Rock critic and music memorabilia collector Simon Reynolds is the author of the new book Retromania. In it, he asserts that obsessing over the past is holding back creativity in music.
Reynolds: I wonder why we’re so obsessed with the past, particularly in music, because that’s my thing. A lot of the other retro phenomena I find vaguely amusing, but the music is a genuine worry because I like to be surprised. The first instinct for a new band starting out now—and I’m talking about very musical, intelligent people—is to go to an existing template and then tinker with it. They have fun trying to reproduce it as exact as they can or adapt it to their purpose in some way. But there are not so many musicians trying to come up with something out of nowhere, which is quite hard to do.
In the past, though, people have tried to do that. That was the general modernist ethos for a long period in music, particularly in the ’60s, but also in the post-punk era I grew up in, and in the electronic techno scene of the ’90s. You might use an idea from the past, but you’d probably mutilate it in some way or drastically change it. Or you’d use it as a springboard to go somewhere new. Now the ethos is much more like reproducing antiques. It’s about getting that drum sound or that guitar texture. It’s literally a backward movement. My concern is a sense of everything being seemingly vaguely familiar. It’s a bit depressing.
How true is it that modern music, and pop culture in general, depends too much on the past? There are plenty of examples in an interview with Reynolds at Collector's Weekly. Link
If you never watched the erstwhile TV show House, you can catch up watching this compilation of clips from all 177 episodes. Well, you'd have to add some arguments about lupus to be really complete, but this will give you an idea of whether you should watch the DVDs. -via Metafilter
To accompany the new Kurt Vonnegut book, We Are What We Pretend To Be: The First and Last Works, the author's youngest daughter Nanette gave an interview to The Rumpus. It covers a lot of personal insight into Vonnegut's life, like the effect World War II had on him.
My father was remembering what it was like and he knew: these are a batch of babies going off to war for nothing. There was a reviewer, William Deresiewicz, who writes for The Nation. He said Slaughterhouse-Five is not a book about flying saucers; it’s a book about post-traumatic stress disorder.
Rumpus: You hadn’t looked at it that way before?
Vonnegut: Nobody had the words for it back then.
Rumpus: So when your dad wrote he was expelling demons.
Vonnegut: He was expelling them with writing and with artwork. If he wasn’t writing he was creating terraces on our patio. He was a nonstop creative force. It was like he had to keep busy or he would die.
The demons gave him the impetus. I do think people are born with the seed of genius, and it either gets worked or it doesn’t. Probably his experiences [in WWII] gave him the impetus to create. Everything he wrote about stemmed from that.
The entire interview is a fascinating read for Vonnegut fans. Link -via The Atlantic
There are around a half-million words in the full Oxford English Dictionary, though most people use only a few thousand in everyday communication. Randall Munroe of xkcd explains the Saturn V rocket using only the 1,000 most commonly-used English words. This comic grew out of Munroe's journeys into Simple English Wikipedia. You can see another example here. If you want a taste of how difficult it is to explain things using only the thousand most common words, The Up Goer Five Text Editor will point out any words you use that are too uncommon. However, if you are going to explain something to children or people who are learning English as a second language, the simpler the better. Link -via Metafilter
Red pandas are the cutest little wild fur balls on earth. But if you startle one unexpectedly, you're treated to a few seconds of adorable comedy gold. This was recorded at the Maruyama Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan. -via The Daily What
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Okay, I know many of you haven't seen the new Steven Spielberg film Lincoln yet. I saw it myself last week, and yes, it really is a great film. Steven Spielberg directing Lincoln -isn't that the very definition of a "must see" picture? Well, here are a handful of facts you may not have known about the movie Lincoln, with no spoilers. That's right, go ahead and read, because this list contains no spoilers.
* Steven directed the entire three-and-a-half month production in a suit and tie. "I think I wanted to get into the role more than anything else," he said. "Because we were creating a part of history, and I didn't want to be the shlubby baseball-cap-wearing 21st century guy. I wanted to be like the cast."
* Steven addressed everyone in the cast by their character name. At all times during the shoot, Daniel Day-Lewis was addressed as "Mr. President" by the director. Sally Field was addressed as either "Mrs. Lincoln" or "Molly." Every other cast member was addressed as his or her character.
* On the daily call sheet, the part of Abraham Lincoln was listed as being played by "Abraham Lincoln." Daniel Day-Lewis' name was never mentioned.
* Describing playing Lincoln, Daniel said, "I never, ever felt the depth of like for another human being that I never met, and that's, I think, probably the effect Lincoln had on most people that take the time to discover him. I wish he had stayed [with me] forever."
* The original choice to play Abraham Lincoln was Daniel Day-Lewis, "8 or nine years ago." He turned the role down. Then Steven considered Liam Neeson. Neeson agreed and waited a few years for the script to be developed, but by the time it had come together, he turned the role down, thinking he was "too old." Then it came back to the original choice of Daniel Day-Lewis, who finally agreed.
* Once Daniel decided on the voice he wanted to use while playing Lincoln, he sent an audiotape of it to Steven with a skull and crossbones on it so no one but Spielberg would hear it.
* Abraham Lincoln's executive mansion was recreated to the letter for the film. Lincoln's office was duplicated, including the same wallpaper and books Lincoln used. The ticking of Lincoln's watch in the film is the sound of Lincoln's real watch, which was recorded in its home at Lincoln's presidential library.
* Hal Holbrook, who plays Francis Preston Blair, won an Emmy award for playing Abraham Lincoln himself, in the 1974 miniseries Lincoln. He also played Lincoln in the North and South miniseries and on The Ed Sullivan Show.
* Sally Field desperately wanted the role of Mary Todd Lincoln, but Steven thought she was too old (she is ten years older than Day-Lewis and twenty years older than Mrs. Lincoln at the time the film took place). It wasn't until Daniel Day-Lewis personally agreed to screen test with her (he flew out for the test from his home in Ireland as a favor) that Steven saw the film and agreed to give her the role.
The 1978 episode of WKRP in Cincinnati called "Turkeys Away," in which the radio station staged a Thanksgiving giveaway has become a classic holiday memory -and one of the funniest TV shows ever! It's also the subject of today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. How many details can you recall from that show? I scored 100%. I would have been ashamed to have scored any less on this one. Link
Even if this doesn't describe what I've done "lately," it may be a prediction of what will happen with a holiday feast and its leftovers around! This Twaggie is a Tweet from Laughing Lesbian, illustrated by Wobbly Goggy. See a new illustrated Tweet every day at Twaggies! Link
Spice up your Thanksgiving grocery shopping list with a cute little turkey! It will also look good on your last homework papers before the holiday, or a love note to someone you are thankful for. Andertoons has a tutorial to make drawing a turkey easy for you. Link
The PhantomX robot has been around for a while. This demo shows its activities running Phoenix code, and features children who are not nearly as afraid of this creepy crawly thing as they should be. Now imagine this machine covered in battle armor with guns mounted above and below. Then imagine it covered in fur on toy shelves for Christmas. I'm not sure which is scarier! -via Metafilter
From the archives of Popular Science magazine, see nine of the strangest musical instruments ever, from the harpitar of 1918 to the musical typewriter of 1939. Each instrument is linked to the original magazine article about it. Shown here is a 14-foot tall fiddle, featured in a 1935 article. Link -via the Presurfer
If you love that song from Angry Birds, here's a way to listen and to share it with others without admitting you're addicted to the video game. A lovely performance by Candian violin virtuoso Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà can be found on Angèle Dubeau's new album Game Music, or try out just the song with video from the game at Geeks Are Sexy. Link
This intergenerational mashup was performed at the American Music Awards last night. If you're a little burned on "Gangnam Style" but want to see what Hammer does with it, you can skip to the middle of the video. Oh, the awards? Wikipedia has all the winners. Link
Here's the strange story of a family-owned business so dysfunctional that business schools teach it as a lesson in how not to run a company.
FOOT SOLDIER
Not long after the end of World War I in 1918, an 18-year-old German soldier named Adolf Dassler returned to his hometown of Herzogenaurach, in northern Bavaria. Shoemaking was the biggest industry in the area, so it was no surprise when he decided to become a cobbler.
Dassler started small, working in an empty laundry shed behind his parents' house. There he constructed his first shoes -work shoes- out of leather scraps salvaged from wartime army helmets and other gear. His interest soon turned to athletic footwear. An inveterate tinkerer, he made his first sports shoes for his friends. But as his designs improved, his reputation spread beyond Herzogenourach, and he soon had more work than he could manage by himself.
In 1923 his boisterous older brother Rudolf joined his business. "Rudi" handled sales while "Adi" made the shoes. In 1924 they formalized their partnership by founding the Dassler Brother Shoe Company. Two years after that, they moved their growing business into a factory on the other side of town.
PARTY POOPERS
When Hitler seized power in 1933, Adi and Rudolf joined the Nazi Party. They certainly benefitted from Hitler's use of sports as a propaganda tool. But they weren't the most dedicated of party members, something that became clear during the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin. Hitler intended the Olympics to serve as a showcase for the Nazi doctrine of Aryan racial superiority, but all the Dasslers cared about was getting Jesse Owens, the famous African-American track-and-field star, to wear Dassler Brothers shoes in the games. He did, and won four gold medals. Owens' victories gave the company its first international exposure. Soon athletes from all over Europe began making their way to tiny Herzogenaurach whenever they passed through Germany, to get a pair of Dassler Brothers shoes.
CAIN AND ADI
The brothers really had very little in common: Adi loved nothing more than to sit at his workbench and tinker with his shoes. Rudi, on the other hand, was a people person, but also short-tempered and loudmouthed. Their personalities complemented each other during the early years of the business. But as Germany moved closer to war in the late 1930s, their relationship became strained, made worse by the fact that they, their wives, their children, their parents, and all their siblings all lived together under the same roof in a villa in Herzogenaurach.
In December 1940, Adi was called up for military service, but he managed to get an exemption after just three months in uniform, perhaps with help from Rudi, who may have pulled strings from Herzogenaurach. If so, that probably made Rudi all the more bitter when he was called up for military service in 1943 and couldn't get out of it. He was convinced that Adi and his wife Kathe had schemed to get him sent to the front so that Adi could have the business to himself. Rudi retaliated by trying to get the factory shut down so that Adi would also be sent to the front, but he failed.
