The First Rock And Roll Record

"Musicians play music, and when they play, they don't begin something so much as they pick something back up that was there all along, and music expands like a delta this way, an unbreakable loop that doesn't begin or end but just rolls onward like a wave. And rock & roll as an American musical form is very much like a delta, collecting elements from jazz, blues, country, gospel, R&B, show tunes, and whatever else was floating around into a high-charged, rambunctious music that defined and drove pop culture across the backwaters of the 20th century and into the 21st. ..."
allmusic
Guardian: The First Rock and Roll Record – review
amazon
The Quietus
YouTube: 'Going To Move To Alabama' CHARLEY PATTON (1929), Pine Top Smith - Pinetop's boogie woogie (1928), Robert Johnson - Cross Road Blues (1936), T-Bone Walker - Mean Old World (1942), Muddy Waters - I Can't Be Satisfied (1948), Mary Ford and Les Paul - How High the Moon (1951), Rocket "88" - Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats (1951), Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley (1955), Elvis Presley - Heartbreak Hotel (1956)

Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis

Les constructeurs (1950)
"Comprising approximately 160 works, including loans from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, this multimedia exhibition will unite The City with other important paintings from this period by the French painter Fernand Léger (1881–1955), and with key works in film, theater design, graphic and advertising design, and architecture by the artist and his avant-garde colleagues, including Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Cassandre, Amédée Ozenfant, Le Corbusier, Francis Picabia, Alexandra Exter, Gerald Murphy, and others."
Philadelphia Museum of Art
amazon

White Noise - Don DeLillo

Wikipedia - "White Noise is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, published by Viking Press in 1985. ... White Noise explores several themes that emerged during the mid-to-late twentieth century, e.g., rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made catastrophes, and the potentially regenerative nature of human violence."
Wikipedia
NYT: 'White Noise,' by Don DeLillo
LA Times: Tuning back in to 'White Noise'
New York Magazine
An Annotation of the First Page of White Noise, With Help From Don DeLillo
amazon: White Noise

2010 October: Pafko at the Wall, 2012 May: Underworld , 2012 July: The Body Artist.

Kassidat: Raw 45s from Morocco

"Features six extended tracks from the Golden Age of the Moroccan record industry. 'Kassidat', the Arabic word for poetry, is one of the essential ingredients in Moroccan song. Despite the bewildering array of musical styles in Morocco, the Moroccan sense of poetry is found throughout the music, regardless of the style or language. This isn’t the language of high art, but an often impenetrable vernacular poetry of oblique references, symbols, metaphors, and double entendres that describes the lives of average Moroccans."
Dust-Digital (Vinyl)
Soundcloud (Vinyl)
Juno (Vinyl)
amazon

Willie Williams – Messenger Man (2005)

“As far back as the rocksteady age, Willie Williams had attempted to deliver songs with a message, but it was only in the roots era that he finally succeeded. Returning to Jamaica after several years in Canada, the singer, with his session band in tow, entered the Channel One studio and laid down this fabulous riddim adapted from the Bee Gees’ chart-topper ‘I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You.’ Driven by Carlton ‘Santa’ Davis and Lloyd Parks’ roots rockers rhythm, the backing beautifully blends a militant aura with a funk-tinged, bluesy atmosphere that’s shredded by organist Bobby Kalphat’s extraordinary solos, which imitate searing rock guitar leads to perfection.”
allmusic
Reggae Vibes
YouTube: Messenger Man (Live), Messenger Man, Dungeon / Version, No Hiding Place, Give Jah Praise

Laundromat - Snorri Sturluson

"Snorri Sturluson is an Icelandic director and photographer. He is best known for his work as a member of the directing / photography collective Snorri Bros. Snorri has lived in New York since 2001 and as part of the Snorri Bros. helmed numerous high profile advertising campaigns for TV, print, and Internet for many of the world’s best known brands as well as directing music videos and other content for various purposes. Along with being a professional image-maker and storyteller in the commercial world Snorri is developing several feature film scripts. Laundromat is the third book of photographs under the Snorri Bros. moniker but it is the first one consisting solely of photographs by Snorri Sturluson."
Known Gallery
“Laundromat” by The Snorri Bros. Looks At a Dying NYC Institution
An Ode to the Urban Laundromat
amazon: Laundromat
vimeo: Laundromat Photography Book

Fernando García

"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. This seems to be the pretext that Fernando García has applied to his recent work. He recently moved his studio from José del Rio Street in the Madrid neighborhood of Urgel to a new house in the country, located in the Los Endrinales area of the town Miraflores de la Sierra. Not being from a small town and never having had any roots in the countryside, this move has been a significant event for him. Consequently his decisions, materials and content have been determined by his surroundings at every moment. A detailed look at local culture and tradition are the result of this reflection. Our worthy heritage, as portrayed through its customs, makes up the artist’s first solo show at the Heinrich Ehrhardt Gallery."
Heinrich Ehrhardt
El artista del pueblo

Women of Visual Poetry Issue

Lori Anderson Moseman, Jet Black
"What is 'visual poetry'? Just as the question of “what is poetry?” may be answered differently by every reader and practitioner, so 'visual poetry' is hard to define closely. The unifying elements of the visual poems presented here seem twofold: first, the following poets responded to the call for 'visual poetry' with the following works (a self-defined community); second, the poems privilege the visual or material over the verbal or sonic. Poetry is so often compared to music that the visual element of the word on the page is transparent in many poems."
Jessica Smith - Women of Visual Poetry: an introduction
The Volta

Maureen Gallace

Grassy Beach House, Falmouth, MA 2002
"Maureen Gallace finds inspiration in the modest edifices and rural environs of her native New England. She paints intimate landscapes featuring serene, unpeopled houses. Deceptively effortless in their appearance, Gallace’s paintings take shape through careful observation and decisive omission. In this series of works, boxlike cottages are surrounded by bright hues of thriving summer greenery and a luminous pale sky. Visible brushstrokes, applied in wet-on-wet layers of oil paint, describe areas of color that appear infused with light. In some of her paintings, descriptive architectural details such as windows and doors are absent, leaving the viewer free to attach his or her own associations to the structure."
Whitney
303 Gallery
Sprueth Magers
frieze

Third Ear Band

"Although they were loosely affiliated with the British progressive rock scene of the late '60s and early '70s, Third Ear Band was in some ways more of an experimental ensemble performing contemporary compositional work. For one thing, they didn't use electric instruments, or even guitars, instead employing violin, viola, oboe, cello, and hand percussion. More important, they didn't play conventional rock "songs." They featured extended instrumental pieces that often built up from a drone, or hypnotic pattern, to a dense, raga-like crescendo, somewhat in the manner of some of Terry Riley's work."
allmusic
Wikipedia
Scaruffi
YouTube: Live (French TV May 1970)
YouTube: Stone Circle - "Alchemy" (1969), Druid One, Water - "Elements" (1970), Fire, "Experiences" (1976)

Iran Modern

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Untitled, 1977
"Asia Society is organizing a landmark exhibition, Iran Modern, that will focus on Iranian art created during the three decades leading up to the revolution of 1979. Asia Society’s aim is to shed light on a period when Iranian artists were engaged with the world through the Tehran Biennial in Iran as well as exhibitions overseas, and when their work was collected by institutions inside and outside of Iran. The exhibition maps the genesis of Iranian modernism in order to argue that the development of modernist art is inherently more globally interconnected than previously understood."
Asia Society
WSJ: A Society Evolves
'Iran Modern' Exhibit At The Asia Society Illuminates 20 Years Of Contemporary Art In Tehran
NYT: Asia Society to Present Modern Iranian Art
Video: 57 Images of Amazing Pre-Revolution Iranian Art in 28 Seconds
YouTube: Iran Modern: A Conversation with Melissa Chiu

Caged/Uncaged - A Rock/Experimental Homage to John Cage (1993)

"Joey Ramone recorded a tribute song to album entitled Caged/Uncaged - A Rock/Experimental Homage to John Cage. Song is The Wonderful Widow Of Eighteen Springs. ... CD contain also tracks by David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Arto Lindsay, Richard Hell, John Zorn with Naked City, Chris Stein, Lee Ranaldo, Ann Magnuson and John Cale, Jello Biafra and Eugene Chadbourne, Lou Reed, Elliott Sharp, Amy Denio and Shelly Hirsch. As an added treat, John Cage himself appears sporadically throughout, in excerpts from a 1969 tape of readings from his book Silence."
RAMONES: JOEY RAMONE ON THE CAGED/UNCAGED
Discogs
YouTube: Caged/Uncaged 1) David Byrne - Cage And The Long Island Expressway (→0:31) 2) David Byrne - Enlightened Whistler (0:31→) 3) Art Lindsay - Proust (4:57→) 4) John Zorn - Verlaine : Part 2 La Bleue (7:41→) 5) David Weinstein and Shelley Hirsh - Cheap Imitation (13:38→) 6) Elliott Sharp - InDET (17:36→) 7) John Cage - John Cage Excerpt #10 (22:11→) 8) John Cage - John Cage Excerpt #11 (22:54→). Joe McGinty, Joey Ramone, Don Yallach / The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, Lee Renaldo / 329 Overtones for John Cage

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
"In 1942, John Cage composed a short piece of music adapted from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Titled 'The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,' the piece was originally commissioned and performed by amateur soprano and socialite Justine Fairbank, and while we don’t have a recording of her performance, we do have Cage’s sheet music (see first page above, or view the entire book here). It is—as one might expect—an unusual piece. It sounds like song, yet isn’t."
Open Culture (Video)

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

Wikipedia - "Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments. ... The story of a rebellious teenager who arrives at a new high school, meets a girl, disobeys his parents, and defies the local school bullies was a groundbreaking attempt to portray the moral decay of American youth, critique parental style, and explore the differences and conflicts between generations."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE by Stewart Stern, CAST OF CHARACTERS
NYT: Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
YouTube: Rebel Without A Cause Trailer, I Go With The Kids, The Chicken Game, Inspriational Performance, Live it Up

2012 January: The James Dean Story, 2012 July: East of Eden.

Ann Hamilton: the event of a thread

"Visual artist Ann Hamilton combines the ephemeral presence of time with the material tactility for which she is best known to create a new large-scale installation for the Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Commissioned by the Armory, the event of a thread references the building’s architecture, as well as the individual encounters and congregational gatherings that have animated its rich social history."
Armory On Park (Video)
NYT: The Audience as Art Movement (Video)

2007 November: Ann Hamilton, 2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, 2010 March: Ann Hamilton - 1, 2010 December: Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects, 2011 January: stylus, 2011 April: indigo blue, 2011 December: Objects, 2012 November: phora , 2013 January: Gemini GEL.

Central Park

Wikipedia - "Central Park is a public park at the center of Manhattan in New York City. The park initially opened in 1857, on 778 acres (315 ha) of city-owned land (it is 840 acres today). In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan. Construction began the same year, continued during the American Civil War, and was completed in 1873. Central Park is the most visited urban park in the United States."
Wikipedia
Central Park
The Official Website of Central Park
[PDF] Central Park Maps
YouTube: Two Years of Mapping Central Park, New York Magazine: Visitor's Guide to Central Park, Central Park, NYC Peak Fall Foliage, Central Park Video Tour Part 1, Central Park Video Tour Part 2

2008 June: Central Park, 2010 September: Christo and Jeanne-Claude - The Gates.

Deep Blues: A Musical Pilgrimage to the Crossroads (1990)

R.L. Burnside
"This superb documentary vividly illustrates the enduring vitality of country blues, an idiom that most mainstream music fans had presumed dead or, at best, preserved through more scholarly tributes when filmmaker Robert Mugge and veteran blues and rock writer Robert Palmer embarked on their 1990 odyssey into Mississippi delta country. ... The film's real triumph, however, rests in the team's success in capturing modern day blues survivors and inheritors playing in the bars, juke joints, and barns of delta country. Palmer, who had returned several years earlier to the delta to capture these artists for his scrappy Fat Possum label, introduces us to the now-amplified but still elemental blues of R.L. Burnside, the late Junior Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Roosevelt 'Booba' Barnes, and other keepers of the faith."
amazon: Deep Blues
amazon: Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
NYT: In Search of a Father in Search of the Blues
W - Robert Palmer
Now This Sound Is Brave
Robert Christgau
YouTube: Deep Blues - R.L Burnside, Dave Stewart and Robert Palmer, Deep Blues Bonus RL Burnside, Big Jack Johnson - Catfish Blues, Big Jack Johnson-Daddy When Is Mama Coming Home

A Feast of Street Art, Luminous and Legal

Five Pointz
"The situation seems desperate. Museums are in hunker-down mode, gearing up for their fall extravaganzas. Galleries are either locked up as tight as banks at midnight or force-marching through the final, forlorn days of group shows. As late August slouches toward September in New York, it always seems as if a city usually overflowing with art had suddenly run short of it: the pre-Labor-Day drought."
NYT: A Feast of Street Art, Luminous and Legal (Video)
 

Various – Lovely Little Records (1980)

"Avantgarde music company Lovely Music, Ltd was founded by Robert Ashley’s wife Mimi Johnson in New York in 1978. Apart from Ashley’s magnum opus Perfect Lives in 1983, Lovely published Alvin Lucier, David Behrman, 'Blue' Gene Tyranny, Pauline Oliveros or Annea Lockwood, among others. Still active today after almost 35 years, Lovely is a major avantgarde music label. Published in 1980, this box set of single records introduced new artists of the Lovely stable, in addition to early associate 'Blue' Gene Tyranny, who already had 3 LPs out on Lovely in 1980."
Continuo
YouTube: "Blue" Gene Tyranny - Harvey Milk (Portrait) Part I - The Action, "Blue" Gene Tyranny - Harvey Milk (Portrait) Part II - The Feeling

Obituary: Seamus Heaney

"Seamus Heaney was internationally recognised as the greatest Irish poet since WB Yeats. Like Yeats, he won the Nobel Prize for literature and, like Yeats, his reputation and influence spread far beyond literary circles. Born in Northern Ireland, he was a Catholic and nationalist who chose to live in the South. 'Be advised, my passport's green / No glass of ours was ever raised / To toast the Queen,' he once wrote. He came under pressure to take sides during the 25 years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and faced criticism for his perceived ambivalence to republican violence, but he never allowed himself to be co-opted as a spokesman for violent extremism."
BBC (Video)
NYT: Seamus Heaney, Irish Poet of Soil and Strife, Dies at 74
11 Videos Of Seamus Heaney Reading His Poems Aloud (Video)
New Yorker - Postscript: Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
The Paris Review: Seamus Heaney, The Art of Poetry No. 75
Poetry Foundation
amazon: Seamus Heaney

2008 May: Seamus Heaney, 2009 April: Heaney at 70, 2010 March: Seamus Heaney - 1.

Impressionists on the Water

Sailboats At Argenteuil, Claude Monet
"Coinciding with San Francisco's hosting of the America's Cup races this summer, another side of nautical life is revealed by more than 80 remarkable paintings and works on paper by Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro and Post-Impressionists such as Maurice Denis and Paul Signac—artists whose breathtaking artistry reflects their own deep understanding of pleasure boating and competition."
Impressionists on the Water
'Impressionists on the Water' review
New Republic: Why the Impressionists Still Matter
amazon:
YouTube: Impressionists on the Water

Borough to Borough: A Choice Hip Hop Mix CD

"Around this time 13 years ago I got together with my friend Alan to make a mix cd of the rap records that has been released that year. A rash of good hip hop records came out in 2000, from major label and underground artists alike. There were joints from name brands like Jay Z, Snoop, Dre, Eminem, Ghostface, MOP, Common, Xzibit, Wu, Outkast, and De La Soul. ... So here you have it. An audio collage, featuring rhymes, scratching, dope production and a host of spoken word and movie clips. You'll recognize the voices of Fred Gwynne, Jack Nicholson, Elliott Gould, George Carlin, Marv Albert, Bill Murray, Frank Oz, Holly Hunter, Steve Martin, Elaine May, Walter Matthau, Al Pacino, Jack Palance, Joe Pesci, Goose Gossage, Richard Pryor, Mel Blanc, John Sterling, Mel Brooks, Bill Cosby, Earl Weaver, Nicholas Cage, Jackie Gleason, Chris Russo, Mark Rydell, Albert Brooks, Michelle Pfieffer, Gabe Kaplan, Mike Tyson, Robert De Niro, Orson Welles, John Turturro, Art Carney and Fat Clemenza."
Borough to Borough: A Choice Hip Hop Mix CD (Video)

A tale of restoration and the Masstransiscope

"When Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope, a zoetrope hidden behind a slitted wall at the long-abandoned Myrtle Ave. stop just north of DeKalb Ave., first debuted in 1980, straphangers could view it from the Manhattan-bound QB train. One of those things, it seems, is ready for a revival. After an extensive restoration that involved removed layers of graffiti, the Masstransiscope is back."
Second Avenue Sagas (Video)
W - Zoetrope
NYT: Attention Passengers! To Your Right, This Trip Is About to Become Trippy (Video)
Moving Pictures: attaining underground momentum with Bill Brand’s Masstransiscope (Video)
YouTube: Masstransiscope Debut, Zoetrope Replica Optical Toy Ancient Magic Toys

Paris hotels attempt to lure customers by playing up literary links

L'Hotel, Rue des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
"Marcel Proust once wrote: 'The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but of having new eyes.' Words full of insight. But it is doubtful that the author of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) imagined that his oft-cited quote would be used to brand 'literary-themed' hotels 100 years after the first publication of his defining work. The rise of the belles-lettres establishment, celebrating France's literary culture, and even that of its neighbours, is the latest marketing sensation in the French capital, as hoteliers come up with ever more innovative – or desperate – ways to attract guests."
Guardian

Ten Chi - Pina Bausch (2004)

"... A giant whale tail sticks up in the middle of the stage, with hump and dorsal fin at the back. The first half of the work contains a lot of swimming actions, as if the stage were a sea, but the overriding sense is of falling asleep: Dominique Mercy snores softly at the front row, as if encouraging them to drift off; Helena Pikon turns a man into a big bear and snuggles down on to his back; a goodnight kiss leads to a lullaby chorus of kissy noises as the cast search for imaginary songbirds. Hushed music and a slow, continuous fall of white petals impart a dreamlike quality to the sharper second half."
Guardian
Ten Chi
NYT: An Olympian Twirl Around the Globe
Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch – Ten Chi – London
Ten Chi, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Barbican Theatre
Renate Stendhal
DailyMotion: Ten Chi
YouTube: JAPON CREATION TEN CHI

2008 May: Pina Bausch, 2009 June: Pina Bausch 1940-2009, 2012 August: Pina Bausch Costumes.

Five Spot Café

David Amram At The Five Spot, 1957
Wikipedia - "The Five Spot Café was a jazz club located at 5 Cooper Square in the Bowery neighbourhood of New York City. ... Artists such as painters Herman Cherry, David Smith, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Alfred Leslie, Larry Rivers, Grace Hartigan, Jack Tworkov, Mike Goldberg, Roy Newell, Howard Kanovitz and writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Ted Joans, and Gregory Corso began frequenting the club. ... On 4 July 1957, Thelonious Monk's quartet featuring John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums began a six month stay at the club. Ware was later replaced by Ahmed Abdul-Malik and Wilson by Roy Haynes. This was Monk's first extended engagement."
Wikipedia
The Story - Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane: Evidence
Ornette Coleman and The Battle of The Five Spot
Monk And Coltrane = Magic A Recently Released Live Recording From 1957 Documents A Meeting Of The Jazz Greats

Bob Dylan's Lost 1970 Gem 'Pretty Saro'

"Bob Dylan ran through the 18th century English folk song 'Pretty Saro' six consecutive times during the Self Portrait sessions in March 1970, but none of those versions made the final cut for the album and the song remained in Columbia's vault for the past 43 years."
Rolling Stone (Video)
Vanity Fair: Bob Dylan’s New Self Portrait: Is It Time to Give Rock's "Shittiest Album Ever" a Second Chance? Yes!
Wikipedia
NPR - First Listen: Bob Dylan, Highlights From 'Another Self Portrait (1969-1971)' (Video)
amazon: The Making of Another Self Portrait
Guardian: Bob Dylan – The Bootleg Series, Vol 10: Another Self Portrait (Video)
Pitchfork: Bob Dylan Announces Bootleg Series, Vol. 10: Another Self Portrait (1969-1971) (Video)

Der Tunnel (2001). Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies

Wikipedia - "Der Tunnel is a made-for-television German film released in 2001 and loosely based on true events in Berlin following the closing of the East German border in August 1961 and the subsequent construction of the Berlin Wall. Roland Suso Richter directed the film. ... The central character of the film is Harry Melchior, played by Heino Ferch and based on the real tunneler, Hasso Herschel. Despite being imprisoned for several years for his role in the June 1953 uprising in East Germany, Melchior competes for and wins the national swimming championship in 1961. With the aid of a false passport and disguise, Harry succeeds in fleeing to West Berlin."
Wikipedia
Review: Der Tunnel (2001)
YouTube: "Der tunnel" (trailer), Drama an der Mauer.
YouTube: |)ER T\_/ NNE|_ 1 2002 (1 - 12) 167 minutes

Tony Fitzpatrick

Wikipedia - "Tony Fitzpatrick (born 1958) is an American artist born and based in Chicago. ... Fitzpatrick's early artistic career focused primarily on multi-colored drawings on slate, followed by printmaking, although he has more recently shifted his focus to producing mixed media 'drawing/collages.' Fitzpatrick's drawing/collages often blend central cartoon-like drawings, found images and ephemera such as baseball cards and matchbooks, and poetic or narrative text. His main subjects have been Chicago and memories of his father, although more recent subjects have included New Orleans, hobo symbology, superheroes, Crazy Horse, and Japan."
Wikipedia
No.9
artnet
amazon: Tony Fitzpatrick
Davidson Galleries
Jonathan Ferrara Gallery New Orleans
YouTube: Tony Fitzpatrick at the Art Intstitute

Blitz the Ambassador

Wikipedia - "Samuel Bazawule (born in 1982), known by the stage name Blitz the Ambassador, is a Ghanaian-American hip-hop artist and visual artist based in Brooklyn, USA. ... After graduation, Blitz moved to New York City to pursue his dream. In NYC, Blitz recorded another album, Double Consciousness (2005), and more recently he released Stereotype, a live-instrument-heavy musical exploration, that tests the limits of Hip Hop. Drawing from his diverse musical background, he immersed himself in the project with explicit intent of changing Hip Hop forever. In order to achieve the live sound he was looking for, he formed a band, The Embassy Ensemble, and brushed off his own djembe skills."
Wikipedia
Dikembe music video by Blitz the Ambassador, shot in Morocco (Video)
Warm up EP (Video)
YouTube: Dikembe! The Warm Up EP, Blitz the Ambassador ft.Rob Murat - Breathe, Nothing to Lose, Kate Mattison and Bajah, StereoLive EP, Remembering The Future, Best I Can ft. Corneille (Native Sun), Something to Believe - Director's Cut

The Homemade Hand Puppets of Bauhaus Artist Paul Klee

"My kids used to beg their dad to help out with their impromptu puppet shows. He complied by having our daughter’s favorite baby doll deliver an interminable curtain speech, hectoring the audience (me) to become subscribers and make donations via the small envelope they’d find tucked in their programs. Like my husband, artist Paul Klee (1879-1940) loomed large in his child’s early puppet work. To mark his son Felix’s ninth birthday, Klee fashioned eight hand puppets based on stock characters from Kasperl and Gretl — Germany’s answer to Punch and Judy."
Open Culture
flickr: Paul Klee - Hand Puppets
amazon

Patti Smith - We're gonna have a real good time (Oct. 3, 1976--Conserthouse, Stockholm)

"We're gonna have a real good time together
We're gonna have a real good time together
We're gonna have a real good time together
We're gonna laugh and dance and shout together"
Velvet Underground - We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together
YouTube: We're gonna have a real good time

The March at 50

"When Daniel R. Smith was born dirt poor more than three-quarters of a century ago, there were only about 20 other blacks in his small Connecticut town. His own father had been born a slave in Virginia in 1862. Mr. Smith served as a medic in Korea in the years just after the Army had been desegregated. And in August 1963, he found himself standing beside the Reflecting Pool with tens of thousands of others listening to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver one of the most famous speeches in American history."
NY Times
CBS News (Video)
CNN - March on Washington: Throngs mark 'I Have a Dream' anniversary (Video)
YouTube: 50 Years Later, the Untold History of the March on Washington & MLK, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Brooklyn Mural Project featuring Faith47, DALeast, Shepard Fairey, Eltono, Buff Monster & more

"As part of our 10 Years of Wooster Collective 2003-2013 exhibition, we organized a mural project around Brooklyn, New York. The project involved Faith47, DALeast, Eltono, Shepard Fairey, Buff Monster, Microbo, Bo130, Galo and 3rd World Pirate. If you're in the area, be sure to visit the locations and check them out in person! The 10 Years of Wooster Collective: 2003-2013 exhibition is only up for another week until August 24th. Don't miss your chance to see over 50 amazing artists under one roof."
Wooster Collective (Video)

The Banquet Years of Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, and Erik Satie - Roger Shattuck

"... Roger Shattuck's book The Banquet Years is a book devoted to five subjects: Henri Rosseau, the self taught painter who would influence Picasso, Léger, Jean Hugo, Beckmann, and the Surrealists; Alfred Jarry, who is most famous for his play Ubu Roi (King Ubu) and its rather famous opening word 'merde' that caused a quarter of an hour of pandemonium with the traditional theater attending public booing and jeering while the avant-garde countered with cheers and applause; Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki), who is accredited as the coiner of the term 'Surrealism', Apollinaire was the impressario of the avant-garde, who met his end of the very last day of the first World War; and Erik Satie, the true progenitor of 'Musak' with his 1920 manifesto advocating 'musique d'ameublement' (furniture music), the brilliant composer that beat both Debussy and Ravel in the race to create modern music, and brought together in his own way the avant-garde, Surrealists, the Dadaists, and the old and the new."
La Femme Flâneuse (Video)
Gord's Café (Video)
New Republic: Half Tame
Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years (1) -- La belle époque
amazon

Various Artists - Don't Call Us Immigrants (2000)

"The fact the informative liner notes are written by Pressure Sounds label founder and modern dub avatar Adrian Sherwood is a sure sign of the historical importance attached to this compilation. The music on Don't Call Us Immigrants marks the emergence of the original wave of U.K. reggae bands, many of them the children of the original post-WWII immigrant wave from Jamaica to the U.K. It features the first-ever recordings by Steel Pulse and Aswad, chronicles the emergence of Dennis Bovell as a producer and major creative force with Matumbi and others, and spotlights U.K. scene mainstays like Misty in Roots, Black Slate, and Reggae Regular. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Don't Call Us Immigrants - Tabby Cat Kelly, Where is Jah? - The Regulars, Black Slate - Sticksman, Steel Pulse - Nyah Love, Aswad - It's Not Our Wish, Misty In Roots - Six One Penny, Lion Youth - Rat A Cut Bottle, AFRICAN BROTHERS - 'Gimme Gimme African Love' + Dub Version - 7" 1976

Harper's Magazine

Wikipedia - "Harper's Magazine (also called Harper's) is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in June 1850, it is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (Scientific American is the oldest). The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010. Harper's Magazine has won many National Magazine Awards."
Wikipedia
Harper's Magazine

Emmet Gowin

Maggie and Donna Jo, Danville, Virginia
Wikipedia - "Emmet Gowin (born 1941 in Danville, Virginia) is an American photographer. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife, Edith, and her family. Later he turned his attention to the landscapes of the American West, taking aerial photographs of places that had been changed by humans or nature, including the Hanford Site, Mount St. Helens, and the Nevada Test Site. Gowin taught at Princeton University for 25 years and has influenced an entire generation of new photographers through his own work and his academic career."
Wikipedia
Pace/MacGill Gallery
John Paul Caponigro
Imaging a Shattering Earth
YouTube: Emmet Gowin

Rudy Green

"Rudy Green (also spelled Greene on the label of some of his recordings) is not exactly a household name. Rock n roll fans may know him from his two wildest songs, 'Juicy Fruit' and 'Wild Life', which have been included on several compilations that claim to offer 'frantic', 'red hot' or 'screaming' R&R. ... Only two photographs have ever been published of Green, one of which shows him picking with the guitar behind his head, a stunt for which T-Bone Walker was well known. The guitar playing on Green's recordings shows him to be an ardent disciple of T-Bone. Rudy made his first, unremarkable recordings in Nashville, for Jim Bulleit's Bullet label in 1946."
Rockabilly
YouTube: My Mumblin' Baby, Juicy Fruit, Wild Life, Teeny weeny baby, It's you I love

Kate Brooks

Wikipedia - "Kate Brooks (born 1977) is an American photojournalist who has covered the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since September 11, 2001. At age 20, while studying Russian and photography, Kate became actively involved in the plight of Russian orphans, starting a non-profit aid group to help the children at an institution outside of Moscow, while documenting their lives. ... Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Brooks moved to Pakistan to photograph the impact of U.S. foreign policy on the region and life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. In 2003, she covered the American invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the insurgency for Time Magazine."
Wikipedia
Kate Brooks
The Atlantic: Photojournalist Kate Brooks Reveals the Human Cost of War (Video)

Cuba 2012 (BBC Documentary)

"Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Cuba to find a communist country in the middle of a capitalist revolution. Two years ago Cuba announced the most sweeping and radical economic reforms the country has seen in decades. From ending state rationing to cutting one million public-sector jobs, one of the last communist bastions in the world has begun rolling back the state on an unprecedented scale."
YouTube: Cuba 2012 58:50

2009 April: Chelsea Visits Havana, 2011 June: Robert Farris Thompson, 2012 September: Where Is Cuba Going?, 2012 November: Carlos Garaicoa.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)

Wikipedia - "Neil Young: Heart of Gold is a 2006 documentary and concert film by Jonathan Demme, featuring Neil Young. The film was made in the summer of 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and was released to theaters on February 10, 2006. The film documents Young's premiere of his songs from his album Prairie Wind at the Ryman Auditorium."
Wikipedia
Jonathan Demme Talks NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS
amazon
YouTube: Neil Young: Heart of Gold CLIP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Los Angeles Review of Books

"The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit, multimedia literary and cultural arts magazine that combines the great American tradition of the serious book review with the evolving technologies of the Web. We are a community of writers, critics, journalists, artists, filmmakers, and scholars dedicated to promoting and disseminating the best that is thought and written, with an enduring commitment to the intellectual rigor, the incisiveness, and the power of the written word."
Los Angeles Review of Books
W - Los Angeles Review of Books
Soundcloud

Detropia (2012)

Wikipedia - "Detropia is a 2012 documentary film, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, about the city of Detroit, Michigan. It focuses on the decline of the economy of Detroit due to long-term changes in the automobile industry, and the effects that the decline has had on the city's residents and infrastructure."
Wikipedia
Detropia (Video)
PBS: Independent Lens (Video)
Washington Post
NY Times

Hamburger

Wikipedia - "The hamburger most likely first appeared in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The modern hamburger was a product of the culinary needs of a society that was rapidly changing due to industrialization, and therefore, people had less time to prepare as well as to consume meals. Americans contend that they were the first to combine two slices of bread and a steak of ground beef into a 'hamburger sandwich'. Part of the controversy over the origin of the hamburger is because the two basic ingredients, bread and beef, were prepared and consumed separately for many years before their combination. Shortly after its creation, the hamburger was prepared with all of the now typically characteristic trimmings, including onions, lettuce, and sliced pickles."
W - History of the hamburger
W - Hamburger
A Hamburger Today
Online Etymology Dictionary
YouTube: Hamburger America Trailer, Hamburger America Documentary 54:03

Out to Lunch! - Eric Dolphy

"Out to Lunch! stands as Eric Dolphy's magnum opus, an absolute pinnacle of avant-garde jazz in any form or era. Its rhythmic complexity was perhaps unrivaled since Dave Brubeck's Time Out, and its five Dolphy originals -- the jarring Monk tribute 'Hat and Beard,' the aptly titled 'Something Sweet, Something Tender,' the weirdly jaunty flute showcase 'Gazzelloni,' the militaristic title track, the drunken lurch of 'Straight Up and Down' -- were a perfect balance of structured frameworks, carefully calibrated timbres, and generous individual freedom. Much has been written about Dolphy's odd time signatures, wide-interval leaps, and flirtations with atonality."
allmusic
W - Out to Lunch!
YouTube: "Hat and Beard" – 8:24; "Something Sweet, Something Tender" – 6:02; "Gazzelloni" – 7:22; "Out to Lunch" – 12:06; "Straight Up and Down" – 8:19.

John Fahey - Railroad (1983)

Wikipedia - "Railroad is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1983. It was originally released as Railroad 1 by mistake. The Shanachie Records reissue is correctly labeled as Railroad. It was his last principal recording for Takoma Records, the label he founded in 1959. ... [Stewart Voegtlin] commented Fahey 'coasted through enough records; he labored honestly at others. Railroad undoubtedly shows both approaches, but holds enough magic in its shallow well to keep those that seek a bare bones account of the man that made it mired in stubborn stories that do little to lay the self-proclaimed primitive bare.'"
Wikipedia
Stylus
YouTube: The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick, Delta Dog Through The Book Of Revelation, Life Is Like A Mountain Railroad, Imitation Train Whistles Po' Boy, Summer Cat By My Door, Afternoon Espee Through Salem, Enigmas And Perplexities Of The Norfolk And Western, Charlie Becker's Meditation

2009 March: John Fahey, 2011 March: Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965), 2012 September: Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice), 2013 February: The Mill Pond

Open Content Program

Eugène Atget. Fête du Trône, 1923
"... The Getty adopted the Open Content Program because we recognized the need to share images of works of art in an unrestricted manner, freely, so that all those who create or appreciate art—scholars, artists, art lovers, and entrepreneurs—will have greater access to high-quality digital images for their studies and projects. Art inspires us, and imagination and creativity lead to artistic expressions that expand knowledge and understanding. The Getty sincerely hopes that people will use the open content images for a wide range of activities and that they will share the fruits of their labors with others."
The Getty - Open Content Program
Getty Museum Launches ‘Open Content Program,’ Shares 4,600 Images Free
The Public Domain Review
Explore the Collection
Getty Search Gateway
Videos: Touring the Collection

Rutu Modan

Wikipedia - "Rutu Modan (Hebrew: רותו מודן‎, born 1966) is an Israeli illustrator and comic book artist. ... Modan's first full length graphic novel tells the story of Koby Franco, a 20-something cab driver working in Tel Aviv. Franco's mundane everyday life is interrupted when a female soldier approaches him, claiming his estranged father was killed by a suicide bomber at a train station. He and the young woman begin searching for clues to see if Franco's father, whom the soldier was romantically involved with, is dead or alive."
Wikipedia
The Comics Journal: The Rutu Modan Interview
heflinreps:
The Paris Review - A Week in Culture: Rutu Modan, Cartoonist
NY Times: Rutu Modan - Mixed Emotions
amazon: Rutu Modan

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi

"Gifted with a deep, gutsy voice and a talent for writing songs that reflect on the daily life and struggles of the people of his homeland, Oliver 'Tuku' Mtukudzi is one of Zimbabwe's greatest artists. His blending of Southern African music traditions, including mbira, mbaqanga, jit, and the traditional drumming styles of the Korekore, has created such a unique sound that it has been respectfully dubbed 'Tuku music.'"
allmusic
Wikipedia
NPR: 'Left Alone,' Oliver Mtukudzi Sees Music As Therapy (Video)
YouTube: Kupokana, Neria, Todii, Ndakuvara, Pindurai Mambo, Ngoma'ne Hosho, Kunze Kwadoka