P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)/Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) - Parliament

Wikipedia - "'Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)' is a funk song by Parliament. It was released as a single under the name 'Tear the Roof off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)'. It was the second single to be released from Parliament's 1976 album Mothership Connection (following 'P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)'), and was the highest-charting single from the album, reaching number five on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart and number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100pop singles chart. With its anthemic sing-along chorus, it is one of the most famous P-Funk songs. It also became Parliament's first certified million-selling single, going Gold in 1976."
Wikipedia
W - "P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)"
YouTube: P. Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up), Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)

French fries

Wikipedia - "French fries (American English) or chips, fries, finger chips, or French-fried potatoes are batons of deep-fried potato. North Americans refer to any elongated pieces of fried potatoes as fries, while in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, long, thinly cut slices of fried potatoes are sometimes called fries to distinguish them from the more thickly cut strips called chips. French fries are served hot and generally eaten as an accompaniment with lunch or dinner, or eaten as a snack, and they are a common fixture of fast food. French fries are generally salted and, in their simplest and most common form, are served with ketchup; in many countries, though, they are topped instead with other condiments or toppings, including vinegar, mayonnaise, or other local specialities. Fries can also be topped more elaborately, as is the case with the dishes of poutine and chili cheese fries. Sometimes, fries are made with sweet potatoes instead of potatoes, are baked instead of fried, or are cut into unusual shapes, as is the case with curly fries, wavy fries, or tornado fries."
Wikipedia
YouTube: French Fries - How to Make Crispy French Fries

Degenerate art

Wikipedia - "Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being forbidden to produce art entirely. Degenerate Art was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Designed to inflame public opinion against modernism, the exhibition subsequently traveled to several other cities in Germany and Austria. While modern styles of art were prohibited, the Nazis promoted paintings and sculptures that were traditional in manner and that exalted the 'blood and soil' values of racial purity, militarism, and obedience. Similarly, music was expected to be tonal and free of any jazz influences; films and plays were censored."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Modernist art haul, 'looted by Nazis', recovered by German police
NYT: Report of Nazi-Looted Trove Puts Art World in an Uproar
amazon: The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany
Open Library: Degenerate Art
YouTube: Degenerate Art - 1993, The Nazis vs. Expressionism 56:14

2009 February: The Rape of Europa

"The Man With The Four Way Hips" - Tom Tom Club

Wikipedia - "'The Man With The Four Way Hips' is a single by Tom Tom Club, on their second album Close To The Bone, released in 1982. It was released as a single in the US, UK, and Japan in 1983."
Wikipedia
Soundcloud: The man with the 4-way hips (Guido.reedit)
YouTube: "The Man With The Four Way Hips", The Man With The 4-Way Hips (Dub Version)

2010 August: Tom Tom Club

Children of Men

Wikipedia - "Children of Men is a 2006 dystopian science fiction film co-written, co-edited and directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based loosely on P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men. In 2027, two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in the United Kingdom, where the last functioning government imposes oppressive immigration laws on refugees. Clive Owen plays civil servant Theo Faron, who must help a pregnant West African refugee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) escape the chaos. Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore, Michael Caine, Pam Ferris, and Chiwetel Ejiofor."
Wikipedia
Reverse Shot
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Children of Men Trailer HD, Ark of the Arts

Small Town Noir

"Small Town Noir is dedicated to recovering the life stories behind mug shots from the vanished golden age of one American town. The men and women in these mug shots are nobody special, but they saw things that none of us will ever see. They were all arrested in New Castle, a small town in western Pennsylvania, right over by the Ohio border. It was once one of the most industrially productive cities in America, but all that’s gone now. At the beginning of the 20th century, New Castle was a boom town – its population almost tripled between 1890 and 1900 as thousands of immigrants from Europe and across America arrived to work in its tin plate mills, steel factories, ceramics works, foundries and paper mills. The depression of the 1930s hit the town as hard as anywhere else, but world war two and the Korean war kept its manufacturing base going. ... - Diarmid Mogg"
Small Town Noir - About
Small Town Noir

Paris 13‎

"Yesterday in Paris, the largest collective street art exhibition opened in the 13th arrondissement on Rue de Bellievre near the Quai d’Austerlitz in a 10-story concrete and brick tower. The Galerie Itinerrance obtained use of the building before its demolition in 2014 and invited 80 artists from all over the world to decorate freely on the inside and outside of the building. 36 apartments were entirely painted and the artists each had their own area to work. In total more than 4500 square meters of street art were created."
untappedcities
A Walk On the Waterfront
YouTube: LA TOUR PARIS 13
Paris 13

Too Much Too Young - The Special AKA (1980)

"Released at a time when 2 Tone could do no wrong, this 5 track EP became the labels first UK Number 1 single. Recorded at The Lyceum in London and Tiffanys in Coventry, it was also issued as the labels first picture sleeve and for some strange reason saw the band revert to their previous name of The Special A.K.A.. Why they reverted back to this title remains a mystery and the plot is only further complicated by the listing of the band as The Specials on the records labels. The sleeve has a photograph of an audience on the front and a favourable report from the Coventry Evening Telegraph on the band as its rear. . It was also the first 2 Tone release to fall foul of the censors. The final line of Too Much Too Young , 'Try wearing a cap', proved too much for the nations moral guardians and the song was deliberately cut short before the offending word 'cap' was broadcast."
2 Tone
YouTube: Too Much Too Young (Old Grey Whistle Test 1979), Guns of Navarone, Long Shot Kick De Bucket, Liquidator, Skinhead Moonstomp

2009 October: The Specials, 2912 September: Ghost Town.

Before the Poison - Marianne Faithfull (2005)

"Each time Marianne Faithfull issues a recording, fans and pundits hold their breaths waiting for another outing as iconoclastic as Broken English. Before the Poison isn't it for a number of reasons, quality not being one of them. Simply put, Before the Poison is an album that concerns itself with both sides of love, friendship, and redemption, not desolation or desperation. That said, there is plenty of human shadow in these ten songs. Polly Harvey wrote three songs here, co-wrote a pair with Faithfull, and is present on all of them. Nick Cave co-wrote three with the singer and his Bad Seeds back her on these tracks. She also co-wrote one apiece with Blur's Damon Albarn and composer Jon Brion. Along with Harvey and Cave, Rob Ellis and Hal Willner aided in production. Therefore, Before the Poison, like its predecessor, Kissin' Time, is an album of collaborations. But unlike that offering, this one is seamless; its songs are sequenced impeccably and all feel of a piece linked by emotional thematics. ..."
allmusic
W - Before the Poison
Pitchfork
YouTube: My Friends have, Crazy Love (Live BBC4 Sessions), There Is a Ghost @Lycabettus, Athens, Green Fields (Last Song), Before the poison, In The Factory, Mystery of love, Before The Poison - Interview

2008 June: Marianne Faithfull, 2010 November: Marianne Faithfull - 1, 2013 January: Broken English: Deluxe Edition.

Forging an Art Market in China

"When the hammer came down at an evening auction during China Guardian’s spring sale in May 2011, 'Eagle Standing on a Pine Tree,' a 1946 ink painting by Qi Baishi, one of China’s 20th-century masters, had drawn a startling price: $65.4 million. No Chinese painting had ever fetched so much at auction, and, by the end of the year, the sale appeared to have global implications, helping China surpass the United States as the world’s biggest art and auction market. But two years after the auction, Qi Baishi’s masterpiece is still languishing in a warehouse in Beijing. The winning bidder has refused to pay for the piece since doubts were raised about its authenticity."
NYT: Forging an Art Market in China

La La La Human Steps perform New Work (2010)

"Purcell's Dido & Aeneas and Gluck's Orpheus & Eurydice must be the most choreographed operas in the repertory. Their buoyant, punchy baroque rhythms, and the simple arc of their plots, lend themselves naturally to dance. Canadian choreographer Édouard Lock joins the illustrious line of Balanchine, Bausch and Morris in tackling these two classics. But Lock is a refusenik when it comes to dance narrative, believing that even the most basic of stories is not carried well by pure movement. So his own interpretation, modestly titled New Work, is presented as an abstraction of the tragic love affairs at the heart of both operas: uniting them into a single choreographic meditation on yearning, anger and loss."
Guardian
Telegraph
YouTube: New Work
YouTube: Interview + Infante c'est Destroy (1991-92)

2008 July: La La La Human Steps, 2010 May: David Bowie - "Look Back In Anger", 2010 September: Mondo Beyondo, 2012 September: Amelia.

Mexican Portraits

"In the history of photography in Mexico, portraiture is an important tradition that transcends styles, subjects, and decades. Mexican Portraits includes more than 350 portraits from over eighty anonymous and well-known Mexican photographers, including Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Agustín V. Casasola, Romualdo García, Graciela Iturbide, and Enrique Metinides. Including both contemporary and classic works, mostly created from the 1970s to the present, this diverse group of images has been selected by photographer and editor Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, in conjunction with curator Vesta Mónica Herrerías, and presents an idiosyncratic and personal perspective on this particular genre."
Aperture
NYT: Mexico Points the Camera at Itself
amazon
vimeo: Mexican Portraits: A Presentation by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio

The Case for Studying Physics in a Charming Animated Video

"Xiangjun Shi, otherwise known as Shixie, studied animation at RISD and physics at Brown. Then, she harnessed her training in both disciplines to create an animation explaining the virtue of studying physics. Pretty quickly, it gets to the crux of the matter: Studying physics will change how you see the world and how you understand your place in it, all while letting you wrap your mind around some pretty electrifying concepts. I think I’m sold! You can find more videos by Shixie here."
Open Culture (Video)
Xiangjun Shi
vimeo: Shixie

Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring
"The Frick Collection is the final American venue of a global tour of paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands. While the prestigious Dutch museum undergoes an extensive two-year renovation, it is lending masterpieces that have not traveled in nearly thirty years. At the Frick, a selection of fifteen paintings includes the beloved Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665) by Johannes Vermeer and Carel Fabritius’s exquisite Goldfinch (1654). The exhibition continues the Frick’s tradition of presenting masterpieces from acclaimed museums not easily accessible to the New York public."
The Frick Collection (Video)
Glenwood
YouTube: Girl with a Pearl Earring at The Frick

2009 September: Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid, 2011 February: Vermeer: Master of Light.

George Jackson

Wikipedia - "George Henry Jackson (March 12, 1945 – April 14, 2013) was an American rhythm & blues, rock and soul songwriter and singer. His prominence was as a prolific and skilled songwriter; he wrote or co-wrote many hit songs for other musicians, including 'One Bad Apple', 'Old Time Rock and Roll' and 'The Only Way Is Up'. As a southern soul singer he recorded a mere 15 singles between 1963 and 1985, with some success."
Wikipedia
YouTube: I'm Just A Prisoner, So Good To Me, The weekend, The feeling is right, Find 'Em, Fool 'Em And Forget 'Em, The Only Way Is Up, I Found What I Wanted, Aretha, Sing One for Me, Slippin on your love

Baaba Maal

Wikipedia - "Baaba Maal (born 12 November 1953) is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. He is well known in Africa and internationally is probably Senegal's most famous musician after Youssou N'Dour. In addition to acoustic guitar, he also plays percussion. He has released several albums, both for independent and major labels. In July 2003, he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary. Baaba sings primarily in Pulaar and is the foremost promoter of the traditions of the Pulaar-speaking peoples who live on either side of the Senegal River in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Three Little Birds, Yela, CACE INT'L TV, Baaba Maal Baayo Live Acoustic, Dakar Moon

Beached

"There is something brutal about Philip Glass’s opera. The way it stops and starts, the taunting tease of a story, then the way it’s anything but narrative. Composed of nine twenty-minute scenes, the whole of Einstein on the Beach — first produced in 1976 and shown in L.A. for the first time this month—is interspersed by five so-called 'knee plays,' in which two women sit or stand or writhe around on plastic platforms, or search dreamily inside gently moving glass boxes. It’s not easy to watch."
The Paris Review
YouTube: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs discuss Einstein on the Beach, Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs discuss Einstein on the Beach

2010 January: Einstein on the Beach, 2011 May: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (1985), 2012 February: Choreographic, Lucinda Childs

Lou Reed (1942 - 2013)

"Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today on Long Island. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May. With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example."
Rolling Stone: Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer
Wikipedia
Lou Reed (Video)
NYT: Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ’n’ Roll (Video)
YouTube: Lou Reed - Topic

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale.

Ernie Barnes

Wikipedia - "Ernest 'Ernie' Eugene Barnes, Jr. (July 15, 1938 – April 27, 2009) was an African-American painter, well known for his unique style of elongation and movement. He was also a professional football player, actor and author. ... According to Barnes, he created the original version of Sugar Shack after reflecting upon his childhood, during which he was not 'able to go to a dance.' In a 2008 interview, Barnes said, 'Sugar Shack is a recall of a childhood experience. It was the first time my innocence met with the sins of dance. The painting transmits rhythm so the experience is re-created in the person viewing it. To show that African-Americans utilize rhythm as a way of resolving physical tension.'"
Wikipedia
Ernie Barnes
Google
YouTube: Ernie Barnes - This is my art, CNN Tribute to Ernie Barnes, Artist Ernie Barnes - October Gallery

What Lies Beneath

"Deep below the streets of New York City lie its vital organs—a water system, subways, railroads, tunnels, sewers, drains, and power and cable lines—in a vast, three-dimensional tangle. Penetrating this centuries-old underworld of caverns, squatters, and unmarked doors, William Langewiesche follows three men who constantly navigate its dangers: the subway-operations chief who dealt with the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the engineer in charge of three underground mega-projects, and the guy who, well, just loves exploring the dark, jerry-rigged heart of a great metropolis."
Vanity Fair

The Pet Sounds Sessions

Wikipedia - "The Pet Sounds Sessions is a 4-CD boxed set released in 1997 which compiles tracks from The Beach Boys' 1966 album Pet Sounds, and its recording sessions. The album is included in its entirety in its original mono mix, as well as a stereo mix. The set also contains instrumental tracks, vocals-only tracks, alternate mixes, and edited highlights from the recording sessions for many of the album's songs, as well as several songs not included on the album. ... The stereo mix of the album contains some notable differences from the original mono mix. Among them, alternate vocal parts used for the bridge of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and the end of 'God Only Knows' due to the original tracks no longer existing. 'You Still Believe in Me' also features a single tracked vocal instead of the doubled vocal of the original due to a missing tape. Other differences are also noted in the booklet."
W - The Pet Sounds Sessions
amazon - The Pet Sounds Sessions [Box set, Original recording remastered], ☼SMiLE
Pet Sounds Track Notes
Pet Sounds Track Notes - 1
allmusic: Pet Sounds, allmusuc: SMiLE
Pitchfork
W - Smile
SOS: The Resurrection Of Brian Wilson's SMiLE
YouTube: Brian Wilson - SMiLE live 51:56, Pet Sounds live, part 1/3, part 2/3, Pet Sounds live, part 3/3
YouTube: The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (FULL ALBUM), ☼SMiLE (FULL ALBUM)
YouTube: Brian Wilson Presents Pet Sounds Live 39:38, Beautiful Dreamer - Brian Wilson and the Story of 'SMiLE' 1:49:53

2010 July: Pet Sounds

Sally Mann - Deep South

"Sally Mann began to experiment with the wet collodian process in the 1990s to create two photographic series, Deep South and Eva. Mann's images have a feeling of cultivated imperfection about them due to a lens she employs in which mildew and misaligned elements contribute a sort of melancholy fog. The use of the collodian process was therefore a natural development to her work because of the interplay between clarity, dreaminess and wildness."
The Crafted Photograph
Sally Mann - Deep South
amazon
YouTube: Deep South

2009 September: Sally Mann, 2010 March: Sally Mann - 1

John Singer Sargent Watercolors

Ponte San Giuseppe di Castello, Venice
"'To live with Sargent’s water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held,' according to the painter’s first biographer. Presenting more than 90 of Sargent’s dazzling works, this exhibition, co-organized with the Brooklyn Museum, combines for the first time the two most significant collections of watercolor paintings by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), images created by a consummate artist with daring compositional strategies and a complex technique. 'John Singer Sargent Watercolors' also celebrates a century of Sargent watercolors at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston."
MFA (Video)
W - John Singer Sargent
New Yorker: Sargent’s Watercolors
amazon
YouTube: WITHOUT ZOOM - VENICE

My Desk - Vanity Fair

"From artistic floral arrangements to signed prints by Annie Leibovitz, to boxes upon boxes of perfume and cologne, the desks of Vanity Fair’s editors and producers are often works of art in themselves. In honor of our regular 'My Desk' feature, VF.com takes a tour of the classy clutter that surrounds the makers of a magazine."
Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair - 1

Cluster & Eno (1977)

Wikipedia - "Cluster & Eno is a collaborative album by the German electronic music group Cluster and English ambient musician Brian Eno. The style of this album is a collection of gentle melodies: a mixture of Eno’s ambient sensibilities and Cluster's avant-garde style. In June, 1977 the duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius joined with Brian Eno for recording sessions at Conny Plank's studio. The first release from those sessions on Sky Records was Cluster & Eno. Guest musicians on the album included Can bassist Holger Czukay and Asmus Tietchens on synthesizer. The association with Eno brought Cluster a much wider audience than previous albums and international attention. ..."
Wikipedia
Pitchfork
YouTube: Cluster & Eno (Full Album 1977)

John Ashbery: Poet Among Things

"Loretta Howard Gallery is pleased to present John Ashbery Collects, an immersive multi-media gallery experience showcasing a selection of things that inform Ashbery’s sensibility as well as his work as a poet, visual artist, collaborator, art critic and collector. Co-curated by Adam Fitzgerald and Emily Skillings and Loretta Howard Gallery, John Ashbery Collects explores the poet’s lifelong interest in collecting through the medium of his late-19th century house in Hudson, NY, a carefully composed collage-environment constructed over thirty-five years with an eclectic array of fine art by European and American masters, furniture, pottery, textiles, bric-a-brac, toys, and other objects, augmented by the content and associations that these objects hold for him—the images and artworks he arranges on his walls, the books he puts on his shelves, the music he plays, the cinema he watches—all organized in an architecturally-distinguished setting. ..."
Loretta Howard Gallery
John Ashbery: Poet Among Things - Loretta Howard Gallery
Standing Inside One of Ashbery’s Poems: Reviews of “John Ashbery Collects” (Video)
The Paris Review - Art House: On “John Ashbery Collects”
John Ashbery Collects: poet among things

2007 November: John Ashbery, 2009 October: PennSound, 2012 February: Reported Sightings: Art Chronicles, 1957-1987, 2012 October: Rivers and Mountains, 2012 November: Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, 2013 June: New critical edition of John Ashbery’s “The Skaters”, 2013 August: Some Trees.

See No Evil

"... They clapped when I finished, but this time around, instead of feeling like I had fomented revolution, I felt like I had done something truly terrible: not so much because I had ripped off another songwriter’s words, but because hearing the lyrics to Television’s 'Marquee Moon' without the unmistakable double-stop guitar intro or the complex key changes is like looking at an Instagram photo of an Egon Schiele painting with some dimwit obscuring part of the view—it just doesn’t compare to the real thing. That song, and all of the other songs on side A of the band’s eponymous 1977 LP, is perfect. I can say without reservation that the first half of Marquee Moon is the greatest single side of any rock album, ever, and like some less-creepy teenage Humbert Humbert, I was obsessed with it, wanted to consume it, and I did something irrevocably horrible to it by appropriating it so disingenuously."
The Paris Review

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, 2013 July: Flash Light.

On Reading Proust

Marcel Proust on vacation with his family, circa 1892
"The following interview with Justice Stephen Breyer was conducted in French by Ioanna Kohler and was initially published in La Revue des Deux Mondes in Paris as part of a special issue entitled 'Proust vu d’Amérique.' It appears here in translation."
NYBook

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, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles

Opening Day Film

"On October 21, 1959, sixteen years after it was first conceived, the Guggenheim Museum opened to the public. Thousands flocked to the opening and the film 'Buildings & Crowd' captures the their excitement as lines formed down Fifth Avenue. The end of the film highlights the inaugural exhibition within the rotunda. With works by Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Stuart David, Max Ernst, Paul Klee, and Vasily Kandinsky, visitors were wowed by both the art and the Guggenheim Museum itself."
Guggenheim (Video)

Montreal Metro

Wikipedia - "The Montreal Metro (French: Métro de Montréal) is a rubber-tired metro system, and the main form of public transportation underground in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Metro, operated by the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), was inaugurated on October 14, 1966, during the tenure of Mayor Jean Drapeau. Originally consisting of 26 stations on three separate lines, the Metro now has 68 stations on four lines measuring 69.2 km (43.00 mi) in length, serving the north, east, and centre of the Island of Montreal with connections to Longueuil, via the Yellow Line, and Laval, via the Orange line."
Wikipedia
Map of the Montreal Metro System
YouTube: Montreal Metro Source Engine First Preview, Métro de Montréal - Garage Beaugrand - ligne 1 verte, Métro de Montréal - Essai de train (nuit) ligne 5