How “Strawberry Fields Forever” Contains “the Craziest Edit” in Beatles History

in Music | May 22nd, 2020

The sto­ry of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” is more or less the sto­ry in minia­ture of the Bea­t­les’ rein­ven­tion after they swore off tour­ing in 1966 and dis­ap­peared into the stu­dio to make their most inno­v­a­tive albums. It was not, as some Bea­t­les fans might remem­ber, an easy tran­si­tion right away. Some of their fans, it turned out, were fick­le, eas­i­ly swayed by gos­sip as the lat­est TV trends. “While unsub­stan­ti­at­ed break-up rumors swirled, some music fans became dis­en­chant­ed with the group,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock. “You need only watch a 1967 clip from Amer­i­can Band­stand to see how many teenagers in the audi­ence thought the Bea­t­les were has-beens.”

Eager to get some­thing out and fight the whims of fash­ion, Par­lophone and Capi­tol both released John Lennon’s lat­est, “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” with Paul McCartney’s “Pen­ny Lane” as the B‑side, in 1967. Since the band no longer toured, they were “direct­ed to make film clips to accom­pa­ny each song and pro­mote the sin­gle.”

Here, they debuted their new psy­che­del­ic look, and in the sin­gles they demon­strat­ed the new direc­tion their music would go. The­mat­i­cal­ly, both songs are nos­tal­gic trips through child­hood, with Lennon tak­ing a mys­ti­cal, psych-rock approach and McCart­ney div­ing head­long into his sen­ti­men­tal music hall ambi­tions.

“Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” also firm­ly estab­lished the band as stu­dio wiz­ards, thanks to the wiz­ardry, pri­mar­i­ly, of George Mar­tin. In the video at the top from You Can’t Unhear This, we learn just what a marvel—as a tech­ni­cal achievement—the band’s new sin­gle was at the time, con­tain­ing “the cra­zi­est edit in Bea­t­les his­to­ry.” The song itself went through a very lengthy ges­ta­tion peri­od, as Col­in Flem­ing details in Rolling Stone, from sketchy, ghost­ly ear­ly acoustic demoes called “It’s Not Too Bad” (below) to the wild cacoph­o­ny of crash­ing rhythms and loop­ing melodies it would become.

Record­ing take after take, the band spent 55 hours in the stu­dio work­ing on “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” Noth­ing seemed to sat­is­fy Lennon, though he was lean­ing toward a dark­er, heav­ier take, Flem­ing notes:

This was a ver­sion approach­ing pro­to-met­al. Lennon couldn’t decide if he want­ed to go the ethe­re­al route, or the stomp­ing one, and famous­ly told George Mar­tin to com­bine the two ver­sions. This was less than prac­ti­cal. 

“Well, there are two things against it,” Mar­tin informed Lennon. “One is that they’re in dif­fer­ent keys. The oth­er is that they’re in dif­fer­ent tem­pos.”

But for a man who had start­ed his most per­son­al, hon­est musi­cal jour­ney, with­in the para­me­ters of a sin­gle song, back in Spain, this was mere­ly part of the process. 

“You can fix it, George,” Lennon con­clud­ed, and that was that, with Mar­tin now tasked with find­ing a solu­tion to a prob­lem that seem­ing­ly vio­lat­ed the laws of musi­cal physics.

Mar­t­in’s solu­tion involved slow­ing one ver­sion down and speed­ing up the oth­er until they were close enough in pitch that “only a musi­col­o­gist, real­ly, would know that there was that much of a dif­fer­ence,” Flem­ing writes. Speed­ing up and slow­ing down tracks was com­mon prac­tice in the stu­dio, and is today, but giv­en the incred­i­ble num­ber of instru­ments and amount of over­dub­bing that went into mak­ing “Straw­ber­ry Fields,” the endeav­or defied the log­ic of what was tech­no­log­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble at the time.

While the time spent on the song might seem extrav­a­gant, we should con­sid­er that these days bands can pluck the sounds they want, what­ev­er they are, from pull-down menus, and splice any­thing togeth­er in a mat­ter of min­utes. In the mid-60s, Bri­an Jones, Bri­an Wil­son, Jimi Hen­drix, the Bea­t­les and oth­er stu­dio pio­neers dreamed up sounds no one had heard before, and brought togeth­er instru­men­ta­tion that had nev­er shared space in a mix. Pro­duc­ers and engi­neers like Mar­tin had to invent the tech­niques to make those new sounds come togeth­er on tape. Learn­ing the ins-and-outs of how Mar­tin did it can give even the most die-hard Bea­t­les fans renewed appre­ci­a­tion for songs as wide­ly beloved as “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear John Lennon Sing Home Demo Ver­sions of “She Said, She Said,” “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” and “Don’t Let Me Down”

Lennon or McCart­ney? Sci­en­tists Use Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Fig­ure Out Who Wrote Icon­ic Bea­t­les Songs

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

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

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Studio Ghibli Producer Toshio Suzuki Teaches You How to Draw Totoro in Two Minutes

in Animation, Art, Film, K-12 | May 22nd, 2020

This is some­thing you can do at home. Every­one, please draw pic­tures —Toshio Suzu­ki

There’s no short­age of online tuto­ri­als for fans who want to draw Totoro, the  enig­mat­ic title char­ac­ter of Stu­dio Ghibli’s 1988 ani­mat­ed fea­ture, My Neigh­bor Totoro:

There’s a two-minute, non-nar­rat­ed, God’s-Eye-view with shad­ing…

A detailed geom­e­try-based step-by-step…

A ten-minute ver­sion for kids that uti­lizes a drink­ing glass and a bot­tle cap to get the pro­por­tions right pri­or to pen­cil­ing, ink­ing, and col­or­ing…

But none has more heart than Stu­dio Ghi­b­li pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki’s sim­ple demon­stra­tion, above.

The paper is ori­ent­ed toward the artist, rather than the view­er.

His only instruc­tion is that the eyes should be spaced very far apart.

His brush pen lends itself to a freer line than the tight­ly con­trolled out­lines of Stu­dio Ghibli’s care­ful­ly ren­dered 2‑D char­ac­ter designs.

This is Totoro as Zen prac­tice, offered as a gift to cooped-up Japan­ese chil­dren, whose schools, like so many world­wide, were abrupt­ly shut­tered in an effort to con­tain the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch 36 Beastie Boys Videos Now Remastered in HD

in Film, Music | May 21st, 2020

The Beast­ie Boys are still the only group to have their music videos receive a Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion release, hav­ing deliv­ered a steady stream of hilar­i­ous and fun pro­mo spots since “She’s on It” in 1985. As the doc­u­men­tary Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry recent­ly dropped on AppleTV, the remain­ing B‑Boys and their record label remas­tered 36 of their videos, now re-uploaded to YouTube in HD. And now’s as good a time as any to restock and rethink their impact on the art form of music video.

The first videos are sil­ly, car­toon­ish slap­stick, with a frat­boy sense of humor that played bet­ter then than now, espe­cial­ly with sev­er­al ref­er­ences to faux-aphrode­si­ac Span­ish Fly. But the sped up action and cos­tume changes placed them in a lin­eage usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with British acts like The Bea­t­les and Mad­ness.

The Beast­ies always poked fun at them­selves, which oth­er Amer­i­can acts rarely did, espe­cial­ly in the very macho worlds of hip-hop and met­al. Even in their final videos they were slap­ping on wigs and fake mus­tach­es.

But if the Beast­ie Boys real­ly had one main lega­cy it was the use of the fish-eye lens. Used first in the “Hold It Now Hit It” video (an afternoon’s film­ing inter­cut with shots from their Dionysian first world tour), it would return for 1989’s “Shake Your Rump”, where the group have learned exact­ly how to work its dis­tort­ing pow­ers (MCA’s fin­gers feel like they’re going to reach through the screen). This style reach­es its apex in “So What’cha Want” where the dis­tor­tion is matched with a slowed motion (the band mim­ing to a sped up ver­sion, then the video slowed to the cor­rect speed). The music’s THC-laced grind is matched with decayed visu­als. Rap videos ever since have used the imme­di­a­cy of the direct-to-cam­era per­for­mance, and direc­tors like Hype Williams made a career of turn­ing a fish­eye lens onto per­form­ers like Bus­ta Rhymes and Mis­sy Elliot, with even more sur­re­al results.

But the Beast­ie Boys real­ly flour­ished when they teamed up with direc­tor Spike Jonze, who direct­ed the Beast­ie Boys Sto­ry and would direct six of their videos. A ris­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er and direc­tor con­nect­ed with the skate­board­ing scene, his first col­lab­o­ra­tion with the group was 1992’s “Time for Liv­ing,” a punk rock non-sin­gle from Check Your Head. But things real­ly took off with “Sab­o­tage,” one of the band’s best videos, a par­o­dy of 1970s cop shows. Watch­ing the Beast­ies and their friends play dress-up, run ram­pant through the streets of Los Ange­les, jump across rooftops, and toss a dum­my off a bridge is like the pla­ton­ic ide­al of a home movie made with your best friends. Absolute­ly sil­ly and hilar­i­ous, but life-affirm­ing at the same time, a dis­til­la­tion of what made the band great.

You prob­a­bly have your own favorites too, as there’s so many: the Godzil­la trib­ute of “Inter­galac­tic,” the par­o­dy of Dia­bo­lik for “Body Movin’ “, the psy­che­del­ic paint explo­sion of “Shadrach,” the homage to Pink Floyd Live at Pom­peii with “Grat­i­tude”, the celebri­ty love­fest of “Make Some Noise”, and the years-before-their-time ‘70s dis­co-and-poly­ester indul­gence of “Hey Ladies” where Jean Cocteau and Dolemite share a coke­spoon-ful of influ­ences.

The playlist also fea­tures a num­ber of non-album tracks done for the hell of it, some real rar­i­ties even for the fan. Good God y’all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Boutique–and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

The Beast­ie Boys Release a New Free­wheel­ing Mem­oir, and a Star-Stud­ded 13-Hour Audio­book Fea­tur­ing Snoop Dogg, Elvis Costel­lo, Bette Midler, John Stew­art & Dozens More

Look How Young They Are!: The Beast­ie Boys Per­form­ing Live Their Very First Hit, “Cooky Puss” (1983)

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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David Lynch Releases an Animated Film Online: Watch Fire (Pozar)

in Animation, Film | May 21st, 2020

David Lynch began his artis­tic career as a painter. Before long his paint­ings became ani­ma­tions, of a kind, as exem­pli­fied by 1967’s Six Men Get­ting Sick (Six Times) and 1968’s The Alpha­bet. By 1977, when the years-in-the-mak­ing Eraser­head final­ly saw the light of day, Lynch’s trans­for­ma­tion into a live-action film­mak­er must have seemed com­plete. But his imag­i­na­tion has nev­er accept­ed con­fine­ment to one medi­um: even while work­ing on ever high­er-pro­file projects — The Ele­phant Man, Blue Vel­vet, Twin Peaks — he con­tin­ued to paint, to draw, to take pho­tographs. Lynch’s com­plete­ly sta­t­ic com­ic strip The Angri­est Dog in the World was a com­pelling fix­ture in the LA Read­er dur­ing the 1980s, but apart from the online series Dum­b­land and the Inter­pol col­lab­o­ra­tion I Touch a Red But­ton Man, lit­tle Lynchi­an in the way of ani­ma­tion has appeared over the past few decades.

This past Mon­day, how­ev­er, Lynch announced the release of one such rar­i­ty free to watch on Youtube. Like I Touch a Red But­ton Man, Fire (Pozar) is a joint effort between film­mak­er and musi­cian, in this case com­pos­er Marek Zebrows­ki. “The whole point of our exper­i­ment was that I would say noth­ing about my inten­tions and Marek would inter­pret the visu­als in his own way,” said Lynch in a USC School of Music inter­view.

As col­lab­o­ra­tors, Lynch and Zebrows­ki go back to Inland Empire, the 2006 fea­ture Lynch shot par­tial­ly in Poland. This neces­si­tat­ed a trans­la­tor, and the Pol­ish-Amer­i­can Zebrows­ki stepped up to the job. In 2007 the two con­tin­ued down that cul­tur­al avenue, record­ing an album called Pol­ish Night Music. Fire (Pozar)‘s bilin­gual title also hon­ors Zebrowski’s ances­tral home­land, though the film itself may lack any direct ref­er­ence to Poland — or to any real place, for that mat­ter.

Lynch is cred­it­ed with hav­ing “writ­ten, drawn, and direct­ed” the short (its ani­ma­tor, Noriko Miyakawa, was an edi­tor on 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return), and on the visu­al lev­el it plays out like a jour­ney through what will feel, to many of us, like the famil­iar realm of the Lynchi­an imag­i­na­tion. The tit­u­lar fire — or rather, pozar — starts ear­ly on. Then we’re trans­port­ed to a sil­hou­ette land­scape that brings to mind David Fos­ter Wal­lace’s descrip­tion of one of Lynch’s paint­ing’s, “the sort of diag­nos­tic House-Tree-Per­son draw­ing that gets a patient insti­tu­tion­al­ized in a hur­ry.” But there are no peo­ple here, or at least no whole peo­ple: the first even faint­ly humanoid fig­ure to emerge brings to mind the men­ac­ing baby in Eraser­head, and by the end the scene will have been over­tak­en by crea­tures nei­ther prop­er­ly ani­mal nor man. Zebrowski’s score gets thor­ough­ly enough into this stark but fre­net­ic spir­it to make Lynch fans believe that fur­ther col­lab­o­ra­tions must sure­ly be on the way.

This short film will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Releas­es a Dis­turb­ing, New Short Film: Watch “Ant Head” Online

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

The Paint­ings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

Dis­cov­er David Lynch’s Bizarre & Min­i­mal­ist Com­ic Strip, The Angri­est Dog in the World (1983–1992)

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

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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A Soul Train-Style Detroit Dance Show Gets Down to Kraftwerk’s “Numbers” in the Late 80s

in Music | May 21st, 2020

Imag­ine Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hüt­ter in his robot voice, say­ing, as he once said to his friend Boris Ven­zen, “Our music is good if blacks and whites can dance to it at the same time.” This state­ment is the essence of Kraftwerk. Despite their ear­ly 70s avant-garde phase and their famous­ly satir­ic Teu­ton­ic look, the robot­ic Ger­man tech­no pio­neers set­tled ear­ly on their “prac­tice of fus­ing Euro­pean elec­tron­ic music with black Amer­i­can rhythms, forg­ing an aes­thet­ic that reached crit­i­cal mass with the release of Trans Europe Express.”

So writes John Mor­ri­son at The Wire, in an essay that explores this fusion in some depth. Mor­ri­son also quotes for­mer Kraftwerk per­cus­sion­ist Karl Bar­tos on the band’s debt to black music: “We were all fans of Amer­i­can music: soul, the Tamla/Motown thing, and of course, James Brown. We always tried to make an Amer­i­can rhythm feel, with a Euro­pean approach to har­mo­ny and melody.” The exper­i­men­tal method emerges even in their ear­li­est work, in which they begin work­ing with the “’Bo Did­dley’ beat… that dom­i­nat­ed rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s and ear­ly 60s,” Mor­ri­son notes.

Black DJs in the states picked up on what the Ger­mans were doing, and start­ed play­ing Kraftwerk—along with Gary Numan, Yel­lo Mag­ic Orches­tra, and New Order—in the dis­cos. Mean­while, Kraftwerk start­ed incor­po­rat­ing ear­ly Amer­i­can house music with their 1981 album Com­put­er World. The response to Kraftwerk in black clubs was huge, and they became even more famous after Afri­ka Bam­baataa sam­pled “Trans Europe Express” in his 1981 track, “Plan­et Rock,” a song that had a seis­mic impact on elec­tron­ic dance music around the world.

Kraftwerk’s most sin­gu­lar impact in the U.S. hap­pened in the city of Detroit. As Mor­ri­son writes:

[Kraftwerk]’s influ­ence took a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong hold in Detroit with Urban radio DJs Like Elec­tri­fy­ing Mojo intro­duc­ing the Euro­pean elec­tron­ic sound to the gen­er­a­tion of black youth that went on to cre­ate tech­no. In recent years, sev­er­al clips have been uploaded of The Scene (and its spin-off The New Dance Show), a Soul Train-style dance show that aired from 1975–87 on Detroit’s WGPR TV 62. In these videos, black youth from Detroit can be seen danc­ing to Kraftwerk and a vari­ety of pro­gres­sive elec­tron­ic dance music, giv­ing us a glimpse into Detroit’s scene at the time.

If you ever need­ed to know how to dance to Kraftwerk, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds of the exu­ber­ant Soul Train-like dance line above, “this is how it’s done”—or at least, how it was done in Detroit in the late 80s on The New Dance Show. From the ear­ly 80s on, Mor­ri­son writes, “Kraftwerk became increas­ing­ly aware of the black music scene,” and leg­endary Detroit tech­no DJs like Juan Atkins, Der­rick May, and Kevin Saun­der­son became increas­ing­ly aware of Kraftwerk, a sit­u­a­tion cul­tur­al schol­ar Paul Gilroy might fold into his con­cept of “the Black Atlantic,” but which could also be called some­thing like The Trans Düs­sel­dorf-Detroit Afro­fu­tur­ist Tech­no Express.

“All of the city latched on to” Kraftwerk’s sound, says May in a 2010 inter­view above. Atkins put it this way in a 2012 trib­ute to Kraftwerk pub­lished on Elec­tron­ic Beats:

[T]he first time I heard ‘Robots’ I just froze. My jaw dropped. It just sound­ed so new and fresh. I mean, I had already been doing elec­tron­ic music at the time, but the results weren’t so pristine—the sound of com­put­ers talk­ing to each oth­er. This sound­ed like the future, and it was fas­ci­nat­ing, because I had just start­ed learn­ing about sequencers and drum pro­grams. In my mind, Kraftwerk were, like, con­sul­tants to Roland and Korg and stuff because they had these sounds before any of the machines even appeared on the mar­ket.

I mean, there were oth­er funky elec­tron­ic bands around—Tan­ger­ine Dream and Gary Numan and all that—but none were as funky as Kraftwerk­. I mean, you could actu­al­ly play the stuff on black radio, and that wasn’t a small feat. You could go to an all black club in Detroit and when they put on ‘Pock­et Cal­cu­la­tor’, every­body just went total­ly crazy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Flo­ri­an Schnei­der (RIP) in Clas­sic Ear­ly Kraftwerk Per­for­mances

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

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

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The Original Star Wars Trilogy Adapted into a 14-Hour Radio Drama by NPR (1981–1996)

in Film, Radio, Sci Fi | May 20th, 2020

When it opened in 1977, Star Wars revived the old-fash­ioned swash­buck­ling adven­ture film. With­in a few years, Nation­al Pub­lic Radio made a bet that it could do the same for the radio dra­ma. Though still well with­in liv­ing mem­o­ry, the “gold­en age of radio” in Amer­i­ca had end­ed decades ear­li­er, and with it the shows that once filled the air­waves with sto­ries of every kind. Radio dra­mas seemed extinct, but then, before George Lucas’ space opera turned block­buster, so had movie seri­als like Flash Gor­don and Buck Rogers. The episod­ic nature of such source mate­r­i­al res­onat­ed with the sim­i­lar­ly episod­ic nature of clas­sic radio dra­ma, and that must have brought with­in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty a bold and near-scan­dalous propo­si­tion: to re-make Star Wars for NPR.

The idea came from a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, who sug­gest­ed it to USC School of the Per­form­ing arts dean and radio-dra­ma enthu­si­ast Richard Toscan. There could have been no insti­tu­tion bet­ter-placed to take on such a project. Since Toscan had already pro­duced dra­mas on the school’s NPR-affil­i­at­ed radio sta­tion KUSC, he made an ide­al col­lab­o­ra­tor in the net­work’s effort to breathe new life into its dra­mat­ic pro­gram­ming. And as Lucas’ alma mater, USC inspired in him a cer­tain gen­eros­i­ty: Lucas sold KUSC Star Wars’ radio rights, along with use of the film’s music and sound effects, for one dol­lar. Found­ed just a decade ear­li­er, NPR still lacked the expe­ri­ence and resources to han­dle such an ambi­tious project itself, and so entered into a co-pro­duc­tion deal with the BBC, which had nev­er let radio dra­ma go into eclipse.

When the Star Wars radio dra­ma was first broad­cast in the spring of 1981, fans of the movie would have heard a mix­ture of the famil­iar (includ­ing the voic­es of Mark Hamill as Luke Sky­walk­er and Antho­ny Daniels as C‑3PO) and the unfa­mil­iar. With sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el­ist Bri­an Daley brought on to add or restore scenes to the script of the orig­i­nal dia­logue-light fea­ture film, the sto­ry stretch­es out to thir­teen episodes for a total run­time of six hours. The series thus stands as an ear­ly exam­ple of the expan­sion of the Star Wars uni­verse that, in all kinds of media, has con­tin­ued apace ever since. An Empire Strikes Back radio dra­ma fol­lowed in 1983, with Return of the Jedi fol­low­ing, after pro­longed devel­op­ment chal­lenges, in 1996.

You can hear all four­teen hours of these orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy radio dra­mas at the Inter­net Archive (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi), or on a Youtube playlist with fan edits com­bin­ing the orig­i­nal­ly dis­crete episodes into con­tin­u­ous lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences. NPR’s gam­ble on adapt­ing a Hol­ly­wood hit paid off: the first Star Wars radio dra­ma drew 750,000 new lis­ten­ers, many from the youth­ful demo­graph­ic the net­work had hoped to cap­ture. It was the biggest sci­ence-fic­tion event on Amer­i­can radio since Orson Welles scared the coun­try with his adap­ta­tion of H.G. Welles’ The War of the Worlds more than 40 years ear­li­er — a broad­cast pro­duced by John House­man, who in his capac­i­ty as USC’s artis­tic direc­to­ry in the 1970s, encour­aged Toscan to bring radio dra­ma back. In recent years, NPR’s audi­ence has con­tin­ued to age while the Star Wars fran­chise has in the­aters, on tele­vi­sion and else­where, gone from strength to strength. Has the time come for radio to use the Force once again?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

Hear Five JG Bal­lard Sto­ries Pre­sent­ed as Radio Dra­mas

Dimen­sion X: The 1950s Sci­Fi Radio Show That Dra­ma­tized Sto­ries by Asi­mov, Brad­bury, Von­negut & More

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

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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“Prince and the Revolution: Live,” the Historic 1985 Concert Is Streaming Online

in Music | May 20th, 2020

A quick heads up. The Prince Estate has released Prince and the Rev­o­lu­tion: Live, a his­toric con­cert cap­tured at the Car­ri­er Dome in Syra­cuse, NY on March 30, 1985. Stream­ing to sup­port the COVID-19 Sol­i­dar­i­ty Response Fund for the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion, the video revis­its the Pur­ple Rain tour, when Prince was at the height of his pow­ers. You can find the 20-song setlist right below. Enjoy the free fundrais­ing stream while it lasts.

1. Let’s Go Crazy

2. Deliri­ous

3. 1999

4. Lit­tle Red Corvette

5. Take Me With U

6. Yan­kee Doo­dle Dandy

7. Do Me Baby

8. Irre­sistible Bitch

9. Pos­sessed

10. How Come You Don’t Call Me Any­more

11. Let’s Pre­tend We’re Mar­ried

12. Inter­na­tion­al Lover

13. God

14. Com­put­er Blue

15. Dar­ling Nik­ki

16. The Beau­ti­ful Ones

17. When Dove’s Cry

18. I Would Die 4 U

19. Baby I’m A Star

20. Pur­ple Rain

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Col­lec­tion of Offi­cial, Autho­rized Prince GIFs!

Hear Prince’s Per­son­al Playlist of Par­ty Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Par­ty to Life

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

The Prince Online Muse­um Archives 16 of Prince’s Offi­cial Web Sites, Span­ning 20 Years

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Robert Fripp & King Crimson Perform a Stirring Cover of “Heroes,” Shortly after David Bowie’s Death (2016)

in Music | May 20th, 2020

In 2016, King Crim­son per­formed “Heroes” at the Admi­ralspalast in Berlin, just after David Bowie’s death, and near­ly forty years after the song was writ­ten and record­ed next to the Berlin Wall. It was “a cel­e­bra­tion, a remem­branc­ing and an homage,” gen­tle­man gui­tarist Robert Fripp wrote in a state­ment. The fol­low­ing year, they released the live ver­sion on an EP called Heroes, in hon­or of the clas­sic Bowie album’s 40th anniver­sary.

King Crim­son sounds absolute­ly amaz­ing in the con­cert record­ing. Yet it’s Fripp’s keen­ing gui­tar line—part vio­lin, part theremin—that most calls out to us, a gor­geous­ly heav­en­ly wail. Like many Bowie songs, the writ­ing and record­ing of “Heroes” pro­duced many a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry. Fripp’s con­tri­bu­tion, as a leg­endary char­ac­ter and prog-rock genius, is no excep­tion.

Frip­p’s angel­ic tone on “Heroes,” as Tony Vis­con­ti tells it above (at 2:15), came about most­ly by hap­py acci­dent. Vis­con­ti explains more ful­ly in a Sound Opin­ions inter­view:

Fripp was avail­able only one week­end. So he came to Berlin, brought his gui­tar, no ampli­fi­er. He record­ed his gui­tar in the stu­dio. We had to play the track very very loud because he was rely­ing on the feed­back from the stu­dio mon­i­tors. So it was deaf­en­ing work­ing with him.

Where­as every­one thinks it’s an ebow, this mag­i­cal gui­tar gad­get called an ebow. In fact it was­n’t an ebow, it was just the feedback–Fripp play­ing this “dah uhh­hh dahh uhhh” that beau­ti­ful motif. And Fripp record­ed a sec­ond time with­out hear­ing the first one. It was a lit­tle bit more cohe­sive, but still quite was­n’t right, and he said, “Let me do it again. Just give me anoth­er track. I’ll do it again.” And we silenced the first two tracks and he did a third pass, which was real­ly great. He nailed it. And then I had the bright idea: I said, “Look let me just hear what it sounds like with the oth­er two tracks. You nev­er know.”

We played it, all three tracks togeth­er, and you know, I must reit­er­ate Fripp did not hear the oth­er two tracks when he was doing the third one so he had no way of being in sync. But he was strange­ly in sync. And all his lit­tle out-of-tune wig­gles sud­den­ly worked with the oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed gui­tars. It seemed to tune up. It got a qual­i­ty that none of us antic­i­pat­ed. It was this dreamy, wail­ing qual­i­ty, almost cry­ing sound in the back­ground. And we were just flab­ber­gast­ed.

It was a typ­i­cal­ly Eno-Vis­con­ti way to find a new sound. That sound, Vis­con­ti says above, is all over the track. For this rea­son, Fripp has been engaged in legal bat­tles with David Bowie’s estate over his cred­it, insist­ing that he should have “fea­tured play­er” sta­tus, a legal des­ig­na­tion that would give him greater rights to remu­ner­a­tion. Always a shame when wran­gling over mon­ey comes between the cre­ators of great music, but in this case, Bri­an Eno and Tony Vis­con­ti both sup­port Fripp’s claims, and so per­haps would Bowie if he were here.

What­ev­er it takes to be a “fea­tured play­er,” Fripp sailed over the thresh­old on “Heroes.” He demon­strates it again in the King Crim­son trib­ute, mak­ing one gui­tar sound like three onstage, and in the video above, which he released with his wife Toy­ah for VE Day. The back­ing track is from the Berlin per­for­mance at the top, with dubbed vocals by Toy­ah and gui­tar, of course, by Fripp, play­ing the same Gib­son Les Paul he flew into the stu­dio with in 1977, and look­ing just as sin­gu­lar­ly unim­pressed by the pro­ceed­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

David Bowie’s “Heroes” Delight­ful­ly Per­formed by the Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain

Pro­duc­er Tony Vis­con­ti Breaks Down the Mak­ing of David Bowie’s Clas­sic “Heroes,” Track by Track

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

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Does Local News Deserve More of Your Attention? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #44 w/ Deion Broxton of Bison Meme Fame

in Media, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | May 20th, 2020

Is news enter­tain­ment? To what extent has local news con­sump­tion decreased giv­en the alter­na­tives? Deion is an on-air reporter for NBC Mon­tana who was recent­ly memi­fied for flee­ing amus­ing­ly from some bison. He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to dis­cuss what we might be miss­ing out on, the uses and abus­es of news cov­er­age, real­i­ty vs. media por­tray­als, and the cur­rent sta­tus of “trust­ed news reporter” in our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness.

Here are a few rel­e­vant arti­cles to peruse:

Read that sto­ry about the mur­der that Deion refers to. Deion’s bison encounter has been cov­ered on the Today Show, Time, Huff­in­g­ton Post, etc. Fol­low him @DeionNBCMT.

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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1930s Phonograph Doubled as an Alarm Clock, Letting People Start Their Day with Their Favorite Record

in Music, Technology | May 19th, 2020

The Deutsches Uhrens­mu­se­um intro­duces the French-made Peter Pan clock above as fol­lows:

Even as ear­ly as 1930, peo­ple were try­ing to find a way to replace the unpleas­ant sound of the alarm clock. The inven­tor of this gramo­phone alarm clock had a bril­liant idea. The gramo­phone works like the stan­dard alarm clock of those days; how­ev­er, instead of a bell, the gramo­phone motor switch­es on when the alarm goes off and your favourite record begins to play to the live­ly crack­ling sound of a typ­i­cal gramo­phone. The motor plays this side of the record twice in suc­ces­sion. The opened lid of the box serves as a res­onator. Even the name is what dreams are made of: Peter Pan Alarm Clock. Who would not want to be a child again and fly off to Nev­er Nev­er Land?

This great find comes from the always inter­est­ing Twit­ter feeds of jazz crit­ic Ted Gioia and the Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France. You can watch the clock in action below.

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, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

How Clocks Changed Human­i­ty For­ev­er, Mak­ing Us Mas­ters and Slaves of Time

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

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Haruki Murakami Will Host a Radio Show & Help Listeners “Blow Away Some of the Corona-Related Blues”

in Literature, Music | May 19th, 2020

Image by Ilana Simon

Char­ac­ters in Haru­ki Murakami’s books see emo­tions in col­ors and hear them in sounds—the sounds, specif­i­cal­ly, of The Bea­t­les, Shostakovich, Sarah Vaugh­an, and thou­sands more folk, pop, rock, clas­si­cal, and jazz artists in the novelist’s immense record col­lec­tion. We must occa­sion­al­ly sus­pend some dis­be­lief as read­ers, not only in the fan­tas­tic ele­ments in Murakami’s work, but in char­ac­ters who seem to know almost as much as the author does about music, who are always ready with ref­er­ences to deep cuts. Muraka­mi “is not (quite) a musi­cian,” writes Dre Dimu­ra at Fly­pa­per, “but he has a greater com­mand of music as an art form than most musi­cians I know, myself includ­ed. How is that pos­si­ble?”

Dimura’s expla­na­tion touch­es on aspects of Murakami’s life we’ve cov­ered before at Open Cul­ture: his long­stand­ing pas­sion for jazz, and time spent as the own­er of a jazz bar before he became a nov­el­ist; his pen­chant for lis­ten­ing to music in his study for hours and hours on end as he under­takes his marathon writ­ing ses­sions.

Muraka­mi has not only shared his ency­clo­pe­dic musi­cal knowl­edge through fic­tion­al char­ac­ters; he also hopes to turn his mas­sive col­lec­tion of approx­i­mate­ly 10,000 records into a pub­lic archive, along with all his books and papers: “a place,” he says, “of open inter­na­tion­al exchanges for lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture.”

Four decades after his jazz club days, Muraka­mi again became a DJ in 2018 when he took to the air­waves to play sev­er­al 55-minute sets called Muraka­mi Radio on Tokyo FM. Now, amidst the uncer­tain­ty and anx­i­ety of COVID-19 lock­downs, he will again play records for his fans in Japan on a show this Fri­day called Stay Home Spe­cial. “I’m hop­ing that the pow­er of music can do a lit­tle to blow away some of the coro­na-virus relat­ed blues that have been pil­ing up.”

Muraka­mi isn’t being Pollyan­nish about the “pow­er of music.” The phrase may be cliché, but fans know from read­ing his books how music plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in even the most mun­dane of social inter­ac­tions, the kind we’d come to take for grant­ed before the virus spread around the world. The author offers music as a friend­ly over­ture. In a char­ac­ter­is­tic image, he wrote before his first radio broad­cast in 2018:

It has been my hob­by to col­lect records and CDs since my child­hood, and thanks to that, my house is inun­dat­ed with such things. How­ev­er, I have often felt a sense of guilt toward the world while lis­ten­ing to such amaz­ing music and hav­ing a good time alone. I thought it may be good to share such good times with oth­er peo­ple while chat­ting over a glass of wine or a cup of cof­fee.

Though he’s been char­ac­ter­ized as a nov­el­ist of iso­la­tion, and is “regard­ed as a recluse in Japan,” Muraka­mi sees the need to make deep con­nec­tions these days. And he rec­og­nizes music’s pow­er to cre­ate shared emo­tion­al spaces, the kind of thing it seems so hard to find in our new frag­ment­ed, quar­an­tined lives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Announces an Archive That Will House His Man­u­scripts, Let­ters & Col­lec­tion of 10,000+ Vinyl Records

A Dream­i­ly Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Haru­ki Muraka­mi, Japan’s Jazz and Base­ball-Lov­ing Post­mod­ern Nov­el­ist

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

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

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

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