Lula Reed

Wikipedia - "Lula Reed (born Lula Marietta McCleland or McClelland, 21 March 1926 – 21 June 2008) was an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer who recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. She had two R&B hits in 1952 as vocalist with pianist and bandleader Sonny Thompson, and later recorded with guitarist Freddy King. She was occasionally credited as Lulu Reed. ... Credited as vocalist on Thompson's records, she made her recording debut for King Records in Cincinnati in late 1951, on the song 'I'll Drown in My Tears' written by Henry Glover. ..."
Wikipedia
BlackCat Rockabilly
YouTube: SICK AND TIRED, Puddentane, JEALOUS LOVE, Lulu Reed & Freddy King - You Can't Hide, What makes you so cold, Troubles on your mind, Lula Reed & Sonny Thompson - I'll Drown In My Own Tears, You gotta have green, KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, SAY HEY PRETTY BABY, Take your time, Ain't No Cotton Pickin' Chicken

Damn. - Kendrick Lamar (2017)

"At first glance, Damn, the fourth and latest opus from Kendrick Lamar, doesn’t seem as much of a group effort as his previous works. Compared to his last album, 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, it has a fraction of the featured guest artists and a shorter run time. But a look at the 14 one-word-titled songs that comprise Damn (officially styled, along with the song titles, in all caps and with an emphatic period at the end) doesn’t tell the whole story. Beneath the surface, there’s a cavalcade of trusted collaborators (his TDE camp, Thundercat, Kamasi Washington), well-known names (9th Wonder, U2, James Blake, Greg Kurstin, Don Cheadle), and a sprinkling of fresh faces (Zacari, Bekon, Kaytranada, the Internet’s Steve Lacy). Let’s walk through the village it took to make Damn. It’s difficult to put together an accurate timeline without knowing all the facts about when, exactly, Kendrick broke ground on Damn. ..."
Slate: A Comprehensive Guide to How Kendrick Lamar Made Damn (Video)
W - Damn
NY Times: Kendrick Lamar’s Anxiety Leads to Joy and Jabs on New Album (Video)
NY Times: A Deep Dig on Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole’s Hip-Hop’s Values
"Wackiness, lamentation, the gnashing of teeth have become the spiritual condition of America, regardless of whether your candidate won or lost the last presidential election. The man sitting atop the throne seems possessed by dementia or mania or both, and it seems communicable to his most rabid detractors and dissipated supporters. Never has reactionary victory been so bereft of giddy triumphalism or trickle-down whoo-ha. Amiri Baraka once said that rhythm and blues would always be the accurate reflection of the emotional condition of Black America. Hiphop is but the latest streaking comet in the metamorphic and meteoric continuum of rhythm and blues, the latest measuring stick and black mirror for all of America's entropy. The truths spoken by hiphop's prophets are thus democratically applicable to all living under the reign of Mein Trumpf. Rap has long had a messianic streak running through its ministry's veins, at least as far back as the days of Melle Mel. Who can the more-woke-than-napping masses call on but a rap-Jesus like Kendrick Lamar when the truth they see marching upon them is that cast with four horsemen? ..."
VOICE: Kendrick Lamar's "DAMN" Is the Soundtrack to the Resistance
GENIUS (Video)
Sounwave Explains Every Song He Helped Produce On Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN.
amazon
YouTube: HUMBLE., DNA., 10 BEST Kendrick Lamar Songs on DAMN.


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), 2016 March: Who gets to say how black people see themselves? - Marlon James, 2016 March: untitled unmastered (EP - 2016), 2016 July: BET Awards 2016: Watch Beyoncé Perform “Freedom” with Kendrick Lamar.

 The Policy Weapon Climate Activists Need

A coal-fired power plant in Holcomb, Kansas, in 2007.
"We’re running out of time on climate change. As Donald Trump and Big Oil’s other friends in Washington do their utmost to keep global temperatures climbing, our window for preserving civilization is closing fast. Yes, solar, wind, batteries, and energy efficiency are plummeting in cost and grabbing market share the world over, but this clean-energy transformation is not proceeding anywhere near fast enough to prevent catastrophic climate disruption. The science is clear on what’s most needed: We must leave the vast majority of Earth’s remaining reserves of oil, coal, and gas unburned and underground. But those reserves are the basis of the stock prices of some of the richest, most powerful companies in history. And those companies give every indication that they plan to keep burning them, science and humanity be damned. ..."
The Nation

AGNÈS VARDA with Alexandra Juhasz

Agnès Varda, Autoportrait mosaique, 1949/2012
"Sitting together in the often bustling offices of Blum & Poe, New York, Dr. Alexandra Juhasz met with Agnès Varda, grande dame of feminist film, to discuss Varda’s current exhibition of video installation, photography, and sculpture—her first in New York. Highlighting works spanning more than six decades, the show is a rare amalgam of various epochs of the prolific artist’s lifetime, each embodying an ever-evolving and ever-intimate investigation of image. Varda, in her new role as a 'young visual artist,' elaborates on her continued celebration and interrogation of cinema and its many expansions: to walls, photos, sculptures, Skype, and iPhones. ..."
Brooklyn Rail

August 2010: Agnès Varda, May 2011: The Beaches of Agnès, 2011 December: Interview - Agnès Varda, 2013 February: The Gleaners and I (2000), 2013 September: Cinévardaphoto (2004), 2014 July: Black Panthers (1968 doc.), 2014 October: Art on Screen: A Conversation with Agnès Varda, 2015 September: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1976), 2017 April: Agnès Varda’s Art of Being There.

Sun Ra Arkestra Under the Direction of Marshall Allen – Babylon Live (2014)

Marshall Allen
"If the recording Babylon is any indication, the second century of Sun Ra's music will be as entertaining as the first hundred years. Recorded live at Istanbul's Babylon Club in 2014, the full effect of Sun Ra's Arkestra is captured in all its glory with this CD and bonus DVD recording. The Arkestra has been under the direction of nonagenarian Marshall Allen since Sun Ra's death in 1993. Allen, an alto saxophonist and sideman to Ra since the 1950s, has been the keeper of the interstellar flame and face of the Arkestra. His efforts have recruited the amazing talents of Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra pianist Farid Barron and singer Tara Middleton, who fills in for the departed June Tyson. ..."
All About Jazz
London Jazz News
Guardian - Sun Ra Arkestra/Marshall Allen: Babylon Live review – otherwordly space-jazz (Video) 1:39:30
YouTube: The Sun Ra Arkestra - Marshall Allen I Babylon Interview 15:56

Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy - Jules Tygiel (1983)

"It's true, what the historian Jules Tygiel points out in his rich, intelligent cultural history, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy - professional baseball's experience since 1947 has certainly represented the considerable degree of racial desegregation that America has achieved since World War II. But whether baseball's achievements were actually a cause of larger black gains, or simply reflected forces unleashed during the war that made their effects felt everywhere, is another question - probably of the chicken-egg variety. Mr. Tygiel, who teaches history at San Francisco State University, does not insist that Branch Rickey, who was the general manager and part owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Jackie Robinson, whom Rickey signed up to play for his team, showed America how to integrate its black people. ..."
NY Times
Kirkus Reviews
Project MUSE
YouTube: Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy
amazon

2009 September: Jackie Robinson, 2014 October: How Brooklyn Has Changed on Screen, 2016 March: Black Ball - Jules Tygiel and John Thorn (Essay), 2016 April: The Unsanitized Story of Jackie Robinson, 2017 April: Baseball color line

The Clash - Rock the Casbah / Long Time Jerk (1982)

Wikipedia - "'Rock the Casbah' is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash, released in 1982. ...  'Rock the Casbah' was musically written by the band's drummer Topper Headon, based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song's musical instrumentation himself. This origin makes 'Rock the Casbah' different from the majority of Clash songs, which tended to originate with music written by the Strummer-Jones songwriting partnership.  ..."
Wikipedia
Genius (Video)
Urban Dictionary
YouTube: Rock the Casbah, Long Time Jerk

Volkswagen Type 2

Wikipedia - "The Volkswagen Type 2, known officially (depending on body type) as the Transporter, Kombi or Microbus, or, informally, as the Bus (US) or Camper (UK), is a forward control panel van introduced in 1950 by the German automaker Volkswagen as its second car model. Following – and initially deriving from Volkswagen's first model, the Type 1 (Beetle) – it was given the factory designation Type 2. ... Like the Beetle, the van has received numerous nicknames worldwide, including the 'microbus', 'minibus', and, because of its popularity during the counterculture movement of the 1960s, Hippie van/wagon, and still remains iconic for many hippies today. ..."
Wikipedia
The Birth Of The VW Bus: From First Sketch To Production
Vintage Bus Import
amazon: How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot
vimeo: The Bus - trailer ($)
YouTube: History of the VW Bus, VW Split Window Bus at Idle and Driving

Mag City - Gary Lenhart, Gregory Masters, and Michael Scholnick, New York

MAG CITY 7
"Mag City was a party in print. It was started to give a form to a literary scene that existed in the East Village, disenchanted with mainstream values. In the mid-’70s this neighborhood provided for a confluence of young artists, poets, musicians. The workshops led by Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church were where the third generation of New York School poets began to develop. Everyone attended the Monday and Wednesday night readings at the Project and would then convene in various bars afterward—Les Mykta, Grassroots, Orchidia, El Centro. Most of the poets worked part-time jobs or worked a few months and took off a few months. We wanted to be ready for the poem. We lived for poetry and were grateful to have discovered there were others like us out there whose priorities were complementary. ..."
From a Secret Location
MIMEO MIMEO: Hot Times in the City
NYPL: Mag City records 1977-1985
amazon

The Infinite Worlds of Arthur Russell

"At first, Charles Arthur Russell was just Charley. Growing up in Iowa during the Fifties and Sixties, Charley vacationed in the Midwest and Mexico with his parents and two sisters. As a teenager, Charley decided he wanted to be called Arthur. When he moved to Northern California in 1968 and found his way into a Buddhist commune, he was renamed Jigmé. It didn't last. But he settled on Arthur when he moved to New York in 1973 at twenty-two, bringing all his places and names with him. Before dying of AIDS-related illnesses in 1992, at forty, Russell checked off many boxes, usually at the same time. But his vision of small and large ensemble work with the unspecified duration of a Buddhist mantra and the hubcap glow of a Beach Boys single was no easy sell — at least, not until his records were reissued in the early 21st century. Now people move to New York because of Arthur. ..."
VOICE

2015 November: Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980), 2015 September: Arthur Russell, 2017 January: Instrumentals (2007)

How the Election Split France

"Two outsiders, Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, advanced in France’s presidential election on Sunday, setting up a runoff that could decide the future of the European Union. Election results are as of 4 a.m. Paris time. The two winners will rely on starkly different bases of support in the runoff on May 7. Ms. Le Pen captured areas with high unemployment and low wages, where she campaigned on pledges to stop immigration and renegotiate France’s relationship with the European Union. Mr. Macron dominated in economically dynamic areas and large cities, like Paris and Bordeaux, where his pro-business and socially progressive platform resonated with educated voters. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen Advance in French Election (Video)

"The Mélenchon campaign has breathed new life into the French left in recent weeks, soaring to a competitive position in the polls and drawing tens of thousands to rallies. But after his narrow defeat today, questions still linger. What does Mélenchon represent? What can the origins of his France Insoumise [Rebellious France] tell us about its politics? And where is it likely to go next? Grégory Bekhtari, a member of the radical left formation Ensemble!, which supported the Mélenchon campaign, explores these questions beginning with Mélenchon’s 2008 departure from the Socialist Party (PS). ..."
Jacobin: The Meaning of France Insoumise
Jacobin: Another World Is Possible With Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Jacobin: A New Beginning
Jacobin: An Earthquake in the Making
 
2017 February: France, Without a Struggle, Is at a Loss, 2017 April: France Rebels

A Thousand Clowns - Herb Gardner (1965)

Wikipedia - "A Thousand Clowns is a 1965 film adaptation of a 1962 play by Herb Gardner, directed by Fred Coe. It tells the story of an eccentric comedy writer who is forced to conform to society to retain legal custody of his nephew. Jason Robards starred in both the original Broadway version and in the film. Martin Balsam won an Academy Award for his supporting performance in the movie. Unemployed television writer Murray Burns (Jason Robards) lives in a cluttered New York City studio apartment with his 12-year-old nephew, Nick (Barry Gordon). Murray has been unemployed for five months after quitting his previous job writing jokes for a children's television show called Chuckles the Chipmunk. Nick, the illegitimate son of Murray's sister, was left with Murray seven years earlier. When Nick writes a school essay on the benefits of unemployment insurance, his school requests that New York State send social workers to investigate his living conditions. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times - 'A Thousand Clowns' Opens:Jason Robards Repeats His Success of Stage
Let Us Now Praise Herb Gardner, Author of A Thousand Clowns
YouTube: How to answer a phone, The Story of Nick, Chuckles The Clown, That's My Baby
YouTube: A Thousand Clowns 2:00:00

Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup

Wikipedia - "“Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known outside blues circles for writing songs such as ’That’s All Right’ (1946), ’My Baby Left Me’ and 'So Glad You’re Mine’, later covered by Elvis Presley and dozens of other artists. Arthur Crudup was born in Forest, Mississippi.  For a time he lived and worked throughout the South and Midwest as a   migrant worker. He and his family returned to Mississippi in 1926. He  sang gospel, then began his career as a blues singer around Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a member of the Harmonizing Four, he visited Chicago in 1939. Crudup stayed in Chicago to work as a solo musician, but barely made a living as a street singer. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
The Mississippi Blues Trail
amazon
YouTube: Mean Ol’ Frisco Blues, My Baby Left Me, That’s All Right, So Glad You’re Mine, Rock me Mama, I’m gonna dig myself a hole, Death Valley Blues, My Mama Don’t Allow, Hey Mama Everything’s All Right, Standing At My Window, She’s Gone, Gonna Be Some Changes Made, Just Like A Spider, Dust My Broom, Hand Me Down My Walking Cane

Henry David Thoreau - The Maine Woods (1864)

"Henry David Thoreau was so emotionally attached to his home in Concord that he found it almost impossible to leave. In fact after 1837 he did so only for short periods--thirteen days on the Concord and Merrimack rivers, some visits to Cape Cod, three trips to the Maine woods, several months in Staten Island and in Minnesota. He was never alone on these excursions; always went with a friend or relative. He was one of the earliest climbers to the heights of Mount Katahdin, but that was a bold exception and he probably did not achieve the highest peak. The canoe trip of 325 miles he writes about in 'The Allegash and East Branch' in The Maine Woods was his most ambitious trip--and a hard one--but the book shows that for all Thoreau's enthusiasm for the wilderness he was sometimes lost and confused in the deep woods. The experience convinced him that he would never be able to live there on his own. The Maine woods were wilderness, but Thoreau emphasizes their proximity: they are only a matter of hours from easily accessible Bangor. ... - Paul Theroux - January, 2004"
Princeton University Press
NY Times: Tracking Thoreau Through Maine’s ‘Grim and Wild’ Land
The Maine Woods - an annotated edition

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden, 2015 March: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), 2017 March: Civil Disobedience (1849)

Protesters Block, Demand Removal of a Painting of Emmett Till at the Whitney Biennial

Dana Schutz, Open Casket (2016)
"On Friday, the 2017 Whitney Biennial opened to the public and protesters showed up to physically block and voice their objections to Open Casket (2016), a painting of Emmett Till by Dana Schutz. According to protesters Parker Bright and Pastiche Lumumba —New York-based artists who went to the Whitney on opening day independently, meeting there for the first time — a white artist should not be permitted to use and profit from the image of a black man killed in a racially motivated crime. ... The Open Casket protesters said the response from museum visitors on Friday was largely positive. No guards interfered. Despite a few critiques of their blockage as an act of censorship — they were, after all, preventing the work from being clearly viewed — the protesters maintain that any conversation should not center on the painting itself, but rather on its content and the implications of who made it. ..."
Hyperallergic
New Yorker: Why Dana Schutz Painted Emmett Till (April 10, 2017)
NY Times: White Artist’s Painting of Emmett Till at Whitney Biennial Draws Protests
Hyperallergic: In Fake Letter, “Dana Schutz” Demands Removal of Controversial Painting from Whitney Biennial

Alton Ellis ‎– Rise And Fall / Earl Sixteen - Make Up Your Mind

"Taken from the recently reissued 'Many Moods Of Alton Ellis' album and produced by Earl 'Heptone' Morgan this is roots flavoured Alton with some great Heptones harmonies on a cut to Earl 16's 'The World Has Just Begun'. Second side features Earl himself on a treatment of the wicked rhythm used for Junior Delgado's 'Don't Study Wrong'."
Dub Vendor
Podomatic (Video)
YouTube: Alton Ellis ‎– Rise And Fall, Earl Sixteen - Make Up Your Mind

James White And The Blacks - Contort Yourself / (Tropical) Heatwave full 12” (1979)

"Consult your average pop-culture oriented magazine these days and you'll see bands slogging through three musical styles being hyped. Unless those magazines are wallowing in electro and the Strokes or are so advanced they're already promoting the big Dietrich Buxtehude revival, those three styles would be: No Wave, JazzFunkPunk, and DiscoPunk. The father of fusing jazz, funk, disco, punk and noise into hyperkinetic, literate, menacing, danceable music, the man with three better band names on his resume than you, the sax maniac himself, is none other than - drum roll please - James Chance. ... By the turn of the decade, as James White and the Blacks, Chance and some Contortions had even managed to elevate disco without denigrating their funk. Today alive and well in New York, James Chance is a huge hero for anyone interested in anarchic music."
ZE Records (Video)
YouTube: Contort Yourself / (Tropical) Heatwave full 12”

2009 December: James Chance, 2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 January: Buy - James Chance and the Contortions (1979), 2015 July: James White And The Blacks - Off White (1979), 2015 October: Pat Place, 2016 January: Lost Chance (1981), 2017 January: Twist Your Soul: The Definitive Collection (2010).

How Liberals Fell In Love With The West Wing

"In the history of prestige tv, few dramas have had quite the cultural staying power of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Set during the two terms of fictional Democratic President and Nobel Laureate in Economics Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet (Martin Sheen) the show depicts the inner workings of a sympathetic liberal administration grappling with the daily exigencies of governing. ... Nearly the same, of course, might be said for other glossy political dramas such as Netflix’s House of Cards or Scandal. But The West Wing aspires to more than simply visual verisimilitude. Breaking with the cynicism or amoralism characteristic of many dramas about politics, it offers a vision of political institutions which is ultimately affirmative and approving. ..."
Current Affairs

2014 September: A Definitive Ranking of Every Character on 'The West Wing'

Slug's Saloon

Wikipedia - "Slug's Saloon was a jazz club at 242 East 3rd Street, between Avenue B and C in Manhattan's Lower East Side, operating from the mid-1960s to 1972. The location, in what was then a run-down part of New York City, first hosted a Ukrainian restaurant and bar, and later a bar that served as a meeting point for drug dealers. ... The interior of the club was longer than it was wide and the bandstand all the way in the back. It could fit 75 people but often held twice that. The bar was on the left side as one entered the venue. The wooden sign that hung outside the venue was carved by James Jackson. During the mid-1960s it slowly started attracting regular jazz performances, developing a reputation as a musician's bar. ..."
Wikipedia
Inside Slugs’ Saloon, Jazz’s Most Notorious Nightclub
NYBooks (Video)
Slugs Saloon (Video)
‘It Was a Joint’: Jazz Musicians Remember Slugs’ in the Far East
Discogs

St-Henri, the 26th of August - Shannon Walsh (2011)

"There have always been attempts to contemplate human being by focusing on the bits of life contained within recordings of certain times and spaces. In 1962, several Canadian filmmakers of the direct cinema group announced À St-Henri le 5 Septembre, a documentary film that recorded a day on a street in St-Henri, Montreal, on the 5th of September. ... St-Henri is a typical suburban location, only a little outdated. ... The date is August 26th in St-Henri. To the people living in it, it is not just a date. Through that day, the past and the future reveal themselves and I, you and we share the day together. This film conveys this simple message in the most beautiful way, in a glittering ode to life itself."
DMZ Docs (Video)
Art Threat (Video)
Parabola Films (Video)
YouTube: St-Henri, the 26th of August - Trailer
W - St-Henri
Why Montreal's St-Henri Is The New And Improved Plateau
St. Henri – A Gentrification in Progress

2013 October: Montreal Metro, 2014 July: Montreal, tales of gentrification in a bohemian city, 2016 August: Montreal-style bagel

Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934)

Wikipedia - "Cigars of the Pharaoh (French: Les Cigares du Pharaon) is the fourth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from December 1932 to February 1934 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1934. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are travelling in Egypt when they discover a pharaoh's tomb filled with dead Egyptologists and boxes of cigars. Pursuing the mystery of these cigars, they travel across Arabia and India, and reveal the secrets of an international drug smuggling enterprise. ..."
Wikipedia
Cigars of the Pharaoh
Cigars of the Pharaoh
amazon
DailyMotion: Cigars of the Pharaoh 46:18

2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983, 2010 July: The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, 2011 December: Prisoners of the Sun, 2012 January: Tintin: the Complete Companion, 2012 December: Snowy, 2015 August: The Black Island (1937), 2015 September: King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938), 2015 December: Red Rackham's Treasure (1943), 2016 July: Captain Haddock.

Travelers of Al-Andalus, Part I: The Travel Writer

"According to later chroniclers, if they can be believed, the adventure of Ibn Jubayr, one of the most illustrious rahhala, or travelers, from Al-Andalus to destinations throughout the Mediterranean and farther east, began in the year 1183 with a repugnant challenge. To name him in full, Abu al-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Jubayr al-Kinani served as secretary in the palace of Granada’s governor, Abu Said Osman, son of the first Almohad caliph, Abd al-Mu’min. As the story goes, at one point while dictating a letter, the prince coerced him to drink seven cups of wine, forbidden to Muslims. In exchange, the prince granted him seven cups of gold dinars. To seek expiation of his sin—and perhaps to make a hasty exit from the court—this otherwise most pious Muslim scholar set out to fulfill one of the five pillars of Islam by making the long pilgrimage to Makkah. ..."
Aramco World

2016 March: Travelers of Al-Andalus, Part VI: The Double Lives of Ibn al-Khatib

Bad as Me - Tom Waits (2011)

"Bad as Me is Tom Waits' first collection of new material in seven years. He and Kathleen Brennan -- wife, co-songwriter, and production partner -- have, at the latter's insistence, come up with a tight-knit collection of short tunes, the longest is just over four minutes. This is a quick, insistent, and woolly aural road trip full of compelling stops and starts. While he's kept his sonic experimentation -- especially with percussion tracks -- Waits has returned to blues, rockabilly, rhythm & blues, and jazz as source material. Instead of sprawl and squall, we get chug and choogle. ... Bad as Me is an aural portrait of all the places he's traveled as a recording artist, which is, in and of itself, illuminating and thoroughly enjoyable."
allmusic
W - Bad as Me
NY Times: A Grizzled Troubadour Dusts Off His Bowler
Guardian - Tom Waits: 'I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me'
YouTube: Bad As Me (Live)
YouTube: Bad As Me full album 54:29

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money, 2014 March: Telephone call from Istanbul (1987), 2014 November: Rain Dogs (1985), 2015 February: Mule Variations (1999), 2015 April: Swordfishtrombones (1983), 2015 July: Alice (2002), 2015 September: Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985, 2015 December: Franks Wild Years (1987), 2016 January: "Bad as Me" (2011), 2016 April: 'It's perfect madness', 2016 May: Real Gone (2002), 2016 October: Tom Waits Sings and Tells Stories in "Tom Waits: A Day in Vienna", a 1979, 2017 January: Bone Machine (1992).

Botticelli and the Search for the Divine

"Perhaps more than any other painter, Sandro Botticelli (about 1445–1510) exemplifies the artistic achievement of Renaissance Florence in the 15th century. Botticelli and the Search for the Divine, organized by the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary and Italy’s Metamorfosi Associazione Culturale, explores the dramatic changes in the artist’s style and subject matter—from poetic depictions of classical gods and goddesses to austere sacred themes—reflecting the shifting political and religious climate of Florence during his lifetime. At the height of his career, Botticelli was supported by the powerful Medici family, headed by Lorenzo the Magnificent. ..."
MFA
MFA: Botticelli and the Search for the Divine

Blow-Up - Michelangelo Antonioni (1966)

Wikipedia - "Blowup, or Blow-Up, is a 1966 British-Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni about a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who believes he has unwittingly captured a murder on film. It was Antonioni's first entirely English-language film. The film also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Tsai Chin and Gillian Hills as well as sixties model Veruschka. ... Bosley Crowther, film critic of The New York Times, called it a 'fascinating picture, which has something real to say about the matter of personal involvement and emotional commitment in a jazzed-up, media-hooked-in world so cluttered with synthetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed'. ..."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Guardian - My favourite film: Blow-Up
Criterion (Video)
Guardian - 'Debauchery all night': the Guardian's original review of Blow-Up (Video)
Vanity Fair - Photos: Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Swinging 1960s London
YouTube: Blow-Up Trailer 1966 Extended Version, Tennis, Modernism and Post-Modernism | An Analysis of Blow-Up


2011 September: Red Desert (1964), 2014 December: The Passenger (1975)

Winter in America - Gil Scott-Heron / Brian Jackson (1974)

Wikipedia "Winter in America is a studio album by American vocalist Gil Scott-Heron and keyboardist Brian Jackson, released in May 1974 on Strata-East Records. They recorded the album during September to October 1973 at D&B Sound Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland. While Jackson's piano-based arrangements were rooted in jazz and the blues, their stripped-down production for the album resulted in a reliance on more traditional African and R&B sounds. The subject matter on Winter in America deals with the African-American community and inner city in the 1970s. ... After the decline of popularity in traditional jazz forms during the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movement, black pride and Afrocentric sentiment by many black Americans emerged. ..."
Wikipedia
The Quietus - Cold Comfort: Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson's Winter In America (Video)
Revive Music
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Winter in America (1974) (Full Album)

2017 January: Pieces of a Man (1971)

Boston’s “Hogmosh” of Neighborhoods, as Mapped by Bostonians

"Putting a neighborhood on a map is harder than it sounds. If you live in a neighborhood with a name, you probably think you know its boundaries. But do your neighbors agree? Does the local government? Probably not. While neighborhoods have roots in concrete things like topography, physical barriers, and architecture, they’re also reflections of the people and communities that reside in them. That leaves their precise location open to interpretation. ... The size of the resulting neighborhood discrepancies—and the degree to which people care about them—varies among cities. In a place like Boston, both of these factors tend toward the more extreme end of the spectrum. The city’s previous mayor described the neighborhood boundaries as a 'hogmosh of undefined lines,' a situation made more volatile by Bostonians’ attitudes toward their home turf. ..."
National Geographic
Neighborhoods
Mapping Greater Boston's neighborhoods
BOSTONOGRAPHY
Neighborhoods as seen by the people

2010 February: Brattle Theatre, 2010 July: Café Pamplona, 2010 June: The Real Paper, 2012 June: John Lincoln Wright, 2012 October: Goodbye, alt-weeklies, 2013 February: House of Poesy: At the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, 2013 June: Arnold Arboretum (Harvard University - Jamaica Plain), 2013 March: Orson Welles Cinema, 2016 February: Club Passim, 2016 December: Boston busing desegregation 1974-1988

Cape Breton fiddling

Angus Chisholm 78 rpm Cape Breton Fiddle Record
Wikipedia - "Cape Breton fiddling is a regional violin style which falls within the Celtic music idiom. Cape Breton Island's fiddle music was brought to North America by Scottish immigrants during the Highland Clearances. These Scottish immigrants were primarily from Gaelic-speaking regions in the Scottish Highlands and the Outer Hebrides. Although fiddling has changed considerably since this time in Scotland, it is widely held that the tradition of Scottish fiddle music has been better preserved in Cape Breton. ... Cape Breton playing is highly accented, characterized by driven up-bowing. The tunes of other music origins (Irish, Canadian, French-Canadian, etc.) sound quite different when performed by Cape Breton players. The strong downbeat pulse is driven by the fiddler's heel into the floor. The pattern tends to be heel-and-toe on reels, the heel on strathspeys. ..."
Wikipedia
The Cape Breton Musical Heritage Series
The Amazing Music of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
YouTube: Angus Chisholm - Cape Breton Fiddle, Angus Chisholm - Rodeo, A.A Gillis Johnnie Cope - Cape Breton, Donald MacLellan - Strathspey & Reel Cape Breton, W.H (Bill) Lamey - Scottish Reels, Alick Gillis - Go To The De'il And Shake Yourself, Margaree's Fancy, Villeneuve & Bouchard - Set du Lac St-Jean, Willie Kennedy traditional Cape Breton Fiddle (Live), Fiddler Robbie Fraser at the Red Shoe in Mabou N.S. (Live), Cape Breton Fiddle | John MacDougall (Live)

2015 October: History of the Acadians, 2012 February: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, 2012 December: Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler, 2011 June: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Alistair MacLeod, 2016 February: Island (2001), 2016 October: Alistair MacLeod - No Great Mischief (1999), October: Nova Scotia Lighthouse

My East in Venice

Drawing of Venice from an account of a journey from Venice to Palestine, Mount Sinai and Egypt. From the collection of the British Library.
"Searching the Shatat. When you get to the train station, turn left and you’ll find it. Directions in Venice are always convoluted, and directions given by a relative in Jaffa about a place in Venice create an even greater web. But that’s all my uncle told me about how I could find some family members in the city. When I arrived at Venezia Santa Lucia train station, I went straight instead. I was drawn to the water, where the sunlight glistened like small fires. There, I could hear the ghosts of the Nakba—catastrophe—the mass exodus of Palestinians that occurred during the creation of Israel between 1947 and 1948. Some drowned, some were killed, some found refuge in places I’ll never discover. ..."
Guernica

Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Hong Kong Garden" / "Voices (On The Air)" (1978)

Wikipedia - "'Hong Kong Garden' is a song by the English rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was released as the debut non-album single by the band in 1978 by Polydor Records. The single quickly hit number 7 in the UK Singles Chart. In March 2005, Q placed it in its list of the '100 Greatest Guitar Tracks Ever' and British writer Colin Larkin qualified it as 'sublime'. The instrumental first version, called 'People Phobia', was composed by guitarist John McKay in 1977. The first time the band heard it, they were on a tour bus. The song was named after the Hong Kong Garden Chinese take-away in Chislehurst High Street. Siouxsie was quoted as explaining the lyrics with reference to the racist activities of skinheads visiting the take-away. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian - Old music: Siouxsie and the Banshees – Hong Kong Garden (Video)
allmusic (Video)
Genius (Video)
YouTube: "Hong Kong Garden", "Hong Kong Garden" (Live), Voices (On The Air)

Frock Flicks Guide to Merchant-Ivory Historical Films

"In the frock flicks pantheon, few lights shine brighter than the films of Merchant Ivory Productions. Typified by A Room With a View, these historical costume movies were often adaptions of Edwardian novels, showcasing some kind of disillusionment with love and/or society. Their heyday for frock flicks was about 1985 to 1995, although the pair of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory made films together starting in 1963, with their frequent collaborator, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. ... While the company made nearly 50 films, not all of them qualify as historical costume movies for our purposes. But plenty do, so it’s time to collect them all together in the ultimate guide to Merchant-Ivory films right here. ..."
Frock Flicks (Video)
The Film Comment Podcast: Merchant-Ivory and Howards End (Video)
W - Merchant Ivory Productions
Vanity Fair: Take a Journey to the Past with Merchant Ivory Mastermind James Ivory

Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond - Michael Nyman (1972)

"The book; Experimental Music Cage and Beyond (Nyman, 1999) was written by Michael Nyman in 1974 with a second edition appearing in 1999. Nyman is a composer directly influenced by, and practicing within the culture of late twentieth century minimalist music. Nyman’s career is laden with examples of working with filmmakers on soundtracks [especially Peter Greenaway] to create a symbiosis of moving image and music. He has also composed a huge repertoire of music for strings and more recently, operas. Nyman’s work is audibly influenced by the canonistic nature of baroque music. ..."
Concerning Temporality in Music
[PDF] Cambridge University Press - Experimental Music Cage and Beyond
[PDF] LOC - Experimental Music Cage and Beyond
amazon

2008 April: Michael Nyman, 2010 August: Decay Music, 2010 December: After Extra Time, 2011 August: Michael Nyman Band, 2011 December: The Draughtsman's Contract - Peter Greenaway, 2012 March: Time Lapse, 2013 July: Composer in Progress, In Concert (2010), 2015 September: An Eye for Optical Theory (Live at Studio Halle, 2010), 2016 January: Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds.