Mass: Charles Olson

"This segment of Jim Dunn and Kevin Gallagher's feature, 'Mass: Raw Poetry from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,' focuses on Charles Olson, and includes contributions from James Cook, Anne Dewey, and Rachell K. Lerner. 'To find out for yourself"' - James Cook. Projecting Amy Lowell - Anne Dewey. Rexroth's 'The Dragon and the Unicorn' - Rachelle Katz Lerner."
Jacket2

2009 January: Charles Olson
2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12
2010 December: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", NET film
2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957
2012 April: A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester
2012 June: In Which We Lather Our Sensibilities At Length

Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel

"When Gram Parsons died of booze and pills (natural causes said the coroner's finding) in 1973 his friend and road manager Phil Kaufman lived up to his end of a deal that they had made earlier. He stole Gram's body and burned it in the desert; at Joshua Tree, California. It was a moment typical of Gram's desire for the big moment, the flamboyant gesture that would set him apart from the rest. ... Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, a documentary film by Gandulf Henning attempts to answer the enigma of Graham Parsons by interviewing the famous, the family, and all of those who knew him during his brief, meteoric passing."
Blogcritics
amazon: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel
YouTube: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel - trailer

2008 March: Gram Parsons
2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973
2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo

On The Map - Simon Garfield

The Mountains of Kong. Africa. 1839 American atlas.
"On The Map is a book about something that makes us human. Maps relate and realign our history. They reflect our best and worst attributes – discovery and curiosity, conflict and destruction – and they chart our transitions of power. Even as individuals, we seem to have a need to plot a path and track our progress, to imagine possibilities of exploration and escape. And maps fascinate us because they tell our stories. The ones in this book examine how maps came about, who drew them, what they were thinking, and how we use them."
Simon Garfield
WSJ: The End of the Map By Simon Garfield (Video)
NYT - The Unfolding Story of Maps: Dragon Warnings to Smartphone Screens
npr: New History Puts Cartographers' Art 'On The Map'
Guardian
amazon
YouTube: Simon Garfield at The Cheltenham Literature Festival (Video)

Kids in the Hall - Into the Doors

"Doors fans aren't made, they'e born!"
YouTube: Into the Doors

2011 July: Kids in the Hall

A Day with New York City’s Pothole Repair Crew

"Each morning, at a small depot tucked away under the Williamsburg Bridge, the New York City workers who call themselves the 'pothole gang' pore over a giant spreadsheet known as 'The Daily Pothole.' On it are thousands of potholes all over the city: giant gorges caused by rain and sleet, small interconnected divots that can flatten tires, and pretty much every other roadway wound you can imagine. The sun is barely up, and yet for these men — members of a street maintenance team tasked by the Department of Transportation with roadway repair — the race has already begun."
Storyboard (vimeo)

Christopher Wool

Wikipedia - "Christopher Wool (b.1955, Chicago) is an American artist residing in New York City. Since the 1980s, Wool's studio practice has incorporated issues surrounding post-conceptual ideas - moving beyond theoretical readings. Ken Johnson, writing in The New York Times, said, 'Christopher Wool made some of the punchiest paintings of the 1980s and 1990s: big, signlike word pictures that delivered gnomic, vaguely alarming messages.'"
Wikipedia
Christopher Wool
Christopher Wool: Painting about Painting
artnet
YouTube: Crosstown Crosstown, artist talk at DCA

Subatomic Sound System / Emch

"For over a decade Emch has been the producer, selector, and musician spearheading Subatomic Sound System and the Subatomic Sound label. Founded at the turn of the millennium, NYC’s Subatomic Sound System has built a reputation worldwide for explosive shows, genre bending production, and breaking down barriers with their unique adaptation of 1970’s Jamaican sound system culture and dub reggae studio techniques to current music genres, technology, and live performances."
Subatomic Sound System (Video)
W - Subatomic Sound System
Brooklyn Radio (Video)
SoundCloud (Video)
YouTube: Subatomic Sound System live melodica dub of Lee Scratch Perry & Dubblestandart, Subatomic Sound System live in Brooklyn, Subatomic Sound System @ Dub Mission

Brian Eno - "Kings Lead Hat" - 1977

"Dark alley (dark alley) black star
Four turkeys in a big black car
The road is shiny (bright shine) the wheels slide
Four turkeys going for a dangerous ride
The lacquer crackles (black tar) the engines roar
A ship was turning broadside to the shore
Splish splash I was raking in the cash
The biology of purpose keeps my nose above the surface (OOH)"
YouTube: Kings Lead Hat

2008 April: Brian Eno

Inferno - Dante

Brunetto Latini Accosts Dante - Gustave Doré
Wikipedia - "Inferno (Italian for 'Hell') is the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is followed by Purgatorio and Paradiso. It is an allegory telling of the journey of Dante through Hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth. Allegorically, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul towards God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of sin."
Wikipedia
U. Texas: Dante's Inferno
W - Divine Comedy

2011 October: A TV Dante by Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway
2012 August: The Dante Quartet (1987) - Stan Brakhage

Son Volt - Austin City Limits

"It's always fun for fans of a group when older stuff surfaces, enriching the band's catalog and overall accomplishments. Live from Austin TX travels back to November 11, 1996, for Son Volt's first appearance on Austin City Limits. Yes, that's nearly ten years and another lineup ago, and what fans may think of as classic Son Volt. ... The performance here is solid but familiar, meaning that the songs don't sound all that different from the studio versions. Then, as now, Jay Farrar's vocals dominate the band's alternative country sound, and one's enjoyment of the band will depend on whether one enjoys his driven nasal drone."
Live from Austin TX
YouTube: Son Volt 11.11.1996 Austin City Limits Complete Concert 1:07:17

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

"This is how al-Mutanabbi street looked like; a winding street filled with outdoor book-fair stalls. Poems and prose invaded its atmosphere until one day when Baghdad municipality raided the street and smashed all the book stalls with the support of military forces and without any prior warning. The municipality instigated huge losses and the people expressed sadness because they were used to this heritage for many years."
Book sellers in Baghdad's iconic al-Mutanabbi street under crackdown (Video)
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here (Video)
The Economist: A literary bridge to Baghdad (1 / 14)
Historic Baghdad Book Market Bulldozed in Late-Night Raid
An Inventory Of Al-Mutanabbi Street, Gallery 1, 2, 3
A Day That Lingers with Us Still - Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here
Google: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here
amazon: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

Charles "Mad Dog" Sheffield

"Charles ‘Mad Dog’ Sheffield, cut 'It's Your Voodoo Working' for J. D. Miller at his Crowley, Louisiana studio in 1961 and released on Nashville’s Excello Records, as were many of Miller’s productions. Sheffield was a blues singer originally from the Beaumont, Texas area on the Gulf Coast, who started off recording as Mad Dog Sheffield in 1957."
Soul Strutter
YouTube: It's Your Voodoo Working, Shoo Shoo Chicken, Rock 'n' Roll Train, I Got Fever, Cool Cat

Iman Issa

Part of the “Material” series (2010–2011).
"Iman Issa’s exhibition, ‘Material’, developed a critical position around monuments quite different to that of the ‘anti-monument’. Anti-monuments, after all, are now part of the mainstream. The British public, for example, not only instantly understood the critical thrust of the unassuming, feminized, interactive aspects of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain (2004) in London’s Hyde Park, but also grasped the failures of that criticality. Monument and anti-monument have a complementary relationship that completes a circle and constitutes the expansion of the language of each."
Frieze
Iman Issa
Iman Issa: Radical Subtraction By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
YouTube: Short Stories, A conversation with Iman Issa and Isla Leaver-Yap

In the Garden - Eurythmics

Wikipedia - "In the Garden is the debut studio album by British new wave duo Eurythmics, released in 1981. It was co-produced with 'krautrock' producer Conny Plank, at his studio in Cologne, with numerous guest musicians. Plank had previously worked with the duo whilst they were in their previous band The Tourists. Two singles were released from the album in the UK, 'Never Gonna Cry Again' and 'Belinda'."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Never Gonna Cry Again, Old Grey Whistle Test, 1981, Never Gonna Cry Again

2009 August: Eurythmics
2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)

Diana Thater - "Chernobyl"

"A new video installation by Diana Thater will fill the interior of Hauser & Wirth’s Piccadilly gallery with images of the post-nuclear landscape of Chernobyl. For this work, Thater spent time in the ‘Zone of Alienation’ which surrounds the site of the nuclear disaster, filming the eroded architecture and wildlife of the one-hundred mile wide radioactive territory. The animals she films have managed to survive amid the devastation of the only existing post-human landscape, demonstrating a wilderness of man’s making. The installation focuses on the rare and endangered Przewalski’s Horse. Once facing certain extinction in its native habitat in central Asia, this sub-species of the wild horse now roams freely in the ‘Zone of Alienation’."
Bauserwirth (Video)
LA Times: David Zwirner opens post-Sandy with Diana Thater's 'Chernobyl' video
YouTube: Diana Thater, Chernobyl, 2010
Hauserwirth: Diana Thater Chernobyl (Video)

Super-Sonic Jazz - Sun Ra

Wikipedia - "Super-Sonic Jazz is an album by Sun Ra, recorded in 1956 at RCA Studios, Chicago. Super-Sonic Jazz was the first album to be released on Saturn records, the label run by Sun Ra and Alton Abraham, and was one of only three albums by Sun Ra to have been available in the 1950s. (The other two are Jazz by Sun Ra, also released in 1957, and Jazz in Silhouette, released May 1959.)"
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: India, Springtime In Chicago, Advice to Medics, Sunology part 2, Portrait of the Living Sky, Kingdom of Not, Enlightenment, When Angels Speak Of Love

David Dunn

"A relentless explorer, composer, performer and theorist, David Dunn (born 1953) uses electro-acoustic resources, voice, non-human living systems, as well as traditional instruments. A creator of text-sound compositions, environmental installations, works for radio and video, he has also written and published extensively. Underlying all his work is a common regard for music as a communicative source with a living world. Growing up in San Diego in the sixties and seventies, he encountered people like Harry Partch and Kenneth Gaburo. He worked with Partch for about five years, and continued to be in his ensemble for a decade after his death. His association with Gaburo was even longer, and lasted until Gaburo's death in the early 1990s."
New World Records
Acousmata - David Dunn: Excerpt from Gradients (1999) - Video
YouTube: Survival of the Beautiful NYIH Event, Live at LUFF 2011, Red Rocks 2003, Mimus Polyglottos (1976)

Nobody's Perfect

"Kulchur is unreadable yet it begs to be read. To be read is to be assaulted. Just look at how Kulchur is dressed; it is asking for it. I am talking about its binding. Perfect, like the manhattans or martinis one drinks at Laure’s with Barbara and Frank while discussing Kulchur’s pages. Or Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy dress (such as Issues 2 and 3, before Kulchur went black on white), which in Kulchur’s case is rather ill-fitting and thus rips at the seams."
MimeoMimeo: Nobody's Perfect

2010 July: Kulchur

Roots Radics

Wikipedia - "The Roots Radics Band was formed in 1978 by bass player Errol 'Flabba' Holt, guitarist Eric 'Bingy Bunny' Lamont and drummer Lincoln Style Scott. They were joined by many musicians, including guitarist Noel 'Sowell' Davy, Dwight Pinkney and Steve Golding, keyboard player Wycliffe 'Steelie' Johnson, and saxophonist Headley Bennett. As a combined force the Roots Radics became a well-respected studio and stage band, which dominated the sound in the first half of the 1980s. They supported artists like Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs and Israel Vibration and have released several albums to their name as well. As an aside, 'Radics' sounds very much like 'Radix', which is the Latin word for 'Root' also."
Wikipedia
Roots Radics
Discogs
YouTube: , Live on TV Part 2, Rocking Miss D, Dedication to Flabba Holt 1, Alien Aborts, Roots Radix Patrolling, Shuffle the deck, False Dub

Michelin

Michelin Morocco Map 742
Wikipedia - "Michelin ... is a tyre manufacturer based in Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne région of France. It is one of the two largest tyre manufacturers in the world along with Bridgestone. In addition to the Michelin brand, it also owns the BFGoodrich, Kleber, Riken, Kormoran and Uniroyal (in North America) tyre brands. Michelin is also notable for its Red and Green travel guides, its roadmaps, the Michelin stars that the Red Guide awards to restaurants for their cooking, and for its company mascot Bibendum, colloquially known as the Michelin Man. Among Michelin's numerous inventions, there is the removable tyre, the pneurail (a tyre for trains made to run on rails) and the radial tyre technology now used in modern 'green tyres' that reduce fuel consumption."
Wikipedia
Maps & Guides - Michelin
The Savvy Traveller
Michelin Travel & Lifestyle

Thomas Hart Benton

Boomtown, 1927 –1928
Wikipedia - "Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States. Though his work is strongly associated with the Midwest, he studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there; summered for 50 years on Martha’s Vineyard off the New England coast; and also painted scenes of the American South and the American West."
Wikipedia
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Thomas Hart Benton's America Today
NYT: Thomas Hart Benton Masterwork Goes to Met
amazon: Thomas Hart Benton: The America Today Murals
YouTube: American artist of the 20th century, Thomas Hart Benton "From the Ozarks and Beyond", 2, 3

Marva Whitney

Wikipedia - "Marva Whitney (born Marva Ann Manning, May 1, 1944 - December 22, 2012), was an American funk singer. Whitney was considered by many funk enthusiasts to be one of the 'rawest' and 'brassiest' music divas. ... While working at a garment factory, she also began performing in nightclubs and local talent competitions, and in the mid 1960s joined local group Tommy & The Derbys as their lead singer. The group opened for many leading performers passing through Kansas City. In 1967 she left the group, and turned down offers to tour with Bobby Bland and Little Richard before joining the James Brown Revue as a featured vocalist."
Wikipedia
Interview with Marva Whitney (Video)
Pitchfork: R.I.P. Singer and James Brown Collaborator Marva Whitney, "Soul Sister Number 1"
YouTube: It's my Thing - Rare Live 1969, James Brown & Marva Whitney - If You Don't Work You Can't Eat, Unwind Yourself, Daddy Don't Know About Sugar Bear, What Kind of Man, Ball of Fire, What Do I Have To Do To Prove My Love To You, Give It Up or Turnit a Loose, Pt.1 & Pt.2

The obsession that is Northern Soul

"A great R&B/Soul label, Okeh Records didn't get the recognition it deserved in the 60's. Under the guidance of production kings like Carl Davis, Okeh released some excellent records, many of which made the charts. This CD contains obscure Okeh tracks, featuring such artists as the Triumphs, the Seven Souls, Johnny Robinson, the Opals, the Carstairs, Jimmy Church, the Little Foxes, and the Autographs. The only real hits are The Artistics' 'This Heart Of Mine,' and Walter Jackson's 'It's An Uphill Climb To The Bottom.'"
allmusic
YouTube: The obsession that is Northern Soul 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

2012 October: Northern Soul

Lower East Side

Wikipedia - "The Lower East Side, (often abbreviated as LES), is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street. It was traditionally an immigrant, working-class neighborhood. But it has undergone rapid gentrification starting in the mid-2000s, prompting The National Trust for Historic Preservation to place the neighborhood on their list of America's Most Endangered Places."
Wikipedia
Lower East Side
Tenement Museum
YouTube: New York City, Lower East Side of Manhattan Video Tour - Part 1, Part 2

“The Paris Swingbox” - Parov Stelar

"The now available five-track mini-album, 'The Paris Swingbox', demonstrates this distinctive sound. Unlike his albums, his EPs are aimed at the dance floor and 'The Paris Swing Box', without coming across as simply a tool for DJ’s, is no exception. The five tracks reflect the mood of the swing era in an inimitable way. The samples are arranged subtly and sit perfectly. While staying true to the original sounds and their aesthetics, 'The Paris Swing Box' manages to be a strictly modern production. With house beats always in the foreground, these are kicking club tracks which have nothing to do with soothing lounge music."
Daily Records
YouTube: The Paris Swingbox (New Album 2010 Preview), The Paris Swing Box, The Golden Boy, The Snake, Booty Swing

2012 October: Parov Stelar

Chris Ware - "Building Stories"

"The most despairing image in Chris Ware’s magnificent new graphic novel, 'Building Stories' — and there are plenty of candidates — depicts a dumpy middle-aged couple, naked in their bedroom. She’s just dropped her clothes to the floor; he’s lying on the bed, oblivious to her, his face and chest illuminated by the iPad propped on his belly. You will never be able to read 'Building Stories' on a digital tablet, by design. It is a physical object, printed on wood pulp, darn it. It’s a big, sturdy box, containing 14 different 'easily misplaced elements' — a hard-bound volume or two, pamphlets and leaflets of various dimensions, a monstrously huge tabloid à la century-old Sunday newspaper comics sections and a folded board of the sort that might once have come with a fancy game. In which order should one read them?"
NYT: Inside the Box
YouTube: Opening Chris Ware's Building Stories, Unboxing
Infographics of Despair: Chris Ware’s Building Stories
LARB: Rick Moody on Building Stories
NYRB: A Triumph of the Comic-Book Novel
Tag Archives: Building Stories Essays
WNYC: Chris Ware's Building Stories (Video)
Watch Chris Ware discuss Building Stories on MSNBC’s The Cycle (Video)
amazon: Building Stories, The Comics of Chris Ware: Drawing Is a Way of Thinking

The Lord of Misrule and the Feast of Fools

Pieter Bruegel, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559)
"In medieval England, the Lord of Misrule was an officer appointed by lot at Christmas to preside over the Feast of Fools - a riotous banquet where the central idea seems always to have been a brief social revolution in which power, dignity and impunity is briefly conferred on those in a subordinate position. The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant appointed to oversee these Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness, wild partying and general licentiousness. The appointment of a Lord of Misrule comes from antiquity. In ancient Rome a Lord of Misrule was appointed for the feast of Saturnalia, in the guise of the god Saturn. During this time the ordinary rules of life were subverted as masters served their slaves, and the offices of state were held by slaves."
The Oddment Emporium
W - Lord of Misrule
W - Feast of Fools

2010 May: Peasant
2011 March: "The Harvesters", Pieter Bruegel the Elder
2012 February: The Mill and the Cross - Lech Majewski

Yule

Wikipedia - "Yule or Yuletide ('Yule time') is a religious festival observed by the Northern European peoples, later being absorbed into and equated with the Christian festival of Christmas. The earliest references to Yule are by way of indigenous Germanic month names (Ærra Jéola (Before Yule) or Jiuli and Æftera Jéola (After Yule). Scholars have connected the celebration to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Modranicht. Terms with an etymological equivalent to Yule are used in the Nordic countries for Christmas with its religious rites, but also for the holidays of this season. Yule is also used to a lesser extent in English-speaking countries to refer to Christmas. Customs such as the Yule log, Yule goat, Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from Yule. A number of Neopagans have introduced their own rites."
Wikipedia
W - Yule log
W - Wassailing

2011 December: The Yule Log

Jazz poetry

52nd Street, NYC, 1947
Wikipedia - "Jazz poetry is poetry that 'demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation'. During the 1920s, several poets began to eschew the conventions of rhythm and style; among these were Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings. The significance of the simultaneous evolution of poetry and jazz during the 1920s was apparent to many poets of the era, resulting in the merging of the two art forms into jazz poetry. Jazz poetry has long been something of an 'outsider' art form that exists somewhere outside the mainstream, having been conceived in the 1920s by African-Americans, maintained in the 1950s by counterculture poets like those of the Beat generation, and adapted in modern times into hip-hop music and live poetry events known as poetry slams."
Wikipedia
A Brief Guide to Jazz Poetry
Jazz as Communication (1956) by Langston Hughes
Jazz Poetry (Four articles by Kenneth Rexroth)
Village voices: “Beat Generation” Jazz Poetry
Ralph J. Gleason for “DownBeat” – On Jazz/Poetry In The Bay Area
Jazz, Poetry, Rap: Cause and Effect of the Black Arts Movement (Video)

Escaping An Uncertain Fate: Mission Of Burma Interviewed

"The reunited post-punk luminaries are currently touring Europe, fresh off the back of a set at Shellac's ATP and a new best of, Learn How. James Ubaghs spoke to singer/guitarist Roger Miller about their enduring power, the internet's capacity to stifle emergent music scenes and how to avoid the perils of tinnitus"
The Quietus (Video)

2009 March: Mission Of Burma
2009 October: Mission Of Burma - 1