A love letter to the lyrics of Levi Stubbs’ Tears by Billy Bragg

"That is not your average opening line. Most pop songs don’t get all in your face from the get-go, certainly not with a masterpiece of compact, single-sentence story telling such as this. Billy Bragg dispenses with the pleasantries in favour of a narrative gauntlet. He throws down the most heavily loaded of lyrics. It is a complete and self-contained twelve word story, but it begs so many questions about possible pasts and possible futures and possible protagonists. You could rewind from here, or fast forward. You could pull out or zoom in. You want to do all of these things. ..."
The Spectator (Video)

2011 November: Billy Bragg, 2012 November: Strange Things Happen (Live on The Tube 1984), 2012 December: The Internationale, 2013 May: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, 2014 June: Tooth & Nail (2013), 2014 September: Peel Session, 2014 December: Don't Try This at Home (1991), 2015 April: Between the Wars EP (1985), 2016 August: Workers Playtime (1987).

Venezuela, a Failing State

"... Public health in Venezuela is, in fact, getting rapidly worse. In 1961, Venezuela was the first country declared free of malaria. Now its robust malaria-­prevention program has collapsed, and there are more than a hundred thousand cases of malaria yearly. Other diseases and ailments long vanquished have also returned—malnutrition, diphtheria, plague. The government releases few statistics, but it is estimated that one out of every three patients admitted to a public hospital today dies there. State mental hospitals, lacking both food and medications, have been reduced to putting emaciated, untreated patients out on the streets. ..."
New Yorker

Rally in Brooklyn Park Condemns Swastikas and ‘Go Trump’ Graffiti

"On Friday, swastikas and the words 'Go Trump' were discovered in graffiti on a jungle gym in Brooklyn Heights. By Sunday, the scrawl had been erased and in its place was a pile of marigolds, chrysanthemums and tiny paper hearts as a rally echoed across the playground, condemning the failure of President-elect Donald J. Trump to address a rash of hate crimes linked to his name. ... At the rally on Sunday, his longtime bandmate Adam Horovitz, known as Ad-Rock, called on New Yorkers to reject the hateful messages of the defacement and many other episodes in New York in recent weeks against Muslims, blacks and other minority groups. ..."
NY Times
The ‘Alt-Right’ Is A Hate Movement, And It’s Scarier Than You Think
NY Times: Alt-Right Exults in Donald Trump’s Election With a Salute: ‘Heil Victory’
W - Alt-right
NY Times: ‘White Nationalism,’ Explained

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 November: Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests, 2016 November: Rust Belt, 2016 November: Autocracy: Rules for Survival

Top 10 Clash Songs

"These aren’t the only songs that matter for 'the only band that matters,' but the Top 10 Clash Songs are a decent place to start. It’s not easy representing every facet of this British band, which began as a punk outfit then – at lightning speed – began to take on reggae, ska, rockabilly, power pop, R&B, dance music and even hip-hop. The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and the Clash could only hold its core lineup together for a few years. But while they did, they burned so very, very brightly. Here are 10 shining examples. ..."
Ultimate Classic Rock (Video)
The 10 best songs by The Clash (Video)
StereoGum (Video)
The Top Tens (Video)
10 Best Clash Songs (Video)
The Clash: 10 of the best (Video)

In Oakland, an Arts Space Bounces Back From a Shooting

"Naming Gallery in Oakland, California, is a multi-purpose arts space where people congregate on Saturday nights. This 360 documentary explores the how the arts center has become a staple for young artists to congregate, despite the fact that it exists in a historically beleaguered neighborhood. In August 2016, a fatal shooting occurred outside the gallery where hundreds of people were celebrating. ..."
The Atlantic (Video)

Gasoline Alley - Rod Stewart (1970)

"Gasoline Alley follows the same formula of Rod Stewart's first album, intercutting contemporary covers with slightly older rock & roll and folk classics and originals written in the same vein. The difference is in execution. Stewart sounds more confident, claiming Elton John's 'Country Comfort,' the Small Faces' 'My Way of Giving,' and the Rolling Stones' version of 'It's All Over Now' with a ragged, laddish charm. Like its predecessor, nearly all of Gasoline Alley is played on acoustic instruments -- Stewart treats rock & roll songs like folk songs, reinterpreting them in individual, unpredictable ways. ..."
allmusic
Rod Stewart’s Unequaled Masterpiece (Video)
W - Gasoline Alley
Rolling Stone
amazon
iTunes
YouTube: Gasoline Alley (Live)
YouTube: Gasoline Alley, Country Comfort, Cut Across Shorty

Is Rock ’n’ Roll Dead, or Just Old?

Watkins Glen in 1973
"This has been a bad year for music legends. First David Bowie, Glenn Frey and Maurice White. Then Prince and George Martin. In the most recent sobering sequence, Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell. We have to face it — rock has grown old. Nothing brings out the indignation of a certain kind of rock ’n’ roll fan like the suggestion that the music of Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and other iconoclasts has aged with its audience. It’s like telling people they are someday going to die — it may be true, but no one wants to hear it, and anyway, why spoil the party? ..."
NY Times
Like It Is: Bob Dylan Explains What Really Killed Rock ’n’ Roll
W - Summer Jam at Watkins Glen

The Best American Comics 2016: Roz Chast, Bill Kartalopoulos (2016)

"I read this year’s Best American Comics on the train and I loved it all the more for doing so–but more on that later. Bill Kartalopoulos is the series editor and this year’s editor is Roz Chast. Even if you think you don’t know enough about the contemporary American comics scene, you probably know Roz Chast’s work in The New Yorker. So nothing to worry about, even Roz Chast doesn’t think of herself as exceptionally knowledgable about the current comics scene. However, Bill Kartalopoulos knew right away that, no matter how splintered the comics scene may be, here was a legendary cartoonist, with a wealth of experience, insight, and a very special kind of irreverence. ..."
Comics Grinder
amazon

John Mayall - Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (1966)

"Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton was Eric Clapton's first fully realized album as a blues guitarist -- more than that, it was a seminal blues album of the 1960s, perhaps the best British blues album ever cut, and the best LP ever recorded by John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. Standing midway between Clapton's stint with the Yardbirds and the formation of Cream, this album featured the new guitar hero on a series of stripped-down blues standards, Mayall pieces, and one Mayall/Clapton composition, all of which had him stretching out in the idiom for the first time in the studio. ..."
allmusic
W - Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton
BBC
amazon
YouTube: Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Full Album)

Skerries

SKerries Harbour, photographed by Robert French between 1865 and 1914.
"Located on the east coast of Ireland 18 miles north of Dublin, Skerries is a town comprising part of the coastline and a group of islands in the Irish Sea. The seaside locale is mentioned twice in Dubliners as a vacation destination frequented by the Kearney family in 'A Mother'. ... Although it is referenced as a place the Kearneys visit, like all such destinations in Dubliners, it is never an actual setting where the story’s events happen. All the action in Dubliners takes place, appropriately though perhaps disappointingly to the Dubliners themselves, in Dublin. ... Skerries by itself seems, as a reference, somewhat insignificant. It’s a small fishing town on the coast that, in Joyce’s day, served as both an industrial and leisure center. ..."
Mapping Dubliners Project

2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2010 March: Ulysses Seen, 2013 February: ULYSSES “SEEN” is moving to Dublin!, 2013: Dubliners, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s, 2016 January: Port and Docks, 2016 February: Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists, 2016 April: Nassau Street, 2016 May: Stephen’s Green, 2016 October: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).

The History of Rhythm and Blues 1942-1952

"... Rhythm & Blues was one of the most identifiable musical art forms of the 20th Century, with an enormous influence on the development of both the sound and attitude of modern music. The History of Rhythm and Blues series of CDs investigates the accidental synthesis of jazz, gospel, blues, ragtime, country, pop and latin into a definable form of black music, which in turn would influence pretty well all popular music from the 1950s to the present. It is the first attempt to put together a cross-label compilation showcasing the most important and influential records in the rise of Rhythm & Blues. Volume Two investigates the transition from race music through sepia to Rhythm & Blues; the growing importance of radio; the rise of the independent record labels, the 45rpm record and the jukebox and looks at the rhythms behind the blues from shuffle and jump through rumba to rock’n’roll and beyond. ..."
Acrobat Music
Discogs
amazon
iTunes
YouTube: The History of Rhythm & Blues Part Two: 1942-1952, Vol. 1, Vol. 2

Edward Dorn Reads from The North Atlantic Turbine (1967)

The North Atlantic Turbine (London: Fulcrum Press, 1967).
"... Edward Dorn comes from Villa Grove, Illinois, a small town on a secret confluence of the Wabash. he was born in the Spring of 1929. There was no flood that year, all the noney haveing been carried off by a few men of vision. In fact that year was the beginning of a long spell of dry weather all over the world. ..."
UbuWeb (Video)
MIMEOMIMEO
Jacket2 - With what geometry (PoemTalk #101)(Video)

2007 December: Edward Dorn, 1929-1999, 2014 September: Tom Clark - Edward Dorn (1929-1999), 2015 November: The Collected Poems 1956 - 1974, 2015 December: Recollections of Gran Apachería (1974), 2016 April: By the Sound (1965), 2016 July: Gunslinger.

Political Fiction: Music and Partisan Violence in Jamaica

"The Caribbean island of Jamaica has long been blighted by unacceptably high levels of politically motivated violence, a nightmarish by-product of its firmly entrenched two-party political system. This podcast reveals the early beginnings of Jamaica’s dramatic partisan divisions, and highlights the role that the island’s music has played in commenting on and challenging such divides. Produced and hosted by David Katz and Saxon Baird."
Afropop (SOUNDCLOUD)

L.A.M.F. - Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers (1977)

Wikipedia - "L.A.M.F. is the only studio album by the American band The Heartbreakers, which included Johnny Thunders, Jerry Nolan, Walter Lure and Billy Rath. The music is a mixture of punk, R&B and rock and roll. ... The original, vinyl release of the album has been criticised for having a lackluster sound, despite several attempts to remix it. The Heartbreakers had been trying to get a record contract in the United States since their formation in 1975. In the fall of 1976, Malcolm McLaren, who had informally managed the New York Dolls in their waning days, invited the band to come to England and participate in the Sex Pistols' Anarchy tour, along with The Clash and The Damned, who were replaced by Buzzcocks shortly after the tour commenced. ..."
Wikipedia
"L.A.M.F.T.M.J.B. - A Mixed Attempt For The Best Mixes", "L.A.M.F. - Original U.K. Cassette Mix" (Cassette/Tape, Track - 1977)
amazon: L.A.M.F.: The Lost '77 Mixes
Discogs
YouTube: Born To Lose (Live), Chinese Rocks
YouTube: L.A.M.F. (full album, original cassette mix) 33:46, HEARTBREAKERS 'LAMF - definitive edition' 3xLP gatefold & booklet - the inside view

Here Comes the Whitney Biennial, Reflecting the Tumult of the Times

Henry Taylor in his downtown Los Angeles studio.
"FOR the first time in 20 years, the lead-up to the Whitney Biennial coincided with the presidential election, a background that could not help but inform the selection of artists and artwork that will be on view when the biennial opens on March 17, the first in the museum’s new downtown building. ... On Thursday, the Whitney revealed the 63 participants in its sprawling survey of what’s happening now in contemporary art — the new, the influential and the potentially provocative. ..."
NY Times

Autocracy: Rules for Survival

"'Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.' ..."
NYBook
NY Times: Scenes From Five Days of Anti-Trump Protests Across a Divided Nation (Video)

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 November: Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests, 2016 November: Rust Belt

Edith Schloss Burckhardt Archive

Alvin Curran, Caspar, Edith Schloss Burckhardt, Richard Teitelbaum, Barbara Mayfield, Nicole and Frederic Rzewski in the Piazza Navona in Rome, ca. 1970.
"Avant-garde composer and musician Alvin Curran has written about his meeting with artist, writer, and critic Edith Schloss Burckhardt during his first years in Rome: 'In that same settling-in period I met Edith Schloss, an Offenbach-born New York painter just divorced from photographer-painter Rudy Burckhardt. She arrived on a cloud of combustible materials which included the entire New York Abstract Expressionist movement, the Cedar Bar, Art News, MOMA, the Art Students League and Balanchine Stravinsky the Carters Edwin Denby de Kooning Twombly Feldman Cage Brown Rothko Cunningham Pollack her beloved Morandi and of course ‘Piero’ (della Francesca)...'"
Granary Books

Paris: One Year On

A wounded man was evacuated at the Bataclan concert hall on Nov. 13, 2015. In all, 90 people were killed in the attack there.
"The night of Nov. 13, 2015, Islamic State militants attacked eight places in and around Paris, killing 130 people and wounding nearly 500. It was the most lethal attack in France since World War II. Confusion gripped the city as two teams of attackers struck nearly simultaneously. One struck at the Stade de France, just outside Paris, while the other shot up cafes and bars in the hip 10th and 11th Arrondissements. About 20 minutes later, a third team of attackers entered the Bataclan concert hall in the same neighborhood, taking hostages and killing scores. The New York Times interviewed 27 people who witnessed parts of those events and asked them to recount what they experienced: suicide bombs, gunfire, the terror of near death. ..."
NY Times (Video)

2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: After Paris Attacks, a Slow Reawakening for City’s Cultural Offerings

Annette Lemieux - Left, Right, Left, Right (1995)

Left, Right, Left, Right, 1995
"Left, Right, Left, Right consists of thirty photolithographs—three copies each of ten images—which Annette Lemieux appropriated from journalistic sources dating from the 1930s to the 1970s, printed on thick museum board, and mounted on wooden sticks that lean against a wall. Each picture depicts a raised fist, some belonging to famous political and cultural figures including Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Nixon, Jane Fonda, and Miss America. Others are anonymous—for example, the fists of a sailor or a preacher. The images and their protest-sign format suggest a demonstration. ..."
Whitney (Video)
Island Press Left Right Left Right
NY Times: Images of Protest, One Cause at a Time (1992)
The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux
Identity Theory
W - Annette Lemieux

Jeff Greinke - Cities In Fog / Cities In Fog 2 (1997)

"Back in 1985, Jeff Greinke released an LP of ambient industrial music titled 'Cities In Fog'. The sound of industry and contemporary cityscapes - grinding metal, pounding machinery - were tempered and processed in the studio, producing a removed impressionist haze. Though the imagery was disturbing, even nightmarish, it was equally compelling, seductive, and undeniably beautiful. This little-known gem was the starting point of a fascinating musical trek for Greinke. His vision has expanded, and his recent work is exotic and atmospheric. ... With the revival of ambient, these disks prove Greinke to be a true visionary. --Dean Suzuki, Wired Magazine"
allmusic
iTunes
YouTube: Low Ceiling, Moving Through Fog, Nightcrawler, Between

2009 December: Jeff Greinke, 2013 May: Timbral Planes, 2015 March: Lost Terrain (1992)

Das Hohelied Salomos - Popol Vuh (1975)

"Das Hohelied Salomos ('the high song of Solomon') is the 6th LP by German bliss merchants Popol Vuh. Released in 1975, it finds the band straddling the line between earlier more electronic work and later Herzog soundtracks and new age meanderings. What we have here is guitar and vocal heaven, easily the most Dead-like of all the Krautrock canon. PV by this point had found a direct route to satori bliss via endless harmonious overdubs, making for a deep and, dare I say, relaxing final product. ..."
Dangerous Minds (Video)
ProgArchives
YouTube: Das hohelied salomos 7 Video

2008 August: Popol Vuh, 2010 December: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 2011 May: Abschied (1972), 2013 May: Fitzcarraldo - Werner Herzog, 2913 September: Hosianna Mantra (1972), 2014 April: Revisited & Remixed 1970-1999 (2011), 2014 August: Letzte Tage-Letzte Nächte (1976), 2014 May: Agape-Agape (1983), 2016 July: Die Nacht Der Seele - Tantric Songs (1979)

Subterranean London

"Take a journey through the subterranean labyrinth of London's Victorian sewers with urban explorer and geographer Bradley Garrett. The experience begins below the streets in one of London's lost waterways, the river Fleet, and continues through the blood sewers underneath Smithfield meat market and down to the floodgates of the river Thames."
Guardian (Video)
W - Subterranean London

The Film J. D. Salinger Nearly Made

"... J. D. Salinger’s eight-thousand-word story, 'For Esmé—With Love and Squalor,' appeared in The New Yorker on April 8, 1950. It’s one of his best stories, and one of his shortest; at the last minute, he cut six pages. Not much happens in it except that a terribly lonely man writes a story for a terribly clever girl. Salinger is sometimes compared to Lewis Carroll; Esmé was his Alice. The New Yorker rejected a lot of his stories but loved 'For Esmé,' and Salinger got more letters about it than he received for anything else he’d ever written. ..."
The New Yorker
W - "For Esmé—With Love and Squalor"
[PDF] "For Esmé—With Love and Squalor"

2010 January: J. D. Salinger, 2012 July: The Catcher in the Rye, 2014 September: Franny and Zooey

Court and Spark - Joni Mitchell (1974)

"Joni Mitchell reached her commercial high point with Court and Spark, a remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz which stands as her best-selling work to date. While as unified and insightful as Blue, the album -- a concept record exploring the roles of honesty and trust in relationships, romantic and otherwise -- moves away from confessional songwriting into evocative character studies: the hit 'Free Man in Paris,' written about David Geffen, is a not-so-subtle dig at the machinations of the music industry, while 'Raised on Robbery' offers an acutely funny look at the predatory environment of the singles bar scene. ..."
allmusic
W - Court and Spark
Joni's Songs Are For Everyone: New York Times, January 6, 1974
Spotify
YouTube: Court and Spark (Full Album)

2015 July: Blue (1970), 2015 Novemer: 40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited, 2016 August: On For the Roses (1972)

A Movie - Bruce Conner (1958)

Wikipedia - "A Movie is a 1958 experimental collage film in which Bruce Conner put together snippets of found footage, taken from B-movies, newsreels, soft-core pornography, novelty short films, and other sources, to a musical score featuring Respighi's Pines of Rome. The film is associational, in which a number of narrative and spatially unrelated shots from a number of sources are edited together to evoke emotions and make thematic points. A Movie consists of many shots of animals and people moving quickly, precariously balanced objects, cars and people crashing, and, perhaps most importantly, violence and war. ..."
Wikipedia
Slant: The Art of Montage
BOMB: Bruce Conner by Walter Hopps
Only the Cinema
DailyMotion: A Movie

2011 August: Bruce Conner, 2016 May: It's All True

Checkpoint 303 - The Iqrit Files (2015)

"An electronic Intifada is the logical—one might argue inevitable—cultural and political product of a zone of effective incarceration and deprivation where children (comprising half the Gaza population) can distinguish by sound between different types of tanks and warplanes, or between mere surveillance drones and those armed with deadly missiles. ... Yet an unrelenting seven-decade assault on Palestinian livelihood, dignity, identity, and human rights has not obliterated the creative spirit of a people that continues to engender artistic ensembles such as Checkpoint 303. ..."
RootsWorld (Video)
Soundcloud: The Iqrit Files
YouTube: In 1948 // بسنة 1948 - Checkpoint 303 //Jawaher Shofani, Come back home, all refugees // يا مهاجرين إرجعوا

Puke Force - Brian Chippendale (2016)

"Puke Force is social satire written dark and dense across Brian Chippendale’s deconstructed multiverse of walking, talking M&Ms, hamsters, and cycloptic-yet-glamorous trivia hosts. In scathingly funny single-page strips that build and build, he takes on social media narcissism, governmental propaganda, racism, and a culture of violence, skewering the malice of the right and the hypocrisy of the left. A bomb explodes in a coffee shop: the incident is played out over and over again from the perspective of each table in the shop, revisiting moments from ten and twenty years before. ..."
Drawn and Quarterly
Brian Chippendale Talks About His Punked-Out Comic, Puke Force
Brian Chippendale’s Puke Force is 2016’s first comics masterpiece
amazon

Rust Belt

Wikipedia - "The Rust Belt is a term for the region straddling the upper North-Eastern United States, the Great Lakes, and the Midwest States, referring to economic decline, population loss, and urban decay due to the shrinking of its once-powerful industrial sector. The term gained popularity in the U.S. in the 1980s. The Rust Belt begins in New York and traverses to the west through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, ending in northern Illinois, eastern Iowa, and southeastern Wisconsin. All or parts of New England are also sometimes included in a broader definition of the Rust Belt. ..."
Wikipedia
The Atlantic: Do Parts of the Rust Belt ‘Need to Die Off’?
Washington Post: The Rust Belt was turning red already. Donald Trump just pushed it along.
NY Times - How Erie Went Red: The Economy Sank, and Trump Rose
NY Times: Ohioans, Tired of Status Quo, Flipped to Trump for Change
NY Times: Michigan Voters Say Trump Could See Their Problems ‘Right Off the Bat’

The Words and Work of Leonard Cohen

"For those who were thinking 2016 couldn’t get any worse, it just did. Last night, Leonard Cohen, beloved poet, songwriter, musician and novelist, died at 82, less than a month after the release of his new album You Want it Darker. While he’ll go down in history as one of our greatest songwriters and performers, Cohen began his career in the arts as a poet, something unlikely to shock anyone who has listened to his music. To celebrate his life and work, read some of his poems or, since poetry is meant to be heard, listen to a few recitations given by the man himself. ..."
Literary Hub (Video)

2008 September: Leonard Cohen, 2009 November: Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen, 2011 June: I'm Your Man, 2012 May: Old Ideas, 2013 February: "Dance Me To The End of Love"

Black Pulp!

“Game Changing (Ace)” 2015 Derrick Adams
"I’m ashamed to say, The International Print Center New York, or IPCNY always gets tangled up in my brain with ICP– as in, yes, the Insane Clown Posse. But one thing you’re definitely not gonna find at IPCNY right now are white people dressed up like murderous clown folk who have yet to grasp some of the most basic, life-on-Earth concepts such as 'stuff falls when you let go of it' and 'some metal things stick together.' Instead, you’ll find a historically-minded, mind-mining show dedicated to a critical exploration of black identity in America from 1912 to the present by way of pulp. ..."
Bedford and Bowery

2016–17 College Basketball

Oregon Chris Boucher
"Sports Illustrated’s College Basketball Projection System is a collaboration between economist Dan Hanner and SI’s Luke Winn and Jeremy Fuchs that produces our 1–351 team rankings, conference predictions and player statistical forecasts. For a deeper look at how the system works, read this explainer. This model has produced the most accurate college basketball projections for the past two seasons. Visit this page for daily updates until the season begins on Nov. 11. ..."
SI
The Undefeated’s top 10 college basketball players for the 2016-17 season
68 things things to know about the 2016-17 college basketball season
NCAA: College basketball: 32 bold predictions for 2016-17 season, Part I (Video)
W - 2016–17 NCAA Division I men's basketball season

2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 December: Welcome to Smarter Basketball, 2016 January: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (1994), 2016 January: A Long Hardwood Journey, 2016 March: American Hustle - Alexandra Starr, 2016 July: Photographers in Focus: Ethan Sprague.

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, November 11 – 19

"Friday, November 11. • Saturn is falling ever farther away to the lower right of Venus at dusk. Far to Venus's upper left, Mars is drawing closer to it — very gradually. • Orion is clearing the eastern horizon by about 8 p.m. now, depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone. High above Orion shines orange Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran is the little Pleiades cluster, the size of your fingertip at arm's length. Far left of the Pleiades is bright Capella. ..."
Sky & Telescope

Close Listening with Will Alexander

"Will Alexander talks with me about his early immersion in the work of John Coltrane and its abiding connection to his own jazz-process/Surrealist poetry and discusses his 'constellation' of mythological and scientific sources, the influence of Aimé Césaire on his work, the politics of his poetic form via resistance to colonization, the role of the black poet in America, the necessity of performance, and his aim to bring the reader into a state of 'supra-mind.' ...”
Jacket2 (MP3)
UPenn: Will Alexander
W - Will Alexande
amazon
YouTube: Will Alexander

Acid Arab - Musique De France (2016)

"Paris’s Les Halles in the 1e arrondissement used to house a vibrant wholesale market, which, once-upon-a-time, was regarded as the beating heart of the city. That was until it was bulldozed in 1971 to make way for a shopping mall and garden maze where drug dealers could hang out in the daytime and set up shop. Recently it’s been upgraded to a giant canopy with a multi storey shopping centre underneath, but its functional opulence is a far cry from the predominantly white working class nerve centre that it once was; Emile Zola called it le ventre de Paris or 'the belly of Paris'. You can find stunning old photographs by Robert Doisneau online, featuring everything from offal stands to accordion players, and French folk going about their business buying sheep’s heads from smoking commerçants in bloodied aprons. ..."
The Quietus
Resident Advisor (Video)
SoundCloud: ACID ARAB
Discogs
iTunes
amazon
YouTube: "Sayarat 303", Acid Arab • DJ Set #2, Acid Arab • DJ Set

Dennis Hopper: Colors, The Polaroids

"After losing himself in Taos, New Mexico, for 15 years, Dennis Hopper (1936–2010) returned to Los Angeles in the mid-’80s. In 1987, on the verge of directing Colors, Hopper made use of a Polaroid camera to document gang graffiti in Los Angeles. He was particularly drawn to the abstract shapes of overlapping paint that appeared when graffiti had been covered up or written over, reminding him, he said, 'that art is everywhere in every corner that you choose to frame and not just ignore and walk by.' ..."
ArtBook
Issue Magazine
2014 HOPPER
amazon

2009 November: Easy Rider (1969), 2010 May: Dennis Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010), 2010 November: The American Friend (1977), 2012 November: Dennis Hopper Documentary (90s), 2013 May: The Lost Album, 2013 December: On the Road

Pharoah Sanders - Tauhid (1967)

"Conventional wisdom has it that saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' signature, late-1960s astral jazz recording is 'The Creator Has A Master Plan' from Karma (Impulse!, 1969). But conventional wisdom is rarely to be trusted. ... At a relatively brief 16:16, 'Egypt' has all the elements which characterised Sanders' astral excursions—explicit spiritual references, vocal chants, a rolling bass ostinato, 'exotic' percussion, out-there but lyrical tenor saxophone, and extended vamp-based collective jamming—and crucially, was played by an edgier and more challenging band, including guitarist Sonny Sharrock and pianist Dave Burrell, than was assembled for Karma. ..."
allaboutjazz
EarTrip
amazon
Spotify
YouTube: Tauhid

2015 December: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharaoh Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors (1994), 2016 January: Ptah, The El Daoud - Alice Coltrane & Pharoah Sanders (1970)

Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests

"Thousands of people across the country marched, shut down highways, burned effigies and shouted angry slogans on Wednesday night to protest the election of Donald J. Trump as president. The demonstrations, fueled by social media, continued into the early hours of Thursday. The crowds swelled as the night went on but remained mostly peaceful. Protests were reported in cities as diverse as Dallas and Oakland and included marches in Boston; Chicago; Portland, Ore.; Seattle and Washington and at college campuses in California, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In Oakland alone, the Police Department said, the crowd grew from about 3,000 people at 7 p.m. to 6,000 an hour later. ..."
NY Times - Not Our President’: Protests Spread After Donald Trump’s Election (Video)
Washington Post - ‘Not my president’: Thousands protest Trump in rallies across the U.S. (Video)
Dissent: Tomorrow’s Fight
"The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety. ..."
New Yorker: An American Tragedy
VOICE: It's Not Going to Be Okay
Jacobin: Politics Is the Solution by Megan Erickson, Katherine Hill, Matt Karp, Connor Kilpatrick, & Bhaskar Sunkara
Michael Moore’s “Morning After To-Do List” Facebook Post For Democrats Is Going Viral

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 February: Bernie and the Millennials, 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 April: Bernie Sanders and the History of American Socialism, 2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders, 2016 August: Jill Stein, 2016 September: “The Spoiler” Speaks, 2016 September: Jill Stein’s Ideas Are Terrible. She Is Not the Savior the Left Is Looking For, 2016 October: Why Bernie Was Right.

The Artists and Their Alley, in Postwar France

Jean Tinguely and the French painter Yves Klein
"There’s a back street in Montparnasse, the entrance to a hospital morgue, where weeds grow in sidewalk cracks and beer cans rust on the pavement. The only discernible sign of life is a corner cafe, but even that feels more like the backdrop of a Cartier-Bresson photograph than a place to purchase actual coffee. On a clammy afternoon in August, the owner sits outside alone, smoking. This narrow, nondescript passage — known as the Impasse Ronsin — was once an artery of aesthetic energy that, in no small fashion, defined French postwar art in all its insanity. ..."
T Magazine

Lynn Nottage - Sweat (2015)

"... With warm humor and tremendous heart, SWEAT tells the story of a group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets and laughs while working together on the line of a factory floor. But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in the hard fight to stay afloat. Kate Whoriskey (Ruined) directs this stunning new play about the collision of race, class, family and friendship, and the tragic, unintended costs of community without opportunity."
Public Theater
NY Times: Lynn Nottage’s ‘Sweat’ Examines Lives Unraveling by Industry’s Demise
Theater Review: Ruined’s Lynn Nottage Heads to the Factory Floor With Sweat
W - Lynn Nottage
Lynn Nottage
W - Reading, Pennsylvania
YouTube: Steelworkers’ stories of disappearing jobs come to life onstage in ‘Sweat’

5 houses from the East Village’s shipbuilding era

"...Greek Revival–style houses on East Seventh Street between Avenues C and D."
"If you traveled back in time to the far East Village of the mid-19th century, you would see a neighborhood sustained mainly by one industry: shipbuilding. Along the East River, thousands of iron workers, mechanics, and dock men—many who were recent Irish and German immigrants—toiled in shipyards and iron works in what was then called the Dry Dock District, east of Avenue B. ..."
Ephemeral New York

2014 September: Passing Stranger :: The East Vilage Poetry Walk, 2009 May: Washington Square Park, 2010 January: Judson Memorial Church, 2011 February: Greenwich Village, 2011 July: East Village, Manhattan, 2012 July: MacDougal Street, 2013 August: The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village, 2014 August: South Village, 2015 August: East Village Other, 2014 October: Houston Street, 2015 September: Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, 2016 January: Chumley's, 2016 March: 25 Radical Things to Do in Greenwich Village, 2016 March: The most charming building on East 13th Street, 2016 October: Stuyvesant Street, 2014 February: The 11 Best Classic Diners and Luncheonettes in NYC, 2015 December: Gem Spa, 2016 October: An Immersive Audio Tour of the East Village’s Famed Poetry Scene.

Street Food, Istanbul Style

"Late one night during the winter of 1973, on a wind-blown, dimly lit street corner not far from Sirkeci train station, I walked through a light rain and noticed steam wafting from an open-air food stall. A tall, vertical spit, layered with roasting meat, was illuminated by a single bare light bulb as a man with an enormous black moustache wielded a long, shiny knife and what looked like a small stainless steel dust pan. He sliced, scooped and assembled ingredients and seasonings with astonishing speed and then wrapped them up in large cones of flat bread. A half dozen eager customers were lined up, and I joined them. ..."
AramcoWorld (Video)

Max Beckmann in New York

"This exhibition puts a spotlight on artist Max Beckmann's special connection with New York City, featuring 14 paintings that he created while living in New York from 1949 to 1950, as well as 25 earlier works from New York collections. The exhibition assembles several groups of iconic works, including self-portraits; mythical, expressionist interiors; robust, colorful portraits of women and performers; landscapes; and triptychs. During the late 1920s, Max Beckmann (1884–1950) was at the pinnacle of his career in Germany; his work was presented by prestigious art dealers, he taught at the Städel Art School in Frankfurt, and he moved in a circle of influential writers, critics, publishers, and collectors. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Exhibition Objects
NY Times: ‘Max Beckmann in New York,’ a Belated but Full-Blown Homage to a German Modernist
Yale Book: Max Beckmann in New York
W - Max Beckmann
vimeo: MET MUSEUM: MAX BECKMANN IN NEW YORK

Neil Young - Eldorado (EP - 1989)

"Eldorado is the 21st release from Neil Young, one of the most prolific artists around today. Released as a special EP in Australia and Japan, and running at only 25 minutes, Eldorado is not much of a value. However, in that 25 minutes there is some of the hardest rocking music that Neil had put out, pre-Ragged Glory. Recorded with the Restless (making for the joke, Neil Young and the Restless), this is a wonderful accomplishment for only three players. The other musicians on the record are Chad Cromwell on drums and Rick 'The Bass Player' Rosas, who both also appear on the album This Note's For You. One of the great things about Neil is that after playing with people such as Cromwell and Rosas (and more recently Booker T and the MGs), he gets a great idea for what would be fun to do next and does it. ..."
Thrasher's Wheat
W - Eldorado (EP)
Discogs
YouTube: Eldorado - Hamburg (Live), Eldorado, Cocaine Eyes (Live), Don't Cry (Live), Heavy Love (Live), On Broadway (Live)
YouTube: No More (Live SNL 1989)

2008 February: Neil Young, 2010 April: Neil Young - 1, 2010 April: Neil Young - 2, 2010 May: Neil Young - 3, 2010 October: Neil Young's Sound, 2012 January: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, 2012 June: Like A Hurricane, 2012 July: Greendale, 2013 April: Thoughts On An Artist / Three Compilations, 2013 August: Heart of Gold, 2014 March: Dead Man (1995), 2014 August: Ragged Glory - Neil Young + Crazy Horse (1990), 2014 November: Broken Arrow (1996), 2015 January: Rust Never Sleeps (1979), 2015 January: Neil Young the Ultimate Guide, 2015 March: Old Black, 2015 September: Zuma (1975), 2016 January: On the Beach (1973), 2016 April: Sleeps with Angels (1994).

Alex Hartley: After You Left

A Gentle Collapsing II, 2016. Site-specific sculptural installation, Victoria Miro.
"An exhibition of new work by the British artist, including a major architectural intervention in the gallery’s waterside garden. Thoughts of modernism and its legacy, as well as Romantic ideas of the ruin and the picturesque are conjured in these new works. While modernist architecture has been a constant touchstone for Hartley, amplified in recent work is a sense of narrative, of the viewer having arrived at a situation of ambiguous cause and uncertain outcome. ..."
Victoria Miro

Hopes and Fears - Art Bears (1978)

Wikipedia - "Hopes and Fears is the debut album by the English avant-rock group Art Bears. It comprises tracks by Henry Cow, Art Bears's predecessor, recorded at Sunrise Studios, Kirchberg in Switzerland in January 1978, and tracks by Art Bears, recorded at Kaleidophon Studios in London in March 1978. Hopes and Fears began as a Henry Cow album, but after the first recording sessions in Switzerland, some of the members of the band were unhappy about the predominance of song-oriented material. As a compromise it was agreed that two albums would be made: the songs would be released by Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause as Art Bears, and the instrumental compositions would be released later by Henry Cow. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Pitchfork
iTunes
YouTube: Moeris Dancing, In Two Minds, Terrain, The Dividing Line, All Hail

2010 February: Art Bears, 2012 July: The Art Box., 2013 July: Coda To "Man & Boy", 2013 October: Art Bears Songbook - 2010-09-19 - Rock In Opposition Festival, , 2009 December: Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, 2011 August: W - Communards’ Wall 1871, 2012 March: The Threepenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, 2012 July: Supply and Demand: Songs by Brecht / Weill & Eisler - Dagmar Krause, 2013 March: Pina Bausch - "The Seven Deadly Sins", 2015 February: The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink, 2016 October: Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins & Berlin Theater Songs (1997).

Mapping Antonin Artaud

“Nancy Spero’s Maypole: Take No Prisoners II, 2008 (detail).”
"The Google map below shows places, dates, and events from Artaud’s life. The red symbols mark biographical elements, the yellow symbols mark performance- or art-based elements, and the blue symbols mark Artaud’s continuing legacy. Where possible there are photographs, video, or links to further materials. ..."
Jacket2

2009 November: Antonin Artaud, 2011 August: La Coquille et le Clergyman - 1926, Germaine Dulac, 2014 September: You Are Quite Unnecessary, Young Man!.

Underground - Thelonious Monk (1968)

"This release has long been considered Thelonious Monk's acknowledgement to the flourishing youth-oriented subculture from whence the collection takes its name. Certainly the Grammy-winning cover art -- which depicts Monk as a World War II French revolutionary toting an automatic weapon -- gave the establishment more than the brilliant swinging sounds in the grooves to consider. Underground became Monk's penultimate studio album, as well as the final release to feature the '60s quartet: Charlie Rouse (tenor sax), Ben Riley (drums), and Larry Gales (bass) behind Monk (piano). One of the motifs running throughout Monk's recording career is the revisitation of titles from his voluminous back catalog. ..."
allmusic
Slate: Lost in Production
W - Underground
amazon
YouTube: Underground (HD FULL ALBUM)

2012 September: Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser, 2013 August: Five Spot Café, 2014 February: Thelonious Monk - Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, 2015 February: "Epistrophy" - Thelonious Monk / Kenny Clarke (1941).

The Virtual Splendor of Paris’s Glass House

"Discovering the existence of the Maison de Verre in Paris can be a major aesthetic epiphany. When you see a photograph of this translucent structure in glass, steel and expanses of glass brick — completed in 1932 — the impression is of startling modernity, something very much of its time yet strikingly ahead of it, too, like Picasso’s 'Les Demoiselles d’Avignon' or Duchamp’s 'The Large Glass.' Tucked into a courtyard on the Left Bank and invisible from the street, the Maison de Verre is among the first large homes made entirely of industrial materials whose structure is starkly exposed. ..."
NY Times
W - Maison de Verre
Maison de Verre Paris by Pierre Chareau + Bernard Bijvoet.
W - Pierre Chareau
YouTube: Architecture 19 of 23 Pierre Chareu Maison de Verre

A Street Scene in Venice - John Singer Sargent (1880-81)

A Street in Venice, 1880-81. This work contains similar use of chiaroscuro and geometrical framing.
Wikipedia - "Street in Venice (or A Street Scene in Venice) is a c. 1882 oil on wood painting by the American artist John Singer Sargent (1856–1925). Painted in a post-impressionist manner, it is set in a quiet backstreet off the Calle Larga dei Proverbi, near the Grand Canal in Venice. The painting shows a young woman walking along the flagstones, kicking her skirt with her right foot, and observed by two men in the shadows to her right. From the manner in which Sargent depicts her down-turned eyes and seemingly fast pace with which she passes the two men, he is concerned largely with the invasive male glare and its effect on the passing woman. ..."
Wikipedia
The Clark