John Zorn - "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008

"Uri Cane & Masada String Trio performs the Static Compositions of the Book Of Angels! / live in Marciac, 2008 // a film by Samuel Thiebaut // Uri Cane - Piano // Mark Feldman - vioin / Erik Friedlander - cello / Greg Cohen - bass // John Zorn - composer // album 'Book Of Angels' available at Tzadik Records."
vimeo: "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008 55:04

2009 March: John Zorn, 2010 August: Spillane,  2011 October: Filmworks Anthology : 20 Years of Soundtrack Music, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 January: Bar Kokhba and Masada, 2013 September: Masada String Trio Sala, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010).

Tom Waits - Telephone call from Istanbul (1987)

All night long on the broken glass
Livin' in a medicine chest
Mediteromanian hotel back
Sprawled across a roll top desk

The monkey rode the blade on an overhead fan
They paint the donkey blue if you pay
I got a telephone call from Istanbul
My baby's comin' home today
YouTube: Telephone call from Istanbul (Live), Telephone call from Istanbul

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money.

Great Shakespeare Plays Retold with Stick Figures in Three Simple Drawings

"Other than Romeo and Juliet and possibly Hamlet, Shakespeare doesn’t exactly lend himself to the elevator pitch. The same creaky plot devices and unfathomable jokes that confound modern audiences make for long winded summaries. Not to say it can’t be done. Mya Gosling, a Southeast Asia Copy Cataloger at the University of Michigan, has been amusing herself, and more recently others, with 'Good Tickle Brain,' a web comic that reduces each of the complete works to a mere three panels. (Titus Andronicus‘ bloodbath required but one.) Those of us who are semi-versed in the Bard should delight in the way major characters and complex side plots are glibly stricken from the record."
Open Culture
Good Tickle Brain

Jacob Hashimoto's Gas Giant

"Jacob Hashimoto (b. 1973, Greeley, Colorado), is an artist whose work studies visual experience in space, artifice, and craft through the use of materials such as handmade kites, fiberglass, marble and the skillful use of light. Combining traditional kite-making techniques and painting into sculptural environments, Hashimoto creates massive space-altering installations with thousands of thin paper sheets. For MOCA Pacific Design Center, Hashimoto is producing the third and final edition of Gas Giant. The work was previously presented in Venice, Italy in 2013 Fondazione Querini Stampalia by Studio la Citta and in Chicago in 2012 at Rhona Hoffman Gallery."
MoCA
MoCA: 1 of 4
Jacob Hashimoto's Gas Giant at MOCA Pacific Design Center (PHOTOS)
NYT (Video)

Listen: Nicolas Jaar's Hour-Long John Lennon Memorial Mix

"Yesterday, December 8, marked 33 years since John Lennon was murdered. To honor his memory, Nicolas Jaar shared an hour-long mix through his Other People imprint. It's titled 'OUR WORLD' and you can stream it above. The mix pieces together clips of drone, film music, and experimental piano works with beat-oriented clips. It opens with a Lennon interview segment and a broadcast regarding his death, and ends with Jaar's mix of 'Oh My Love' from 1971's Imagine. About 21 minutes in, Jaar splices in a clip documenting a Black Friday fight at a Wal-Mart."
Pitchfork (Video)
YouTube: Nicolas Jaar Performs A 5 Hour Improvised Set At MoMA PS1 +1

Spools Out 3: A Cassette Reviews Column For March

Friesen / Waters Duo - FW
"It's a constant reassurance. Digging deeper and deeper into the pile of tapes, one gets an invaluable insight to the sheer weight of ambition and creativity still out there; confirmation that affordable MIDI controllers and desktop condenser mics have levelled the playing field in a truly big way. The overgrown long tail of new music could be considered to have diluted creativity on a global scale, yet the opposite appears to be true. Creative thought begets creative thought, and inspiration flows via groups, and effectively the cultural conversation ends up a global game of musical Chinese whispers, throwing up twisted and morphed replicas of replicas until turning points emerge. Releasing music on cassette post-internet is perhaps two steps back in response to one giant leap forward, but the physical embodiment of it seemingly offers some small legitimacy to artists that would have to fight beyond their means to get heard in other ways."
The Quietus (Video)

2013 December: Spool's Out: 2013's Best Tapes Reviewed, 2014 January: Spool's Out: A Cassette Reviews Column For January.

Next Stop, Greenwich Village - Paul Mazursky (1976)

Wes Anderson's 10 favorite New York movies
Wikipedia - "Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a 1976 romantic comedy drama film, set in the early 1950s, written and directed by Paul Mazursky, featuring, amongst others, Lenny Baker, Shelley Winters, Ellen Greene, Lois Smith, and Christopher Walken. The film was generally well received by critics. ... Filmmaker Mazursky had made his acting debut in Stanley Kubrick's 1953 film Fear and Desire (shot in New York) and Next Stop, Greenwich Village is a semiautobiographical account of Mazursky's early life as an actor in that city. The film was entered into the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. The film takes place in 1953. Larry Lipinsky is a young Jewish boy from Brooklyn, New York, who has dreams of stardom."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
NYT: Next Stop, Greenwich Village
New York Film Locations
YouTube: Stop a Greenwich Village - Trailer, Christopher Walken in "Next Stop Greenwich Village", 1976

Happy Birthday, Frank O’Hara: The Beloved Poet Reads His “Metaphysical Poem”

"'Love is metaphysical gravity', Buckminster Fuller wrote in his scientific revision of 'The Lord’s Prayer.' From beloved poet Frank O’Hara (March 27, 1926–July 25, 1966) comes a very different and very wonderful cross-pollination of love, metaphysics, and the art of verse. In this short, damaged, yet infinitely delightful reading recorded at the Lockwood Memorial Library at SUNY-Buffalo on September 25, 1964, two years before his death, O’Hara reads his 'Metaphysical Poem,' found in the altogether spectacular volume Selected Poems (public library)."
brainpickings (Video)

2008 January: Frank O'Hara, 2010 February: USA: Poetry, 2010 October: Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara,  2011 October: City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara - Brad Gooch, 2012 December: USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966), 2013 June: A Visual Footnote to O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”: New World Writing and The Poets of Ghana.

August Sander: People of the Twentieth Century

The Brick Layer 1928
"People of the Twentieth Century, the collective portrait of German society made by German photographer August Sander, has fascinated viewers from its earliest presentation in a 1927 exhibition and the controversial publication of a selection of 60 images in the book Face of the Time published two years later. Despite Sander's dedication over five decades to the idea and compilation of this portrait atlas of the German people, the project remained unfinished. Nonetheless, his photographs remain compelling, in part because he chose to categorize his subjects by profession or social class. The images are thus representations of types, as he intended them to be, rather than portraits of individuals."
Detty
MoMA
W - August Sander
Luminous-Lint
vimeo: August Sander - People of the 20th century by Reiner Holzemer

"English Civil War" - The Clash (1979)

Wikipedia - "'English Civil War' is a song by British punk rock band The Clash, featured on their second album Give 'Em Enough Rope, and released as a single on 23 February 1979. It reached number 25 in the UK Singles Chart and number 28 in the Irish Singles Chart. The song is derived from an American Civil War song, 'When Johnny Comes Marching Home', written by Irish-born Massachusetts Unionist Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore, which is in turn derived from the Irish anti-war song 'Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye'. It was popular among both sides of the conflict. Having learnt the song at school, Joe Strummer suggested that the band should update it. Those on the left wing saw the rise during the mid-1970s of far right groups such as the British National Front as alarming and dangerous omens for Britain's future. The song is about this state of politics in the country and warns against all things uniformed and sinister."
Wikipedia
YouTube: English Civil War

Luca Pignatelli

Testa di Afrodite, 2007
"Luca Pignatelli was born in 1962 in Milan, where he lives and works. After studying architecture Pignatelli chooses art and debuts in 1984 in Milan with an exhibition at the Centro San Fedele. He transforms his first training as an architect in refined aesthetic as seen in the artwork in 1998, the year in which Pignatelli decided to use sheets of rail instead of the traditional canvas on which he paints the face of Aphrodite and war planes. The choice to use dark and bleak colours on the landscapes as well as other subjects is a leitmotif that emphasizes and loads the subject of symbolic elements. In Pignatelli’s artwork, the Greek and Roman icons come to life and are mixed into history recently catapulted into anachronistic and imaginative scenarios, that evoke the charm of archeology and the exploration of a myth."
Capri Palace
Google

Stuyvesant Square

Wikipedia - "Stuyvesant Square is a park in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located between 15th Street and 17th Street and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place, formerly Livingston Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence. The name is also used for the neighborhood around the park, roughly bounded by 14th and 18th Streets and First and Third Avenues. Directly around the square are the Friends Meeting House and Seminary and St. George's Episcopal Church – once attended by J.P. Morgan – both on Rutherford Place. On the eastern side is Beth Israel Medical Center – part of which, the Robert Mapplethorpe Residential Treatment Facility for AIDS patients, was built on the site of Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák's 1893 home at 327 East 17th Street."
Wikipedia
NYT: History and a Dog Run, in One Cozy Package

Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970)

"Gram Parsons had a habit of taking over whatever band he happened to be working with, and on the first three albums on which he appeared -- the International Submarine Band's Safe at Home, the Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo, and the Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin -- he became the focal point, regardless of the talent of his compatriots. Burrito Deluxe, the Burritos' second album, is unique in Parsons' repertoire in that it's the only album where he seems to have deliberately stepped back to make more room for others; whether this was due to Gram's disinterest in a band he was soon to leave, or if he was simply in an unusually democratic frame of mind is a matter of debate. ..."
allmusic
W - Burrito Deluxe
W - "Wild Horses"
YouTube: Cody, Cody, Wild Horses, High Fashion Queen, Lazy Days, Farther Along

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969).

Graphic notation

Bernard Rands - "As All Get Out"
Wikipedia - "Graphic notation is the representation of music through the use of visual symbols outside the realm of traditional music notation. Graphic notation evolved in the 1950s, and it is often used in combination with traditional music notation. Composers often rely on graphic notation in experimental music, where standard musical notation can be ineffective. A common aspect of graphic notation is the use of symbols to convey information to the performer about the way the piece is to be performed. These symbols first began to appear in the works of avant-garde composers such as Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis, as well as the works of experimental composers such as Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff during the 1950s and 60s."
Wikipedia
SoundSpace: Graphic Notation (Video)
WFMU: Gallery of Graphic Musical Notation
Guardian - Playing pictures: the wonder of graphic scores, Composer Tom Phillips
NYT: Scoring Outside the Lines
Graphic notation Art that you can play (Video)
Smithsonian: 5 1/2 Examples of Experimental Music Notation (Video)
vimeo: SYN-Phon (Graphic notation)

Southern Belles

"From Gone with the Wind to Debutante Balls, a Cross-Generational Look at Beauty in the Deep South. A little under 75 years ago, David O. Selznick’s adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind delivered Scarlett O’Hara in all her Technicolor glory, imprinting forever the notion of the Southern belle: the feisty beauty with a honey-laden accent, done-up in yards of antebellum dress, on the hunt for a husband. By exploring Scarlett’s proverbial stomping grounds in and around Atlanta, Georgia, Tim Richmond and James Nutt’s documentary short Southern Belles discovers that, while the plantation no longer remains, the front porches, hospitality, grace, and etiquette persevere."
NOWNESS (Video)

Victor Arnautoff

Coit Tower Murals - City Life by Victor Arnautoff
"... The 210-foot pillar Coit Tower now graces the summit of Telegraph Hill in Pioneer Park, providing tourists with unforgettable views of the city and bay. Completed in 1933, the idea of such a tower was derided at first as an eyesore, but more 'beautification' was still to come. The finishing touches were murals on the interior of the tower, from its base to its summit, depicting California’s life and history. Part of the New Deal’s Public Works Art Program, twenty-six artists worked under the technical direction of muralist Victor Arnautoff, who had trained with Diego Rivera. The effort to provide artists with meaningful work, not just labor, was a deliberate aspect of the program."
Humanities: New Deal Murals
W - Victor Arnautoff
Detail from the mural City Life by Victor Arnautoff (1896-1979)
SF Mural Arts: City Life (1934)
Depression-Era Murals
Art and Architecture – San Francisco

Philip Glass performs "Mad Rush"

"Philip Glass (piano) performs, 'Mad Rush,' a piece originally written and performed by Glass in honor of the Dalai Lama's visit to North America in 1979. Glass begins by remarking that the legacy of Gandhi can be seen in the work of leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama, who advocate for nonviolent, social change and by inviting listeners to consider 'Mad Rush' as a play between wrathful and peaceful deities. Performance at Satyagraha: Gandhi's 'Truth Force' in the Age of Climate Change presented by the Garrison Institute on April 13, 2008 at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York City."
YouTube: "Mad Rush"

Blackboard Jungle Dub - Lee Perry and the Upsetters (1973)

"On Blackboard Jungle Dub, Lee Perry and the Upsetters produce another fine example of their subversive brand of dub with a unique blend of murky rhythm tracks, warbling guitar effects and distant-sounding horns. Although it does not quite match the quality of the classic Upsetters album Super Ape, Blackboard nevertheless impresses with both the brevity of 'strictly' drum and bass cuts such as 'Dreamland Dub' and 'Kasha Macka Dub,' and expansive touches like the animated DJ toasting on 'Cloak A Dagger (Ver. 3).' ... Just standard technique for Perry really, and part of the sound which made his productions instantly recognizable amongst many '70s and '80s dub releases. Blackboard Jungle contains classic dub taken to the outer limits and is one of the highlights of the Lee Perry catalog."
allmusic
YouTube: Blackboard Jungle Dub - The Upsetters Lee"Scratch" Perry (complete album)

Leandro Erlich

Building (2004)
"Leandro Erlich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. An architect of the uncertain, Erlich creates spaces with fluid and unstable boundaries. Before one tries to make sense of his sculptures and installations, one senses the uncanny. A single change (up is down, inside is out) can be enough to upset the seemingly normal situation, collapsing and exposing our reality as counterfeit. Through this transgression of limits, the artist undermines certain absolutes and the institutions that reinforce them."
Sean Kelly
Leandro Erlich
Telegraph: Artist Leandro Erlich offers 'crazy perspective' at his illusion house in east London (Video)
YouTube: Leandro Erlich: Swimming Pool at P.S.1, Leandro Erlich en Ruth Benzacar - Noviembre 2012

Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Arkestra - Sleeping Beauty (1979)

"This is the great late-night Sun Ra chillout album you never knew about. The band had been working in a more groove-oriented setting off and on for over a year, as evidenced by the albums Lanquidity and On Jupiter, with both featuring prominent electric bass and electric guitar. Sleeping Beauty picks up right where On Jupiter left off, with the gentle, swaying 'Springtime Again' echoing the same mellow vibe of 'Seductive Fantasy' from On Jupiter. A skittering intro coalesces as different instruments pick up bits of the melody, which is then fully expressed by the horn section and ensemble vocals. It's a simple two-chord vamp, with beautiful solos that seem to embody the reawakening and rebirth of springtime. 'The Door of the Cosmos' starts with a gospel-like chant and handclaps, with comments from Ra's electric piano and electric guitar. ..."
allmusic
Dusted (Video)
YouTube: Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty [full album]

The Dial-A-Poem Poets (1972)

"... On this LP of Dial-A-Poem Poets are 27 poets. The records are a selection of highlights of poetry that spontaneously grew over 20 years from 1953 to 1972, mostly in America, representing many aspects and different approaches to dealing with words and sound. The poets are from the New York School, Bolinas and West Coast Schools, Concrete Poetry, Beat Poetry, Black Poetry and Movement Poetry. - John Giorno, August 1972"
UbuWeb (Video)
W - Giorno Poetry Systems
Discogs

2012 June: The Dial-A-Poem Poets: The Nova Convention

Cool and the Counterculture: 1960–79

James Dean
"In the 1960s and 1970s, to be cool was to be antiauthoritarian and open to new ideas from young cultural leaders in rock and roll, journalism, film, and African American culture. Cool was a badge of opposition to 'the System,' by turns a reference to the police, the government, the military-industrial complex, or traditional morality. Using drugs such as marijuana or even LSD was an indicator of risk taking and expanding one’s consciousness; not experimenting with drugs suggested a fear of opening one’s mind or perspective, of being 'uptight' or 'square.' The same was true of sexual exploration, social protest, and ethnic politics. The aesthetic of stylized understatement still held power, yet cool itself morphed under the era’s social upheavals."
Cool and the Counterculture: 1960–79
Defining cool, from Walt Whitman and James Dean to Steve Jobs and Tony Hawk

Danzig Baldaev

"Danzig Baldaev grew up in a Russian children's home, his father having been denounced as an enemy of the people. He was later ordered to take a job as a warden in Kresty, an infamous Leningrad prison, where he worked from 1948 to 1981. It was a job that allowed Baldaev to continue his father's work as an ethnographer – by documenting the tattoos of criminals. Heavy with symbolism and hidden meanings, the tattoos depicted a complex world of hierarchies, disgraces and achievements. Mostly anti-Soviet and frequently obscene, they are a portal into a violent world that ran alongside the worst excesses of the Communist era."
Guardian
FUEL Design
FUEL Design (Video)
amazon: Soviets: Drawings by Danzig Baldaev. Photographs by Sergei Vasiliev.
W - FUEL Design
Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia and Books by Danzig Baldaev

Emilie Brzezinski

"The Kreeger Museum presents an exhibition of monumental wood sculptures by Emilie Brzezinski September 2 through December 27, 2014. The Lure of the Forest expresses Brzezinski’s fascination with trees and her love and respect for the environment. The Museum pays homage to this masterful sculptor, who for over thirty years has chain sawed and hand-chiseled tree trunks into majestic forms. Each work exhibits beauty, grace, sensuousness, and strength. Her imposing installations are awe-inspiring and express the passion and respect Brzezinski has for her trees. This exhibition will be curated by Milena Kalinovska."
Kreeger Museum
Re-Forestation: Emilie Brzezinski at Grounds for Sculpture (PHOTOS)
Emilie Brzezinski
YouTube: Emilie Brzezinski on CBS Sunday Morning, "Family Trees" Sculpture by Emilie Brzezinski on display in Gdańsk, Poland

Lisa Anne Auerbach

"The artist Lisa Anne Auerbach likes to make statements, which are most often knitted. She is best known for her sweater-and-skirt works that feature clever, assertive slogans offering commentary and critique on issues that are important to her, whether political or personal. After receiving an M.F.A. in photography from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., she no longer had access to the school’s darkroom and taught herself to knit instead."
NYT: Seeing Things | Studio Visit: Lisa Anne Auerbach
Lisa Anne Auerbach
vimeo: Lisa Anne Auerbach, artist
Lisa Anne Auerbach's Politically Charged Knitted Sweaters Rock Our World (PHOTOS)
YouTube: 2014 Biennial: Lisa Anne Auerbach

The Roots of Drone (2012)

"Gathering together an incredible cross section of recordings both obscure and not, the Roots of Drone compilation aims to highlight the early history of experiments with repetition and single-note musicality that have gone on to influence generations of sound from techno to metal. The collection omits obvious examples of drone in the rock arena (Velvet Underground, Can, Spacemen 3, etc.) and leans more toward an extremely wide variety of sounds from raw blues primitivism to field recorded bagpipe soliloquies. Minimalist composers like John Cage show up, as does Miles Davis' Kind of Blue classic 'So What,' taking on a different view when couched in the context of drone fundamentalism. Apart from being an engaging and colorful playlist, Roots of Drone's strongest attribute is its curation and arrangement of these 37 tracks. Finding a commonality at all between the fiery gospel of Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers and Ravi Shankar's sun-drenched ragas is no small feat, but being able to coherently gather such eclectic recordings together under the shared umbrella of early drone prototypes really takes considered research and dedication."
allmusic
W - Drone music
W - Drone_metal
Theatres of Eternal Music
Drone in American Minimalist Music
boingboing - Music Appreciation: Drone (Video)
amazon: The Roots of Drone (2012) (Video)
Avant-Avant 3.0 to be uncovered early 2014 (Video)
YouTube: The Velvet Underground - Heroin, Dream House by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, The Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage: "Blues Dhkir Al-Salam (Blues Al Maqam)", Ali Akbar Khan - Goojjari Todi, Earth - Like Gold and Faceted, Phill Niblock - The Movement of People Working

The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles (1949)

Wikipedia - "The Sheltering Sky is a 1949 novel of post-colonial alienation and existential despair by American writer and composer Paul Bowles. The story centers on Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. The journey, initially an attempt by Port and Kit to resolve their marital difficulties, is quickly fraught by the travelers' ignorance of the dangers that surround them."
Wikipedia
NYT: December 4, 1949 - An Allegory of Man and His Sahara By TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Sheltering Sky Quotes
amazon: The Sheltering Sky
W - The Sheltering Sky (film)
Roger Ebert
YouTube: The Sheltering Sky Trailer, Final scene of The Sheltering Sky, featuring Paul Bowles' monologue

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998).

Semiotext(e)

Wikipedia - "Semiotext(e) is an independent publisher of critical theory, fiction, philosophy, art criticism, activist texts and non-fiction. Founded in 1974, Semiotext(e) began as a journal that emerged from a semiotics reading group led by Sylvère Lotringer at Columbia University. Initially, the magazine was devoted to readings of seminal thinkers like Nietzsche and Saussure. In 1978, Lotringer and his collaborators published a special issue, Schizo-Culture, in the wake of a conference of the same name he’d organized two years before at Columbia University. The magazine brought together artists and thinkers as diverse as Gilles Deleuze, Kathy Acker, John Cage, Michel Foucault, Jack Smith, Martine Barrat and Lee Breuer. Schizo-Culture brilliantly brought out connections between high theory and underground culture that had not yet been made, and forged the 'high/low' aesthetic that remains central to the Semiotext(e) project."
Wikipedia
Semiotext(e)
Semiotext(e) | The MIT Press
Semiotext(e) - Whitney Publications
Semiotext(e) - Sylvère Lotringer
YouTube: CHRIS KRAUS #7: Semiotext(e)

2012 April: The German Issue (1982)

Bohemia in Midtown

Apt. 845. Josef Astor, photographer.
"The high-ceilinged, light-filled studios on top of Carnegie Hall have housed artists, musicians, and writers for more than a century; now, the remaining tenants are fighting to stay. 'I peeled away the plasterboard until I got down to the original walls,' says the portrait photographer Josef Astor as he walks up the smooth wooden stairs of the triplex he rents in the Carnegie Hall Studio Towers. Astor, who’s been in his skylighted space since 1985, was once surrounded by hundreds of creative neighbors—painters and dancers, photographers and composers—who lived and worked in 170 studios built directly above the grand midtown concert hall."
NYMag
Josef Birdman Astor
Joseph Astor's Lost Bohemia (Video)
Lost Bohemia: Trailer (Video)

Kronos Quartet Plays Terry Riley: Salome Dances for Peace (1989)

"There is no string quartet that has ever been written that can compare length and diversity with Terry Riley's Salome Dances for Peace. Morton Feldman has written a longer one, but it is confined to his brilliant field of notational relationships and open tonal spaces. Riley's magnum opus, which dwarfs Beethoven's longest quartet by three, is a collection of so many different kinds of music, many of which had never been in string quartet form before and even more of which would -- or should -- never be rubbing up against one another in the same construct. Riley is a musical polymath, interested in music from all periods and cultures: there are trace elements of jazz and blues up against Indian classical music, North African Berber folk melodies, Native American ceremonial music, South American shamanistic power melodies -- and many more. ..."
allmusic
W - Kronos Quartet Plays Terry Riley: Salome Dances for Peace
LA Times: Kronos Makes Riley's 'Salome' Dance, Dance
YouTube: Salome Dances for Peace (1989)

December 2007: Terry Riley, March 2010: In C, December 2010: Terry Riley & Gyan Riley, April 2011: Terry Riley - Shri Camel: Morning Corona, Terry Riley rare footage, live in the 70s.

ATOMIC BOMB! The Music of William Onyeabor

Wikipedia - "William Onyeabor is a funk musician from Nigeria. His songs are often heavily rhythmic and synthesized, occasionally epic in scope, with lyrics decrying war sung by both Onyeabor himself and female backing vocalists. In recent years a number of his songs have appeared on various compilations, most often his biggest hit 'Better Change Your Mind' which appeared on Africa 100, World Psychedelic Classics 3: Love's a Real Thing - The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa, and Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of 1970's Funky Lagos, through labels such as Luaka Bop. Some biographies claim that he studied cinematography in Russia, returning to Nigeria in the 1970s to start his own Wilfilms music label and to set up a recording and production studio."
Wikipedia
Who is William Onyeabor?
BAM: ATOMIC BOMB! The Music of William Onyeabor
YouTube: Atomic Bomb, Body and Soul, Good Name, Something You'll Never Forget, Why Go To War, Heaven and Hell

Jannis Kounellis

tappeto natura 1966
Wikipedia - "Jannis Kounellis (... born March 23, 1936, Piraeus, Greece) is a contemporary artist based in Rome. He studied in art college in Athens until 1956 and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. ... From the years of 1960-1966, Kounellis went through a period of only exhibiting paintings. In some of his first exhibitions, Kounellis began stenciling numbers, letters, and words onto his canvases often reflecting advertisements and signs seen on the street. In 1960 he began to introduce found sculptural objects such as actual street signs into his work, exhibiting at Galleria La Tartaruga. This same year he donned one of his stencil paintings as a garment and created a performance in his studio to demonstrate himself literally becoming one with his painting. This newfound convergence of painting, sculpture, and performance was Kounellis' way out of traditional art. By 1961 he began to paint on newspaper to reflect his feelings towards modern society and politics."
Wikipedia
designboom
Cheim & Read
MoMA
YouTube: Jannis Kounellis | Film & Interview | Blain Southern Berlin, CHEIM & READ, Jannis Kounellis

Tess (1979)

Wikipedia - "Tess is a 1979 romance film directed by Roman Polanski, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1891 novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles. It tells the story of a strong-willed, young peasant girl (played by Nastassja Kinski) who finds out she has title connections by way of her old aristocratic surname and who is raped by her wealthy cousin (Leigh Lawson), whose right to the family title may not be as strong as he claims. ... The story takes place in Thomas Hardy's Wessex during the Victorian period."
Wikipedia
W - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Polanski's Tess 30 Years Later
ARTFORUM: Roman à Clef
Roger Ebert
amazon
YouTube: Tess/Roman Polanski/1979, Tess - Roman Polanski (Trailer)

Too Many Zooz

"Friday was a BIG day for New York 'Brass House' trio Too Many Zooz. Also known as Matt Doe, Leo P and Dave 'King of Sludge' Parks. At one end, their January video of a rip-roaring Union Square subway station performance hit the front page of Reddit. At the other, they were thanking Jimmy Fallon‘s band leader Questlove for having followed them on Twitter. The Questlove follow has fueled a campaign by some fans to get the trio noticed and booked by Fallon. Along with today’s warmer weather, nothing will get you into the jiggy spirit of early spring quite like the above nine-minute number that is one part Stomp, two parts New Orleans parade band and seven parts fan-ZOOZ-tastic."
FishbowlNY (Video)
YouTube: Live at Union Square 19Jan2014, Union Square February 2014

Bill Cunningham | No Coupons at Chanel

"At Chanel, the real fun began after more than 2,000 guests got up from their carton seats and thought they had the right to shop."
NY Times - No Coupons at Chanel
Bill Cunningham New York - DVD
The Atlantic: Bill Cunningham's Playful Photographs of 1970s New York
hulu: Bill Cunningham New York (2011)

2011 November: Bill Cunningham