Captain Beefheart - This Is The Day (1974-Old Grey Whistle Test)

"Don Van Vliet (born as Don Glen Vliet, January 15, 1941 – died December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12 studio albums. Noted for his powerful singing voice with its wide range, Van Vliet also played the harmonica, saxophone and numerous other wind instruments. His music blended rock, blues and psychedelia with free jazz, avant-garde and contemporary experimental composition. Beefheart was also known for exercising an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians, and for often constructing myths about his life."
vimeo: This Is The Day

2009 October: Captain Beefheart, 2009 December: Anton Corbijn, 2010 December: Captain Beefheart, Art-Rock Visionary, Dead At 69, 2011 October: Interview with Captain Beefheart.

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

"CNN's highly-rated new original series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown garners four Primetime Emmy Award nominations in it's inaugural season, and marks the first time CNN has been honored with a Primetime Emmy nod. The one-hour weekend lifestyle series follows host Anthony Bourdain—world-renowned chef, bestselling author and Emmy winning television personality—as he travels across the globe to uncover little-known areas of the world and celebrate diverse cultures by exploring food and dining rituals."
Zap2it
Wikipedia
CNN: Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Video)

Protosapien Street Art Animation

"We're loving this clever street art animation sent to us from Adam Brock Ciresi in Portland, Oregon. This video took Adam about 8 months to create as he wheat pasted each frame all over the city."
Wooster Collective (Video)

Donna Dennis: Coney Night Maze

Coney Night Maze, 1997-2009 (detail), Mixed Media.
"One of the most popular New York City icons is the Coney Island Cyclone, a 1927 landmark wooden roller coaster, whose jack-knife turns and precipitous drops have thrilled hundreds of thousands of visitors since it opened in 1927. It also is the inspiration for Coney Night Maze, a monumental sculptural installation by artist Donna Dennis that will be presented to the public for the first time at the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, from June 7 through October 13, 2013."
Neuberger Museum of Art
NY Times: Under a Coaster, a Dream, or Maybe a Nightmare

William Kentridge: Stereoscope (1999)

"The filmed drawings, or drawn films, of William Kentridge inhabit a curious state of suspension between static to time-based, from stillness to movement. These 'drawings in motion' undergo constant change and constant redefinition, while the projection of their luscious charcoal surfaces somehow retains an almost tangible tactility. Smoky grounds and rough-hewn marks morph into an incessant, though not seamless, flow of free association that evokes the fleeting hypnagogic images that precede sleep. Bodies melt into landscape; a cat turns into a typewriter, into a reel-to-reel recorder, into a bomb; full becomes void with the sweep of a sleeve. The allure of Kentridge's animations lies in their unequivocal reliance on the continuing present, in the uncanny sense of artistic creation and audience reception happening at once."
Lilian Tone
UbuWeb (Video)

2009 November: William Kentridge, 2011 April: The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art.

Fela Kuti & Africa 70 - V.I.P. / Authority Stealing (Berlin 1978)

"Another duo of albums on MCA's recollection of Fela Kuti's various landmarks. This double album really consists of two songs -- lengthy ones, as they tend to be anyway. The first half of the CD consists of a live performance from Berlin in 1979, V.I.P.. The rest of the concert that it was taken from was never released. This concert was important in its own right, as Fela was finally able to perform after being banned (officially or unofficially) from performing in a number of African nations due to his inflammatory lyrics."
allmusic
YouTube: V.I.P (Part 1), (Part 2), Authority Stealing (Part 1), (Part 2)

Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History

Perils of the Sea, 1881
"Winslow Homer: Making Art, Making History, an innovative exhibition of work by the nineteenth-century American artist, is the largest display from the Clark's extensive holdings in decades. While the objects on view encourage wonder at Homer's aesthetic achievement, the breadth of the collection also allows questions to be asked about relations among the works themselves, their place in the art world of the nineteenth century, and the role they play in helping us understand their era. The exhibition offers insights into the artist's achievement, raises questions about the variable nature of history, and documents the collection's own institutional past."
The Clark
NYT: When Reality Triumphed Over Transcendence
YouTube: West Point, Prout's Neck, 1900. Eastern Point, 1900; Undertow, 1886; Saco Bay; Sleigh Ride, 1890-95; The Bridle Path, White Mountains, 1868: Summer Squall, 1904; Playing a Fish, 1875-95; Two Guides, 1877; Farmyard Scene, c. 1874; An October Day, 1889; Perils of the Sea, 1888; Lemon, 1876; The Eagle's Nest, 1902; Schooner at Anchor, 1884; "Snap-the-Whip", 1873.

Jamel Shabazz

"Jamel Shabazz has been documenting the ‘Urban Life’ for over 30 years. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY he picked up his first camera at the age of 15 and proceeded to record the world around him. Jamel has drawn inspiration from the great James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Robert Capa, Chester Higgins and Eli Reed."
Jamel Shabazz
Wikipedia
NYT: Through the Lens of Jamel Shabazz
amazon

Brooklyn a Bogotá

"Limited Edition Tour Release that was pressed up for Greenwood Rhythm Coalition’s appearance in Colombia December 2012. Hand-numbered and silk screened in Brooklyn. Only 145 made. Features the unreleased and alternate horn version of GRC’s Traicion (a different mix from the Digital Download) and the previously unreleased Jaley Jaley by Frente Cumbiero."
Discogs
YouTube: Greenwood Rhythm Coalition - Traición, Frente Cumbiero - Jaley-Jaley, Frente Cumbiero - Explosión de Vinilos en la RompeCadera Vol 2

One Mile Film by Jennifer West

"... Jennifer West is known for using unusual materials to alter her films, drawings, and collages. She has used coal-tar dye, eyeliner, whiskey, hot sauce, deodorant, and even skateboard wheels. For the High Line, West will stage a public performance by taping a one-mile-long 35mm filmstrip to the High Line pathway for one day during park hours. The thousands of visitors to the High Line that day will be invited to leave their mark on the filmstrip with their shoes, heels, and hand prints to etch the film with the walkway’s many surfaces. Visitors are encouraged to wear stilettos, tennis shoes, combat boots, bare feet, or other shoes that to significantly alter the film. After the performance, the filmstrip will be treated with related materials and actions, a signature of West's work."
Highline
W - Jennifer West
Jennifer West
vimeo: One Mile Film by Jennifer West, 2012

The Making of a Counter Culture - Theodore Roszak

Wikipedia - "The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition is a work of non-fiction by Theodore Roszak originally published in 1969. ... The Making of a Counter Culture 'captured a huge audience of Vietnam War protesters, dropouts, and rebels - and their baffled elders. Theodore Roszak found common ground between 1960s student radicals and hippie dropouts in their mutual rejection of what he calls the technocracy - the regime of corporate and technological expertise that dominates industrial society. He traces the intellectual underpinnings of the two groups in the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Norman O. Brown, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Goodman.'"
Wikipedia
W - Theodore Roszak
International Socialism, November/December 1970
amazon: Theodore Roszak

Grrrl, Collected

"A few years ago, I started a collection at NYU’s Fales Library & Special Collections to document the feminist Riot Grrrl movement in its formative and most active years, from 1989 to 1997. Originally a reaction against the failures of punk to extend its DIY model of empowerment to women, Riot Grrrl encouraged young women to form their own bands, self-publish personal stories and revolutionary agendas in zines, and carve out safe spaces in a violent, misogynist culture. Riot Grrrl was not a centralized movement, and many of the donors to the collection never called themselves 'riot grrrls.' I never did, even though I went to the shows, read the zines, and identified as a punk and a feminist."
The Paris Review
The Fales Library & Special Collections
amazon: The Riot Grrrl Collection
LA Times: 'The Riot Grrrl Collection' spreads girl germs of the '90s movement

2009 November: Riot Grrrl

Lou Harrison: A World of Music

"An exquisitely crafted, in-depth and deeply moving look at the life and work of a great composer ~ created with footage collected for over two decades by documentary filmmaker/music producer Eva Soltes, who was closely associated with Lou Harrison during his lifetime."
vimeo: Lou Harrison: A World of Music
REDCAT
Documentary film gives Lou Harrison his due
Lou Harrison : Documentary Project

2008 September: Lou Harrison, 2012 January: Music from Canticle No. 3.

Art Bears - Coda To "Man & Boy"

"This track arguably features Fred Frith's most stunning attempt at reinventing the guitar. If more people would look at the instrument in a similar way- 'Why not try and play the guitar like it's a tuba and see what happens?'- the ol' fascist-killing machine might still have some life in it yet! Still...I do kind of miss Dagmar Krause's always devastating vocal histrionics. From discogs: 'Recorded live at Cantu, N. Italy on cassettedeck, 2 mikes. One-sided 7" on clear vinyl, other side is printed in silver."
YouTube: Coda To "Man & Boy"

2010 February: Art Bears, 2012 July: The Art Box.

The Legend of Rita - Volker Schlondorff (2001), Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies

Wikipedia - "Die Stille nach dem Schuß or The Silence after the Shot is a 2000 German film that was released in English as The Legend of Rita (the website IMDB calls this choice of title translation 'unfortunate'). It is an account of fictionalised exiled West German radical left Red Army Faction members, though the fictional characters all have close parallels to several real-life RAF members. After a brief overview of the initial bank robberies of the 2nd of June Movement with the distribution of chocolate kisses as well as a disastrous prison break at the Westberliner Prison, the group flees, via the Friedrichstraße train station, into the German Democratic Republic."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies
YouTube: The Legend of Rita (Trailer)
YouTube: The Legend of Rita 1:37:47

Alexander Trocchi

Wikipedia - "Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi (30 July 1925 – 15 April 1984) was a Scottish novelist. Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to relocate to continental Europe. In the early 1950s, he lived in Paris and edited the literary magazine Merlin, which published Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Logue, and Pablo Neruda, amongst others."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Mean streets
Walk On Gilded Splinters: In Memorandun To Memory 13 April 1969.
A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds - Alexander Trocchi
sigma: A Tactical Blueprint - Alexander Trocchi
Alex Trocchi In Conversation With Allen Ginsberg, November 8 l979, London - Part 1, Part 2
YouTube: A Life in Pieces - Part 1/2, Part 2/2

Flash Light - Tom Verlaine (1987)

"With this release, Tom Verlaine comes full circle to the style of his initial solo album. This great platter has an energized, mostly no-nonsense feel to it that is extremely appealing. Production is meticulous, if not normally showy as on his previous album, Cover. Flash Light is chock-full of rocking numbers of all kinds, ranging from straight-ahead, meat-and-potatoes types ('Cry Mercy, Judge' and 'Say a Prayer'), to the quirkier 'Bomb' and 'Annie's Tellin' Me,' to the walloping big beat of 'A Town Called Walker,' 'The Funniest Thing' and 'One Time at Sundown' are earnest mid-tempo selections that in places suggest Dire Straits."
allmusic
W - Flash Light
The Wonder
Part One of The Interview with S.R.P.
YouTube: Bomb, A Town Called Walker, At 4 a.m., Song, Annie's Tellin' Me, The Scientist Writes A Letter, The Funniest Thing

2007 November: Tom Verlaine, 2010 March: Tom Verlaine - 1, 2011 October: Warm and Cool, 2012 Nov: Little Johnny Jewel, 2012 December: Words from the Front

Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles

"Till the age of 40, Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was a composer and music critic, composing for Broadway musicals, Hollywood movie scores, incidental music for ballet. He once aknowledged to be a composer of ‘hotel music’, though his serious music calls to mind that of Copland, Virgil Thomson, Francis Poulenc or Satie. It is actually when he get tired of writing easy music that he turned to writing literature."
UbuWeb (Sound)

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996).

LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital

"LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital uses social documentary and portraiture to create a personal visual history of an industrial town’s decline. Through approximately 40 photographic works of her family and their hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier offers an intimate exploration of the effects of deindustrialization on the lives of individuals and communities. Home to one of America’s first steel mills, Braddock now has a population below 2,500 and has been declared a 'distressed municipality'."
Brooklyn Museum
Art In America - Haunted: Q&A with LaToya Ruby Frazier
NY Times: The Flesh and the Asphalt, Both Weak
Guernica - Kirsten O’Regan: These Dark Histories

Wooden Joe Nicholas

"Wooden Joe Nicholas was one of the more primitive trumpeters to record in New Orleans. He was perhaps most notable in his early days for his very loud volume and for his endurance, important assets for brassmen at parades. By the time Nicholas (the uncle of clarinetist Albert Nicholas) got on records, he gave the impression of being much older than he actually was, and he was clearly past his prime. Early on he played clarinet and throughout his career he occasionally doubled on that instrument. Nicholas was quite familiar with Buddy Bolden, although he did not switch to cornet until he played with King Oliver in 1915."
allmusic
W - Wooden Joe Nicholas
YouTube: Eh La Bas (Original Artesian Hall Version), Up Jumped The Devil, St Louis Blues, All The Whores (go crazy 'bout the way I ride), The Lord Will Make A Way (Ann Cook), Lead Me On

2011 July: The Cradle Is Rocking

Raymond Chandler

Wikipedia - "Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker)."
Wikipedia
The Raymond Chandler Web Site
NY Times: Raymond Chandler
amazon: Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler on Writing
Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"(1950)

Bob Dylan ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ | Classic Tracks

"... Then, after the musicians were woken up just before four in the morning of the 16th, they recorded three takes of ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’, the first of which ended up on the album. Indeed, if ever there was an opportunity for them to familiarise themselves and get to grips with the main man’s improvisational approach, this was it. A soulful, 11-minute, 23-second ode to Dylan’s then-new wife, former Playboy Bunny Sarah Lowndes, ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ was set apart from the rest of the often-witty yet acerbic Blonde On Blonde by occupying the double album’s entire fourth side. Diving headlong into surreal imagery, the track features its author at his poetic peak as, playing harmonica and acoustic guitar to the band’s traditional, loping 6/8 waltz arrangement, he nonchalantly sings about your childhood flames on your midnight rug, and your Spanish manners and your mother’s drugs, and your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs...."
SOS
W - Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
allmusic
Bob Dylan Song #81: Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
vimeo: Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

2010 August: Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Gramsci Monument

"This year’s most captivating new art work—Thomas Hirschhorn’s summerlong 'Gramsci Monument,' an installation at a city housing project in the South Bronx—excites so many thoughts that you may, as I did, want help thinking them. Start with the artist. Hirschhorn, fifty-six, a rangy and intense Swiss, is on hand all day, every day, at his tree-house-like village of purpose-built shacks, set on open land amid the brick towers of the Forest Houses, which are home to thirty-four hundred people."
New Yorker: House Philosopher by Peter Schjeldahl
W - Antonio Gramsci
NYT: A Summer Place in the South Bronx
Gramsci Monument
Dia Art Foundation
Art Observed
YouTube: The Gramsci Monument, Gramsci Monument

Motor City's Burning - Detroit from Motown to the Stooges

"Documentary looking at how Detroit became home to a musical revolution that captured the sound of a nation in upheaval. In the early 60s, Motown transcended Detroit's inner city to take black music to a white audience, whilst in the late 60s suburban kids like the MC5 and the Stooges descended into the black inner city to create revolutionary rock expressing the rage of young white America."
YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Strand Bookstore

Wikipedia - "The Strand Bookstore is an independent bookstore located at 828 Broadway, at the corner of East 12th Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, two blocks south of Union Square. In addition to the main location, the store's Central Park kiosk is open on fair weather days at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 60th Street."
Wikipedia
Strand Bookstore
Celebrating The Strand Book Store
NY Times: At Home With Millions of Books
YouTube: Book Row: The history of the Strand Bookstore with Fran Lebowitz

White Chalk - PJ Harvey (2007)

"The quiet ones are always the scariest. Polly Jean Harvey's appearance on the cover of White Chalk -- all wild black hair and ghostly white dress -- could replace the dictionary definition of eerie, and the album itself plays like a good ghost story. ... White Chalk is Harvey's darkest album yet -- which, considering that she's sung about dismembering a lover and drowning her daughter, is saying something. It's also one of her most beautiful albums, inspired by the fragility and timelessness of chalk lines and her relative newness to the piano, which dominates White Chalk; it gives 'Before Departure' funereal heft and 'Grow Grow Grow' a witchy sparkle befitting its incantations. Most striking of all, however, is Harvey's voice: she sings most of White Chalk in a high, keening voice somewhere between a whisper and a whimper."
allmusic
Wikipedia
Dailymotion: When under ether & The piano, White Chalk, Grow grow grow and Silence, The Mountain
YouTube: The Piano, Silence

2009 November: PJ Harvey, 2011 May: Let England Shake, 2013 May: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.

Geeshie Wiley

Wikipedia - "Geeshie Wiley (sometimes rendered as Geechie Wiley) was an American female blues singer and guitar player. She recorded three records in the early 1930s. There are no known photographs or images of the artist in existence. Ishman Bracey (whose testimony may not be reliable) stated Wiley hailed from Natchez, Mississippi, and was romantically linked to Papa Charlie McCoy. It is thought that in the 1920s she worked in a medicine show in Jackson, Mississippi. Some evidence suggests that Wiley may have married Casey Bill Weldon following his divorce from Memphis Minnie."
Wikipedia
Illustrated Geeshie Wiley discography
YouTube: Last Kind Words Lyrics, Skinny leg blues, Eagles On A Half

Hands Over the City - Francesco Rosi (1963)

Wikipedia - "Hands Over the City (Italian: Le mani sulla città) is a 1963 drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It is a story of political corruption in post-World War II Italy. A ruthless Neapolitan land developer and elected city councilman, Edoardo Nottola (Rod Steiger), manages to use political power to make personal profit in a large scale suburban real estate deal. However, after the collapse of a residential building, the Communist councilman Da Vita initiates an inquiry on Nottola's possible connection to the accident."
Wikipedia
Slant Magazine
Contact Music
amazon
YouTube: Hands Over the City, The Limits Of Our Investigation

In Fairfield Porter / James Schuyler country: Penobscot Bay, Maine

 Fairfield Porter, Penobscot Bay with Peak Island, 1966
"I’m currently on vacation on the coast of Maine, an area I’ve read a lot about — especially in relation to Fairfield Porter and James Schuyler — but never visited before. In Camden yesterday, from the top of Mount Battie, I saw the whole sweep of Penobscot Bay and caught a glimpse of Great Spruce Head Island in the distance, the island owned by the Porter family, where Schuyler spent so many summers living with Fairfield and his wife and kids, and where Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and other poets came for extended visits. You might say that Great Spruce Head Island is the northernmost outpost of the New York School."
Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets

2008 May: Fairfield Porter, 2010 June: Fairfield Porter - 1, 2011 August: "Respect For Things As They Are" - by John Ashbery, 2013 March: "The Great Spruce" by Alex Carnelevale. 2008 January: James Schuyler, 2009 October: James Schuyler: Six New Recordings Added, 2011 March: Broadway: A Poets and Painters Anthology, 2011 December: An Anthology of New York Poets, 2012 July: A Schuyler of urgent concern.

Fred Frith / Joey Baron - Klub "Mózg" Bydgoszcz, Poland (2006)

"01. Fred Frith Solo Concert. 02. Interview with Frith. 03. Interview with Baron. 04. Joey Baron Solo Concert.
YouTube: Klub "Mózg" Bydgoszcz, 47:25