Sketching Performer Auditions for the M.T.A.

"Once a year, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority holds auditions for musicians to perform in subway and commuter train stations, and for the past couple of years, Joan Chiverton, an illustrator and music lover, has sketched the hopefuls. The auditions, which take place in Grand Central Terminal, have a festive atmosphere, starting with the master of ceremonies, Robert Holman, the poet and indefatigable poetry evangelist, who wears a referee’s striped shirt and blows a whistle on musicians who exceed their five-minute time limit. Because we all know the transportation agency will not tolerate delays. ..."
NY Times
MTA Arts & Design

Pond Scum - Henry David Thoreau’s moral myopia. By Kathryn Schulz

"On the evening of October 6, 1849, the hundred and twenty people aboard the brig St. John threw a party. The St. John was a so-called famine ship: Boston-bound from Galway, it was filled with passengers fleeing the mass starvation then devastating Ireland. They had been at sea for a month; now, with less than a day’s sail remaining, they celebrated the imminent end of their journey and, they hoped, the beginning of a better life in America. Early the next morning, the ship was caught in a northeaster, driven toward shore, and dashed upon the rocks just outside Cohasset Harbor. Those on deck were swept overboard. Those below deck drowned when the hull smashed open. Within an hour, the ship had broken up entirely. All but nine crew members and roughly a dozen passengers perished. Two days later, a thirty-two-year-old Massachusetts native, en route from Concord to Cape Cod, got word of the disaster and detoured to Cohasset to see it for himself. ..."
New Yorker (Oct 19, 2015)
Sierra Club: In Defense of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau Farm: A Reply to Pond Scum – a critique of Thoreau in the New Yorker

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden, 2015 March: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), 2017 March: Civil Disobedience (1849), 2017 April: The Maine Woods (1864), 2017 June: This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal

National Park Maps

Acadia
"The National Park Service publishes tons of great free maps; I’ve collected them all for you. Here on NPMaps you’ll find hundreds of PDF and image files of any U.S. national park map; you can view all parks alphabetically and sort by state. Or use the menu above to navigate to the park of your choice. If you’re looking for a single national parks map that shows all U.S. national parks, click the image to the left (2.7 mb) or download the PDF (21.2 mb). The PDF map will take a while to load; please be patient! Or, order a large poster of this national parks map from the NPMaps Store (links open in new window). I created this site because I love visiting national parks and planning trips by poring* over a classic national park map. However, I’ve always found it time-consuming to visit each park’s web page and use an embedded map viewer or muddle through the website to find a nice printable map. ..."
National Park Maps

Made to Measure, Vol. 1 (1984)

"Volume 1 initiated Made to Measure, a series of records of experimental soundtrack music, in high form as a compilation with several artists from Crammed Discs' roster. Minimal Compact offer some songs from a ballet, Tuxedomoon weigh in with three pieces from a film score, Benjamin Lew with a sound backdrop to a fashion exhibition, and Aksak Maboul bring in an excerpt from a private movie, as well as music composed for a play. Except for the Minimal Compact cuts, these are instrumentals of various moods and textures, and the various contributors complement each other with similar Euro-art rock aesthetics. Though Tuxedomoon expatriated from the U.S. and Minimal Compact from Israel, both groups have a very European sound, though Minimal Compact do throw some Middle Eastern flute and chanting on 'Too Many of Them.' Otherwise their tracks don't differ too much from what is on their regular albums, clunky rhythms, creepy and subdued art-rock songs. ..."
allmusic
Discogs
Crammed Discs
amazon, Spotify
YouTube: Minimal Compact - Animal Killers, Tuxedomoon - Fanfare, Aksak Maboul - Mort de Velimir, AKSAK MABOUL Ossip & Lili/Odessa, Tuxedomoon - No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition, Benjamin Lew - A La Rechèrche De B., Minimal Compact - Bat-Yam

Adam Lucas aka Hanksy on His Recent Venture at the Historic Essex Street Market on Manhattan’s Lower East Side

"This past weekend, the now-abandoned Essex Street Market at 140 Essex was the site of Market Surplus, an exhibit featuring ten huge striking murals in a range of styles — from meticulously rendered photorealistic to brightly colored expressionistic. Largely site-specific, they were the perfect homage to a soon-to-be-demolished historic Lower East Side building. While visiting late Sunday afternoon, I had the opportunity to pose a few questions to its curator, Adam Lucas aka Hanksy. ..."
Street Art NYC

2017 Tour de France

Wikipedia - "The 2017 Tour de France will be the 104th edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. The race will begin with an individual time trial in Düsseldorf on 1 July, and conclude with the Champs-Élysées stage in Paris on 23 July 2017. A total of 198 riders from 22 teams will enter the race. As the Tour de France is a UCI World Tour event, all eighteen UCI WorldTeams were invited automatically and obliged to enter a team in the race. ... The main pre-race favorites are Chris Froome, Richie Porte, Nairo Quintana and Alberto Contador. ... The top-ranked sprinters are Peter Sagan, Mark Cavendish, Marcel Kittel, André Greipel, John Degenkolb, Alexander Kristoff and Arnaud Démare. ..."
Wikipedia
Cycling News (Video)
Tour de France 2017: 5 key stages
Steephill (Video)
Guardian (Video)
BBC: Stage-by-stage guide (Video)
Le Tour 2017
Telegraph
Cycling Stage - Route and stages

Stage 9: Nantua to Chambéry (181km)

2008 July: Tour de France 2008, 2009 July: Tour de France 2009, 2010 July: Tour de France 2010,  2011 July: Tour de France 2011, 2012 July: 2012 Tour de France, 2015 July: 2015 Tour de France, 2015 July: Tour de France 2015: Team Time Trial Win Bolsters American’s Shot at Podium, 2015 July: Tour de France: Chris Froome completes historic British win, 2016 July: 2016 Tour de France.

Fred Frith - Field Days (The Amanda Loops) (2015)

"14 pieces originally written for dance and other practical situations, here reassigned and reconstructed for choreographer Amanda Miller and the Nederland Dans Theater. These are loop-based, textural, mood pieces, and invocations of spaces and landscapes, with some fine steel guitar playing. Mostly this is Fred multi-instrumenting, with pianist Daan Vanderwalle, percussionist Willie Wynant, saxophonist Lotte Anker, the Arte Sax and Arditti Quartets, Kiku Day (playing occasional shakuhachi), and violinist/nykelharpist Karla Kihlstedt. Hit from the show: Desert Sundown. Field Days is an exploration of the past--in this case Fred's past as a composer of music for dance. Using music originally composed for choreographer Amanda Miller, and working with her and long-time studio collaborator Myles Boisen, Fred created a vast number of loops of all shapes and sizes, and used them as the setting for additional material that was also largely drawn from pre-existing recordings of other works. Fred then added bottleneck guitar to some of the pieces to provide a certain sonic continuity."
Forced Exposure
W - Field Days (The Amanda Loops)
YouTube: Field Days 14 videos

Matisse: The Joy of Things - Claire Messud

Vase of Flowers, 1924
"Daily, I slice bread with my maternal grandmother’s bread knife. Neither beautiful nor valuable—its handle scored white melamine, its wide serrations still sharp—it connects me to my mother’s hands (that used this knife) and to my grandmother’s hands (smaller than my mother’s, arthritic already when I was born); to my grandmother’s kitchen, beloved in my childhood; and to the long-ago morning light that filtered through the sunroom into that kitchen, in a long-sold house, in a far-off city. All this is present when I take it up and tackle a loaf. No other knife will do. Matisse, unsurprisingly, had similar feelings about the objects of his daily life. They delighted, inspired, or confounded him, in their humble ordinariness and in all that they evoked: a chocolate pot, a green glass vase, a pewter jug, embroidered hanging cloths (haitis) from North Africa, masks and figurines from sub-Saharan Africa, a brazier, a marquetry coffee table, a low-slung chair. ..."
NYBooks

2011 December: Gauguin Tahiti, 2012 May: Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia, 2014 May: Gauguin: Metamorphoses, 2015 April: Van Gogh, Manet, and Matisse: The Art of the Flower, 2016 April: Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, 2017 May: Matisse in the Studio.

"Teenage Kicks" - The Undertones (1978)

Wikipedia - "'Teenage Kicks' was the debut single for Northern Irish punk rock/new wave band The Undertones. Written in the summer of 1977 by the band's principal songwriter, John O'Neill, the song was recorded on 16 June 1978 and initially released that September upon independent Belfast record label Good Vibrations, before the band—at the time unobligated to any record label—signed to Sire Records on 2 October 1978. Sire Records subsequently obtained all copyrights to the material released upon the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single upon Sire's own label on 14 October that year, reaching number 31 in the UK Singles Chart two weeks after its release. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: "Teenage Kicks"

A Parable for the Distance Between Language and Truth

The Parable of the Blind, 1568
"In 1951, the writer Gert Hofmann, who was then twenty years old, fled the German Democratic Republic for West Germany. Ten years later, he left Germany altogether and found work teaching literature at universities in the United States and Europe. He also started writing radio plays. He was prolific, writing some thirty plays in as many years. Hofmann’s plays, produced mainly by West German public broadcasters, focus on the grim realities of Nazi Germany, the Second World War, and its aftermath. They are formally wide-ranging and often hinge on the murky relationship between language and reality. ... He continued writing for radio, sometimes transforming those plays into prose and sometimes adapting prose for radio, exploring the interplay of narrative and dialogue. His slim comic novel Der Blindensturz, first published in Germany in 1985, and translated into English by Christopher Middleton, in 1989, as 'The Parable of the Blind,' reads like the culmination of this work. It is told solely through dialogue and sets the reader adrift amid unreliable accounts. ..."
New Yorker

2010 May: Peasant, 2011 March: "The Harvesters", Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 2012 February: The Mill and the Cross - Lech Majewski, 2012 December: The Lord of Misrule and the Feast of Fools., 2013 July: Netherlandish Proverbs, 2014 August: Children's Games (1560), 2016 May: The Hunters in the Snow (1565).

James Blood Ulmer solo live @ Skopje Jazz Festival 2015

"... What followed for four consecutive nights was a firm confirmation of the festival's direction to build a strong program characterized by diversity and maverick artists rather than associate itself with an image of a typical jazz festival and a strict cast of profiles each year. The honor of opening the festival belonged to guitarist James Blood Ulmer and his unique take on the blues. In his hands the blues became simultaneously avant-garde and traditional. Well-versed in the harmolodic approach, the songs sounded far from the played—to -death kind of approach to the blues. Sang with a sly, husky, raw voice, the songs sparkled with many little ideas and harmonies, and he only referenced the blues along the way. The overall feeling was of warmth and as he was strumming his bright yellow guitar waves of warmth and feel-good feelings seemed to spread all over the hall. ..."
All About Jazz
YouTube: solo live @ Skopje Jazz Festival 2015

2015 November: Prime Time (1981), 2016 September: Black Rock (1982), 2017 May: Are You Glad to Be in America? (1980)

The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984

"First, let’s get the nostalgia out of the way. Sure, the bands were great, and if you were lucky enough to play in one, the clothes were great too. But if the young, wild, and barely employed could afford to live, make art, and party hard between Canal and 14th Streets in the mid- to late-seventies, it was for the same socio-economic reasons that govern affordability, or the lack of it, anywhere. Except for a few oases like the Ukrainian enclave around East 6th Street, the area that spawned the Downtown scene was blighted by poverty, unemployment, drugs, prostitution, homelessness, arson, and street crime; or it was simply bleak. New York City itself seemed a place without a future, battered by blackouts, riots, serial killings, and the onset of AIDS. The migration of industrial jobs to low-wage regions of the South and the subsequent flight of its middle and working classes eroded the city’s tax base and, coupled with the collapse of the financial markets, catapulted it toward bankruptcy. ..."
Brooklyn Rail
ArtForum: Scene Spirit
NY Times: The Downtown Scene, When It Was Still Dirty
Austin Chronicle
amazon

Ahmed Malek and Other Treasures From Habibi Funk’s North African Crate - Digging Expeditions

Jannis Stuertz of Habibi Funk Records
"Though Algerian composer Ahmed Malek was an established musician in his country—he passed away in 2008—and also the long-time conductor of the Algerian Television Orchestra, his music had largely been condemned to obscurity. Getting it back on wax has taken a bit of persistence. On May 14th, the Berlin-based imprint Habibi Funk will release Musique Original De Films, a collection of Malek’s film music. Written during the ’70s, the music has stylistic parallels to popular soundtracks of the era, particularly the work of Italian composer and spaghetti-western maestro Ennio Morricone. Yet it is also very much a product of North Africa. The songs are moody and slightly melancholy, but also surprisingly groovy. They fuse Arabic melodies and jazz harmonies with Latin-style rhythms and the odd scrap of psychedelia. ..."
Handcamp (Audio)
Discogs
Habibi 003: Ahmed Malek by Musique Originale De Films (Audio)
Soundcloud: Men Awel Deqiqa, Ebda' Men Gedid, Sah
YouTube: La ville, Maya, Halla, La Silence Des Cendres

White Material - Claire Denis (2009)

"... Denis’ most recent feature, White Material (2009), continues the director’s preoccupation with sound. Sparse in dialogue (save for explanatory purposes), the film also has a very spare musical soundtrack save for its theme, composed by long-time musical collaborator Stuart Staples from Tindersticks. Instead, the film relies heavily on diegetic sound to explore and imply moods and feelings, and most importantly to enhance the difficult and complex processes of the creation of the self. In White Material Denis follows the personal journey of Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), a coffee plantation boss in an unnamed French-African colony during the last days of colonial rule. As the film unfolds, we witness Maria’s struggle to retain her belief that while the country may not be her true home, she is accepted there. ..."
senses of cinema
Filmmaking
Wikipedia
Slant Magazine
Criterion - Video
Roger Ebert
NY Times: The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century. So Far.
YouTube: White Material | trailer

2009 September: Claire Denis, 2013 October: Claire Denis Dialogue with Eric Hynes

Their Satanic Majesties Request - Rolling Stones (1967)

Wikipedia - "Their Satanic Majesties Request is the sixth British and eighth American studio album by the Rolling Stones, released in December 1967 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. Recording sessions saw the band experimenting widely with a psychedelic sound in the studio, incorporating unconventional instruments, sound effects, string arrangements, and African rhythms. The album's title is a play on the 'Her Britannic Majesty requests and requires ...' text that appears inside a British passport. ... Following the album's release, the Rolling Stones abandoned their psychedelic style for a stripped-down return to their roots in blues music. ... The Stones experimented with many new instruments and sound effects during the sessions, including Mellotron, theremin, short wave radio static, and string arrangements by John Paul Jones. ..."
Wikipedia
11 East 14th Street
Psyched Master
allmusic
Genius
amazon: Their Satanic Majesties Request
YouTube: Sing This All Together, Citadel, In Another Land (Original Single Mono Version), 2000 Man, Sing This All Together (See What Happens), She's A Rainbow (Original Single Mono Version), The Lantern (Original Single Mono Version), Gomper, 2000 Light Years From Home (Original Single Mono Version), On With The Show
YouTube: Psychedelic-2000 light years from home (Live), In Another Land - Clips taken from Kenneth Anger's "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome", Acid In The Grass Brian on Harp 1967
YouTube: Sing This All Together - Satanic sessions, Majesties Honky Tonk (instrumental 1967), The Lantern (instrumental 1967), She's A Rainbow (instrumental 1967) Nicky Hopkins, In Another Land (instrumental 1967 v1), Child Of The Moon (instrumental v2) Nicky Hopkins, 2000 Light Years (instrumental v1)

2015 August: Exile on Main Street (1972), 2015 October: "Let's Spend the Night Together" / "Ruby Tuesday" (1967), 2015 December: Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (1971), 2016 January: Some Girls (1978), 2016 January: The Rolling Stones (EP), 2016 March: Five by Five (EP - 1964), 2016 May: "The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling — Ireland 1965", 2016 December: Singles Collection: The London Years (1989)

Saving Queens’ Secret Wetlands

Asters grow around the old reservoir.
"One early-March afternoon in 2007, Rob Jett climbed through a hole in a chain-link fence and thought he had entered a lost world. He and two fellow bird-watchers rappelled into a dense swamp forest of birch and sweetgum, mosses and lichens. They were standing in ankle-deep water in the west basin of the 160-year-old Ridgewood Reservoir, the last vestige of Brooklyn’s old waterworks, smack on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. Inside this wilderness, the sounds of the city faded away above the reservoir’s stone levees. ... Jett, 61, had never seen a place like it, even though he had grown up only two miles away and for years had been writing about bird-watching throughout the city. The reservoir was once important to the growth of Brooklyn as it became one of the largest cities in the country. ..."
Voice
Following Hook Creek Through Ghost Towns and Wetlands
The Nature Conservancy: New York - Protecting Wetlands and Marshes
NY Times: Come On In, the Swamp Is Fine; Wetland Beauty Restored, Just Off Flatbush Avenue (Aug. 24, 2000)
[PDF] Wetlands Strategy

Kensinger Hook Creek. Located just across Rockaway Boulevard.

The CIA Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left

"It is often presumed that intellectuals have little or no political power. Perched in a privileged ivory tower, disconnected from the real world, embroiled in meaningless academic debates over specialized minutia, or floating in the abstruse clouds of high-minded theory, intellectuals are frequently portrayed as not only cut off from political reality but as incapable of having any meaningful impact on it. The Central Intelligence Agency thinks otherwise. ... For in an intriguing research paper written in 1985, and recently released with minor redactions through the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA reveals that its operatives have been studying the complex, international trend-setting French theory affiliated with the names of Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes. ..."
The Philosophical Salon

2010 March: Roland Barthes, 2011 June: Gaston Bachelard, 2012 October: Hervé Guibert, 2014 March: Semiotext(e), 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2016 December: Can We Criticize Foucault?

Gonzo journalism

Wikipedia - "Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word 'gonzo' is believed to have been first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style. It is an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire. It has since been applied to other subjective artistic endeavors. Gonzo journalism involves an approach to accuracy that concerns the reporting of personal experiences and emotions, in contrast to traditional journalism, which favors a detached style and relies on facts or quotations that can be verified by third parties. Gonzo journalism disregards the strictly-edited product favored by newspaper media and strives for a more personal approach; the personality of a piece is as important as the event or actual subject of the piece. Use of sarcasm, humor, exaggeration, and profanity is common. ..."
Wikipedia
Open Culture - How Hunter S. Thompson Gave Birth to Gonzo Journalism: Short Film Revisits Thompson’s Seminal 1970 Piece on the Kentucky Derby (Video)
The Atlantic - Before Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson's Early, Underrated Journalism Career
Guardian: Why gonzo journalism is crucial to our understanding of cities and their tribes

The "Gonzo fist", characterized by two thumbs and four fingers holding a peyote button, was originally used in Hunter S. Thompson's 1970 campaign for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado.

"I Need Your Loving" - Donald Gardner & Dee Dee Ford (1962)

Wikipedia - "Donald Gardner (born May 9, 1931) is an American rhythm and blues singer, songwriter, and drummer. His records included the 1962 pop hit 'I Need Your Loving', with Dee Dee Ford. ... When the Sonotones played at the Smalls Paradise club in Harlem, New York, they were heard by blues performer Arthur Crudup, who recommended them to the Fire record label owner Bobby Robinson. He produced a song written by Gardner, 'I Need Your Loving' (also known as 'Need Your Lovin'), a 'gospel-drenched', call-and-response number in the mold of Ike & Tina Turner, and the song became their biggest hit, rising to number 4 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1962 and number 20 on the pop chart. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: "I Need Your Loving"

Painter Among Poets: The Collaborative Art of George Schneeman

Rita Hayworth's Theory (with Ron Padgett)
"Painter Among Poets: The Collaborative Art of George Schneeman is the first retrospective presentation of the wide range of artworks that Schneeman has created with poets over the past thirty-five years. It not only investigates Schneeman's enthusiasm for free-wheeling collaboration, but also considers his work as part of the remarkable modernist tradition of poet/painter collaboration. Always open to spontaneity and engagement, Schneeman encourages poets to contribute visual elements in order to create surprising works that neither artist nor poet could have done alone. Painter Among Poets offers a behind-the-scenes look at the high-wire process of collaboration as an outgrowth of Schneeman's friendship with poets Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Michael Brownstein, Tom Clark, Edwin Denby, Larry Fagin, Dick Gallup, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Greenwald, Steve Katz, Lewis MacAdams, Alice Notley, Ron Padgett, Harris Schiff, Peter Schjeldahl, Tom Veitch, Anne Waldman, Lewis Warsh, and many others. ..." - Ron Padgett
Granary Books
George Schneeman: Collages
[PDF] A Painter and His Poets: The Art of George Schneeman - Poets House

Bob Dylan Plays First Live Performance of “Hurricane,” His Song Defending Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (RIP) in 1975

"This weekend, Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter passed away. He was 76. An American middleweight boxer, Carter was tried and convicted twice (once 1967, again in 1976) for homicides that took place in Paterson, New Jersey in 1966 -- despite the fact that there were no finger prints or eyewitnesses connecting him to the crime. (Both convictions were later overturned when courts found that the trials were tainted by prosecutorial misconduct.) ... He's backed by Scarlet Rivera on violin, Rob Stoner on bass, and Howie Wyeth on drums. It was apparently Dylan's first live performance of the eight minute song. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
W - “Hurricane”
NY Daily - ‘Hurricane’: For Bob Dylan, Rubin Carter fight was personal
“Hurricane” (Written by: Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy)

Stephen Shore

Bridge Street, Mexico, Maine, July 30, 1974
Wikipedia - "Stephen Shore (born October 8, 1947) is an American photographer known for his images of banal scenes and objects in the United States, and for his pioneering use of color in art photography. ...  He began to use a 35 mm camera three years later and made his first color photographs. At ten he received a copy of Walker Evans's book, American Photographs, which influenced him greatly. His career began at fourteen, when he presented his photographs to Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Recognizing Shore's talent, Steichen bought three. At seventeen, Shore met Andy Warhol and began to frequent Warhol's studio, the Factory, photographing Warhol and the creative people that surrounded him. ..."
Wikipedia
Stephen Shore
Guardian - Shady character: how Stephen Shore taught America to see in living colour
Honestly WTF
SF MoMA - Stephen Shore: Taking photographs that “feel like seeing” (Video)

Sonar Senghor - Lost Africa (1957) / Rare African Swing Vol. 1

"Purely on historical grounds, this album from the 1950s is an interesting document, as it was one of the first recordings to expose the tribal music of Western Africa to a European and North American audience. Academic considerations aside, this collection of songs associated with ritualistic dances is worthwhile listening, consisting solely of the Sonar Senghor troupe's high-spirited vocals and chants, with no backup instrumentation save simple (yet varied) percussion. The stark production is, if anything, an asset. Music this direct and elemental doesn't need polish, and the songs can be heard not just as folkloric rituals, but as enjoyable performances in their own right."
allmusic
Anti-gravity
amazon
YouTube: Bonomiollo, Sougnou Mbtaye, Sindhio, Dianka Bi

"Rare African Swing Vol. 1 album for sale by Various Artists was released May 24, 2013 on the Mondotone label. Rare African Swing Vol. 1 CD music contains a single disc with 20 songs."
amazon, iTunes, Spotify
YouTube: Rare African Swing Vol. 1 20 songs · 51:04

The Town and the City - Jack Kerouac (1950)

Wikipedia - "The Town and the City is a novel by Jack Kerouac, published by Harcourt Brace in 1950. This was the first major work published by Kerouac, who later became famous for his second novel On the Road (1957). Like all of Jack Kerouac's major works, The Town and the City is essentially an autobiographical novel, though less directly so than most of his other works. The Town and the City was written in a conventional manner over a period of years, and much more novelistic license was taken with this work than after Kerouac's adoption of quickly written 'spontaneous prose'. ..."
Wikipedia
Pseudo-Intellectual Reviews
NY Times: Of Growth and Decay (March 1950)
Retracing Jack Kerouac
amazon
YouTube: by Jack Kerouac recited by Allen Ginsberg, Coleman Hawkins, "Body and Soul" from Kerouac, 4) 'The Town And The City' - Jack Kerouac Jazz and Prose

2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959), 2015 December: Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken, 2016 July: Mexico City Blues (1959), 2017 February: The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990), 2017 May: The Subterraneans (1958)

ARPANET

Wikipedia - "The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was an early packet switching network and the first network to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. ARPANET was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. The packet switching methodology employed in the ARPANET was based on concepts and designs by Americans Leonard Kleinrock, Paul Baran, Lawrence Roberts and British scientist Donald Davies. ..."
Wikipedia
Historical Maps of Computer Networks
Internet History 1962 to 1992
YouTube: A Visual History of Human Knowledge | Manuel Lima | TED Talks

During Prohibition, Harlem Night Clubs Kept the Party Going

"Prohibition may have put a damper on alcohol sales in much of the United States in the 1920s and early ’30s, but it didn’t stop the party up in Harlem. The map above, created in 1932, shows a thriving nightlife centered on New York jazz venues like the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom. The map is filled with caricatures of famous musicians and dubious denizens of the nighttime scene, as well as helpful tips for partygoers. 'It’s pretty fantastic,' says Melissa Barton, curator of drama and prose for the Collection of American Literature at Yale University’s Beinecke Library. 'It’s just packed with details.' ..."
National Geographic
Gather Out of Star-Dust: The Harlem Renaissance & the Beinecke Library
A Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance in Maps, Manuscripts, and Art
Yale Books
YouTube: Earl "Snake Hips" Tucker

2009 February: Harlem Renaissance, 2010 August: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2010 October: Apollo Theater, 2014 May: History of Harlem, 2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday, 2015 February: A Nightclub Map of Harlem

Allen Ravenstine

Wikipedia - "Allen Ravenstine (born May 9, 1950) is an American keyboard player, most recognized for his work in the experimental rock group Pere Ubu. In 1991, he quit music to become a commercial airline pilot. Allen Ravenstine was born on May 9, 1950. ... He met visual artist Bob Bensick, who was experimenting with sending distortion into oscillators and out a stereo system. Eventually, they discovered a way to attach lights and have them work in conjunction with the sounds being produced and decided to stage art shows. The act was short lived as Ravenstine moved out of the area and lost contact with Bensick. Soon after, Ravenstine purchased his first synthesizer, an ElectroComp EML 200, and began associating with the garage band Rocket from the Tombs and recording their performances. ..."
Wikipedia
‘Terminal Drive’: Pere Ubu’s Allen Ravenstine’s legendary long lost electronic composition found (Video)
Furious: Allen Ravenstine 1, 2, 3, 4
Blue Jet Music
City Desk / Farm Report - Robert Wheeler & Allen Ravenstine
Allen Ravenstine "Terminal Drive" CD
Allen Ravenstine + Robert Wheeler On EML Modular Synthesizers (Video)
iTunes, Spotify, amazon
YouTube: City Desk - Farm Report

EML 101

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), 2016 December: Don't Expect Art (1980), 2017 January: New Picnic Time (1979)

Marsden Hartley's Maine

Lobster Fishermen, (1940-41)
"This exhibition explores Marsden Hartley's complex, sometimes contradictory, and visually arresting relationship with his native state—from the lush Post-Impressionist inland landscapes with which he launched his career, to the later roughly rendered paintings of Maine's rugged coastal terrain, its hardy inhabitants, and the magisterial Mount Katahdin. Hartley's renowned abstract German series, New Mexico recollections, and Nova Scotia period have been celebrated in previous exhibitions, but Marsden Hartley's Maine illuminates Maine as a critical factor in understanding the artist's high place in American art history. Maine served as an essential slate upon which he pursued new ideas and theories. It was a lifelong source of inspiration intertwined with his personal history, cultural milieu, and desire to create a regional expression of American modernism. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art (Video)
NY Times: ‘Marsden Hartley’s Maine,’ His Muse, First and Last

Did Gerard de Nerval walk his pet lobster through Paris?

"Legend has it that the 19th-century French Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855) had a pet lobster named Thibault that he took on walks in the Palais Royal gardens of Paris, using a blue silk ribbon as a leash. When asked why he did this, he replied: Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? Or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. ... In other words, the lobster that Nerval walked was a symbolic lobster, not a real one. Nerval, [Mark] Dery notes, was 'a fervent scholar of the occult,' and lobsters have special significance in some occult sources, such as Tarot cards. For instance, the Moon card shows a lobster crawling out of a pool onto dry land, up a path guarded by two dogs (or a dog and a wolf) toward the full moon. The lobster, in this setting, could be interpreted as a symbol of the animal self struggling toward enlightenment. ..."
Hoaxes
Harpers - Nerval: A Man and His Lobster
New Yorker: Lobsters and Lies
Nerval's Lobster By Mark Dery
Gérard de Nerval – the man who walked lobsters – fallen stars
The Man Who Loved Lobster

2007 December: Gerard De Nerval, 2010 March: Robin Blaser - Les Chimeres, 2016 June: Voyage to the Orient (1851), 2017 March: Selected Writings of Gerard De Nerval (1957)

Los Angeles - X (1980)

"By the late '70s, punk rock and hardcore were infiltrating the Los Angeles music scene. Such bands as Black Flag, the Germs, and, especially, X were the leaders of the pack, prompting an avalanche of copycat bands and eventually signing record contracts themselves. X's debut, Los Angeles, is considered by many to be one of punk's all-time finest recordings, and with good reason. Most punk bands used their musical inability to create their own style, but X actually consisted of some truly gifted musicians, including rockabilly guitarist Billy Zoom, bassist John Doe, and frontwoman Exene Cervenka, who, with Doe, penned poetic lyrics and perfected sweet yet biting vocal harmonies. ... Although they utilize elements of punk's frenzy and electricity, they also add country, ballads, and rockabilly to the mix."
allmusic
W - Los Angeles
amazon, iTumes
YouTube: Los Angeles (music video - Live), Your Phone's Off The Hook - Live 1980 Rare!
YouTube: Los Angeles (Full Album) 32:04

An Upper West Side Art Nouveau–like subway sign

"You don’t have to be a typeface nerd to appreciate loveliness the letters and numerals affixed to plaques and signs in the city’s earliest subway stations. My favorite is the '96' at the Broadway and 96th Street station. Opened in 1904 as part of the original IRT line, it looks like the numerals were created by hand, not a printing press. Thanks to the rosettes, green coloring, and what look like two tulips framing the numerals, this plaque across from the platform also looks like a rare examples of the naturalistic Art Nouveau design style—which swept Europe in the early 20th century but didn’t make much of an impression in New York, save for some building facades."
Ephemeral New York
W - 96th Street (IRT Lexington Avenue Line)

Olivier Assayas - Summer Hours (2009)

"In a literal, almost banal sense, Olivier Assayas’s 'Summer Hours' is a movie about an inheritance. Hélène Berthier (Edith Scob), a silver-haired matriarch enthroned among her children and grandchildren at the beginning of the film, leaves behind a charming country house and a cherished art collection, and her heirs, as is normal, must figure out what to do with it all after her death. Hélène’s eldest son, Frédéric (Charles Berling), wants to keep everything as it is, so that the next generation can gather at the old place and appreciate Grandma’s stuff. But Frédéric’s sister, Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), and their younger brother, Jérémie (Jérémie Renier), who live abroad (she in the United States, he in China with his wife and three children), would rather sell the house and most of what is in it, donating the best of the paintings, pieces of furniture and sundry knickknacks to the Musée d’Orsay. ..."
NY Times - Sorting Out an Inheritance: Three Siblings Dissect the Stuff of Life
Film Comment
Criterion (Video)
W - Summer Hours
NY Times: The 25 Best Films of the 21st Century. So Far.

Outdoor Miner / Practice Makes Perfect - Wire (1979)

Wikipedia - "'Outdoor Miner' is a song written by Colin Newman and Graham Lewis, and performed by the English post-punk band Wire. ... The song is based on Graham Lewis's fascination with the Serpentine leaf miner insect and details the life cycle of the insect. EMI recognised that the song could potentially be a hit single, but were concerned that it was too short, measuring only 1 minute 45 seconds. Unusually the label asked the band to make a longer version for the single. The band added an additional verse and chorus, and a piano solo played by producer Mike Thorne, pushing the length to 2 minutes 51 seconds. EMI were confident that the song could become a hit and commercial breakthrough for the band. ..."
Wikipedia
Perfect Pop | Outdoor Miner By Wire
YouTube: Outdoor Miner, Practice Makes Perfect

2009 January: Wire, 2012 January: On the Box 1979., 2013 September: Chairs Missing (1978), 2014 June: 154 (1979), 2014 July: Document And Eyewitness (1979-1980), 2015 April: The Ideal Copies: Graham Lewis Of Wire's Favourite Albums, 2015 July: Pink Flag (1977), 2015 December: The Peel Sessions Album (1989), “Dot Dash”, "Options R" (1978).

Portraits by Cézanne

Boy in a Red Waistcoat (1888-1890)
"Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) painted almost 200 portraits during his career, including 26 of himself and 29 of his wife, Hortense Fiquet. The exhibition will explore the special pictorial and thematic characteristics of Cézanne's portraiture, including his creation of complementary pairs and multiple versions of the same subject. The chronological development of Cézanne's portraiture will be considered, with an examination of the changes that occurred with respect to his style and method, and his understanding of resemblance and identity. The exhibition will also discuss the extent to which particular sitters inflected the characteristics and development of his practise. ..."
Musée d'Orsay (Video)
Musée d'Orsay: For a detailed presentation

2011 August: Paul Cézanne, 2014 November: Cézanne: Landscape into Art, 2015 March: Madame Cézanne

The Underside Of Power - Algiers (2017)

"We named Algiers a Band To Watch back in 2015 on the strength of their self-titled debut. The politically-minded gospel-punks, now a quartet following the addition of former Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong, are returning in June with a new album called The Underside Of Power, produced by Portishead’s Adrian Utley and Ali Chant, mixed by Randall Dunn of Sunn O))), and featuring post-production by the Men’s Ben Greenberg. Dunn and Greenberg both have cameos in the Henry Busby-directed video for the title track, which follows the band as they organize an anti-fascist resistance movement from their dimly-lit underground bunker. ..."
stereogum
NPR: Algiers Shows Us 'The Underside Of Power'
amazon
YouTube: The Underside of Power, Cleveland, Full Performance (Live on KEXP). Recorded June 19, 2015. 27:55