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

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

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

Not so fast! It’s also jazz, baby!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Amis Explains His Method for Writ­ing Great Sen­tences

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

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

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

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

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

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What Happens When a Chess Player Mistakes a Grandmaster for a Beginner: It’s Pretty Delightful

in Games, Life | May 19th, 2023

Vaca­tion­ing in New York City last sum­mer, Anna Cram­ling, an Inter­na­tion­al Chess Fed­er­a­tion mas­ter swung by Wash­ing­ton Square Park, to see about scor­ing a pick­up game with one of the reg­u­lars.

Her oppo­nent, Jon­ny O’Leary, a native New York­er who learned the rules of the game from oth­er Wash­ing­ton Square habitués while work­ing main­te­nance jobs in the sur­round­ing build­ings in the mid-80s, is a gar­ru­lous sort, shar­ing his phi­los­o­phy of life as the game pro­ceeds.

Luck­i­ly he believes that the human inter­ac­tion and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn make even los­ing games a win­ning propo­si­tion because Cram­ling whoops him pret­ty hand­i­ly.

Flash for­ward a cou­ple of sea­sons.

Cram­ling, bun­dled up in a par­ka and warm stock­ing cap, heads back to Wash­ing­ton Square with her mom in tow.

O’Leary is more than will­ing to intro­duce the elder Ms. Cram­ling, now 60, to the Game of Kings. He loves teach­ing begin­ners, even if they have no mon­ey to put down. He is so eager to show her the ropes that he dic­tates four of her first five moves.

His extro­ver­sion may be his down­fall here.

In our expe­ri­ence, folks who call mid­dle-aged women they’ve just met “Mom” tend to under­es­ti­mate and talk over them.

Sur­prise! Pia Cram­ling is a Grand­mas­ter of Chess, who once held the title of best female play­er in the world.

“Mom” humbly fol­lows direc­tions, mov­ing her knights and bish­op as instruct­ed and pre­sum­ably clamp­ing down on her tongue as O’Leary schools her begin­ning strat­e­gy and the names of the pieces.

To his cred­it, he seems absolute­ly thrilled when the Cram­lings’ ruse is revealed, eager­ly call­ing for anoth­er game even as he vol­un­teers that he’s nowhere near as good of a play­er.

(“Get the old man,” his bud­dy Doc glee­ful­ly inter­jects.)

Their shared love of chess burns bright.

The Cram­lings com­pli­ment O’Leary on his gen­eros­i­ty as a teacher, no doubt mind­ful that his immer­sion in the game looks dif­fer­ent from theirs. (Anna’s father is Grand­mas­ter Juan Manuel Bel­lón Lopez and she has been accom­pa­ny­ing her moth­er to tour­na­ments since she was a baby.)

O’Leary may appear to draw a bit of a blank when Pia Cram­ling men­tions World Chess Cham­pi­on Ana­toly Kar­pov, but he’s rubbed shoul­ders with grand­mas­ters Max­im Dlu­gy and John Fedorow­icz at the Wash­ing­ton Square Park chess simul, and he was very inter­est­ed in her Elo rat­ing, the U.S. Chess Federation’s sys­tem for assess­ing play­ers’ skills.

“She has a brain that’s not from here!” he cries admir­ing­ly to any­one with­in earshot.

After wit­ness­ing some oth­er play­ers’ over­ly cocky, unsport­ing, and rude behav­ior in Anna’s oth­er filmed street match­es, we def­i­nite­ly agree that Jon­ny O’Leary is the “Grand­mas­ter at the social aspect.”

Watch more of Anna Cramling’s chess relat­ed videos, includ­ing her mom’s encoun­ters with oth­er Wash­ing­ton Square Park reg­u­lars here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Free 700-Page Chess Man­u­al Explains 1,000 Chess Tac­tics in Straight­for­ward Eng­lish

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

– 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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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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The First Full 3D Scan of the Titanic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Capturing the Wreck’s Every Detail

in History, Technology | May 18th, 2023

Even the most ardent ship­wreck enthu­si­asts among us must make peace with the fact that, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, we’ll nev­er get to see the Titan­ic for our­selves. But now, at least, we have a sub­sti­tute in the form of the ship’s “dig­i­tal twin,” based on more than 700,000 images col­lect­ed under­wa­ter over 200 hours.“It pro­vides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away,” report BBC News’ Rebec­ca Morelle and Ali­son Fran­cis. “The scan was car­ried out in sum­mer 2022 by Mag­el­lan Ltd, a deep-sea map­ping com­pa­ny, and Atlantic Pro­duc­tions, who are mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the project.”

You can catch a glimpse of how the scan looks in the clip from the Times at the top of the post, but it only hints at its true lev­el of detail. “The joint mis­sion by Mag­el­lan and Atlantic Pro­duc­tions deployed two sub­mersibles nick­named Romeo and Juli­et to map every mil­lime­ter of the wreck, includ­ing the debris field span­ning some three miles,” writes Ars Techi­ca’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette.

“The result was a whop­ping 16 ter­abytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to cre­ate the 3D dig­i­tal twin. The res­o­lu­tion is so good, one can make out part of the ser­i­al num­ber on one of the pro­pellers.”

“The bow, now cov­ered in sta­lac­tites of rust, is still instant­ly rec­og­niz­able even 100 years after the ship was lost,” write Morelle and Fran­cis. “Sit­ting on top is the boat deck, where a gap­ing hole pro­vides a glimpse into a void where the grand stair­case once stood.” As one might expect, the Titan­ic has come through twelve decades at the bot­tom of the North Atlantic ocean some­what worse for wear, and get­ting worse all the time. “Microbes are eat­ing away at it and parts are dis­in­te­grat­ing. His­to­ri­ans are well aware that time is run­ning out to ful­ly under­stand the mar­itime dis­as­ter.” Indeed, there will come a day when the remains of the Titan­ic will have van­ished com­plete­ly. But even then, its dig­i­tal twin — or, per­haps, dig­i­tal ghost — will have more to teach us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

See the First 8K Footage of the Titan­ic, the High­est-Qual­i­ty Video of the Ship­wreck Yet

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Ani­ma­tion

Watch 80 Min­utes of Nev­er-Released Footage Show­ing the Wreck­age of the Titan­ic (1986)

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

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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Google & Coursera Launch New Career Certificates That Prepare Students for Jobs in 2–6 Months: Business Intelligence & Advanced Data Analytics

in Business, Online Courses | May 18th, 2023

Back in 2021, Google launched a series of online cours­es designed to help stu­dents earn a pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate in six months and also land an entry-lev­el job. In its orig­i­nal offer­ing, Google devel­oped cer­tifi­cate pro­grams in five pro­fes­sion­al areas: User Expe­ri­ence (UX) Design, Data Ana­lyt­ics, Project Man­age­ment, IT Sup­port and IT Automa­tion. Now, the tech com­pa­ny has added two new pro­grams to its line­up, each offered through Cours­er­a’s online edu­ca­tion plat­form.

First, the Google Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate builds on the orig­i­nal Data Ana­lyt­ics Cer­tifi­cate and “delves into machine learn­ing, pre­dic­tive mod­el­ing, and exper­i­men­tal design to col­lect and ana­lyze large amounts of data.” Fea­tur­ing sev­en cours­es in total, the pro­gram takes rough­ly six months to com­plete and aims to teach stu­dents how to 1) build regres­sion and machine learn­ing mod­els to ana­lyze and inter­pret data, 2) cre­ate data visu­al­iza­tions and apply sta­tis­ti­cal meth­ods to inves­ti­gate data, and 3) com­mu­ni­cate insights from data analy­sis to stake­hold­ers. Essen­tial­ly, it teach­es many tools of the trade need­ed to become a senior data ana­lyst or junior data sci­en­tist.

With the Google Busi­ness Intel­li­gence Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, stu­dents can par­tic­i­pate in a short­er pro­gram that focus­es on trans­form­ing data into action­able insights for orga­ni­za­tions. Con­sist­ing of three cours­es (and last­ing about two months), the pro­gram helps stu­dents learn skills like data mod­el­ing, data visu­al­iza­tion, and dashboarding–skills that have wide applic­a­bil­i­ty in our data-dri­ven age.

Stu­dents can actu­al­ly take indi­vid­ual cours­es in these pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate pro­grams for free. How­ev­er, if you would like to receive the cer­tifi­cates, Cours­era charges $49 per month (after an ini­tial 7‑day free tri­al peri­od). That means that the Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, if com­plet­ed in 6 months, will cost less than $300. And the Busi­ness Intel­li­gence Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate would run about $100. Once stu­dents com­plete a cer­tifi­cate, they can add the cre­den­tial to their LinkedIn pro­file, resume, or CV. Like­wise, they can con­nect with 150+ U.S. hir­ing orga­ni­za­tions in Google’s Employ­er Con­sor­tium. If you would like to learn more about Google Career Cer­tifi­cates, you can read this handy page on Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas’ web­site.

Update: Google has also added a new cer­tifi­cate pro­gram focused on Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. Find out more about the pro­gram here.

You can sign up for the pro­grams by click­ing on the links in bold above. Each pro­gram has a 7‑day free tri­al.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

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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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Behold the International Ink Library Created by the U.S. Secret Service: Features A Collection of 12,000 Ink Samples

in History, Technology | May 17th, 2023

Late though it may be in the age of print, we still envi­sion ran­som or oth­er threat­en­ing notes in the same way we have for gen­er­a­tions, with their demands incon­gru­ous­ly spelled out with indi­vid­ual let­ters, each one a dif­fer­ent size and font, tak­en from the pages of news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. This clas­sic cut-and-paste method of ran­som note con­struc­tion pre­sum­ably emerged as means of evad­ing minds like that of Trista Gins­berg, a doc­u­ment ana­lyst spe­cial­iz­ing in hand­writ­ing at the Secret Ser­vice. She appears in the Great Big Sto­ry above, which comes to focus on one facil­i­ty at the Ser­vice’s head­quar­ters in par­tic­u­lar: the Inter­na­tion­al Ink Library.

“The Secret Ser­vice has the largest ink library in the world,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. Its more than 12,000 sam­ples of dif­fer­ent inks include “pens, bot­tled ink, and print­er car­tridges.” These come in handy when, say, “some­one writes a threat­en­ing let­ter to the pres­i­dent.”

A doc­u­ment ana­lyst like Iri­na Geiman sam­ples the let­ter’s ink, and then, by com­par­ing it to the inks in the library, “she can fig­ure out what kind of ink was used, and, hope­ful­ly, it can help solve the case.” Geiman also explains a less dra­mat­ic type of case that comes across her desk rather more often: at-home inkjet coun­ter­feit­ing of $20 bills.

Though that may not be the high­est exam­ple of the coun­ter­feit­er’s art, the art itself moti­vat­ed the cre­ation of the Secret Ser­vice in 1865 as a branch of the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment. “Fol­low­ing the Civ­il War,” says the Secret Ser­vice’s FAQ, “it was esti­mat­ed that one-third to one-half of the cur­ren­cy in cir­cu­la­tion was coun­ter­feit.” It was in 1901, after the McKin­ley assas­si­na­tion, that “the Secret Ser­vice was first tasked with its sec­ond mis­sion: the pro­tec­tion of the pres­i­dent.” Hence the cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy of the image of the would-be pres­i­dent assas­sin evad­ing gov­ern­men­tal pur­suit while labo­ri­ous­ly assem­bling his mis­sives one let­ter at a time — sure­ly rea­son enough for the Secret Ser­vice to have put togeth­er a top-secret Inter­na­tion­al Glue Library.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Ink is Made: The Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Books Made with Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink Strate­gi­cal­ly Fade Away

Anato­my of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Paint­ing by Jack­son Pol­lock (or Any Oth­er Artist)

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

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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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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Take Carl Jung’s Word Association Test, a Quick Route Into the Subconscious (1910)

in History, Psychology | May 16th, 2023

We’ve all, at one time or anoth­er, been asked to say the first thing that pops into our heads in response to a cer­tain word or phrase. It may have hap­pened to us in school, in a mar­ket research group, or per­haps in a job inter­view at a com­pa­ny that regards itself as some­what out­side-the-box. Most such exer­cis­es, and the the­o­ries sup­port­ing their effi­ca­cy as a tool for reveal­ing the speak­er’s inner self, orig­i­nate with the work of the Swiss psy­chi­a­trist-psy­cho­an­a­lyst and then-pro­tégé of Sig­mund Freud Carl Jung.

Jung pub­lished his descrip­tion of this “asso­ci­a­tion method” in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chol­o­gy in 1910, and you can see the sto­ry of its cre­ation — ani­mat­ed in the usu­al Mon­ty Python-esque paper-cutout style — told in the new School of Life video above. In his word-asso­ci­a­tion test, says nar­ra­tor Alain de Bot­ton, “doc­tor and patient were to sit fac­ing one anoth­er, and the doc­tor would read out a list of one hun­dred words. On hear­ing each of these, the patient was to say the first thing that came into their head.” The patient must “try nev­er to delay speak­ing and that they strive to be extreme­ly hon­est in report­ing what­ev­er they were think­ing of, how­ev­er embar­rass­ing, strange, or ran­dom it might seem.”

Tri­al runs con­vinced Jung and his col­leagues that “they had hit upon an extreme­ly sim­ple yet high­ly effec­tive method for reveal­ing parts of the mind that were nor­mal­ly rel­e­gat­ed to the uncon­scious. Patients who in ordi­nary con­ver­sa­tion would make no allu­sions to cer­tain top­ics or con­cerns would, in a word asso­ci­a­tion ses­sion, quick­ly let slip crit­i­cal aspects of their true selves.” The idea is that, under pres­sure to respond as quick­ly and “unthink­ing­ly” as pos­si­ble, the patient would deliv­er up con­tents from the instinct-dri­ven sub­con­scious mind rather than the more delib­er­ate con­scious mind.

Jung used 100 words in par­tic­u­lar to pro­voke these deep-seat­ed reac­tions, the full list of which you can see below. While some of these words may sound fair­ly charged — angry, abuse, dead — most could hard­ly seem more ordi­nary, even innocu­ous: salt, win­dow, head. “When the exper­i­ment is fin­ished I first look over the gen­er­al course of the reac­tion times,” Jung writes in the orig­i­nal paper. “Pro­longed times” mean that “the patient can only adjust him­self with dif­fi­cul­ty, that his psy­cho­log­i­cal func­tions pro­ceed with marked inter­nal fric­tions, with resis­tances.” He found, as de Bot­ton puts it, that “it was pre­cise­ly where there were the longest silences that the deep­est con­flicts and neu­roses lay.” In Jung’s world­view, there were the quick, and there were the neu­rot­ic: a dras­tic sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, to be sure, but as he showed us, some­times the sim­plest lan­guage goes straight to the heart of the mat­ter.

1. head
2. green
3. water
4. to sing
5. dead
6. long
7. ship
8. to pay
9. win­dow
10. friend­ly
11. to cook
12. to ask
13. cold
14. stem
15. to dance
16. vil­lage
17. lake
18. sick
19. pride
20. to cook
21. ink
22. angry
23. nee­dle
24. to swim
25. voy­age
26. blue
27. lamp
28. to sin
29. bread
30. rich
31. tree
32. to prick
33. pity
34. yel­low
35. moun­tain
36. to die
37. salt
38. new
39. cus­tom
40. to pray
41. mon­ey
42. fool­ish
43. pam­phlet
44. despise
45. fin­ger
46. expen­sive
47. bird
48. to fall
49. book
50. unjust
51 frog
52. to part
53. hunger
54. white
55. child
56. to take care
57. lead pen­cil
58. sad
59. plum
60. to mar­ry
61. house
62. dear
63. glass
64. to quar­rel
65. fur
66. big
67. car­rot
68. to paint
69. part
70. old
71. flower
72. to beat
73. box
74. wild
75. fam­i­ly
76. to wash
77. cow
78. friend
79. luck
80. lie
81. deport­ment
82. nar­row
83. broth­er
84. to fear
85. stork
86. false
87. anx­i­ety
88. to kiss
89. bride
90. pure
91. door
92. to choose
93. hay
94. con­tent­ed
95. ridicule
96. to sleep
97. month
98. nice
99. woman
100. to abuse

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Jung Offers an Intro­duc­tion to His Psy­cho­log­i­cal Thought in a 3‑Hour Inter­view (1957)

How Carl Jung Inspired the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Carl Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in a Rare Inter­view (1957)

The Vision­ary Mys­ti­cal Art of Carl Jung: See Illus­trat­ed Pages from The Red Book

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Mean­ing­less Life’ (1959)

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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Watch Young David Attenborough Encounter Animals in Their Natural Habitats: Video from the 1950s and 1960s

in Biology, Nature, Television | May 15th, 2023

Expe­ri­ence long ago con­ferred the man­tle of author­i­ty on broad­cast­er, biol­o­gist, nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and author David Atten­bor­ough, age 97.

In his late 20s, he land­ed at the BBC, pro­duc­ing live stu­dio broad­casts that ran the gamut from children’s shows, bal­let per­for­mances and arche­o­log­i­cal quizzes to pro­grams focused on cook­ing, reli­gion and pol­i­tics.

When an edu­ca­tion­al show star­ring ani­mals from the Lon­don Zoo became a hit with view­ers, the pow­ers that be built on its pop­u­lar­i­ty with a fresh take — a show that sent the intre­pid young Atten­bor­ough around the world, seek­ing ani­mals in their native habi­tats. He was accom­pa­nied by cam­era­man Charles Lagus and two zool­o­gists, whom he quick­ly sup­plant­ed as host.

It made for thrilling view­ing in an era when wildlife tourism was avail­able to a very few.

The New York Times notes that many of the crea­tures who cropped up onscreen in these ear­ly Zoo Quest episodes were shipped back to Lon­don Zoo:

It is not the kind of mis­sion we approve of nowa­days, but with­out it the West might nev­er have got­ten inter­est­ed in wildlife to begin with. We start­ed by shoot­ing exot­ic species for their skins and bones and trap­ping them for our zoos, and only recent­ly moved to wor­ry­ing about their sur­vival in the wild and the health of the plan­et in gen­er­al. This his­to­ry is sym­bol­ized by the trans­for­ma­tion of Atten­bor­ough him­self from a talk­ing and writ­ing croc­o­dile hunter to the great­est liv­ing advo­cate of the glob­al ecosys­tem.

In Bor­neo in 1956, in search for Komo­do drag­ons, he paused for an encounter with an orang­utan, above, and also a big whiff of duri­an, the spiky, odif­er­ous fruit whose aro­ma famous­ly got it banned from Singapore’s ele­gant Raf­fles Hotel, with taxis, planes, sub­ways, and fer­ries fol­low­ing suit.

Soon there­after, the six-episode hunt for the Komo­do drag­on finds Atten­bor­ough in Java, mask­ing his nerves as he uses a cut­lass, a will­ing­ness to climb trees, and a cloth sack to get the bet­ter of a ful­ly grown python.

(Once the ser­pent was set­tled at the Lon­don Zoo, he made the trek to the BBC for an in-stu­dio appear­ance.)

You’ll note that this episode is in col­or.

Although Zoo Quest filmed in col­or, it aired ten years before col­or broad­casts were avail­able to UK view­ers, so most of the folks watch­ing at home assumed it had been shot in black and white.

In 1960, Atten­bor­ough used the lat­est — now severe­ly out­mod­ed-look­ing– tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture the first audio record­ing of the indri, Madagascar’s largest lemur for Attenborough’s Won­der of Song.

This audio vic­to­ry led him to won­der if he could be the first to film an indri.

Frus­trat­ed by the thick canopy over­head, Atten­bor­ough resort­ed to play­back, suc­cess­ful­ly tempt­ing the ani­mals to not only come clos­er, but do so while vocal­iz­ing.

Mat­ing calls?

No. Atten­bor­ough deduced that they were the indris’ “bat­tle songs”, issued as a warn­ing to the per­ceived threat of unfa­mil­iar indris.

In 2011, Atten­bor­ough returned to Mada­gas­car, lis­ten­ing respect­ful­ly to Joseph, a local hunter turned con­ser­va­tion­ist, who explains how the local pop­u­lace no longer think of indri as a food source, but rather a sym­bol of their com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing the nat­ur­al world around them. Joseph’s rela­tion­ship with the indri affords Sir David a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty, as the indri feed from his hand:

Fifty years ago, I spent days and days and days search­ing through the for­est, with these fir­ing their noise over­head but now this group is so accus­tomed to see­ing peo­ple around that I have been right close up to them, some­thing I nev­er believed could have be pos­si­ble. 

Read more about David Atten­bor­ough’s Zoo Quest expe­ri­ences in his mem­oir, Adven­tures of a Young Nat­u­ral­ist, and watch a playlist of doc­u­men­taries for the BBC here.

via TheKidsShould­SeeThis

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Net­flix Makes Doc­u­men­taries Free to Stream: Design, Pol­i­tics, Sports, Sir David Atten­bor­ough & More

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

– 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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