Music for 18 Musicians

Wikipedia - "Music for 18 Musicians was written for a cello, violin, two clarinets (both players double on bass clarinet), four pianos, three marimbas, two xylophones, a metallophone, and four women's voices. In the introduction to the score, Reich mentions that although the piece is named Music for 18 Musicians, it is not necessarily advisable to perform the piece with that few players due to the extensive doubling it requires."
Wikipedia, amazon, YouTube - Music for 18 Musicians, Music for 18 Musicians CD Trailer

Allen Ginsberg: The Art of Poetry No. 8

"INTERVIEWER. Do you feel you're in command when you're writing? GINSBERG. Sometimes I feel in command when I'm writing. When I'm in the heat of some truthful tears, yes. Then, complete command. Other times—most of the time not. Just diddling away, woodcarving, getting a pretty shape; like most of my poetry. There's only a few times when I reach a state of complete command. Probably a piece of Howl, a piece of Kaddish, and a piece of The Change. And one or two moments of other poems."
The Paris Review

Parisian sewer

Wikipedia - "The Parisian sewer system dates back to the year 1370 when the first underground system was constructed under 'rue Montmartre'. Since then consecutive French governments have enlarged the system to cover the city's population."
Wikipedia, Museum Chick, The Sewers of Paris: A Brief History, YouTube - Paris Sewer

Banksy

Wikipedia - "Banksy is the pseudonym of a prolific British graffiti artist, political activist and painter, whose identity is unconfirmed. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cites throughout the world."
Wikipedia, Banksy, flickr, BANKSY By Shepard Fairey, Guardian - Banksy, YouTube

Tonewheels

"The technology of synthesizing sound from light is a curious combination of research from the realms of mathematics, physics, electronics and communications theory which found realization in the industries of motion picture films, music, surveillance technology and finally digital communications."
Tonewheels

Moleskine Stories

"From creative minds and hearts that are aided by Moleskine journals come many uses. Here are but a few. Enjoy! Thanks to all submitters! And for those of you browsing, feel free to submit your art, drawing, writings, doodle, sketch, photo, short story, or snippet."
Moleskine Stories

Tellus #13 - Power Electronics (1986)

Joseph Nechvatal - "To begin; the basic premise behind 'Power Electronics' and 'Media Myth' was the exploration of the introspective world of the ear under the influence of the era's high-frequency electronic environment."
UbuWeb

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Wikipedia - "Ladysmith Black Mambazo is a male choral group from South Africa that sings in the vocal style of isicathamiya and mbube."
Wikipedia, last.fm, YouTube - Mambazo, Homeless, How Long, Music Legends

John Henry Twachtman

Landscape, 1889
Wikipedia - "John Henry Twachtman (August 4, 1853 – August 8, 1902) was an American painter best known for his impressionist landscapes, though his painting style varied widely through his career. Art historians consider Twachtman's style of American Impressionism to be among the more personal and experimental of his generation. He was a member of 'The Ten', a loosely-allied group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art organizations, who banded together in 1898 to exhibit their works as a stylistically unified group."
Wikipedia, John Henry Twachtman

Alice's Restaurant

Wikipedia - "The song lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds, occupying the entire A-side of Guthrie's 1967 debut record album, also titled Alice's Restaurant. It is notable as a satirical, first-person account of 1960s counterculture, in addition to being a hit song in its own right. The final part of the song is an encouragement for the listeners to sing along, to resist the U.S. draft, and to end war."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Alice's Restaurant, Part 2

Prepared guitar

Wikipedia - "A prepared guitar is a guitar which has had its timbre altered by placing various objects on or between the instrument's strings, including other extended techniques. This practice is sometimes called tabletop guitar, because many prepared guitarists do not hold the instrument in the usual manner, but instead place the guitar on a table to manipulate it."
Wikipedia, Keith Rowe - Prepared Guitar, keith rowe. live 2001, Keith Rowe in Czechia, Brno (festival Expozice nové hudby 2009), fred frith & camel zekri Luz 2005, Fred Frith / sound. at REDCAT pt. 1/2, REDCAT pt. 2/2, Steve Roden / sound. at the Schindler House pt. 1/3, Schindler House pt. 2/3, Schindler House pt. 3/3, Carl Stone/sound. at the Schindler House, Ear Meal with Carl Stone, Thomas Dimuzio / sound. at the Schindler House

Eileen Myles - Inferno

"Zingingly funny and melancholy, Inferno follows a young girl from Boston in her descent into the maelstrom of New York Bohemia, circa 1968. Myles beautifully chronicles a lost Eden: ‘The place I found was carved out from sadness and sex and to write a poem there you merely needed to gather.' -- John Ashbery"
DC'S, Poetry Foundation - Inferno, Eileen Myles - Inferno, YouTube - Inferno

Martha and the Vandellas

Wikipedia - "Martha and the Vandellas (known from 1967 to 1972 as Martha Reeves and the Vandellas) were among the most successful groups of the Motown roster during the period 1963-1967."
Wikipedia, History of Rock, YouTube - Heatwave, Dancing in the Streets, Nowhere To Run, Jimmy Mack

Busking

Nick. Chester, York, Bolton, Bury and Manchester.
Wikipedia - "Busking is the practice of performing in public places for tips and gratuities. People engaging in this practice are called buskers. Buskers may also be known as street performers, street musicians, minstrels, or troubadours. Busking performances can be just about anything that people find entertaining. Buskers may do acrobatics, animal tricks, balloon twisting, card tricks, caricatures, clowning, comedy, contortions & escapes, dance, singing, fire eating, fire breathing, fortune-telling, juggling, magic, mime and a mime variation where the artist performs as a living statue, musical performance, puppeteering, snake charming, storytelling or recite poetry or prose as a bard, street art (sketching and painting, etc.), street theatre, sword swallowing, and even putting on a flea circus."
Wikipedia

An Italian Journey: Drawings From the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo

"The title suggests a leisurely Grand Tour, but An Italian Journey: Drawings From the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is more of a whirlwind trip. A couple of lines from Vasari, a map of Italy and you’re off, dashing through two centuries and at least eight cities in fewer than 100 works."
NYT, Met Museum, amazon, YouTube - The Handwriting of Artists and the Dating of Their Drawings: The Case of Parmigianino

99 Records

Wikipedia - "99 Records (pronounced Nine Nine) was an independent record label active from 1980-1984. 99 was run out of a record store with the same name, located at 99 MacDougal Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, and owned by Ed Bahlman."
Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube - ESG-UFO, ESG - Moody, Liquid Liquid - Cavern, Maximum Joy - Stretch (Discomix & Rap), Rip Rig & Panic - Bob Hope Takes Risks, Bush Tetras - Too Many Creeps, Glenn Branca - Lesson no.1 for electric guitar

Dick Tracy

"Dick Tracy is a long-running comic strip featuring a popular and familiar character in American pop culture. Dick Tracy is a hard-hitting, fast-shooting, and intelligent police detective. Created by Chester Gould, the strip made its debut on October 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror."
Wikipedia, Dick Tracy Museum

MTA - 60s, 70s, and 80s

"New York's MTA has a YouTube channel that features some pretty great historical videos from the 60s, 70s, and 80s."
YouTube - Metropolitan Transportation Authority, We're Coming Back TV Commercials (1989), Don't Do It (1988), Where Do We Go From Here? Part 1 (1970), Part 2, Part 3. Daily Miracle Part 1 (1961), Part 2, Part 3.

Time Waster

"Tonematrix by AM Laboratory is a very fun and easy-to-use music sequencing toy. It's a 16 x 16 grid of grey boxes, and clicking in a box will turn it on. Boxes that have been turned on go white, and you will quickly see that each line of boxes has its own individual tone."
Tonematrix, Andre Michelle

Fresh Stuff From Vinchen

"More from Vinchen here."
Wooster Collective, Vinchen

John Zorn / Spillane

"John Zorn, talking in his apartment about his file card composition Spillane, how TV and cartoon music inspired him and other stuff."
YouTube - 1, 2, amazon - Spillane, John Zorn

1934 West Coast waterfront strike

Bloody Thursday on the 1934 San Francisco General Strike
Wikipedia - "The 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike (also known as the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike, as well as a number of variations on these names) lasted eighty-three days, triggered by sailors and a four-day general strike in San Francisco, and led to the unionization of all of the West Coast ports of the United States. The San Francisco General Strike, along with the 1934 Toledo Auto-Lite Strike led by the American Workers Party and the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 led by the Communist League of America, were important catalysts for the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s, much of which was organized through the Congress of Industrial Organizations."
Wikipedia

Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance

2008 Image, Dia Art Foundation
"Much of contemporary photography and video seems haunted by the past, by ghostly apparitions that are reanimated in reproductive media, as well as in live performance and the virtual world. By using dated, passé, or quasi-extinct stylistic devices, subject matter, and technologies, this art embodies a melancholic longing for an otherwise irrecuperable past."
Guggenheim

Sun Ra - Disco 3000: Complete Milan Concert [1978]

"This is a remarkable live recording of Sun Ra playing various keyboards with a small ensemble that includes John Gilmore (tenor sax), Luqman Ali (drums), Michael Ray (trumpet) and June Tyson (vocals). Recorded during his brief stay in Italy in the winter 1977-78, it was originally released on Sun Ra's own Saturn label. Superb!"
Know Your Conjurer

All Creative Work Is Derivative (Minute Meme #2)

"Copyright control extends not just to verbatim copies, but to 'derivative works.' This has led to censorship on a grand scale. For example, the seminal German silent film 'Nosferatu' was deemed a derivative work of 'Dracula' and courts ordered all copies destroyed. Shortly before his death, author J.D. Salinger convinced U.S. courts to censor another author who transformed his characters. And so on. The whole history of human culture evolves through copying, making tiny transformations (sometimes called 'errors') with each replication. Copying is the engine of cultural progress. It is not 'stealing.' It is, in fact, quite beautiful, and leads to a cultural diversity that inspires awe."
All Creative Work Is Derivative (Minute Meme #2)

Electric Windows 2010

"On Saturday July 31st 2010, OPEN SPACE gallery and Burlock Home present Electric Windows 2010. 30 artists will converge in Beacon, NY to create live artwork and have their work installed on the exterior of a 19th century factory building. Electric Windows draws its name from the former electric blanket factory at the foot of Mount Beacon that will act as the backdrop for the event."
Electric Windows 2010

Dean & Britta “13 Most Beautiful… Songs For Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests”

"There certainly hasn’t been a lack of programming associated with the Wexner Center’s 'Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms' exhibition, especially of the musical variety. And for good reason, considering Warhol’s inseparability from the Velvet Underground."
Don't just do something, stand there, YouTube, Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed, Ingrid Superstar, Nico, Ann Buchanan, Dennis Hopper, Richard Rheem, Bob Dylan

Corinth Press

Anne Waldman & Eileen Myles; Lewis Warsh. Corinth Books, c1971.
"In the aftermath of my Floating Bear column, RealityStudio informed me that Jan Herman worked at the Eighth Street Bookshop and might have some facts about Corinth Press and the mysterious Bill Wilentz. According to Jan, Eli and Ted ran the bookstore and the press as I mentioned. No scoop on Bill Wilentz. Jan suggested I contact Bill Reed who also worked at the store and wrote a memoir entitled Early Plastic."
Reality Studio

The Silver Dream Machine: The synthesizer that accidentally changed the world

"They say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. By that reckoning, you certainly shouldn't judge a synth by it's cheap plastic casing. On first impressions you would probably not take much notice of this little silver box with it's array of silver knobs and switches scattered over its clumsy exterior."
The Silver Dream Machine, Google - Roland TB303 Documentary BASSLINE BASELINE by Nate Harrison

Orientalism

The Snake Charmer, Jean-Leon Gerome
Wikipedia - "Orientalism is primarily a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. Since the 19th century, 'orientalist' has been the traditional term for a scholar of Oriental studies, however the use in English of 'Orientalism' to describe academic "Oriental studies' is rare; the Oxford English Dictionary cites only one such usage,'by Lord Byron in 1812."
Wikipedia, YouTube - On Orientalism, Edward Said, 1, 2, 3, 4

Blaxploitation

Wikipedia - "Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made specifically (and perhaps exclusively) for an audience of urban black people; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words 'black' and 'exploitation.' Blaxploitation films were the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music."
Wikipedia, Blaxploitation, African American cinema, Blaxploitation Jive, YouTube - Great Moments In Blaxploitation History, Shaft trailer (1971), Savage! - Blaxploitation Trailer

Acousmata

"Acousmata is dedicated to no particular genre, style, or aesthetic. Most of what is covered here can be called, in a broad sense, '20-century music.' But I am not a partisan: to paraphrase Apollinaire, 'I have not made my mind up to admire everything new. I am trying to distinguish the good from the bad so that the energies liberated by the good should not be lost.'"
Acousmata, twitter

The Artful Pose: Early Studio Photography in Mumbai, c. 1855-1940

Sepia sisters: A photograph from The Artful Pose collection.
"A melancholy young woman sits on the steps of a crumbling building, a pile of glistening fruit beside her. The folds of her white robe seem to glow. Do her garments symbolize purity? Is she a representation of the chaste goddess Diana? Instead of a toga, though, the snowy fabric swaddling her looks suspiciously like a sari—draped in the Gujarati style favored by the Parsi community in Mumbai."
Artforum, The Artful Pose - Early Studio Photography in Mumbai 1855 - 1940

The Syndicate of Sound

Wikipedia - "The Syndicate of Sound was an American garage band that existed between 1965 and 1970. Originally from San Jose, California, the band had an edgy style that some critics have considered to be a forerunner of psychedelic rock."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Little Girl

back to geography (PoemTalk #34)

Charles Olson
"Bob Perelman, Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Charles Bernstein converged on Al's office-studio to attempt what Al in his intro dubs a 'daunting' task - to talk somehow about one of Charles Olson's Maximus poems in such a way that would make the poem make sense and might serve as a good introduction to The Maximus Poems more generally."
PoemTalk - back to geography (PoemTalk #34)