Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - White Lunar

"All three movies, with their epic landscapes and acutely incised psychology, find a correlative sweep and depth in the scores that Cave and Ellis have devised for them, and a poignancy that imbues the films with a timeless aura; the music from this triumvirate is on Disc 1 of the 2 CD set. In addition to these large-scale efforts, Cave and Ellis have also contributed a resonant musical dimension to a pair of lesser known, but striking documentaries, represented on Disc 2."
Nick Cave & Warren Ellis
amazon: White Lunar
Pitchfork: White Lunar
YouTube: White Lunar (preview), Song for Bob, Song for Jesse, Cheata, The Journey

Pierre Bonnard

La fenetre
Wikipedia - "Pierre Bonnard (3 October 1867 – 23 January 1947) was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis. ... Bonnard is known for his intense use of color, especially via areas built with small brushmarks and close values. His often complex compositions—typically of sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens populated with friends and family members—are both narrative and autobiographical."
Wikipedia
Google
Pierre Bonnard
NYT: Pierre Bonnard
YouTube

BBC Documentary: Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet

"Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman Blount, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, although Sun Ra himself always denied that Blount was his surname. He returned to Saturn in 1993 after creating a stunningly variegated and beautiful assemblage of earthly and interplanetary music, most notably with his fervently loyal Arkestra."
YouTube: BBC Documentary: Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet

The Voice Lays Off J Hoberman

"Reaction on Twitter and Facebook to yesterday's late-breaking news that the Village Voice had laid off J Hoberman, a staff writer since 1983 and chief film critic since 1988, was swift and harsh. ... Following the waves of fury, some who might be in a position to know have suggested that Hoberman will 'land on his feet' and I know I'm not alone in sincerely hoping he does. Today's must-read, then, is 'A History of Film Criticism at the Village Voice,' which Hoberman wrote back in October 2005 on the occasion of the alternative weekly's 50th anniversary."
mubi
amazon: The Village Voice Film Guide: 50 Years of Movies from Classics to Cult Hits

Cesária Évora

Wikipedia - "Cesária Évora (Portuguese ... 27 August 1941 – 17 December 2011) was a Cape Verdean popular singer. Nicknamed The Barefoot Diva for performing without shoes, she was also The Queen of Morna."
Wikipedia
The Paris Review: Sodad
Cesária Évora
amazon
NYT: Cesária Évora, Singer From Cape Verde, Dies at 70
YouTube: Sodade (Paris, 2004), Besame mucho (Paris 2002), Isolada (Le Grand Rex de Paris, 2004), Saia Travada (Paris, 2004), Carnaval De São Vicente (São Paulo, 2000), Cabo Verde, Rotcha Scribida, Angola (Le Bataclan, Paris, 1995), Fada

"Into the Mystic" - Van Morrison

Wikipedia - "'Into the Mystic' is a song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison and featured on his 1970 album Moondance. ... The lyrics are about a spiritual quest, typical of Morrison's work. 'Bass thrums like a boat in motion, and the song comes back to water as a means of magical transformation.' 'At the very end Van sings: too late to stop now, suggesting that the song also describes an act of love.'"
Wikipedia
YouTube: "Into the Mystic"

Ends of the Earth: Art of the Land to 1974

"Ends of the Earth: Art of the Land to 1974 is the first large-scale, historical-thematic exhibition to deal broadly with Land Art, capturing the simultaneous impulse emergent in the 1960s to use the earth as an artistic medium and to locate works in remote sites far from familiar art contexts."
Stanford
amazon: Ends of the Earth: Art of the Land to 1974
Will Double Negative be a no show?
Michael Heizer- Levitated Mass Update and Upcoming Exhibition
Levitated Mass Update and Upcoming Exhibition (YouTube)

Tintin: the Complete Companion

"A fully illustrated guide to the world-famous comic character Tintin, and his adventures. This well-researched and gorgeously presented overview follows Tintin through the 23 titles of the complete series. Tintin is the classic example of groundbreaking graphic narrative that all others can be compared to. Written and drawn between 1929 and 1976, the 23 adventures of Tintin, his dog Snowy and an unforgettable cast of characters has become a defining standard of graphic literature."
amazon: Tintin: the Complete Companion
W - The Adventures of Tintin
W - Tintin
Clear Lines (on the afterlife of Tintin)
Tintinologist

2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983

Dr. T's Music Software

"I founded Dr. T's Music Software in 1984. The Commodore 64 KCS was the first sequencer that offered event editing and open-ended composition structuring. This program evolved for many years, and eventually became Omega II, for the Atari, a sequencing packing with interactive editing, performance, and algorithmic composition features that are (to the best of my knowledge) unmatched in currently available sequencers. I left Dr. T's in 1993, suffering from a severe case of personal burn-out, and uninterested in the direction that the company was going in."
Dr. T's Music Software
Dr. T's Musical Workstation - From Random Thoughts to Finished Score
Dr T's MIDI-Ax
"A Short History of Intelligent Instruments" (1987) - Laurie Spiegel
YouTube: Tobenfeld's channel

DJ Faroff

"So what's a mashup? What's a bootleg? It's pretty much all the same. Also known as 'bastard pop,' a bootleg is a song that's 'mashed-up.' Usually, this means the vocal track of one song is mixed over the instrumentation of another. Using audio editing software, DJs and mashup artists combine different artists and musical genres to create new and unique songs that are often greater than the sum of their parts."
DJ Faroff
YouTube: Johnny Cash vs Jackson 5 vs Steve Miller Band - Folsom Prison Robin, The Beatles vs Joan Jett vs Cypress Hill vs House of Pain vs RATM, MC Hammer vs Eurythmics vs New Order vs Talking Heads vs Donna Summer, B-52's vs Lipps, Inc. vs Patrick Hernandez vs Yello vs Soulwax - Funky Shack!, Bob Marley vs The Beatles - Let It Be, No Cry, Ramones vs Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Blitzkrieg Girl
vimeo: The Temptations vs Cee Lo Green, Justin Timberlake vs Ray Parker Jr. vs Laid Back vs MSTRKRFT vs Justice

John Luther Adams

Wikipedia - "John Luther Adams (born January 23, 1953 in Meridian, Mississippi) is a composer whose music is inspired by nature, especially the landscapes of Alaska where he has lived since 1978."
Wikipedia
John Luther Adams
YouTube: INUKSUIT, Red Arc / Blue Veil, John Luther Adams: The Music of a True Place
vimeo: A Sonic Geography Of Alaska

Andrew Lenaghan

"My paintings are life paintings. They are painted outdoors and on location. I observe the sun and weather move over the subject. I paint with an urgency to capture these passing moments. I encounter the people who frequent the site. I learn anecdotal stories about it. While working, I am fully immersed in my subject. It's exciting to get to know a foreign city or place through the act of pleinair painting. And that was the case for me in Santa Fe."
William Siegal
artnet

Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse - Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Wikipedia - "Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse is a 1980 album by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. The album is also known by the title French Record. The album title is a pun. Lajeunesse is a street name in Montreal, Quebec, but the title can also mean 'between youth and wisdom'. It is considered by many fans, even those who don't speak French, to be one of the duo's best albums. The album includes several of the French songs that appeared on the sisters' earlier albums, along with a number of newly recorded tracks."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Complainte pour Ste. Catherine, Excursion a Venise, Naufragee Du Tendre, Parlez-Nous à Boire, Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse
123video: Prends ton manteau

2010 January: Kate McGarrigle 1946 – 2010
2008 July: Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Karen Finley

Wikipedia - "Karen Finley (b. 1956, Chicago, Illinois) is an American performance artist, whose theatrical pieces and recordings have often been labelled 'obscene' due to their graphic depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement. She was notably one of the NEA Four, four performance artists whose grants from the National Endowment for the Arts were vetoed in 1990 by John Frohnmayer after the process was condemned by Senator Jesse Helms under 'decency' issues."
Wikipedia
Karen Finley
Karen Finley: The Rage of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman
YouTube - GRITtv: Karen Finley: Constructing Women's Identities, GRITtv: Art is Still Threatening, Karen Finley's "I'm An Ass Man" spoken word performed at Limelight NYC, Epilogue, PRANKS!: Karen Finley

"Radio Radio" - Elvis Costello and The Attractions

Wikipedia - "'Radio Radio' (sometimes written 'Radio, Radio') was a single by Elvis Costello and The Attractions released in the UK in October 1978. The song had already appeared on the US version of their second album, This Year's Model, released earlier that year. The song is a protest song concerning the commercialization of radio broadcasts and the power wielded by the recording studios and radio companies who decided what songs were heard over the airwaves, especially the more politically explicit side of punk rock."
W - Radio Radio
Media: Radio Radio, Saturday Night Live 1977
YouTube: Radio Radio (1979)

Hymn to the Manhattan Bridge

"Nick Franglen‘s 24-hour-long performance for Make Music New York 2011, Hymn to the Manhattan Bridge, has been turned into an evocative 17 minute film by Bevis Bowden."
Nick Franglen (vimeo)

Clay Ketter

"... Clay Ketter’s work is often described in terms of painting and art history. Moderna Museet is presenting an exhibition, and a body of work, that comprises a multitude of intra-artistic statements and questions: 'the Duchampean gesture' of the wall paintings, the serial and the relationship to minimalism, the veritably stage-like states of ‘before’ and ‘after’. Before painting, as in Wall Paintings, made from spackled but un-painted gypsym boards. Impressions after sockets and other building materials, as in Trace Paintings. But also before and after a looming, or actual, disaster."
Moderna Museet hosts Paintings, Assemblages and Sculptures by Clay Ketter
artnet
Clay Ketter
YouTube: Clay Ketter på Moderna Museet del 1/2 (Part 1 of 2), (Part 2 of 2)

The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

"Not since the publication of Paul Auster’s The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry (1984) has there been a significant and widely read anthology of modern French poetry in the English-speaking world. Here for the first time is a comprehensive bilingual representation of French poetic achievement in the twentieth century, from the turn-of-the-century poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire to the high modernist art of Samuel Beckett to the contemporary verse of scourge Michel Houellebecq."
Yale Press
amazon

Brotherhood - New Order

Wikipedia - "Brotherhood is the fourth studio album by the English rock band New Order, released in 1986 by Factory Records. The album contains a mixture of post-punk and electronic styles, roughly divided between the two sides. New Order would not utilize the guitar as a main instrument again until 2001's Get Ready. Brotherhood includes the band's breakout single in the USA, 'Bizarre Love Triangle'. It is the only track from the album released as a single and as a video."
Wikipedia
W - Bizarre love triangle
YouTube: Bizarre Love Triangle, New Order & Depeche Mode Bizarre love triangle & Strange love, State of the Nation, Broken Promise, Paradise, As It Is When It Was

Broken Barricades - Procol Harum

"Procol Harum is a commune, a workshop, a whatever, five musicians and one poet-in-residence, who have survived England's pop explosion - an explosion which left in its wake a number of ephemeral successes."
Procol Harum
W - Broken Barricades
YouTube: Broken Barricades, Simple Sister, Power Failure

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