard Bernstein & Opera Star Christa Ludwig Get Into a Vigorous Creative Disagreement Over the Tempo of Mahler (1972)

in Music | May 12th, 2023

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.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Bern­stein Awk­ward­ly Turns the Screws on Tenor Jose Car­reras While Record­ing West Side Sto­ry (1984)

Hear the Famous­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Con­cert Where Leonard Bern­stein Intro­duces Glenn Gould & His Idio­syn­crat­ic Per­for­mance of Brahms’ First Piano Con­cer­to (1962)

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

When Leonard Bern­stein Turned Voltaire’s Can­dide into an Opera (with Help from Lil­lian Hell­man, Dorothy Park­er & Stephen Sond­heim)

Leonard Bern­stein: The Great­est 5 Min­utes in Music Edu­ca­tion

Leonard Bern­stein Demys­ti­fies the Rock Rev­o­lu­tion for Curi­ous (if Square) Grown-Ups in 1967

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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