Document Records / Third Man Records

"After nearly twenty years since the last Document vinyl LP record was produced, Document Records and Third Man Records are thrilled to announce the release of the first three records in our highly-anticipated Document Records reissue series produced exclusively as vinyl LPs. The recordings we'll be presenting in this reissue series are the building blocks and DNA of American culture. Blues, Gospel, R&B, Soul, Elvis, teenagerism, punk rock... it all goes back to these vital, breath-taking recordings."
Document Records / Third Man Records (Video)
W - Document Records
Pitchfork: Jack White's Third Man Launches Document Records Reissue Series of Archival Blues Recordings (Video)

Henry Taylor

Served Up, 2009
"Henry Taylor: Girrrrrl! is the first West Coast museum exhibition of a Southern California artist whose painting practice pointedly and poignantly examines the profound social, political, and racial disparities that persist in the United States. Girrrrrl! is comprised of 4 major new works depicting scenes from Taylor’s personal life and urban community."
Saatchi-Gallery
Henry Taylor at MoMA PS1
NYT: A Visual Equivalent of the Blues, in Warm Shades
Henry Taylor Paints a Picture
YouTube: Henry Taylor Summer Works in Progress, Blues for Smoke, 2012 Henry Taylor - African American Artist Profile - W Magazine & New York Times

The Globe Shrinks, Barbara Kruger

"The Globe Shrinks, Barbara Kruger, a solo exhibition by American artist Barbara Kruger, features a new multi channel video installation, entitled The Globe Shrinks, 2010, that continues the artist’s engagement with the kindness and brutality of the everyday, the duet of images and text and the resonance of direct address. Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1945, Barbara Kruger began her career as an editorial designer, followed by a picture editor at Condè Nast Publications. She started making art in the early 1970s and gradually developed her unmistakable and unique formal language using a powerful combination of image and text."
From Designing Magazine Pages to Large-Scale Gallery Installations

2008 February: Barbara Kruger

Women in Punk

"Documentary covering the Women in Punk rock such as Siouxsie Sioux, Gaye Advert, Poly Styrene, The Slits etc."
YouTube: Punk girls documentary (part 1), (part 2)

Pleasures of the Harbor - Phil Ochs

Wikipedia - "Pleasures of the Harbor is Phil Ochs' fourth full-length album and his first for A&M Records, released in 1967. It is one of Ochs's most somber albums. In stark contrast to his three albums for Elektra Records which had all been basically folk music, Pleasures of the Harbor featured traces of classical, rock and roll, Dixieland jazz and experimental synthesized music crossing with folk, in hopes of producing a 'folk-pop' crossover."
Wikipedia
LINER NOTES FOR PHIL OCHS'S PLEASURES OF THE HARBOR
YouTube: Crucifixion (Live Stockholm 1969), Flower Lady, Pleasures of the Harbor (Live in Montreal 1966)

2008 September: Phil Ochs
2011 December: All the News That's Fit to Sing
2012 February: There but for Fortune

Rev. Utah Smith

"Utah Smith was born in 1906 in Cedar Grove, Louisiana, in the countryside outside of Shreveport. He was schooled to the third grade, then took a job as a water boy in the cotton fields before graduating to picking cotton. He later worked in a chicken plant plucking and cleaning chickens, a job he was fired from."
TheHoundBlog
Rev. Utah Smith
I Got Two Wings: Incidents and Anecdotes of the Two-Winged Preacher and Electric Guitar Evangelist
CaseQuarter (Video)
YouTube: Two Wings, #1, Glory to Jesus, I'm Free, Take A Trip, God's Mighty Hand, A New World In My View

Pulp-O-Mizer

"If you're reading this manual you have just purchased, borrowed, rented, leased, stolen, or otherwise acquired the Pulp-O-Mizer, the world's most advanced customizable pulp magazine cover generator. Cornelius Zappencackler, inventor of the PULP-O-MIZER. The advanced Pulp-O-Mizing technology behind this remarkable machine has been developed in the Derange-O-Lab of Professor Cornelius Zappencackler, inventor of the highly regarded Pulp Sci Fi Title-O-Tron, the Reciprocating Orbital Hedge Trimmer, the Absolutely Unstoppable Bog Stomper, and other devices too numerous or controversial for us to describe here."
Pulp-O-Mizer

Luddites

Wikipedia - "The Luddites were 19th-century English textile artisans who violently protested against the machinery introduced during the Industrial Revolution that made it possible to replace them with less-skilled, low-wage labourers, leaving them without work. Historian Eric Hobsbawm has called their machine wrecking 'collective bargaining by riot', which had been a tactic used in Britain since the Restoration, as the scattering of manufactories throughout the country made large-scale strikes impractical."
Wikipedia
W - Neo-Luddism
Is it O.K. to be a Luddite? - Thomas Pynchon
Smithsonian: What the Luddites Really Fought Against
Wired: Interview with the Luddite
YouTube: robots vs luddites 1 of 2, 2 of 2

"Dance Me To The End of Love" - Leonard Cohen

"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love"
YouTube: "Dance Me To The End of Love", "Dance Me To The End of Love" (Live)

2008 September: Leonard Cohen
2009 November: Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen
2011 June: I'm Your Man
2012 May: Old Ideas

Perhaps it's Rock A Shaka

"A couple of new Rock A Shacka Studio One 7″ vinyl re-issues are in the shops now and despite the premium price will be hard to ignore. A few years ago the people at Dub Store had a beef with the Rock A Shacka crew over their Studio One re-issues. Initially the accusation was that they were unauthorised whereas Rock A Shacka argued they were legitimately licensed from Clement Dodd Junior, this was a short while after Clement Jr had successfully challenged being written out of his fathers will in court in Jamaica. As Rock A Shacka Studio One 7″ reissues have continued at a slow but steady pace without further comment from Dub Store it seems clear that this particular argument has been settled."
Perhaps it's Rock A Shaka (Video)

Blue Note: Album Cover Art

"Smaller in trim size, greatly expanded in content, this compendium of Chronicles classic Blue Note books (50,000 copies sold) is now an appealingly chunky paperback. Blue Note remains one of the most influential jazz labels of all time, and its cover art is a virtual time-capsule of cool. Now comprehensive, Blue Note: Album Cover Art gathers nearly 400 of the legendary covers, spanning the 40s to the 70s, and features the greatest work of legendary Blue Note art director Reid Miles. Simple and sophisticated, moody and alluring, these covers continue to influence designers and excite jazz aficionados today. 'One glance,' as Esquire said of the original edition, 'and youll know where the essence of cool remains.'"
amazon: Blue Note: Album Cover Art
amazon: Blue Note: The Album Cover Art
Almost Blue — Album Covers Inspired By Blue Note Records
YouTube: Blue Note Album Cover Art: The Ultimate Collection

Evening Star (1975) - Robert Fripp and Brian Eno

Wikipedia - "Evening Star (1975) is an album by the British ambient musicians Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. The cover is a painting by the artist Peter Schmidt. The first three tracks are serene, gentle tape-looped guitar textures performed by Robert Fripp and accented with treatments, synthesizer and piano by Brian Eno. Track four, 'Wind on Wind', is an excerpt from Eno’s solo project Discreet Music, which was released after this album. Eno had originally intended Fripp to use the material which became Discreet Music as a backing tape to play over in improvised live performances. The second half of the album is a twenty-eight minute piece of drone music titled 'An Index of Metals', in which guitar notes are accumulated in a loop, with distortion increasing as the track progresses."
Wikipedia
The Quietus
YouTube: "Wind on Water", "Evening Star", "Evensong", "Wind on Wind", "An Index of Metals".
YouTube: Huddersfeild performance of "Evening Star."

Carol Tyler

Wikipedia - "Carol Tyler aka C. Tyler (born 1951) is an American painter, educator, comedian, and Eisner nominated cartoonist known for her autobiographical stories."
Wikipedia
Bloomerland
Fantagraphics: C. Tyler
An Interview With Carol Tyler

ULYSSES “SEEN” is moving to Dublin!

"It is true. We’re Dublinbound. When this website first began in 2009 all of us here at Throwaway Horse tried to envision it as a place where interested people could come to learn about and discuss the work of James Joyce through his novel ULYSSES. We set up a pretty large challenge for ourselves with the initial idea of adapting that novel into a comic with the hope that each page and panel could serve as a window into Joyce’s deeper mysteries and his world of Dublin on June 16th, 1904."
ULYSSES “SEEN” Blog

2010 March: Ulysses Seen

The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Features 17,000 Recordings

"A huge treasure trove of songs and interviews recorded by the legendary folklorist Alan Lomax from the 1940s into the 1990s have been digitized and made available online for free listening. The Association for Cultural Equity, a nonprofit organization founded by Lomax in the 1980s, has posted some 17,000 recordings."
Open Culture (Video)
npr: Alan Lomax's Massive Archive Goes Online (Video)
cultural equity
cultural equity: John Henry, Come Up, Horsey (Go To Sleep And Don't You Cry), In A Shanty In Old Shanty Town, Story of a slave who asked the devil to take his master

2008 August: Alan Lomax

Eden and John's East River String Band

Wikipedia - "Eden and John's East River String Band are a New York City based duo who play country blues from the 1920s and 1930s. The members are John Heneghan (guitar/mandolin/vocals) and Eden Brower (ukulele/vocals). They often have other musicians sit in with them including Dom Flemons of the Grammy Award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, Pat Conte of the Canebreak Rattlers and Otis Brothers, and Robert Crumb of The Cheap Suit Serenaders."
Wikipedia
Eden and John's East River String Band (Video)
The Modern Sounds of Antique Music
amazon: East River String Band
YouTube: Me And My Chauffeur, One Dime Blues, Allen Bros Rag, Robert Crumb & East River String Band, So Sorry Dear - East River String Band w/ R. Crumb, Rolling Log Blues, Future Blues, Beaver Slide Rag - R. Crumb East River String Band

Gorgeously Decomposed Film Frames from the 1900s

Clip #18088: Barbe bleu (Pathé, 1907)
"Sometimes decay can be as beautiful as perfection. At least that’s the feeling we get looking at these gorgeous 35mm nitrate film frame clippings from the Davide Turconi Project, which we spotted over at 50 Watts. According to Joshua Yumibe, who curated the selection, 'such frames make up a relatively small yet remarkable portion of the collection. As these shapes and hues have tragically faded in disintegrating emulsion, we are left with fragments that, through the workings of time, have transmuted into breathtaking images akin to abstract works of art.' Indeed, each of these images, already art in its own way, has become something mysterious and remarkable — a new life for an old story. After the jump, check out a few of our favorites, and then be sure to head over to 50 Watts to check out the rest of the collection."
Flavorwire
50watts: Nitrate-Nocturne
50watts: Nitrate Nocturne 2
Il progetto Turconi

Anselm Hollo

Wikipedia - "Anselm Paul Alexis Hollo (April 12, 1934 – January 29, 2013) was a Finnish poet and translator. He lived in the United States from 1967 until his death in January of 2013. ... Hollo published more than forty titles of poetry in the UK and in the US, in a style strongly influenced by the American beat poets. In 1965, Hollo performed at the 'underground' International Poetry Incarnation, London. In 2001, poets and critics associated with the SUNY Buffalo POETICS list elected Hollo to the honorary position of 'anti-laureate', in protest at the appointment of Billy Collins to the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Hollo translated poetry and belles-lettres from Finnish, German, Swedish and French into English. He was one of the early translators of Allen Ginsberg into German and Finnish."
Wikipedia
People Who Died: Anselm Hollo 1934-2013
Poetry, Poems, Bios & More
PennSound: Anselm Hollo
Jacket2: Anselm Hollo (1934-2013)
YouTube: A joyful summit of old savages. "On a traditionally wet and rainy wednesday night in London, on April 18th 2012, one of the most remarkable poetry readings in recent memory saw Andrei Codrescu, Gunnar Harding, Anselm Hollo and Tom Raworth perform excerpts from their work at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury."

Stinkfish New Street Pieces In Uyuni, Bolivia

"Stinkfish and his friend ZAS recently travelled through Bolivia where they dropped a series of new pieces at a train cemetery in Uyuni, Southern Bolivia. The first piece is based on a portrait from 1979 of one of the greatest Mexican photographer: Graciela Iturbide."
StreetArtNews

Hoodie

Wikipedia - "A hoodie (also called a hooded sweatshirt or hoody) is a sweatshirt with a hood. They often include a muff sewn onto the lower front, a hood, and (usually) a drawstring to adjust the hood opening, and may have a vertical zipper down the center similar to a windbreaker style jacket. The garment's style and form can be traced back to Medieval Europe when the formal wear for monks included a long, decorative hood called cowl worn a tunic or robes. The hooded sweatshirt was first produced in the United States starting in the 1930s. The modern clothing style was first produced by Champion in the 1930s and marketed to laborers working who endured freezing temperatures while working in upstate New York. The term hoodie entered popular usage in the 1990s."
Wikipedia
Rolling Stone
Players Flout the NBA's Hoodie Ban to Stand Up for Travyon Martin

Marianne Faithfull - Broken English: Deluxe Edition

"... That's the thing about pretty faces. We'd much prefer to watch them wilt. We don't expect them to belong to the fighters-- the junkies and monks and cockroaches who'll survive every atomic bomb and suicide attempt and outlive us all. And we definitely don't expect them to make songs as gnarled and candid as the ones on Faithfull's finest record, Broken English, but there you go: the best records are all, in some way or another, the ones that blow a mouthful of smoke in the face of expectation. The world that thought it had tsk-tsked Miss X into submission was probably not ready for Broken English in 1979, and even today as it's released in a deluxe edition, it's still raw enough to make you squirm-- the cracked, undead voice of a woman back from exile to make a record about the simple audacity of staying alive."
Pitchfork
amazon - Broken English: Deluxe Edition
Glasswerk
YouTube: Broken English 1979, Broken English (acoustic) 2011, Working Class Hero, The Ballad of Lucy Jordan, Why d'ya do it 2004, Witches' song, Brain Drain, Guilt (Live on Sunday Night 1988), What's The Hurry?

2010 November: Marianne Faithfull

Back on the Shelf: At the Seminary Co-op

"Nostalgia is a dangerous feeling to indulge. It transforms other people, including old versions of one’s self, into figures whose lone purpose is to lend texture and credence to a diorama of the past. And just as an elementary-school diorama of, say, a Roman frontier fortress, no matter how meticulously researched and constructed, can never convey the totality of what it would have been like to stand sentry in Germania circa 70 A.D., so the version of the past constructed by nostalgia is a distortion, albeit one that relies upon memory (itself a kind of distortion, as neuroscience tells us) and experience to weave what is in essence a fairy tale."
The Paris Review
Seminary Co-op Bookstore - Chicago Theological Seminary (vimeo: Co-op Tour)
Seminary Co-op Bookstore

The Real George Orwell

"Of course there is no real George Orwell – it was the pen name of Eric Blair – but he was a writer and political commentator who is very hard to pin down. Ever since his early death in 1950, he has been at one and the same time the darling of some on both the left and the right of British politics - whilst being reviled by others. For all the beautiful simplicity of his writing and storytelling Orwell/Blair is a complex mass of confusions – an anti-establishment, pro-English, ex-Etonian ex-policeman and socialist, who was ardently anti-authoritarian. He was as anti-fascist as he was anti-communist, a former Spanish Civil War soldier who was anti-war but pro the Second World War, and so on and so on."
BBC - The Real George Orwell (Video)
George Orwell at the BBC
YouTube: The Real George Orwell (1/6), (2/6), (3/6), (4/6), (5/6), (6/6)
W - George Orwell

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July
2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London
2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)

Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown

"If you had to pick one album that best represents the pinnacle of the art of dub, you'd cull the candidates down pretty quickly to ten or 12, and it would get very difficult after that. Few would fault you for ending up with this one, though, which stands as perhaps the finest collaboration between two of instrumental reggae's leading lights: producer and melodica player Augustus Pablo and legendary dub pioneer King Tubby. Among other gems, this album offers its title track -- a dub version of Jacob Miller's 'Baby I Love You So' -- which is widely regarded as the finest example of dub ever recorded. But the rest of the album is hardly less impressive."
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: 01 - keep on dubbing - 02 - stop them jah 03 - young generation dub 04 - each one dub 05 - 555 dub street 06 - brace's tower dub 07 - king tubby meets rockers uptown 08 - Brace's Tower Dub No. 2 09 - corner crew dub 10 - Skanking Dub 11 - frozen dub 12 - satta dub 13 - black gunn 14 - 1 ruthland close 15 - 1-2-3 version 16 - silent satta

Please Feed The Meters: The Next Parking Revolution

"There’s plenty to hate about driving—traffic jams, car accidents, speeding tickets—not to mention the endless headache of finding a spot to park. So what if you discovered an invention that could wean us from our vehicles, combating suburban sprawl and making city streets less dangerous, congested, and polluted? Well, that device has been around for nearly 80 years: It’s called the parking meter. Contrary to popular belief, the parking meter was originally designed to keep traffic moving and make more spaces available for shoppers, a measure often lauded by local businesses as much as the public who paid their hourly rates."
Collectors Weekly
W - Parking meter

The American Circus

"The circus is a source of nostalgia for Americans of all ages, either from memories of attending P. T. Barnum's 'Greatest Show on Earth,' or through the colorful evocations in many movies, television programs, and books. Interest in the circus phenomenon is unflagging, yet there have been few publications that look closely at how the circus's European origins were refashioned for an American audience. Lavishly illustrated and carefully researched, this volume explores how American culture, values, demography, and business practices altered the fundamental nature of the European circus, and how, by the end of the 19th century, they had transformed it into a distinctly American pastime."
Yale
Huffington Post (Photos)
Yale: Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010
History Extra: The American circus (Photos)

Bookbinding

Wikipedia - "Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching a book cover to the resulting text-block. There is no way to be certain where book crafting originated; it was an evolving art encompassing techniques from a variety of cultures and civilizations."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Bookbinding
Google

Patti Smith - Hey Joe / Piss Factory (1974)

"Patti Smith released a cover of the song as the A-side of her first single, 'Hey Joe' b/w 'Piss Factory', in 1974. The arrangement of Smith's version is based on a recording by blues guitarist Roy Buchanan that was released the previous year (and dedicated to Hendrix). Smith's version is unique in that she includes a brief and salacious monologue about fugitive heiress Patty Hearst and her kidnapping and participation with the Symbionese Liberation Army. Smith's version portrays Patty Hearst as Joe with a 'gun in her hand'. Tom Verlaine on lead guitar. 'Piss Factory' is a protopunk song written by Patti Smith and Richard Sohl, and released as a B-side on Smith's debut single 'Hey Joe' in 1974."
popsike
Daily Motion: Hey Joe (Video - 1976)
YouTube: Piss Factory

Hannah Williams & The Tastemakers

"Funky sounds have taken us by storm the past weeks and months with a constant flow of outstanding releases from Dojo Cuts, the Hannah Williams & The Tastemakers Souljazz Orchestra, Antibalas, Elikeh and even bass-driven glitch-hop producers like Opiuo and KOAN Sound. However, more than anyone on the list Hannah Williams & The Tastemakers dive far back into the history of the genre to craft new, irresistible tunes. Here it is slow, brutish soul that overpowers and considering Hannah’s impressive, hoarse, earth-shuttering vocals that is not a bad thing at all, even for skank-rhythm junkies like us."
Freegan kolektiva (Video)
amazon: Hannah Williams & the Tastemakers
YouTube: I'm A Good Woman, Work it out, Don't Tell Me, Deep Fried Funk Computer, I've Been Waiting

Allan Kaprow

Wikipedia - "Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the 'Environment' and 'Happening' in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years. Eventually Kaprow shifted his practice into what he called 'Activities', intimately scaled pieces for one or several players, devoted to the study of normal human activity in a way congruent to ordinary life. Fluxus, Performance art, and Installation art was, in turn, influenced by his work."
Wikipedia
Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) - The Brooklyn Rail
MoCA: Allan Kaprow–Art as Life
FLUXLIST
frieze: Allan Kaprow
How to Make a Happening
YouTube: Allan Kaprow at Zwirner & Wirth, NYC (Sept 2009), Fluids: A Happening by Alan Kaprow's, Interacting in Allan Kaprow´s Vacuum Cleaner Fluxus Happening Space. 2010, Allan Kaprow, Meters (1972/2007) Version by Nina Langensand