Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father

"President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day. Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings. ..."
NY Times (Audio)
NY Times: Opinion - Donald Trump and the Self-Made Sham

Punking Out, a Short 1978 Documentary Records the Beginning of the Punk Scene at CBGB’s

The Ramones
"I hate to be one of those people who goes on about how punk was an all-American phenomenon before it crossed the pond. But hell, I’ve no less an authority on the counterculture than William S. Burroughs on my side, or on the side of Legs McNeil, at least, the music journalist who just happened to give punk its name by co-founding Punk magazine in 1975. Of McNeil’s seminal oral history Please Kill Me, Burroughs remarks, 'This book tells it like was.' More accurately, it lets the music’s frontiersmen and women tell it, starting with Lou Reed and the Velvets and other mainstays in Andy Warhol’s Factory scene. McNeil’s book surveys a number of major American scenesters, most of them from New York, with the exception of The Stooges from Detroit, and one exceptional band from, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio. The Dead Boys rarely get their due, but they were as influential as the Ramones in the downtown New York scene. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
Must-Watch: “Punking Out” – a Short 1978 Documentary About the CBGB Scene (Video)

Charles Simonds - Dwellings

Picaresque Landscape (detail). Museum of Modern Art installation, 1976.
"Charles Simonds is an artist who has been making dwelling places for an imaginary civilization of Little People who are migrating through the streets of cities throughout the world. Each dwelling tells part of the story of the lives of these people, where they have gone, what they do, how they live, and what they believe. Usually passersby, often children, join in as Simonds works and he offers them clay bricks, and allows them to add to his dwelling or to make a fantasy dwelling of their own. In 2016 Simonds was invited by the Department of Arts and Culture of the city of Munich to propose a public artwork. ... Irving Sandler has followed Simonds’s work since the artist began creating dwellings in the streets of the Lower East Side of New York in the early 1970s. He was curious about the Munich project and interested to know how Simonds’s involvement with children relates to his conception of art-making generally. ..."
Brooklyn Rail: CHARLES SIMONDS with Irving Sandler
UbuWeb: Charles Simonds (b. 1945) - Dwellings (1972), Landscape <--> Body <--> Dwelling (1973), Dwellings Winter (1974) (Video)
Charles Simonds - Dwellings (Video)

Dwelling, Dublin, 1980.

Music Revelation Ensemble - No Wave (1980)

"James 'Blood' Ulmer may well be the only constant in the Music Revelation Ensemble, or MRE. For over 20 years, the self-professed blues preacher has remained the sole permanent member of this ever-shifting group, known as much for mixing up melodics as personnel. This is not to say the pursuit is a sketchy one: Since its 1980 Moers Music release No Wave, featuring Ulmer on guitar, David Murray on tenor saxophone, Amin Ali on electric bass, and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, MRE has been fueling the free jazz torch lit by pioneer and Ulmer mentor Ornette Coleman so adeptly that All Music Guide’s Chris Kelsey was moved to call the group 'one of the first and best free jazz/funk bands.' ..."
Different Perspectives In My Room
Discogs (Video)
W - No Wave (album)
YouTube: Big Tree, Sound Check, Baby Talk

TellusTools (1992)

"... A legendary twin-release, TellusTools was a 2LP set meant as a Tellus resumé and a DJ tool, albeit purposedly intended for ‘perspective DJs’ (according to liner notes). Basically, this is a Tellus survey conceived by curator Taketo Shimada, with 7 Tellus sound excerpts added at end of side 2 for break-beat purposes. Both discs have the same content to allow creative mixing on 2 turntables. A New York resident since the late 1980s, Taketo Shimada graduated from MIT in 1997. A visual artist and musician, he was then a member of the band Messages along Tres Warren. ... The TellusTools’ cover art by Christian Marclay is gorgeous, an arrangement of spread out Tellus cassettes and dischevelled audio tape. Musically speaking, the choice is clearly aiming at sound art – no electric guitar here, no improvisation, no theater–, and participants are mostly US sound artists from NY’s early 1990s art milieu. Basquiat even found his way – along Rammelzee – on Isaac Jackson’s radio show excerpt from 1982, for an exqusite early hip-hop session. Other tracks include concrete/plunderphonic experiments, avant-song and performance pieces. ..."
Continuo
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Messages from The RAMMELLZEE, Jean-Michel Basquiat, A-One, Toxic C1 & General Arbitrator KOOL KOOR, Alan Tomlinson - Floor Polish Tango, Christian Marclay - Groove, Maurice Lemaître - Lettre Rock

Terrorist By Association

"In the salle des assises, the Paris courtroom reserved for the examination of murders, rapes, and other serious crimes, a box of thick glass has been erected atop the old wood enclosure in which the accused is made to sit. The glass is a recent addition, and incongruous; the remainder of the room—the lustrous carved oak of the wainscoting, the six brass chandeliers strung from the high plafond—has been preserved as it was at least a century and a half ago. Above the glass box, a grand mural depicts a conclave of red-robed judges and the child king Louis XIII. The mural is in fact a somewhat recent flourish, having been commissioned by the wartime fascists of Vichy, but that infelicitous detail is easily obscured by the vision of splendid continuity the painting sets forth. French judges still wear those red robes. Amid this pomp, the effect of the glass box is that of nothing so much as a museum specimen case, one intended for curiosities of human scale. Last year, for the month of October, it held a 35-year-old Franco-Algerian man named Abdelkader Merah. ..."
New Republic

Photographer Alex Harsley Created An Artists’ Hub In the East Village—And Now He’s Trying To Save It

"All the roads in Alex Harsley’s life have led him to photography (many of these roads he traversed as a young man keen on tearing up the streets of New York on his sweet motorcycle). Specifically, what he calls 'information photography.' ... He gestures to a photograph on the wall near him, where a man and woman stand under streetlamps on a New York night. Two drops of blue from the streetlights—almost like splashes of paint—stand out from the yellow and black hues of the photo. This is a signature technique of Harsley, who’s spent much of his life experimenting with the ultraviolet spectrum by pulling different colors out and plopping them where they normally wouldn’t be seen. But Harsley is fixated on a different detail at the moment. ..."
Bedford + Bowery
GoFundMe - Keep the 4th St Photo Gallery Open! (Video)
vimeo: Alex Harsley - East Village photographer

Céleste Albaret

Wikipedia - "Céleste Albaret (née Gineste, 17 May 1891 – 25 April 1984) was a country girl who moved to Paris in 1913 when she married the taxi driver Odilon Albaret. The most regular of Odilon Albaret's regular clients was the celebrated novelist and critic, Marcel Proust. Lonely and bored in the grand city, and at her husband's suggestion, Albaret began to run errands for Proust. Before very long she became his secretary and housekeeper. During the final decade of Proust's life his health declined and he became progressively more withdrawn, even while working with continuing intensity on his writing: she became his nurse and 'the writer’s most trusted conduit to the world beyond his reclusive, cork-lined bedroom'. Marcel Proust died in 1922 and Albaret moved on to run a small Paris hotel, together with her husband and daughter. Odilon Albaret died in 1960, by which time the hotel had been sold and Albaret had become the caretaker-guide at a museum at Montfort-l'Amaury, on the western edge of Paris. In the early 1970s she was persuaded by the Laffont publishing company that she should disclose what she could concerning the private life of Marcel Proust, who was still an iconic literary figure among the intellectual classes. ..."
Wikipedia
NYRB: Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret, foreword by André Aciman, translated from the French by Barbara Bray

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, 2016 May: The Guermantes Way (1920-21), 2016 August: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time — Patrick Alexander, 2016 October: My Strange Friend Marcel Proust, 2017 March: Sodom and Gomorrah (1921-1922), 2017 August: Letters To His Neighbor by Marcel Proust; translated by Lydia Davis, October: Proust's À la recherche – a novel big enough for the world, 2017 October: Proust Fans Eagerly Await Trove of Letters Going Online, 2017 December: The Prisoner / The Fugitive (1923-1925), 2018 May: Time Regained (1927)

From Roots to Dancehall

"The death of Bob Marley in 1981 is often conceived as a line of demarcation, signalling the end of roots reggae and the dawning of dancehall. But Jamaican music has never been as simple as that. Dig a little deeper and you will find that the shift happened significantly earlier, with the deejays of western Kingston being the major catalysts of change. For much of the last fifty years, Jamaican popular music has been typified by transformation. Most readers will be familiar with the ska/rock steady/reggae axis that was at the music’s core before dancehall’s advent. In fact, the island’s earliest recordings featured mento — an indigenous folk form — and during the late 1950s, a Jamaican form of rhythm and blues gained favour, which gave way to ska as the independence movement gathered steam. Then, after the pared-down rock steady dominated, in late 1968, reggae came storming in as a fast-paced dance style with a shuffling organ. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

The Absence Of Alice Coltrane – Reflections On Spiritual Eternal

"Getting over yourself is a lifelong job; you really have to keep at it, and most of us never manage. You might struggle, too, to work out what the difference is – practically speaking – between getting over yourself and just sitting down and being quiet. (You’d be in good company, and would perhaps make an excellent nun.) The fear, perhaps, is how do you get over yourself without making yourself disappear? There's no doubt that Alice Coltrane got over herself. She had help (though that might not be the right way to put it) when she was widowed aged 29 with four children to look after, her beloved husband killed by cancer. Grief can do amazing, terrible and bottomlessly strange things to you. In the period following John Coltrane's death, the harp that he'd ordered a few months previously arrived and Alice began to play it. She also entered into what she described as her tapas – a period of spiritual cleansing – where she fasted, deprived herself of sleep, meditated, hallucinated, and was admitted to hospital after purposefully burning herself during 'examinations' to see her body's further reactions to extremity. ..."
The Quietus

Senate Panel Approves Kavanaugh, but Flake Wants F.B.I. Investigation Before Final Vote

"The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Friday to advance Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate, but in a dramatic reversal, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona said he would not support final confirmation until the F.B.I. investigates accusations of sexual assault leveled against Judge Kavanaugh. The decision put a cloud over what Republicans expected to be a triumphant day, but they still had reason to be optimistic: Despite adamant Democratic opposition, they were still able to muscle the nomination through committee with an 11-to-10 vote and send it to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation. Mr. Flake, an Arizona Republican, had announced Friday morning that he would vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, less than 24 hours after a remarkable public hearing with a woman accusing him of sexual assault. But after nearly an hour of hushed negotiations with Democratic senators in an anteroom to the chamber on Friday, Mr. Flake, who is retiring at the end of the term, chose a different course. His decision threw the nomination into uncertainty just moments before the panel was set to vote. ..."
NY Times (Video)
****facebook: Samuel L has some words for Kavanaugh (Video)
NY Times: A Bitter Nominee, Questions of Neutrality, and a Damaged Supreme Court (Video)
The Atlantic: Kavanaugh’s Fate Will Have a Massive Ripple Effect
NY Times: Two Voices Pierce Washington: ‘I Am Terrified.’ ‘I Am Innocent.’
CNN: Frustrated Trump turns optimistic on Kavanaugh (Video)
CNN: Ford '100%' certain of assault claim; Kavanaugh says 'I am innocent' (Video)
NY Times: Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford Square Off in Emotional Hearing With Court in Balance (Video)
The Atlantic: The 17 Most Striking Moments From the Kavanaugh Hearing
The Atlantic: Once Christine Blasey Ford's Humanity Was on Display, It Was All Over
The Atlantic: What's in It for Christine Blasey Ford?
The Atlantic: Lindsey Graham’s Furious Defense of Brett Kavanaugh
New Republic: Brett Kavanaugh Disqualified Himself From the Supreme Court
WSJ: Kavanaugh: “If I Had Done That, It Would Have Been the Talk of Campus.” (Video)

Spaccanapoli - Vesuvio (As featured in The Sopranos)

"Vesuvio is a volcano mountain in Naples. This song is by the European group 'Spaccanapoli' The pictures are all from Deviant Art web site. This song was used in the Sopranos to describe the affair that was about to happen between Carmella and Furio. I think the words fit that situation perfectly. And I was captivated by this song when I heard it on there and it took me a long time to find out who it was by and what it was about. The lyrics for this song in both Napoli and English translation are as follows...."
YouTube: Vesuvio By Spaccanapoli (Napoli and English translated lyrics)

The Golden Bowl - Henry James (1904)

Wikipedia - "The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight. ... The Golden Bowl's intense focus on these four characters gives the novel both its tremendous power and its peculiar feeling of claustrophobia. While the book delves deeply and often brilliantly into the consciousness of Amerigo and Maggie, some critics think it loses momentum in a maze of over-analysis. ..."
Wikipedia
Literary Corner Cafe
NYBooks: Cracking ‘The Golden Bowl’
On Bookes
[PDF] Gutenberg - The Golden Bowl
amazon

The Rise of West Coast Democrats

"In July, Jeff Merkley, the junior senator from Oregon, traveled to Iowa. The trip was his third in twelve months—a sign, political commentators said, that he was preparing to launch a presidential bid. Nobody from the West Coast has ever won the Democratic presidential nomination. But two years from now, at least six will likely be competing for it: a mayor, a governor, at least two senators, even a few business executives. Tom Steyer, a venture capitalist from San Francisco, has already spent $40 million on a national ad campaign calling for President Trump’s impeachment and has held town halls in Iowa and New Hampshire. ..."
New Republic

Material - The Road to the Western Lands (1998)

"This generous remix album delivers five versions of 'The Western Land' and two of the title tracks from Material's Seven Souls album, which was originally released on the Virgin label in 1989 and was reissued by Triloka in 1997. (Tracks one and seven are duplicated on the full album.) All of the remixes are radical departures from the album tracks on which they're based, and you might never guess that all the 'Western Land' mixes are based on the same original version if it wasn't for the wisps of William Burroughs' laconic spoken-word vocals fluttering in and out of all of them. There are lots of big names here, including Talvin Singh (who weighs in with an attractively funky, if unexciting, selection), DJ Olive and DJ Soul Slinger (who gets more radical with the source material, messes around more with Burroughs' voice and creates extremely intricate rhythms, to compelling effect). Spring Heel Jack take a sort of ambient approach, with frankly boring results. But Bill Laswell's ten-minute excursion on 'Seven Souls' is a revelation. Recommended with minor reservations."
allmusic
W - Seven Souls (album)
W - The Western Lands - William S. Burroughs (1987)
NY Times: Joe the Dead Seeks Immortality
amazon
YouTube: Material + William S. Burroughs ۞ Seven Souls, the western lands, Deliver

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive, 2016 December: #6 – Call Me Burroughs LP, 2017 January: A Visit to William S. Burroughs at the Beat Hotel in Summer, 1958, 2017 December: The Nova Trilogy (The Cut-up Trilogy)

A Responsible Freedom: Patti Smith on ‘Little Women’ - Patti Smith

"Perhaps no other book provided a greater guide, as I set out on my youthful path, than Louisa May Alcott’s most beloved novel, Little Women. I was a wiry daydreamer, just ten years old. Life was already presenting challenges for an awkward tomboy growing up in the gender-defined 1950s. Uninterested in preordained activities, I would take off on my blue bicycle, to a secluded place in the woods, and read the books I had checked out, often over and over again, from the local library. I could hardly be found without book in hand and sacrificed sleep and hours at play to enter wholeheartedly each of their unique worlds. Many wonderful books captured my imagination, but in Little Women something extraordinary happened. I recognized myself, as if in a mirror, the lanky headstrong girl, who raced on foot, ripped her skirts climbing trees, spoke in common slang, and denounced social pretensions. ..."
The Paris Review
W - Little Women

Distortion

Wikipedia - "Distortion and overdrive are forms of audio signal processing used to alter the sound of amplified electric musical instruments, usually by increasing their gain, producing a 'fuzzy', 'growling', or 'gritty' tone. Distortion is most commonly used with the electric guitar, but may also be used with other electric instruments such as bass guitar, electric piano, and Hammond organ. Guitarists playing electric blues originally obtained an overdriven sound by turning up their vacuum tube-powered guitar amplifiers to high volumes, which caused the signal to distort. While overdriven tube amps are still used to obtain overdrive in the 2010s, especially in genres like blues and rockabilly, a number of other ways to produce distortion have been developed since the 1960s, such as distortion effect pedals. The growling tone of distorted electric guitar is a key part of many genres, including blues and many rock music genres, notably hard rock, punk rock, hardcore punk, acid rock, and heavy metal music. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: A Brief History of Electric Guitar Distortion 9:15

From ’80s Street Art to Graphic Novels. And Back.

Richard McGuire in his Tribeca studio with new posters in the style of his 1979-82 Ixnae Nix works.
"It’s hard to imagine many people becoming emotional over a nondescript alley in downtown New York. But the illustrator and graphic novelist Richard McGuire sounded downright wistful as he gazed out the back window of his fifth-floor studio at Cortlandt Alley — which once led to the Mudd Club, a much-mythologized dawn-of-the-’80s nightspot. Yet he wasn’t feeling nostalgic for his time onstage there, playing bass with his band Liquid Liquid. Rather he was focused on the alley itself, where he had once spent many late nights furtively looking over his shoulder for passing police cars as he wheatpasted handmade posters of his alien-like Ixnae Nix character onto the walls. ..."
NY Times
Alden Projects - Richard McGuire: Art for the Street – 1978-1982

Ixnae Nix amid downtown’s “babel of competing images,” in 1979.

Geraldo Pino & The Heartbeats – Afro Soco Soul Live (1972)

"2018 CD re-issue of 1972 album on Oom Dooby Dochas of Geraldo Pino's super rare afro-funk album 'Afro Soco Soul Live'. One of the hidden heroes of African popular music, singer, guitarist and band leader from Sierra Leone, Geraldo 'Pine' Pino had a major influence on the burgeoning afrobeat/soul/funk scene in West Africa during the '60s and '70s. 'Afro Soco Soul Live' is a live album at the top of the game, stretching out for heavy Afro-funk jams! ..."
Holland Tunnel
Discogs
Merlins Nose Records (Audio)
YouTube: Geraldo Pino - Afro Soco Soul Live (Full) 36:50

Gerry Mulligan Quartet - Pacific Jazz Records (1952)

"This was the 10" LP that launched the Pacific Jazz label. In fact, producer Dick Bock originally started his label specifically to record the popular Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Baritonist Mulligan, trumpeter Chet Baker, bassist Bob Whitlock, and drummer Chico Hamilton made for a classic team, as can be heard on the eight numbers that comprise this album. All of the music has since been reissued many times, but they are still worth hearing, particularly such performances as 'Soft Shoe,' 'Aren't You Glad You're You,' 'Bernie's Tune,' 'Walkin' Shoes,' and 'Nights at the Turntable.' Classic music."
allmusic
Discogs
W - Gerry Mulligan Quartet Volume 1
YouTube: Gerry Mulligan Quartet 23:40

Fairfield Porter – "Mystery that is Essential to Reality"

Bear Island with Spruces, 1974
"Fairfield Porter has been on my mind recently which led me to finding some interesting articles, books and links related to Porter’s paintings that I’d like to share. A recurring theme that often reverberates back and forth inside my head is the notion about painting nature the way you find it. To find the underlying abstract structure of the painting through what is seen rather than imposing a notion of what’s the best order. Of course this doesn’t mean mindless inventory and copy of details but rather looking past the unessential to get to that best line of poetry which captures this particular moment and the experience of looking. The key is keeping it real, that the truthful interaction with nature is often far more inventive, surprising and fresh than repeating ideas of what you think a painting’s proper subject is or should look like. One of my biggest attractions to Fairfield Porter is this honesty before his motif as well as his background parallel-track tunes playing from the ethers of Bonnard, Vuillard, Velázquez and Tiepolo. ..."
Painting Perceptions
W - Fairfield Porter

Spruce & Birch, 1964

In The Weeds

"Take the B31 bus to the last stop at the end of Gerritsen Avenue, and you’ll arrive at what locals call 'the Point,' a sandy strip of unguarded shoreline at the southern tip of Brooklyn’s 900-acre Marine Park. This land was originally intended to be one of New York City’s largest and most ambitious public spaces, with grand designs that included a 100,000-seat stadium, nine swimming pools, and enough recreational facilities to cover 1,800 acres of parkland. But the project was sidelined by the Great Depression and drastically scaled back by the time it resumed in the late 1940s. Mountains of garbage were transferred to the site and covered with topsoil to fill in 1,000 acres of swampy marshland, but in some areas, the work stopped there. Today, large sections of the park remain undeveloped. As a result, the westernmost banks of Gerritsen Creek boast a degree of wildness that you wouldn’t expect to find within the city limits. ..."
BKLYNR
W - Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn

R.L. Burnside - Mississippi Hill Country Blues

"Culled from early ’80s sessions originally recorded in the Netherlands, this compilation features Burnside-currently being touted as an icon in alternative rock circles-singing in that riveting, blues-drenched style accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. The final three tracks were recorded near Coldwater, Miss., in 1967 and carry the same mesmerizing rhythmic drive and deep blue spirit of the Delta that typifies Burnside’s work to this day."
JazzTimes
W - Hill country blues
North Mississippi Hill Country Blues: It's NOT the Delta Blues! (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Mississippi Hill Country Blues - Full Album 56:29

Jakarta Records x Habibi Funk (Jannis & Malte) • DJ Sets • Le Mellotron

"Pas peu fier de recevoir les boss du label allemand Jakarta Records et Habibi Funk au studio ! Diggers invétérés, en constante recherche de perles musicales, Jannis et Malte sont arrivés avec quelques sacs à disques, des oldies et des fraicheurs du label. Un panel assez large, à l'image de Jakarta et Habibi Funk, mais 100% quali. Le Mellotron is all about people and music. In the beginning it was a blog that quickly takes the shape of a webradio gathering a growing community of music curators and lovers. Located in a bar just steps from Place de la Republique, in the heart of Paris, Le Mellotron beats day after day to the rhythm of the city, its people and streets. We strongly believe in a an emerging parisian musical scene, moved by its curiosity, able to capture and transform its worldwide influences. LeMellotron will be its amplifier."
Le Mellotron (Video/Audio)

The Village Voice (1955–2018)

"The destruction of the Village Voice — in the spirit of the paper itself, let’s not mince words about the nature of its ending—may not have been a surprise, but it was still a shock to the system. I myself was a latecomer to the publication, first hired as a pinch-hitter art critic in 2014, and then bumped up to art columnist in 2016. At that time, a new owner promised a new era, vowing to make the Voice great again, and we who worked there believed him. Few of us trusted the self-proclaimed savior, but we did somehow, perhaps a bit dumbly, have faith that the phoenix would inevitably rise from the ashes as it had before—this time, with great enough force and vitality that the city would have its beloved and reviled weekly back on the streets. And for a while, it did. The Voice was a cultural necessity for decades, a breeding ground for generations of passionate and relentless journalists, critics, and writers, where they could hone their chops, flex their intellects, dig deep and deeper still into acts both heroic and criminal, whether civic or aesthetic. As its title promised, it produced a raucous and joyful chorus that remains a standard by which writerly courage is still measured. ..."
ARTFORUM
The Voice and Its Village

Alexander Cockburn leads an editorial meeting in the Voice offices.

2018 September: Last Rites for the Village Voice, a Bohemian Who Stayed On Too Long

The Hieronymus Bosch Demon Bird Was Spotted Riding the New York City Subway the Other Day…

"To me, the great promise of homeschooling is that one day your child might, on their own initiative, ride the New York City subways dressed in a homemade, needlefelted costume modeled on the ice-skating bird messenger from Hieronymus Bosch’s The Temptation of St. Anthony. ... Even the tiniest creature produced by this method is a labor intensive proposition, wherein loose woolen fibers are soaked, soaped, and jabbed with a needle until they come together in a rough mat, suitable for shaping into the whimsical—or demonic—figure of its creator’s choosing. Stimson matched her full-head bird mask to the one in the painting by equipping it with gloves, a blanket cloak, long velvet ears, and a leafless twig emerging from the spout of its hand-painted funnel hat. ..."
Open Culture
Hieronymus Bosch: The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Lisbon, and Kansas City)
W - Triptych of the Temptation of St. Anthony

Hieronymus Bosch (c 1450–1516), The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Lisbon) (left wing, detail)

The Plot to Subvert an Election: Unraveling the Russia Story So Far

"On an October afternoon before the 2016 election, a huge banner was unfurled from the Manhattan Bridge in New York City: Vladimir V. Putin against a Russian-flag background, and the unlikely word 'Peacemaker' below. It was a daredevil happy birthday to the Russian president, who was turning 64. In November, shortly after Donald J. Trump eked out a victory that Moscow had worked to assist, an even bigger banner appeared, this time on the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington: the face of President Barack Obama and 'Goodbye Murderer' in big red letters. Police never identified who had hung the banners, but there were clues. The earliest promoters of the images on Twitter were American-sounding accounts, including @LeroyLovesUSA, later exposed as Russian fakes operated from St. Petersburg to influence American voters. The Kremlin, it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory laps for the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history. For many Americans, the Trump-Russia story as it has been voluminously reported over the past two years is a confusing tangle of unfamiliar names and cyberjargon, further obscured by the shout-fest of partisan politics. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: A Timeline Showing the Full Scale of Russia’s - Unprecedented Interference in the 2016 Election, and Its Aftermath
NY Times: Collecting the Details of the Russia Investigation in One Place

Houston Chronicle: Russian online trolls organized a protest of an Islamic center in Houston in 2016. ("A Houston protest, organized by Russian trolls" - Feb. 20, 2018)

Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Resina, Shida Shahabi - The Sea At The End Of Her String (2018)

"‘The Sea at The End of Her String’ is a seven-track EP that highlights three adventurous, hugely talented female artists from the current roster of FatCat’s pioneering 130701 imprint. Featuring seven exclusive new tracks, the EP is available both digitally and in a limited edition, one-time-only vinyl pressing of 300 copies to be sold alongside a short, triple-bill UK tour. Both tour and EP feature the same three artists – French pianist / composer Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Polish cellist Resina and Swedish-Iranian pianist Shida Shahabi. The EP’s title is taken from a line in Sylvia Plath’s poem, ‘Three Women’ and, whilst taken somewhat out of context, is used here to indicate both the instrumental rooting of the three artists’ music (bound to the resonating strings of the piano or cello) and to offer some suggestion of the fluidity and vastness it either draws from or expresses. ..."
fat cat records
Soundcloud: Emilie Levienaise - Farrouch - Layers Of Sentiments (Audio)
YouTube: Époques; Morphee; A Trace Of Salt

Neo-noir

Wikipedia - "Neo-noir is a modern or contemporary motion picture rendition of film noir. The term film noir (popularised by two French critics, namely, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, in 1955) was applied to crime movies of the 1940s and 1950s, most produced in the United States. It meant dark movie, indicating a sense of something sinister and shadowy, but also expressing a style of cinematography. The film noir genre includes stylish Hollywood crime dramas, often with a twisted dark wit. Neo-noir has a similar style but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media. Neo-noir, as the term suggests, is contemporary noir. The film directors knowingly refer to 'classic noir' in the use of tilted camera angles, interplay of light and shadows, unbalanced framing; blurring of the lines between good and bad and right and wrong, and a motif of revenge, paranoia, and alienation, among other sensibilities. ..."
Wikipedia
W - List of neo-noir titles
10 Great European Neo-Noir Films
Independent: The ten greatest neo-noir films
10 Neo-Noir Films That Should Be Essential Viewing

Meet the Cultural Illuminati Guarding France’s Most Sacrosanct Asset: The French Language

The Institut de France, home to the Académie Française, situated in Paris’s Sixth Arrondissement. Opposite, the Académie’s meeting room.
"When you’re known as 'the immortals,' as are the 40 members of the Académie Française, it’s hard to take yourselves lightly. Over the course of five centuries, 732 of them have walked the earth and reigned as the guardians of France’s most sacrosanct asset: its language. A linguistic secret service, if you like, they project an almost priestly aura when they don their habits verts—long black cloaks embroidered with leafy-green botanical motifs—accessorized with elaborate ceremonial swords. Drawn from the arts and academia as well as the clergy and government, the Académie is considered to include the nation’s finest minds, and is revered accordingly. It is, after all, the most exclusive club in France. ... Inside their temple-like palace on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre, in the majestic coupole-topped chamber where they convene, a good portion of the numbered fauteuils have sat vacant for long stretches (six were unoccupied in 2017) while the Académie goes through its laborious election process. In May, it chose its fifth living female immortal, and the ninth ever. ..."
Vanity Fair
W - Académie française

Philologist and newly elected Académie member Barbara Cassin at her Paris apartment.

Radiant and Radical: 20 Years of Defining the Soul of Black Art

Elizabeth Catlett’s 1968 mahogany sculpture “Black Unity” and Faith Ringgold’s 1967 painting “American People Series #18: The Flag Is Bleeding” in the new Brooklyn Museum exhibition “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.”
"It will be a happy day when racial harmony rules in this land. But that day’s not coming any time soon. Who could have guessed in the 1960s, when civil rights became law, that a new century would bring white supremacy tiki torching out of the closet and turn the idea that black lives matter, so beyond obvious, into a desperate battle cry? Actually, African-Americans could have seen such things coming. No citizens know the national narrative, and its implacable racism, better than they do. And no artists have responded to that history-that-won’t-go-away more powerfully than black artists. More than 60 of them appear in the passionate show called 'Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power' now at the Brooklyn Museum, in a display filling two floors of special exhibition space with work that functioned, in its time, as seismic detector, political persuader and defensive weapon. ..."
NY Times
Brooklyn Museum - Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power
Tate - Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Video)

Benny Andrews, Did the Bear Sit Under a Tree? 1969

My Journey with Jazz

The saxophonist Alan Braufman and the pianist Cooper-Moore reunited recently to play at National Sawdust, in Brooklyn.
"The first jazz album I bought was John Coltrane’s 'Interstellar Space.' At the time (I was a teen-ager), I knew almost nothing about jazz, beyond typically clichéd impressions that it was contemplative, grownup music, and people always seemed to be romantically snapping their fingers, ecstatically bopping their heads. ... In the seventies, young musicians enthralled by the new, collaborative possibilities of 'free jazz' and avant-garde experimentation began moving to New York, where rents were cheap, loft spaces abundant, and zoning codes rarely enforced. In 1973, the pianist Gene Ashton (now known as Cooper-Moore) and some other musicians found a four-story building at 501 Canal Street, on the west side of Manhattan. The saxophonist Alan Braufman, a friend from Berklee College of Music, in Boston, soon joined him. On Friday nights, they would set up some folding chairs and open the doors to anyone who wanted to come, listen, and join their excursions. ..."
New Yorker
NY Times: Coming of Age in the Loft Jazz Scene
The Quietus: Alan Braufman (Video)
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: "Valley of Search" (Live In The Greene Space), Alan Braufman "Valley of Search" full album 43:10

Charles-François Daubigny (15 February 1817 – 19 February 1878)

The Bridge between Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise, 1867
Wikipedia - "Charles-François Daubigny (15 February 1817 – 19 February 1878) was one of the painters of the Barbizon school, and is considered an important precursor of Impressionism. Daubigny was born in Paris, into a family of painters and was taught the art by his father Edmond François Daubigny and his uncle, miniaturist Pierre Daubigny. Initially Daubigny painted in a traditional style, but this changed after 1843 when he settled in Barbizon to work outside in nature. Even more important was his meeting with Camille Corot in 1852 in Optevoz (Isère). On his famous boat Botin, which he had turned into a studio, he painted along the Seine and Oise, often in the region around Auvers. From 1852 onward he came under the influence of Gustave Courbet. In 1866 Daubigny visited England, eventually returning because of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. In London he met Claude Monet, and together they left for the Netherlands. Back in Auvers, he met Paul Cézanne, another important Impressionist. It is assumed that these younger painters were influenced by Daubigny. ..."
Wikipedia
The Clark: The Bridge between Persan and Beaumont-sur-Oise, 1867, The Clark: The Creek, 1863

The Creek, 1863