Connections

"The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Connections invites its diverse staff to offer their personal perspectives on works of art in the Museum's vast collection. Their voices range from the authoritative to the highly subjective, and touch upon any number of themes and concepts. Connections is a year-long series comprising of 100 episodes, and inspires fresh ways to approach art. Throughout 2011, please join us on Wednesdays for weekly releases."
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Bach on the F train

"The inaugural edition of Make Music Winter, which unfolded in New York yesterday, included Thruline, a delightful musical installation by the composer James Holt. For one hour in the early evening, musicians from the chamber orchestra The Knights were positioned at all forty-four stops along the F subway line, each one playing the prelude from Bach's G-major Cello Suite. Holt further explains the project on the MATA blog."
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise - YouTube

Stan Brakhage - Burial Path/The Process/The Machine of Eden

The Machine of Eden (1970)
"Stan Brakhage's Burial Path, as its title implies, seems to be concerned with the burying of the dead, with mortality. If it can be said to have a narrative, it's a simple story: finding a dead bird in one's garden and burying it. But Brakhage takes this simple moment, this prosaic story, and expands upon it, free-associating around the ideas and images conjured up by this dead bird. The film opens with an image of a bird, a drawing like those found in science textbooks or bird-watching guides, and then an image of the dead bird itself, lying in the dirt. Then the associations start."
Only the Cinema: Burial Path/The Process/The Machine of Eden
YouTube: The Machine of Eden (1970), Burial Path (1978), The Process (1972)

Street Art by French artist Oakoak – A Collection

"Saint-Etienne-based French artist OakOak loves to play with urban elements and create amazing ephemeral pieces of street art. We really like the artist’s art 'improvisations' and believe they are able to make anyone’s day just by encountering them unexpectedly on the street. There is even a design idea that you might have observed (the one with the piano stairs) that could be implemented indoors also."
Damn Cool Pictures
Mohammad Reza Hassani

All the News That's Fit to Sing - Phil Ochs

Wikipedia - "All The News That's Fit to Sing was Phil Ochs' first official album. Recorded in 1964 for Elektra Records, it was full of many elements that would come back throughout his career. It was the album that defined his 'singing journalist' phase, strewn with songs whose roots were allegedly pulled from Newsweek magazine. It is one in a long line of folk albums used to tell stories about everyday struggles and hardships."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Bullets of Mexico, One More Parade, Power And The Glory, Bound for glory, Knock on the Door, Talking Cuban Crisis

Glassworks - Philip Glass

Wikipedia - "Glassworks is a chamber music work of six movements by Philip Glass. It is regarded as being a characteristically Glass-like work. Following his larger-scale concert and stage works, Glassworks was Philip Glass's successful attempt to create a more pop-oriented 'Walkman-suitable' work, with considerably shorter and more accessible pieces written for the recording studio."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Glassworks (2009), Floe, Island, Rubric, Facades, Closing, Metamorphosis 1, Metamorphosis 2

The First Day - David Sylvian and Robert Fripp

Wikipedia - "The First Day is the first of three collaborations between David Sylvian and Robert Fripp. It was released in July 1993 and was something of a departure from David Sylvian’s usual work. It’s a combination of Sylvian’s deep, thoughtful lyrics with funk, techno and hard hitting progressive rock music."
Wikipedia
amazon: The First Day
amazon: Damage
YouTube: Wave, Blinding Light Of Heaven, Riverman, Firepower, Twentieth Century Dreaming, Damage, Jean The Birdman

Black Panther Party

Emory Douglas
Wikipedia - "The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African-American revolutionary leftist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and in U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The group's 'provocative rhetoric, militant posture, and cultural and political flourishes permanently altered the contours of American Identity.'"
Wikipedia
Black Panther
Treasure trove of graphic resistance Black Panther: Emory Douglas and the Art of Revolution
MIA: History: USA: The Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party Research Project
Black Panther Party Historical Photo Tour
Google
YouTube: The Black Panther Party, American Revolution -The Black Panther Party
Black Panthers (1968) part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

Coxsone Dodd

Wikipedia - "Clement Seymour 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd, CD (Kingston, Jamaica, January 26, 1932 – May 5, 2004) was a Jamaican record producer who was influential in the development of ska and reggae in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd
YouTube: Clement Coxsone Dodd - Hooligan, Hi Fashion Dub, Chase them version, Many Moods, Burning Spear-Rocking Time (Ft Clement Dodd), A get a lick ( rare track)

Michael McClure

Wikipedia - "Michael McClure (born October 20, 1932 in Marysville, Kansas) is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets (including Allen Ginsberg) who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums. He soon became a key member of the Beat Generation and is immortalized as 'Pat McLear' in Kerouac's Big Sur."
Wikipedia
Michael McClure
EPC Buffalo
YouTube: Michael McClure reading poetry to lions
McClure (a sounding portrait)

Appalachian Spring

Wikipedia - "Appalachian Spring is a modern score composed by Aaron Copland that premiered in 1944 and has achieved widespread and enduring popularity as an orchestral suite. The ballet, scored for a thirteen-member chamber orchestra, was created upon commission of choreographer and dancer Martha Graham with funds from the Coolidge Foundation headed by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge; it premiered on Monday, October 30th, 1944, at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, with Martha Graham dancing the lead role. The set was designed by the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi."
Wikipedia
LOC: What's Old Is New
amazon: Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring
Pioneers: Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring - Network Awesome (Video)

The Yule Log

Wikipedia - "The Yule Log is a television program which is broadcast traditionally on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning (except for the 1990s and the year 2000 when the program wasn't broadcast), originally by New York City television station WPIX but now by many other Tribune Company-owned television stations, including WGN America, and by Antenna TV starting in 2011. ... The program, which has been two to four hours in duration, is a film loop of a yule log burning in a fireplace, with a traditional soundtrack of classic Christmas music playing in the background. It is broadcast without commercial interruption."
Wikipedia
YouTube: WPIX Yule Log, 2 Hour Burning Logs in Fireplace

Carlfriedrich Claus

"I’d been waiting for a Carlfriedrich Claus retrospective ever since I came across his work while researching the ‘unofficial’ art world of East Germany several years ago. Claus, who died in 1998, has been referred to as an artist, philosopher, essayist, concrete poet and sound artist. Although his entire career was shaped by his position in the German Democratic Republic, as this long-overdue exhibition revealed, his work is too nuanced, polymathic and idiosyncratic for him to be easily categorized as an East German artist, ‘unofficial’ or otherwise."
frieze
Carlfriedrich Claus
Google
YouTube: Tongtong (1954-56)

Vern Blosum

"You remember how, a couple of months ago, I could find next to nothing online about Vern Blosum, the mysterious artist whose crisp, deadpan paintings of parking meters were featured in one of the very first museum exhibitions of Pop Art, 'The Popular Image,' organized by Alice Denney in the Spring of 1964 1963 at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art?"
greg.org
greg.org (1)
greg.org (2)
greg.org (3)

Next Stop Soweto

"By the 1930s, the Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown had grown into a vibrant and vital hub for black urban culture. It was here that the cyclic sounds of marabi and big band swing had fused to create the progressive foundations of African jazz, and where flamboyant but dangerous sharp-suited gangs with names like The Americans and The Russians ruled the dance. As Gwen Ansell explains in her essential book Soweto Blues, when Drum magazine asked its readers what they wanted the answer was: 'Give us jazz and film stars man! We want Duke, Satchmo and hot dames. Yes brother, anything American. You can cut out this junk about kraals and folk tales and Basutos in blankets.'"
Mondomix, YouTube - Next Stop...Soweto Trailer, SOWETO VOL 2. trailer, SOWETO VOL 3 trailer
Next Stop... Soweto Township Sounds from the Golden Age of Mbaqanga
amazon: Vol. 1 - Township Sounds From The Golden Age Of Mbaqangwa; Vol. 2 - Soultown, R&B, Funk & Psych Sounds from the Townships 1969 - 1976 ; Vol. 3: Giants, Ministers And Makers- Jazz In South Aftrica 1963-1984
amazon: SOWETO BLUES: Jazz, Popular Music & Politics in South Africa

Tellus cassettography

"Launched in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting edge music, documenting the New York scene and advanced US composers of the time. Maybe surfing on the ROIR cassettes selling figures, Tellus ‘The Audio Cassette Magazine’ was in activity for 10 years (1983-1993), witnessing the digital revolution taking place in the new media arts."
Continuo

2009 September: Tellus Audio Cassette Magazing - Wikipedia, UbuWeb: Sound

Bob Dylan – Man of Constant Sorrow (1963)

"Man of Constant Sorrow is a traditional American folk song first recorded by Dick Burnett, a partially blind fiddler from Kentucky. The song was originally recorded by Burnett as Farewell Song printed in a Richard Burnett songbook, c. 1913. An early version was recorded by Emry Arthur in 1928 (Vocalion Vo 5208). ..."
Ishtarmuz's Blog (YouTube - Video)

Soft Verdict

"Since these are the rock and pop archives of Belgium, Wim Mertens is a bordercase on whether or not to allow him in (just as it is the case on the other side with the Flemish schlager-singers like Jimmy Frey, Will Tura ...). Fact is that minimal music, although certainly a part of modern day classical music, has a lot of points in common with rock & pop : Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Steve Reich are in the same case as Wim Mertens and they're also considered popmusicians, or at least enjoy the modern day popularity of them."
The Belgian Pop & Rock Archives
YouTube: Struggle For Pleasure, Inergys, Close Cover, Invader, A Visiting Card, Not At Home, Multipule 12, Maximizing The Audience, Yes, i never did, Gentleman Of Leisure

John Oswald - "White"

"Musical instruments produce sounds. Composers produce music. Musical instruments reproduce music. Tape recorders, radios, disc players, etc., reproduce sound. A device such as a wind-up music box produces sound and reproduces music. A phonograph in the hands of a hip hop/scratch artist who plays a record like an electronic washboard with a phonographic needle as a plectrum, produces sounds which are unique and not reproduced - the record player becomes a musical instrument. A sampler, in essence a recording, transforming instrument, is simultaneously a documenting device and a creative device, in effect reducing a distinction manifested by copyright."
plunderphonics
YouTube: John Oswald "White"

2010 March: John Oswald

Nicolas Dhervillers

"I love these composits by Nicholas Dhervillers of the interesting picturetank agency. The series is called ‘Tourists’ and tries to represent someone alien in their surrounding, what I love is the process, using found and authored images. He says 'The initial idea behind this new series was to radically change night photos that I had already taken and that had a pictorialist tendency, in order to create a new non-place. [I then] relit certain parts of the photo and carried out a universal ‘casting’ session, spending hours googling portraits of anonymous people, looking for the most banal image possible.'"
Contact Editions
Nicolas Dhervillers
La Lettre

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Wikipedia - "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a 1965 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by John le Carré. It was adapted by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper. The film stars Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, along with Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner, Peter van Eyck, Sam Wanamaker, Rupert Davies and Cyril Cusack. It was directed by Martin Ritt."
Wikipedia
Criterion (Video)
W - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
NYT: Le Carre's Best Seller Adapted to Film
YouTube (Video)

The Super-8 Years With Tuxedomoon

"The entire span of every era of the much beloved and legendary Tuxedomoon - from their early beginnings in San Francisco through their many years in Europe. Impressionistically filmed in both grainy black & white and psychedelic color, by group co-founder Steven Brown. Fits together like a perfect 15-year dream."
UbuWeb (Video)

Slinkachu

"My 'Little People Project' started in 2006. It involves the remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which I then place and leave on the street. It is both a street art installation project and a photography project. The street-based side of my work plays with the notion of surprise and I aim to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings. The scenes I set up, more evident through the photography, and the titles I give these scenes aim to reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed. But underneath this, there is always some humour. I want people to be able to empathise with the tiny people in my works."
Slinkachu
The Little People Project
amazon: Little People in the City: The Street Art of Slinkachu
YouTube: Little People in the City (by Slinkachu, Slinkachu Art

The Story Of American Folk Music

"Fascinating account of the development of American folk music through the 20th century. The first part centre on the contributions of Leadbelly and Alan Lomax."
YouTube: The Story Of American Folk Music 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12

B.T. Express

Wikipedia = "B.T. Express (originally named Brooklyn Trucking Express) was an American funk/disco group, that had a number of successful songs during the 1970s. The group was part of the 'Brooklyn sound' of the early 70s, formed from three players of the group King Davis House Rockers."
Wikipedia
B.T. Express
YouTube: Do It ('Til You're Satisfied), Peace Pipe, Give It What You Got, Do, It Till You're Satisfied, Once You Get It, Uptown Express, Watcha Think About That

A Book of Surrealist Games

"This delightful collection allows everyone to enjoy firsthand the provocative methods used by the artists and poets of the Surrealist school to break through conventional thought and behavior to a deeper truth. Invented and played by such artists as Andr Breton, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst, these gems still produce results ranging from the hilarious to the mysterious and profound."
Google
amazon

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage

Wikipedia - "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter. It was executive-produced by Adrian Malone, produced by David Kennard, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and Gregory Andorfer, and directed by the producers, David Oyster, Richard Wells, Tom Weidlinger, and others. It covered a wide range of scientific subjects, including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe."
Wikipedia
amazon
hulu: Cosmos
YouTube: Carl Sagan - Cosmos Intro

5 - Merry Christmas!!

"Available now for the first time... The lost recordings of one of rock and roll's most mysterious bands... In rare Yuletide spirit, The Doors... Light my Christmas..."
YouTube: The Doors -- Light My Christmas
The Soul Saints Orchestre - Santa's Got A Bag Of Soul
Tom Waits - Christmas Card From a Hooker
A Very Calvin & Hobbes Christmas
Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special

2010 December: 30 - Merry Christmas!!

Hey You! What Are You Listening To? New York

"A guy (his YouTube handle is TyCullen, so maybe he's named Ty Cullen) walks the streets of New York asking pedestrians with headphones what they're listening to. Listening to music in the crowded Mahattan streets is usually a private, even isolating, enterprise. Cullen's simple project is a nice reminder that there's value in sharing the things we like, and also provides an interesting cultural cross-section of New York pedestrians. Enjoy."
GOOD
YouTube

"Wild Leaves" - Patti Smith on World Aids Day

"To celebrate World AIDS Day this year we are showing Wild Leaves, a film of Patti Smith directed by Melodie McDaniel. The song 'Wild Leaves' was originally penned by Smith to honor her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who died from complications arising from AIDS in 1989."
NOWNESS (Video)

Vladimir Zuev

"Vladimir Zuev is a Russian artist specializing in graphic art. Over 10-year
experience in printing graphic abstract etchings, ex-librises and
woodcuts makes his works popular all over the world."
Vladimir Zuev
50watts

Nashville (1975) - Robert Altman

Wikipedia - "Nashville is a 1975 American musical black comedy film directed by Robert Altman. A winner of many awards, selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, Nashville is generally considered to be one of Altman's best films. The film takes a snapshot of people involved in the country music and gospel music businesses in Nashville, Tennessee. It has 24 main characters, an hour of musical numbers, and multiple storylines."
Wikipedia
filmsite
Classic Throwback: Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
Salon: A movie called “Nashville”
Dailymotion: NASHVILLE trailer Robert Altman

Down in the Tube Station at Midnight - The Jam

Wikipedia - "'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight' was the second single taken from the album All Mod Cons by The Jam. Released on 21 October 1978, it charted at number 15 and was backed by a cover of the Who song 'So Sad About Us', and 'The Night', written by Bruce Foxton. The back of the record jacket displayed a photo of Keith Moon, former drummer of The Who, who had died of an overdose of prescribed medication intended to help his alcoholism the month prior to the single's release."
Wikipedia - Down in the Tube Station at Midnight
YouTube: Down at the tube station at midnight, So Sad About Us, The Night

An Anthology of New York Poets

"Mark Ford's new anthology provides an excellent insight into the work of four very distinct and fascinating writers (Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and James Schuyler), whose early careers all flourished in the exuberant New York art scene of the 1950s. The city was brimming with postwar energy and confidence, self-consciously taking on the modernist mantle worn by Paris in the first half of the century, and this book is charged with the vivacity, optimism and camaraderie of the times."
One thing that can save America
amazon: An Anthology of New York Poets

Shakespeare and Company

Wikipedia - "Shakespeare and Company is the name of two independent bookstores on Paris' Left Bank. The first was opened by Sylvia Beach on 17 November 1919 at 8 rue Dupuytren before moving to larger premises at 12 rue de l'Odéon in the 6th arrondissement in 1922. During the 1920s, it was a gathering place for writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford. It closed in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris and never re-opened."
Wikipedia
Shakespeare and Company
George Whitman, owner of Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company, dies at 98
YouTube: Shakespeare and Company.
W - Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, 2005
video: Portrait of of a Bookstore as an Old Man