Johnny Otis

Wikipedia - "Ioannis Alexandros Veliotes (December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012), better known as Johnny Otis, was an American singer, musician, talent scout, disc jockey, composer, arranger, recording artist, record producer, vibraphonist, drummer, percussionist, bandleader, impresario and pastor. Born in Vallejo, California, he is commonly referred to as the 'Godfather of Rhythm and Blues'."
Wikipedia
Johnny Otis
YouTube: Hand Jives, Willie & the Hand Jives, Johnny Otis with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy - Ma (He's Making Eyes At Me), Harlem Nocturne, Linda Lu, Sittin' Here Drinkin', Can't you hear me callin', Castin my spell, Johnny Otis & Group - Voodoo Woman '59, Call Operator 210, Barrelhouse Blues, Low Down Dirty Dog Blues, The Watts Breakaway-Johnny Otis Show, Johnny Otis with Shuggie Otis & Roy Buchanan Live

The Tropological Space of Locus Solus

"The five issues of Locus Solus, edited by Harry Mathews, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch, are yet another example of the magazine as alternative space. If Robin Blaser viewed Pacific Nation in terms of mapping and nations, in terms of open space, I see Locus Solus as a form of Kunstkammer (a Cabinet of Wonder), a closed in hermetic space akin to Cornell's and Duchamp's boxes. A closed space, yet one that opens into an endless labyrinth of choices, options, and possibilities. Locus Solus was named after Raymond Roussel's 1914 novel."
Mimeo Mimeo

2009 September: Raymond Roussel
2010 June: Locus Solus (RealityStudio)
2011 April: Locus Solus

Weegee, the Photographer Who Gave Murder Style

"Weegee, who dramatically shaped America’s perception of the crime scene, only really started working as a professional photojournalist when he was close to 40. I mention this not only to make all us late starters feel better about ourselves but also because it puts the 100 prints currently on display at the International Center for Photography in New York in perspective."
Slate: Weegee, the Photographer Who Gave Murder Style
NoirCon (YouTube)
Wikipedia

The Knee Plays

"Welcome to the official website for David Byrne's 2007 Nonesuch Records reissue of the Knee Plays. Here you will find all things Knee Plays -- from its original conception, as part of Robert Wilson's epic play the CIVIL warS, to the groundbreaking stand-alone album it became. On the site, you'll find exclusive, never-before-released bonus material and works-in-progress, including photos, essays, reviews, and sketches."
The Knee Plays
WHAT’S A KNEE PLAY? by David Byrne
Wikipedia - The Knee Plays
YouTube: The Knee Plays
YouTube: Knee Plays - Live (1 of 10), (2 of 10), (3 of 10), (4 of 10), (5 of 10), (6 of 10), (7 of 10), (8 of 10), (9 of 10), (10 of 10)

(OvO)

Janine Niépce, Paris, 1950s
"'Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.'"
(OvO)

Jean Follain: 130 Poems

"The poetry of Jean Follain (1903-1971) is increasingly seen, by poets and critics in France and by his foreign admirers, as central to French poetry’s change of course after Surrealism. The writer Henri Thomas spoke of Follain as a poet 'qui parle d’autre chose', who speaks of things outside himself; he admired his freedom from rhetoric. Follain’s short, down-to-earth, subtle poems, many of which set out to preserve the lost rural world of his pre-war Norman childhood, have influenced a new generation of French poets. To anyone who still believes that modern French poetry is abstruse and over-cerebral, Follain’s memorable poems are the answer."
amazon
Wikipedia
Hard-Wired

2008 Janurary: Jean Follain

Dubstep

Digital Mystikz
Wikipedia - "Dubstep ... is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, United Kingdom. Its overall sound has been described as 'tightly coiled productions with overwhelming bass lines and reverberant drum patterns, clipped samples, and occasional vocals'. The earliest dubstep releases date back to 1998 and were darker, more experimental, instrumental dub remixes of 2-step garage tracks attempting to incorporate the funky elements of breakbeat, or the dark elements of drum and bass into 2-step, which featured B-sides of single releases."
Wikipedia
BBC: MistaJam (Video)
YouTube: Westbam - Bam Bam, Westbam - Celebration Generation, Westbam - Terminator, Digital Mystikz and Loefah - Twisup, Digital Mystikz - Third One, Digital Mystikz - Clash, Burial - Ghost Hardware, Burial - Broken Home, Whoa-B - Ten Minute Dubstep Mix

Dennis Sheehan

"Dennis Sheehan was born in Boston, MA in 1950, has works are in major public & private collections, including the White House. Sheehan paints in the Barbizon mode with remarkable authority & faithful adherence to his 19th century precursors. In the tradition of the tonalist painters, Sheehan creates landscapes of mood, affected by nature's changing seasons."
Dennis Sheehan
artnet
YouTube: Painting demo

Jimmy Cliff – Sacred Fire EP

"Bob Marley will forever remain the ubiquitous face of reggae, but Jimmy Cliff came before to inspire generations of musicians and introduce the world to the genre he and fellow Jamaicans called simply 'makin’ music.' On his latest release, Sacred Fire, Cliff turns around to give a reverent nod to songs he originally influenced — looping the sequence of influence full circle. He also covers some early Bob Dylan and unveils a new song of his own. Produced by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and recorded on vintage equipment, the five-song EP is a buildup to a full-length anticipated next year. It’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s first release since 2004′s Black Magic."
Consequence of Sound
amazon
YouTube: Ruby Soho, Guns of Brixton, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, Brixton Version, Ship Is Sailing

Etta James

Wikipedia - "Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins; January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was an American singer whose style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, gospel and jazz. Starting her career in the mid 1950s, she gained fame with hits such as 'Dance With Me, Henry', 'At Last', 'Tell Mama', and 'I'd Rather Go Blind' for which she claimed she wrote the lyrics. She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album The Seven Year Itch."
Wikipedia
YouTube: I'd Rather Go Blind, Something Got A Hold On Me, Tell Mama, Take It To The Limit, Misty, At Last, Baby, What You Want Me To Do, Good Rockin' Daddy, Dance With Me Henry, Please no more

2011 February: Etta James, Keith Richards, Robert Cray - "Hoochie Coochie Gal"
2011 July: Record Row: Documentary of major Chicago Soul labels

The Man from London

Wikipedia - "The Man from London is a 2007 film by Hungarian director Béla Tarr. It is an adaptation by Tarr and his collaborator-friend László Krasznahorkai of the 1934 French language novel L'Homme de Londres by prolific Belgian writer Georges Simenon. ... The plot follows Maloin, a nondescript railway worker who recovers a briefcase containing a significant amount of money from the scene of a murder to which he is the only witness. Wracked by guilt and fear of being discovered, Maloin sinks into despondence and frustration, which leads to acrimony in his household. Meanwhile, an English police detective investigates the disappearance of the money and the unscrupulous characters connected to the crime."
Wikipedia
amazon
Reverse Shot
BFI: The weight of the world
NYT: Slowly, Slowly in the Fog to Noir, via Simenon
YouTube: The Man from London, Bela Tarr - The Man From London

Heroic Africans

"This major international loan exhibition challenges conventional perceptions of African art. Bringing together more than one hundred masterpieces drawn from collections in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Portugal, France, and the United States, it considers eight landmark sculptural traditions from West and Central Africa created between the twelfth and early twentieth centuries in terms of the individual subjects who lie at the origins of the representations. Analysis of each of these considers the historical circumstances and cultural values that inform the artistic landmarks presented."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
NYT: What Leaders Look Like: A Continental Shift
The New Yorker: African Icons - Peter Schjeldahl(Video)

The David Johansen Group Live

Wikipedia - "The David Johansen Group Live was originally a promotional-only LP released by David Johansen to help promote his solo career away from the New York Dolls. The nine tracks from the promotional LP were recorded on July 21, 1978 at the New York's Bottom Line. In 1993, a CD was released of the full 18 songs from the 1978 concert."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube:Cool Metro, Reach Out (I'll Be There), Girls, Frenchette, We Gotta Get Outta This Place / Don't Bring Me Down/ It's My Life, Personality Crisis, Build me up buttercup, Lonely Tenement, Donna

Sean Landers

Why So Panicky? (2004)
Wikipedia - "Sean Landers (born 1962) is a contemporary artist working and living in New York, United States. Sean Landers was born in Palmer, Massachusetts. He is known for paintings with a central painted picture surrounded with text. ... His written paintings are written usually on either skies, or plain black or white. One series he did based on the seven deadly sins, using a pig for gluttony, cow for lust and horse for pride."
Wikipedia
Sean Landers
frieze: Sean Landers: Onwards!
YouTube: A Discussion with Sean Landers, New Paintings at ANDREA ROSEN Gallery

Lou Harrison - Music from Canticle No. 3

"Lou Harrison has for fifty years been in the vanguard of American composers. An innovator of musical composition and performance that transcends cultural boundries, Harrison's highly acclaimed work juxtaposes and synthesizes musical dialects from virtually every corner of the world. Born in Portland, Oregon, on May 14, 1917, Lou Harrison grew up in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area. There he was influenced by Cantonese Opera, Gregorian chants and the music of California's Spanish and Mexican cultures. Harrison also developed an interest in Indonesian Gamelan music through early recordings."
New Albion
An interview with Lou Harrison
YouTube: Music from Canticle No. 3, La Koro Sutro (1973), Main Bersama-Sama (1978), Varied Trio (1987), Song of Quetzalcoatl (1941), Fifth Simfony (1939), Fugue for percussion (1941)

2008 September: Lou Harrison

EL MAC

"Born in Los Angeles in 1980 to an engineer and an artist, Mac has been creating and studying art independently since childhood. His primary focus has been the lifelike rendering of human faces and figures. He has drawn inspiration from the surrounding Mexican & Chicano culture of Phoenix and the American Southwest, religious art, pin-up art, graffiti, and a wide range of classic artists such as Caravaggio, Mucha, and Vermeer. He began painting with acrylics and painting graffiti in the mid ’90s, and has since worked consistently towards mastering his signature portrait style."
EL MAC
vimeo
Blogspot (vimeo)

Ralph Stanley

Wikipedia - "Ralph Stanley (born February 25, 1927), also known as Dr. Ralph Stanley, is an American bluegrass artist, known for his distinctive singing and banjo playing. Ralph Edmond Stanley was born, grew up, and lives today in rural southwestern Virginia—'in a little town called McClure at a place called Big Spraddle, just up the holler' from where he moved in 1936 and has lived ever since in Dickenson County."
Wikipedia
Ralph Stanley
amazon
YouTube: O Death, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Girl From The Greenbriar Shore, Clawhammers the Banjo + Angel Band, I've Got A Mule To Ride, Angel Band, Bound to Ride

Web Protests Piracy Bills, and 2 Senators Change Course

"Internet protests on Wednesday quickly cut into Congressional support for anti-Web piracy measures as lawmakers abandoned and rethought their backing for legislation that pitted new media interests against some of the most powerful old-line commercial interests in Washington. Freshman Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a rising Republican star, was first out of the starting gate Wednesday morning with his announcement that he would no longer back anti-Internet piracy legislation he had co-sponsored. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican who heads the campaign operation for his party, quickly followed suit and urged Congress take more time to study the measure that had been set for a test vote next week."
NY Times

Neil Young: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History

"Neil Young has been described as brilliant, cantankerous, enigmatic, and vexing. Regardless, his generation-spanning fan base and his profound musical influence cannot be denied. While a number of narrative titles have chronicled Neil Young in one manner or another, this is the first illustrated history to span his 41 studio albums, 6 live releases, and 40-plus years as a recording and touring musician."
amazon

2008 February: Neil Young
2010 March: Neil Young and Miles Davis
2010 April: Neil Young - 1
2010 April: Neil Young - 2
2010 May: Neil Young - 3
2010 October: Neil Young's Sound

Rafal Milach

Black Sea
"Rafal Milach is a documentary photographer based in Warsaw, Poland. He graduated Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Poland and ITF in Opava, Czech Republic. For more than 10 years he has been working on transition issues in Russian speaking countries and CEE region. This work resulted with the book called 7 Rooms (Kehrer Verlag 2011) and such essays as The Grey (2002), Wunderland (2006) or Black Sea of Concrete (2009)."
Rafal Milach
YouTube: Presenting 7 Rooms by Rafal Milach
Q&A: Rafal Milach, Warsaw
Modernphoto: Rafal Milach - Interview with Photographer
vimeo: Black Sea of Concrete

Kool & the Gang

Wikipedia - "Kool & the Gang are an American jazz, R&B, soul, and funk group, originally formed as the Jazziacs in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1964. They went through several musical phases during the course of their recording career, starting out with a purist jazz sound, then becoming practitioners of R&B and funk, progressing to a smooth pop-funk ensemble, and in the post-millennium creating music with a modern, electro-pop sound."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Funky Stuff, Jungle Boogie, Celebration, Fresh, Get Down On It

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Wikipedia - "Hiroshi Sugimoto ... born on February 23, 1948, is a Japanese photographer currently dividing his time between Tokyo, Japan and New York City, USA. His catalog is made up of a number of series, each having a distinct theme and similar attributes."
Wikipedia
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Hiroshi Sugimoto - Theater
artnet
pbs: art21 (Video)
YouTube: T Magazine - It's All About Hiroshi Sugimoto

Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart live

"Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart live at the Town and Country Club, London, 6th September 1992 as a part of the NME's Viva 8! week of concerts for the Spastics Society."
YouTube: part 1/6, part 2/6, part 3/6, part 4/6, part 5/6, part 6/6

The Color of Pomegranates (1968) - Sergei Parajanov

Wikipedia - "The Color of Pomegranates ... is a 1968 Armenian film directed by Sergei Parajanov. The Color of Pomegranates is a biography of the Armenian ashug Sayat-Nova (King of Song) that attempts to reveal the poet's life visually and poetically rather than literally. The film depicts the poet's coming of age, discovery of the female form, falling in love, entering a monastery and dying, all framed through both Sergei Parajanov's imagination and Sayat Nova's poems."
Wikipedia
Senses of Cinema
reverse shot
amazon
YouTube: Color of Pomegranates / Sayat Nova

Gilbert Sorrentino

Wikipedia - "Gilbert Sorrentino (April 27, 1929 – May 18, 2006) was an American novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and editor. In over twenty-five works of fiction and poetry, Sorrentino explored the comic and formal possibilities of language and literature. His insistence on the primacy of language and his forays into metafiction mark him as a postmodernist, but he is also known for his ear for American speech and his attention to the particularities of place, especially of his native Brooklyn."
Wikipedia
Poetry Foundation: Gilbert Sorrentino 1929–2006
Gilbert Sorrentino Interview
Brooklyn Rail: Remembering Gilbert Sorrentino
HiLobrow: Gilbert Sorrentino
Coffee House Press
amazon

Loop

Brian Eno, Discreet Music
Wikipedia - "In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns. A loop can be created using a wide range of music technologies including digital samplers, synthesisers, sequencers, drum machines, tape machines, delay units, or they can be programmed using computer music software."
Wikipedia
Sound From Diagrams and The Vivarium (YouTube)
soundsnap
Royalty Free Music Library
Infinity Loop Music

Café Müller (1978) - Pina Bausch

A piece by Pina Bausch. "The rhythm of a Pina Bausch piece is obsessively regular. Bursts of violence are followed by long stillnesses. Bits of business are systematically repeated, sometimes with increasing urgency but more often with no variation at all. At every repetition, less is revealed, and the action that looked gratuitous to begin with dissolves into meaningless frenzy." 1984, BAM, Next Wave Festival.
UbuWeb (Video)
Pina Bausch Remembered
theartsdesk Q&A: Meeting Pina Bausch
Review: Pina Bausch Wuppertal Tanztheater in Cafe Muller/The Rite of Spring at Sadler's Wells

2008 May: Pina Bausch
2009 June: Pina Bausch 1940-2009

Five Points

George Catlin, 1827, Paradise Square
Wikipedia - "Five Points (or The Five Points) was a neighborhood in central lower Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood was generally defined as being bound by Centre Street in the west, The Bowery in the east, Canal Street in the north and Park Row in the south. ... Five Points gained international notoriety as a disease-ridden crime-infested slum that existed for well over 70 years."
Wikipedia
THE FIVE POINTS By Gregory Christiano
YouTube: Five points, Uncovering the real Gangs of New York Part 1 of 4, Part 2 of 4, Part 3 of 4, Part 4 of 4

James Brown - Live Zaire 1974

"In spite of various personal problems and setbacks he continued to score hits in every decade through the 1980s. In addition to his acclaim in music, Brown was also a presence in American political affairs during the 1960s and 1970s."
YouTube: The Payback, Cold Sweat, Try Me, Gonna Have A Funky Good Time - Muhammad Ali

Keith Haring - Journals

"This biography uses Keith's own words to tell his story--words that first appeared in numerous interviews and profiles published during his lifetime, as well as in his personal diaries."
Keith Haring - In His Own Words
amazon
Art In America Magazine
YouTube: Keith Haring Documentary

2009 April: Keith Haring

Rare Concert Footage of The Band, 1970

"Just four songs from The Band, performing live at The Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh, PA, recorded on November 1st, 1970."
YouTube: Time to Kill, The Weight, This Wheel's on Fire, Up on Cripple Creek

EVOL

"EVOL is a berlin based street artist that transforms banal urban surfaces, into miniature architectural surfaces through pasting. using pasted paper, EVOL transforms electric boxes, small planters and other geometric city forms, into miniature apartment buildings and other structures. each piece of paper is printed with a repetitive pattern of flat gray walls dotted with plain window frames. once applied to a surface, the paper transforms the form into small building that EVOL often adorns with small characters. EVOL performs this process within different cities and has even been commissioned to do installations in galleries, where he was created entire blocks of miniature buildings."
designboom
EVOL – A Street Art Collection
EVOL/CTINK

Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven

Wikipedia - "Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven (born 5 December 1951) is a Belgian artist whose work involves painting, drawing, computer art and video art."
Wikipedia
Zeno X
e-flux

Elvis To KLF: The Train I Ride Is Sixteen Coaches Long

"Life with a three-year-old can find you focusing on on forms and representations of transportation you wouldn't otherwise. Trains, for example, hold a particular resonance with the developing mind that challenge their relative rarity compared to cars and airplanes. We've found ourselves meeting constant demands for all things trains by discovering the online world of obsessive documentarians of all things locomotive. Watching this narration-and-music-free modern footage of old-fashioned steam engines has caused us to consider the sensual impact the advent of train travel would have on the rural blues men who would incorporate the sound of trains into their music and use the eeire whistle of the coming train as a metaphor for all great changes in life, love and death."
WFMU (YouTube)

Music Is the Weapon - Fela Kuti

"Music Is the Weapon may be short, but it's essential viewing for Fela fans. Filmed in 1982, the 53-minute documentary captures the late Nigerian musician/activist at his peak. ... For the uninitiated, it's hard to explain--in mere words--how one man could so successfully mate the sexuality of James Brown with the righteous politics of Bob Marley and sinuous sounds of Miles Davis. Fela drew as much inspiration for his 'Afro-beat' from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as funk, reggae, and jazz."
amazom
vimeo: Music Is the Weapon