The Books We’ve Lost - Charles Simic

Browsing on Charing Cross Road, London
"Used-book stores are disappearing in our day at an even greater rate than regular book stores. Until ten years ago or so, there used to be a good number of them in every city and even in some smaller towns, catering to a clientele of book lovers who paid them a visit in search of some rare or out-of-print book, or merely to pass the time poking around. Even in their heyday, how their owners made a living was always a puzzle to me, since typically their infrequent customers bought nothing, or very little, and when they did, their purchase didn’t amount to more than a few dollars."
The New York Review of Books

The Revolution of St. Vincent

"Record Kicks has released a monster reissue of a Tropical Funk Holy Grail with The Revolution of St. Vincent’s 'The Little You Say'. This 45, originally on the Wirl label has been coveted and sought after by Funk vinyl collectors for some time. Hailing from the island of St. Vincent and founded by Harold 'Ploomie' Lewis in the early 1970′s, this side has been in demand by many collectors and usually carries a very high price tag. With an island heavy vibe, this organ and horn stomper will not disappoint."
Flea Market Funk (Video)
YouTube: The Little You Say, Discoringue

Essence - Lucinda Williams (2001)

"Between her well-documented determination to retail full control of her music and the plain-spoken willfulness of her best-known songs, Lucinda Williams is practically the working definition of a strong woman you do not want to mess with, but she reveals a very different side of her musical personality on her sixth album, Essence. Subtle and often stark, Essence is an unusually quiet and frequently downbeat set that depicts a fragile emotional vulnerability which rarely makes its presence felt in Williams' music; there's an unadorned longing in songs like 'Blue' and 'Lonely Girls' that's new and deeply affecting, and the leaf-in-the-breeze quaver of Williams' voice on 'I Envy the Wind' is as heart-rending as anything she's ever committed to tape."
allmusic
W - Essence
The Graham Weekly Album Review #1242
YouTube: Essence, Out of touch, Blue, Reason to Cry, Get right with God, Steal your love, Lonely Girl

2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks", 2013 June: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

The Black Mountain Review

"First impressions. Some people take their cue from a handshake, the eyes, a bank statement, or the shine of one’s shoes. I make a beeline for the bookshelves. Forget reading palms. One’s library is a window into one’s soul. Go through my books and I stand naked before you. So I was excited to get a series of e-mails from Steve Clay of Granary Books attaching selections from the library of Robert Creeley. The institutions had first crack at the lot and, if there were no takers, the doors were thrown open to the collectors."
RealityStudio
W - Black Mountain poets
Poetry Foundation: "Projective Verse" (1950) by Charles Olson
MimeoMimeo
YouTube: The Rise of The Black Mountain Review

Pina Bausch - Ahnen (1988)

"One of the world's most influential choreographers, she is based in an obscure German town where her avant garde, often violent, work attracted furious hostility. Her own company rebelled over her methods but more recently, after she overcame personal tragedy, critics have noted a lighter touch. John O'Mahony reports."
Guardian
Ahnen (1988)
Ursula Kaufmann
Bettina Stöß Photographie

2008 May: Pina Bausch, 2009 June: Pina Bausch 1940-2009, 2012 August: Pina Bausch Costumes.

Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles

"Paintings in Proust is a companion guide to a monumental twentieth century work of art. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, one of the most expansive literary creations ever composed, is a vast novel teeming with visual references. Author Eric Karpeles has combined his experiences as painter and writer to create a lavishly illustrated book that illuminates the winding corridors of Proust's singular, labyrinthine masterpiece. For newcomers to Proust's work, Paintings in Proust functions as a complementary guidebook, providing a firmer ground from which to undertake the task of plunging into a novel famously known for its complexity and its length."
Paintings in Proust
Telegraph
amazon
vimeo: Radio Proust

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust.

Indonesian gamelan medley from Java, Sunda and Bali

"Indonesian Gamelan Medley from Java, Sunda and Bali performed by Amadinda Percussion Group, Triginta Percussion, Péter Szalai and László Tömösközi (2008).
YouTube: Indonesian Gamelan Medley from Java, Sunda and Bali

2009 October: Electric Junkyard Gamelan, 2011 March: Gamelan, 2011 June: Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson - Trance and Dance in Bali, 2011 June: Gamelan gong kebyar, 2012 March: Joko Sutrisno & Group.

The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village

"Prepare yourself for a great walking tour of Greenwich Village through historical periods and many changing landscape. Wear good shoes and bring a camera, for the book is almost exhausting in its coverage. Also bring a good map, as the author and editors provide none and surprisingly too few historical photographs. The first thing to do is Google a good map and print it, for John Strausbaugh refers to streets and locations on every page. For images he substitutes his detailed and comprehensive historical research of the place and its personalities enhanced by his storytelling ability and some beautifully descriptive detail, as in..."
New York Journal of Books
Pinterest
Untapped Cities
WSJ: When the Village Was the Vanguard
amazon
YouTube: Author Traces History of Greenwich Village

2009 May: Washington Square Park, 2010 January: Judson Memorial Church, 2011 February: Greenwich Village, 2011 July: East Village, Manhattan, 2011 September: The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920–1925, 2012 July: MacDougal Street.

March 16–20, 1992 - Uncle Tupelo

"Produced by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, March 16-20, 1992 represents Uncle Tupelo's full evolution into a true country unit; with the exception of the eerie squalls of guitar feedback which haunt Jeff Tweedy's mesmerizing 'Wait Up,' there's virtually no evidence of the trio's punk heritage. Instead, the all-acoustic album -- a combination of Tupelo originals and well-chosen traditional songs -- taps into the very essence of backwoods culture, its music rooted in the darkest corners of Appalachian life. An inescapable sense of dread grips this collection, from the large-scale threat depicted in the stunning rendition of the Louvin Brothers' 'The Great Atomic Power' to the fatalism of the worker anthems 'Grindstone' and 'Coalminers'; even the character studies, including a revelatory 'Moonshiner,' are relentlessly grim. A vivid glimpse at the harsh realities of rural existence, March 16-20, 1992 is a brilliant resurrection of a bygone era of American folk artistry."
allmusic
Wikipedia
YouTube: Grindstone, Coalminers, Wait Up, The Great Atomic Power, Moonshiner, Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down, Black eye, I Wish My Baby Was Born, Shaky Ground

2011 July: Uncle Tupelo, 2012 December: UNCLE TUPELO Part – Thoughts On An Artist / Looking For A Way Out,

Daft Punk "Lose Yourself To Dance" AKA Daft Signz

"Every wednesday at a suburban Los Angeles park in North Hollywood, a group of talented individuals come together to create a form of self-expression you may have never experienced before: a mind-blowing synthesis of sign spinning and street dance. Daft Signz celebrates this California-born phenomenon."
vimeo: Daft Punk "Lose Yourself To Dance" AKA Daft Signz

Snap Noir: Snapshot Stories from the Collection of Robert E. Jackson

"A total of 61 black and white photographs, framed in white/black and matted, and hung against grey and white walls in the main rooms of the gallery. All of the photographs are vintage gelatin silver prints, made by unknown photographers from generally undated negatives. The prints are arranged into groups ranging in size from 4 to 21 prints. All of the prints come from the collection of Robert E. Jackson. There is no photography allowed in the gallery, so the installation shots at right are via the Pace/MacGill website."
DLK COLLECTION
NPR: Photography Phone Call: Are Snapshots Dead? (vimeo)

DJ Kool Herc - 11 August, 1973

Wikipedia - "Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), also known as Kool Herc, DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Herc, is a Jamaican-born American DJ who is credited with originating hip hop music in the early 1970s in The Bronx, New York City. His playing of hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s. Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record, which emphasized the drum beat—the 'break'—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two turntable set-up of disco DJs, Campbell used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music."
Wikipedia
Kool Herc: We are Still Here on the Block as Hip Hop Turns 40 This Weekend (Video)
New York: 40th anniversary - The Holy House of Hip-hop
BBC: 40 years on from the party where hip hop was born
amazon: Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
YouTube: Kool Herc "Merry-Go-Round" technique, Kool Herc Old School

2010 May: Kon + Amir Present: The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Samples Of All Time, 2011 July:The Wheels Of Steel: An Ode To Turntables, 2012 April: B-boying, 2012 August: ‘Hip Hop Family Tree’ Comics Explain Genesis of the Genre, 2012 November: An Intro To Rebel Hip-Hop Of The Arab Revolutions, 2012 November: Cuba Hip Hop.

Art Made from Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed

"They stalk books with X-Acto knives, tiny sandblasters, glue, paint, scissor, and a shared obsession for giving new form to old things. The resulting sculptures, as pictured in the upcoming Art Made From Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved and Transformed (Chronicle Books), extend the shelf life for phone books, encyclopedias, pulp fiction and fairy tales. Instead of winding up in the landfill, ink-on-paper artifacts can now be rejiggered as astonishing text objects that have nothing to do with words."
Stories That Jump Off The Page: See Stunning Art Made From Books
amazon

Arthur Rimbaud Documentary

"Slide show of images from the life and travels of poet Arthur Rimbaud. Images of 19th century Charleville, Paris, the Commune, France, London, Belgium and many photographs of Aden and Harar taken by Rimbaud himself. Infamous manuscripts in Rimbaud's handwriting; biographical drawings by Delahaye and friends."
YouTube: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado).

Good Bye, Lenin! Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies

Wikipedia - "Good Bye, Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, released internationally in 2003. Directed by Wolfgang Becker, the cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz. In a prologue, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl) recalls as a child in 1978 how proud he was along with his countrymen when the first German to enter space, Sigmund Jähn, came from East Germany (the GDR). The remainder of the film is set in East Berlin, spanning from October 1989 to just after German reunification a year later."
Wikipedia
amazon
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Good Bye, Lenin! Cinematic Trailer
YouTube: Good Bye, Lenin! 1:51:49

#3 MOJO’s Brit Folk Treasures

"IN TRIBUTE TO THE returning Bright Phoebus, Nic Jones – due to feature in a documentary screened on the Beeb – and Roy Harper – whose first album in 13 years, Man & Myth, is forthcoming on Bella Union, MOJO’s in-office aficionados stuck a finger in one ear and reeled off their personal favourite cuts from 60 years of British folk recordings. Note – folk grumpers – that’s British, so Ireland can wait for another weekend."
MOJO (Video)

Cihad Caner

"War photographers don’t usually carry colored pencils in their bags. But Cihad Caner didn’t want to photograph war. Using a polaroid camera and colored pencils, Caner creates diptychs of Syria that pair bleak, black and white images with written appeals for normality penned in bright hues. Anwar (slide 4) wants safety for his unborn child, and Adbullah (slide 7) wants to drink coffee in Damascus."
Guernica
Cihad Caner
Photographic Museum Of Humanity Blog
vimeo: 7.2

"Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"

Wikipedia - "'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' is a gospel-blues song written and performed by American musician Blind Willie Johnson and recorded in 1927. The song is primarily an instrumental featuring Johnson's self-taught bottleneck slide guitar and picking style accompanied by his vocalizations of humming and moaning. It has the distinction of being one of 27 samples of music included on the Voyager Golden Record, launched into space in 1977 to represent the diversity of life on Earth. 'Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground' was chosen as the human expression of loneliness. The song has been highly praised and covered by numerous musicians and is featured on the soundtracks of several films."
Wikipedia
Soundcloud: "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" - Blind Willie Johnson (Video)
allmusic
amazon: Blind Willie Johnson
YouTube: Marc Ribot - Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground), Catfish Keith, Ry Cooder

9th Street Art Exhibition

Wikipedia - "The 9th Street Art Exhibition, otherwise known as the 9th St. Show, Ninth Street Show May 21-June 10, 1951 was a historical, ground-breaking exhibition. The show was hung by Leo Castelli, as he was liked by most of the artists and thought of as someone who would hang the exhibition without favoritism. It represented the New Art in the 20th Century. It was a gathering of a number of notable artists, and it was the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School. The opening of the show was a great success."
Wikipedia
Abstract Expressionism by Gary Comenas
YouTube: 9th St. Show-abstract expressionism 1950s artists reminisce, Albert Kotin - Abstract Expressionism - New York School 1950s action, New York School: Pt 1

Soundings: A Contemporary Score

Hong-Kai Wang. Still from Music While We Work. 2011
"MoMA's first major exhibition of sound art presents work by 16 of the most innovative contemporary artists working with sound. While these artists approach sound from a variety of disciplinary angles—the visual arts, architecture, performance, computer programming, and music—they share an interest in working with, rather than against or independent of, material realities and environments. These artistic responses range from architectural interventions, to visualizations of otherwise inaudible sound, to an exploration of how sound ricochets within a gallery, to a range of field recordings—including echolocating bats, abandoned buildings in Chernobyl, 59 bells in New York City, and a sugar factory in Taiwan."
MoMA
MoMA: Soundings (Video)
Soundings: A Contemporary Score
[PDF] Soundings: A Contemporary Score
NYT: Going to MoMA to See the Sounds
WSJ: The Art of Noise, Explored

Marble

Wikipedia - "A marble is a small spherical toy usually made from glass, clay, steel, plastic or agate. These balls vary in size. Most commonly, they are about 1/2 inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.54 cm) in diameter, but they may range from less than 1/30 inch (0.111 cm) to over 3 inches (7.75 cm), while some art glass marbles for display purposes are over 12 inches (30 cm) wide. Marbles can be used for a variety of games called marbles. They are often collected, both for nostalgia and for their aesthetic colors."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Vintage Machine Made Toy Marbles A Macro View & Marble Types

Jane and Louise Wilson

Atomgrad 1 (Nature Abhors A Vacumn), 2010
Wikipedia - "Jane Wilson and Louise Wilson (born 1967, Newcastle upon Tyne)are British artists who work together as a sibling duo. Jane and Louise Wilson's art work is based in video, film and photography. ... When they left art school, they lived in King's Cross and made films of small living spaces, such as bed and breakfast rooms. Another early film showed them taking LSD for the first time. Jane and Louise Wilson's work together includes multiscreen video installations and photo-pieces; their artworks often feature institutional spaces, for example an oil rig, the archives of the Stasi in East Berlin (the building had previously been used by the Nazis and Stalin's Russia), The Houses of Parliament, and the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee designed by Victor Pasmore."
Wikipedia
303 Gallery
YouTube: Jane and Louise Wilson, Trust New Art: 'Blind Landing', by Jane & Louise Wilson, Orford Ness

Deconstructing Harry

"The trouble with Harry Nilsson was worsening. It was his voice. One of pop music's most precious gifts, his three-and-a-half-octave range, was escaping the singer-songwriter. Where once there were angelic rays of falsetto, now came rasps and gasps. Nilsson simply could not sound like Nilsson. He awoke on the morning of April 2, 1974, in a rented Santa Monica villa that had been built for Louis B. Mayer and was later owned by the Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford. It was the same home that Lawford had rented to his brothers-in-law Robert and John F. Kennedy more than a decade earlier, the getaway bungalow to which they had allegedly smuggled Marilyn Monroe for secret trysts. But for Nilsson, it was a frat pad and an artist's sanctuary."
Grantland (Video)
W - Harry Nilsson
allmusic
amazon: Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson | A Little Touch of Schmilsson on the Net
YouTube: Nilsson on the BBC Part 1, Part 2

Ellen Harvey: The Alien's Guide to the Ruins of Washington, DC

"Ellen Harvey’s new project is a glimpse into the world of the distant future. Human civilization having long-since come to an end, the earth is populated now only by ruins, ripe for archeological interpretation by visitors from another planet. Most immediately striking to these alien historians are the remains of the classical and neo-classical buildings that seem to have taken root in every corner of the globe."
Corcoran
Art Review: “Ellen Harvey: The Alien’s Guide to the Ruins of Washington DC” at the Corcoran Gallery of Art
WSJ: An Alien's Guide to Washington
[PDF] Ellen Harvey: The Alien's Guide to the Ruins of Washington, DC

Searching for Sugar Man

Wikipedia - "Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary film directed by Malik Bendjelloul, which details the efforts of two Cape Town fans in the late 1990s, Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, to find out whether the rumoured death of American musician Sixto Rodriguez was true, and, if not, to discover what had become of him. Rodriguez's music, which never took off in the United States, had become wildly popular in South Africa, but little was known about him there."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Searching For Sugar Man Official HD trailer

Les Disques Africains

"Les disques africains collects, rips, and uploads out-of-print records (and their sleeves!) from the golden age of vinyl in francophone Africa. Don't miss la belle chanteuse Sali Sidibé, psychedelic grooves from Benin, or this incredible 35-minute oral-musical history of Bobo-Dioulasso. New posts appear, as if by some rare magic, every three to four days. - theodolite"
Les Disques Africains (Video)

Alligator Records 40th Anniversary Collection

"Starting with its 20th anniversary in 1991, every five years brings another double Alligator collection, and 2011 was no exception. While the 35th edition --released in 2006 -- logically featured 35 songs, the compilers couldn't quite squeeze 40 onto this 40th anniversary disc, even though owner Bruce Iglauer does admit to fading a few endings off prematurely in order to maximize the list, which hits 38 selections. The trick with these albums is to both pay tribute to the label's storied past while including enough recent acts to connect the dots between the house-rocking music Iglauer built his company on, and the more modern yet still roots-based sounds he's released during the last five years."
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Koko Taylor - I'm A Woman, Albert Collins: I Ain't Drunk, Shemekia Copeland And Blues Band - My own tears, Marcia Ball - Party's Still Goin' On, New Orleans 5/1/11, Feed My Soul - The Holmes Brothers and Joan Osborne, Hound Dog Taylor - Sitting Here Alone, Buddy Guy And Junior Wells - Give Me My Coat & Shoes, Janiva Magness - Slipped, Tripped and Fell In Love

Victory - Joseph Conrad (1915)

Wikipedia - "Victory (also published as Victory: An Island Tale) is a psychological novel by Joseph Conrad first published in 1915, through which Conrad achieved 'popular success.' ... The novel's 'most striking formal characteristic is its shifting narrative and temporal perspective' with the first section from the viewpoint of a sailor, the second from omniscient perspective of Axel Heyst, the third from an interior perspective from Heyst, and the final section. It has been adapted into film a number of times."
Wikipedia
Washington Post: Joseph Conrad's Dark 'Victory'
Victory - Modernism Lab Essays
amazon

2011 November: Heart of Darkness

Classic Penthouse Riddims

Love I Can Feel Riddim Compilation Pt.1
"Penthouse’s founder Donovan Germain was born on March 7, 1952 in Kingston, Jamaica. In the 70′s he relocated to New York and was running Keith’s Records, a reggae record shop here in Brooklyn. In 1975, Germain began distributing records for several jamaican producers and started producing. Germain spent much of the 80s travelling between Jamaica, USA and England for his productions. He progressively gave up roots productions and turned to digital riddims. Eventually he moved back to Kingston to open his own Penthouse studio on the top floor of a building on Slipe Road in 1988 (hence the name Penthouse)."
Brooklyn Radio (Video)

Paul Blackburn and Das Rhinegold

"I had my first Rheingold at the Mars Bar in New York City a few years ago when I was doing a tour of some Old School bars. In the area around Houston, I walked into Milano’s, the 7B, and the Parkside Lounge. Then I walked up past Cooper Square, where Floating Bear was mimeographed for time, and spent the good part of an afternoon at McSorley’s. Like Ballantine Ale, Rheingold makes me think of 1950s/1960s New York City, particularly of landmarks like the Parkside Lounge. And the poet I most associate with that time and those places is not Frank O’Hara or Ted Berrigan, but Paul Blackburn."
MimeoMimeo

2008 August: Paul Blackburn, 2012 November: Yankee go home (PoemTalk #59), 2013 January: Cronopios and Famas - Julio Cortazar (Paul Blackburn).