Explore a Big Archive of Vintage Early Comics: 1700–1929

in Archives, Art, Comics/Cartoons, History | April 22nd, 2022

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of graph­ic nov­els (and more than a few extreme­ly lucra­tive super­hero movie fran­chis­es) have con­ferred respectabil­i­ty on comics.

Hand­some reis­sues of such stun­ning ear­ly works as Win­sor McKay’s Lit­tle Nemo in Slum­ber­land, George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, and Frank King’s Walt and Skeez­ix sug­gest that read­ers’ appetite for vin­tage comics extends deep­er and fur­ther back than mere nos­tal­gia for the Sun­day fun­nies of their youth.

Artist Andy Bleck’s Andy’s Ear­ly Comics Archive is an excel­lent resource for those seek­ing to dis­cov­er ear­ly exam­ples of the form that have yet to be reis­sued in a col­lect­ed edi­tion. (Fair warn­ing: reflect­ing the atti­tudes of the time, the col­lec­tion does inevitably con­tains some racist imagery. Such imagery won’t be on dis­play in this post.)

Bleck, the cre­ator of Konky Kru, a beau­ti­ful­ly sim­ple, word­less series, as well as sev­er­al self-pub­lished mini comics, takes a historian’s inter­est in his sub­ject, begin­ning with the William Hog­a­rth engrav­ings A Harlot’s Progress from 1730:

The famous ‘pro­gres­sions’ by Hog­a­rth were not actu­al­ly comics. The images don’t lead into and don’t inter­act with each oth­er. Each shows a dis­tinct, sep­a­rate stage of a longer sto­ry. How­ev­er, because of their great pop­u­lar­i­ty, they estab­lished the very notion of telling enter­tain­ing sto­ries with a series of pic­tures and so became a high­ly influ­en­tial step­ping stone for future devel­op­ments.

He also cites the influ­ence of British polit­i­cal car­toons, Chi­nese wood­cuts, illus­trat­ed fairy tales and nurs­ery rhymes, and Hein­rich Hoff­man­n’s Struwwelpeter, a book that ter­ri­fied chil­dren into behav­ing by depict­ing the mon­strous con­se­quences befalling those who failed to do so.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Franz Joseph Goez’s Lenar­do und Blan­dine, an actu­al graph­ic nov­el­ette from 1783, “prob­a­bly had lit­tle influ­ence:”

 It was too ahead of its time as far as the com­ic struc­ture is con­cerned. In con­tent, it was delight­ful­ly very much of its time, full of out­ra­geous melo­dra­ma.

Things con­tin­ued to evolve in the sec­ond half of the 19th-cen­tu­ry, with pic­ture broad­sheets for chil­dren, such as the ones star­ring Wil­helm Busch’s wild­ly pop­u­lar Max and Moritz. (See an Eng­lish trans­la­tion here.)

Bleck traces the birth of mod­ern comics, whose sto­ry­telling vocab­u­lary con­tin­ues today, to the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, with Amer­i­can news­pa­per strips and par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Sun­day fun­nies:

The news­pa­per for­mat was much larg­er and cheap­er, pro­vid­ing a lot more emp­ty space to fill. The audi­ence was less sophis­ti­cat­ed, but (pos­si­bly because of this) more open to a par­tic­u­lar type of exper­i­men­ta­tion, despite the dumb and low­brow humor… these Amer­i­can Sun­day pages became the breed­ing ground for some­thing new. Weird­er, rougher, slap­dashier. Also eas­i­er, for chil­dren, but not child­ish. More pop­u­lar. More … some­thingi­er.

Maybe it was that new type of human being, the urban immi­grant, who was most pre­pared and eager to pay for all this new visu­al goings on.

Andy’s Ear­ly Comics Archive can be searched chrono­log­i­cal­ly, or alpha­bet­i­cal­ly by artist’s name. Enter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Read The Very First Com­ic Book: The Adven­tures of Oba­di­ah Old­buck (1837)

Down­load Over 22,000 Gold­en & Sil­ver Age Com­ic Books from the Com­ic Book Plus Archive

Down­load 15,000+ Free Gold­en Age Comics from the Dig­i­tal Com­ic Muse­um

- 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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The Sistine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Collection Features Remarkable High-Resolution Views of the Murals of Michelangelo, Botticelli & Other Renaissance Masters

in Art, Books, History, Religion | April 22nd, 2022

Michelan­ge­lo did­n’t want to paint the ceil­ing of the Sis­tine Chapel. Hav­ing con­sid­ered him­self more of a sculp­tor than a painter — and, giv­en his skill with stone, not with­out cause — he felt that tak­ing on such an ambi­tious project could bring him to ruin. But one does not sim­ply turn down a job offer from the Vat­i­can, and espe­cial­ly not when one is among the most respect­ed artists in six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Italy. In the event, Michelan­ge­lo proved equal to the task, or rather, much more than equal: he com­plet­ed his ceil­ing fres­coes in 1512 for Pope Julius II, and 23 years lat­er was com­mis­sioned again by Pope Paul III to paint the Last Judg­ment over the altar.

Long before Michelan­ge­lo touched a brush to the Sis­tine Chapel’s ceil­ing, a team of painters includ­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Pietro Perug­i­no, and Pin­turic­chio had already adorned the build­ing’s inte­ri­or with fres­coes depict­ing the lives of Moses and Jesus Christ.

Tak­en togeth­er, the Sis­tine Chapel has long been regard­ed as one of the great­est achieve­ments in West­ern art, if not the great­est of them all. Hence the six mil­lion tourists who vis­it­ed it each year before COVID-19; hence, more recent­ly, the painstak­ing care that has gone into the pro­duc­tion of The Sis­tine Chapel, a three-vol­ume at-book set that brings the build­ing’s Bib­li­cal visions as close as any earth­ly read­er cold hope to see them.


The fruit of a half-decade-long col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Vat­i­can and two pub­lish­ers, Call­away Arts & Enter­tain­ment and Scrip­ta Maneant, The Sis­tine Chapel demand­ed 65 nights of con­sec­u­tive work from its pho­tog­ra­phers, who shot 270,000 high-res­o­lu­tion images. Cap­tur­ing the mas­ter­works on the walls and ceil­ing down to the tex­tures of their paint and brush­strokes neces­si­tat­ed climb­ing up on scaf­fold­ing, just as Michelan­ge­lo him­self famous­ly did to make his con­tri­bu­tions in the first place. Lim­it­ed by the Vat­i­can to a print run of 1,999 copies, the set is now avail­able for pur­chase at Abe­Books, though it will cost you $22,000. In a sense that’s a small price to pay, for as Goethe put it, “with­out hav­ing seen the Sis­tine Chapel one can form no appre­cia­ble idea of what one man is capa­ble of achiev­ing.” Find The Sis­tine Chapel book col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

New Video Shows What May Be Michelangelo’s Lost & Now Found Bronze Sculp­tures

Michelangelo’s Hand­writ­ten 16th-Cen­tu­ry Gro­cery List

The Sis­tine Chapel of the Ancients: Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er 8 Miles of Art Paint­ed on Rock Walls in the Ama­zon

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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The History of Iron Maiden: A Documentary Streaming Free Online

in Music | April 21st, 2022

From the offi­cial Iron Maid­en YouTube chan­nel comes the two-part doc­u­men­tary The His­to­ry of Iron Maiden. Released in 2004, Part 1: The Ear­ly Days (above) moves from the band’s begin­nings in Lon­don’s East End in 1975, to the Piece of Mind album and tour in 1983. Part 2 (below) was lat­er includ­ed on the Live After Death DVD release in 2008.

The His­to­ry of Iron Maid­en will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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 and BlueSky.

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 

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are Alright: Sci­en­tif­ic Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins

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100-Year-Old Music Recordings Can Now Be Heard for the First Time, Thanks to New Digital Technology

in History, Music, Technology | April 21st, 2022

If you were lis­ten­ing to record­ed music around the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, you lis­tened to it on cylin­ders. Not that any­one alive today was lis­ten­ing to record­ed music back then, and much of it has since been lost. Invent­ed by Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell (bet­ter known for his work on an even more pop­u­lar device known as the tele­phone), the record­ing cylin­der marked a con­sid­er­able improve­ment on Thomas Edis­on’s ear­li­er tin­foil phono­graph. Nev­er hes­i­tant to cap­i­tal­ize on an inno­va­tion — no mat­ter who did the inno­vat­ing — Edi­son then began mar­ket­ing cylin­ders of his own, soon turn­ing his own name into the for­mat’s most pop­u­lar and rec­og­niz­able brand.

“Edi­son set up coin-oper­at­ed phono­graph machines that would play pre-record­ed wax cylin­ders in train sta­tions, hotel lob­bies, and oth­er pub­lic places through­out the Unit­ed States,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Sarah Durn. They also became the medi­um choice for hob­by­ists. “One of the most famous is Lionel Maple­son,” says Jen­nifer Vanasco in an NPR sto­ry from ear­li­er this month.

“He record­ed his fam­i­ly,” but “he was also the librar­i­an for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera. And in the ear­ly 1900s, he record­ed dozens of rehearsals and per­for­mances. Lis­ten­ing to his work is the only way you can hear pre-World War I opera singers with a full orches­tra”: Ger­man sopra­no Frie­da Hempel, singing “Evvi­va la Fran­cia!” above.

The “Maple­son Cylin­ders” con­sti­tute just part of the New York Pub­lic Library’s col­lec­tion of about 2,700 record­ings in that for­mat. “Only a small por­tion of those cylin­ders, around 175, have ever been dig­i­tized,” writes Durn. “The vast major­i­ty of the cylin­ders have nev­er even been played in the gen­er­a­tions since the library acquired them.” Most have become too frag­ile to with­stand the nee­dles of tra­di­tion­al play­ers. Enter End­point Audio Labs’ $50,000 Cylin­der and Dictabelt Machine, which uses a com­bi­na­tion of nee­dle and laser to read and dig­i­tize even already-dam­aged cylin­ders with­out harm. Only sev­en of End­point’s machines exist in the world, one of them a recent acqui­si­tion of the NYPL’s, which will now be able to play many of its cylin­ders for the first time in more than a cen­tu­ry.

Some of these cylin­ders are unla­beled, their con­tents unknown. Cura­tor Jes­si­ca Wood, as Velas­co says, is hop­ing to “hear a birth­day par­ty or some­thing that tells us more about the social his­to­ry at the time, even some­one shout­ing their name and explain­ing they’re test­ing the machine, which is a pret­ty com­mon thing to hear on these record­ings.” She knows that the NYPL’s col­lec­tion has “about eight cylin­ders from Por­tu­gal, which may be some of the old­est record­ings ever made in the coun­try,” as well as “five Argen­tin­ian cylin­ders that have pre­served the sound of cen­tu­ry-old tan­go music.” In the event, from the first cylin­der she puts on for NPR’s micro­phone issue famil­iar words: “Hel­lo, my baby. Hel­lo, my hon­ey. Hel­lo, my rag­time gal.” This lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence per­haps felt like some­thing less than time trav­el. But then, were you real­ly to go back to 1899, what song would you be more like­ly to hear?

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

A Beer Bot­tle Gets Turned Into a 19th Cen­tu­ry Edi­son Cylin­der and Plays Fine Music

400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain

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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The Woman Who Theorized Color: An Introduction to Mary Gartside’s New Theory of Colours (1808)

in Art | April 21st, 2022

“I shall only say that those ladies who study the rules of the art, secure a nev­er-ceas­ing source of plea­sure to them­selves, which is always at their own com­mand.… while those who pur­sue the prac­ti­cal part alone, can make no progress when­ev­er their teacher or copy is with­drawn.” 

The his­to­ry of col­or the­o­ry is a sto­ry we tell based on avail­able facts. Like many his­to­ries, it has most­ly been a sto­ry by and about men. Isaac New­ton’s exper­i­ments with optics inspired the broad­er inquiry. Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe’s 1810 The­o­ry of Col­ors set a stan­dard — visu­al­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly — for books about col­or in the fol­low­ing cen­turies. A series of less­er-known names sur­round them, to the founders of col­or monop­o­list Pan­tone and beyond.

Maybe the sto­ry would be dif­fer­ent if Mary Gart­side’s work had been more read­i­ly avail­able to her con­tem­po­raries and suc­ces­sors. Gart­side, an Eng­lish water­col­or teacher and painter of botan­i­cal sub­jects, pub­lished An Essay on Light and Shade in 1805, and an expand­ed edi­tion, An Essay on a New The­o­ry of Colours in 1808. The obscure study con­sti­tutes “one of the rarest and most unusu­al books about col­or ever pub­lished,” says Alexan­dra Loske, cura­tor at Brighton’s Roy­al Pavil­ion and her­self a his­to­ri­an of col­or.

Loske found that Gart­side is “one of the only nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry women to have com­posed ‘the­o­ret­i­cal trea­tis­es on colour,’ ” as Pub­lic Domain Review writes, “near­ly a cen­tu­ry before Emi­ly Noyes Van­der­poel pub­lished her Col­or Prob­lems (1902).”

Gart­side wrote in con­ver­sa­tion with New­ton and in cri­tique of “eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry the­o­ries pro­posed by Ger­ard de Lairesse and William Her­schel.” Gart­side’s book antic­i­pates Goethe and James Sower­by’s 1809 A New Elu­ci­da­tion of Colours and draws “par­al­lel con­clu­sions” about “the eye of the behold­er as the cen­tre and ori­gin of colour per­cep­tion.”

Gart­side dressed her phi­los­o­phy in what Ann Berming­ham calls “the very mod­esty of the genre” of water­col­or paint­ing guides, the writ­ing of which con­sti­tut­ed a respectable out­let for women, where crit­i­cal thought was not. The author ges­tures toward this state of affairs in her intro­duc­tion, stat­ing that she does not “offer my opin­ion unasked,” and not­ing emphat­i­cal­ly she can only teach “to the best of my knowl­edge.” Her knowl­edge turns out to be con­sid­er­able. More­over, Pub­lic Domain Review writes, her “hand col­ored illus­tra­tions for the Essay, unique to each vol­ume, have been deemed some of the ear­li­er exam­ples of abstrac­tion in paint­ing.”

Indeed, Gart­side’s detailed instruc­tions on the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of the­o­ry seem to presage the abstrac­tions of Vasi­ly Kandin­sky, who brought his per­son­al meta­physics to the for­mu­lae in the 1923 book Con­cern­ing the Spir­i­tu­al in Art. Unlike the Roman­tics of her time — and like the Mod­ernists of two hun­dred years lat­er — Gart­side de-empha­sized indi­vid­ual genius while stress­ing the impor­tance of the­o­ret­i­cal under­stand­ing. Only through a knowl­edge of col­or the­o­ry and psy­chol­o­gy, she writes bold­ly, could one achieve “com­mand” of the art and make it their own, as she sure­ly did in her illus­tra­tions. Joseph Litts points out in an essay for Mate­r­i­al Mat­ters:

Gart­side used her medi­um of water­col­or paint­ing to engage with con­tem­po­rary debates on col­or. Her under­stand­ing of col­or and col­or the­o­ry is the sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion of her book. She recasts both Isaac Newton’s the­o­ry of pris­mat­ic col­or and Sir William Herschel’s the­o­ry of radi­al col­or by cre­at­ing a “col­or ball” that wraps the chro­mat­ic prism into a con­tin­u­al spec­trum. Such a col­or ball antic­i­pates Goethe’s attempts to put col­or into wheels, a shift from ear­li­er grid rep­re­sen­ta­tions.

Though Gart­side would not claim the man­tle of genius for her­self or her read­ers (and she avoids fuzzy talk of inspi­ra­tion, the mus­es, and so forth), we may place her con­fi­dent­ly in the com­pa­ny of great col­or the­o­rists and illus­tra­tors. And we might also see how her work shows an approach not tak­en, or not tak­en until a cou­ple cen­turies lat­er.

“There is no oth­er exam­ple of a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of colour sys­tems,” Loske writes, “that is as inven­tive and rad­i­cal as Gart­side’s colour blots.” Learn more about Loske’s dis­cov­ery of Gart­side’s work in Kel­ly Grover’s BBC essay “The Women Who Rede­fined Colour.” See more of Gart­side’s water­col­ors at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

Goethe’s Col­or­ful & Abstract Illus­tra­tions for His 1810 Trea­tise, The­o­ry of Col­ors: Scans of the First Edi­tion

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

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The Efficacy of Protest Songs — Four Songwriters Discuss on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #121

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 21st, 2022

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Are protest songs effec­tive, either as protest or songs? Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by Lil­li Lewis, Rod Picott, and Tyler His­lop to dis­cuss how protest works in var­i­ous musi­cal gen­res, who it’s aimed at, and when it goes wrong. Has the day of the protest song passed, or is it alive and well?

Rod men­tions how Bruce Spring­steen clar­i­fied the polit­i­cal char­ac­ter of “Born in the U.S.A.” by rear­rang­ing it (and so did Neil Young with “Rockin’ in the Free World.”) We also men­tion “1913 Mas­sacre,” “Fuck the Police,” “Signs,” “Ohio,” “We Are the World,” “Why We Build the Wall,” crap­py protest songs against COVID restric­tions, Hip Hop for Respect, and more.

Lil­li men­tions Crys Matthews. Mark men­tions this arti­cle about Twist­ed Sis­ter and their song used for Ukraine. Vis­it worldunited.live re. Ukraine.

Each of us has writ­ten some kind of polit­i­cal song: Rod, Lil­li, Tyler, and Mark. Learn more about Lil­li and Rod’s cur­rent releas­es at folkrockdiva.com and rodpicott.com.

Some arti­cles with more lists and such include:

Fol­low us @folkrockdiva, @RodPicott, @sacrifice_mc, and @MarkLinsenmayer.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing all of our guests that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast 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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The Birth of the Blues Brothers: How Dan Aykroyd & John Belushi Started Introducing a New Generation to the Blues

in Comedy, Music, Television | April 20th, 2022

What were the Blues Broth­ers? A com­e­dy sketch? A par­o­dy act? A real band? A celebri­ty soul artist trib­ute? All of the above, yes. The musi­cal-comedic duo of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi turned a ludi­crous begin­ning in bum­ble bee cos­tumes — not dark suits, fedo­ras, and Ray-Bans — into a musi­cal act that “exposed a gen­er­a­tion to the bril­liance of blues and soul leg­ends like John Lee Hook­er and Aretha Franklin,” as Dar­ren Weale writes at Loud­er­sound.

That’s quite an accom­plish­ment for a cou­ple of improv come­di­ans on a fledg­ling late-night com­e­dy show that did not seem, in its first year, like it would stick around long. It was dur­ing that anar­chic peri­od when the Killer Bees became recur­ring char­ac­ters on the show, appear­ing 11 times (despite the stu­dio note, “Cut the bees,” which Lorne Michaels point­ed­ly ignored).

The bees were the first incar­na­tion of the Blues Broth­ers, two years before their actu­al debut in Sea­son 4. (See a lat­er appear­ance from that sea­son, intro­duced by Gar­rett Mor­ris, just above).

A Jan­u­ary 17, 1976 appear­ance of the bees fea­tured “Howard Shore and his All Bee Band,” con­sist­ing of “Aykroyd on the har­mon­i­ca and Belushi on vocals belt­ing out a blues clas­sic very much in the style of the future Elwood and ‘Joli­et’ Jake Blues,” notes History.com. They had the begin­nings of an act, but the look and the per­sonas would come lat­er, “dur­ing the hia­tus between SNL sea­sons two and three” in 1977, while Belushi filmed Ani­mal House in Eugene, Ore­gon and fell under the spell of local blues­man Cur­tis Sal­ga­do, future har­mon­i­ca play­er for Robert Cray.

Sal­ga­do “sure turned John on to blues music,” says Aykroyd. “He steeped him in blues cul­ture.” Sal­ga­do him­self describes how Belushi won him over on their first meet­ing: “I’m pack­ing up my harps, try­ing to break free, when he says, ‘I’m going to have Ray Charles on the show.’ ” Sal­ga­do also gave Belushi a les­son in play­ing it straight, even when he played the blues for laughs. When the com­ic per­formed the song “Hey Bar­tender” to a packed house one night, in char­ac­ter as Joe Cock­er, his men­tor gave him a post-show dress­ing down.

“He asks me, ‘What did you think?’”
“I say, ‘John, it’s Joe Cock­er.’”
‘Yes, I do Joe on Sat­ur­day Night Live.’
“I punch his chest and say, ‘You need to do this from here [point­ing at his heart] and be your­self.’ After that he didn’t mim­ic any more. He was him­self.”

Tak­ing the look of Jake and Elwood from Sal­ga­do, but devel­op­ing the char­ac­ter as his swag­ger­ing self, Belushi “came back from Ore­gon with a lust for the blues,” his wid­ow, Judith, recalls. “He had tapes in his pock­ets and went to clubs.” (See the duo play “Hey Bar­tender” at the Uni­ver­sal Amphithe­ater in 1978, below.)

The name was the brain­child of SNL musi­cal direc­tor Howard Shore (who would go on to write the Lord of the Rings film scores), who hap­pened to be present when the two con­ceived the char­ac­ters at a bar. Their 1978 debut — made over the protests of Lorne Michaels (who did­n’t get it) — made them instant stars.

Paul Shaf­fer spun their ori­gin sto­ry in his intro­duc­tion, “claim­ing that they had been dis­cov­ered in 1969 by the fic­tion­al ‘Mar­shall Check­er,” writes Men­tal Floss. He went on:

Today they are no longer an authen­tic blues act, but have man­aged to become a viable com­mer­cial prod­uct. So now, let’s join “Joli­et” Jake and his silent broth­er Elwood — the Blues Broth­ers.

With that, the nev­er-authen­tic blues act did, indeed, become a viable com­mer­cial prod­uct. “Things start­ed to move quick­ly,” Weale writes. “Record exec­u­tive Michael Klenfn­er took John and Dan to see Ahmet Ertegün at Atlantic Records. He signed the Blues Broth­ers up.” They were a real act, and two years lat­er, real movie stars with the release of John Lan­dis’ The Blues Broth­ers, a film that ful­ly deliv­ered on the duo’s com­ic promis­es, while glee­ful­ly giv­ing the spot­light away to its huge cast of soul and blues leg­ends

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Per­fect Per­for­mance in The Blues Broth­ers, the Film That Rein­vig­o­rat­ed Her Career (1980)

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

The Night John Belushi Cart­wheeled Onstage Dur­ing a Grate­ful Dead Show & Sang “U.S. Blues” with the Band (1980)

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

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What Great Archaeological Sites Used To Actually Look Like: Machu Picchu, the Colossus of Rhodes, Hadrian’s Wall & More in All Their Glory

in History | April 20th, 2022

With nation­al bor­der restric­tions now loos­en­ing up, many of us are reviv­ing our years-dor­mant world trav­el plans. For some, the pan­dem­ic-induced sus­pen­sion of easy access to oth­er coun­tries has even inspired jour­neys they might not oth­er­wise have tak­en. Stuck at home, they real­ized that they’d nev­er seen the won­ders of the ancient world — or at any rate, what remains of the won­ders of the ancient world. Ruin tourism has a long and pres­ti­gious his­to­ry, of course, but it also has the unde­sir­able side effect of sub­con­scious­ly con­vinc­ing us that our ancient fore­bears lived amid a more sham­bol­ic built envi­ron­ment than they real­ly did. To see these ruins as they were before their ruina­tion demands a strong imag­i­na­tion.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can watch the video above, which presents artis­tic recon­struc­tions of such still-fre­quent­ed sites as Pom­peii, Machu Pic­chu, Chichen Itza, the Parthenon, and the Great Pyra­mid of Giza. You can still see some these struc­tures for your­self, of course, albeit only now that the rav­ages of time — as well as those of var­i­ous plun­der­ers, scav­engers, and insti­tu­tions — have tak­en their ter­ri­ble toll.

(The food hall of Nero’s palace still stands, but the water-pow­ered rota­tion sys­tem that made it his­to­ry’s first revolv­ing restau­rant has long since gone out of order.) Oth­ers of them nobody has seen since antiq­ui­ty itself: the Colos­sus of Rhodes once stood a hun­dred feet tall over that Greek island, but it only did so for 54 years until its top­pling by an Earth­quake in 226 BC.

Yet over the two-and-a-quar­ter mil­len­nia since, the Colos­sus has come to take on much greater pro­por­tions in our minds. “The famous imagery of it strad­dling the har­bor,” says the video, only “came about cen­turies lat­er, and was tout­ed by his­to­ri­ans in the Mid­dle Ages who had nev­er seen the mon­u­ment. The har­bor itself is almost the same width as an Amer­i­can foot­ball field, so to be pro­por­tion­al­ly accu­rate, the stat­ue would have to stand a stu­pen­dous 1,640 feet tall. This was firm­ly impos­si­ble at the time.” Even today, nowhere on Earth boasts a stat­ue that’s so much as half that size. And indeed, this may con­sti­tute the endur­ing appeal of ruins: how­ev­er glo­ri­ous they would have been when whole, their worn, dis­col­ored frag­ments fire our imag­i­na­tions to much greater heights.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Ancient Greece Real­ly Looked Like: See Recon­struc­tions of the Tem­ple of Hadri­an, Curetes Street & the Foun­tain of Tra­jan

Watch Ancient Ruins Get Restored to their Glo­ri­ous Orig­i­nal State with Ani­mat­ed GIFs: The Tem­ple of Jupiter, Lux­or Tem­ple & More

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

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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In 1968, Stanley Kubrick Makes Predictions for 2001: Humanity Will Conquer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn German in 20 Minutes

in Film, Sci Fi | April 19th, 2022

kubricklist

Image by Moody Man, via Flickr Com­mons

1968. Rev­o­lu­tion was in the air and the future seemed bright. That year, Stan­ley Kubrick released his mas­ter­piece 2001: A Space Odyssey – a big-bud­get, exper­i­men­tal rumi­na­tion on the evo­lu­tion of mankind. The film was a huge box office hit when it came out; its mind-bend­ing meta­physics res­onat­ed with the culture’s new­found inter­est in chem­i­cal­ly altered states and in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

In the Sep­tem­ber issue from that year, Play­boy mag­a­zine pub­lished a lengthy inter­view with Kubrick. Even at a time when pub­lic fig­ures were sup­posed to sound like intel­lec­tu­als (boy, times have changed), Kubrick comes across as insane­ly well read. Dur­ing the course of the inter­view, he quotes from the likes of media crit­ic Mar­shall McLuhan, Win­ston Churchill, and 19th Cen­tu­ry poet Matthew Arnold along with a hand­ful of promi­nent aca­d­e­mics.

Kubrick is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cagey about offer­ing any expla­na­tions of his enig­mat­ic movie but he does read­i­ly expound on philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions about God, the mean­ing of life (or lack there­of) and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of extrater­res­tri­al life. But per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of the 17-page inter­view is his vision of what 2001 might look like. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see what he got right, what might be right a bit fur­ther into the future, and what’s com­plete­ly wrong. Check them out below:

“With­in ten years, in fact, I believe that freez­ing of the dead will be a major indus­try in the Unit­ed States and through­out the world; I would rec­om­mend it as a field of invest­ment for imag­i­na­tive spec­u­la­tors.”

“Per­haps the great­est break­through we may have made by 2001 is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that man may be able to elim­i­nate old age.”

“I’m sure we’ll have sophis­ti­cat­ed 3‑D holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion and films, and it’s pos­si­ble that com­plete­ly new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion will be devised.”

“You might have a machine that taps the brain and ush­ers you into a vivid dream expe­ri­ence in which you are the pro­tag­o­nist in a romance or an adven­ture. On a more seri­ous lev­el, a sim­i­lar machine could direct­ly pro­gram you with knowl­edge: in this way, you might, for exam­ple, eas­i­ly be able to learn flu­ent Ger­man in 20 min­utes.”

“I believe by 2001 we will have devised chem­i­cals with no adverse phys­i­cal, men­tal or genet­ic results that can give wings to the mind and enlarge per­cep­tion beyond its present evo­lu­tion­ary capacities…there should be fas­ci­nat­ing drugs avail­able by 2001; what use we make of them will be the cru­cial ques­tion.”

“The so-called sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, mid-wifed by the pill, will be extend­ed. Through drugs, or per­haps via the sharp­en­ing or even mechan­i­cal ampli­fi­ca­tion of latent ESP func­tions, it may be pos­si­ble for each part­ner to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly expe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tions of the oth­er; or we may even­tu­al­ly emerge into poly­mor­phous sex­u­al beings, with male and female com­po­nents blur­ring, merg­ing and inter­chang­ing. The poten­tial­i­ties for explor­ing new areas of sex­u­al expe­ri­ence are vir­tu­al­ly bound­less.”

“Look­ing into the dis­tant future, I sup­pose it’s not incon­ceiv­able that a semi­sen­tient robot-com­put­er sub­cul­ture could evolve that might one day decide it no longer need­ed man.”

For such a famous­ly pes­simistic film­mak­er, Kubrick’s vision of the future is remark­ably groovy – lots of sex, drugs and holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion. He wasn’t, of course, the only one out there who thought about the future. You can see more bold pre­dic­tions below:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Mar­shall McLuhan Announces That The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2014.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Behold 3D Recreations of Pompeii’s Lavish Homes–As They Existed Before the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius

in Animation, Architecture, History | April 19th, 2022

“I pray that to their share of noble for­tunes [Zeus] send no Neme­sis of jeal­ous will, but in pros­per­i­ty and free from ills, exalt them and their city.” Pin­dar, Olympian Ode 8

Why are humans awestruck by nat­ur­al dis­as­ter? Or — more to the point — why are we dumb­found­ed when dis­as­ters destroy cities? We should hard­ly be sur­prised at this point when nature does what it invari­ably does: tec­ton­ic plates shift, vol­ca­noes erupt, hur­ri­canes and typhoons sweep the coasts…. These things have always hap­pened on Earth, with or with­out our help, and for many mil­lions of years before any­thing like us showed up.

Like the myth­i­cal Nar­cis­sus, we can only see our­selves and assume every­thing that hap­pens must be for us. After the Great Lis­bon Earth­quake in Por­tu­gal in 1755, “Lis­bon’s devout Catholic pop­u­la­tion saw the ruined city as divine pun­ish­ment,” writes Lau­ra Trethewey.

“The Protes­tant coun­tries of Europe also saw the destruc­tion as pun­ish­ment, but for back­ward Catholic behav­ior.” Mean­while, philoso­phers like Voltaire, who wrote Can­dide to sat­i­rize respons­es to the quake, saw the cat­a­stro­phe as more evi­dence that a cre­ator, if such a being had ever cared, cared no more.

In Greek and Roman mythol­o­gy, the gods nev­er stop med­dling, pun­ish­ing, reward­ing, etc. Nar­cis­sus is tempt­ed to gaze at him­self by Neme­sis, the god­dess who meets hubris with swift ret­ri­bu­tion. While gen­er­al­ly invoked as a lev­el­er of indi­vid­u­als who over­step, she also lev­els cities, as fifth cen­tu­ry BC Greek poet Pin­dar sug­gests when he begs Zeus to spare the island city of Aegi­na from her wrath. Per­haps, then, it was Neme­sis, winged vengeance her­self, that the cit­i­zens of Pom­peii believed bore down upon them, as molten lava, smoke, and ash.

From its ear­li­est sta­tus as a Roman-allied city (then Roman colony), Pom­peii grew into a very wealthy area, its sur­round­ing lands rich with vil­las and farms, its city cen­ter anchored by its Amphithe­ater, Odeon, Forum Baths and tem­ples, its run­ning water arriv­ing from the Seri­no Aque­duct. Maybe they had it too good? Maybe their extrav­a­gant good for­tune caused too much jeal­ous­ly in the neigh­bors? Maybe the gods demand­ed bal­ance. It’s very human to think so — to ascribe divine will, in the lack of expla­na­tion, for why some­thing so filled with teem­ing life should be destroyed for no rea­son at all.

It must have been the gods, who looked down on Pom­pei­i’s wealth and grew jeal­ous them­selves. In these 3D ani­mat­ed videos, see why ancient Pom­pei­ians would have been proud of their city, recre­at­ed here in part by Swe­den’s Lund Uni­ver­si­ty and Sto­ried Past Pro­duc­tions. “While in Pom­peii few could reach the elite,” notes the lat­ter in their descrip­tion of the video above, “many tried to recre­ate ‘the good life’ in their own ways.… From grand urban vil­las, to small pri­vate homes, to small­er apart­ments.” In these walk­throughs, you can “see all the dif­fer­ent things ‘home’ could mean in ancient Pom­peii.” You might also, if you aren’t care­ful, find your­self get­ting a lit­tle envi­ous of these doomed ancient urban­ites.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pom­peii Rebuilt: A Tour of the Ancient City Before It Was Entombed by Mount Vesu­vius

The Lit­tle-Known Bomb­ing of Pom­peii Dur­ing World War II

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman Snack Bar in the Ruins of Pom­peii

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ruins of Pom­peii

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

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Discover 18 Underground Bands From Ukraine

in Music | April 19th, 2022

When it comes to sup­port­ing the Ukrain­ian peo­ple in their bat­tle against the Russ­ian inva­sion, it helps when an oppor­tu­ni­ty match­es our own inter­est. On this site that means direct­ly fund­ing the artists of Ukraine if pos­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly, this new video from YouTube cre­ator Band­splain­ing will point you in the direc­tion of 18 Ukrain­ian under­ground bands that deserve a lis­ten and your mon­ey (if so choose).

While his chan­nel is devot­ed to “Weird sto­ries and less­er-known gen­res that don’t get cov­ered by Pitch­fork,” Band­splain­ing doesn’t usu­al­ly go in for cur­rent events, but as he explains, he is inter­est­ed in music his­to­ry, and bands that have con­tin­ued to cre­ate under extreme and dan­ger­ous con­di­tions.

“Music scenes that exist­ed six weeks ago are now at risk of van­ish­ing com­plete­ly,” he says. The list is com­plete­ly sub­jec­tive, and only hints at the Ukrain­ian music scene. Each major city has its clubs, and its fans, and its own home­grown labels. The sad­ness of watch­ing the video is won­der­ing what might have been bombed out of exis­tence.

I sus­pect none of the bands or musi­cians will be well known to most read­ers, though DakhaBrakha might be—they per­formed an excel­lent set for NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­cert series.

Includ­ing a band well-known enough for pub­lic radio might not be that “under­ground” but Band­splain­ing real­ly means musi­cians who don’t sound main­stream.

Ukraine has its own par­tic­u­lar psych/metal sound, exem­pli­fied here by Shi­va the Destruc­tor, La Hor­sa Bian­ca, Stone Jesus, and Soma­li Yacht Club. Lviv’s Sher­pa the Tiger play mod­ern Krautrock grooves. For elec­tron­i­ca it has the cold­wave of Kurs Valüt, Voy­age Future’s ambi­ent music, and the low-fi hip-hop of Provod.

There’s also old­er music his­to­ry dug up here—the tale of Valenti­na Gon­charo­va, the clas­si­cal­ly trained vio­lin­ist who turned to free jazz and musique con­crete, or pianist Ihort Tsym­brovsky, whose 1995 pri­vate cas­sette release is now con­sid­ered way ahead of its time.

Band­splain­ing checks in with some of these bands to see their cur­rent fates. Some have moved, some are fight­ing, sav­ing refugees, and doing what they can. His gen­uine inter­est in their lives makes this video more than just a list­si­cle.

Most of this music is avail­able through Band­camp, which does mean a major­i­ty of the mon­ey is going back to the musi­cians them­selves. And any YouTube rev­enue from the video will go back to the bands too, Band­splain­ing says, or Ukrain­ian char­i­ties.

Last­ly, the YouTube com­ments for the video con­tains hun­dreds more rec­om­men­da­tions from fans of Ukrain­ian music. Band­splain­ing has opened the flood­gates.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Ukraine’s Works of Art Are Being Saved in Wartime–Using the Lessons of World War II

Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine Teach-Out: A Free Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan

Pink Floyd Releas­es Its First New Song in 28 Years to Help Sup­port Ukraine

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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