#6 – Call Me Burroughs LP

"The English Bookshop (1965). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Your finger runs along a series of spines searching for a hot track. Ah, there is one. You pull out the sleeve. A few taps. Lift the arm. Drop the needle. The snap, crackle and pop, this hiss are a prelude; there is an air of anticipation. Then you slump back as the warm sound that can only come from vinyl washes over your entire body and soul. The lives of vinyl junkies are full of ritual. Like with Bukowski collectors, I am envious of those deeply into music. ..."
RealityStudio
W - Call Me Burroughs LP
Open Culrture (Video)
YouTube: Call Me Burroughs LP 43:27

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive.

Studies in Scale - Excerpts by Emily Dickinson and Jen Bervin

"The following portfolio represents a small selection of works from The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems (Christine Burgin /New Directions in association with Granary Books, 2013). The 'gorgeous nothings' is an excerpt from Emily Dickinson’s manuscript A 821; in choosing it as the title for this project with Marta Werner, I was thinking of Dickinson’s own definition for nothing in a letter: 'By homely | gifts and | hindered Words | The human | heart is told | Of nothing – | ‘Nothing’ is | the force | That renovates | the World – ' and her definition for no: 'the wildest | word we consign | to Language.' These 'gorgeous nothings' are that kind of nothing. ..."
Poetry Foundation
Jacket2
The Paris Review
NY Times
NY Times: The Lost Gardens of Emily Dickinson
W - Emily Dickinson
amazon: The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems

Don't Expect Art - Pere Ubu (1980)

"A semi-approved bootleg limited to 500 copies. Original covers were promo jackets of Patti Smith's Horses album pasted over with printed pieces of paper front and back. Probably recorded in 1978 and mostly at Pirate's Cove. 'I Will Wait' was recorded at the Homestead Theater. No other details are remembered. Released on Tri-City Records in 1979. The label on Side 1 reads 'X-Mas Concert At Interstate Mall.' The label on Side 2 reads 'Live At Club Wow.' ... Cover of AOT This same bootleg was re-booted, unofficially, as Don't Expect Art (Impossible Recordworks IMP1-07) in 1980. 'Don't Expect Art' was an Ubu Communex injunction of the day so the source of the re-boot was probably also a fan. Song titles on both releases were disguised, undoubtedly an effort to avoid detection by the bootleg police."
U-Men Live At Interstate Mall - Pere Ubu
YouTube: (TheU-Men) - Don’t Expect Art (X-MasConcert) '80 full album

2008 April: Pere Ubu, 2010 July: Pere Ubu - 1, 2012 November: David Thomas And The Pedestrians - Variations On A Theme, 2013 February: Dub Housing, 2014 September: Carnival of Souls (2014), 2015 June: Street Waves / My Dark Ages (1976), 2016 January: Live at the Longhorn: April 1, 1978, 2016 February: Cloudland (1989), 2016 April: Architecture of Language 1979-1982, 2016 November: The Modern Dance (1978).

An Alt-Right Makeover Shrouds the Swastikas

Matthew Heimbach, who runs the Traditionalist Worker Party, at home in Paoli, Ind., with his son and wife. His group advocates replacing the United States with nation-states based on ethnicity and religion.
"A small but determined political organization in Detroit began to worry that its official symbol was a bit off-putting. With the group’s central philosophy suddenly finding traction in the daily discourse, appearances mattered. So in November, as the country’s divisive presidential campaign became ever more jagged, the National Socialist Movement, a leading neo-Nazi group, did away with its swastika. In its stead, the group chose a symbol from a pre-Roman alphabet that was also adopted by the Nazis. According to Jeff Schoep, the movement’s leader, the decision to dispense with the swastika was 'an attempt to become more integrated and more mainstream.' Let us pause. Not even two years ago, white supremacists like Mr. Schoep would rant from the fringe of the fringe, their attention-desperate events rarely worth mention. ..."
NY Times

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 November: Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests, 2016 November: Rust Belt, 2016 November: Autocracy: Rules for Survival, 2016 November: Rally in Brooklyn Park Condemns Swastikas and ‘Go Trump’ Graffiti, 2016 December: The Democratic Party Has Failed—We Need a Radical Vision to Defeat Trumpism

Dub Kings - King Jammy At King Tubby's (2011)

""Climbing in distinction from merely Prince Jammy to King Jammy, this student of King Tubby started out as Lloyd James, learning the tricks of dub production from one of the masters over the course of working on countless reggae productions throughout the '70s. Dub Kings collects some of Jammy's standout mixes, rugged rocksteady rhythms with a focus on sharp horn sections, especially notable on cuts like 'Wreaking Dub' and 'Pride and Ambition Dub.' These 18 tracks were all engineered at King Tubby's studio by King Jammy in the late '70s, and have an especially swimmy quality to them, awash in the type of echo trails, reverb, and generous negative space that made the sounds coming out of Tubby's studio worthy of royalty."
allmusic
Forced Exposure
YouTube: Dub Kings - King Jammy At King Tubby's

Joy Division - John Peel Session (1979)

"Joy Division recorded its first John Peel Session in January and second in November of 1979. The group's first full-length release, Unknown Pleasures, would hit the streets between the two -- around the same time Manchester's sewage system collapsed (at least the city had something to celebrate in its hometown band's brilliant debut). The sessions were originally available as separate EPs; the first included the initial four tracks, the second the remaining four. They were rendered somewhat redundant once combined into this recording. Then it too became redundant upon the appearance of the Heart & Soul box set in 1998 and The Complete BBC Recordings two years later. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Transmission (Peel Sessions 1979 - Live)
YouTube: The Peel Sessions (Full Album)

2008 March: Ian Curtis, 2009 August: Factory: Manchester From Joy Division To Happy Mondays, 2010 November: Love Will Tear Us Apart, 2012 February: An Ideal for Living EP, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures, 2013 May: "Atmosphere"/ "Dead Souls"

Six Postcards From Famous Writers: Hemingway, Kafka, Kerouac & More

Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein, 1924
"Today we’ve gathered together a group of postcards from six of the most famous writers of the 20th century. (Please click the images to see them in a larger format.) Some of the cards are about business, others friendship. We found them all fascinating to glance through. ... In the summer of 1924, Ernest Hemingway traveled in Spain to attend bullfights. On June 9 he sent a postcard from Madrid to his mentor and fellow bullfighting fan Gertrude Stein. Hemingway was eager to fill Stein in on the latest developments. ..."
Open Culture

Band of Gypsys - Jimi Hendrix (1970)

Wikipedia - "Band of Gypsys is a live album by Jimi Hendrix and the first without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was recorded on January 1, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City with Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, frequently referred to as the Band of Gypsys. The album mixes funk and rhythm and blues elements with hard rock and jamming, an approach which later became the basis of funk rock. It contains previously unreleased songs and was the last full-length Hendrix album released before his death. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Band Of Gypsys was Jimi Hendrix’s funky contractual obligation (Video)
Hear Jimi Hendrix's Electrifying First Band of Gypsys Performance
amazon: Band of Gypsys, Machine Gun - The Fillmore East 12/31/1969
DailyMotion: Band of Gypsys Who Knows, Machine Gun
YouTube: Band Of Gypsys [Full]

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), 2015 November: Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968.

Three Tales - Gustave Flaubert (1877)

Wikipedia - "Three Tales (Trois Contes) is a work by Gustave Flaubert that was originally published in French in 1877. It consists of the short stories 'A Simple Heart', 'Saint Julian the Hospitalier,' and 'Hérodias'. 'Dance of Death' is another story sometimes grouped with 'Simple Heart' and 'Saint Julian the Hospitalier' as Three Short Works. 'A Simple Heart', or Un cœur simple or Le perroquet in French, is a story about a servant girl named Felicité. After her one and only love Théodore purportedly marries a well-to-do woman to avoid conscription, Felicité quits the farm where she works and heads for Pont-l'Évèque, where she picks up work in a widow's house as a servant...."
Wikipedia
Three Short Works by Gustave Flaubert (Video)
amazon

2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert, 2013 March: Sentimental Education (1869)

William Kentridge - NAI010 (2016)

"The South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955) has achieved a worldwide reputation with his large, poetic and incisive installations. Over the last decades the versatile artist has developed a multidisciplinary way of working that combines film, animation, drawing, music and theater. Typical of his work are the powerful charcoal drawings that he turns into moving images. Kentridge's work explores the historically charged past of his native country. The artist is producing an impressive large-scale installation for EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, to be shown on eight large screens and accompanied by a soundtrack of an African brass band. This publication of Kentridge's texts, sketches, set photographs and film stills lays bare the process by which this unusual project came into being and places it within the context of his oeuvre."
artbook
Eye Film Museum, If ever we get to heaven, William Kentridge (1955, South Africa) (Video)
amazon

009 November: William Kentridge, 2011 April: The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art, 2013 August: Stereoscope (1999), 2015 October: “More Sweetly Play the Dance” (2015)

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013)

"Three young black men are cruising in a ’54 Chevy, armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and a rifle. It’s dark, and they’re following a police car on patrol in north Oakland. In the confrontation that follows, the young men hold firm, refusing to put down their weapons, and they attract a small crowd of bystanders. As historians Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin document in their new book, Black Against Empire, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seal, the quick-witted leaders of the Black Panther Party were on their way to building a revolutionary movement that has yet to be replicated in the United States. The Black Panthers crafted their unique identity by advocating a form of “self-defense” that entailed militant defiance of police authority and brutality. ..."
Harpers
History
LA Times
amazon
YouTube: Black Against Empire 5:02

2011 December: Black Panther Party, 2014 July: Black Panthers (Agnès Varda, 1968 doc.), 2015 January: The Black Panthers Revisited, 2015 February: Black Panther Newspapers, 2016 February: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.

In Chicago, Bodies Pile Up at Intersection of ‘Depression and Rage’

A damaged “No Guns” sign in the 3300 block of West Walnut Street last month.
"... Over Memorial Day weekend, when The New York Times tracked every shooting in this city, the largest concentration of them happened here, in about six square miles that make up Chicago’s 11th police district. Of 64 people shot that weekend, 16 were in this district. Three people were shot on this same stretch of Walnut Street. The Times returned to the blocks in the 11th District where the Memorial Day weekend shootings occurred to try to better understand Chicago’s crisis of violence. Residents along Walnut Street and at other crime scenes told of a fractured community — isolated by this city’s entrenched segregation, hollowed out by joblessness and poverty, and battered by resignation and indifference. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Sun Ra & His Arkestra - At Inter-Media Arts April 1991 (2016)

"... And then there's Sun Ra. Born in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, he absorbed the big-band sounds of Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson (whom he would later join) but spun their influences into something entirely new and bold to become a singular American figure — even if he maintained that he was from Saturn. Now, with Sun Ra and his Arkestra: At Inter-Media Arts, April 1991 (Modern Harmonic), a 25-year-old concert just released on double-CD and triple-vinyl, the bandleader's — yes — genius is on full display yet again. If Other Music on East 4th Street, a virtual shrine to the iconoclast, hadn't sadly closed earlier this year, they might've thrown a record-release party on account of this. ..."
VOICE: Sun Ra's Sunset
Dusty Groove
Discogs, iTunes
Modern Harmonic
YouTube: Sun Ra at Inter-Media Arts, 1991 16 videos

Beginnings - Meredith Monk (2009)

"The pieces in Tzadik's collection of early works by Meredith Monk have either never been released before or are heard in performances released here for the first time. Since her 1981 album Dolmen Music, Monk has recorded for ECM, and these selections (including some live performances) all predate that release. The album begins with a disarmingly simple version of Greensleeves, made in 1966; it's intriguing to hear Monk's distinctive voice conventionally used in a folk song. ... The album is a treasure for any fan of Monk's who wants to hear what she was doing early in her career, before her works were regularly recorded commercially."
allmusic
W - Beginnings
Listen: Meredith Monk recordings (Video)
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Quarry: The Rally (Live, 1977), The Tale, Candy bullets and moon

2008 March: Meredith Monk, 2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, 2011 February: Meredith Monk: A Voice For All Time, 2011 August: Ellis Island, 2012 December: Turtle Dreams, 2013 February: Quarry: The Rally (Live, 1977), 2014 November; 10 Things You Might Not Know About Meredith Monk, Volcano Songs (1994), 2015 June: Ellis Island, 2016 April: 16 Millimeter Earrings and the Artist’s Body (1966/1998).

Eleven Spring: A Celebration of Street Art (2016)

"Street art has always been transgressive, with underground artists marrying beauty with the power of illegal actions--art that went hand in hand with the very real danger of arrest. Now street art and graffiti have transitioned into a mainstream genre, and art on walls is as likely to be an ad coopting that power as an actual guerilla artwork. Eleven Spring: A Celebration of Street Art, out this week, celebrates a pivotal moment in that change. It's the tenth anniversary of a massive, five-floor collaboration that brought together street artists from around the world to take over the building at the titular address in Soho. The contributors, including Shepard Fairey, Swoon, JR, Faile, and more, are a laundry list of the '00s era heavyweights--many of whom have gone on to have successful careers inside the traditional art world. ..."
PAPER
ELBOW-TOE on Eleven Spring, Wooster Collective, Street Art and more
ObeyGiant
amazon

Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion (1959)

"Having come to the U.S. from his native Nigeria to study medicine, percussionist Babatunde Olatunji eventually became one of the first African music stars in the States. He also soon counted jazz heavyweights like John Coltrane ('Tunji') and Dizzy Gillespie among his admirers (Gillespie had, a decade earlier, also courted many Cuban music stars via his trailblazing Latin jazz recordings). And, in spite of it being viewed by some as a symbol of African chic, Drums of Passion is still a substantial record thanks to Olatunji's complex and raw drumming. ... [The 2002 CD reissue on Columbia/Legacy adds the track 'Menu Di Ye Jewe (Who Is This?)', which was recorded at one of the 1959 sessions for the album, but was previously unissued in the US.]"
allmusic
Pitchfork
W - Drums of Passion
Discogs
iTunes
YouTube: Drums of Passion 39:19

Libra - Don DeLillo (1988)

Wikipedia - "Libra (1988) is a novel written by Don DeLillo. It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events that shaped the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The book takes the reader from Oswald's early days as a child, to his adolescent stint in the US Marine Corps, through his brief defection to the USSR and subsequent marriage to a Russian girl, and finally his return to the US and his role in the assassination of Kennedy. In DeLillo's version of events, the assassination attempt on Kennedy is in fact intended to fail; the plot is instigated by disgruntled former CIA operatives who see it as the only way to guide the government to war on Cuba. ..."
Wikipedia
Q&A: Don DeLillo - Exploring 'Libra' and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
NY Times: DALLAS, ECHOING DOWN THE DECADES
In Retrospect: Troy Jollimore on Don DeLillo’s “Libra”
Perival

2010 October: Pafko at the Wall, 2012 May: Underworld , 2012 July: The Body Artist, 2013 September: White Noise, 2013 November: The Art of Fiction No. 135, 2014 July: Don DeLillo: The Word, The Image, and The Gun, 2014 October: Falling Man (2007).

Fanzines from the 1970s

"I started buying music fanzines in the late 1970s, and although most of them subsequently got lost or thrown away over the years I still have a few good ones from the punk and immediate post-punk era. Fanzines about various subjects had existed before, but the new wave of zines that emerged alongside the punk rock explosion (and in parallel with independent record labels, shops and distribution channels), became a vibrant DIY subculture channelling punk’s 'anybody can do this' attitude into print. These fanzines captured the energy and excitement of punk rock as it was actually happening. ..."
stillunusual...
W - Punk zine

2014 December: Paper Trail, 2016 May: Punk 1976-78

New Breed Workin' ~ Blues With A Rhythm

"The subtitle of Ace's fifth installment of New Breed R&B underscores the aesthetic behind their New Breed series: these collections focus on blues and hard R&B acts who cut singles infused by a distinctly grooving soul sensibility. Most of the 24 tracks featured on Blues with a Rhythm date from the '60s but there are a couple of cuts from the '50s -- Richard Berry's 'Big John' is from 1955, the same year as Little Walter's 'My Babe,' which also reworked 'This Train (Is Bound for Glory)' -- and everything is united by a deep, slinky groove. Even when the singers growl or the guitars crank out a 12-bar shuffle, this music feels like it was designed for dancefloors. The fact that some of this sensibility is no doubt accidental actually makes this more fun: it feels like this whole scene was tapped into a vibe so powerful that it could not be denied, it could only be expressed."
allmusic
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: New Breed Workin' ~ Blues With A Rhythm

Chomsky: Humanity Faces Real and Imminent Threats to Our Survival

"On Monday night, Democracy Now! celebrated its 20th anniversary at the historic Riverside Church in New York City. Among those who addressed more than 2,000 attendants was world-renowned linguistic Noam Chomsky, who spoke about the two most dangerous threats the human species faces today: the possibility of nuclear war and the accelerating destruction of human-fueled climate change. ..."
alternet (Video)
alternet: Noam Chomsky Unveils America's Deplorable History of Playing Footsie With Fascism (Video)

2011 January: Peak Oil and a Changing Climate, 2015 May: The Limits of Discourse As Demonstrated by Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky, 2015 October: Electing the President of an Empire, 2015 December: Noam Chomsky on Paris attacks

The Photography of Poet Arthur Rimbaud (1883)

"Arthur Rimbaud, far-seeing prodigy, 'has been memorialized in song and story as few in history,' writes Wyatt Mason in an introduction to the poet’s complete works; 'the thumbnail of his legend has proved irresistible.' The poet, we often hear, ended his brief but brilliant literary career when he ran off to the Horn of Africa and became a gunrunner… or some other sort of adventurous outlaw character many miles removed, it seems, from the intense symbolist hero of Illuminations and A Season in Hell. ..."
Open Culture
Arthur Rimbaud, poet and photographer
gettyimages: Poet Arthur Rimbaud Pictures and Images
NY Times: Where Rimbaud Found Peace in Ethiopia

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 2015 May: Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery - 1875), 2016 March: Rimbaud in New York.

Gillian Welch - Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg (2016)

"'If any of y’all wanna give me shit about my twang, you can just do it,' Gillian Welch once told a chatty San Francisco crowd in 1994. It was two years before Welch would release her debut Revival, but the California-bred daughter of two entertainers was already anticipating the skepticism that would greet her when she rose to prominence in the mid-to-late ’90s singing about destitute coal miners and Depression-era whiskey runners with an unsettling familiarity for someone born in New York City, raised in Los Angeles, and who found their lifetime musical partner at a conservatory in Boston. In 1994, Welch’s repertoire consisted largely of a number of songs that would never find their way onto a record, a handful of traditional tunes, and some John Prine covers. ..."
Pitchfork
NPR (Spotify)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Dry Town (Demo)

2009 February: Gillian Welch, 2011 March: Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings NPRP, 2012 July: Harrow Harvest, 2012 September: By The Mark (2004), 2014 February: BBC FOUR Sessions: Gillian Welch.

Boston busing desegregation 1974-1988

1974 Boston Busing Crisis
Wikipedia - "The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students. The call for desegregation and the first years of its implementation led to a series of racial protests and riots that brought national attention, particularly from 1974 to 1976. In response to the Massachusetts legislature's enactment of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered the state's public schools to desegregate, W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts laid out a plan for compulsory busing of students between predominantly white and black areas of the city. ..."
Wikipedia
The Atlantic: The Lasting Legacy of the Boston Busing Crisis
PBS: The Story of the Movement
'It Was Like A War Zone': Busing In Boston
Boston: The Boston busing crisis: 40 years later (Video)

The Old House at Home by Joseph Mitchell (April 1940)

John Sloan - "McSorley's Back Room", 1912. Etching.
"McSorley’s occupies the ground floor of a red brick tenement at 15 Seventh Street, just off Cooper Square, where the Bowery ends. It was opened in 1854 and is the oldest saloon in the city. In eighty-six years it has had four owners—an Irish immigrant, his son, a retired policeman, and his daughter —and all of them have been opposed to change. It is equipped with electricity, but the bar is stubbornly illuminated with a pair of gas lamps, which flicker fitfully and throw shadows on the low, cobwebby ceiling each time someone opens the street door. There is no cash register. Coins are dropped in soup bowls—one for nickels, one for dimes, one for quarters, and one for halves—and bills are kept in a rosewood cashbox...."
New Yorker
McSorley's Old Ale House: "Be Good Or Be Gone"

2009 August: John Sloan, 2011 November: American realism, 2012 December: Old New York, 2015 May: Spectator of Life, 2015 October: Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, 1897-1917, 2015 October: Tenderloin, 2015 October: McSorley's Bar - John Sloan (1912), 2015 December: "Red Kimono on the Roof," 1912, 2016 January: “The Hell Hole,” 1917, 2016 February: Gloucester Days, 2016 March: “Hanging Clothes,” 1920, 2016 May: "Roof, Summer Night," 1906, 2016 October: "Spring Rain," 1912, 2016 October: "The Lafayette" (1927)

Toyin Ojih Odutola

Michaelmas Term, 2016. Charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper.
"Toyin Ojih Odutola is a contemporary artist who focuses on identity and the sociopolitical concept of skin color through her pen and ink drawings. Her work explores her personal journey of having been born in Nigeria then moving and assimilating into American culture in conservative Alabama. 'I’m doing black on black on black, trying to make it as layered as possible in the deepness of the blackness to bring it out. I noticed the pen became this incredible tool. The black ballpoint [pen] ink on blackboard would become copper tone and I was like 'wow, this isn’t even black at all!' The black board was like this balancing platform for the ink to become something else.' ..."
Jack Shainman Gallery (Video)
Artst
Interview: Toyin Odutola and the Public Struggle
Toyin Ojih Odutola
W - Toyin Ojih Odutola
YouTube: Toyin Ojih Odutola

Antebellum - Gilles Mora

"Photographer, editor, artistic director and museum director Gilles Mora has just released a new monograph, Antebellum, published by Texas University Press that consists of impressionistic, rarely seen images of a disappearing Deep South. His grainy images capture ordinary southern life in all it’s glorious beauty. Gilles has had a lifelong connection to American photography through monographs he has written on iconic American photographers, but for Antebellum, he is behind the camera. For twenty years, Gilles photographed the South, discovering the nuances of a place that holds secrets and stories. ..."
lenscratch
amazon

Delancey Street

Wikipedia - "Delancey Street is one of the main thoroughfares of New York City's Lower East Side in Manhattan, running from the street's western terminus at the Bowery to its eastern end at FDR Drive, connecting to the Williamsburg Bridge and Brooklyn at Clinton Street. It is an eight-lane, median-divided street west of Clinton Street, and a service road for the Williamsburg Bridge east of Clinton Street. West of Bowery, Delancey Street becomes Kenmare Street, which continues as a four-lane, undivided street to Lafayette Street. Delancey Street is named after James De Lancey, Sr., whose farm was located in what is now the Lower East Side. Businesses range from delis to check-cashing stores to bars.
Wikipedia
New York Songlines: Delancey Street
RK Chin: Delancey
YouTube: MuniNYC - Bowery Street & Delancey Street, Video Tour of the Lower East Side of Manhattan

John Coltrane - Dakar (1957)

"Often cited as saxophonist John Coltrane's first album as leader, Dakar—recorded on April 20, 1957—is a usurper. Originally credited to the Prestige All Stars (and released as part of a short-lived experiment with 16-rpm discs), it was only credited to Coltrane on its re-release in 1963, when the saxophonist's star was firmly in the ascendant. The Dakar session was one of several Coltrane appeared on as a sideman that week—on the 16th with pianist Thelonious Monk, on the 18th with the Prestige All Stars, and on the 19th with pianist Mal Waldron. He gets no more solo time than either of the other saxophonists, baritone players Cecil Payne and Pepper Adams. Another day, another dollar. ..."
All About Jazz
W - Dakar
allmusic (Video)
YouTube: Dakar FULL ALBUM

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958).

Police Violence Against Native Americans Goes Far Beyond Standing Rock

"On Nov. 28, a legal collective representing Native Americans opposing the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline filed a lawsuit against two North Dakota counties and their sheriffs, and the city of Mandan, North Dakota, and its police chief. Eight days before, the suit alleges, law enforcement officers from those places had used excessive force against a group of peaceful protesters, injuring more than 200. The allegations in the case are striking — the lawsuit describes officers using water cannons on protesters despite freezing temperatures, shooting people in the head with non-lethal plastic rounds, and shooting a woman in the genitals with a flash-bang grenade. ..."
FiveThirtyEight
NY Times: The Conflicts Along 1,172 Miles of the Dakota Access Pipeline
NY Times: Federal Officials to Explore Different Route for Dakota Pipeline
***Jacobin: Guns, Grenades, and Facebook

2011 July: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown, 2012 September: The Ghost Dance, 2016 September: A History and Future of Resistance, 2016 November: Dakota Access Pipeline protests

Robert Quine & Fred Maher - Basic (1984)

"Ah yes, the intangible, enduring allure of the 2nd hand record shop! Before I found a copy of Basic in the stuffed racks of this musty emporium last week I'd not previously heard of it. Now, of course, I'm semi-outraged as to why it's been unobtainable for so long - the cursory CD reissue appears to be rarer than the original LP, for God's sake! An instrumental collaboration between Robert Quine & Fred Maher (Material, Scritti Politti), Basic was recorded at Quine's home studio in N.Y.C. in early '84, while both of them were still fresh from their brief tenure as fellow Voidoids (on 1982's Destiny Street) & in Lou Reed's last great live band (during his Blue Mask / Legendary Hearts period, alongside bassist Fernando Saunders). For whatever reason, Quine never got 'round to releasing a bona fide solo album, but Basic comes pretty close - Maher's unobtrusive bass & electronic percussion providing a stripped back, metronomic anchor for Quine's thoughtful, serpentine Fender wrangling. ..."
I Love Total Destruction
W - Basic
YouTube: '65, Stray, Fala, Bluffer, Village, Summer Storm, Despair, Bluffer, Bandage Bait, Pickup, Dark Place

2012 October: Ikue Mori, 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984, 2015 October: The Blue Mask (1982), 2016 March: New Sensations - Lou Reed (1984), 2016 March:Film Works 1986-1990 - John Zorn, 2016 October: Ikue Mori (with Robert Quine and Marc Ribot) - Painted Desert (1997)

The Democratic Party Has Failed—We Need a Radical Vision to Defeat Trumpism

"'Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?' Hillary Clinton asked a group of labor organizers in late September, when she and Trump were neck and neck in national polls. It seemed like a fair question. Throughout his entire campaign, Donald Trump utterly humiliated and disqualified himself in new ways almost every day. Tapes of him bragging about sexual assault dominated the final weeks of the campaign. ... For 40 years their wages have been stagnant even as productivity grows. For some groups, even life expectancy is now declining. Many who are living through this have been yearning for some sort of political revolution for years. ... A vote for Trump symbolized burning it all down. ..."
In These Times
New Yorker: Seven Electors Against Trump
In These Times - A Message to Trump: We’re Not Going Back in the Shadows
Jacobin: The Workers Versus Trump

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 November: Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests, 2016 November: Rust Belt, 2016 November: Autocracy: Rules for Survival, 2016 November: Rally in Brooklyn Park Condemns Swastikas and ‘Go Trump’ Graffiti

Sparrows - Black Sparrow Press

"These three attractive essays by Robert Creeley presented as Sparrows 6 (March, 1973), 14 (November 1973), and 40 (January 1976) by John Martin's Black Sparrow Press (1966-2002) were among the stacks at Powell's. 'SPARROW will appear monthly. It will print poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, commentaries, & reviews. Each issue will present the work of a single author. The poet is prophet.' Or profit? Among the small presses of that era, Martin had one of the most successful business models. ..."
MIMEOMIMEO
[PDF] Creeley – Inside Out
Oak Knoll

Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016

"Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016 focuses on the ways in which artists have dismantled and reassembled the conventions of cinema—screen, projection, darkness—to create new experiences of the moving image. The exhibition will fill the Museum’s 18,000-square-foot fifth-floor Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, and will include a film series in the third-floor Susan and John Hess Family Theater. The exhibition’s title refers to the science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft’s alternate fictional dimension, whose terrain of cities, forests, mountains, and an underworld can be visited only through dreams. Similarly, the spaces in Dreamlands will connect different historical moments of cinematic experimentation, creating a story that unfolds across a series of immersive spaces. ..."
Whitney (Video)
Whitney: Dreamlands - Screenings and programs (Video)
[PDF] Whitney
NY Times: A Retort to Shrinking Screens, in an Ultra-Immersive Show at the Whitney
NY Times: Diving Into Movie Palaces of the Mind at the Whitney
amazon

Striking Portraits of Lonely Cars in 1970s New York

White Tower car, Buick LeSabre, Meatpacking District, 1976.
"On a snowy night in 1976, a Buick LeSabre was parked outside a White Tower hamburger restaurant in New York’s Meatpacking District. For photographer Langdon Clay, armed with a Leica and some Kodachrome film, it was an arresting moment. In Clay’s photograph of the scene, the empty car looks almost forlorn under the neon strip lighting. Around it, the street is empty. The only signs of life are the blurred figures inside the diner, presumably the car’s owners ordering food. This photograph is just one of many Clay shot between 1974 and 1976. ..."
Atlas Obscura
New Yorker - When Cars Ruled the Night: New York City, 1974-1976
Cars – New York City, 1974–1976 - Langdon Clay
amazon

Lori McKenna - Bittertown (2004)

"Steeped in a kettle of Americana or alt country, Lori McKenna should rank up there with quality performers such as Lucinda Williams, Julie Miller, Kathleen Edwards, and Mary Alice Wood. 'Bible Song,' which sports a guest appearance by Buddy Miller, gives a perfect example of the singer knowing what she wants and getting it right: hints of twang, mandolin touches, and a melody that is just as uplifting as it is dreary and pragmatic. ... Wrapping up another quality and stellar piece of work, the boogie ramble on 'One Kiss Goodnight' recalls Natalie Merchant if she grew up in the heart of the South. The album is rarely bitter but incredibly sweet."
allmusic
Lori McKenna: Bittertown by George Graham
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Monday Afternoon, Stealing Kisses, Mr. Sunshine, One Man, Bible Song, One Kiss Goodnight