Soundtrack Composer Craig Wedren (Zoey’s Playlist, Glow, Shrill) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #41 on TV Musicals

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 30th, 2020

Craig was the front-man of the brainy punk band Shud­der to Think from the mid-’80s through the ’90s and has cre­at­ed music for many TV shows and films. He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt due to his involve­ment with the cur­rent NBC musi­cal dram­e­dy Zoey’s Extra­or­di­nary Playlist, which along with Glee, Crazy Ex-Girl­friend, Nashville, Rise, etc. rep­re­sents a new era of musi­cals as main­stream TV.

Why are shows like this being cre­at­ed at this point in our cul­tur­al his­to­ry? These shows all use some nar­ra­tive expla­na­tion for why there’s singing (i.e. the songs are diagetic) instead of just hav­ing the char­ac­ters sing as in a clas­sic musi­cal or a film like The Great­est Show­man or La La Land. Most of these also make heavy use of cov­er tunes and/or par­o­dies in a way that stage musi­cals usu­al­ly don’t. And of course there’s often a heavy use of auto­tune and more star-based cast­ing than is the norm for stage pro­duc­tions.

Some arti­cles to pro­vide an overview of the top­ic:

Note that Craig does­n’t cre­ate the actu­al songs that the cast mem­bers sing for Zoey’s, just the inter­sti­tial music, but he’s writ­ten heaps of songs and is in a great posi­tion to talk with us about every­thing from Cop Rock to Mama Mia. We also touch on musi­cal episodes in Com­mu­ni­ty and Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, karaoke in film, Adam Schlesinger, Stop Mak­ing Sense (also see David Byrne’s mobile band on Col­bert) and a weird Net­flix lip-sync dra­ma called Sound­track,

Lis­ten to Craig talk about his own tunes on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music and watch his dai­ly Sab­bath Ses­sions at facebook.com/craigwedrenmusic or on YouTube. Hear the song he wrote for School of Rock.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. 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 or start with the first episode.

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When David Bowie Launched His Own Internet Service Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

in History, Music, Technology | April 29th, 2020

When we con­sid­er the many iden­ti­ties of David Bowie — Zig­gy Star­dust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke — we often neglect to include his trans­for­ma­tion into an inter­net entre­pre­neur. In line with Bowie’s rep­u­ta­tion for being ahead of his time in all endeav­ors, it hap­pened sev­er­al tech booms ago, in the late 1990s. Fore­see­ing the inter­net’s poten­tial as a cul­tur­al and com­mer­cial force, he got ahead of it by launch­ing not just his own web site (which some major artists lacked through the end of the cen­tu­ry), but his own inter­net ser­vice provider. For $19.95 a month (£10.00 in the UK), BowieNet offered fans access not just to “high-speed” inter­net but to “David Bowie, his world, his friends, his fans, includ­ing live chats, live video feeds, chat rooms and bul­letin boards.”

So announced the ini­tial BowieNet press release pub­lished in August 1998, which also promised “live in-stu­dio video feeds,” “text, audio and video mes­sages from Bowie,” “Desk­top themes includ­ing Bowie screen­savers, wall­pa­per and icons,” and best of all, a “david­bowie e‑mail address (your name@davidbowie.com).” While the dial-up of the inter­net con­nec­tions of the day was­n’t quite equal to the task of reli­ably stream­ing video, many of BowieNet’s approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 mem­bers still fond­ly remem­ber the com­mu­ni­ty cul­ti­vat­ed on its mes­sage boards. “This was in effect a music-cen­tric social net­work,” writes The Gar­dian’s Kei­th Stu­art, “sev­er­al years before the emer­gence of sec­tor lead­ers like Friend­ster and Myspace.”

Unlike on the the vast social net­works that would lat­er devel­op, the man him­self was known to drop in. Under the alias “Sailor,” writes Newsweek’s Zach Schon­feld, “Bowie would some­times share updates and rec­om­men­da­tions or respond to fan queries.” He might endorse an album (Arcade Fire’s debut Funer­al earned a rave), express increduli­ty at rumors (of, say, his play­ing a con­cert with Paul McCart­ney and Michael Jack­son to be beamed into out­er space), crack jokes, or tell sto­ries (of, say, the time he and John Lennon sat around call­ing into radio sta­tions togeth­er). As Ars Tech­ni­ca’s inter­view with BowieNet co-founder Ron Roy con­firms, Bowie did­n’t just lend the enter­prise his brand but was “tremen­dous­ly involved from day one.” As Roy tells it, Bowie kept BowieNet fresh “by explor­ing new tech­nolo­gies to keep fans engaged and excit­ed. He always preached [that] it’s about the expe­ri­ence, the new.”

It helped that Bowie was­n’t sim­ply look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on the rise of the inter­net. As the 1999 ZDTV inter­view at the top of the post reveals, he was already hooked on it him­self. “The first thing I do is get e‑mails out of the way,” he says, describ­ing the aver­age day in his online life. “I’m e‑mail crazy. And then I’ll spend prob­a­bly about an hour, maybe more, going through my site.” Even in the ear­ly days of “the con­tro­ver­sial mp3 for­mat,” he showed great enthu­si­asm for putting his music online. He con­tin­ued doing so even after tech­nol­o­gy sur­passed BowieNet, which dis­con­tin­ued its inter­net ser­vice in 2006. Now, as the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic keeps much of the world at home, many high-pro­file artists have tak­en to the inter­net to keep the show going. David Bowie fans know that, were he still with us, he’d have been the first to do it — and do it, no doubt, the most inter­est­ing­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

David Bowie Sells Ice Cream, Sake, Coke & Water: Watch His TV Com­mer­cials from the 1960s Through 2013

How David Bowie Deliv­ered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Zig­gy Star­dust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Scenes of Ezra Pound Wandering Through Venice and Reading from His Famous Pisan Cantos (1967)

in Poetry | April 29th, 2020

Ezra Pound is a prob­lem for Mod­ernist lit­er­ary stud­ies in the same way Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger is for Con­ti­nen­tal phi­los­o­phy: it’s impos­si­ble to deny the over­whelm­ing influ­ence of either figure—and impos­si­ble to deny that both were devot­ed anti-Semit­ic fas­cists from at least the 1930s to the end of their days. Hei­deg­ger kept his views most­ly hid­den in his “Black Note­books.” Pound, on the oth­er hand, became an enthu­si­as­tic mouth­piece. He pub­licly idol­ized Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, signed let­ters with “Heil Hitler,” and broad­cast para­noid anti-Semit­ic hate speech on Ital­ian radio in over a hun­dred pro­pa­gan­da pieces for the Axis pow­ers dur­ing the war.

Pound was to be sen­tenced for trea­son in 1945 but was saved by an insan­i­ty defense pro­mot­ed by Ernest Hem­ing­way (who con­vinced him­self Pound must have been insane to say such things.) After a stay in St. Elizabeth’s, Pound recant­ed, but pri­vate­ly he nev­er changed. If he were a less­er poet, crit­ics and read­ers might assure them­selves they’d nev­er read the likes of him today. But not only is he insep­a­ra­ble from lit­er­ary his­to­ry as an influ­en­tial edi­tor and boost­er (with­out Pound, no Eliot’s The Waste Land), but he is right­ly rec­og­nized as one of the most gift­ed poets of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

“Is it wrong to love a fas­cist?” asked Ash Sarkar in a take on the Pound prob­lem that lists him among many “prob­lem­at­ic faves, along with The Simp­sons and Vybz Kar­tel.” The “vitu­per­a­tive” anti-Semi­tism of Pound’s lat­er years finds its way into his lat­er Can­tos—the mas­sive, unfin­ished, eclec­tic, eru­dite, and deeply obscure series of epic poems he worked on from 1915 to 1962. “Can­to XLV,” notes Sarkar, “one of his many attacks on financiers, is suf­fused with anti­se­mit­ic lan­guage and imagery.”

Can­to XVI con­tains what Mark Ford calls “a char­ac­ter­is­tic spec­i­men of Pound’s mim­ic­ry,” which Mus­soli­ni found “enter­tain­ing” dur­ing their first and only meet­ing. (“It’s my idea of how a Con­ti­nen­tal Jew would speak Eng­lish,” Pound sup­pos­ed­ly told Il Duce.) Such moments of racist mock­ery alter­nate in the Pisan Can­tos—pub­lished in 1948 and writ­ten dur­ing the war—with ele­gies, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal the­o­ries, and archa­ic lines in which many read­ers hear echoes of blood and soil mythol­o­gy. We may hear such an echo in Can­to LXXXI, from which Pound reads above, over footage of him wan­der­ing around Venice.

Allen Gins­berg described Can­to LXXXI as “a col­lage of Pound’s prison men­tal gos­sip (think­ing to him­self in prison, notat­ing down… lit­tle nos­tal­gic rec­ol­lec­tions of pre-World War I.)” There are, how­ev­er, ges­tures toward more recent events. He refers to the “friends of Fran­co” in one line, for exam­ple, and Hélène Aji iden­ti­fies Pound’s ref­er­ence to Thomas Jef­fer­son as an allu­sion to Mus­soli­ni. How did Pound him­self square his nation­al­ism with his cos­mopoli­tan mod­ernism? Lit­er­ary schol­ar David Barnes spec­u­lates:

The writer would have seen no con­flict here. Pound could eas­i­ly switch from his Hit­ler­ian fan­tasies to a rec­om­men­da­tion of the kind of artists (Joyce, Marinet­ti) that Führer would have classed as “degen­er­ate.” In his mind, the sharp lines of mod­ernism seem to have been equat­ed or even inter­change­able with the total­i­tar­i­an pol­i­tics of Nazi Fas­cism.

Except it wasn’t Nazi Fas­cism that Pound most­ly hawked—though he enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly rec­om­mend­ed Mein Kampf. It was the Ital­ian orig­i­nal. Mus­soli­ni did not share Hitler’s extreme antipa­thy for mod­ern artists. He too saw mod­ernism and fas­cism as inter­change­able, as did the many Ital­ian artists he coopt­ed as pro­pa­gan­dists. Pound was not espe­cial­ly unique in such cir­cum­stances.

It’s not clear when this film footage was shot, but the read­ing was record­ed in Spo­le­to, Italy dur­ing the sum­mer of 1967. You can lis­ten to the full record­ing above, and hear anoth­er ver­sion, and dozens more record­ings of Pound, at Penn Sound.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernest Hem­ing­way Writes of His Fas­cist Friend Ezra Pound: “He Deserves Pun­ish­ment and Dis­grace” (1943)

Read Ezra Pound’s List of 23 “Don’ts” For Writ­ing Poet­ry (1913)

Rare Ezra Pound Record­ings Now Online

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

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An Unbelievably Detailed, Hand-Drawn Map Lets You Explore the Rich Collections of the Met Museum

in Art | April 29th, 2020

Would-be tourists tak­ing time out of their sud­den­ly very less busy lives to pore over New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art map online may con­vince them­selves it’s pos­si­ble to see every col­lec­tion in one day. Say, if they got there first thing in the morn­ing, skipped lunch, and moved fast. Sure, Mod­ern and Egypt­ian art are on oppo­site sides of oppo­site wings and there are two floors and a mez­za­nine, but if you make a plan….

Any New York­er who runs across such a per­son should imme­di­ate­ly send them John Kerschbaum’s dense, col­or­ful, infor­ma­tion- and peo­ple-rich, Where’s Wal­do-eye view map above. (View it in a larg­er for­mat here. Once you access the page, click on the graph­ic to expand it.) Say, “this is what’s it’s real­ly like on any giv­en day.”

A bewil­der­ing expe­ri­ence that ren­ders the most care­ful plan use­less in under thir­ty min­utes. Unless you only plan to spend time in a cou­ple gal­leries, at most, and know how to get there, it’s best not to get your hopes up for a one-day vis­it. You’ll be daz­zled and wowed, for sure, but also suf­fer from sen­so­ry over­load if you try to see it all.

Tar­get your favorite peri­ods and world cul­tures, ford the crowds to reach your des­ti­na­tion, have some grub. It will take a while to get back out. The expe­ri­ence can be daunt­ing, but by all means do not let these warn­ings stop you once there’s final­ly an all-clear. The Met is “over­whelm­ing, amaz­ing, and down-right unbe­lie­ve­able, real­ly,” writes one blog­ger and fre­quent trav­el­er based in New York City. “If you haven’t been, think of the Lou­vre, Vat­i­can Muse­um, or British Muse­um. The Met is on the scale of those oth­er impres­sive inter­na­tion­al col­lec­tions.”

Ker­schbaum cap­tured the scale of the museum’s awe-inspir­ing huge­ness with flat­tened car­toon scale and per­spec­tive. But the map was drawn from life, in way. Upon receiv­ing the com­mis­sion in 2004 for what became The Fam­i­ly Map, Ker­schbaum, a New York­er him­self, “made count­less vis­its to the ency­clo­pe­dic muse­um and drew hun­dreds of sketch­es,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes.

He was giv­en 50 muse­um pieces that are always on dis­play to anchor the authen­tic feel of his high­ly com­pressed ren­der­ing. “I’d have a floor plan of the muse­um and a clip­board,” he says, “and I’d make notes of where each item was, either by name or a quick sketch.” (Note that he did this over “count­less vis­its.”) After that prepara­to­ry work, he says, in a charm­ing duet with his daugh­ter above, he returned again and again, and “drew and drew and erased and drew and drew and erased and drew some more and drew and drew. Final­ly it was done.” (See a larg­er time-lapse gif fur­ther up.)

Those who would like to know the Met as Ker­schbaum does, in exquis­ite detail and with a very keen sense of direc­tion, will need to put in some seri­ous time. The artist him­self “ded­i­cat­ed not hours, days, or months, but sev­er­al years to draw­ing the art, spaces, and peo­ple he saw at the Met,” the museum’s blog notes. The Fam­i­ly Map fea­tures “hun­dreds of gal­leries and thou­sands of works of art.”

It’s a map the whole fam­i­ly can appre­ci­ate, though Kerschbaum’s daugh­ter sounds maybe a lit­tle weary of talk­ing about it. But it’s also one that depicts the muse­um as a mas­sive, wall-to-wall extend­ed fam­i­ly, one that takes some time and effort to get to know. Ker­schbaum even knows where all the bath­rooms are. “I tell peo­ple about the ones that aren’t crowd­ed,” he says proud­ly. This is, of course, the most use­ful knowl­edge of all in a space of such labyrinthine mag­ni­tude in what will some­day be again one of the most vis­it­ed cities in the world.

See Ker­schbaum’s map up close in a high res­o­lu­tion scan here. When you open the page, click on the image to expand and zoom in.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 569 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Down­load 50,000 Art Books & Cat­a­logs from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions

The Met Puts 650+ Japan­ese Illus­trat­ed Books Online: Mar­vel at Hokusai’s One Hun­dred Views of Mount Fuji and More

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

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Metallica Is Putting Free Concerts Online: 6 Now Streaming, with More to Come

in Music | April 29th, 2020

So, you pull up to the Metal­li­ca show and dou­ble check to make sure you have every­thing you need. Cash? Check. Change of clothes for when you stum­ble back to the car exhaust­ed and sweaty? Check. Earplugs? …. Where are the damn earplugs?

Oh man. You for­got the ear plugs.

Any­one got an extra pair of ear plugs? You’re boned. What to do? You’re gonna need your ears for the next few days for your sum­mer camp gig. Those kids are loud enough with­out tin­ni­tus.

You con­sid­er, for a split sec­ond, ditch­ing your tick­et and call­ing a cab. But c’mon. Screw your hear­ing, this is 1991, you’re in Muskegon, Michi­gan, and The Black Album just came out. You’re gonna miss the show? No way, man.

Ah, but it’s not 1991, you’re (prob­a­bly) not in Muskegon, Michi­gan, and you’re stay­ing home because there’s a dead­ly virus going around the world. The good news is you can still catch the show.

Watch it at the top, from the com­fort of your cozy nest. More good news? You don’t need those earplugs any­more. Turn it way down low and let “Enter Sand­man” lull you to sleep.

When you wake up, trav­el back to last June, to the love­ly Slane Cas­tle, to see Metal­li­ca play Meath, Ire­land, just above. Dime the vol­ume knob until your neigh­bors com­plain. Put on your head­phones and blast it till your ears bleed and you pass out. There’s more where that came from.

“Metal­li­ca may be stay­ing home due to the coro­n­avirus but that doesn’t mean they aren’t here to rock your face off,” Bill­board report­ed last month. “The band, who announced on Mon­day (March 23) that they have been forced to post­pone a sched­uled South Amer­i­can spring tour…. Just launched a new week­ly con­cert series called Metal­li­ca Mon­days.”

This announce­ment being sev­er­al weeks ago, there are now sev­er­al con­certs post­ed on the band’s YouTube chan­nel—six at this moment, includ­ing a 2009 gig in Copen­hagen, Den­mark, one of many places where Metallica’s loud, fast (till The Black Album), death-obsessed thrash met­al trav­eled and trans­formed into even loud­er, faster, more death-obsessed met­al sub­gen­res.

Maybe you were at one of these shows? If so, relive the glo­ry. If you’ve nev­er seen the band live, know that this is but a pale imi­ta­tion, as are all filmed con­certs, whether you stream them on your smart­phone or your 85” TV. But if you want to know what it was like for that kid in Muskegon who for­got his ear plugs, try that head­phone trick. Then head over to Metallica’s YouTube chan­nel on Mon­day for the next show.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metallica’s “Enter Sand­man” Sung in the Style of David Bowie

Metallica’s Bassist Robert Tru­jil­lo Plays Metal­li­ca Songs Fla­men­co-Style, Joined by Rodri­go y Gabriela

Pink Floyd Stream­ing Free Clas­sic Con­cert Films, Start­ing with 1994’s Pulse, the First Live Per­for­mance of Dark Side of the Moon in Full

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

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Radiohead Covers The Smiths & New Order (2007)

in Music | April 28th, 2020

If you grew up at a cer­tain time, with a cer­tain melan­cholic dis­po­si­tion and mor­bid sense of humor, you grew up lis­ten­ing to the music of the Smiths. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, you’re rough­ly around the same age as the mem­bers of Radio­head, who also grew up lis­ten­ing to the Smiths. Ergo, there’s a good chance you’re a fan of Radio­head, a band whose own melan­cholic, mor­bid mood draws from the best Alter­na­tive bands (as they were called once) of the 80s and 90s, while updat­ing the sound of that mood on every suc­ces­sive album.

On the 20th anniver­sary of Radiohead’s mas­sive-sell­ing Ok Com­put­er, gui­tarist Ed O’Brien remem­bered their hum­ble begin­nings in a Rolling Stone oral his­to­ry, invok­ing those bands whose records you like­ly own in hard copy if you fit the pro­file above:

We start­ed off at the time of the Smiths’ The Queen is Dead, that era. By the end of that peri­od, or the mid­dle of that peri­od, there was the Pix­ies, Hap­py Mon­days and Stone Ros­es and all these things. We dipped our toe, not very effec­tive­ly, in each. But in doing so we came out with a sound. We came up with our thing. And that’s how we got signed.

No mat­ter how far they end­ed up stray­ing from gui­tar rock, their ear­ly influ­ences have always been an inte­gral part of their cre­ative DNA. On the 10th anniver­sary of Ok Com­put­er, well into their trans­for­ma­tion from alt-rock super­stars to exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic band, Radio­head filmed a two-and-a-half-hour web­cast, play­ing old and new songs, tak­ing turns DJing, and cov­er­ing one of my favorite Smiths’ songs, “The Head­mas­ter Rit­u­al” from 1985’s Meat is Mur­der.

It’s a track tai­lor-made for them—a song that “express­es fury at a kind of school life that has been for­got­ten,” writes Katharine Vin­er, but which the fierce­ly anti-author­i­tar­i­an Thom Yorke remem­bered well. Years into his suc­cess­ful career, he still smart­ed from his unpleas­ant school years.

In inter­views, writes Will Self at GQ, he’s often “waxed dis­con­so­late­ly about his dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed child­hood, the fre­quent changes of school, and the bul­ly­ing at those schools because of his paral­ysed eye.” If you grew up lis­ten­ing to the Smiths, you too may have a per­son­al affin­i­ty for “The Head­mas­ter Rit­u­al.”

And you prob­a­bly also fre­quent­ly wal­lowed to Joy Division—a band that, like Radio­head, rad­i­cal­ly changed musi­cal direc­tion, albeit for a much more trag­ic rea­son. After the sui­cide of lead singer Ian Cur­tis, Joy Divi­sion reformed as New Order, synth-pop super­stars and prog­en­i­tors of acid house. On their first record, Move­ment, they had a lot of post-punk brood­ing to get out of their sys­tem, with songs like ICB (which stands for “Ian Cur­tis Buried”) and “Cer­e­mo­ny,” orig­i­nal­ly a Joy Divi­sion song.

Fur­ther up, see Radio­head cov­er “Cer­e­mo­ny,” a song that defines an era—one, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, in which Radio­head grew up. And maybe you did, too. But chances are, if you grew up lis­ten­ing to Radio­head, you know their influ­ences no mat­ter when you were born. See the full 2007 web­cast just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

Radio­head Puts Every Offi­cial Album on YouTube, Mak­ing Them All Free to Stream

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

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When IBM Created a Typewriter to Record Dance Movements (1973)

in Dance, History, Technology | April 28th, 2020

Increas­ing­ly many of us in the 21st cen­tu­ry have nev­er used a type­writer — indeed, have nev­er seen one in real life. But despite being deep into its obso­les­cence, the machine has a long cul­tur­al half-life. See­ing type­writ­ers in clas­sic and peri­od films, for exam­ple, keeps an idea of their look and feel in our minds. Nat­u­ral­ly it gets entan­gled with the romance of the writer, or rather the Writer, whom we imag­ine pound­ing away on a cul­tur­al­ly icon­ic mod­el: an Under­wood, an Olvetti. “If Olivet­tis could talk, you’d get the nov­el­ist naked,” writes Philip Roth in The Anato­my Les­son. From the then-new elec­tric IBM type­writ­ers, how­ev­er, you’d hear “only the smug, puri­tan­i­cal work­man­like hum telling of itself and all its virtues: I am a Cor­rect­ing Selec­tric II. I nev­er do any­thing wrong.”

Yet we under­es­ti­mate the influ­ence of the IBM Selec­tric, on not just writ­ing but late-20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can life in gen­er­al, at our per­il. Intro­duced in 1961, this tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary type­writer replaced the old “type­bars” — those thin met­al arms that whack a let­ter onto the page with each key­stroke — with a “type­ball,” a “com­pact unit con­tain­ing all the let­ters and sym­bols of a key­board, rotat­ed and piv­ot­ed to the cor­rect posi­tion before strik­ing.”

So writes IBM’s Jus­tine Jablon­s­ka in an essay on the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the type­ball, which could be swapped out and mod­i­fied accord­ing to the needs of the user. In 1973, IBM could say even to those users who need­ed to type out not words, sen­tences, and para­graphs but dances that, yes, there’s a type­ball for that.

Devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with New York City’s Dance Nota­tion Bureau, this unusu­al type­ball “had spe­cial Laban­o­ta­tion sym­bols, devel­oped in the 1920s by Hun­gar­i­an dancer/choreographer Rudolf Laban to ana­lyze and record move­ment and dance.” Each sym­bol­’s loca­tion “showed which part of the body — arm, leg, tor­so — was to be used. The symbol’s shape indi­cat­ed direc­tion. The symbol’s shad­ing showed the lev­el of an arm or leg. And its length con­trolled the time val­ue of a move­ment.” In total, writes Karen Hill at Zip­py Facts, Laban­o­ta­tion had “88 dif­fer­ent sym­bols, which could be arranged to form a com­plete vocab­u­lary for record­ing move­ment of any kind, from bal­let and mod­ern to eth­nic, even folk.” Beyond dance, the sys­tem could also record “move­ments in areas like sports, behav­ioral sci­ences, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, and even indus­tri­al oper­a­tions.”

This par­tic­u­lar type­ball show­cased the Selec­tric’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, but some had high­er hopes. In a 1975 paper, dance schol­ar Drid Williams com­pares its poten­tial impact to that of “Guten­berg’s inven­tion sev­er­al cen­turies ago,” sig­nal­ing that “the graph­ic lin­guis­tic sign can now be joined by its obvi­ous coun­ter­part, the print­ed human action sign.” But she also express­es regret that “ ‘the ball’ is being looked on by many as a mere prac­ti­cal aid to record­ing human move­ment and it is being asso­ci­at­ed with spe­cial­ist fields like dance. As usu­al, con­cern with the syn­tag­ma­ta obscures the real issues of the par­a­digms.” Indeed. A more prac­ti­cal-mind­ed assess­ment comes from Charles Ditchen­dorf, employed at the time at IBM’s Office Prod­ucts Divi­sion. “To the best of my knowl­edge,” Jablon­s­ka quotes him as say­ing, I didn’t sell one.” But then, when has dance ever been enslaved to the mar­ket?

via Ted Gioia on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Arnold Schoen­berg, Avant-Garde Com­pos­er, Cre­ates a Sys­tem of Sym­bols for Notat­ing Ten­nis Match­es

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Watch Free Plays from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & More

in K-12, Life, Literature, Theatre | April 28th, 2020

As depress­ing arti­cles about the upcom­ing Sum­mer of COVID-19 begin to pro­lif­er­ate, our hopes for beach days, con­cert series, and sum­mer camp begin to dim.

Here in New York City, the Pub­lic Theater’s announce­ment that it is can­celling the upcom­ing sea­son of its famed Shake­speare in the Park was met with under­stand­able sad­ness.

You don’t have to like Shake­speare to enjoy the rit­u­al of enter­ing Cen­tral Park short­ly after dawn, pre­pared to sit online for sev­er­al hours await­ing noon’s free tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion, then return­ing to the Dela­corte lat­er that night with snacks and sweater and wine.

Per­form­ing a quick Inter­net search to brush up on the plot can enhance the expe­ri­ence, but—and I saw this as some­one whose degree includ­ed a met­ric heinieload of The Bard—it can be equal­ly sat­is­fy­ing to spend the final acts enjoy­ing an impromp­tu, al fres­co nap.

Bonus points if a rac­coon runs across the stage at some point.

Alas all this must be denied us in the sum­mer of 2020, but it’s still with­in our pow­er to repli­cate that sum­mer feel­ing in advance of the equinox, using the past pro­duc­tions that London’s Globe The­atre is screen­ing on its YouTube chan­nel as our start­ing place.

First up is Romeo & Juli­et from 2009, star­ring Ellie Kendrick and Adetomi­wa Edun, though accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent’s Michael Coveney, the show belongs to Pen­ny Lay­den as the Nurse:

Far removed from the fuss­ing tra­di­tion of com­ic gar­ruli­ty and the Patri­cia Rout­ledge fac­tor, Lay­den plays her as a scrubbed, mid­dle-aged, sen­si­ble woman car­ry­ing a his­to­ry of sad­ness. The bawdy assault on her by Philip Cum­bus’s melan­choly Mer­cu­tio is both shock­ing and plau­si­ble, and she retains her qui­et dig­ni­ty while at the same time mourn­ing its sac­ri­fice.

Back to New York City…

Pri­or to start­ing your screen­ing, you’ll want to approx­i­mate a seat at the Dela­corte (which, like the Globe, is authen­ti­cal­ly cir­cu­lar in shape). I rec­om­mend a met­al fold­ing chair.

Sprin­kle a table­spoon or so of water onto the seat if you want to pre­tend it rained all after­noon lead­ing up to the per­for­mance.

Def­i­nite­ly have some wine to pour into a plas­tic cup.

Slather your­self in insect repel­lent.

Silence your cell phone.

If your housemate’s cell phone goes off mid-per­for­mance, feel free to tsk and sssh and roll your eyes. Hon­est­ly, how hard is it to com­ply with the famil­iar instruc­tions of the house manager’s speech?

At inter­mis­sion, stand out­side your own bath­room door for at least 15 min­utes before let­ting your­self into a “stall” to use the facil­i­ties.

Doze all you want to…. arrange for your house­mate to tsk and sssh at you from an appro­pri­ate dis­tance, should your snor­ing become audi­ble.

You have until Sun­day, May 3 to stum­ble sleep­i­ly away from the screen, and pre­tend you’re wan­der­ing to the sub­way with 1799 oth­er New York­ers.

Then make plans to wake up at 5:30 and sit on the floor with a ther­mos of cof­fee for sev­er­al hours, hop­ing that they won’t run out of tick­ets for The Two Noble Kins­men before you make it to the top of the line.

(Spoil­er alert: they won’t.)

Oth­ers in the Globe’s free series:

Mac­Beth, May 11 until UK schools reopen

The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18 — May 31

The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor (2019), June 1 — June 14

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (2013), June 15 — 28

Click­ing the red “dis­cov­er more” lozenge beneath each show’s pho­to on the Globe Watch’s land­ing page will lead you to a wealth of sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, from pre-show chats with the Globe’s Post-Doc­tor­al Research Fel­low Will Tosh to pho­tos, arti­cles, and a stu­dent chal­lenge specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the times we find our­selves liv­ing through now.

Sub­scribe to the Globe’s YouTube chan­nel to receive reminders.

Donate to the Globe here.

Amer­i­cans can make a tax-deductible dona­tion to The Pub­lic The­ater here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Depend­ing on how long this thing goes on, she may look into giv­ing Pen­ny Lay­den a run for the mon­ey by live-stream­ing her solo show, NURSE. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Picasso Create a Masterpiece in Just Five Minutes (1955)

in Art, Film | April 28th, 2020

“One day in Paris a wealthy woman goes into a café and sees Picas­so,” writes Alas­tair Dry­burgh in Every­thing You Know About Busi­ness Is Wrong.

After a few min­utes, she sum­mons up the courage to approach him. ‘Mon­sieur Picas­so,’ she asks, ‘would you make a por­trait of me? I’ll pay you any­thing you want.’ Picas­so nods, grabs a menu, and in five min­utes has sketched the wom­an’s por­trait on the back of it. He hands it to her.

‘Five thou­sand francs,’ he says.

‘But Mon­sieur Picas­so, it only took you five min­utes.’

‘No, Madam, it took me my whole life.’

This anec­dote has been ele­vat­ed, in books like Dry­burgh’s, to the sta­tus of a “Picas­so Prin­ci­ple.” Indi­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es alike, this prin­ci­ple states, should price their goods and ser­vices in accor­dance not just with the time and effort required to do the job, but the time and effort required to make doing the job pos­si­ble in the first place.

Whether Picas­so ever actu­al­ly charged a rich lady in a café 5,000 francs for an impromp­tu por­trait, nobody knows. But that he pos­sessed the skills to cre­ate a ful­ly real­ized work of art in five min­utes is a mat­ter of cin­e­mat­ic record, and you can wit­ness such an act in the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Arts video above.

The video’s source is Le Mys­tère Picas­so, a doc­u­men­tary by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot, the film­mak­er best known for 1950s thrillers like The Wages of Fear and Les Dia­boliques. Offi­cial­ly declared a French nation­al trea­sure and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, the film cap­tures Picas­so in action, cre­at­ing orig­i­nal art­works right before the cam­era. “Not many of the works he cre­at­ed for the doc­u­men­tary sur­vive,” say this video’s notes, but three of them were recent­ly dis­played in the Roy­al Acad­e­my’s exhi­bi­tion Picas­so and Paper, a vir­tu­al tour of which appears just above. In Le Mys­tère Picas­so the artist paints 1955’s Vis­age: Head of a Faun in just five min­utes, a severe time con­straint imposed by Clouzot’s sup­ply of film stock.

The direc­tor’s ten­sion comes across as clear­ly as the painter’s con­cen­tra­tion. While Clouzot puffs away on his pipe, Picas­so gets right down to work. “Picas­so plays with the draw­ing,” says the video’s onscreen com­men­tary, “tak­ing it from flower to fish to chick­en to face and builds up from a mono­chrome draw­ing with bright, sat­u­rat­ed col­ors.” As the rolling counter on Clouzot’s cam­era ticks off the final meters of film, Picas­so trans­forms the work-in-progress almost com­plete­ly, con­jur­ing up a wild-eyed fig­ure in sil­hou­ette, nei­ther man nor beast, to dom­i­nate the fore­ground. He exe­cutes every brush­stroke unflinch­ing­ly, filled with the con­fi­dence of a painter long since assured of his mas­tery. In one sense, Vis­age: Head of a Faun took Picas­so five min­utes; more truth­ful­ly, it took him 74 years and five min­utes.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Picas­so Makes Won­der­ful Abstract Art

How To Under­stand a Picas­so Paint­ing: A Video Primer

The Mys­tery of Picas­so: Land­mark Film of a Leg­endary Artist at Work, by Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Hear Classic Rock Songs Played on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “White Room” & More

in Music | April 27th, 2020

In the 60s and 70s, rock and folk bands intro­duced ear­ly Euro­pean music to the mass­es, with Medieval, Renais­sance, and Baroque strains run­ning through the songs of Simon and Gar­funkel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Fair­port Con­ven­tion, and even Led Zep­pelin. For the most part, how­ev­er, arrange­ments stayed mod­ern, save the appear­ance of a few, still-rel­e­vant folk instru­ments like man­dolins, dul­cimers, and nylon-string gui­tars.

One can draw many lines in pop­u­lar cul­ture from this development—to prog-rock bal­ladry, goth rock’s dirges, metal’s medieval obses­sions, and what­ev­er that tech­no Gre­go­ri­an chant thing was in the 90s. In so many of these evo­lu­tion­ary moves, the trend has been toward more tech­nol­o­gy and away from acoustic music. So, how can play­ers of old Euro­pean instru­ments inter­est con­tem­po­rary audi­ences in their sound?

One pop­u­lar way they’ve done so is by play­ing hits from bands who drew from the tra­di­tion (and from a few who very much didn’t)—hits like Procul Harum’s Chaucer-ref­er­enc­ing “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

At the top, Baroque lute play­er Daniel Estrem gives a solo instru­men­tal per­for­mance of the soul­ful tune, throw­ing in a sec­tion of Bach’s “Air on the G String,” to which “A Whiter Shade of Pale” alludes. (I wasn’t con­scious­ly com­bin­ing rock with clas­si­cal,” com­pos­er Gary Brook­er lat­er said. “It’s just that Bach’s music was in me.”) The song’s con­tra­pun­tal struc­ture trans­lates beau­ti­ful­ly to the lute, as does the sin­is­ter musi­cal­i­ty of Cream’s “White Room,” above, a song with a vague­ly Medieval-sound­ing descend­ing melody in its clas­sic psych-rock vers­es.

Of course, Euro­pean folk and clas­si­cal informed the increas­ing­ly com­plex com­po­si­tions of the Bea­t­les, includ­ing George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (or at least its first fin­ger­picked acoustic gui­tar demo ver­sion). In his take on the clas­sic, above, Estrem recov­ers the song’s folk influ­ence and retains its shifts in mood, from mourn­ful lament to hope­ful melody. Of course, Estrem not only has to trans­late these songs to a dif­fer­ent musi­cal idiom but to a very dif­fer­ent instrument—one with a tun­ing unlike the gui­tar on which so many pop songs are writ­ten.

Com­mon lutes at the end of the Renais­sance had 10 cours­es (a “course” is a set of two strings tuned to the same pitch). These instru­ments used “a more har­mon­i­cal­ly based ‘D minor tun­ing,’ instead of the more ‘gui­tar-like’ tun­ing that con­tin­ued to be used for the viol in the baroque era,” notes Case West­ern Reserve’s Ear­ly Music Instru­ment Data­base. They were suit­ed to a very dif­fer­ent kind of music than, say, the blues. But whether or not we ful­ly under­stand the chal­lenge of arrang­ing “House of the Ris­ing Sun” (called “the first folk rock song” when the Ani­mals record­ed it) for the Baroque lute, we can cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the results. Estrem makes a gen­tly plucked, elo­quent­ly word­less argu­ment for giv­ing the instru­ment a star­ring role in pop­u­lar music again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

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

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Watch 12 Classic Chinese Films Online, Complete with English Subtitles (1920s-1940s)

in Film | April 27th, 2020

The Chi­nese film indus­try began around the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry, but unfor­tu­nate­ly noth­ing sur­vives of those first two decades–films lost to fire, to age, and just plain lost. Any per­son want­i­ng to study this his­to­ry must make do with syn­opses, pho­tos, and imag­i­na­tion. How­ev­er, after that? This YouTube playlist curat­ed by the Depart­ment of Asian Stud­ies of the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia fea­tures a dozen notable films and influ­en­tial clas­sics from two and half decades of Chi­nese his­to­ry, some of the most tumul­tuous years for that nation. Chi­na oust­ed the British, fought off the Japan­ese, and began a rev­o­lu­tion under Mao. The print qual­i­ty varies here and there, but all are enter­tain­ing, from musi­cals to hor­ror movies to social dra­mas.

The col­lec­tion begins with the old­est sur­viv­ing film in the series, Labourer’s Love, a two-reel­er from 1922 direct­ed by Zhang Shichuan. Most of the orig­i­nal Chi­nese film­mak­ers were trained by Amer­i­cans, so ear­ly shorts like this tend­ed to be silent come­dies filled with visu­al gags–this one fea­tures a car­pen­ter who opens up a fruit stand to woo a woman, and uses his wood­work­ing skills and tools to increase his busi­ness.

By the late 20s how­ev­er, Chi­na was already devel­op­ing its own gen­res and styles, just as it was devel­op­ing a mod­ern nation­al­ist pride away from colo­nial influ­ence. The first mar­tial arts film would be pro­duced in 1928. Oth­er stu­dios opt­ed for folk­lore tales or fam­i­ly melo­dra­mas.

Trained and edu­cat­ed in the Unit­ed Stat­ed, Sun Yu was one of the major film­mak­ers of the 1930s (a group of direc­tors known as the Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion film­mak­ers) until the inva­sion of Japan sent him flee­ing Shang­hai for the inte­ri­or. But the films he made for the left­ist film stu­dio Lian­hua are now clas­sics. Three of his are rep­re­sent­ed here: 1933’s Day­break, a tale of a young coun­try cou­ple who get cor­rupt­ed in the big city; Queen of Sports, a 1934 dra­ma of a plucky track star who has to nav­i­gate class stratas as well as com­pe­ti­tions; and maybe Sun Yu’s most famous film The Big Road (above), a sto­ry of six young men build­ing a road for the Chi­nese army to bat­tle the Japan­ese. Yes, it’s wartime pro­pa­gan­da, but Sun Yu was always focused on work­ing men and women. These three films also star Li Lili, con­sid­ered by some to be the “Chi­nese Mae West,” and who lived to a ripe age (as did Sun Yu). She has a role in Stan­ley Kwan’s Cen­ter Stage from 1992, his ode to the movie stars of the 1930s.

China’s first hor­ror film is also in this list: 1937’s Song at Mid­night, Ma-Xu Weibang’s retelling of Phan­tom of the Opera (with a bit of Franken­stein thrown in–the Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios influ­ence is very appar­ent here). It’s also a musi­cal, with karaoke-like subs for you to sing along if you know Can­tonese.

Last­ly, Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town from 1947 is one of the most influ­en­tial on this list. A sick­ly man’s friend vis­its in the after­math of the Sino-Japan­ese war, and the wife rec­og­nizes him as a lover from long ago. Roman­tic ten­sions soon begin to smol­der. Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love bor­rowed its repressed, long­ing mood. And film­mak­er Tian Zhuangzhaung remade it in 2002, keep­ing the orig­i­nal set­ting. Many Chi­nese film­mak­ers and crit­ics con­sid­er it one of the best of all time, China’s Casablan­ca.

Hope­ful­ly this dozen will whet your appetite for more Chi­nese cin­e­ma and pro­vide an alter­na­tive to watch­ing anoth­er binge-wor­thy but shal­low Net­flix series.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First Chi­nese Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film, Princess Iron Fan, Made Under the Strains of WWII (1941)

The God­dess: A Clas­sic from the Gold­en Age of Chi­nese Cin­e­ma, Star­ring the Silent Film Icon Ruan Lingyu (1934)

An Epic Retelling of the Great Chi­nese Nov­el Romance of the Three King­doms: 110 Free Episodes and Count­ing

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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