Erika Iris Simmons

"iri5 is an imaginative painter and sculptor who is driven by an incredible passion for self-expression through art. Her works are often noted for their unique and innovative style that focuses on recycling found materials, such as old cassettes and used books."
Erika Iris Simmons, flickr

Sir James George Frazer

J.M.W. Turner
Wikipedia - "Sir James George Frazer (1 January 1854, Glasgow, Scotland – 7 May 1941, Cambridge), was a Scottish social anthropologist influential in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion. His most famous work, The Golden Bough (1890), documents and details similar magical and religious beliefs across the globe."
Wikipedia, The Golden Bough, YouTube

Roy Orbison

Wikipedia - "Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 – December 6, 1988) was an American singer-songwriter and musician, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly / country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis."
Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube - Oh Pretty Woman (1964), Blue Bayou, In Dreams, It's Over, Running Scared, Crying, Goodnight

Hollow Earth

Wikipedia - "According to the Hollow Earth hypothesis, the planet Earth is either wholly hollow or otherwise contains a substantial interior space. The hypothesis has long been contradicted by overwhelming observational evidence, as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation; the scientific community has dismissed the notion since at least the late 18th century."
Wikipedia

Beat Hotel

Journalists, cameramen and fashion designers relax in the Beat Hotel in 1960
Wikipedia - "The Beat Hotel was a small, run-down hotel of 42 rooms at 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur in the Latin Quarter of Paris, notable chiefly as a residence for members of the Beat poetry movement of the mid-20th century."
Wikipedia, The Beat Hotel, Gallery Package - The Beat Hotel, The Beat Hotel. Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1958-1963, YouTube - The Beat Hotel, The Beat Generation (Part 1), The Beat Generation (Part 2)

Francisco Goya

Third of May, 1808
Wikipedia - "Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history. The subversive and subjective element in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso."
Wikipedia, WebMuseum, Met Museum, Francisco Goya, YouTube

New York Daily Photo

Enchanted April
"New York City - a place of diversity. Visit a daily photo blog of the timely, the timeless, the classic, the unexpected and the hidden gems by a long time resident who shares his love of New York."
New York Daily Photo

Drone music

Wikipedia - "Drone music is a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as 'the sustained tone branch of minimalism'."
Wikipedia, amazon - "The best of drone music, "Stars Of The Lid And Their Refinement Of The Decline", The Platypus Affiliated Society

The Whole Earth Catalog

"In 1968 Stewart Brand launched an innovative publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was groundbreaking, enlightening, and spawned a group of later publications. The collection of that work provided on this site is not complete — and probably never will be — but it is a gift to readers who loved the CATALOG and those who are discovering it for the first time."
The Whole Earth Catalog, Wikipedia

SST Records

Wikipedia - "SST Records is an American independent record label formed in 1978 in Long Beach, California by musician Greg Ginn. The company was initially called Solid State Transmitters through which Ginn sold electronics equipment."
Wikipedia, SST, Perfect Sound Forever, SST Records

Stand by Me

Wikipedia - "Stand by Me is the title of a song originally performed by Ben E. King and written by Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller."
Wikipedia, You Tube - Ben E. King, John Lennon, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Cassius Clay, Mink DeVille, Andy, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora & Friends, Spyder Turner, Playing For Change Song Around the World

Humberto Solás

Wikipedia - "Humberto Solás (14 December 1941 - 18 September 2008) was a Cuban film director, credited with directing the classic film Lucía (1968), which explored the lives of Cuban women during different periods in Cuban history."
Wikipedia, film reference, Guardian, Fandango, YouTube - Lucia, amazon, Cuba Now, In Praise of a Famous Cuban: Humberto Solás and the Power of Melodrama

Letters from Camp

"In the early 1950s while at Black Mountain College, Charles Olson had a dream of an atomic holocaust. The threat of the bomb hovered over Olson. Between the death of FDR and the bombing of Hiroshima, which Olson considered the end of history, Olson revised Call Me Ishmael and wrote his first mature poems. Out of death and destruction arose Olson the creator."
Mimeo Mimeo

Hugo Ball

Wikipedia - "Hugo Ball (February 22, 1886 – September 14, 1927) was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists."
Wikipedia, Ubu, DADA Companion, YouTube - Gadji Beri Bimba, The ABC's of DADA, The ABC's of DADA - 2, The ABC's of DADA - 3

"Walking With The Comrades" - Arundhati Roy

"The terse, typewritten note slipped under my door in a sealed envelope confirmed my appointment with India’s Gravest Internal Security Threat. I’d been waiting for months to hear from them. I had to be at the Ma Danteshwari mandir in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, at any of four given times on two given days. That was to take care of bad weather, punctures, blockades, transport strikes and sheer bad luck."
"Walking With The Comrades" - Arundhati Roy, Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, India and Why Democracy Is “The Biggest Scam in the World” - Democracy Now

The Reverb, workshop Fred Frith

Wikipedpa - "Frith has used a variety of picks with his guitars, from traditional guitar picks to violin bows, drum sticks, egg beaters, paint brushes, lengths of metal chain and other found objects."
Wikipedia, YouTube, solo concert from MÓZG, sound. at REDCAT pt. 1/2, sound. at REDCAT pt. 2/2, Knitting Factory 1992

American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915

John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark, 1778
"From the colonial period to the present, Americans have been inventing characters and plots, settings and situations to give meaning to our everyday lives. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 includes seventy-five paintings, from before the Revolution to the start of World War I, that tell these stories in scenes of family life and courting, work and leisure, comic mishaps and disasters."
LACMA, (1), Met Museum

Baseball Poems

"Many great men and women have written entire books about every aspect of the game; however, other than 'Casey at the Bat,' few know about some of the other great poems that have appeared honoring our national pastime. Here are several that honor the game of baseball."
Baseball Almanac, Earthlink, The Baseball Poems, Outlaw Baseball, Poetry Foundation - "Baseball and Verse, from Tinker to Evers to Big Papi", Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine, Line drives: 100 contemporary baseball poems, npr - Donald Hall's Baseball Poetry, Extra innings: baseball poems, May Swenson - "Poetry Dispatch No. 111", The Best American Poetry, Hummers, knucklers, and slow curves: contemporary baseball poems

García Lorca — The Seawater Ballad

Joaquín Sorolla, The Beach at Valencia (1908)
"The sea
Smiles from far off
Teeth of foam
Lips of sky.
..."
Harpers, Wikipedia, Poems by Federico García Lorca

Little Eva

Wikipedia - "Eva Narcissus Boyd (June 29, 1943 – April 10, 2003), known by the stage name of Little Eva (after a character from Uncle Tom's Cabin), was an American pop singer."
Wikipedia, Little Eva, last.fm, YouTube, (1)

The Battle of Chile

Workers at a protest, from The Battle of Chile. Venezuela /France/Cuba 1973-1979
Wikipedia - "The Battle of Chile is a documentary film in 3 parts, directed by the Chilean Patricio Guzman: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975), The Coup d'état (1976), Popular Power (1979). It is a chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. It won the Grand Prix in 1975 and 1976 at the Grenoble International Film Festival."
Wikipedia, amazon, The Rumpus, WSWS, Icarus Films, Patricio Guzmán: The Battle for Chile

Front Cover

"I found a copy of Alan Powers's Front Cover at the local used bookstore last night and was pleasantly surprised to find so many interesting specimens..."
Mimeo Mimeo, amazon

Satyagraha

Wikipedia - "Satyagraha is an opera in three acts for orchestra, chorus and soloists, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Glass and Constance de Jong. The opera is loosely based on the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi, and is the second part of Glass's 'Portrait Trilogy' of operas about men who changed the world, which also includes Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten."
Wikipedia, W - Satyagraha, Philip Glass, amazon, YouTube

Spiral Jetty

Wikipedia - "The Spiral Jetty, considered to be the central work of American sculptor Robert Smithson, is an earthwork sculpture constructed in 1970."
Wikipedia, DIA, Robert Smithson, Getty

The Map Room

"The Map Room is a blog about maps by Jonathan Crowe. It covers everything from collecting to the latest in geospatial technology from a generalist’s perspective."
The Map Room

Cluster

Wikipedia - "Cluster is a German experimental musical group who influenced the development of contemporary popular electronic and ambient music. They have recorded albums in a wide variety of styles ranging from experimental music to progressive rock, all of which had an avant-garde edge."
Wikipedia, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5). Interview with Hans-Joachim Roedelius of CLUSTER. Hans-Joachim Roedelius Performance, (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), (12), (13)

Meredith Monk

Wikipedia - "Meredith Jane Monk (born November 20, 1942 in New York City) is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which dwell in the spaces between music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records."
Wikipedia, Meredith Monk, MySpace, YouTube - Meredith Monk, (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8). Book of Days (1988), Churchyard Entertainment, Walking Song, Last song, Facing North, Boat Song (Recent Ruins), Dolmen Music, An Interview with Meredith Monk, Meredith Monk

Susan Rothenberg

123456, 1988
Wikipedia - "Susan Rothenberg is a contemporary painter who lives and works in New Mexico, USA. Since 1989, she has been married to the artist Bruce Nauman."
Wikipedia, art:21, Sperone Westwater, artnet

Pinhole camera

Wikipedia - "A pinhole camera is a very simple camera with no lens and a single very small aperture. Simply explained, it is a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. Cameras using small apertures and the human eye in bright light both act like a pinhole camera."
Wikipedia, The Pinhole Gallery, Pinhole Photography, Making a Pinhole Camera

Bert Jansch

Wikipedia - "Herbert Jansch (born 3 November 1943), known as Bert Jansch, is a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and, in the 1960s, he was heavily influenced by the guitarist Davey Graham and folk singers such as Anne Briggs. He is best known as an innovative and accomplished acoustic guitarist but is also a singer and songwriter."
Wikipedia, Bert Jansch, last.fm, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6).
Acoustic Routes - part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8

The Art of Illumination

"The Belles Heures (1405–1408/9) of Jean de Berry, a treasure of The Cloisters collection, is one of the most celebrated and lavishly illustrated manuscripts in this country. Because it is currently unbound, it is possible to exhibit all of its illuminated pages as individual leaves, a unique opportunity never to be repeated."
Met Museum

Werner Herzog's cave art documentary takes 3D into the depths

"From his film about the hostage survivor Dieter Dengler, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, to his examination of the life and death of the eccentric grizzly bear activist Timothy Treadwell, Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog always seems to have an eye for stranger-than-fiction scenarios that make for fascinating documentaries. Over on Roger Ebert's blog, there's news of a new Herzog project that might represent his most important venture into factual film-making yet."
Guardian, Roger Ebert's Journal, Wikipedia

The Troggs

Wikipedia - "The Troggs are an English rock band from the 1960s that had a number of hits in Britain and the USA, including their most famous song, 'Wild Thing'. The Troggs were from the town of Andover in southern England. The band were originally called The Troglodytes (troglodyte meaning 'caveman')."
Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube, (1), (2)

McCarthyism

Wikipedia - "McCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term specifically describes activities associated with the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by heightened fears of communist influence on American institutions and espionage by Soviet agents."
Wikipedia, Spartacus

Pianoless Vexations - Erik Satie

Wikipedia - "Vexations is a noted musical work by Erik Satie. Apparently conceived for keyboard (though the single page of manuscript does not specify an instrument), it consists of a short theme in the bass whose four presentations are alternatively heard unaccompanied and played with chords above. The theme and its accompanying chords are written using strikingly eccentric and impractical enharmonic notation. The piece is undated, but scholars usually assign a date around 1893 on the basis of musical and biographical evidence."
Wikipedia, UbuWeb