Stamen's watercolour maps are things of great beauty - now there's a print version

"My favourite thing about the internet is how it facilitates communities coming together around any number of specialist and obscure interests, so that whatever floats your boat you can easily find and connect with like-minded obsessives. The mapping community (my new favourite community) was a flutter with excitement a couple of weeks back when superb San Francisco studio Stamen released the second part of their city tracking project, particularly with regards to the eye-meltingly gorgeous watercolour style."
It's Nice That
stamen

Floating Bear

"After my deal to obtain Floating Bear #24 fell through a month or so ago, Floating Bears have been much on my mind. I broke down and bought a run of 31 of these fragile mimeos from William Reese Company. This bookstore is proof positive of the value and importance of the true bookman. I received three catalogs along with my purchase including a two volume catalog of 20th Century periodicals."
Reality Studio
Reality Studio Archive
Reality Studio, Floating Bear 24
Jacket2: Bibliographic Bunker
ZineWiki: The Floating Bear

Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Wikipedia - "Kate and Anna McGarrigle is the self-titled 1975 debut album by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. The album includes 'Heart Like a Wheel,' the McGarrigles' most famous song, which was first released by Linda Ronstadt in 1974."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Talk To Me Of Mendocino, Foolish You, Go Leave, Heart Like a Wheel (Caffe Lena, 1990), Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Linda Ronstadt : Heart Like A Wheel, Complainte pour Ste Catherine, Be My Baby, My Town

2008 July: Kate and Anna McGarrigle
2010 January: Kate McGarrigle 1946 – 2010
2012 January: Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse

Clouds 365 Project

"Kelly DeLay: This is Year Three of the Clouds 365 Project. I started the Clouds 365 Project on July 1, 2009, as a commitment to do something creative every day. My goal was, and still is, to shoot an image or video of clouds every day for 365 days. On days that are cloudless or rainy, I have to stretch creatively to illustrate the day. There are no rules; I just want to react and see where this project takes me."
Clouds 365 Project
Clouds 365 Project - Year 3(Video)
Clouds 365 Project - Blog

Dub Syndicate

Wikipedia - "Dub Syndicate is a dub band, formed by Adrian Sherwood, and it became a showcase for Adrian Sherwood's collaboration with Style Scott, former ace drummer with the Roots Radics and Creation Rebel. Dub Syndicate initially evolved out of Creation Rebel and had a classic dub sound until the third album, Tunes From The Missing Channel (1985), where Dub Syndicate gave birth to a highly experimental more technological dub sound. Dub Syndicate's new sound centered around the interaction of Scott, Sherwood, and members of Tackhead, Skip McDonald, Keith LeBlanc, and Doug Wimbish."
Wikipedia
Dub Syndicate biography
YouTube: Brighton's Stanmer Park, 30th May 1994, Lee Scratch Perry & Dub Syndicate - Jungle, Brancaleone 10 Nov 2011, Ravi Shankar Rootsman (Rare Version), Forward Not Back, Bim Sherman & Dub Syndicate, Let the Spirit Rise

2011 September: Adrian Sherwood

Skipping rope

Kids playing jump-rope on the sidewalk in NYC, 1946
Wikipedia - "Jump rope (American English) or skipping rope (British English) is the primary tool used in the game of skipping played by children and many young adults, where one or more participants jump over a rope swung so that it passes under their feet and over their heads. This may consist of one participant turning and jumping the rope, or a minimum of three participants taking turns, two of whom turn the rope while one or more jumps. This is called long rope. Sometimes the latter is played with two turning ropes; this form of the activity is called Double Dutch and is significantly more difficult. Jump-rope rhymes are often chanted beginning when the skipper jumps in and ending when the skipper is tripped up."
W - Skipping rope
W - Skipping-rope rhyme
W - Double Dutch (jump rope)
W - Clapping game
YouTube: Jump Rope Cinderella, Jump rope tricks, Hand Clapping Game "Sevens"

Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy - Robert Farris Thompson

"Introduction: The Rise of the Black Atlantic Visual Tradition. Listening to rock, jazz, blues, reggae, salsa, samba, bossa nova, juju, highlife, and mambo, one might conclude that much of the popular music of the world is informed by the flash of the spirit of a certain people specially armed with improvisatory drive and brilliance. Since the Atlantic slave trade, ancient African organizing principles of song and dance have crossed the seas from the Old World to the New. There they took on new momentum, intermingling with each other and with New World or European styles of singing and dance."
Web Archaeolgy
amazon: Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy
Flash of the Spirit: Big Freedia’s Sissy Bounce & Sierra Leone Tribal (YouTube)
Mashpedia: Kongo people (Video), Haitian Vodou, Oshun

Rosanne Cash - "I Was Watching You"

"Rosanne Cash casts an eye on life, love and loss on The Tonight Show in Feb.2006."
YouTube

2010 March: Rosanne Cash
2012 January: Black Cadillac

The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk

"In Istanbul, one hot, sun-soaked day this past summer, the novelist Orhan Pamuk leaned back in his chair, a writerly throne in an overfull study, and looked out the window. He trained his eyes on the unblemished vista before him, where the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn run into one another and emerge as a perfect muddle of turquoise. Today, he announced, he was depressed."
NYT: The Objects of the Exercise
amazon: The Museum of Innocence, (1)
W - The Museum of Innocence
npr: Orhan Pamuk's 'Museum' Of Obsession, Innocence (Video)
Guardian: Orhan Pamuk on The Museum of Innocence (Video)

Troubled Voyage In Calm Weather - The Early Years of the Incredible String Band

"'There is something occult and mysterious and unexplained about the Incredible String Band,' mused Lilian Roxon way back in the Counterculture's famous long ago, 'as if it were conjured out of nowhere with a magic spell, and perhaps it was.' Words of a similar cadence might well be uttered by many of us about the year these ones were written: 1969."
Perfect Sound Forever
Five Thousand Spirits Singing and Gladly Dancing
YouTube: Ithkos and Rehearsal (1972), The Letter - (Live at Woodstock 1969), When You Find Out Who You Are, Everything's fine right now, Empty Pocket Blues (Live 1970), Gently Tender, Red Hair

2008 August: Incredible String Band

A Trip to Charles Olson’s Gloucester

"... Except for that letter, for years I kept largely to myself and have had a limited correspondence. That has begun to change recently but for the most part I still remain wary of my idols despite all the wonderful insight they could bring. Charles Olson would have been an exception to that rule had I been fortunate enough to have been born a full two decades earlier. From all accounts, Olson was one of the great talkers of all time at home, in the library, looming over the lecture hall, sitting at the kitchen table, or holding forth in the barroom."
Reality Studio
Poetry Foundation: I, Maximus of Gloucester, to You
Poetry Foundation: Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]
The Battle of Gloucester: Vincent Ferrini Meets Charles Olson

2009 January: Charles Olson
2009 April: Rockport Harbor
2010 March: Charles Olson: August 1963
2010 September: Charles Olson: The Art of Poetry No. 12
2010 December: "In Cold Hell, in Thicket", NET film
2011 January: Woodberry Poetry Room Oral History Initiative
2011 July: Charles Olson: February 21, 1957
2011 October: Photograph Database

Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times: Afro-Funk Highlife

"Strut announce the return of their pioneering ‘Nigeria 70’ compilation series with an exclusive new third volume: ‘Sweet Times: Afro Funk, Highlife & Juju from 1970s Lagos’ compiled again by series curator Duncan Brooker. Excavating another choice batch of rare grooves from Nigeria’s label archives, the new edition places the spotlight on some of the deeper fusions happening across the country during the 1970s as traditional guitar highlife blended with jazz and funk, hypnotic juju grooves became more progressive and young Nigerian bands came through with their own heavy West African take on U.S. soul, funk, disco and rock."
Strut
amazon
Duncan Brooker on Nigeria 70: Sweet Times
Nigeria70-Sweet Times (Video)
YouTube: Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times preview trailer, Chief Commander Ebeneza Obey and his International Brothers - Ajoyo

Rosie Sanders

Delphiniums (detail)
"Botanical painting has a long and specific history, cataloguing plant species in excruciating detail, often abstracting them against a plain paper void away from their natural context. Moving away from this conventional approach to botanical art but continuing a tradition of valued documentation of flowers that has earned her five Royal Horticultural Gold Medals, artist Rosie Sanders creates contemporary and striking portraits of backlit blooms in the less than perfect phases of degeneration."
It's Nice That: Contemporary botanical painting in Rosie Sanders' exhibition Against the Light
Rosie Sanders
YouTube: Part 1: The inspiration behind her work, Part 2: Rosie at work in her studio

Speaking in Tongues - Talking Heads

Wikipedia - "Speaking in Tongues is the fifth studio album by the band Talking Heads, released in 1983. The album was a commercial breakthrough that produced the band's first (and only) American Top 10 hit, 'Burning Down the House', which was accompanied by a promotional video."
Wikipedia
Rolling Stone
YouTube: Burning Down the House, Making Flippy Floppy, Girlfriend Is Better, Slippery People, Swamp, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)

The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951

"In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War."
The Jewish Museum
NYT: Artists Equipped With a Social Conscience
NYT: 15 Years That Changed Photography

The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 (1962)

"Unearthed some 40 years after the fact, this has to be one of the finest blues collections ever assembled on video. Thanks to a couple of young promoters who brought the musicians to Europe--where they were treated with a good deal more respect and dignity than in America--we get an extraordinary lineup of bluesmen and women: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace... the list goes on."
amazon: The American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1966, Vol. 1 (1962)
YouTube: 1:10:50. 01. T-Bone Walker — Call Me When You Need Me 02. Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee — Hootin' Blues 03. Memphis Slim — The Blues is Everywhere 04. Otis Rush — I Can't Quit You Baby 05. Lonnie Johnson — Another Night to Cry 06. Sippie Wallace — Women Be Wise 07. John Lee Hooker — Hobo Blues 08. Eddie Boyd — Five Long Years 09. Walter "Shakey" Horton 10. Junior Wells — Hoodoo Man Blues 11. Big Joe Williams — Mean Stepfather 12. Mississippi Fred McDowell — Going Down to the River 13. Willie Dixon — Weak Brain and Narrow Mind 14. Sonny Boy Williams — Nine Below Zero 15. Otis Spann — Spann's Blues 16. Muddy Waters — Got My Mojo Working 17. Finale: Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon — Bye Bye Blues 18. Earl Hooker — Walking The Floor.Over You/Off The Hook

Here Come the Warm Jets - Brian Eno

Wikipedia - "Here Come the Warm Jets is the debut solo album by Brian Eno. Produced by Eno, it was released on Island Records in 1974. The musical style of Here Come the Warm Jets is a hybrid of glam rock and art rock, similar to Eno's previous album work with Roxy Music but with songs that are more quirky and experimental. The album features various guest musicians, including Robert Fripp of King Crimson and members of Roxy Music, Hawkwind, Matching Mole, and The Pink Fairies. In developing the album's words and music, Eno used unusual methods such as dancing for his band members and having them play accordingly, and singing nonsense words to himself that would form the basis of subsequent lyrics."
Wikipedia
enoweb/lyrics
YouTube: China My China, More Blank than Frank, Baby's on Fire - The BBC Sessions (1974), Blank Frank, Dead Finks Don't Talk

The Ex + Tom Cora

"The Ex is an anarchist band from the Netherlands. They formed in 1979 at the height of the original punk explosion and have released more than twenty full length albums since. In the early 1990s they collaborated with the late Tom Cora (September 14, 1953 - April 9, 1998), who was a United States cellist and composer, best known for his improvisational performances in the field of experimental jazz and rock."
last.fm
W - The Ex
YouTube: Lamp Lady, State of Shock, Hidegen Fújnak A Szelek, The Flute's Tale, Hickwall 1993, New Clear Daze, The Big Black

2010 June: Tom Cora
2012 February: Fred Frith & Tom Cora

Philip Wolfhagen

"Philip Wolfhagen is, quintessentially, a painter of the Australian landscape, one whose work has been exclusively absorbed into his private obsession with Tasmania, the terrain of his personal origins. His work is physical, dense in its application, sombre in mood and tonality, the result of a deeply experienced, enduring engagement with an ancient, yet eternally living subject."
Sherman Galleries
Karen Woodbury

The German Issue (1982)

"The German Issue (1982) was originally conceived as a follow-up to Semiotext(e)'s Autonomia/Italy issue, published two years earlier. Although ideological terrorism was still a major issue in Germany, what ultimately emerged from these pages was an investigation of two outlaw cities, Berlin and New York, which embodied all the tensions and contradictions of the world at the time. The German Issue is the Tale of Two Cities, then, with each city separated from its own country by an invisible wall of suspicion or even hatred. It is also the complex evocation of the rebelling youth—squatters, punks, artists and radicals, theorists and ex-terrorists—who gathered all their energy and creativity in order to outlive a hostile environment."
MIT Press
W - Semiotext(e)
Semiotext(e)
Afterall / : The German Issue, Annette Weisser
Re:Print: The German Issue: Still Straddling the Berlin Wall
How leftist intellectuals once approached bifurcated Berlin
amazon

The Righteous Brothers

Wikipedia - "The Righteous Brothers were the musical duo of Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield. They recorded from 1963 through 1975, and continued to perform until Hatfield's death in 2003. Their emotive vocal stylings were sometimes dubbed 'blue-eyed soul'. Medley and Hatfield both possessed exceptional vocal talent, with range, control and tone that helped them create a strong and distinctive duet sound and also to perform as soloists."
Wikipedia
YouTube: You've lost that loving feeling, Unchained Melody, (You're My) Soul And Inspiration, Little Latin Lupe Lu

Impressions Of Light: The French Landscape From Corot To Monet

"This large, lavish journey through the art of the 19th-century French landscape offers a host of masterful works, among them Corot's Forest of Fontainbleau, Millet's End of the Hamlet of Gruchy, Renoir's Rocky Crags at L'Estaque, and Monet's Rue de la Bavolle, Honfleur. As is often the case, however, some of the most wonderful things to see are also the least expected: rare and unusual monotypes by Degas, three states of a softground etching by Pissarro, and numerous works by some of their lesser-known but equally important contemporaries. Unlike previous books on the topic, Impressions of Light presents a unique and stunningly complete group of work that introduces a new level of complexity into the discussion of French landscapes."
amazon

Le Pas Du Chat Noir - Anouar Brahem

"Oud player Brahem has established his own little niche with the instrument; his music, strongly Arab-inflected, has the spare, chamber feel that makes it a perfect fit in the ECM catalog. He's a contemplative player, and this melding with piano and accordion suits his style perfectly, as notes and ideas draw out marvelously. The interplay between musicians is as delicate as lace -- thoughtful, with everyone listening as much as playing."
All Music
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Toi qui sais (Live), Le pas du chat noir, Leila au pays du carrousel, var.
vimeo: 2002 - Full Album, 1:10:39

Meredith Monk: Spring Variation from Songs of Ascension

"New Sounds Live: Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble with the Todd Reynolds Quartet from The Greene Space on May 18, 2011."
YouTube

2011 July: Songs of Acsension

The Beats — A Graphic History

"NYT: The writers of the Beat Generation had the good fortune to give themselves a name and to write extensively about their lives, in novels like Jack Kerouac’s 'On the Road' and William Burroughs’s 'Junkie,' in poems like Allen Ginsberg’s 'Howl' and, later, in memoirs like Joyce Johnson’s 'Minor Characters' and Hettie Jones’s 'How I Became Hettie Jones.' Jones once said they couldn’t be a generation because they could all fit in her living room, but in the popular imagination they were much more than the sum of their body parts or writings. They were a brand."
NYT: The Mad Ones
amazon: The Beats: A Graphic History

B-boying

Wikipedia - "B-boying, often called 'breakdancing', is a popular style of street dance that was created and developed as part of hip-hop culture among African American and Latino youth in New York City. The dance consists of four primary elements: toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes. It is danced to both hip-hop and other genres of music that are often remixed to prolong the musical breaks. The musical selection for b-boying is not restricted to hip-hop music as long as the tempo and beat pattern conditions are met. A practitioner of this dance is called a b-boy, b-girl, or breaker. These dancers often participate in battles, formal or informal dance competitions between two individuals or two crews."
Wikipedia
npr: Breakdancing, 'Present at the Creation' (Video)
W - Capoeira
B-BOYING (Breaking)
Urban Dictionary
YouTube: FURIOUS ROCKERS-BREAKDANCING 1984, The Suns of James Brown feat, NEW YORK CITY BREAKERS OLD FOOTAGE, New York City Breakers on SoulTrain 1984, New York Subway Break Dance

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

"As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication -- and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes."
YouTube
amazon: Alone Together

2011 April: Sherry Turkle

Albert Marcoeur

"Albert Marcoeur, French multi-instrumentalist/composer, was born on December 12 1947, in Dijon, France. During his formal education of clarinet at the National Academy of Music and Dance of Dijon, Marcoeur actively participated in many straightforward college rock 'n roll bands. Closing an end to his formal training Marcoeur's musical visions had gravitated towards the experimental facets of music, wishing 'to do nothing else but make my own music'."
Albert Marcoeur
Marcoeur
last.fm
YouTube: Compte-rendu d'analyse, Simone, Formule 1 & 2, La salle d'attente, Comment Tu T'Sens, Téléphone privé (Celui où y'a Joseph, 1984)

Twentysix Gasoline Stations - Ed Ruscha

"Twentysix Gasoline Stations is the first artist's book by the American pop artist Ed Ruscha. Published in April 1963 on his own imprint National Excelsior Press, it is often considered to be the first modern Artist's book, and has become famous as a precursor and a major influence on the emerging artist's book culture, especially in America. The book does exactly what its title suggests, reproducing 26 photographs of gasoline stations next to captions indicating their brand and location."
Wikipedia
Twentysix Gasoline Stations
APX: ED RUSCHA: “Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1962″ (1997)
A Kind of a ‘Huh?’: The Siting of Twentysix Gasoline Stations
lens culture

Philip Perkins

"Philip Perkins was born in 1951 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. During the first half of the 1970s he made numerous experimental films in Eugene, Oregon before relocating to San Francisco in 1977. Starting 1979, he focused on sound engineering and music, yet still making videos for local bands The Residents, Tuxedomoon or MX-80, for instance."
Continuo: Philip Perkins ‘Drive Time’
FUN MUSIC
Continuo: Philip Perkins ‘Neighborhood With A Sky’
Philip Perkins
Artist Detail
last.fm

Tiina Heiska

Twin Room, 2009
"For some years now, I have been creating series of paintings in which my themes evolve from one painting to the next. My work is based on photography, which I use as a sketch or a draft for the later painted image, and it’s intricately linked to cinematography. However where traditional cinema relies on a continuous flow of events and thereby creates a story with a beginning and an end, my work is comprised of several series of stills. My paintings form no obvious storyline but rather leave it to the viewer’s imagination to bridge the gap between image and story."
Escape Into Life
Tiina Heiska

Fela Kuti live in England, 1984 - "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense"

"Fela 'Anikulapo' Kuti and Egypt 80 perform live in Glastonbury, England, 1984.
Fela gives a brief interview and denies the very existence of Democracy as a political system before launching into his song 'Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense,' son, Femi Kuti, is featured on alto sax."
YouTube: Fela Kuti live in England, 1984 (1/3), (2/3), (3/3)

"One Night in Brooklyn"

"Taylor Deupree and Stephen Vitiello played a concert together earlier this month. If you follow either musician, and anyone who admires ambiguously melodious ambient music should, then you knew this, because they mentioned it on Twitter, and posted photos as they were gearing up, such as the one above. It took place in Brooklyn, and fortunately for those of us not in the area, Vitiello has subsequently posted a six-minute piece from the show."
disquiet (Video)

Literary Style: 15 Writers' Bedrooms

V. Hugo’s Bedchamber
"It's true; we find the secret lives of others fascinating. Especially if those others are writers. We get to know them through their work, and we yearn to learn more about them as people... We feel a kinship, with their experiences or with their characters, and we begin to imagine what their lives must be like. We read biographies about them, tour their homes and visit their graves, all in an effort to gain insight into their own particular genius. And nowhere is the essence of the artist more present than in the bedroom."
Literary Style: 15 Writers' Bedrooms

Dusty Springfield

"Britain's greatest pop diva, Dusty Springfield was also the finest white soul singer of her era, a performer of remarkable emotional resonance whose body of work spans the decades and their attendant musical transformations with a consistency and purity unmatched by any of her contemporaries; though a camp icon of glamorous excess in her towering beehive hairdo and panda-eye black mascara, the sultry intimacy and heartbreaking urgency of Springfield's voice transcended image and fashion, embracing everything from lushly orchestrated pop to gritty R&B to disco with unparalleled sophistication and depth."
YouTube: I Only Want To Be With You, Wishing and Hoping, I Just Don't Know What to do With Myself, In The Middle Of Nowhere, Son of a Preacher Man, 24 Hours From Tulsa, Live at the BBC (1/8), (2/8), (3/8), (4/8), (5/8), (6/8), (7/8), (8/8), Nothing has been proved, In Private, Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield - What Have I Done To Deserve This

2009 May: Dusty Springfield