An Introduction to Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda: Romantic, Radical & Revolutionary

"Does politics belong in art? The question arouses heated debate about creative freedom and moral responsibility. Assumptions include the idea that politics cheapens film, music, or literature, or that political art should abandon traditional ideas about beauty and technique. As engaging as such discussions might be in the abstract, they mean little to nothing if they don't account for artists who show us that choosing between politics and art can be as much a false dilemma as choosing between art and love. In the work of writers as varied as William Blake, Muriel Rukeyser, James Baldwin, and James Joyce, for example, themes of protest, power, privilege, and poverty are inseparable from the sublimely erotic—all of them essential aspects of human experience, and hence, of literature. Foremost among such political artists stands Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who—as the TED-Ed video above from Ilan Stavans informs us—was a romantic stylist, and also a fearless political activist and revolutionary. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
Pablo Neruda’s relationship with Spain examined through his focus on the concrete particulars of daily life.

The varieties of everyday life that Neruda’s poetry explores; illustrated by Julie Paschkis

February 2009: Pablo Neruda, 2011 November: 100 Love Sonnets, 2015 November: The Body Politic: The battle over Pablo Neruda’s corpse, 2015 December: In Chile, Where Pablo Neruda Lived and Loved, 2016 May: Windows that Open Inward - Pablo Neruda. Milton Rogovin, Photographing., 2018 March: What We Can Learn from Neruda’s Poetry of Resistanc, 2018 July: Poet of the People: The partisan world of Pablo Neruda, 2018 December: Neruda - Pablo Larraín (2016)

Across a Crowded Room—Live at Barrymore’s 1985 - Richard Thompson

"As one of the greatest guitarists of his generation, Richard Thompson has played with some of the world’s most accomplished rock and folk musicians, starting, of course, with his first band, Fairport Convention. But of all the outfits Thompson has led during his sterling, post-Fairport, solo career, perhaps the finest was the unit he took out on the road with him for his 1985 tour supporting his then-current studio release (and first for the Polydor label), Across A Crowded Room. While the album’s recording sessions had featured Fairport Convention stalwarts Simon Nicol and Dave Mattacks on rhythm guitar and drums, respectively, for the tour Thompson enlisted the considerable talents of Any Trouble leader Clive Gregson and his creative partner Christine Collister, whose haunting harmonies (and occasional songwriting contributions) beautifully fleshed out the band’s live sound. ..."
Real Gone Music
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Full Across A Crowded Room concert 1985 13 videos

2011 July: Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson, 2012 February: I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, 2014 March: Videowest 81, 2015 October: Richard & Linda Thompson - Rafferty's Folly (1980), 2015 December: Rumor and Sigh (1991), 2016 March: Hand of Kindness (1983), 2018 December: You? Me? Us? (1996)

Cape Cod Baseball League

Wikipedia - "The Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL) is a collegiate summer baseball league located on Cape Cod in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Founded in 1885, the league consisted largely of local and regional college players until 1963, when it became officially sanctioned by the NCAA. In 1985, the league moved away from the use of aluminum bats, and became the only collegiate summer league in the nation at that time to use wooden bats. This transition began a period of significant growth in the league's popularity and prestige among Major League Baseball (MLB) scouts, as well as among college players and coaches. The league continues to be one of the nation's premier collegiate summer leagues, receiving significant financial support from Major League Baseball, and boasting well over 1,000 alumni who have gone on to play in the major leagues. ..."
Wikipedia
Cape Cod Baseball (Video)
Cape Cod Baseball League
YouTube: Cape Cod Baseball League: Find Out What Makes Cape Cod Baseball Second To None!

The Chatham Anglers take on the Harwich Mariners at Whitehouse Field.

Top 10 Experimental Music Festivals

"Of course, we're all partial to flailing our arms and screaming our lungs out to anthemic belters during a climactic festival headline slot. But sometimes, the paint-by-number music frequenting the mainstream charts just doesn't quite cut the mustard. For those who possess a taste for the innovative, unconventional, and wholly original, there's a surging network of experimental music festivals emerging around the globe. With an emphasis on the wider scope of music festivals rather than simply assembling a roster of familiar artists, experimental music festivals offer a platform for sounds to be heard, sights to be seen, and sensations to be felt that aren't commonplace. Just yet. Here are our Top 10 experimental music festivals, in no particular order, that succeed in propelling the festival experience to new heights. ..."
Festicket (Video)

Always the Model, Never the Artist

Left: Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with Bouquet of Violets, 1872; Right: photo of Berthe Morisot
"'It’s annoying they’re not men,' Édouard Manet wrote to fellow artist Henri Fantin-Latour, after meeting Berthe and Edma Morisot, two sisters from the Parisian upper crust who were promising painters. He found them 'charming' and feared that because they were women, their accomplishments would inevitably go to waste. Manet thought the Morisot sisters should 'further the cause of painting by marrying académiciens,' members of the jury who selected which works to display at the Académie des Beaux-Arts’s annual salon. The possibility that the Morisots might actually become artists did not seem to occur to him. Manet envisioned the Morisot sisters might make their mark in the annals of art as counselors to men in power—by influencing their tastes and sympathies, and convincing them of the worth of outsider artists (such as Manet himself). ..."
The Paris Review

Berthe Morisot, Hanging the Laundry out to Dry, 1875.

2010 January: Berthe Morisot, 2014 March: In Which Berthe Morisot Is Spared Nothing, 2015 March: In Which Berthe Morisot And Claude Monet Exchange Winter Letters, 2019 July: Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

Theatre of the Absurd

On the occasion of West Berlin Festival Weeks the workshop of Schiller theatre will give “Fin de Partie” of Samuel Beckett. ... Left Ernst Schroeder (Hamm), right Horst Bollmann (Clov). September 26. 1967, Berlin, Germany
Wikipedia - "The Theatre of the Absurd (French: théâtre de l'absurde [teɑtʁ(ə) də lapsyʁd]) is a post-World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work focused largely on the idea of existentialism and expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument give way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence. Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay 'Theatre of the Absurd'. He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus. ..."
Wikipedia
British Library - Nonsense talk: Theatre of the Absurd
NY Times - Theatre: Of the Absurd (February 12, 1962)
On Absurdity. Adorno, Beckett, and the Demise of Existentialism
amazon: The Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin
YouTube: Beckett, Ionesco, and the Theater of the Absurd: Crash Course Theater #45, Why should you read "Waiting For Godot"? - Iseult Gillespie

Blue Note Records at 80: Can a Symbol of Jazz’s Past Help Shape Its Future?

Some stars who defined Blue Note Records years ago, from left: Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter.
"The name Blue Note Records calls to mind a once-regnant sound in jazz: the hard-bop of the 1950s and ’60s, with its springy four-beat swing rhythm, its spare-but-lush horn harmonies, its flinty, percussive piano playing. Imagine a smoky room with a horn player blowing fiercely over a strolling standup bass, and you’re hearing the Blue Note sound. Think of a modernist, cobalt-hued album cover, with blocky title text and a photo of a studious young musician hunkered over an instrument, and you’re envisioning the Blue Note look. It’s been a long time since that fantasy was a reality — for jazz or for Blue Note, which turns 80 this year. Since the 1960s, the label has been through numerous corporate mergers, partial shutdowns and creative readjustments, all while working to keep pace with shifts that have left jazz in a state of diffusion: Much of its forward motion is happening on the fringes, and there’s hardly a mainstream sound to speak of. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: A History of Blue Note Records in 15 Albums (Video)

Herbie Hancock, Bobbi Humphrey, Cecil Taylor and more: Blue Note Records has been celebrating its eight-decade history this year.

The Book Beri’ah - John Zorn (2018)

"If you are a fan of downtown NYC impresario and jazz/classical/rock/unclassifiable composer John Zorn, two contradictory things are likely to be true about your relationship to his music: you own more of it than you could ever hope or want to listen to, and you can’t get enough of it. Zorn is despairingly prolific and also controls his own means of production in the form of his record label, Tzadik. Central to his oeuvre is the Masada project, his take on new Jewish music, which began in the nineties and has spawned literally hundreds of compositions and dozens of albums by many, many bands. This summer, Zorn brings the project to a close with his final collection of Masada music, ninety-two compositions performed by twelve bands or performers released as a lavish boxed set of eleven CDs. He is also releasing each volume individually. ..."
The Paris Review
Avant Music News
Tzadik (Video)
YouTube: Highlights from The Book Beri'ah [FULL ALBUM - VINYL] 44:50, Malkhut [FULL ALBUM] 43:11


2009 March: John Zorn, 2010 August: Spillane 2011 October: Filmworks Anthology : 20 Years of Soundtrack Music, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 January: Bar Kokhba and Masada, 2013 September: Masada String Trio Sala, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010), 2014 March: "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008, 2015 June: The Big Gundown - John Zorn plays Ennio Morricone (1985), 2015 July: News for Lulu (1988), 2016 March: Film Works 1986-1990, 2017 March: John Zorn Is Rolling The Stone From Avenue C To The New School, 2017 September: Naked City (1990)

Sport, history and politics at the African Cup of Nations

"I have been struck lately by how strongly held our ideas about race and nationhood are. That these ideas are socially constructed or artificial—I teach a course on their historical construction in Africa through colonial science—does not mean they are not powerful. Living in Cairo, I attended the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) finals between Senegal and Algeria. The closing ceremony before the match featured an impressive light and fireworks show with music by Ghanaian Afropop singer Fuse ODG and Egyptian pop diva Donia Samir Ghanem. But was also a preview of racial binaries that would become more apparent once the football started. Algeria won the match 1-0 on Baghdad Bounedjah’s deflected ball in the second minute. A stout Algerian defense prevented the Senegalese, favored by many to win the tournament, from equalizing. ..."
Africa is a Country (Video)
Guardian: Africa Cup of Nations 2019: highs, lows and moments of mayhem (Video)
CNN: Algeria crowned Africa Cup of Nations champion after beating Senegal
W - 2019 Africa Cup of Nations
Algerian football success is a double-edged sword

2019 July: Yes We Can—Football and Nationalism

Film Forum: Burt Lancaster - Through Thursday, August 15

"A street kid from East Harlem, Burt Lancaster (1913-1994), after a stint as a circus acrobat, got a late start in pictures – but his star personality, among the most powerful in film history, was there from the beginning: from the doom-laden twisted hunks in films noir; to the grinning hot dogs in spoof adventure films; to the sleaziest of con men, Nazi collaborators, and tabloid columnists; to stalwart leaders of men; to idealistic fanatics; to a supremely dignified icon of another age."
Film Forum
W - Burt Lancaster


2014 July: Sweet Smell of Success (1957), 2018 December: 1900 - Bernardo Bertolucci (1976), 2018 December: Atlantic City - Louis Malle (1980)

All-time temperature records tumble again as heatwave sears Europe

"Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have recorded all-time national temperature highs for the second day running and Paris has had its hottest day ever as the second dangerous heatwave of the summer sears western Europe. The extreme temperatures follow a similar heatwave last month that made it the hottest June on record. Scientists say the climate crisis is making summer heatwaves five times more likely and significantly more intense. ... As authorities across the continent handed out free water to homeless people, placed hospitals and residential care institutions on high alert and opened municipal buildings to anyone seeking shade, trains were slowed in several countries to avoid damage to lines, which could buckle in the heat. France’s SNCF rail operator and the Métro in Paris advised travellers to postpone their trips if possible. ..."
Guardian
Washington Post - Europe heat: Temperature records are shattered in Europe, with Paris hitting all-time mark of 109 degrees (Video)

Forecast for Sunday showing a powerful ridge of high pressure, associated with unusually mild temperatures, across Scandinavia and the Arctic.

The Guide to Getting Into Joni Mitchell, the Blueprint for Human Experience

"... It was an inauspicious but telling beginning for one of the most prolific musicians of the twentieth century. With 19 studio albums released since her 1968 debut Song to a Seagull, Mitchell—who turns 75 this week—never really stopped singing, with pain and hard circumstance catalyzing some of her most beloved output. The public would sit captivated as she forged an uncharted route through the folk scene of her youth, into pop mega-stardom, to avant-garde jazz, to an 80s rock incarnation for which she embraced the sound and technology of the era—all on her own, distinctly Joni Mitchell terms. In this way, Mitchell’s body of work manifests the progression of American music since the late 1960s. But hers is also a path that could never have been schemed up by the star-maker machinery Mitchell often lamented. ..."
VICE (Video/Audio)

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), 2016 November: Court and Spark (1974), 2017 February: Hejira (1976), 2017 August: Miles of Aisles (1974), 2017 October: Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius, 2018 March: Joni Mitchell: We look back over her extraordinary 50 year career, 2018 November: Free Man In Paris (1974), 2019 April: Mingus (1979)

Renoir: The Body, the Senses

Bathers Playing with a Crab, c. 1897
"‘Renoir: The Body, the Senses,' at the Clark Art Institute, is a hedonist’s dreamland—a glorious celebration of the nude. Until now, the only place to see a major grouping of Renoir’s miraculous late nudes, those paintings made between 1885 and his death, at age 78, in 1919, was at the Barnes Foundation. Albert C. Barnes, who acquired 181 Renoirs, appreciated the astonishing achievement of these late works. In these paradoxical paintings—in which the naked bodies are monumental, as solid as oaks, yet pearlescent, translucent and shimmering; in which form and color are brought to a fever pitch; and in which Neoclassicism and Impressionism come head-to-head—Renoir sought to secure his foothold as an artist. ..."
WSJ - ‘Renoir: The Body, the Senses’ Review: Celebrating the Nude
Renoir’s Controversial Second Act
The Clark: Renoir: The Body, the Senses

The Farm at Les Collettes, 1914

2010 February: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 2010 July: Late Renoir, 2012 February: Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting, 2012 September: Renoir: Between Bohemia and Bourgeoisie, 2014 December: Dance at Le moulin de la Galette (1876), 2015 June: Dance at Bougival (1883), 2015 December: Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-81), 2019 May: View at Guernsey (1883)

The Most Revealing Exchange of the Mueller Hearing

Illustration by Nicholas Konrad; Photographs by Doug Mills.
"There’s a logical disconnect in volume 2 of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that is unmissable to any careful reader. As Mueller explains in the report, a charge of obstruction of justice requires three elements: an obstructive act, a nexus with an official proceeding, and corrupt intent. And in the report, Mueller’s team laid out several cases where President Donald Trump committed an obstructive act, in connection with an official proceeding, with what Mueller’s team concluded could be a corrupt intent. But because Mueller had decided at the outset of his report that he could not and would not charge the president with crimes, thanks to Justice Department guidance and in the interest of fairness, Mueller did not make the otherwise obvious jump from laying out the ways that Trump’s behavior met the three-prong test to actually stating that Trump obstructed justice. ..."
The Atlantic
NY Times: Mueller Warns of Russian Sabotage and Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Claims (Audio)
NY Times: Opinion | ‘They’re Doing It as We Sit Here’
New Republic: The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Continues
NY Times: Highlights of Robert Mueller’s Testimony to Congress (Video)
NY Times - Read the Mueller Report: Searchable Document and Index (April 18, 2019)

Hannelore Baron: Collages and Box Constructions, 1969 to 1985

Untitled, 1981-1984.
"Leslie Feely Fine Art is proud to present Hannelore Baron: Collages and Box Constructions, 1969 to 1985. Hannelore Baron (1926 – 1987), a German-born artist who escaped from the Nazis and emigrated to New York City in 1941, conceived small-scale works of extraordinary impact. She used everyday materials to create delicate collages and mysterious box constructions that evoke both the fragility of life and the power of courage and endurance. These intimate compositions read as universal expressions of human emotion. Baron produced works of beautiful color with her very distinctive touch. Although Baron suffered from severe childhood trauma and debilitating anxiety as an adult, her work shows a joyful energy. Although deeply loved by people who know her work, she still remains an undiscovered treasure to others. ..."
Leslie Feely
W - Hannelore Baron
The Estate of Hannelore Baron
YouTube: Hannelore Baron: Collages and Box Constructions, 1969 to 1985

An Adirondack Wilderness All Your Own

Experiencing such remote corners of the Adirondacks wouldn’t have been possible without the use of a floatplane.
"Moments after parking our car and loading into a compact, one-propeller bush plane, my three friends and I were looking down at a lush boreal landscape, newly green after the long winter. The view of soft, wooded peaks interspersed with creeks and lakes extended as far as we could see, evoking the northern territories of Canada or Alaska. But what lay below us was closer to home: the heart of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, its vast wooded expanse concealing the isolated campsite where we would ensconce ourselves. ... Some years later, we became aware of a new, more enticing approach. Away from Lake Placid, Lake George and other more crowded regional hubs, are several smaller hamlets that provide access to a handful of exceptionally remote lakeside campgrounds reachable only by pontooned floatplanes. With round-trip charters typically priced at $150 or less per person, some of the most secluded frontiers of the Adirondack Park are accessible even to travelers on a limited budget. ..."
NY Times
W - Adirondack Mountains
Adirondack Regional Tourism Council
Adirondack Mountain Club

Canoes are conveniently stashed at the various campsites.

2009 May: Long Lake, New York

Sammy Lewis With Willie Johnson ‎– So Long Baby Goodbye / I Feel So Worried (1955)

Wikipedia - "Willie Johnson (March 4, 1923 – February 26, 1995) was an American electric blues guitarist. ... As the guitarist in the first band led by Howlin' Wolf, he appeared on most of Wolf's recordings between 1951 and 1953. He provided the slightly jazzy yet raucous guitar sound that was the signature of all of Wolf's Memphis recordings. Johnson also performed and recorded with other blues artists in the Memphis area, including pianist Willie Love, Willie Nix, Junior Parker, Roscoe Gordon, Bobby 'Blue' Bland and others. When Wolf moved to Chicago in around 1953, he could not convince Johnson to join him. Johnson stayed on in Memphis for several years, playing on a number of sessions for Sun Records, including a 1955 collaboration with vocalist Sammy Lewis, 'I Feel So Worried', released under the name Sammy Lewis with Willie Johnson. ..."
Wikipedia
Discogs
YouTube: So Long Baby Goodbye, I Feel So Worried

"Baseball's Sad Lexicon"

Wikipedia - "'Baseball's Sad Lexicon,' also known as 'Tinker to Evers to Chance' after its refrain, is a 1910 baseball poem by Franklin Pierce Adams. The eight-line poem is presented as a single, rueful stanza from the point of view of a New York Giants fan watching the Chicago Cubs infield of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance complete a double play. These three players helped the Cubs win four National League championships and two World Series from 1906 to 1910. 'Baseball's Sad Lexicon' became popular across the United States among sportswriters, who wrote their own verses along the same vein. The poem only enhanced the reputations of Tinker, Evers, and Chance over the succeeding decades as the phrase became a synonymous with a feat of smooth and ruthless efficiency. It has been credited with their elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. ..."
Wikipedia
Hummers, knucklers, and slow curves: contemporary baseball poems
Baseball Poems, Baseball Poetry & Baseball Songs
Baseball Poems
Poetry - October 1955
Spitball Magazine
Poetry Matters: In Baseball, No Poet Has Yet to Do the Game Justice, Baseball and Writing - Marianne Moore
Line drives: 100 contemporary baseball poems
Reading: The Poetry of Baseball
W - Line-Up for Yesterday by Ogden Nash
Baseball Haiku: Shelf Awareness, amazon

Poet Marianne Moore, 81, threw out the first pitch at the opening of the 1968 baseball season at Yankee Stadium on April 10th, against the Los Angeles Angels.

Connections With Strangers: A Photo Series Offers a Window Onto the World

Gloucester Street, Gloucester, Massachusetts, 2010; from the ‘Hopper Redux’ series
"When Gail Albert Halaban’s daughter turned one, she received balloons, flowers and a note from some neighbours she had never met. ... The scene is staged – Halaban is in constant conversation with the subject – and deliberately lit to make it clear that they know she is photographing them. She doesn’t shoot with a telephoto lens, instead wishing to see the scene – always quotidian actions like making coffee – from the perspective of the watcher. The resulting pictures are Hopper-esque, revealing at once the isolation and humanity of connecting with someone unknown. ..."
culture trip

Berfin, İstiklal Cad, Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015; from the ‘Out My Window’ series

Left of the Dial: The Evolution of Punk, New Wave and Indie on American Radio

"Rock and roll was born to give offense, and radio has long served as the music industry’s primary gatekeeper. AM, FM, free-form, Top 40, AOR, left of the dial (was there ever a right of the dial?) – the programmers who pick which songs get on the air (whether based on gut feeling, label entreaties, payola, peer pressure, or audience testing) live and die by the records they choose. These firing-line calls can seem bizarre in retrospect: radio, and its audiences, has often latched on to (or flatly rejected) the most unpredictable songs. Even bands headed for the cultural pantheon have struck radio as ones to avoid. The Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Stooges, Patti Smith – all of them are in the pantheon, but none of them had more than a song or two (if that) in serious rotation. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

The gods of good health on a Fifth Avenue facade

"You could spend hours taking in the visual feast that is the New York Academy of Medicine building on Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street. Completed in 1926, it’s a blend of Romanesque and Byzantine styles with an exterior complete with Latin quotes, figures of gods and goddesses, and some impressive gargoyles and bas reliefs—all apparently relating to health and medicine. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Asclepius and Hygeia (top image) are carved into the grand entrance on 103rd Street.

Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges (1999)

"The story 'Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth,' roughly in the middle of this marvelous new collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is as good a place as any to start an appreciation of one of the most remarkable writers of our century. A king flees the ghost of his vizier, whom he has killed, taking refuge in a labyrinth he builds on the moors of Cornwall. But the ghost, or what seems to be a ghost, catches up with him, and the king is murdered within his own hiding place. It is not one of Borges's greatest stories, but many of the familiar elements of his work are here: arcane knowledge, characters that emerge from some combination of mythology and scholarship, images of labyrinths, a lightly satirical Homeric tone, blood and vengeance, the blending of murder and metaphysics, and an interplay of appearances and apparitions in which reality and illusion are almost indistinguishable. ..."
NY Times: Savoring a Borges Blend of Imaginings
complete review
amazon: Collected Fictions
Open Culture: An Animated Introduction to the Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges (Video)

2009 August: Jorge Luis Borges, 2013 May: Jorge Luis Borges - 1, 2013 October: Borges: Profile of a Writer Presents the Life and Writings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges, 2016 May: Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin,2016 October: The Library of Babel (1941)

Never A Dull Moment - Rod Stewart (1972)

"The ironic album portrait may have suggested otherwise, but life was anything but boring for Rod Stewart in 1972. After endless toil, he had made it big beyond his wildest imaginings the year before, both as a solo artist and with his beloved Faces. Now, after the spectacular breakthrough of Rod’s Every Picture Tells A Story album and ‘Maggie May’ single, came further new glory. The follow-up album may have featured more than a little help from his mates, but it was again entirely self-produced. When it was released, on 21 July, Never A Dull Moment was an apt title. ..."
‘Never A Dull Moment’: How Rod Stewart Kicked His Career Into High Gear (Video/Audio)
Graded on a Curve: Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment
W - Never A Dull Moment
amazon
YouTube: Never A Dull Moment (Full Album) 9 videos

2016 November: Gasoline Alley (1970), 2017 May: Every Picture Tells a Story (1971)

Burning Bush - Agnieszka Holland (2013)

Wikipedia - "Burning Bush (Czech: Hořící keř) is a 2013 three-part miniseries created for HBO by Polish director Agnieszka Holland. Based on real characters and events, this haunting drama focuses on the personal sacrifice of a Prague history student, Jan Palach, who set himself on fire in 1969 in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in the previous year. Dagmar Burešová, a young female lawyer, became part of his legacy by defending Palach's family in a trial against the communist government, a regime which tried to dishonour Palach’s sacrifice, a heroic action for the freedom of Czechoslovakia. The fight for freedom, for moral principles, self-sacrifice and protest in those desperate times led to the moral unification of a repressed nation, which twenty years later defeated the totalitarian regime. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Czech Pawns In a System That Stifled by A.C. Scott
Burning Bush – Agnieszka Holland
BetaCinema
YouTube: Burning Bush - Official Trailer (Dir. Agniezska Holland)

Redux: The Rapturous Monotony of Metal, Water, Stone

"In honor of Bastille Day this past Sunday, The Paris Review is returning to its expatriate roots by highlighting some of the many French authors whose work resides within the archive. Read on for Simone de Beauvoir’s Art of Fiction interview, as well as Baudelaire’s poem 'Parisian Dream' and Andre de Mandiargues’s brief story 'The Bath of Madame Mauriac.' If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, and poems, why not subscribe to read the entire archive? You’ll also get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. ..."
The Paris Review

Time After Time: The Lasting Legacy Of Chet Baker

"When the body of Chet Baker was found, crumpled and bloodied, on an Amsterdam pavement on Friday, 13 May 1988, beneath the third-floor window of the hotel where he was staying, at first no one recognised him. Years of drugs and alcohol abuse had rendered the 58-year-old unrecognisable from the clean-cut young man who, in the early 50s, with his chiselled good looks, was perceived as the iconic poster boy for West Coast cool jazz. Though Baker’s death was officially deemed to have been a tragic accident that resulted from him falling from his hotel window, the singing trumpeter’s demise was an ignominious one for a jazz musician whose career had begun so spectacularly. ..."
uDiscoverMusic (Audio/Video)

2018 September: Gerry Mulligan Quartet - Pacific Jazz Records (1952), 2019 May: Italian Movies (2014), 2019 June: Let's Get Lost - Bruce Weber (1988)

Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits = ሙዚቃ ሕይወቴ (1972)

"The Ethiopian saxophonist Tèsfa-Maryam Kidané was one of the most remarkable stylists of his generation and between 1965 and 1972 emerged as a brilliant, inspired player. Tesfa Mariam got his start with the Police Orchestra in Asmara. After his stints with the second Ras Band & The All Star Band. He left Ethiopia to study at Berkelee College of Music in ’72 and he stayed and settled in United States. Bass – Haylu «Zihon» Kèbbèdè, Ivo. Drums – Girma Zèmaryam, Tesfayé «Hodo» Mèkonnen. Electric Piano [Fender Rhodes], Organ, Percussion – Mulatu Astatqé. Guitar – Tèklè «Hukèt» Adhanom. Tenor Saxophone – Fekade Amde Maskal. Tenor Saxophone [First] – Tesfa-Maryam Kidané. Transferred By, Engineer [Restauration] – Wilfrid Harpaillé. Upright Piano – Girma Bèyènè/
YouTube: Tesfa Maryam Kidane - Heywete
Bandcamp: Ethiopian Modern Instrumentals Hits (Audio)
Discogs (Video)

Trump Sets the 2020 Tone: Like 2016, Only This Time ‘the Squad’ Is Here

During a news conference on Monday, Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez denounced Mr. Trump’s comments.
"With three days of attacks on four liberal, minority first-term congresswomen, President Trump and the Republicans have sent the clearest signal yet that their approach to 2020 will be a racially divisive reprise of the strategy that helped Mr. Trump narrowly capture the White House in 2016. It is the kind of fight that the president relishes. He has told aides, in fact, that he is pleased with the Democratic reaction to his attacks, boasting that he is 'marrying' the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party to the four congresswomen known as 'the squad.' His efforts to stoke similar cultural and racial resentments during the 2018 midterm elections with fears of marauding immigrant caravans backfired as his party lost control of the House. But he is undeterred heading into his re-election campaign, betting that he can cast the entire Democratic Party as radical and un-American. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: House Condemns Trump’s Attack on Four Congresswomen as Racist (Video)