Mr. Okra

"There's a new toy at my desk that a certain 20-something in the office wants to play with. Press a button, and a voice familiar to many rings out in an amplified sing-song: 'I have blueberries, I have peaches. I have plums. I have the mango.'"
Nola
He's got bananas! He's got okra!
Mr. Okra In Your Pocket
vimeo: Mr. Okra

Bob Marley - "Concrete Jungle"

"No sun will shine in my day today; (no sun will shine)
The high yellow moon won't come out to play:
(that high yellow moon won't come out to play)
I said (darkness) darkness has covered my light,
(and the stage) And has changed my day into night, yeah."
YouTube:The Old Grey Whistle Test 1973, Concrete Jungle, Studio repetition in 1980

Golden Age of Piracy

Capture of the Pirate, Blackbeard, 1718
Wikipedia - "The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation given to usually one or more outbursts of piracy in maritime history of the early modern period. In its broadest accepted definition, the Golden Age of Piracy spans the 1650s to the 1730s and covers three separate outbursts of piracy. ... Narrower definitions of the Golden Age sometimes exclude the first or second periods, but most include at least some portion of the third. The modern conception of pirates as depicted in popular culture is derived largely, though not always accurately, from the Golden Age of Piracy."
Wikipedia
W - Piracy in the Caribbean
W - Blackbeard
W - William Kidd
W - Anne Bonny
YouTube: The Pirates - Buccaneer

John Prine Live from Sessions at West 54th

"John Prine won over critics in the early '70s with a string of successful singer/songwriter albums, and won over audiences with his charismatic stage presence. Although live albums have long been available for fans, Sessions at West 54th gave Prine a chance to work his charm on a television audience.
allmusic
YouTube: Live from Sessions at West 54th 1:06:36

2010 February: John Prine, 2011 October: John Prine - 1, 2012 May: Diamonds in the Rough.

Peter Doig - No Foreign Lands

Red Boat (Imaginary Boys), 2003-04
"A major exhibition of the work of Peter Doig (b. Edinburgh 1959), one of the most internationally-renowned painters working today. No Foreign Lands surveys the paintings and works on paper that Doig has created during the past 10 years, with a particular emphasis on the artist's approach to serial motifs and recurring imagery. These works are exotic in their subject matter, formally spare and monumental at the same time, and show Doig working at the height of his extraordinary powers."
National Galleries
Guardian - Peter Doig: a free spirit captured in Scottish National Gallery's retrospective
Saatchi Gallery
YouTube: TateShots Issue 12, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2008)

2009 April: Peter Doig, 2009 June: Compass in Hand.

Alfredo Jaar - Pavilion of Chile

"Alfredo Jaar has developed a critical practice of call and response through alert and advanced invocations to sites of crisis. Whether about violence and poverty, exile and migration, or other conditions of global or ideological conflict, his work prompts observation and thinking that unsettle conventions and complacency. Representing Chile at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia in its temporary pavilion situated in the Arsenale, Jaar’s evocative installation Venezia, Venezia guides visitors along an arching passage—like one of Venice’s iconic bridges—of striking visual and somatic encounters of aridity and liquidity."
MOUSSE
Alfredo Jaar
YouTube: Biennale Arte 2013 - Chile

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity - Mike Brodie

"Mike Brodie's compelling body of work sprang from his journeys walking, hitchhiking and train-hopping across the United States. In 2003, Brodie was a bored 18-year-old living in Pensacola, Florida and working part time in a grocery store when he hopped the wrong train to visit a friend in Mobile - and landed several hundred miles away in Jacksonville. The journey sparked something in Brodie and, with a Polaroid SX-70 camera given to him by a friend (or found behind the seat of an abandoned car, depending which story you prefer), he began an anarchic photographic adventure, documenting the hobos, vagabonds and fellow travellers he met along the way."
Telegraph
amazon
Guardian
photo-eye
YouTube: Mike Brodie: Documenting America's homeless train-jumpers

Etron Fou Leloublan

Wikipedia - "Etron Fou Leloublan ..., also known as EFL, were a French avant-rock band founded in 1973 by actor and saxophonist Chris Chanet. They recorded five studio albums between 1976 and 1985, and released a live album, En Public Aux Etats-Unis d'Amérique recorded during a tour of the United States in 1979. Etron Fou Leloublan were best known as one of the five original Rock in Opposition (RIO) bands that performed at the first RIO festival in London in March 1978. Etron Fou Leloublan's music has been described as a blend of punk rock, jazz, French music hall, comedy satire and 'avant-garde mayhem'."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: nicolas, Batelages [Full Album] 1976, L' enfance de guigou, Le Fleuve Et Le Manteau, Monsieur Blanc

Rebels: A Journey Underground

"Rebels: A Journey Underground is an excellent Canadian documentary history of “the counterculture” produced for television in the late 1990s and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. It’s the work of writer/director Kevin Alexander, who did a great job with it. More people should see it. I’m happy to see that the series has been posted in full on YouTube. The six-part series covers a wide swath of historical countercultures moving from William Blake and 1830s Parisian bohemians to mostly 20th century movements like hippie, Jazz, Beatniks, punk, and what was at the time the series was produced, the brave new world of cyberspace."
DangerousMinds (Video)

Procol Harum (1967)

Wikipedia - "Procol Harum is the self-titled debut studio album by English rock band Procol Harum. It was released in September 1967. The original Deram Records release of the LP included a large poster of the album cover artwork by Dickinson. Though the album was recorded on multitrack, it was issued as mono-only in the UK, and in mono and rechannelled stereo in the US. Despite extensive searching, the original multitrack tapes have not been located and thus a stereo mix of the original ten tracks may never be possible. Several alternate takes, however, have been mixed into stereo and are available on CD."
Wikipedia
Art Dudley, Stereophile, September 2003
allmusic
YouTube: A Whiter Shade of Pale, Conquistador, Repent Walpurgis, Procol Harum (Full album)

2009 July: Procol Harum, 2011 July: A Salty Dog, 2011 December: Broken Barricades, 2013 April: "Homburg".

Reggae / Hip-Hop Remixes of the 1990s

Johnny Osbourne
"Let’s start off with one of our favourite producers! Kenny Dope is know for his excellent production skills over a wide variety of genres, and he’s definitely secured his place in history based on his Reggae / Hip-Hop remixes alone. Listen to Johnny Osbourne‘s classic Buddy Bye and Kenny’s Dondadda Original Rama Jama Mix from 1993."
BrooklynRadio (Video)
W - Johnny_Osbourne
W - Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez

United States Live - Laurie Anderson

Wikipedia - "United States Live was the third album release by avant-garde singer-songwriter Laurie Anderson. Released as a 5-record boxed set (later reissued, slightly truncated, on four CDs), the album was recorded at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City in February 1983. United States was Anderson's magnum opus performance-art piece featuring musical numbers, spoken word pieces, and animated vignettes about life in the United States. Segments ranged from humorous, such as 'Yankee See,' which gently chided Anderson's record label, Warner Bros."
Wikipedia
amazon
TheAwl - Difficult Listening Hour: An Introduction to Laurie Anderson (Video)
Hardformat (Video)
Media Art Net
This Week in BAM History: Laurie Anderson’s United States (Video)
YouTube: "United States - Live" Part IV 1/5, Part IV 2/5

2008 June: Laurie Anderson, 2009 December: Personal Service Announcements, 2011 February: Home studio (late 80's), 2011 March: I Don't Need It, I Don't Want It, And You Cheated Me Out of It, 2011 October: Big Science, 2011 October: Delusion

“And Now a Word from Our Sponsors”

"Getting started can be difficult. When your name draws a blank, it’s unlikely that anyone will buy what you’re selling. Luckily, the attention that worthy unknowns need in order to get noticed has a price. And for fifty years, publishers with books to sell and authors with a name to make have announced their arrival with an appearance in The New York Review: though not, at least initially, under a byline. In the Review’s twenty-ninth issue, dated October 22, 1964, the third of more than thirty books written by the historian Howard Zinn was advertised on page 13."
NY Review of Books

Martha's Vineyard

Edgartown. Annie C., 1976-1977
Wikipedia - "Martha's Vineyard (Wampanoag: Noepe) is an island (including the smaller Chappaquiddick Island) located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, known for being an affluent summer colony. Often called just 'The Vineyard,' the island has a land area of 100 square miles (260 km2). ... The island received international notoriety after the July 18, 1969, Chappaquiddick incident, in which Mary Jo Kopechne was killed in a car driven off the Dike Bridge by U.S. Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy. The bridge crossed Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island (a smaller island connected to the Vineyard and part of Edgartown). As a foot bridge, it was intended for people on foot and bicycles, as well as the occasional emergency vehicle when conditions warranted."
Wikipedia
W - Chappaquiddick Island
W - Vineyard Haven
W - Oak Bluffs
W - Edgartown
YouTube: Martha's Vineyard, Driving North Water Street Edgartown, Edgartown

Button Up

"Button Up is the brainchild of Garry John Kane. Garry is currently the bass player with Scottish legends The Proclaimers and has also played with Marianne Faithfull, The McCluskey Brothers and Justin Currie to name but a few. Button Up first came to life in 1998 when Garry, joined by drummer Ross McFarlane and keyboardist Paul Gallagher, started gigging around Glasgow with a unique hammond driven mod/soul sound that quickly gathered them a loyal following."
Buttonup Records
iTunes: Button Up
YouTube: If I Could Only Be Sure, Listen To Your Heart Beat, Inhaler, Same Time, Same Place, Keeps On Burning

Cotton Tenants: Three Families

"... The origins of Agee and Evan's famous collaboration date back to an assignment for Fortune magazine, which sent them to Alabama in the summer of 1936 to report a story that was never published. Some have assumed that Fortune's editors shelved the story because of the unconventional style that marked Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and for years the original report was lost. ... Published here for the first time, and accompanied by thirty of Walker Evans’s historic photos, Cotton Tenants is an eloquent report of three families struggling through desperate times. Indeed, Agee’s dispatch remains relevant as one of the most honest explorations of poverty in America ever attempted and as a foundational document of long-form reporting."
amazon: Cotton Tenants: Three Families
NYT: A Paean to Forbearance (the Rough Draft)
BookForum / artforum
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 by James Agee (1938)

2011 June: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Wildflower

Blue-flowered penstemons. Mt. Harrison.
Wikipedia - "A wildflower (or wild flower) is a flower that grows in the wild, meaning it was not intentionally seeded or planted. Yet 'wildflower' meadows of a few mixed species are sold in seed packets. The term 'wildflower' has been made vague by commercial seedsmen who are interested in selling more flowers or seeds more expensively than when labeled with only its name and/or origin. The term implies that the plant probably is neither a hybrid nor a selected cultivar that is in any way different from the way it appears in the wild as a native plant, even if it is growing where it would not naturally."
Wikipedia
Wildflower Identification
MyWildflowers
Wildflowers of the United States

Billy Bragg - Tooth & Nail (2013)

"'January Song,' the bluesy leadoff track from veteran English folkie Billy Bragg's first solo outing since 2008's Mr. Love and Justice, begins with the lyric 'I'm so tightly wound in tension' and ends with 'This is how the world ends,' signaling a shift from the stalwart political activism of previous outings to a more internalized dialogue that suggests a subtle re-positioning of the magnifying glass. Bragg has always tempered his political leanings with matters of the heart, and the weepy 'Chasing Rainbows' and sad and soulful 'Your Name on My Tongue' rank as two of his more intimate offerings, suggesting a recent emotional upheaval that needed a basement in Pasadena, California to find catharsis."
allmusic
W - Tooth & Nail
COS
Spotify (Video)
YouTube: Tooth & Nail, No One Knows Nothing Anymore, Handyman Blues, Ideology, I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore, Another Man's Done Gone, Greetings to the New Brunette, January Song

2011 November: Billy Bragg, 2012 November: Strange Things Happen (Live on The Tube 1984), 2012 December: The Internationale, 2013 May: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions

Curtis Mayfield - Roots (1971)

"Curtis Mayfield's visionary album, a landmark creation every bit as compelling and as far-reaching in its musical and extra-musical goals as Marvin Gaye's contemporary What's Goin' On. Opening on the hit 'Get Down,' the album soars on some of the sweetest and most eloquent -- yet driving -- soul sounds heard up to that time. Mayfield's growing musical ambitions, first manifested on the Curtis album, and his more sophisticated political sensibilities, presented with a lot of raw power on Curtis Live!, are pulled together here in a new, richer studio language, embodied in extended song structures ('Underground'), idealistic yet lyrically dazzling anthems ("We Got to Have Peace," "Keep On Keeping On," and, best of all, the soaring 'Beautiful Brother of Mine'), and impassioned blues ('Now You're Gone')."
allmusic
W - Roots
amazon
YouTube: Keep On Keeping On, Get down, We Got To Have Peace, Underground, Beautiful Brother of Mine.

Suzanne Treister

"HEXEN 2.0 looks into histories of scientific research behind government programmes of mass control, investigating parallel histories of countercultural and grass roots movements. HEXEN 2.0 charts, within a framework of post-WWII U.S. governmental and military imperatives, the coming together of diverse scientific and social sciences through the development of cybernetics, the history of the internet, the rise of Web 2.0 and increased intelligence gathering, and the implications for the future of new systems of societal manipulation towards a control society."
HEXEN 2.0
Suzanne Treister
NYT: Suzanne Treister: ‘Hexen 2.0’
Interview: Suzanne Treister, capturing the essence of gaming since the '80s
YouTube: PPOW GALLERY, Hexen2.0 Seance remix, Alchemy

Sam Durant - Proposal for Public Fountain

"Sam Durant’s third exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ, Proposal for Public Fountain, centres on a fountain sculpted from black marble – a prototype for a larger installation in a public setting – together with a series of related graphite drawings. The structure features a reproduction of an armoured water cannon, which sprays a jet of water onto a hooded figure bearing an anarchist flag. Its note of polemic is a defining aspect of Durant’s art. Poised between detached commentary and acerbic critique, it recasts a contemporary episode of state authoritarianism in the ‘stately’ aesthetics of public stonework."
Wall Street International
Sadie Coles
Sam Durant on Scaffolds, Fountains, and Abstracting the Political

Some Sort of Alchemy

"His names were many: christened Herman Blount, he reinvented himself as Sonny Blount, H. Sonne Blount, Le Sony’r Ra, and, finally, what he called his 'vibrational name,' Sun Ra. Ra’s band, too, was rich in appellation—one could compile a dizzyingly poetic list of its nearly fifty names, including the Myth Science Arkestra, the Intergalactic Research Arkestra, the Cosmo Drama Arkestra, the Transmolecular Arkestra, and the Love Adventure Arkestra. As many names, Ra might have said, as there are stars in the sky. This jazz visionary was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and not on Saturn, as he often claimed; in Chicago, in the late forties, a young Sonny Blount played piano with Fletcher Henderson, sharpening his formidable skills as a composer and arranger with the big-band legend."
Paris Review

2008 September: Sun Ra, 2010 August: Disco 3000: Complete Milan Concert [1978], 2010 August: Sounds from Tomorrow's World: Sun Ra and the Chicago Years, 1946-1961, 2010 October: Sun Ra on Artbeat, 2010 November: The Magic Sun (1966), 2010 November: Space Is the Place (1974), 2010 December: Sun Ra in Egypt and Italy, 2011 April: A Joyful Noise (1980), 2011 August: Lanquidity, 2012 Thursday: BBC Documentary: Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet, 2012 July: The Paris Tapes, 1971, 2012 November: Sun Ra Arkestra - Points On A Space Age, 2012 December: Super-Sonic Jazz.

Colors - Dennis Hopper

Wikipedia - "Colors is a 1988 American police procedural crime film starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall, and directed by Dennis Hopper. The story takes place in South Central, North West and East Los Angeles, and centers on Bob Hodges (Duvall), an experienced Los Angeles Police Department CRASH Police Officer III, and his rookie partner, Danny McGavin (Penn) who try to mitigate the gang violence between the Bloods, the Crips, and the Hispanic street gangs. Colors relaunched Hopper as a director 18 years after Easy Rider and stirred some controversy over its depiction of gang life and gang violence."
Wikipedia
Guardian: I was Dennis Hopper's henchman
NY Times: Police vs. Street Gangs In Hopper's 'Colors'
YouTube: Colors Official Trailer #1 - Robert Duvall Movie (1988) HD, The Car Chase Scene, Intro - One Time One Night In America

2009 November: Easy Rider (1969), 2010 May: Dennis Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010), 2010 November: The American Friend (1977), 2012 November: Dennis Hopper Documentary (90s), 2013 May: The Lost Album.

Cedar Tavern

Wikipedia - "The Cedar Tavern (or Cedar Street Tavern) was a bar and restaurant in New York City last at 82 University Place between 11th and 12th Streets. It was famous as a former hangout of many prominent Abstract Expressionist painters and beat writers. The establishment was located at 24 University Place in its heyday, but closed in April 1963 and reopened three blocks north in 1964 in a more upscale pub style."
Wikipedia
Nostalgia (or Not) for The Cedar Tavern
NY Times: Bye-Bye Bohemia
An Inside Look at the AbEx-ers
WNYC - Audio Download: Downtown at The Cedar Tavern (Video)

"You're The One For Me" - D. Train

Wikipedia - "'You're The One For Me' is a 1982 dance/soul single by D. Train, a New York based duo. 'You're The One for Me' was a number one dance hit for three weeks early in 1982. The single also made it to number thirteen on the soul singles chart."
Wikipedia
W - D. Train
allmusic
YouTube: You're The One For Me, You're the one for me, vinyl 12" extended version

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road - Lucinda Williams

Wikipedia - "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is the 1998 album by singer-songwriter and guitarist Lucinda Williams, her fifth professional release. Issued by Mercury/Polygram Records, it was recorded in Nashville and Canoga Park, California. Williams co-produced the album, which includes guest appearances by Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Rolling Stone
YouTube: Right In Time, Drunken Angel, Lake Charles, Still I Long For Your Kiss, Greenville, Metal Firecracker, Can`t Let Go, Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, Concrete and Barbed Wire

2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks"

Nunca New Mural In Berlin, Germany

"After a quick stop by London, UK, Nunca is now in Germany where he just completed this massive Berliner Punk mural for the Urban Spree Festival in Berlin. Nunca's frank and figurative work is characterized by a bright spectrum of colors and his use of hatching lines to give the forms volume and definition. Traditionally seen in old prints like etchings and woodcuts, the artist resourcefully uses this technique to cover large surfaces with skillfully spray-painted lines."
StreetArtNews
NUNCA

1939 New York in HD Color

"A just released, amazing film clip brings back to life the colorful life on the streets of New York City - from the summer of 1939, that's right you read right that's 1939. The color footage, which comes from Romano-Archives and was recently released on the Web, is 74 years old."
WJCT
1939 New York in HD Color (Video)

The Rite of Spring

Wikipedia - "The Rite of Spring ... is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky, with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation and almost a riot in the audience. Although designed as a work for the stage, with specific passages accompanying characters and action, the music achieved equal if not greater recognition as a concert piece, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century."
Wikipedia
W - Igor Stravinsky
W - Sergei Diaghilev
Guardian: How Stravinsky's Rite of Spring has shaped 100 years of music (Video)
The Rite of Spring at 100 | Carolina Performing Arts (Video)
Slate (Video)
BBC: Did The Rite of Spring really spark a riot?
YouTube: "The Rite of Spring", The Mariinsky Theater Orchestra and Ballet, Maurice Béjart, Joffrey Ballet, Vaslav Nijinsky, Georges Momboye

2009 September: The Rite of Spring - Pina Bausch

A New Chapter of Dub - Aswad (1982)

"The strongest album of Aswad's CBS period, a powerful roots-and-culture program entitled New Chapter, was followed shortly by what would turn out to be the strongest dub album of several that were produced during the group's career. A New Chapter of Dub was produced by Aswad in collaboration with the up-and-coming dubmeister Mikey Dread (credited here as Michael [Reuben] Campbell), whose work as a radio DJ had made him a household name among London's West Indian expatriate population even before he began establishing himself as a top studio producer."
allmusic
YouTube: Dub Fire, Ghetto in the sky, Truth, Bammie Blow, Tuffist, Zion I, Shining Dub

Fitzcarraldo - Werner Herzog

Wikipedia - "Fitzcarraldo is a 1982 film written and directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski as the title character. It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known as Fitzcarraldo in Peru, who has to pull a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory. The film is derived from the real-life story of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
amazon
MUBI (Video)
Fitzcardboardaldo: A Classic Film Recreated with Cardboard (Video)

2008 August: Popol Vuh, 2010 December: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 2011 May: Abschied (1972)

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) - PJ Harvey

Wikipedia - "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is the fifth studio album by English alternative rock musician PJ Harvey, released 23 October 2000 on Island Records. Recorded during March to April 2000, it contains themes of love that are tied into Harvey's affection for New York City."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: Good Fortune, A Place Called Home, Big exit, One Line, This Mess We're In

2009 November: PJ Harvey, 2011 May: Let England Shake

Hand Drawn Map of New York

"Hi everyone, so here is the Hand Drawn Map of New York that I've been working on for what seems like FOREVER! It was once again commissioned by the lovely Evermade.com and was just as hard as the Map of London, if not harder... Anyway, I'll let the images speak for themselves as I have lost the ability to think about anything other than buildings."
Jenni Sparks Illustration
Guardian: 10 of the best hand-drawn maps – in pictures
Daily Mail

Jorge Luis Borges

Wikipedia - "Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986), known as Jorge Luis Borges ..., was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the 'character of unreality in all literature'. His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, animals, fictional writers, philosophy, religion and God. His works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to both the fantasy and magical realism genres."
Wikipedia
Paris Review: Jorge Luis Borges, The Art of Fiction No. 39
The Poetry Foundation
The Garden of Jorge Luis Borges
NY Times
amazon: Jorge Luis Borges

2009 August: Jorge Luis Borges

Shaped on all Six Sides

"'Shaped on all Six Sides' is a fascinating mini documentary on the philosophy and craft of wooden boat carpentry, as told by boat carpenter Andy Stewart of Emerald Marine in Anucortes, Washington. The film was directed by Kat Gardiner."
laughing squid (Video)