Yugen


"Several years ago, I wrote on the potential joys of collecting Charles Olson. Olson loomed as a literal giant over the small press and little magazine scene from 1950 until his death in 1970. As a result, his work appeared in some of the most interesting chapbooks and magazines of the period. His books are beautiful and expansive (I am thinking of the Jargon Press Maximus Poems) as objects above and beyond the epic scope of their contents."
RealityStudio

Phyllis Galembo


"Went to an opening of a photo exposition by my friend Phyllis Galembo last night. I hadn’t seen her new work for a few years, so this was a chance to catch up. Wow. I was knocked out. The show was in a relatively out of the way gallery (Sepia International), that is not on street level, so there won’t be the walk-in traffic of the Chelsea galleries. Worth checking out, as I think it puts a lot of contemporary 'fictional' photo work to shame. Hell, it puts a lot of stuff in other mediums outside photography to shame too."
David Byrne's Journal, Phyllis Galembo, Steven Kasher Gallery

Political Cinema


Wikipedia - "Political Cinema in the narrow sense of the term is a cinema which portrays current or historical events or social conditions in a partisan way in order to inform or to agitate the spectator. Political cinema exists in different forms such as documentaries, feature films, or even animated and experimental films."
Wikipedia, italica, Celluloid Activism - A short history of political cinema by Julian Upton

The Fleshtones


Wikipedia - "The Fleshtones are an American garage rock band from Queens, New York formed in 1976."
Wikipedia, Trouser Press, YouTube - Roman Gods, Hitsburg USA / Love's In The Grave, Jump, Jive & Harmonize, Accelerated Emotion, Right side of a goog thing

Catchin' Up With Priest


""A 'fan' emailed me detailing how I was ruining her son's life because my pieces around town had inspired her son to want to be, wait for it, an artist! I hope they both see this and it furthers his downward spiral into creativity and expressionism."
Wooster Collective

The Searchers


Wikipediaia - "The Searchers are an English rock band who emerged as part of the 1960s Merseybeat scene along with The Beatles, The Swinging Blue Jeans, and Gerry & The Pacemakers. The band's hits included a remake of the Drifters' 1961 hit, 'Sweets for My Sweet'; remakes of Jackie DeShannon's 'Needles and Pins' and 'When You Walk In The Room'; an original song written for them, 'Sugar and Spice'; The Orlons' 'Don't Throw Your Love Away'; and a remake of The Clovers' 'Love Potion No. 9'."
Wikipedia, lsat.fm, YouTube - Needles And Pins, Love Potion No 9, Don't Throw Your Love Away, Sweets For My Sweet

Orchestra Baobab


Wikipedia = "Orchestra Baobab is a Senegalese Afro-Cuban, Son, and Pachanga band. Organized in 1970, as a multi-ethnic, multi-national club band, Orchestre Baobab adapted the then current craze for Cuban Music (growing out of the Congolese Soukous style) in West Africa to Wolof Griot culture and the Mandinga musical traditions of the Casamance. One of the dominant African bands of the 1970s, they were overshadowed in the 1980s and broke up, only to reform in 2001 after interest in their recordings grew in Europe."
Wikipedia, lsat.fm, YouTube - Cabral, On Verra Ça, Soundcheck At Momo's, Guitar Solo, Battery Park, NYC, Specialist in All Styles/ El Son te llama, Ndeleng Ndleleng

T-shirt


Wikipedia - "A T-shirt (or T shirt) is a shirt which is pulled on over the head to cover most of a person's torso. A T-shirt is usually buttonless and collarless, with a round neck and short sleeves. However, many people incorrectly use the term T-shirt to describe any short sleeved shirt or blouse; a polo shirt or other collared shirt is not a T-shirt."
Wikipedia

Nixon in China (1987)


Wikipedia - "Nixon in China (1987) is an opera with music by the American composer John Adams and a libretto by Alice Goodman. It is about the visit of United States President Richard M. Nixon to China in 1972, where he met with China's Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese officials.'
Wikipedia, Nixon in China, (1987), 'Nixon in China', reviewed by Robert Hugill, YouTube - Nixon in China (Adams/Goodman), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), (12), (13), (14), (15), (16), (17)

Much On The Cliffs: The Philosophies of John Ashbery


"Winner of multiple awards for literary excellence, writer and educator John Ashbery is a seminal force in modern poetics. In an enlightening installment of Artists On The Cutting Edge, Ashbery reads, and comments on, selected works."
YouTube

Tuxedomoon


Wikipedia - "Tuxedomoon is an experimental Post-punk/New Wave group formed in San Francisco, California consisting of core members Blaine L. Reininger, Steven Brown and Peter Principle."
Wikipedia, MySpace, last.fm, YouTube - In A Manner of Speaking..., No Tears (ADULT. Remix), No Tears (A Montage of Accelerated Memory), Desire, Litebulb Overkill / Jinx (Live 1980), Atlantis

Comic Book Cartography


"A curator of lost items. If you are the owner of a copyright that I have violated, I will be happy to remove the relevant content."
Comic Book Cartography

Perfect Sound Forever


The Rolling Stones – “Their Satanic Majesties Request” (1967)
Wikipedia - "Perfect Sound Forever (est. 1995) is one of the longest-running online-only music magazines. Along with Michael Goldberg's Addicted to Noise (est. 1994), it is one of the very first publications to post recurring, feature-length music journalism online."
Wikipedia, Perfect Sound Forever

White Rabbit Press


"A few months ago marked the 50th anniversary of the end of a storybook run of poetry chapbooks put out by a small press. I haven’t been able to find any special notice of that fact anywhere on the web. So here goes, a bit late but definitely necessary: a celebration of the first ten books of the White Rabbit Press, published between November 1957 and September 1958."
the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica, Granary Books, Mimeo Mimeo

Trouser Press


"Trouser Press, online here since August 2002, began with the contents of all five Trouser Press Record Guides, those highly opinionated review books of alternative rock. Thanks to many fine contributors, the site now includes loads of new and updated entries — more than 3,000 in all."
Trouser Press

Landscape art


The Harvesters, Pieter Brueghel the Elder
Wikipedia - "Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition. Detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects."
Wikipedia

Fairfield Porter


Morning Landscape
"Fairfield Porter was the most important American realist painter from 1949 until his death in 1975. Not coincidentally, these were the years when Porter lived in Southampton, and in 1979, his estate recognized the bond between the artist and the Museum by donating some 250 works to the Parrish collection."
Parrish Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, watercolor artists, Teleported into Fairfield Porter's Southampton studio at Parrish Hall

Havana, Cuba 1930s


"A tour of the city of Havana, Cuba in the 1930s filmed by Andre de la Varre."
Travelingo

Disco


Wikipedia - "Disco is a genre of dance music whose popularity peaked during the middle to late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco was a reaction by New York City's gays as well as black and Latino heterosexuals against both the domination of rock music and the demonetization of dance music by the counterculture during this period."
Wikipedia, Best Disco Songs of the 1970s & 1980s, The Disco History, YouTube: The Trammps - Disco Inferno, Boogie wonderland - Earth Wind and Fire, The Commodores - Brick House, Chic - Good Times, Sister Sledge - We Are Family, KC & The Sunshine Band - Shake Your Booty (Shake, Shake, Shake), I Feel Love - Donna Summer, Bee Gees - Stayin' Alive

The Real Paper


Wikipedia - "The Real Paper was a Boston alternative weekly newspaper that ran from August 2, 1972, to June 18, 1981, often devoting space to counterculture issues of the early 1970s. The offices were located on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
Wikipedia, Jon Landau – “Growing Young With Rock and Roll” (1974)

Sugar Minott


Wikipedia - "Sugar Minott (born Lincoln Barrington Minott, 25 May 1956, Kingston) is a Jamaican reggae singer, producer and sound-system operator."
Wikipedia, Sugar Minott, MySpace, Root Archives, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6)

Black Mountain poets


Wikipedia - "The Black Mountain poets, sometimes called projectivist poets, were a group of mid 20th century American avant-garde or postmodern poets centered on Black Mountain College."
Wikipedia, A Brief Guide to the Black Mountain School, University of Virginia

Hurdy gurdy


Wikipedia - "The hurdy gurdy or hurdy-gurdy (also known as a wheel fiddle) is a stringed musical instrument that produces sound by a crank-turned rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to a violin. Melodies are played on a keyboard that presses tangents (small wedges, usually made of wood) against one or more of the strings to change their pitch. Like most other acoustic string instruments, it has a soundboard to make the vibration of the strings audible."
Wikipedia, Google, YouTube

Performance art


Chris Burden
Wikipedia - "Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. It is opposed to painting or sculpture, for example, where an object constitutes the work."
Wikipedia, FADO Performance Art Centre, Performance art, Cleveland Performance Art Festival Collection, amazon

The Four Tops


Wikipedia - "The Four Tops are an American vocal quartet, whose repertoire has included doo-wop, jazz, soul music, R&B, disco, adult contemporary, hard rock, and showtunes. Founded in Detroit, Michigan as The Four Aims, lead singer Levi Stubbs (born Levi Stubbles, a cousin of Jackie Wilson and brother of The Falcons' Joe Stubbs), and groupmates Abdul 'Duke' Fakir, Renaldo 'Obie' Benson and Lawrence Payton remained together for over four decades, having gone from 1953 until 1997 without a single change in personnel."
Wikipedia, The Four Tops, last.fm, YouTube - Baby I Need Your Lovin', It's The Same Old Song, Bernadette, And the Lonely, Reach Out(I'll Be There), Reach Out(I'll Be There)-acapella

Meme


Wikipedia - "A meme ... is a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. ... Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures. The British scientist Richard Dawkins coined the word 'meme' in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena."
Wikipedia

Iannis Xenakis


Wikipedia - "Iannis Xenakis ... (May 29, 1922 – February 4, 2001) was a Greek, naturalised French, composer, music theorist and architect. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers. Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models such as applications of set theory, varied use of stochastic processes, game theory, etc., in music, and was also an important influence on the development of electronic music."
Wikipedia, Iannis Xenakis, Google, YouTube, (1), (2), (3), (3a). Iannis Xenakis Interview (1 of 3) , (2 of 3), (3 of 3)

Why preserve Van Gogh's palette?


Gustave Moreau
"Why preserve an artist’s palette? The daubs of raw pigment or the mixes left in position can be an intriguing index to the working method and the mind of the artist. And most, once the status of art had been elevated above the realms of mere craft, would paint themselves palette in hand."
Telegraph, Vermeer's Palette, Color Inspiration from the Masters of Painting, The Blue Lantern, Paintbox, Victorian Artist's Paint Box, Objects Page

Astor Piazzolla


"After this episode, Piazzolla returns to tango and to his instrument, the bandoneon. What was once a choice between the sophisticated music or tango, now would be sophisticated music and tango, but in the most efficient way: to work the structure of sophisticated music with the passion of the tango. In Paris, he composes and records a series of tangos with a string orchestra and he begins to play the bandoneon while standing up, he puts one leg on a chair, a trait that would characterize him on the music scene (Most bandoneonists play sitting down)."
Astor Piazzolla: Chronology of a Revolution, Wikipedia, YouTube - Muerte / Angel, Milonga del angel, Adios Nonino, Verano Porteño, Fracanapa, Lunfardo, Chin Chin, Tristezas de un doble A (Parte I), Tristezas de un doble A (Parte II), Buenos aires, Piazzolla & Bandoneon

Dennis Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010)


Wikipedia - "Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1955, and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). Over the next ten years, Hopper appeared frequently on television in guest roles, and by the end of the 1960s had played supporting roles in several films. He directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969), winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as co-writer."
Wikipedia, NYT, Mubi, YouTube - Raw Video: a Bandaged Dennis Hopper Gets a Star, Actor Dennis Hopper, On Art, Drug Crazed Rant in Apocalypse Now, Dennis Hopper throws a fit, Dennis Hopper reads a poem on The Johnny Cash Show, Blue Velvet Straight to Hell Fucker, Easy Rider Marijuana and UFO's, Inside The Actor's Studio Dennis Hopper 1, (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)

T.J. Wilcox


Tragedy (Sissi at the Sala Terrena)
"Wilcox’s fascination with the interaction of different eras is encapsulated by an image of the remains of the swimming pool Adele incongruously installed outside the walls of the 900-year-old castle where the couple lived after they married in 1932. The water has completely disappeared -- all that is left is a perimeter of stones outlining a rectangle in the lush green grass. The Duchess recalls a small pavilion by the pool, filled with suntan lotion in rainy Ireland."
artnet, (1), frieze

The Roundhouse


Wikipedia - "Many of these were hosted and promoted by the Jeff Dexter. Others bands who played at the Roundhouse during this period included, Gass, The Rolling Stones,[Jeff Beck, Zoot Money's Dantalions Chariot, David Bowie, The Sinceros, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Incredible String Band, The Doors with Jefferson Airplane, The Clash, Elkie Brooks and Motörhead who appeared at the Roundhouse on July 20, 1975."
Wikipedia

The Map Room


Manitoba Historical Maps
"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

C Press


"For more information about C Press, see Jed Birmingham’s articles on Time, Ted Berrigan, and Don’t Ever Get Famous. Andy Warhol provided the cover for issue four of C: A Journal of the Arts. Edwin Denby and Gerard Malanga appear on the silk-screened cover."
RealityStudio, Granary Books

Gary U.S. Bonds


Wikipedia - "Gary U.S. Bonds (born Gary Levone Anderson, June 6, 1939, Jacksonville, Florida) is an American rhythm and blues and rock and roll singer. He is also a prolific songwriter."
Wikipedia, YouTube, (1), (2)