Up From Liberalism

"Decades before Tony Blair and Bill Clinton took power, Anthony Crosland posited another third way. Crosland, a British Labour politician, gazed upon the welfare state his party had swiftly built after World War II — the crown jewel of which was the National Health Service — and effectively pronounced socialists’ work complete. Even if further reforms were needed to loosen up Britain’s famously rigid class system, Crosland wrote in 1956, the welfare-state-plus-full-employment mix was so widely accepted that 'the Conservatives now fight elections largely on policies which 20 years ago were associated with the Left, and repudiated by the Right.' In this changed environment, Crosland held, socialists should let go of their traditional commitment to socializing the means of production and focus on the present. ..."
Jacobin
It’s Their Party - Jacobin
Atari Democrats - Jacobin
Up From Liberalism - WINTER 2016 | ISSUE 20 - Jacobin ($)

Cuba on the Edge of Change

A weathered barber shop in Old Havana.
"Cuba at times can feel like a nation abandoned. The aching disrepair of its cities, the untamed foliage of its countryside, the orphaned coastlines — a half-century of isolation has wrapped the country in decay. Yet few places in the world brim with as much life as Cuba, a contrast drawn sharper amid its faded grandeur. They wait, coiled with anticipation. For web pages to download. For tourists to hurry up and buy something. For a flag to be raised. Cubans know how to wait. Yet, after decades of Communist rule, they are less prepared to handle the feeling of opportunity now permeating the island, and their government’s resistance to letting them seize it. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Obama Visits Cuba
NY Times: Obama Hopes Cuba Visit Can Be Harbinger of Political Change (Video)
NY Times - Cuba’s Message to Its People: Be on Your Best Behavior for Obama

2009 April: Chelsea Visits Havana, 2011 June: Robert Farris Thompson, 2012 September: Where Is Cuba Going?, 2012 November: Carlos Garaicoa, 2013 August: Cuba 2012 (BBC Documentary), 2014 November: U.S. to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility, 2015 February: A Day In the Life of Havana, 2015 August: ¡Cuba, Cuba! 65 Years of Photography, 2016 February: The Cuban Money Crisis (March 2015).

Make a Joyful Noise - Mother Earth (1969)

"Make a Joyful Noise is the follow-up to 1968's Living With the Animals. This time out, Mother Earth neatly divided their joint appreciations for rural and urban American music: à la the thematic 'City Side' and 'Country Side.' The City Side is an R&B workout, powered by a robust horn section and the vocals of Rev. Ron Stallings on burning soul cuts such as 'Stop That Train,' Tracy Nelson's killer performance on Naomi Neville's cooker 'What Are You Trying to Do,' and sultry read of Little Willie John's babymaker 'Need Your Love So Bad.' The Country Side is more subdued, adorned by steel guitars and Powell St. John's quavering vocals on 'I'll Be Moving On' and the strange 'The Fly.' Nelson's version of Doug Sahm's 'I Wanna Be Your Mama Again' is her blues-country gospel version of Hank Williams' honky tonk nugget 'You Win Again' (with a fine fiddle solo by Johnny Gimble). Some of the guest stars on this set include Boz Scaggs, Hargus Robins, Ben Keith, D.J. Fontana, and Pete Drake. Make a Joyful Noise remains an overlooked classic from the Warner Brothers catalog that finally saw CD issue in 2004 by Wounded Bird."
allmusic
Discogs
20 Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the Sixties That You've Never Heard
The Rising Storm
YouTube: Stop the Train, What Are You Trying to Do, I Need Your Love So Bad, Soul of the Man, Blues for the Road, You Win Again, Come on and See, Then I'll Be Moving On, The Fly, I Wanna Be Your Mama Again, Wait, Wait, Wait

Making Museums Moral Again - Holland Cotter

Activists outside the Louvre Museum, protesting its ties to oil companies during climate-policy negotiations in December in Paris.
"In the past, when people wondered how to live moral lives, they could look to the saints, or take their questions to church. Today, some of us might instead turn our attention to art and the institutions that house it. That’s what several dozen artists did, for a related but different reason, last December during the United Nations climate talks in Paris. One afternoon, in a week when crucial policy negotiations were underway, hundreds of environmental activists gathered outside the Louvre to protest the museum’s sponsorship ties to two of the world’s largest oil companies. Among the demonstrators were members of politically minded art collectives like Occupy Museums and Not an Alternative, from the United States, and Liberate Tate, from England. Carrying open black umbrellas that spelled out the phrase 'Fossil Free Culture,' most of them stayed in the plaza around the museum’s glass pyramid, singing and reading position statements. ..."
NY Times
NY Times - Museums: A Special Section

W.S. Di Piero

"W.S. Di Piero was born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and earned degrees from St. Joseph’s College and San Francisco State College. ... Di Piero’s poetry is known for its gritty realism. Populated with characters and settings reminiscent of the South Philadelphia neighborhood of his boyhood and the Italian-American working-class families he grew up with, Di Piero’s poetry frequently makes use of colloquial language and diction—what poet Philip Levine described as 'our American voices in all their glory and banality.' ..."
Poetry Foundation
W - W.S. Di Piero
A McSweeney’s Books Q&A With W.S. Di Piero, Author of the New Poetry Collection, TOMBO.
Poets: Smoke
Poetry Foundation: What’s Left
Google: The Restorers
Google: Shadows Burning
Google: The Dog Star
amazon
YouTube: Exhibitionist, Johnny One Note

John Sloan, “Hanging Clothes,” 1920

"John Sloan's tiny print of a New York woman hanging clothes out to dry is no mere scribble nor intended primarily as an illustration of contemporary life. It is like all true art an allegory of its own making. This image, an etching from around 1920, would have required an acid bath and then washing in water. The prints, like the garments, must then be hung to dry; indoors, of course, but this is allegory. Like clothes in the wash, it is inside out. It resembles external nature but depicts the inside of the artist's mind. Besides, hanging is common in art not only for the drying of prints but for the exhibition of paintings. Few artists would miss that connotation in the title. Four hundred years earlier Albrecht Dürer depicted the same process in an etching but with an angel holding a 'print' of Christ, as I have explained in its own entry. ... Sloan presents himself as a woman; Dürer as an angel, male but looking female. Watch out for similarities like these (left) because they can help make sense of art."
EPPH

The Megan Kelso Interview

"Watergate Sue"
"Megan Kelso and I first met about seven years ago, through a mutual friend who knew we were both cartoonists. I was excited to meet her, since a woman who draws comics is a relative rarity, but a little trepidatious about being introduced to someone solely on the basis of shared job description. To my relief, we got along easily, and on that occasion comics took a back seat to less obsessive conversational topics. It was only later, and over time, that the obsession would heat up. ..."
The Comics Journal
W - Megan Kelso
Megan Kelso talks turkey about the Times
NY Times: I. Watergate Sue: Epilogue (pdf format)
How Comic-Book Artist Megan Kelso Makes It Work
Alternative Comics
amazon

"The Dark End of the Street" - James Carr (1967)

Wikipedia - "'The Dark End of the Street' is a 1967 soul song written by songwriters Dan Penn and Chips Moman and first recorded by James Carr. The song was co-written by Penn, a professional songwriter and producer, and Moman, a former session guitarist at Phil Spector's Gold Star Studio, and also the owner of American Sound Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. ... In the summer of 1966, while a DJ convention was being held in Memphis, Penn and Moman were cheating while playing cards with Florida DJ Don Schroeder, and decided to write the song while on a break. Penn said of the song 'We were always wanting to come up with the best cheatin’ song. Ever.' ..."
Wikipedia
BEHIND THE SONG: “The Dark End Of The Street”
YouTube: James Carr, Percy Sledge, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Richard and Linda Thompson, Aretha Franklin, Ry Cooder, Linda Ronstadt, Billy Bragg, Prince Buster, The Commitments

The most charming building on East 13th Street

"Every time I pass the lilliputian walkup at 17 East 13th Street, with 'Erskine Press' faded on the facade, I imagine the 1920s Greenwich Village of Edmund Wilson, Djuna Barnes, and e.e. cummings. Constructed in 1911 (Erskine Press had been operating out of a building across the street since 1895), the little walkup has amazingly escaped the wrecking ball. It’s an emblem of the long-gone Greenwich Village of print shops, small publishers, struggling artists and writers, and a literary culture. I’m not sure when Erskine Press moved out. But since then, the building has changed hands over last four or five decades—getting a new paint job and undergoing minor changes yet ultimately looking very Jazz Age. ..."
Ephemeral New York

2009 May: Washington Square Park, 2010 January: Judson Memorial Church, 2011 February: Greenwich Village, 2011 July: East Village, Manhattan, 2012 July: MacDougal Street, 2013 August: The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village, 2014 August: South Village, 2014 October: Houston Street, 2015 September: Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, 2016 January: Chumley's, 2016 March: 25 Radical Things to Do in Greenwich Village

Invaders Of The Heart - Jah Wobble (1982)

"In the early eighties a lot of new wave bands were recorded live and transmitted by Dutch radio. I recorded some of them on cassette tape. Including two concerts of Jah Wobble. It is not his best period, the music is a kind of improvisation jazz funk. The first concert was in Vera, Groningen, the Netherlands on November 21st 1982, the second on Pandora's Music Box festival in de Doelen, Rotterdam, September 3rd 1983. I removed the worst drop-outs and the clicks generated by the fridge. Live in Holland (1982-1983, UK) ..."
Wiel's Time Capsule
Discogs
YouTube: Invaders Of The Heart (Decadent Disco Mix)

2011 February: Plight & Premonition, 2011 June: Persian Love, 2013 October: Flux + Mutability - David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1989) , 2014 June: Holger Czukay - Der Osten Ist Rot, Rome Remains Rome (1984/7).

Paris Street Style - Zoe de las Cases

"It looks like the coloring book craze isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. I keep seeing new coloring books popping up. One book that caught my eye was Paris Street Style by Zoe de las Cases. I was drawn to this coloring book because of the subject matter, fashion. It’s the perfect subject for coloring. There are no rules on how to color a dress or pair of shoes. Each coloring page is a fresh canvas. As usual, I’m going to share a few pictures from the book. When it comes to craft books, you need to see if the content appeals to you. I could go on and on about a craft book but if you don’t find the content appealing, my words mean nothing. ..."
Zakka Life
amazon
YouTube: The Colouring Book: Adult Colouring Book Review, Book Stacks Amber

The playlist – Middle Eastern and North African: Acid Arab, Ballake Sissoko and more

"... Mali: Ballake Sissoko and Vincent Segal - Diaboro (live session). Master kora player Ballaké Sissoko lives in a partially secluded house of red laterite bricks in the Ntomikorobougou, or 'old tamarind', neighbourhood of Bamako, under the shadow of the Koulouba Hill. And this is worth mentioning, as this serene location – specifically his roof terrace – is where he recorded his new album, Musique Du Nuit, with French cellist Vincent Segal. And as this clip shows, the music has been suffused with domestic and street noise, creating the kind of intimate and welcoming sound that would be impossible to achieve in the studio. ..."
Guardian (Video)

Suffragette (2015)

Wikipedia - "Suffragette is a 2015 British historical period drama film directed by Sarah Gavron and written by Abi Morgan. ... In 1912, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) is a 24-year-old laundress. While delivering a package one day, she is caught up in a suffragette riot involving smashing windows, where she recognizes one of her co-workers, Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff). Later, Alice Haughton (Romola Garai), the wife of an MP, encourages the women from the laundry to speak out to parliament and give testimony in order to secure the right to vote. Violet is the one who offers to testify; however, she is beaten by her abusive husband and subsequently Maud is the one who testifies. Maud is energized by her testimony and goes with Violet and other women to see if women have been given the right to vote. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Suffragette
Guardian: My great-grandmother, Emmeline Pankhurst, would still be fighting for equality today
Guardian: Suffragette reminds us why it's a lie that feminists need men's approval
NY Times: In ‘Suffragette,’ Feminist Insight That’s About More Than the Vote (Video)
New Statesman: What did the suffragette movement in Britain really look like?
YouTube: Trailer #1, Trailer #1

Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty

Edgar Degas, Heads of a man and a woman
"The upcoming Degas exhibition at MoMA, A Strange New Beauty, is set to open March 25 until July 24, 2015. Edgar Degas is best known as a painter and chronicler of the ballet, yet his work as a printmaker reveals the true extent of his restless experimentation. In the mid-1870s, Degas was introduced to the monotype process—drawing in ink on a metal plate that was then run through a press, typically resulting in a single print. Captivated by the monotype’s potential, he immersed in the technique with enormous enthusiasm, taking the medium to radical ends. He expanded the possibilities of drawing, created surfaces with a heightened sense of tactility, and invented new means for new subjects, from dancers in motion to the radiance of electric light, from women in intimate settings to meteorological effects in nature. ..."
NY Elite Magazine
MoMA
ArtBook
amazon

Rag - Nicole Dextra

"This Richmond Art Gallery Interview was done for the City As Site exhibition by videographer Melanie Devoy. The exhibition curated by Rachel Lafo, covered a selection of projects initiated by the Richmond Public Arts Program. My work included pieces from the StoreFront, objects of desire project."
Nicole Dextras (Video)
YouTube: Storefront at the Richmond Art Gallery

Journey to Italy - Roberto Rossellini (1954)

"In his 1950s collaborations with Ingrid Bergman, the great Italian director Roberto Rossellini captured his wife and muse in a light completely different from her glamorous Hollywood persona. Drawn, fretful, and confused, the Swedish star wanders through these films as if looking anxiously at the man behind the camera, begging for direction while the exploratory Rossellini sought emotional truth by dropping her into alien landscapes. It's a harrowing series of portrayals of unsettled female consciousness, and also a glimpse into a complex behind-the-scenes romance as revealing as the films Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich some 20 years earlier. If not quite their The Devil Is a Woman, the 1954 masterpiece Voyage to Italy is similarly awash in the emotional unease of a relationship racing to its end, a meta sketchbook where the disillusionment of the protagonists seems to irresistibly mirror that of the actress and the filmmaker. ..."
Slant
W - Voyage to Italy
NY Times: Revisiting a Rossellini Classic to Find Resonances of Today
senses of cinema
YouTube: Trailer, Viaggio in Italia
YouTube: Voyage to Italy 1:25:40

2009 May: Roberto Rossellini, 2010 March: Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy

Hand of Kindness - Richard Thompson (1983)

Wikipedia - "Hand of Kindness is the second solo studio album by Richard Thompson. ... Hand of Kindness is a distinct departure from the albums that preceded it. Thompson biographer Patrick Humphries observed that with this album Thompson 'left the darkness behind him and walked out into the light'. This is one of the most straightforward and up-tempo rock albums in the Thompson catalog. The mood is generally exuberant and Thompson's vocals and particularly his guitar playing are confident and extrovert...."
Wikipedia
allmusic
iTunes
YouTube: Tear Stained Letter, Hand Of Kindness, The Wrong Heartbeat, A Poisoned Heart And A Twisted Memory, How I Wanted To

2011 July: Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson, 2012 February: I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, 2014 March: Videowest 81, 2015 October: Richard & Linda Thompson - Rafferty's Folly (1980), 2015 December: Rumor and Sigh (1991)

The Fantastic World of Mr. Phelps

"Postcards have been cherished by people as tokens of memory since at least the 1800s. This is something I’ve known since I was a kid, but never really thought about until I worked on a research and design project centered on the postcard collection at the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. The project led me to one man in particular who collected postcards sent from his friends who traveled the world. His postcards took me on an unforgettable journey. That man was Mr. Walter Phelps Warren. Postcards have been used for sending greetings from afar and expressing to a loved one how you wished they were with you. These capsules of time, landmarks and monuments attempt to capture places in order to showcase them to those who are not there. Do postcards successfully depict a place? Do culture, behavior and current events come across in this media? Are postcards like the social media we use today? These questions and many others were the base for one of the most memorable research projects I’ve ever conducted. ..."
The New York Public Library

Who gets to say how black people see themselves? - Marlon James

"Nearly every rap album has that one moment you can’t get with. If you’re a woman, there are at least five. It’s been almost a year since I first heard Kendrick Lamar’s 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' an ambitious, spellbinding, masterpiece of a rap album, and it took me nearly a year to like it. The main reason: the 13th song, 'The Blacker the Berry.' Up to that moment, musically if not lyrically, 'Butterfly' is almost a quiet storm of an album, a record that gazes more inward than out, even as it tackles institutional racism and hood politics. Then comes 'The Blacker the Berry,' all booming drums and NWA-style rage. For the first time, homeboy is furious, as if he has just realized that the only response to the stereotype of the angry black man is to get angrier. It’s the part where I thought I would be most engaged, but it turned into the part that locked me out. ..."
NY Times: 25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going (Video)
W - "The Blacker the Berry"
GENIUS: "The Blacker the Berry"
The Atlantic: Kendrick Lamar Is Not a Hypocrite
Pitchfork - Grammys 2016: Kendrick Lamar Performs "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright," Debuts New Track in Politically Charged Performance (Video)

2015 December: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), 2016 March: When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (2013)

Penn Station, New York - Louis Stettner

"When New York’s original Pennsylvania Station was demolished in 1963 to much protest, a part of the city was lost forever. The McKim, Mead & White–designed Beaux Arts train station would be known in the years to come as much for its destruction as for its beauty. Built in 1910, the massive station stood below a vaulted glass roof, and the waiting room, modeled after the ancient Roman baths at Caracalla, would fill with dappled light as passengers came and went. The old Penn Station was, by nearly all counts, more enchanting than today’s incarnation, which lies underground, below Madison Square Garden. Louis Stettner, born in Brooklyn in 1922, first had the opportunity to photograph the old Penn Station in 1957. ..."
Architectural Digest: Take a Trip Back to the Days of New York’s Original Penn Station
NY Times: Louis Stettner and the Glories of Penn Station
CityLab: Photographing the People in New York's Old Penn Station

Julio Cortázar - Cronopios and Famas (1969)

"... [Julio] Cortázar shows a wide range of talents in these very different stories. He avoids the obvious didacticism of most such modern fable-literature, working with considerable more subtlety. The pieces also vary greatly in form and approach. The final section of the collection shares the title of the volume itself, Cronopios and Famas. It deals with the creatures (or human types, if one prefers) of the title -- as well as a third genus, esperanzas. Cortázar contrasts these three classes of being in numerous scenes and tales. ... Cortázar is always interesting stylistically, and Paul Blackburn's translation seems to capture most of the writing quite well. The translation (from 1969) holds up well, with few jarring dated anachronisms -- no small feat, given Cortázar's playful and experimental style."
the complete review
THOUGHTS OF XANADU
Wikipedia
EPC: from Cronopios and Famas "The Instruction Manual"
Google: Cronopios and Famas, Julio Cortazar/Paul Blackburn
amazon
YouTube: Julio Cortázar Talks Cronopios and Famas - English Subtitles by Minifiction

2011 November: Blow-Up (1966) - Michelangelo Antonioni

Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives (1977-83)

"PERFECT LIVES was developed musically through live performances in Europe and America. 'Blue' Gene Tyranny was Ashley’s first collaborator — his keyboard melodies and harmonies define the character of Buddy. Tyranny and Ashley performed a chamber version of the piece many times together (including at The Kitchen in early 1978). Shortly after, The Kitchen commissioned PERFECT LIVES as an opera for television, the live version expanded to include richly layered orchestral tapes produced by composer Peter Gordon, and the singing of Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem. In 1980, John Sanborn recorded the basic video tracks on location in Illinois according to the templates provided by Ashley’s score. From this material, The Lessons, a preview version of the opera (based on keyboard gestures by 'Blue' Gene Tyranny) was produced through the TV Lab at WNET. In the fall of 1982, a pre-sale was obtained from Channel Four Television in Great Britain, making possible the completion of Perfect Lives. ..."
Robert Ashley
frieze: American Opera
Lovely (Video)
allmusic
Reading Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives
amazon
YouTube: Perfect Lives 1 The Park Privacy Rules, 2 The Supermarket Famous People, 3 The Bank Victimless Crime, 4 The Bar Differences

2008 March: Robert Ashley, 2012 April: Sonic Arts Union, 2012 July: Various - Lovely Little Records, 2013 October: The Old Man Lives in Concrete, 2014 March: Robert Ashley, 1930-2014.

The Egyptian Counterrevolution

.
"The most common interpretation of the Egyptian Revolution goes something like this: in January 2011, thousands of young Egyptians used social media to build a mass movement against Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian government. In February, the revolution brought down Mubarak and paved the way for democratic elections. But after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won the 2012 elections and began implementing Islamist policies, the army was forced to step in again to prevent the country from backsliding into authoritarianism. ..."
Jacobin

2014 July: Stories of Change – Beyond the ‘Arab Spring’, 2015 December: The Square (2013)

Interviews - Robert Wyatt (2014)

"Robert Wyatt is sitting in his English cottage near the picturesque Lincolnshire Wolds, recovering. The 69-year-old recently broke his foot, though he’s not looking for sympathy. 'It doesn't bother me,' shrugs Wyatt, who lost feeling in his lower half after falling out of a four-story window 41 years ago. 'I don't use these things anyway!'

This no-bullshit humility—along with a discography that combines jazz, pop, and experimental sounds into something completely singular—is at the core of Wyatt’s appeal. He’s certainly the only human to have recorded with Jimi Hendrix and Björk, for instance, but he’s not exactly going to yell such factoids from the mountaintops. Luckily, writer Marcus O’Dair is doing that for him with the new authorized biography, Different Every Time. ..."
Pitchfork (Video)
Robert Wyatt - Interview by Richie Unterberger (1996)

2010 November: Robert Wyatt, 2011 October: Sea Song, 2012 October: Comicopera, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 September: Solar Flares Burn for You (2003), 2014 March: Cuckooland (2003), 2014 October: Robert Wyatt Story (BBC Four, 2001), 2014 December: Different Every Time (2014).

Barcelona Floors

"The City of Marvels is how writer Eduardo Mendoza called the coolest city of the Mediterranean in one of his novels. The book is set at the turn of the 20th century, a time in which Barcelona boomed and became what it is today. A time in which factories’ chimneys grew side by side with the Sagrada Familia’s towers. That tumultuous era left its signature on thousands of floors in the city – one of its marvels. Pavements laid in churches, palaces and avenues form an amazing mosaic. 'These floors are addictive', says José Jóvena, creator with Elisabet Martínez of Tile Addiction. The two have uploaded hundreds of pictures of Barcelona’s floors on Instagram. Recently, they discovered that a German photographer, Sebastian Erras, shared their passion for floors.  ..."
Barcelona Floors
Venetian Floors
Sebastian Erras
Instagram

2009 March: Barcelona 1908, 2014 September: I Work the Street. Joan Colom, photographs 1957-2010, 2015 May: Barcelona: Berta Marsé, Ricardo Feriche, Javier Velasco. 2009 August: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, 2011 April: Venice Backstage. How does Venice work?.

The David W. Niven Collection of Early Jazz Legends, 1921-1991

Lionel Hampton, tape 3, 1938-1939
"... I became the proud owner of every recording up to the start of WWII and some 75% of his recordings until his death in 1974, some 180 hours of the recorded Duke Ellington. Throughout the ten years prior to WWII, during my high school and college years, my 78 RPM 10”, followed by 33 1/3 RPM LP, collection grew to the thousands. ... I had always hoped that maybe at least one of my kids would show an interest in my collection, so I began making tapes that could include a chronological compilation of my collection, along with commentary: date and place of recording, personnel, soloists, etc. The main reason for doing this rather major project was to put my collection into some kind of compendium form that would attract my children to the music that had been of such significance in my life. My collection amounted to over 10,000 hours of tapes. No two people will agree with my selection of Legends. I decided to choose from the years prior to the BeBop period, i.e., before Gillespie, Bird, Monk, Miles. ..."
Internet Archive: About
Internet Archive: Collection (Video)

When You Listen to Music, You’re Never Alone

Gustav Klimt, Schubert at the Piano II, 1899
"On a late spring evening in 2015, at South Street Seaport, a square on the southern tip of Manhattan, hundreds of people slipped on headphones and slipped into their own worlds. It was a clear night, perfect for a stroll, but attendees weren’t interested in local shops and restaurants. They were too busy dancing silently to the music, tuning in—or tuning out—to a 'silent disco.' The silent disco is a concert that passersby can barely hear, and that attendees can customize with a flip of the switch. At this event, a wireless signal allowed dancers to choose their favorite of three playlists. Each pair of headphones covered the ears and gave off a robotic glow. 'This is what we’ve been reduced to: dancing with ourselves,' one dancer told a reporter from The New York Times. ..."
Nautilus

New Yorkers - Benedict Evans

Kristen
"These pictures began as an exercise, really, in making a quick, collaborative portrait in one or two frames, with little control over the background, light, etc. I enjoy the slightly weird interaction of asking a stranger who catches my eye if I can take their picture. Relatively few declined, and after a while I put them together to form a small series. Many of the pictures were taken around the time I was working on projects for Bklynr, including “Dirty Dreamer' and 'A Place to Call Home.' So it feels fitting that they appear here. I’m sad to see Bklynr closing its doors, but am proud to have been part of a great project from some very good people. A big thank you to Bklynr, and all its readers."
Bklynr

George Bellows, "Dempsey and Firpo," 1924

"Dempsey and Firpo, one of George Bellows’s most ambitious paintings, captures a pivotal moment in the September 14, 1923 prizefight between American heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his Argentine rival Luis Angel Firpo. The frenzy lasted less than four minutes, Firpo going to the floor nine times and Dempsey twice. Although Dempsey was the eventual victor, the artist chose to represent the dramatic moment when Firpo knocked his opponent out of the ring with a tremendous blow to the jaw. At the match on assignment for the New York Evening Journal, Bellows portrays himself as a balding man at the extreme left of the picture. His geometrically structured composition also creates a low vantage point that includes the viewer: looking up at this angle, we find ourselves among the spectators pushing Dempsey back into the ring. The excitement is further heightened by the chromatic contrast between the fighters bathed in lurid light, and the dark, smoke-filled atmosphere around them."
Whitney, Whitney (Video)
Art Beyond Sight
The Atlantic - 'Dempsey and Firpo': The Greatest American Sports Painting
MoMA
Dandelion:
W - Jack Dempsey vs. Luis Ángel Firpo

New Order, olden style: A unique take on Blue Monday

Orkestra Obsolete: Blue Monday
"New Order's Blue Monday was released on 7 March 1983, and its cutting-edge electronic groove changed pop music forever. But what would it have sounded like if it had been made 50 years earlier? In a special film, using only instruments available in the 1930s - from the theremin and musical saw to the harmonium and prepared piano - the mysterious Orkestra Obsolete present this classic track as you've never heard it before. ..."
BBC (Video)

2009 February: New Order, 2011 May: Movement, 2011 October: Low-Life, 2011 December: Brotherhood, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division, 2012 September: Power, Corruption & Lies (1983), 2015 June: Believe In A Land Of Love: New Order's Low-Life 30 Years On, 2015 November: True Faith (1987).

11 Essential Feminist Books: A New Reading List by The New York Public Library

Virginia Woolf
"We now find ourselves about a third of the way through March, more interestingly known as Women’s History Month, a time filled with occasions to round up and learn more about the creations and accomplishments of women through the centuries. And 'who better to honor this March than history’s influential feminists?' writes Lynn Lobash on the New York Public Library’s website. We’ve previously featured treasures from the New York Public Library, including art posters, maps, restaurant menus, theater ephemera, and a host of digitized high-resolution images. Today it’s time to highlight one of the many recommended reading lists that the NYPL’s librarians regularly create for the reading public. ..."
Open Culture

Nathaniel Rateliff's Stax playlist: Otis Redding, Sam and Dave and more

"The Night Sweats frontman selects a soul-baring slice of blues, a magical dance track and one of the most recognisable instrumentals recorded. Wendy Rene – "After Laughter (Comes Tears)." I love how haunting this song is in its instrumentation and arrangement. There is so much space for Rene’s vocals to shine, and she is so full of soul. It sounds far ahead of its time, and it was sampled in a Wu-Tang Clan song. ..."
Guardian (Video)
Otis Redding - These Arms Of Mine

American crossroads: Reagan, Trump and the devil down south

Nixon, Reagan and Goldwater in 1965
"How did it get to Trump? To put it in Trump terms: you could say it started with a deal. Or more precisely, a big deal with various side deals attached, all of it amounting to one grand, dark bargain whose payment may be coming due at last. If one was inclined to reach for metaphor, you could say it was a deal with the devil. Or you could say it started with this, a plank adopted by the Democratic national convention of 1948: The Democratic party commits itself to continuing efforts to eradicate all racial, religious, and economic discrimination. That was enough to bring the devil howling out of his hole, that foot-on-the-neck-of-the-black-man devil of the Jim Crow, hookworm, lynch-prone south – 'the solid south' that reliably delivered its votes to the Democratic party every four years. ...'
Guardian (Video) Cross Road Blues - Robert Johnson (1936)
W - Southern strategy
Newsweek: Trump and the Racist Ghost of George Wallace
How the ghost of George Wallace hijacked the GOP
Esquire: The Roots of Donald Trump's Candidacy Lie in a South Carolina Cemetery
Rolling Stone - Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump (Video)
Washington Post: Researchers have found strong evidence that racism helps the GOP win
Esquire: Up in Michigan, Where American Fascism Lived Once Before

Annie Leibovitz - Women: New Portraits

"Wapping Hydraulic Power Station is a spare, redbrick ex-industrial utility space, not one of the glossy, high-end galleries that populate the West End of London. At first, it seemed odd that a photographer of the standing of Annie Leibovitz should have chosen such a place, well away from the comfort zone of the art-dealing classes, to launch her traveling exhibition 'Women: New Portraits.' But any woman who visits will understand, with a gradual and visceral realization, why Leibovitz has positioned her long-collected essay on womanhood very deliberately here, off the beaten track of money and establishment art. ..."
VOGUE: Annie Leibovitz’s New Exhibit Is a Life-Affirming Celebration of Womanhood
WOMEN: New Portraits - Annie Leibovitz (Video)
NY Times: Annie Leibovitz’s Classic Portraits of Women, Now in Expanded Form
Vanity Fair (Video)
Architectural Digest: Annie Leibovitz Discusses Her 2016 Traveling Exhibition, WOMEN: New Portraits

2013 October: My Desk

The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography with Robin Blaser and Friends

"Robin Blaser is in his element in these monologues in interview format — personable, pedagogic, and himself a 'high-energy construct,' to not-quite-cite Charles Olson. By virtue of this book, the reader experiences Blaser as a unique force field of magnetic knowledge and charismatic charm. He is at home among the poets, themselves practitioners and friends, meeting in 1974 at someone’s house in Vancouver. The agenda is mixed: the taped sessions from which these talks are transcribed were apparently proposed by Warren Tallman to constitute or contribute to Blaser’s autobiographical memoir, and probably to dig into the complex nexus of a famous triad: Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Blaser. Their comradeship, quarrels, spites, and splits (among those involving other intimates) are one tale of the formation and impact of the 'Berkeley' or 'San Francisco Renaissance' in the New [North] American Poetry, a poetics and practice — with its accompanying lore — that energized these Canadian poets in distinctive ways. ..."
Jacket2: In his element
Bookslut
Google: The Astonishment Tapes
The Astonishment Tapes
Project MUSE
Of Robin Blaser

November 2007: EPC, November 2009: Robin Blaser (1925 - 2009), March 2010: The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, 2011 February: The Holy Forest, 2011 July: "Image-Nation 21 (territory", 2007 November: Jack Spicer, 2010 February: mad cartographer (PoemTalk #28), 2010 April: Manroot and Acts, 2011 January: 5 Poems by Jack Spicer, 2012 July: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, 2015 January: 'Absolutely temporary': Spicer, Burgess, and the ephemerality of coterie, 2015 March: San Francisco Renaissance