Moonlight - Barry Jenkins (2016)

Wikipedia - "Moonlight is a 2016 American, coming-of-age, drama film written and directed by Barry Jenkins based on Tarell Alvin McCraney's unpublished semi-autobiographical play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. It stars Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Naomie Harris, and Mahershala Ali. The film presents three stages in the life of the main character. It explores the difficulties he faces with his own sexuality and identity, including the physical and emotional abuse he receives as a result of it. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times - ‘Moonlight’: Is This the Year’s Best Movie? (Video)
New Yorker: “Moonlight” Undoes Our Expectations
Vogue: Moonlight’s Cinematographer on Filming the Most Exquisite Movie of the Year
The Atlantic: Moonlight Is a Film of Uncommon Grace
YouTube: Moonlight

Border Crossings: Issue 139 – Painting

Letterpress Box #4, 2015
"The Beauty of Being Boxed In. The work of Winnipeg artist Brian Hunter traces a process of ongoing and inventive transformation with the object he is painting, transforming into different subjects. A letterpress box that was used as a display case for trinkets his wife’s grandmother had collected has been changed into a body of paintings that touches on everything from architecture to an engagement with the history of modernist painting. All his paintings in this series are oil on wood; the largest is 36 x 48 inches, the smallest 10 x 8 inches. ..."
Border Crossings
Border Crossings: August 2016 – Volume 35, Number 3

Marvin Gaye - I Want You (1976)

"Marvin Gaye’s I Want You was originally released 40 years ago this month, and the timing feels somewhat fitting given today’s essential dialogue about the existential value of black life. You can’t make a convincing argument that black lives matter if you’re not also willing to acknowledge that black sexuality, romance, and love—aspects that have been historically threatened, circumscribed, and limited by the horrors of slavery and legally enforced systems of segregation and brutality—matter too. So as we join in the #blacklivesmatter fight, we would do well to recall that #blackerotics have always been an indispensable tool of community recalcitrance and survival. ..."
Pitchfork - I Want You Still: Celebrating 40 Years of Marvin Gaye’s Sensual Classic (Video)
W - I Want You
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: "I want You" Rare footage of GREATNESS (Live)
YouTube: I Want You 38:09

2016 July: "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" (1971)

Trisha Brown, Choreographer and Pillar of American Postmodern Dance, Dies at 80

Trisha Brown rehearsing members of her troupe in 1991 in her work “Foray Foret.”
"Trisha Brown, the choreographer and exemplar of the founding generation of American postmodern dance, died on Saturday in San Antonio. She was 80. Barbara Dufty, the executive director of Ms. Brown’s dance company, confirmed the death. Ms. Brown had been treated for vascular dementia since 2011. Few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential. Her choreography, showcased primarily in New York, helped shape generations of modern dance creators into the 21st century. [ Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson and other artists speak on working with Ms. Brown. ] ..."
NY Times
NY Times: 5 Artists on Working With Trisha Brown (Video)

2008 May: Trisha Brown, 2010 December: "A Walk Across the Rooftops", 2011 January: Trisha Brown - Floor of the Forest (1970), 2011 March: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s, 2012 February: Dance/Draw, 2016 January: Dance, Valiant & Molecular, 2016 February: Set and Reset (1983), Newark (1987), Present Tense (2003).

Van Dyke Parks - Jump! (1984)

Wikipedia - "Jump! is a studio album by Van Dyke Parks. It was released in 1984 on Warner Bros.. The album (and its accompanying children's book) is a retelling of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tales. Parks mixes numerous musical styles. On Jump! these include bluegrass, Tin Pan Alley, 1930s jazz, and Broadway musical. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Van Dyke Parks: 'I was victimised by Brian Wilson's buffoonery'

Wikipedia - "Br'er Rabbit /ˈbrɛər/ (Brother Rabbit), also spelled Bre'r Rabbit or Brer Rabbit or Bruh Rabbit, is a central figure as Uncle Remus tells stories of the Southern United States. Br'er Rabbit is a trickster who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, provoking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit. ... The Br'er Rabbit stories can be traced back to trickster figures in Africa, particularly the hare that figures prominently in the storytelling traditions in West, Central, and Southern Africa. These tales continue to be part of the traditional folklore of numerous peoples throughout those regions. In the Akan traditions of West Africa, the trickster is usually the spider Anansi, though the plots in his tales are often identical with those of stories of Br'er Rabbit. ..."
W - Br'er Rabbit
Paste Magazine
Genius
YouTube: Jump! 36:08

2012 July: Van Dyke Parks, 2015 December: Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (1998), 2016 November: Song Cycle (1967)

Human Interest: Scott Rothkopf on Jasper Johns

"I’m Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s chief curator, and we’re in the exhibition Human Interest which I co-curated, looking at Jasper Johns’s Racing Thoughts. The term racing thoughts can be related to a sense of anxiety. I think it also can be related to creativity—to all the different thoughts that are appearing before us in this picture, and the way that Johns kind of gathers them together, but without one conclusion. When I look at this painting, I am in a certain headspace that feels kind of dreamy, almost. It keeps giving me more every time I look at it, and I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever fully solved. It is a portrait containing many portraits within it. ..."
Whitney (Video)

2012 November: Dancing around the Bride, 2014 November: Sturtevant: Double Trouble, 2015 January: Dial-A-Poem Poets - Big Ego (1978), 2016 November: John Cage: Lecture on the Weather (1975)

The Vibrators - Pure Mania (1977)

"Were the Vibrators real punks? Maybe not, but then again, were the Stranglers? Or Eddie and the Hot Rods? Even more to the point, was Steve Jones? Plenty of rock careerists jumped onto the punk/new wave bandwagon in the wake of the Sex Pistols' success (and more than a few folks, like Jones, stumbled into the new movement by accident), but unlike most of them, the Vibrators took to the fast/loud/stripped down thing like ducks to water, and both Knox (aka Ian Carnarchan) and Pat Collier had a genius for writing short, punchy songs with sneering melody lines and gutsy guitar breaks. If the Vibrators were into punk as a musical rather than a sociopolitical movement, it's obvious that they liked the music very much, and on that level their debut album stands the test of time quite well. ... Maybe Pure Mania isn't purist's punk, but it's pure rock & roll, and there's nothing wrong with that."
allmusic
W - Pure Mania
iTunes
YouTube: Pure Mania

Spread Art NYC Presents 20 Big Years — an Artistic Tribute to Biggie Smalls — at the Bishop Gallery through Tomorrow

Danielle Mastrion, Crook from the Brook
"Continuing through tomorrow, Sunday, at the Bishop Gallery is 20 Big Years, an artistic tribute to the late Biggie Smalls. Presented by Spread Art NYC, it features works in a range of styles by over a dozen of our favorite local artists. Pictured above is a portrait of Biggie painted by Ben Angotti. Here are several more images from the exhibit. ... A particular highlight of the exhibit is the collaborative piece by Rocko and Zimer, who had painted the now-iconic Biggie tribute mural on Bedford and Quincy. You can check that one out out — along with over 20 other tribute pieces — through tomorrow at the Bishop Gallery, 916 Bedford Avenue in Bed-Stuy."
Street Art NYC
The Notorious B.I.G.’s Legacy to Be Celebrated With New York Art Show (Video)

2016 January: Brooklyn, the Remix: A Hip-Hop Tour (2013)

Paris Commune 1871

French troops assaulting a barricade during the Paris Commune.
Wikipedia - "The Paris Commune (French: La Commune de Paris, IPA: [la kɔmyn də paʁi]) was a radical socialist and revolutionary government that ruled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871. Following the defeat of Emperor Napoleon III in September 1870, the French Second Empire swiftly collapsed. In its stead rose a Third Republic at war with Prussia, which laid siege to Paris for four months. A hotbed of working-class radicalism, France's capital was primarily defended during this time by the often politicized and radical troops of the National Guard rather than regular Army troops. In February 1871 Adolphe Thiers, the new chief executive of the French national government, signed an armistice with Prussia that disarmed the Army but not the National Guard. ..."
Wikipedia
ROAR - On this day in 1871: Paris Commune established
New Yorker: The Fires of Paris
THE WAR OF THE PARIS COMMUNE, 1871
W - Communards' Wall
Pere-Lachaise: The Communards Wall and More at the World’s Most Famous Cemetery
Guardian - La Commune: a lesson in audacity
YouTube: The Paris Commune

"California Sun" - The Rivieras (1963)

Wikipedia - "'California Sun' is a song written and originally recorded by Henry Glover and Morris Levy and performed by Joe Jones. It was then released by Roulette Records in the winter of 1961. The most successful version of the song was released by the Rivieras in 1964 and became the group's biggest hit in their short career. This song was the result of their first recording session at Chicago's Columbia Recording Studios in 1963 (purchased by manager Bill Dobslaw). The lineup for this session included Marty Fortson on vocals and rhythm guitar, Joe Pennell on lead guitar, Doug Gean on bass, Otto Nuss on organ, and Paul Dennert on drums. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Rivieras
YouTube: California Sun

Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau (1849)

Wikipedia - "Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). ... The word civil has several definitions. The one that is intended in this case is 'relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state', and so civil disobedience means 'disobedience to the state'. ... This misinterpretation is one reason the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha. ..."
Wikipedia
Open Culture: Henry David Thoreau on When Civil Disobedience and Resistance Are Justified (1849)
Civil Disobedience

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden, 2015 March: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

Thrilling Short Film Captures Madness of NYC Subway System in Quick, Two-Second Clips

"The New York City subway system comprises 24 separate lines, 469 different stations, and more than 31,000 individual turnstiles. Laid out end to end, its 840 miles of track could stretch from the five boroughs to Chicago, and its 6,300-plus trains currently serve some 5.6 million riders each day. And despite the intricacies involved in maintaining an operation of this magnitude, it turns out one of the best ways to conceptualize the organized chaos that is the New York City subway system is to boil the insanity down into a two-minute experimental film. ..."
VOICE (Video)
MTA

Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974)

"Kicking off with one of prime funk's purest distillations -- the outrageously great title track, with a perfect party chorus line and uncredited horns (presumably the Horny Horns were involved somehow) adding to the monster beat and bass -- Up for the Down Stroke finds Parliament in rude good health. As was more or less the case through the '70s, Parliament took a slightly more listener-friendly turn here than they did as Funkadelic, but often it's a difference by degrees. Just listening to some of Bernie Worrell's insane keyboard parts or Bootsy Collins' bass work here is enough to wake the dead. ..."
allmusic
W - Up for the Down Stroke
Pitchfork
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: UP FOR THE DOWN STROKE-1974 TV Commercial-1st Casablanca
YouTube: Up For The Down Stroke (Full Album)

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983).

Embrace The Contradictions: The Strange World Of... The KLF

"When a young Scotsman named Bill Drummond arrived in Liverpool in the early seventies to complete his art school education, the city was overflowing with eccentric, creative characters, visionaries and dreamers. Perhaps the most influential of these was the beat poet and former merchant seaman Peter O'Halligan, who Drummond encountered in an old warehouse on Mathew Street- formerly home to the legendary Cavern Club, but by 1974 all but derelict. O'Halligan was very interested in dreams, especially one experienced in 1927 by the pioneering Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. As recorded on page 223 of Jung's book Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung found himself in a 'dark, sooty city' he identified as Liverpool (a place he never actually visited) and concluded that it was quite literally 'the pool of life'. Jung considered this the most significant dream he ever had. ..."
The Quietus (Video)

2009 May: The KLF, 2011 June: Justified & Ancient, 2013 May: "3 a.m. Eternal", 2013 November: "America: What Time Is Love?" / "What Time Is Love?"

 Algeria’s New Imprint

"A few months ago, I was deep in conversation with Hichem Lamraoui, one of the principal buyers for the Librairie du Tiers Monde in downtown Algiers, when an elegantly dressed young woman rushed into the store and asked the cashier if she could see the books from Éditions Barzakh. She wasn’t talking about a particular author or series—she wanted to see the entire run of Barzakh’s titles. It was as if someone at McNally Jackson in Manhattan or Moe’s in Berkeley had asked whether there was a section devoted to New Directions. But in this bookstore, the best in Algiers, the Barzakhs sit together on a bookshelf directly across from the entrance. They are small, narrow, and taller than average, so they fit easily in the hand. ..."
The Nation
W - Barzakh Editions

2011 February: Raï, 2011 November: The Battle of Algiers (1957), 2012 February: An Intro To Rebel Hip-Hop Of The Arab Revolutions, 2013 March: Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of North African Literature

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" - Bob Dylan (1965)

Wikipedia - "'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan and featured on his Bringing It All Back Home album, released on March 22, 1965 by Columbia Records (see 1965 in music). The song was recorded on January 15, 1965 with Dylan's acoustic guitar and harmonica and William E. Lee's bass guitar the only instrumentation. The lyrics were heavily influenced by Symbolist poetry and bid farewell to the titular 'Baby Blue.' There has been much speculation about the real life identity of 'Baby Blue', with suspects including Joan Baez, David Blue, Paul Clayton, Dylan's folk music audience, and even Dylan himself. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Genius (Video)
Rolling Stone (Video)
YouTube: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"

2014 August: "Subterranean Homesick Blues" - Bob Dylan (1965), The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Cutting Edge 1965–1966, 2016 September: "Maggie's Farm"/"On the Road Again" (1965)

Robert Lepage - 887. Ex Machina

Wikipedia - "Robert Lepage, CC OQ (born December 12, 1957) is a French Canadian playwright, actor, film director, and stage director, one of Canada's most honoured theatre artists. ... In 1994, Lepage founded Ex Machina, a multidisciplinary production company, for which he is artistic director. Lepage and Ex Machina have toured numerous productions internationally to critical and popular acclaim, most notably The Seven Streams of the River Ota (1994) and Elsinore (1995). Lepage was invited in 1994 to direct August Strindberg's A Dream Play at Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, Sweden. ..."
Wikipedia
Ex Machina (Video)
BAM (Video)
Epidemic: Performances
YouTube: EX MACHINA/ROBERT LEPAGE - 887 - REf15, Playwright and Director Robert Lepage's Unique Creative Style

2010 October: Clanking, Ponderous Rheingold: The Met's New Valhalla Machine (Robert Lepage)

Roma - Federico Fellini (1972)

Wikipedia - "Roma, also known as Fellini's Roma, is a 1972 semi-autobiographical, poetic comedy-drama film depicting director Federico Fellini's move from his native Rimini to Rome as a youth. Roma is formed of a series of loosely connected episodes. The plot is minimal, and the only 'character' to develop significantly is Rome herself. ... Federico Fellini recounts his youth in Rome, an extremely crude, corrupt, cruel city, without shame or morals. A memorable scene is one where he, along with his friends in their young teens, go to a third-class theater to see some simple shows. People do not applaud; instead whistles, burps, fart sounds and angry tirades are hurled against the poor actors, who eventually have had enough of their audiences' vulgar rudeness, leading them to turn against the public. ..."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Criterion Collection (Video)
Criterion Collection - Roma: Rome, Fellini’s City
Blu-ray Review: Criterion Goes Far With FEDERICO FELLINI'S ROMA
YouTube: Roma

13 stories of Art Nouveau beauty in Manhattan

"The magnificent boulevards of Prague and Vienna are resplendent with Art Nouveau building facades, lobbies, and public transit entrances. But the sinuous lines and naturalistic curves characteristic of this artistic style never caught on in turn-of-the-century New York, where architects seemed to prefer the stately Beaux Arts or more romantic Gothic Revival fashion. It’s this rarity of Art Nouveau in Gotham that makes the 13-story edifice at 20 Vesey Street so spectacular. Completed in 1907, this is the former headquarters for the New York Evening Post—the precursor to today’s New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Moroccan Tape Stash Of The Air - Live Today on Bodega Pop Live

"Moroccan Tape Stash comes alive this week, as I join Gary Sullivan, curator of the great Bodega Pop blog, on WFMU's Give The Drummer Radio for a special episode of his Bodega Pop Live show. You can find us live on the interweb today - Wednesday September 21, 4-7PM PDT, or in the archives thereafter. Follow this link, and join us for some Gab and Groove, Gnawa and Ghiwane, Chaâbi and Chikhat, and much more!"
Moroccan Tape Stash (Video)

"Hey Joe"

Wikipedia - "'Hey Joe' is an American popular song from the 1960s that has become a rock standard and as such has been performed in many musical styles by hundreds of different artists. 'Hey Joe' tells the story of a man who is on the run and planning to head to Mexico after shooting his unfaithful wife. The song was registered for copyright in the U.S. in 1962 by Billy Roberts, however, diverse credits and claims have led to confusion about the song's authorship. The earliest known commercial recording of the song is the late-1965 single by the Los Angeles garage band The Leaves; the band then re-recorded the track and released it in 1966 as a follow-up single which became a hit. The most well-known version is The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1966 recording, their debut single. ..."
Wikipedia
“Hey Joe” didn’t start or end with Jimi Hendrix (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), 2015 November: Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968, 2016 December: Band of Gypsys (1970).

Greystones

The Coast, Greystones, Co. Wicklow, photographed between 1900 and 1939.
"The southernmost of three favorite vacation spots for the Kearney family in 'A Mother,' Greystones is situated about 17 miles (27 km) south of Dublin’s city center on the eastern coast of Ireland. It is a small fishing village that became a popular summer holiday retreat when the railroad connected the town to Dublin in 1855. Today it would take about an hour to travel to Greystones from Dublin by train. Accounting for number of stops and speed differences, we might estimate a similar if not longer travel time for the Kearneys at the turn of the the twentieth century. The locale is named for the grey stones that form a wall along the center of the coast. On the north end of the wall lies the harbour and on the south the train station and beach. The reference appears in only one Dubliners story and as a part of a typical Joycean trinity. ..."
Mapping Dubliners Project

2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2010 March: Ulysses Seen, 2013 February: ULYSSES “SEEN” is moving to Dublin!, 2013: Dubliners, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s, 2016 January: Port and Docks, 2016 February: Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists, 2016 April: Nassau Street, 2016 May: Stephen’s Green, 2016 October: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), 2016 November: Skerries, 2017 January: Walking Ulysses | Joyce's Dublin Today.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker - Counter Phrases (2000)

"Counterphrases is an evening of cinema with live music. Ten shorts by Thierry De Mey set to music by ten composers with ten danced phrases choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and performed by Rosas. These ten films encapsulate the best of De Keersmaeker and De Mey’s collaboration: twenty years of assiduously practicing variation, of perpetually inventing algorithms, filters, and formulae that twist movement and space according to the capricious mathematics of pleasure. All of this is filmed – O Belgitude! – in exquisite flower-filled gardens and under impressionistic drizzling rain. The ten composers of Counterphrases will each work on one of the variations separately, after the films have been edited, and will be completely unaware of what the others are doing. ..."
Ictus
UbuWeb: Counter Phrases. Directed by Thierry de Mey. Choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker.

2009 July: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, 2012 December: Rosas Danst Rosas (1983), 2013 September: Re : Rosas!, 2014 March: Maison Martin Margiela with H&M (2012), 2016 October: Vortex Temporum.

N.C.A.A. Bracket Predictions: Who the Tournament Experts Pick

Wake Forest guard Brandon Childress driving
"Everyone has an opinion on the N.C.A.A. tournament. But instead of listening to Uncle Louie or Aunt Ruth to fill out your bracket, maybe it’s a better bet to appeal to authority. Here’s a roundup of the early selections from people in a position to know. Let’s start with the home team. Marc Tracy and Zach Schonbrun of The New York Times are offering up some upsets. They include No. 12 Princeton over Notre Dame, No. 12 Middle Tennessee State over Minnesota, No. 12 U.N.C.-Wilmington over Virginia, No. 10 Marquette over South Carolina and, most daringly, No. 14 Florida Gulf Coast over Florida and No. 14 Iona over Oregon. ..."
NY Times
Sporting News - NCAA Tournament bracket 2017: Upset predictions, Final Four pick in West Region (Video)
FiveThirtyEight: 2017 March Madness Predictions
Washington Post: March Madness: The No. 5 seeds most likely to be upset by No. 12s
NY Times: The Best and Worst of the N.C.A.A. Tournament
ESPN: A full guide to every team in the 2017 NCAA tournament (Video)
CBS Sports - 2017 March Madness bracket predictions: NCAA Tournament picks, winners, upsets (Video)
NY Times: N.C.A.A. Bracket: Printable March Madness Schedule

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: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 October: Loose Balls - Terry Pluto (2007), 2015 November: The Sounds of Memphis, 2015 December: Welcome to Smarter Basketball, 2015 December: New York, New York: Julius Erving, the Nets-Knicks Feud, and America’s Bicentennial, 2016 January: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (1994), 2016 January: A Long Hardwood Journey, 2016 March: American Hustle - Alexandra Starr

Robert Stone - Damascus Gate (1998)

"Robert Stone doesn't need the approaching millennium to push him toward fantasies of Armageddon. Since starting out as a novelist in the 1960's he has been loaded for Leviathan, writing with Melvillean chutzpah, his harpoon aimed at the heart of apocalyptic America. But Stone's latest novel is set in Jerusalem in the early 1990's, making manifest the metaphor lurking behind much of his work and raising the stakes of Damascus Gate, which has an emblematic urgency unusual even for a writer of Stone's ambition. Stone's new novel takes its name from one of the gates of the Old City of Jerusalem. Though most of the book's characters live in the city's newer neighborhoods, it is the Old City -- with its ancient, uneasy divisions of Muslim, Christian and Jew, and its labyrinthine passageways snaking toward the Temple Mount -- that ignites their imaginations and desires. ..."
NY Times
New Republic: Holy Plots
Al Jadid: Political Novel Set in Jerusalem
amazon

2013 September: Outerbridge Reach (1993), 2015 January: Robert Stone (August 21, 1937 – January 10, 2015)

Ray Agee

"Known primarily for his tough 1963 remake of the blues standard 'Tin Pan Alley' (featuring the moaning lead guitar of Johnny Heartsman) for the tiny Sahara logo, vocalist Ray Agee recorded for a myriad of labels both large and small during the 1950s and '60s without much in the way of national recognition outside his Los Angeles home base. That's a pity -- he was a fine, versatile blues singer whose work deserves a wider audience (not to mention CD reissue). The Alabama native was stricken with polio at age four, leaving Agee with a permanent handicap. After moving to L.A. with his family, he apprenticed with his brothers in a gospel quartet before striking out in the R&B field with a 1952 single for Eddie Mesner's Aladdin Records (backed by saxist Maxwell Davis' band). From there, his discography assumes daunting proportions; he appeared on far too many logos to list (Elko, Spark, Ebb, and Cash among them)."
allmusic
W - Ray Agee
Discogs
YouTube: Top Tracks - Ray Agee, 12 videos
YouTube: Tin Pan Alley, I’m Losing Again, Mr. Clean, Real Real Love, It’s Hard To Explain

Ginane Makki Bacho

"Lebanese artist Ginane Makki Bacho uses a series of sculptures inspired by the brutality of ISIS to reflect on humanity’s innate thirst for violence, questioning what it truly means to be civilised. Ginane Makki Bacho was welding together scrap metal to make a toy truck for her grandson when the idea for her next series struck her. The truck, complete with caterpillar treads made from an old bike chain, reminded her of video footage she’d seen of ISIS convoys – tanks, trucks and motorbikes bristling with armed men and black flags. Bacho never gave the truck to her grandson. Instead, she created two gunmen to place inside it, and began welding an army. ..."
SELECTIONS: The Barbarity of Civilisation (Video)
beirut
Ginane Makki Bacho & Fathallah Zamroud, Material Remains
YouTube: Civilization, Material Remains

Anatomy of a Fascinating Disaster: Fire Walk With Me

"David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me opened in theaters 20 years ago this week. Booed at Cannes and mostly shivved by critics, Lynch’s exploration of the last days of small-town homecoming queen and future MacGuffin Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) — a prequel to the brilliant-then-canceled ABC TV series he’d created with Mark Frost in 1990 — would eventually make back around $4 million of the $10 million a French film-financing company had given Lynch to make it, although it did big business in Japan. Lynch wouldn’t make another feature for five years. (It was his longest-ever vacation from filmmaking, at the time; it’s now been almost six years since the premiere of Inland Empire, although Lynch has been busy making records with Danger Mouse, selling coffee beans on the Internet, directing Dior commercials, and teaching Russell Brand to catch the big fish.) ..."
Grantland (Video)
Review: TWIN PEAKS: THE MISSING PIECES
W - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Telegraph - Fire Walk With Me: the film that almost killed Twin Peaks (Video)
YouTube: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) Trailer

2008 September: Twin Peaks, 2010 March: Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama, 2011 October: Twin Peaks: The Last Days, 2014 October: Welcome to Twin Peaks, 2015 June: David Lynch: ‘I’ve always loved Laura Palmer’, 2015 July: Twin Peaks Maps, 2016 May: Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played..., September: Twin Peaks Tarot Cards For The Magician Who Longs To See Through The Darkness Of Future Past, 2014 September: David Lynch: The Unified Field, 2014 December: David Lynch’s Bad Thoughts - J. Hoberman, 2015 March: Lumière and Company (1995), 2015 April: David Lynch Creates a Very Surreal Plug for Transcendental Meditation, 2015 December: What Is “Lynchian”?.

Long May You Run - The Stills-Young Band (1976)

"Long May You Run is not a Neil Young solo album. It is credited to 'The Stills-Young Band,' which is to say, Stephen Stills and his band with Young added, and the two divide up the songwriting and lead vocals, five for Young, four for Stills. The pairing, though it proved short-lived and had, in fact, ended before this album was released, must have seemed commercially logical. ... Young's songs were pleasant newly written throwaways with the exception of the title track, a trunk song he had written as a tribute to an old car. Stills' compositions seemed more seriously intended, but still were not substantial. The playing, largely handled by the professional sessionman types in Stills' band, was far smoother than what one was accustomed to in a Young album. The result was a listenable record, but not a compelling one, and thus well below Young's usual standard and Stills' best." (Jake Weisman, Wesley Davis)
allmusic
W - "Long May You Run
Discogs
YouTube: Long May You Run (Full album)

2008 February: Neil Young, 2010 April: Neil Young - 1, 2010 April: Neil Young - 2, 2010 May: Neil Young - 3, 2010 October: Neil Young's Sound, 2012 January: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, 2012 June: Like A Hurricane, 2012 July: Greendale, 2013 April: Thoughts On An Artist / Three Compilations, 2013 August: Heart of Gold, 2014 March: Dead Man (1995), 2014 August: Ragged Glory - Neil Young + Crazy Horse (1990), 2014 November: Broken Arrow (1996), 2015 January: Rust Never Sleeps (1979), 2015 January: Neil Young the Ultimate Guide, 2015 March: Old Black, 2015 September: Zuma (1975), 2016 January: On the Beach (1973), 2016 April: Sleeps with Angels (1994), 2016 November: Eldorado (EP - 1989).

Source: Music of the Avant Garde, 1966-1974

"Wikipedia - "Source: Music of the Avant-Garde – also known and hereafter referred to as Source Magazine – is an independent, not-for-profit musical and artistic magazine published between 1967 and 1973 by teachers and students of University of California, Davis, CA. It emerged from the flourishing Californian musical experimentalism of the late 1950s-early 1960s, either at UC-Davis, UC Berkeley's Department of Music or Mills College. The 11 issues document new music practices of the period like indeterminacy, performance, graphic scores, electronic music and intermedia arts."
Wikipedia
amazon: Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966-1974
UbuWeb - Source: Music of the Avant-Garde (Video)
Bibliolore (YouTube)

"Directed by Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn, both former teachers at UC-Davis, this long-awaited anthology published by U. of Cal. Press, gathers a generous selection from the 11 issues of Source, but is not a complete reprint, as original color pages, photo essays and material printed on transparencies or fur had to be set aside for practical reasons. Printed in black and white, in a format reduced by 1/3rd compared to the original magazine, the book is still a wonderful complement to the Pogus 3xCD set issued by Al Margolis and restoring the six accompanying 10-inch LPs, including such classics as Robert Ashley’s The Wolfman, Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In A Room or Annea Lockwood’s Tiger Balm. See the revamped Wikipedia article for an introduction to Source. ..."
Continuo
Original copies of SOURCE (Video)
Sound Morphology
Google - Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966-1973
U. California Press
Max Neuhaus «Public Supply IV» (Video)
Music Industry Newswire

The Guggenheim’s Greatest Hits Come Roaring Back

"Of New York City’s major museum collections, the Guggenheim’s is the hardest to see, because so little of it is usually on view. Blame Frank Lloyd Wright’s design, that big empty well of light and air with a little art up the sides. Not that I object to the building. I’ve adored it since my first visit as an out-of-town kid in 1960, the year after it opened. There was art on the ramps then, but all I remember is thinking: spaceship. Still do. But now, as if answering a hunger — maybe its own — to see what that spaceship originally held, the museum brings us 'Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim,' a permanent collection show that fills the rotunda. ..."
NY Times

The Jam ‎– David Watts / "A" Bomb In Wardour Street (1978)

"All Mod Cons is the album on which the Jam truly left punk behind, having had only a tangential relationship to the style in the first place. From the title to the target-painting logo on the UK LP's labels to the memorabilia scattered across the inner sleeve, this is the album on which Paul Weller and company declare fealty to the Who and the Creation. All this makes 'A-Bomb In Wardour Street' sound that much more jarring in this context. The last genuinely punky song the Jam ever recorded, 'A-Bomb In Wardour Street' sounds rather like a pale rewrite of the Clash's '1977,' complete with the machine-gun riff and Weller's Joe Strummer-like snarl and London-centric apocalyptic lyrics. ..."
allmusic
Discogs
YouTube: David Watts, A Bomb In Wardour Street

2009 March: The Jam, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980), 2014 December: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982, 2015 March: "Town Called Malice" / "Precious", 2015 July: The Gift (1982), 2015 September: "Strange Town" / "The Butterfly Collector" (1979), 2016 April: "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" (1979), 2017 January: Absolute Beginners EP (1981).

Watch a 5-Part Animated Primer on Afrofuturism, the Black Sci-Fi Phenomenon Inspired by Sun Ra

"We recognize its hallmarks in music especially. It is the province of Sun Ra, George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic, Afrika Bambaataa, and, in recent years, Janelle Monae, Andre 3000, Beyoncé, and many other black artists who have updated for the 21st century the styles and sounds of Afrofuturism. Reaching back into an Afrocentric past—with heavy emphasis on Egyptology—and forward to an interstellar future, the genre of Afrofuturism reclaims the terrain of science fiction for people of African descent, serving as an 'umbrella term,' as one contemporary Afrofuturist community puts it, 'for the Black presence in sci-fi, technology, magic, and fantasy.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)
W - Afrofuturism

2014 July: The Shadows Took Shape

Selected Writings of Gerard De Nerval (1957)

"Richard Sieburth has created a wonderfully comprehensive overview of Nerval's writings in this 400-page anthology. Included are Nerval's central prose narratives, Sylvia and Aurelia. A true devotee of this poet will come back to these two works repeatedly. Readers will never exhaust their poetic riches. Sieburth divides Nerval's poetic prose works into four evocative categories, each one prefaced by his illuminating comments: Shadow Selves, Memories of Valois, Unreal Cities, Dream/Life. This is excellent. He preserves the mystery of Nerval, but gives the reader a map by which to journey through that mysterious terrain. Nerval is ever the Poet, even though he wrote more prose than verse. By poet I mean a visionary who transforms ordinary reality into something marvelous and liberating. ... Richard Sieburth does not translate them in verse form, but his literal prose versions give you the basic meanings to work with. - Daniel B."
amazon
Gerard De Nerval - By Robert S. Robbins

2007 December: Gerard De Nerval, 2010 March: Robin Blaser - Les Chimeres, 2016 June: Voyage to the Orient (1851)

Lindsey Balbierz

"It seems that Fall has arrived, at least that is what the calendar is telling me. It has been unusually warm here in New York, leaving me a bit perplexed on what to wear for the day. October has always been a sort of personal refresh button for me, as my birthday falls in this month. I always feel it’s the right time for me to take stock of what I have accomplished in the past year as well as write some personal and professional goals for the year to come. So along with taking stock of my personal achievements, the season also makes me want to assess what items I would like to add to my wardrobe. ..."
Lindsey Balbierz: October
Lindsey Balbierz