David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve

"Since the break-up of Talking Heads in 1991, David Byrne has made a good career for himself as a solo artist, working in film and music, and also becoming an active supporter of cycling. Overtly intellectual, Byrne has given lectures on a great variety of topics – from Carl Jung to the ways in which venue and context shape artistic creation. The TED talk above was given in February 2010 in Long Beach, California, and here David Byrne presents his ideas on the interrelationship between music and architecture."
YouTube - Open Culture

Lightnin’ Hopkins

Wikipedia - "Sam John Hopkins (March 15, 1912 – January 30, 1982), better known as Lightnin’ Hopkins, was an American country blues singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional pianist, from Houston, Texas."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Baby Please Dont Go, Goin Down Slow, Mojo Hand, Rare Performances 1960-1979 - Parte 1, Parte 2, Parte 3, Parte 4, Parte 5, Parte 6, Parte 7, Parte 8, Parte 9, Texas blues legend - Where Lightnin' Strikes

Sterling Ruby

Installation view of Pig Pen
Wikipedia - "Sterling Ruby is a multi-disciplinary artist who has become known for his richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, poured urethane sculptures, various forms of collage, and video work. ... He takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, the mechanisms of warfare, and urban gangs. His work has often been cited as invoking minimalism as a means to expose underlying systems and social power structures."
Wikipedia, Foxy Production, Sprueth Magers, YouTube - Lifestyle Sterling Ruby

Cyanotype - Christian Marclay

"Christian Marclay is a New York based visual artist and composer whose innovative work explores the juxtaposition between sound recording, photography, video and film. As a performer and sound artist Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records and turntables since 1979 to create his unique 'theater of found sound.' A dadaist DJ and filmmaker, his installations and video/film collages display provocative musical and visual landscapes."
USF, Met Museum

James Sturm

"The educator and cartoonist James Sturm is another of my favorite people in comics. He's the co-founder of The Center For Cartoon Studies, the author of 2010's fine book Market Day and one of the driving forces behind the publication of Denys Wortman's New York. If there were a tree chart of 2010 comics events and underlying issues with lines drawn to the cartoonists engaged in some element of said issues, Sturm would appear on it looking like a marionette with tangled strings."
CR Holiday Interview #17, NYT: In One Sad Day, an Old World Artisan Confronts a New World, npr: 'Market Day': Beauty And History In Handmade Art, Products by James Sturm, James Sturm Heads to the "Market", Slate: Life Without the Web, YouTube - The Conversation: Giving Up the Web

New Wave Time Warp

Joy Division - “Love Will Tear Us Apart” YouTube
"thirty years ago
today, people wore
shiny things"
New Wave Time Warp

Jitish Kallat - Public Notice 3

"In the first major presentation in an American museum of Jitish Kallat’s work, the contemporary Indian artist has designed a site-specific installation that connects two key historical moments—the First World Parliament of Religions held on September 11, 1893, and the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that very date, 108 years later. The resulting work, Public Notice 3, creates a trenchant commentary on the evolution, or devolution, of religious tolerance across the 20th and 21st centuries."
The Art Institute of Chicago, YouTube - Jitish Kallat's Public Notice 3 at the Art Institute of Chicago

Eddie Cochran

Wikipedia - "Eddie Cochran (October 2, 1938 – April 17, 1960), was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a small but lasting influence on rock music through his guitar playing. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as 'C'mon Everybody', 'Somethin' Else', and 'Summertime Blues', captured teenage frustration and desire in the late 1950s and early 1960s."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Summertime Blues, C'mon Everybody, Money Honey, Nervous breakdown, Don't blame it on me, Be honest with me, Long Tall Sally, White lightening, Teenage Heaven, Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young (1955)

Philip Glass Ensemble - "Train/Spaceship"

"Philip Glass Ensemble perform 'Train/Spaceship' live at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London in 1982."
YouTube, (1)

Robert Breer

Robert Breer, top, in a shot from “Fist Fight” (1964).
Wikipedia - "Robert Carlton Breer (September 30, 1926 – August 11, 2011) was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. 'A founding member of the American avant-garde,' Breer was most well known for his films, which combine abstract and representational painting, hand-drawn rotoscoping, original 16mm and 8mm film footage, photographs, and other materials."
Wikipedia, frieze, mubi, Robert Breer, Kinetic Poet of the Avant-Garde, YouTube - Eyewash (1959), A Man And His Dog Out For Air (1957), Blazes (1961), Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons (1980), 69 (1968), 70 (1970), Robert Breer, Screening Room with Robert Breer (1976)

Gaspesia: Les portraits en papier -- Fresh Stuff From Dan Bergeron

"The large-scale portraits in Gaspesia: Les portraits en papier represent former employees of Papiers Gaspesia, a pulp and paper mill founded in 1912 by Percy Milton Chandler in Chandler, Quebec. Named for the mill’s founder, the port city’s economy and social organization depended heavily upon this industry."
Wooster Collective

"I Only Want You to Love Me" - Rainer Maria Fassbinder

"The title of this documentary on Rainer Maria Fassbinder is just slightly changed from the title of a film that director made in 1976, entitled Ich Will Doch Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt ('I Only Want You to Love Me'). The wunderkind of postwar German filmmaking died at age 36 in 1982 after making over 50 films in his short fifteen year career. He tended to produce resolutely experimental films using members of his theatrical troupe, the 'Anti-Theater'."
bing, YouTube

"Spirit in the Night" - Bruce Springsteen

Wikipedia - "'Spirit in the Night' is a song written and originally recorded by New Jersey based singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen for his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973). It was also the second single released from the album."
Wikipedia - "Spirit in the Night", YouTube - "Spirit in the Night", Live 1973 in Los Angeles

Madness

Wikipedia - "Madness are a British pop/ska band from Camden Town, London, that formed in 1976. The band continue to perform with their most recognised lineup of seven members, although their lineup has varied slightly over the years. They were one of the most prominent bands of the late-1970s 2 Tone ska revival."
Wikipedia, YouTube - One Step Beyond, Night Boat To Cairo, Baggy Trousers, Our House

Amateur astronomy

Wikipedia - "Amateur astronomy, also called backyard astronomy and stargazing, is a hobby whose participants enjoy watching the night sky (and the day sky too, for sunspots, eclipses, etc.), and the plethora of objects found in it, mainly with portable telescopes and binoculars. Even though scientific research is not their main goal, many amateur astronomers make a contribution to astronomy by monitoring variable stars, tracking asteroids and discovering transient objects, such as comets."
Wikipedia, Amateur Astronomers, Backyard Astronomy

Lavender Lake

"The Gowanus Canal is located in the heart of Brooklyn, bordering the neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens and Red Hook. When the canal opened in 1866, it quickly became the nation’s busiest commercial waterway and also the most polluted. The resulting growth of foundries, oil-storage facilities, dye works, printing plants, cement factories, tanneries, coal yards, chemical plants, paint and ink factories produced so much pollutants that the waterway was dubbed 'Lavender Lake' by locals, inspired by the opaque bluish-purple color of the water."
Charles Le Brigand (Video), Forgotten NY

Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

"A philosophical road comic about two unemployed robots on an improvised interplanetary voyage of self discovery."
Bohemian Drive, The Webcomic Overlook #134: Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

Jungle Brothers

Wikipedia - "The Jungle Brothers are an American hip hop group that pioneered the fusion of jazz and hip-hop and also became the first hip-hop group to use a house-music producer. The group began performing in the mid-1980s and released its first album, Straight Out the Jungle, in July 1988. With Afrocentric lyrics and innovative beats, the Jungle Brothers were critically acclaimed and soon joined the influential Native Tongues collective."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Straight out the Jungle, Doin' Our Own Dang (Remix), I'll House You (The Gee St.Reconstruction), Because I Like It Like That, Brain, On The Run

Get Happy!! - Elvis Costello the Attractions

Wikipedia - "The fourth album by Elvis Costello, his third with the Attractions, Get Happy!! is notable for being a dramatic break in tone from Costello's previous 'trilogy' of commercially successful albums, and for being heavily influenced by R&B and soul music. The cover art was intentionally designed to have a 'retro' feel, to look like the cover of an old LP with ring wear on both front and back. The title may be a reference to gospel music, where 'getting happy' is synonymous with receiving the Holy Spirit (a meaning that Costello himself hints at in the liner notes to the 2003 edition of the album). The title may also refer to the Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler song of the same name."
Wikipedia, YouTube - High Fidelity, I Stand Accused, I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down, Possession, New Amsterdam, Love For Tender

Misty Woodford: Polaroids

'Pat with New Clothing Form'
"Misty Woodford is a writer and photographer. More of her Polaroids, taken on a 1967 land camera, can be seen here."
The Paris Review, far-afield

Tex Williams

Wikipedia - "Sollie Paul Williams (August 23, 1917–October 11, 1985), known professionally as Tex Williams, was an American Western swing musician from Ramsey, Illinois. He is best known for his talking blues style; his biggest hit was the novelty song, 'Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)', which held the number one position on the Billboard charts for six weeks in 1947."
Wikipedia, B-Westerns, YouTube - Smoke Smoke That Cigarette, That's What I Like About The West, Every Night, The Talking Boogie, Let's Go Rockabilly

Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990

WET magazine, 1979. April Greiman and Jayme Odgers.
"Of all movements in art and design history, postmodernism is perhaps the most controversial. This era defies definition, but it is a perfect subject for an exhibition. Postmodernism was an unstable mix of the theatrical and theoretical. It was visually thrilling, a multifaceted style that ranged from the colourful to the ruinous, the ludicrous to the luxurious."
V&M. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990.

Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris, 2009

"A study depicting the stylistic diversity found in Parisian graffiti tags. Now on display at Fondation Cartier’s Born In The Streets – Graffiti exhibition until November 29, 2009. Over 2,400 graffiti tags were photographed from April 24 to April 28, 2009, from each of Paris’s 20 districts. All photographs were archived, tagged and sorted by letter. The ten most commonly used letters by Paris graffiti writers were identified for further study (A,E,I,K,N,O,R,S,T and U). From each letter grouping, eighteen tags were isolated to represent the diversity and range of that specific character."
Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris, 2009 (Video), Graffiti Taxonomy

Dollars Trilogy

Wikipedia - "The 'Dollars Trilogy' (Italian: Trilogia del dollaro), also known as the 'Man with No Name Trilogy', refers to the three 'Spaghetti Westerns' starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)."
Wikipedia, A Watershed Role for Clint Eastwood, A Ground Breaking Film for Sergio Leone..., amazon, YouTube - A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars, The Good The Bad and The Ugly

Andy Denzler

Wikipedia - "Andy Denzler (3rd August 1965 in Zurich) is a Swiss artist. The art media he works with comprise painting, printing, screen printing, graphic design, sculpture and drawing. ... Andy Denzler’s works move between abstraction and reality. With the classic means of oil painting, the artist endeavors to fathom the borderlines between fiction and reality. He presents his own perception of the world in his pictures. They are snap-shots of events that take place, blurred, distorted movements, Freeze Frames that stylistically move between Photorealism and Abstract Expressionism. In his paintings Denzler frequently alludes to other media."
Wikipedia, Andy Denzler

Johnny Clarke

Wikipedia - "Johnny Clarke (born January 12, 1955), Whitfield Town, Kingston, Jamaica) is a reggae musician. Clarke grew up in the Kingston ghetto of Whitfield Town."
Wikipedia, Roots Archives, YouTube - SHALL ESCAPE THE JUDGEMENT, Marcus Garvey, Rude Boy, I've Got The Handle, Ten To One

Paul Cézanne

The Card Players
Wikipedia - "Paul Cézanne (...19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic enquiry, Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne 'is the father of us all' cannot be easily dismissed."
Wikipedia, Paul Cézanne - The Complete Works, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kassav'

Wikipedia - "Kassav' (Antillean Creole for a local dish made from cassava root) is a Francophone zouk band formed in Paris in 1979. The core members of the band are Jocelyne Béroard, Jacob Desvarieux, Jean-Philippe Marthély, Patrick St. Eloi, Jean-Claude Naimro, Claude Vamur and Georges Décimus (who left to form Volte Face and returned). Kassav' have issued over 20 albums, with a further 12 solo albums by band members."
Wikipedia, YouTube - syé bwa, DOUBOUT PIKAN, Jean-Philippe Marthely Rété, Eva, Se Dam Bonjou

Big Mouth Billy Bass

Wikipedia - "Big Mouth Billy Bass is an animatronic singing prop, resembling a largemouth bass, popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The fish is made of rubber stretched over a mechanical frame; at first glance it closely resembles a mounted fish."
Wikipedia, YouTube

Roulette TV: David Gamper and Gisela Gamper

"Composer/performer David Gamper is an accomplished designer of electronic music studios and constructor of electronic music instruments. ... For their Roulette TV performance, David Gamper and photographer/visual artist Gisela Gamper create a microcosmic world that opens with images of water bubbles and small organic objects projected throughout the performance area. Small quasi-random sounds of a struck seashell, electric keyboard patterns, tiny bells and wood flute are processed electronically and accompany the visuals. The organic, water images begin to modulate into human hands moving around Tesla coils which in turn emit squiggly rays analogous to the organic images."
Roulette TV: Vimeo

A Bluegrass Music Classic - On The Porch

"It was back in 1964. New York City filmmaker, David Hoffman, age 22, was headed down with his new 16mm hand held camera (weight 49 lbs!) to spend three weeks driving the backcountry around Madison County, North Carolina, in the center of Appalachia, with the 82 year old founder of the pioneer Asheville Mountain Music and Dance Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford."
YouTube - A Bluegrass Music Classic - On The Porch, Bluegrass Musicians Let Loose in Classic Documentary

Wheel of Fortune

Wikipedia - "Wheel of Fortune (X) is the tenth trump or Major Arcana card in most Tarot decks. It is used in game playing as well as in divination. To the right is the Wheel Of Fortune card from the A. E. Waite tarot deck. A. E. Waite was a key figure in the development of the Tarot in line with the Hermetic magical-religious system which was also being developed at the time, and this deck, as well as being in common use today, also forms the basis for a number of other modern tarot decks."
Wikipedia

Eric Burdon & War

Wikipedia - "War (originally called Eric Burdon and War) is an American funk band from California, known for the hit songs 'Low Rider', 'Spill the Wine', 'The Cisco Kid' and 'Why Can't We Be Friends?'. Formed in 1969, War was a musical crossover band which fused elements of rock, funk, jazz, Latin, rhythm and blues, and reggae. The band also transcended racial and cultural barriers with a multi-ethnic line-up."
Wikipedia, YouTube - Tobaco Road, Brіght Lights, Bіg City аnd Mystery Train, Love Is All Around, Spirit, Spill The Wine

Del Short

"He’s been 'fooling around' with woodworking since he was a little kid, 74-year-old Del Short remembers, when his father 'first gave me a handful of nails, a block of wood and a hammer to play with.' That early pounding led through the decades to a vast array of projects, from practical to whimsical to nearly confounding."
The Register-Guard, YouTube - Del's Beautiful New Wooden Machine, Escapement Drive, 1985, Pedal-Operated Wooden Scroll Saw

Communards’ Wall

Wikipedia - "The Communards’ Wall (Mur des Fédérés) at the Père Lachaise cemetery is where, on May 28, 1871, one-hundred forty-seven fédérés, combatants of the Paris Commune, were shot and thrown in an open trench at the foot of the wall. To the French left, especially socialists and communists, the wall became the symbol of the people's struggle for their liberty and ideals. Many leaders of the French Communist Party, especially those involved in the French resistance, are buried nearby."
Wikipedia, W - Paris Commune