Stacy Doris, 1962-2012

"We at Harriet are deeply saddened to report the loss of poet and translator Stacy Doris, who died on January 31 at the age of 49 after a battle with cancer. We discussed Doris’s book-length poem The Cake Part (Publication Studio, 2011) just recently. This work, which acts as 'an eruption of all the repressed joy and terror of [the] 18th century revolution, back into our time, into the 21st century,' was released with a series of video adaptations of the book, in which many of Doris’s poets and friends in the Bay area and beyond enacted their parts or songs with a rather plucky and loving spirit. It’s clear that Doris 'begins with complexity and mixture and continues with complexity and mixture.' ..."
Poetry Foundation (Video)
Electronic Poetry Center
W - Stacy Doris
PennSound (Video)
[PDF] Violence of the White Page

Wagner Collection at the Whitney, 25 Years of Astute Buying

"More collectors of contemporary art should follow the lead of Thea Westreich Wagner and her husband, Ethan Wagner. They are neither building a private museum to house their holdings nor sending their trove off to auction hoping for headline-grabbing profits, although this is partly because their purchases have not especially encompassed the so-called trophy art that earns such profits. Instead, Ms. Westreich Wagner and Mr. Wagner are doing something that is, unfortunately, beginning to feel old-fashioned. They are giving a great deal of a strong collection with an independent bent to two museums historically committed to new art. All told, some 850 works amassed mostly during, and mostly dating from, the last quarter-century will move house (but not quite yet — the majority are promised gifts)...."
NY Times

A Brief History of ISIS

Members loyal to ISIS wave their flag during a parade in June 2014.
"In the wake of the November 13 attacks in Paris, much of the Left has linked the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to the deepening imperialist violence in the Middle East. War and imperialism, on one side, and the growing reach of jihadist terrorism, on the other, are said to be locked together in a mutually reinforcing embrace of violence and destruction. 'Imperialist cruelty and Islamist cruelty feed each other,' the French Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) argued shortly after the Paris attacks. In order to break this nihilistic death grip, we need to oppose foreign intervention, put an end to imperialist violence, and halt the ongoing plunder of wealth from countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. The basic logic of this argument is undoubtedly sound. But in terms of explanatory value, this kind of analysis does not go far enough. ..."
Jacobin
The Atlantic: What ISIS Really Wants (2015 March)

2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency.

Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken-World Albums: A Sublime Union of Beat Literature and 1950s Jazz

"At the epicenter of three explosive forces in 1950s America—the birth of Bebop, the spread of Buddhism through the counterculture, and Beat revolutionizing of poetry and prose—sat Jack Kerouac, though I don’t picture him ever sitting for very long. The rhythms that moved through him, through his verse and prose, are too fluid to come to rest. At the end of his life he sat… and drank, a mostly spent force. But in his prime, Kerouac was always on the move, over highways on those legendary road trips, or his fingers flying over the typewriter’s keys as he banged out the scroll manuscript of On the Road in three feverish weeks (so he said). After the publication of On the Road, Kerouac 'became a celebrity,' says Steve Allen in introduction to the Beat writer on a 1959 appearance above, 'partly because he’d written a powerful and successful book, but partly because he seemed to be the embodiment of this new generation.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959).

Robin Rimbaud (Scanner)

Wikipedia - "Robin Rimbaud (born 1964) is an electronic musician who works under the name Scanner due to his use of cell phone and police scanners in live performance. He is also a member of the band Githead with Wire's Colin Newman and Malka Spigel and Max Franken from Minimal Compact. Rimbaud is also a writer and media critic, multi-media artist and record producer. He borrowed his stage name from the device he used in his early recordings, picking up indeterminate radio and mobile phone signals in the airwaves and using them as an instrument in his compositions. ... Born in Southfields, London, Scanner was interested in avant garde literature, cinema and music while growing up. When he was a teenager his family was bereaved when his father was killed in a motorcycle accident. ..."
Wikipedia
Scanner (Video)
Soundcloud: Scanner
The world of scanner... (Video)
YouTube: Scanner

2012 October: Scanner

Sasha Waltz & Guests

Gezeiten (2015)
Wikipedia - "Sasha Alexandra Waltz (born 8 March 1963, Karlsruhe) is a German choreographer, dancer and leader of the dance company Sasha Waltz and Guests. Waltz is the daughter of an architect and a curator. At five years old she had her first dance lesson in Karlsruhe with Waltraud Kornhass, a student of Mary Wigman. From 1983 until 1986, Waltz studied at the School For New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Between 1986 and 1987, she did further training in New York. During that period she was a dancer for Pooh Kaye, Yoshiko Chuma & School of Hard Knocks and Lisa Kraus. After that she collaborated intensely with choreographers, visual artists and musicians such as Tristan Honsinger, Frans Poelstra, Mark N Tompkins, David Zambrano. ... Once her 5-year period with the Schaubühne finished she reactivitated Sasha Waltz & Guests as an independent company again, with a base in Berlin. It was established as an international project with 25 permanent and 40 associate collaborators."
Wikipedia
Sasha Waltz & Guests (Video)
Arts Journal
Guardian: Sasha Waltz & Guests review – savage rites marshal wild energies (Video)
Berlin (Video)
vimeo: etc., Dialoge 09 – Neues Museum, Gezeigt, Impromptus
YouTube: Sasha Waltz & Guests feat. Robyn Schulkowsky, noBody, SACRE

The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert

"Often referred to as 'The Royal Albert Hall Concert' this live bootleg had a mythical status surrounding it, I remember when I was heavily into the Band I looked for as much footage and recordings from that tour as I could find. I was completely mesmerised by what little I saw, the sound was brutal, raw rock and roll at it's finest, unlike anything people had heard at that time. ... Even though it seemed Dylan was now offering no compromise on his journey he did divide each show into two segments, the first was Dylan in acoustic mode, perhaps a farewell to his past, before bringing The Hawks out for the second electric set. It's pretty well documented that as soon as the band showed up the audience went into uproar and a cacaphony of boos and slow handclapping ensued. Dylan seemingly unperturbed and quite possibly stoned out out of his mind ploughed onwards leaving a bewildered and upset audience in his wake."
nighthawk music
W - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert
allmusic
YouTube: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert

The County: the story of America's deadliest police

Sgt Brian Holcombe is a 10-year veteran of Bakersfield Police Department and has patrolled higher-crime sectors on the east side for most of his career.
"Seventy-five years after Kern County’s leaders banned The Grapes of Wrath from their schools and libraries, complaining that John Steinbeck’s new book portrayed their policemen as 'divested of sympathy or human decency or understanding', officer Aaron Stringer placed his hands on the body of James De La Rosa without permission. De La Rosa had just been shot dead by police officers in Bakersfield, the biggest city in this central California county, after crashing his car when they tried to pull him over. He was unarmed. Now the 22-year-old oilfield worker lay on a gurney in the successor to the coroner’s office where Tom Joad’s granma awaited a pauper’s funeral in the 1939 novel."Guardian (Video), The County: where deputies dole out rough justice (Video)
Guardian: The Counted

Black Artists and the March Into the Museum

Norman Lewis
"The painter Norman Lewis rarely complained in public about the singular struggles of being a black artist in America. ... In the last few years alone, his work has been acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. This month the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts opened the first extensive survey of Lewis, an important but overlooked figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement — and a man who might well have been predicting history’s arc for several generations of African-American artists in overcoming institutional neglect. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Welcome to Smarter Basketball

"On Thursday, 60 of basketball’s most talented prospects will realize a lifelong dream when the NBA conducts its annual draft. Karl-Anthony Towns, the Kentucky University center, has been heavily rumored to be the number one pick, but after that, it’s a bit up in the air. Among the potential picks: Jahlil Okafor, D’Angelo Russell, Emmanuel Mudiay, and Kristaps Porzingis, a versatile 7 foot 1, 19-year-old Latvian who’s as lean as he is skilled. Regardless of who ends up where, this high-potential group will be entering a league that’s undergone a major transformation in the past few years. And it’s a revolution that’s indisputably linked to the NBA’s growing, but controversial, reliance on data to measure a team’s likelihood of winning—a phenomenon vaguely defined as 'analytics.'”
The Atlantic

2011 June: American Basketball Association, 2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2012 November: Your Guide to the Brooklyn Nets, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2013 October: Rucker Park, 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 June: Basketball’s Obtuse Triangle, 2015 September: SLAM Magazine, 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 October: Loose Balls - Terry Pluto (2007), 2015 November: The Sounds of Memphis.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad – a trip into inner space

"Conrad’s famous novella is based on a real journey the author took up the Congo in 1890, during King Leopold II of Belgium’s horrific rule. It is a fantastic, imaginative journey to find a man named Kurtz who has lost his mind in the African jungle. It is a journey into inner space; a metaphorical investigation into the turbid waters of the human soul. It is a political journey into the dark heart of European colonialism. It is a nightmare journey, into horror. It is a journey to nowhere, set on a boat lying motionless and at anchor on the river Thames, which also 'has been one of the dark places on the earth'. ..."
Guardian

2011 November: Heart of Darkness, 2013 August: Victory (1915), 2014 May: Nostromo (1904).

St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street - Ada Calhoun

"... St. Marks bohemians—those who were Beats in the fifties, hippies in the sixties, punks in the seventies, or anarchists in the eighties—often say that the East Village is dead now, with only the time of death a matter of debate. New Yorkers are street-proud, and every neighborhood invites its share of good-old-days lamenting. But just as St. Marks Place has long been an amplified corner of the city—louder, drunker, more garish than its neighbors—today it seems to evoke a more intense nostalgia. Of course, the sentimentalists are right: I did miss a lot. My parents have lived in their top-floor walk-up on St. Marks Place since 1973. By the time I was born, in 1976, many of the street’s most defining eras had passed. Gone were the days of Thelonious Monk playing the Five Spot jazz club, Andy Warhol hosting the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and the New York Dolls ambling down the street in hot pants. ..."
New Yorker: The Many Lives of St. Marks Place
Ada Calhoun - St. Marks Is Dead
Guardian - St Marks Place: is this America's coolest street?
Atlantic: St. Marks Is Dead and the Complexity of Gentrification
amazon
YouTube: St. Marks Is Dead Book Launch Party

Alexander Hammid

"Born in Austria, he grew up in Prague, making his first silent experimental film, Bezucelna Prochazka/ Aimless Walk in 1930. Working as a cinematographer for the leftist American documentarian Herbert Kline, he fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 to the US where he met and married Eleonora Derenkowskaya who took the name, perhaps with his advice, of Maya Deren, much as he too took a new name. With her he collaborated on the classic avant-garde film Meshes in the Afternoon (1943) that established her reputation that survived their divorce. In the 1960s, Hammid began collaborating with the sometime painter Francis Thompson on multi-screen films: To Be Alive (1964), which knocked me out at the Montreal World's Fair, both of which remain in my mind as masterpieces of the under-developed genre. Later Hammid and Thompson, among the great collaborations in modern film, produced To Fly! (1976), which remains the pioneering classic in the -- Richard Kostelanetz, Dictionary of the Avant Gardes"
UbuWeb (Video)
Wikipedia
NY Times: Alexander Hammid, 96, Filmmaker Known for Many Styles
Aimless Walk - Alexander Hammid

Little Walter - "Juke" / "Can't Hold On Much Longer" (1952)

Wikipedia - "'Juke' is a harmonica instrumental recorded by then 22-year-old Chicago bluesman Little Walter Jacobs in 1952. Although Little Walter had been recording sporadically for small Chicago labels over the previous five years, and had appeared on Muddy Waters' records for the Chess label since 1950, 'Juke' was Little Walter's first hit, and it was the most important of his career. Due to the influence of Little Walter on blues harmonica, 'Juke' is now considered a blues harmonica standard. In May 1952, Little Walter had been a regular member of the Muddy Waters Band for at least three years. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Juke, "Can't Hold On Much Longer"

The 20 Greatest Films Directed By Women

Lost in Translation (2003) - Sofia Coppola
"I recently asked fifty of the most passionate cinephiles and brilliant critics to name their ten favorite films directed by women. The following video is a collection of the twenty titles that received the most votes from participants. Lists of this sort have been going around lately and for that we can be grateful. The little celebrations we can throw for female genius goes a little way towards making up for the shameful underrepresentation of their work in canonical surveys and the horrific treatment women experience in film industries all over the world. For many women in the film industry, criticism is harsher and money is scarcer than for their male counterparts, and unless we make noise we'll allow it to continue. ..."
Fandor (Video)

George Bellows, "Cliff Dwellers," 1913

Cliff Dwellers, 1913.
"... The term 'cliff dwellers' refers to the Native Americans of the Southwest who lived in stratified cave dwellings cut into the sides of steep cliffs. Here, multistory tenement buildings on the Lower East Side are overcrowded to the point of bursting. Residents spill onto the streets and hang out of windows to get some relief from the summer heat. Penned in by walls of brick, they seem unable to escape their circumstances. As one New York City official lamented, 'It is simply impossible to pack human beings into these hives . . . and not have them suffer in health and morals.' While the picture appears to have a political agenda, [George] Bellows professed his commitment only to personal and artistic freedom. These drawings for Bellows's oil painting Cliff Dwellers illustrate how the artist spent a fair amount of time thinking about the narrative details and compositional arrangements of his large oil paintings. ..."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art"
Wikipedia
A Working-Class Painter

Marc Ribot Ceramic Dog (2014)

"... Ribot has held down straight gigs since then, but his work has tended toward the avant-garde. That's much less true on the song-oriented second album by the trio he calls Ceramic Dog. Where Ceramic Dog's first album was what you might expect from a Marc Ribot power trio, long on experiment and short on tune, Your Turn is a straight rock album sonically and structurally, except that it's half instrumentals. And the six lyrics are doozies. My favorite is 'Masters of the Internet.' If you're one of those people who download music without paying for it, you pop up in the very first words you'll hear. Marc Ribot is a political guy — he's long been a union activist on behalf of independent musicians. ..."
NPR (Video)
YouTube: Marc Ribot Ceramic Dog - Cully Jazz Festival 2014 1:16:32

2011 February: Selling Water By the Side of the River - Evan Lurie, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 February: Silent Movies, 2013 November: The Nearness Of You, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010), 2014 May: Gig Alert: Marc Ribot Trio, 2014 September: Marc Ribot Trio with Mary Halvorson at The Stone, 2015 September: Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos - The Prosthetic Cubans (1998).

Stars Seen in Person: Selected Journals of John Wieners (2015)

"... John Wieners was on the periphery of many of the twentieth century’s most important avant-garde poetry scenes, from Black Mountain and the Boston Renaissance to the New York School and the SF Renaissance. Having achieved cult status among poets, Wieners has also become known for the compelling nature of his journals, a mixture of early drafts of poems, prose fragments, lists, and other fascinating minutiae of the poet’s imagination. Stars Seen in Person: Selected Journals of John Wieners collects four of his previously unpublished journals from the period between 1955 and 1969. These journals capture a post-war bohemian world that no longer exists, depicted through the prism of Wieners’ sense of glamour. ..."
City Lights Blog
City Lights
Drunk on the Poetry of a New Friend: John Wieners and Frank O’Hara
A Queer Excess: the Supplication of John Wieners
Poetry Clips of the Week: Robert Dewhurst, Michael Seth Stewart on John Wieners (Video)

2008 July: John Wieners, 2009 December: John Wieners - 1, 2011 May: John Wieners: June 21, 1959, 2012 May: Behind the State Capitol: Or Cincinnati Pike, 2012 August: John Wieners - 707 Scott Street, 2013 January: Mass: John Wieners, 2013 October: Measure (1957-1962).

Everybody Street - A Street Photography Documentary (2013)

"Everybody Street is a new documentary featuring iconic street photographers such as Ricky Powell, Martha Cooper, Jamel Shabazz, and Jamel Freedman - all of whom managed to capture the raw essence of New York City through its artists, graffiti writers, junkies, and street people. The film is directed by Cheryl Dunn, a photographer who has been documenting NYC for over two decades herself. 'It is pure and uncontrollable and it takes an intense commitment,' she says when speaking to the New Yorker. 'I feel it reveals a thread in humanity that is random and true and hard to capture.' Everybody Street premiered this year at Hot Docs International Film Festival in Canada and is set for release this Autumn."
HUH
NOWNESS (Video)

Fernando Bryce

El mundo en llamas, 2010-2011, Tinta sobre papel 83 dibujos de 70 x 50 cm.
"Fernando Bryce was born in Lima in 1965 and now divides his time between Lima and Berlin. His ink on paper drawings systematically re-examine the way historical events are represented. The process, which Bryce describes as ‘mimetic analysis’ involves culling archives for print materials like advertisements, newspaper articles, and propaganda pamphlets relating to specific political developments in order to faithfully reproduce a select few on ink paper. ..."
Alexander and Bonin
Fernando Bryce: His Art And History
frieze
The Artist and the Propaganda Machine: How Fernando Bryce Retells 20th-Century History
YouTube: Fernando Bryce

Nicolas Jaar - Soundtrack, The Color of Pomegranates (2015)

"Other hobbyists gravitate to woodworking, marijuana cultivation, gemology, and urban gardening, but Nicolas Jaar’s pastimes tend to be more fruitful. Hence, when he got bored in 2013, he and Dave Harrington re-worked the entire Daft Punk album for the funk of it. His most recent contribution to the numinous is an unofficial soundtrack to the 1969 Soviet masterpiece commonly known as The Color of Pomegranates. ... The film’s director was the brilliant and frequently banned Sergei Parajanov, who drew heavy censorship from Soviet authorities for his all-out subversion. He was somewhere between Andrei Tarkovsky and Oscar Wilde, abandoning social realism for stunning visuals, persecuted for his homosexuality, sentenced to time in labor camps, and beloved by fellow artists from John Updike to Godard and Fellini. ..."
Passion Of The Weiss (Video)
Nicolas Jaar releases new album Pomegranates — listen (Video)
vimeo: Near Death
YouTube: Tracklist
YouTube: Նռան գույնը (1969) - OST by Nicolas Jaar 1:17:04

2013 September: Nicolas Jaar, 2014 January: Other People, 2015 May: Nicolas Jaar Soundtracks Short Film About Police Brutality and #BlackLivesMatter, 2015 July: Space Is Only Noise (2010), 2015 August: Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset Takeove, 2015 September: Work It (Bluewave edit), 2015 October: Darkside EP - Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington (2011). 2012 January: The Color of Pomegranates (1968) - Sergei Parajanov

Hector Zazou - Chansons des mers froides (1994)

Wikipedia - "Chansons des mers froides (French: 'songs from the cold seas') is a 1994 album by French musician Hector Zazou. Zazou approached Sony Records with merely the title and the concept of songs from the Arctic. He was accompanied by cameraman Philippe Roméo as he recorded traditional folk songs in and from Alaska, Canada (Newfoundland), Greenland, Iceland, Japan, Scandinavia and Scotland. He incorporated the shamanic incantations and lullabies of aboriginal people such as the Ainu, Inuit, Nanai, and Yakuts. The only original composition, 'The Long Voyage', was written by Zazou as an expression of gratitude to his record company for granting him complete artistic freedom on the project. The song was released as a single and featured several remixes, including one by Mad Professor and by Zazou himself."
Wikipedia
SOS
YouTube: Yaisa Maneena, Yakut Song, She's Like a Swallow, Visur Vatnsenda-Rosu, The Long Voyage, Annukka Suaren Neito

2008 September: Hector Zazou, 2011 December: Sahara Blue

A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s --1980s

Charlotte Moorman performs Nam June Paik’s "One for Violin Solo," New York City, March 22, 1968.
"The indelible image of Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991) playing the cello topless -- save for a pair of miniature television sets strapped to her chest -- is about to be replaced with a more complex, but equally powerful, portrait of the girl from Little Rock, Arkansas. She metamorphosed into a seminal and barrier-breaking figure in performance art and an impresario of the postwar avant-garde. The occasion is 'A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s --1980s,' a groundbreaking exhibition opening Jan. 16, 2016, at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, where it will remain through July 17, 2016. The Moorman exhibition will then travel to New York University’s Grey Art Gallery in fall 2016 and to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria, in spring/summer 2017. ..."
Northwestern
amazon
NY Times: Exhibitions Where Moral Force Trumps Market Forces

The French Emergency

"Shortly before midnight on November 13, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks that left 130 dead and hundreds more wounded, French President François Hollande declared a national state of emergency. Not long thereafter, the Élysée issued a communiqué detailing its provisions, including the warrantless detention and house arrest of suspects, additional border controls, closure of schools and other public places, and expanded powers of search and seizure. Days later, the government presented parliament with a law extending the state of emergency for an additional three months, beyond the twelve days allowed under initial decree, and updating the existing legislation. ... A dramatic rhetorical escalation has accompanied this judicial response. Across the spectrum, politicians and commentators aver that France is now at war. ..."
Jacobin

In Which She Is Not Like Any Of The Other Wives

"Restaurant Men by ELLEN COPPERFIELD. Dorothea Lange, 26, featured a high pitched voice and a pronounced limp. She made her living from portrait photography. She set a price and never haggled over it; no one quibbled with the results. For example: They called it the slipper club. All of the photographer Dorothea Lange's friends were Jews; exiled for a second time from the mostly gentile areas of Nob, Russian, and Telegraph Hills in San Francisco to Pacific Heights. Lange was not herself among the chosen people, but all her friends were. (They were as far from the immigrant Jews in the Fillmore as they were from the gentiles in the wealthier neighborhoods.) The slipper club, so named because Dorothea gave all her closest ones footwear as a gift, met outside the circles of power due to the vagaries of a parlor anti-Semitism. They talked of gardening, the arts, their relationships.... It was through these people that Dorothea met the artist who would become her first husband, Maynard Dixon. ..."
This Recording

2008 May: Dorothea Lange

Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Buddy Guy & B.B. King

"'I started playing the guitar about 6 or 7, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. I was influenced by everything at the same time, that’s why I can’t get it together now.' When you listen to Jimi Hendrix, one of the last things you’re ever likely to think is that he couldn’t 'get it together' as a guitarist. Hendrix made the characteristically modest statement in 1968, in a free form discussion about his influences with Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner and Baron Wolfman. 'I used to like Buddy Holly,' he said, 'and Eddie Cochran and Muddy Waters and Elvin James… B.B. King and so forth.' But his great love was Albert King, who 'plays completely and strictly in one way, just straight funk blues.'”
Open Culture (Video)

2010 September: Jimi Hendrix, 2013 November: Watch Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’, the New PBS Documentary, 2014 July: Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock: The Complete Performance in Video & Audio (1969), 2014 October: Live at Monterey (1967), 2015 March: "Little Wing" (1967).

Paul Bowles: The Rolling Stone Interview (May 23, 1974)

"On the fourth floor of a small gray apartment house at the sunny outskirts of Tangier, Morocco, lives an American who may well rank as the premier expatriate of his generation; a rare blend of talents—composer, novelist, short-story writer—who has spent the last 40 years of his life on the move, through Europe, South and Central America, Africa and the Far East, and who settled at last in the odd and exotic blend of cultures that is Tangier. 'The Greeks used to call Greece the navel of the world,' says Paul Bowles. 'I always thought it was Tangier.' It seems a fair call: The compact white city perches at the very tip of northern Africa, almost precisely between continents, a mix of influences European, African and Arabic. ..."
Rolling Stone
UbuWeb: An American in Tangier (1993) Dir. Mohamed Ulad-Mohand. Runtime: 27 min.

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), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949), 2015 January: Things Gone & Things Still Here, 2015 October: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles – a cautionary tale for tourists.

40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited

"... It doesn’t really matter whether The Hissing Of Summer Lawns is Mitchell’s best album. What does matter is that anyone who thrills to, say, Blue, as well they might, may find this even more thrilling if they’ve yet to hear it. Mitchell is unusual among major artists in that little of her very finest work is among her most famous, with the possible exception of this album’s predecessor, Court And Spark. Hejira, the magnificent record that followed it, is stranger, more exotic, more thickly draped in mysteries. There are those - I’ve met one or two - who most adore Mingus, her daring 1979 collaboration with the great double bassist. Then again, 'daring' is tautological when cited in tandem with Joni Mitchell, whose career is one of unparalleled audacity. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
Guardian - Joni Mitchell: the sophistication of her music sets her apart from her peers – even Dylan (Video)
The Four Oh Project: Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns
pod
W - The Hissing Of Summer Lawns
Spotify: The Hissing Of Summer Lawns

2015 July: Blue (1970)

King Tubby's Special 1973-1976 (1989)

"This two-disc set brings together some of the finest dub mixes ever produced by the legendary King Tubby. The first disc compiles 13 tracks played by the Observer All Stars and originally produced by Winston 'Niney' Holness; the second consists of 17 cuts by the Aggrovators (produced by Bunny Lee) and includes the collection's title track, a DJ talk-over featuring the great U-Roy. King Tubby's approach to dub was always distinctive; his mixes are distinguished by a touch that is sweet sounding and endlessly creative, balancing innovation with respect for the original even during the most drastic deconstruction of a song. And unlike some other dub producers, Tubby generally left swatches of the vocal line in place, dropping it in and out of the mix and applying dirty analog echo, sometimes subtly changing the lyrical focus. This collection's unusually helpful liner notes will assist interested listeners in finding original versions of many of the tracks. A truly essential dub collection."
allmusic
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: KING TUBBY'S SPECIAL 1973-1976 (Full Album / Both Disks)

2009 December: Augustus Pablo, 2011 November: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, 2011 May: East of the River Nile, 2013 January: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, 2015 April: Valley of Jehosaphat (1999), 2015 June: Hugh Mundell & Augustus Pablo - Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version), 2015 August: Hugh Mundell - Africa Must Be Free By 1983 + Dub (1978).

Circles: Charles Henri Ford

"Charles Henri Ford’s vanity turns 100 today. Its owner, poet and publisher Charles Henri Ford, was by all reliable accounts born in Mississippi on this day in 1908 but he insisted that he was born in 1913, a fudge which endures on his Wikipedia entry. Beyond contention, however, is his status as a major cultural catalyst. His influence and relationships ranged from the Surrealists and the interwar expat community in Paris through to the Beats and the Factory, connections which he carried right into the 21st century, dying in 2002. Anyone whose address book has space for both Faulkner, William and Arcade, Penny is surely worth investigating further. Even allowing for the half-decade headstart, Ford’s early activities are remarkable. At 21 he launched Blues, a literary journal which attracted contributions from the likes of Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. ..."
Strange Flowers
The Garden of Disorder
Wikipedia
BOMB
NY Times: Charles Henri Ford, 94, Prolific Poet, Artist and Editor
Johnny Minotaur by Charles Henri Ford; narration by Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert, Dan Basen and Lynne Tillman & 25th Anniversary Party
amazon: Charles Henri Ford

Sun Ra and His Arkestra: Jazz in Silhouette (1958)

"In the jazz universe, Sun Ra typically travels in an unknown, distant galaxy of his own. He is on the map, but understood and given his proper significance by only a loyal few. Most know his esoteric philosophising, lavish stage shows, and outward-bound music, but those features only scratch the surface of Ra’s music. Recorded in 1958, Jazz in Silhouette stands as an overlooked masterpiece, a work that shows Ra not as a mere curiosity or backwater galaxy, but as a major creative force in the jazz universe, a center of gravity around which many of jazz’s major developments have orbited. This album simply inspires, no matter what perspective you adopt: rhythm, melody, ensemble or mood. You can listen to John Gilmore sculpt his solo on 'Saturn' with sensitivity and flair, or Hobart Dotson extemporize with grace and wit on the two-beat gospel number 'Hours After'. ..."
all about jazz
W - Jazz in Silhouette
YouTube: Jazz In Silhouette [Full Album] 44:40

Robert Walser - Looking At Pictures (2015)

"An elegant collection, with gorgeous full-color art reproductions, Looking at Pictures presents a little-known aspect of the eccentric Swiss writer's genius. His essays consider Van Gogh, Manet, Rembrandt, Cranach, Watteau, Fragonard, Bruegel, and his own brother Karl. The pieces also discuss general topics such as the character of the artist and of the dilettante as well as the differences between painters and poets. Each piece is marked by Walser's unique eye, his delicate sensitivity, and his very particular sensibilities—and all are touched by his magic screwball wit."
New Directions Publishing Company
Robert Walser, Original Art Blogger
Portrait of a Lady
Guardian: Translation Tuesday: from Looking at Pictures by Robert Walser
amazon

Bronx Cheer

"'The Bronx is on Fire,' a journal of the New York real-estate industry recently trumpeted, 'Because the Real Estate Market Is Heating Up.' The headline deliberately echoed a famous line attributed to sportscaster Howard Cosell: 'The Bronx is burning,' he is remembered saying—though he did not actually use those words—during a 1977 World Series game, as flames shot up in the beleaguered neighborhood beyond Yankee Stadium’s outfield wall. ... Once a synonym for urban collapse, the New Bronx was now a hot property. Some of the hottest new properties include purchases by Silvercup Studios—the Queens-based facility where The Sopranos and 30 Rock were filmed—of South Bronx land on which it will erect an additional 120,000-square-foot studio for other productions, and by the food-delivery company Fresh Direct, which announced it would build a 500,000-square-foot warehouse also in the South Bronx. ..."
The American Prospect
NY Times: Bracing for Gentrification in the South Bronx (17 Photographs)
What's Burning in the South Bronx?
W - South Bronx
The meaning and origin of the expression: Bronx cheer, W - Blowing a raspberry (Video)

k. leimer - music for land and water (1983)

"these pieces were produced in 1983 for an ensemble of five closed-loop tape players. each player ran a different duration loop as part of a month-long gallery installation. it was later 'performed' in seattle at seward park's open air amphitheater. the setting proved ideal in allowing listeners to experience the work from the stage to the shoreline to points approaching silence out along the heavily wooded trails. like much of my work, music for land and water is systems-based,seeking self-determined outcomes that usually manifest a limited and artificial approximation of theme and variation. as max shaefer has written: 'leimer posits an apparently selfless art concerned with the purity of physical acoustic phenomenon, undisturbed by any manner of distortion or empty space...' clearly derivative of techniques pioneered in pieces such as eno's music for airports and perfected by recent works such as robert henke's indigo transform, music for land and water marks a point of persistent musical dilettantism along the endless search for aesthetically significant self-regulating systems." - k. leimer
Autumn Records (Video)
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: Very Tired
Soundcloud: Go Slowly

2010 September: K. Leimer, 2014 June: K. Leimer by Alexis Georgopoulos

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, The Art of Translation No. 4

"Credited with starting a 'quiet revolution,' Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear have joined the small club of major translators whose interpretation of a master­piece displaces the one read by generations before. Volokhonsky, who is Russian, and Pevear, who is American, have been married thirty-three years. In that time, they have translated much of Russian literature as we know it. Their thirty or so translations include The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Demons, The Idiot, Notes from Underground, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Hadji Murat, The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, The Master and Margarita, Doctor Zhivago, Gogol’s Collected Tales, Dead Souls, The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov, and Chekhov’s Selected Stories. ..."
The Paris Review
W - Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Humanities: Done with Tolstoy
New Yorker: The Translation Wars
The Millions Interview: Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky