Black Cover

"This blog is dedicated to the search for the perfect little black notebook. Yes, we're insane and obsessive. But for some reason, the Moleskine, which comes close, still feels lacking. And we can't believe there isn't ANY competition out there."
Black Cover

Charlie Palmieri

Wikipedia - "Charlie Palmieri (November 21, 1927 – September 12, 1988) was a renowned Bandleader and musical director of salsa music. He was known as 'The Giant of the Keyboards'."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Maria Cervantes, Son Montuno, Meñique, Charlie Palmieri & Friends At Club Broadway

Matt Saunders

China in Nixon
"Blum & Poe is very pleased to present China in Nixon, Matt Saunders’ first solo exhibition in Los Angeles and his first with Blum & Poe. For this exhibition, Saunders presents two interrelated bodies of work: large-scale unique photographic prints produced from hand-painted “negatives” and a new animated video made from thousands of individual ink drawings on Mylar. Beginning as oil paintings on stretched linen, Saunders then uses these canvases as 'negatives' in the darkroom, passing light through them to expose large sheets of photographic paper."
Blum and Poe, Matt Saunders, Google

Cold Sweat - James Brown

Wikipedia - "'Cold Sweat' is a song performed by James Brown and written by his bandleader Alfred 'Pee Wee' Ellis. Brown recorded it in May 1967. An edited version of 'Cold Sweat' released as a two-part single on King Records was a #1 R&B hit, and reached number seven on the Pop Singles chart. A complete version of the song, over 7 minutes long, was included on the album Cold Sweat. In the song's lyrics Brown protests that he doesn't care about his woman's past or faults, and testifies that with even her slightest display of affection toward him 'I break out in a cold sweat.'"
Wikipedia
YouTube: Cold Sweat, May 1967.
Live At Boston Garden 1968, Cold Sweat Part 1, Part 2.
Cold Sweat & Try Me 1973.
Cold Sweat live in Zaire, 1974.

A New Musical Language (documentary, 1987) - Steve Reich

"A profile of composer Steve Reich, a leading creator of stripped-down, 'minimal' music. The program explores how Reich's music eventually became accessible to the musical audience at large. Included are interviews with the composer himself, and contemporaries, and also performances of some of his works."
UbuWeb (Video)

Hieronymus Bosch

Proverbs
Wikipedia - "Hieronymus Bosch (... c. 1450 – 9 August 1516), was a Dutch painter. His work is known for its use of fantastic imagery to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives."
Wikipedia, Hieronymus Bosch, WebMuseum
YouTube: Hieronymus Bosch

Lovely Music

Wikipedia - "Lovely Music (full name Lovely Music, Ltd.) is an American record label devoted to new American music. Based in New York City, the label was founded in 1978 by Mimi Johnson, an outgrowth of her nonprofit production company Performing Artservices, Inc. It is one of the most important and longest running labels focusing exclusively on new music and has released over 100 recordings on LP, CD, and VHS video."
Wikipedia, Lovely Music

Spalding Gray

Wikipedia - "Spalding Rockwell Gray (June 5, 1941 – ca. January 10, 2004) was an American actor, playwright, screenwriter, performance artist and monologuist. He was primarily known for his 'trenchant, personal narratives delivered on sparse, unadorned sets with a dry, WASP, quiet mania.' Gray achieved celebrity for writing and acting in the play Swimming to Cambodia, adapted into a film in 1987. He began his career in regional theatre, moved to New York in 1967 and three years later joined Richard Schechner's experimental troupe, the Performance Group. He co-founded the Wooster Group ensemble in 1975. He died in New York City of an apparent suicide."
Wikipedia, Spalding Gray, NYT: Spalding Gray' Vanishing Act, BOMB 17/Fall 1986
YouTube: "Swimming to Cambodia", What New York Does to You, "True Stories" (1986), Spalding Gray Explains Modern Life, Khmer Rouge history primer
npr: Remembering Spalding Gray (Video)

Apparat’s ‘Breaking Bad’ Season Ender

"Both the German electronic musician Apparat and the music supervisors for the American TV series Breaking Bad found an interesting balance of licensing and scoring for the final episode of the recent season."
disquiet (Video)

Fred Neil

Wikipedia - "Fred Neil (March 16, 1936 – July 7, 2001) was an American folk singer-songwriter in the 1960s and early 1970s. He did not achieve commercial success as a performer, and is mainly known through other people's recordings of his material – particularly 'Everybody's Talkin', which became a hit for Harry Nilsson after being used for the film Midnight Cowboy. Though highly regarded by contemporary folk singers, he was reluctant to tour (something he shared with Nilsson), and mainly spent the last 30 years of his life assisting with the preservation of dolphins."
Wikipedia, Perfect Sound Forever - Fred Neil: The Other Side Of Greenwich Village 60's Folk Scene, Fred Neil, amazon: The Many Sides of Fred Neil, Fred Neil Chronology, Fred Neil discography
YouTube: Everybody`s Talkin`, Everybody`s Talkin` (Harry Nilsson), Fred Neil, Vince Martin & John Sebastian - The Dolphins, Please Send Me Someone To Love, Fare Thee Well, Fred Neil - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Notes for Echo Lake - Michael Palmer

"... Some of Palmer's serenity emerges from the ferocious focus of his poetry itself. The eponymous sequence in Notes for Echo Lake, for example, probes the concepts of subject, setting, and story with a patience born of deferring the tired emotional appeals built into to so much of our poetic tradition."
Interview with Michael Palmer, Boston Review, amazon: Notes for Echo Lake - Michael Palmer

2008 January: Michael Palmer

Ursula 1000 HEY YOU! Featuring Fred Schneider of the B-52s

"OUT NOW is the BRAND NEW single called...FUZZ! 4 killer rockers inspired by savage fuzzy garage punk...with that Ursula 1000 wink wink nudge nudge. Opening song HEY YOU! features the amazing FRED SCHNEIDER from the B-52S!!! Dig the video clip-o-rama by Tom Yaz!"
YouTube

Shadowland - k.d. lang

Wikipedia - "Shadowland is the debut solo album by k.d. lang, released in 1988 (see 1988 in music). The album included her collaboration with Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn and Brenda Lee on 'Honky Tonk Angels' Medley' and was produced by Owen Bradley, who produced Patsy Cline's best-known work."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Western Stars, Lock, Stock & Teardrops, Sugar Moon, Black Coffee, I'm Down To My Last Cigarette

Trip Print Press

"I believe in well-printed promos; something that tells me the person who made it cares about presentation. After all, we are visual people. Business cards, postcards, books, exhibition catalogues, I’m a total sucker for print. Which means I was thrilled when Nicholas Kennedy gave me a tour of his Toronto-based letterpress studio, Trip Print Press."
knocktwice, Trip Print Press
vimeo: Trip Print Press & The Making Of FreshSox

Haris Epaminonda

"The ghostly folds of a curtain, a couple strolling backwards on a sun-dappled path, the limpid eyes of a disconsolate diva: these are just some of the suspended moments captured in the video works of Haris Epaminonda. In the last few years, the artist has produced a series of radiant, emotional, audio-visual vignettes, which are long enough to soak into the viewer’s consciousness yet short enough to assume the qualities of a vision: they come and go fleetingly, but linger in the head like an afterimage. Reality is kept at arm’s length, its absence not particularly noticed, while the present is lost in a fictionalized past."
frieze, Haris Epaminonda, Artforum, Domobaal
YouTube: Haris Epaminonda
blip: Haris Epaminonda, Tarahi V (2007)
Site Gallery: Talks about her recent show at Site Gallery

Requiem Lass

"...Patti Smith, poet, musician, author, photographer, in Paris, late June."
NYT, A.O. Scott: "I met Patti Smith at the Electric Lady recording studios on West Eighth Street in Manhattan on a sunny August afternoon. Both the place and the date have a special significance in Smith’s personal mythos and in the broader mythology of rock ’n’ roll. The facility, which you enter through a nondescript storefront on a once famously scruffy block now given over to discount shoe stores and student-friendly eating places, was Jimi Hendrix’s brainchild, and it stands as an enduring part of his legacy."
NYT
Grantland: Patti Smith, the Curator of Rock 'N' Roll (Brian Phillips)

Sharon B's - Pin Tangle

"Pin Tangle tracks online resources, news and information which relate to contemporary and historical textiles, embroidery and crazy quilting, the fiber and book arts including studio and visual journals."
Sharon B's - Pin Tangle, I dropped the button box crazy quilt

Clarence Ashley

Wikipedia - "'Tom' Clarence Ashley (September 29, 1895 – June 2, 1967) was an American clawhammer banjo player, guitarist and singer. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame during the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands."
Wikipedia, Clarence Ashley
YouTube: Clarence Ashley performs "The Cuckoo", Dark Holler, Coo Coo Bird, The Old Arm Chair, "Tom" Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson- Peg and Awl, The House of the Rising Sun, Corinna, Corinna

Bill Cunningham

Wikipedia - "William J. Cunningham (born 1928/9) is a fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid and street photography."
Wikipedia, NYT: On the Street, Bill Cunningham, New York, Google
YouTube: On the Street, Bill Cunningham New York Trailer, Bill Cunningham New York - Movie review by Kenneth Turan

Lucinda Williams - Austin, Texas, 1989

"I've drove my car in the middle of the night
I just wanted to see you so bad
The road was dark but the stars were bright
I just wanted to see you so bad"
YouTube: I Just Wanted To See You So Bad, Side of the Road, Something About What Happens When We Talk, Wild and Blue

Big Youth

Wikipedia - "Manley Augustus Buchanan (born 19 April 1949, Trenchtown, Kingston, Jamaica), better known as Big Youth (sometimes called Jah Youth), is a Jamaican deejay, mostly known for his work during the 1970s. He commented, 'Deejays were closest to the people because there wasn't any kind of establishment control on the sound systems'."
Wikipedia, Roots Archives, last.fm
YouTube: Pride & Joy Rock, Train To Rhodesia, Chi Chi Run, Cool Breeze, Travelling Man, Wolf In Sheep's Clothing, Lion In The Jungle

Maurizio Cattelan: All

"Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster, and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art. His source materials range widely, from popular culture, history, and organized religion to a meditation on the self that is at once humorous and profound. Working in a vein that can be described as hyperrealist, Cattelan creates unsettlingly veristic sculptures that reveal contradictions at the core of today’s society. While bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique."
Guggenheim, NYT: A Suspension of Willful Disbelief, Art Fag City - Slideshow: Maurizio Cattelan’s All at The Guggenheim

Them

Wikipedia - "Them were a Northern Irish band formed in Belfast in April 1964, most prominently known for the garage rock standard 'Gloria' and launching singer Van Morrison's musical career. The original five member band consisted of Morrison, Alan Henderson, Ronnie Millings, Billy Harrison and Eric Wrixon. The group was marketed in the United States as part of the British Invasion."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Here Comes the Night, Gloria, Baby please don't go, Turn on your love light, Mystic Eyes/Gloria , Interview + Them Here comes the night

Style Wars

"One of the questions people always ask us is, 'What's in the outtakes?' STYLE WARS was originally edited to its 69 minute length from about 30 hours of 16 mm film that we shot in 1981 and 1982. Hours of exciting and wonderful scenes in the extra footage that didn't make it into the finished film need to be restored. There are many shots of trains and some surprising masterpieces rescued from oblivion."
Style Wars (Video), Pitchfork (Video), Wikipedia

A la recherche du temps perdu

Woolf's passport leaf, 1923. Virginia Woolf
"This is a commonplace book of words, images, poetry, visual art, film stills, philosophical and cultural materials, all with a Proustian sensibility. Every day my posts are built around a theme; there is no random ordering or arbitrary choice of what I post here, even if the theme or the relation between images and words is only evident to me."
A la recherche du temps perdu, Tumblr - A la recherche du temps perdu

The Rum and Coca-Cola Reader

"A reader from Berkeley, California pointed out that the site did not contain a transcription of Lord Invader’s original version of 'Rum and Coca-Cola'. So here it is, below on the left. The text is scanned directly from the page of the famous booklet, 'Victory Calypsoes - 1943'. It is as close as we can come to the version of the song as performed by Invader in Trinidad in 1943. On the right is the Andrews Sisters’ version which was recorded in New York City on October 18, 1944."
The Rum and Coca-Cola Reader (Video), Wikipedia

Perfect Lives - Robert Ashley

"Perfect Lives has been called 'the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s.' At its center is the hypnotic voice of Robert Ashley. His continuous song narrates the events of the story and describes a 1980's update of the mythology of small town America. Perfect Lives is populated with myriad characters revolving around two musicians — 'R', the singer of myth and legend, and his friend, Buddy, 'The World's Greatest Piano Player'. They have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at the Perfect Lives Lounge."
Lovely Music, Ltd.: Perfect Lives, Perfect Lives, Performa 11, amazon, amazon - 1.
YouTube: PERFECT LIVES (excerpts), Part 1 of part 1: The Park (Privacy Rules), Part 1 of part 2: The Supermarket (Famous People), Part 1 of part 3: The Bank (Victimless Crime).
VIDAS PERFECTAS: a new version of Robert Ashley's opera Perfect Lives (1983)(Video).

Kareem Rizk

"Born in Australia in 1982, Kareem Rizk is a Melbourne-based collage artist, illustrator and designer who graduated from Monash University in 2004 with a Bachelor in Visual Communication. During the course, Rizk developed an appreciation for collage and explored a diverse array of mixed media techniques and mediums."
Kareem Rizk, Escape Into Life, Vintage Illustrations by Kareem Rizk

Jimmy Reed

Wikipedia - "Mathis James 'Jimmy' Reed (September 6, 1925 – August 29, 1976) was an American blues musician and songwriter notable for bringing his distinctive style of blues to mainstream audiences. Reed was a major player in the field of electric blues, as opposed to the more acoustic-based sound of many of his contemporaries. His lazy, slack-jawed singing, piercing harmonica and hypnotic guitar patterns were one of the blues' most easily identifiable sounds in the 1950s and 1960s and had a significant impact on many rock and roll artists who followed, such as Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones."
Wikipedia, Blues Harp.
YouTube - Jimmy Reed plays the blues, Bright lights, big city, Ain't That Lovin' You Baby, You're Something Else, You've got me dizzy, Aw Shucks, Hush Your Mouth, Baby What You Want Me To Do, Big Boss Man, Take Out Some Insurance, Shame Shame Shame

Gotham Book Mart

Wikipedia - "The Gotham Book Mart, in operation from 1920 to 2007, was a famous midtown Manhattan bookstore and cultural landmark. The business was located first in a small basement space on West 45th Street near the Theater District, it then moved to 51 West 47th Street, then spent many years at 41 West 47th Street within the Diamond District in Manhattan, New York City, before finally moving to 16 East 46th Street. Beyond merely selling books, the store virtually played as a literary salon, hosting meetings of the Finnegans Wake Society, the James Joyce Society, poetry and author readings, art exhibits, and more. ... The store specialized in poetry, literature, books about theater, art, music and dance. It sold both new books as well as out-of-print and rare books."
Wikipedia, NYT: Gotham Book Mart Holdings Are Given to Penn, Google, 16 E 46th: The New Gotham Book Mart, The James Joyce Society

William Morris

Woodpecker Tapestry, 1885
Wikipedia - "William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he is considered an important writer of the British Romantic movement, helping to establish the modern fantasy genre; and a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien."
Wikipedia, William Morris: Story, Memory, Myth, YouTube

The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

Wikipedia - "The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry is a collection of poems from an assorted list of poets. First published in 1999, the collection features work from several notable poets, including Jack Micheline, Harold Norse, A.D. Winans, David Trinidad, Jim Chandler, Tuli Kupferberg, D.A. Levy, Bob Kaufman, David Lerner, Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey, and Rebecca Fransway, among others."
Wikipedia, amazon, Google: The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry - Alan Kaufman, Disinformation, NYT: 'The Outlaw Bible of American Literature': The Rebel Establishment, eclectic / eccentric, YouTube: Alan Kaufman discusses upcoming memoir about self-recovery | Mills College

Twin Peaks: The Last Days

"‘When Twin Peaks’ in-house photographer had quit and no further promotional shots were needed since the show was cancelled, Richard Beymer (Benjamin Horne) took his Olympus camera to the set and was given David Lynch’s thumbs up to document the last days of filming the show.’ - Welcome to Twin Peaks"
HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT - Twin Peaks: The Last Days, Twin Peaks 20 years later, 'Twin Peaks' 20 Years Later: How the Show Changed Television (Video)

2008 September: Twin Peaks
2010 March: Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama

The Cardboard Valise - Ben Katchor

"Ben Katchor is the best world-builder in comics today. This is true even though he does none of the things we tend to associate with world-building, be it visual or narrative in nature. He’s no epic sci-fi-fantasist, with a wiki-worthy cultural-historical framework underpinning (or overwhelming) every person, place, and thing that ends on the printed page. He hasn’t developed a personal visual vocabulary of forms and symbols from which a wholly alien world that nonetheless makes optical sense on its own terms can be constructed."
The Comics Journal, amazon, Ben Katchor

DJ Conquerrah - "On The Run"

"Hello Brooklynites and all other listeners throughout the world! It's been too long. During this go-around we are on the run and time traveling. Into the past with tracks by U Roy, Roger Rankin, and Count Machuki, predecessor to the Jamaican dancehall DJ (this is the man who started it ALL!). Then we go back to the future with heavy dub remixes from 10 Foot Ganja Plant, Copia Doble Systema, and Dubblestandart (Big-ups to Subatomic Sound System, always.) Plus some righteous roots and culture from the likes of Steel Pulse and the Marley brothers, and those tunes are dedicated special for the thousands fighting the good fight on Wall Street and beyond.. Chanting down Babylon for real for real."
DJ Conquerrah - "On The Run" (Video)