Aksak Maboul ‎– Figures (2020)

"The legendary experimental pop outfit returns with a brand-new record entitled Figures, written, conceived and produced over the last couple of years by Marc Hollander (founder of Aksak Maboul and of the Crammed label) and Véronique Vincent (former singer with The Honeymoon Killers). Figures is a double album containing 22 tracks and interludes, resulting from the flow of creative ideas which arose after a gap of over thirty years (see the Aksak story overleaf). Drawing again from the multiple sources which have always inspired the band (from electronic music and pop to experimentation, jazz, minimalism, contemporary classical etc), Aksak Maboul transcends and reconfigures them with its inimitable style, to create an impressive, rich and unclassifiable piece of work. ..."
Bandcamp (Audio)
Crammed Discs
The Quietus - Everything Has An End: Aksak Maboul Sum Up With Figures
Discogs (Video)
amazon

2014 November: Aksak Maboul, 2017 July: Made to Measure, Vol. 1 (1984), 2018 February: Before And After Bandits: Marc Hollander Of Aksak Maboul & Crammed Discs, 2020 March: Tout a une fin / Blaue Bleistift (2020)

Wild Dub: Dread Meets Punk Rocker Downtown

"It's a well-known fact that the early punks found their impulse for social rebellion in Jamaican culture, but how this influence translated into musical terms is usually undermined in our cultural histories. Wild Dub fills in the lack with 13 tracks by punk rock bands doing their versions of the 'version'. Mikey Dread's dub of the Clash's 'Bankrobber' is the most legendary of the selections here, but as Vivien Goldman points out in her liner notes, it wasn't the first to attempt this kind of crossover. ... The energy on the 'brink style dub' of the Slits 'Typical Girls' and Red Beat's 11-minute 'Red Beat' fare better and even show riddim-ic strains of what would eventually materialise into drum & bass more than a decade later. ... The inclusion of Grace Jones and the black punk outfit Basement 5 recall to the multi-racial character of this scene just as the unnamed 'rock against racism' track at the end reiterates the politics of the time."
exclaim
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Wild Dub: Dread Meets Punk Rocker 13 videos

2020 UEFA Champions League Final

"The 2020 UEFA Champions League Final was the final match of the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League, the 65th season of Europe's premier club football tournament organised by UEFA, and the 28th season since it was renamed from the European Champion Clubs' Cup to the UEFA Champions League. It was played on 23 August 2020 at the Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal, between French club Paris Saint-Germain, in their first European Cup final, and German club Bayern Munich. The match was held behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. ... Bayern Munich won the final 1–0 thanks to a 59th-minute goal scored by former Paris Saint-Germain player Kingsley Coman, later selected as man of the match. ..."
Wikipedia
UEFA Champions League Finals schedule (Video)
YouTube: PSG vs Bayern Munich | UEFA Champions League Final 18:41

The Party of Whatever the Hell Trump Says

A truck with an anti-Trump sign parked outside the Andrew Mellon Auditorium where speakers opened the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention.
"The betrayal of the Republican Party began long ago, as party leaders compromised away the last of the basic premises on which it was founded. But the final abandonment comes this week, with the gathering of partisans to end the party as anything more than a cult of personality. Heading into the Republican National Convention that began on Monday, President Trump’s praetorian guard decreed that it would not present a fresh platform to voters in the 2020 election. Instead, it greeted the convention with a one-page statement that concluded. ..."
The Nation

Texas Funk: Hard Texas Funk 1968-1975

"... This was the first large-scale project we embarked upon. Deep funk was the thing and nobody was doing proper reissues of it. By proper I mean digging up obscurities, contacting the artists, getting them paid, telling their stories. Malcolm Catto and I spent several weeks driving around Texas finding these guys. It was exhausting work, but we got interviews, pictures, records and – to top it all – the master tapes of a previously unknown and unreleased album by Mickey & the Soul Generation. The album did very well, and we followed it up with some more regional deep funk compilations. ..."
The Vinyl Factory
Bandcamp (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
JAZZMAN RECORDS TOP 10: Texas Funk tracks (Audio)

How to Use Binoculars - Jason Ward

"Jason Ward is a birder, science nerd, and social activist from the Bronx. He currently lives in Georgia, where he leads bird walks and has done science surveys with the Atlanta Audubon Society. As a Fund II Apprentice Ward will assist with a variety of conservation and education programs including bird monitoring and banding, habitat restoration, field trips, and school and community outreach. Throughout the year, Ward will be working closely with the Atlanta Audubon Society and Birmingham Audubon. ..."
Audubon: Jason Ward
From the Bronx to Birding: An Interview with Jason Ward, Host of “Birds of North America”
The Atlantic - Listen: A Guide to Birding (Audio)
YouTube: How to Use Binoculars - Jason Ward
topic: How to Use Binoculars (Video)

2008 September: Birds, 2008 June: Bird Songs, 2017 April: Of a Feather, 2017 June: Bird Sounds, 2017 July: Beautifully Designed Tiny Houses... For Birds, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 March: She Invented a Board Game With Scientific Integrity. It’s Taking Off., 2019 June: Where Birds Meet Art . . . After Dark, 2019 September: The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All, 2019 October: A Quest to Protect the World's Last Silent Places, 2020 June: Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds, 2020 July: New Bird Song That ‘Went Viral’ Across This Species of Sparrow Was Tracked by Scientists For the First Time

An Impressionist paints Brooklyn by the water

“Afternoon by the Sea, Gravesend Bay”, 1888
"After studying art in Munich, refining his eclectic Impressionist style across Europe, and creating an elegant studio on East 10th Street in Manhattan that reflected his flamboyant persona, painter William Merritt Chase moved to Brooklyn. It was 1887. The 37-year-old had just gotten married, and he and his new bride chose to live with his parents at their comfortable Brooklyn home as they began having kids. It’s no surprise, then, that the booming city of Brooklyn was the subject of many of Chase’s landscape paintings. ..."
Ephemeral New York

“Landscape Near Coney Island,” date unknown

2016 November: William Merritt Chase: A Modern Master

Malcolm Lowry - Under the Volcano (1947)

"Last year, fighting the anxiety and listlessness that seems to have become the norm of our overstimulated era, I read Under the Volcano for the first time. Since then, I have found myself continually pulling the book off the shelf, returning again and again to its sad, pristinely lyrical pages, as the seasons change and the state of the world remains tumultuous as ever. Under the Volcano is mesmerizing, brokenhearted, almost infinitely discursive, a mescal-sodden, naval-gazing dirge. Though it is resolutely a Modernist work, replete with countless esoteric references and ambiguous plot movements, the implications of the work continue to startle me with their relevance to the Digital Age. Far from the popular notion that Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece is merely 'about alcoholism,' Under the Volcano remains a dead-serious bereavement of the insurmountable space that can separate two people sitting side by side. ..."
Revisiting Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under the Volcano’ on the Day of the Dead
W - Under the Volcano
amazon
[PDF] Under the Volcano

2018 November: Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry (John Huston - 1984)

Cultural Roots - Drift Away From Evil (1984), Everton Dacres ‎- Jah Jah A Come (1977), The Officials - Babylonians (1974), Etc.

"Cultural Roots founding member Wade Dyce, now living in Salem, Massachusetts, takes his time to ponder when I ask him about the unusual path that led to the life and death of reggae’s most elusive outfit. ... To this day, the singer of the legendary, elusive trio (sometimes quartet) Cultural Roots still has trouble formulating what exactly happened. On paper, the band had everything to become the next Wailing Souls, the future Mighty Diamonds: a beautiful set of complementary voices and a few solid vocal albums, ranging from 1978 to 1984, riding the finest riddims provided by no less than producers Donovan Germain and Junjo Lawes (Revolutionary Sounds, Hell A Go Pop, and the dread and sumptuous Drift Away from Evil). ..."
Cultural Roots could have been the biggest reggae vocal trio of all time, YouTube: Cultural Roots - Drift Away From Evil + Version (1984), Everton Dacres ‎- Jah Jah A Come (1977), The Officials - Babylonians (1974), Dennis Brown - Tribulation (1975), Peter Tosh - Wanted Dread & Alive (1981), Alton Ellis - Tumbling Tears (1969), Hugh Mundell/Augustus Pablo "Little Short Man" (1978), Clarence Parks - Mount Zion (1980), Sylford Walker - Burn Babylon (1975), Sugar Minott - So We Love It (1982)

Hugh Mundell/Augustus Pablo "Little Short Man" (1978)

On Lasts - Jill Talbot

"Summer slips away, like so much else this year. It’s late August, midafternoon, and I’m sitting on a porch in upstate New York. This is the final week my daughter, Indie, and I have together on our cross-country trip to her new college. These days are the last ones before we say goodbye at her dorm, before we begin to unfold the pages of our separate lives. Not long before we left Texas two weeks ago, I asked Indie if she’d like to take me on a tour of her favorite places in high school. She grabbed her keys and drove us to a doughnut store, to the turn she took so many times on Crescent Street, past her school parking space under a tree, to the restaurant where she had worked for over a year, to Sonic Drive-In, space 23, the one she and her best friend pulled into every time, and to the band practice field, telling me stories the whole way. ..."
The Paris Review

The Sopranos - Season 4

"The fourth season of the HBO drama series The Sopranos began airing on September 15, 2002 and concluded on December 8, 2002, consisting of thirteen episodes. The fourth season was released on DVD in region 1 on October 28, 2003. The story of season four focuses on the marriage between Tony and Carmela, as Tony engages in an affair with his uncle's nurse Svetlana and Carmela finds herself infatuated with one of Tony's soldiers, Furio Giunta. The increasing tension between Tony and Ralph Cifaretto comes to a violent head and Uncle Junior is put on trial for his crimes. Adriana is forced into becoming an FBI informant, while Christopher plunges deeper into heroin addiction. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Adriana La Cerva, W - Silvio Dante, W - Paulie Gualtieri, W - Satriale's Pork Store
RecapGuide
The Sopranos: Tony's 10 Best Mistresses, Ranked
Top 5 Episodes: The Sopranos – Season 4 (Video)
The Closing Credits Song For Every Episode of The Sopranos (Season 4) (Video)
YouTube: The Sopranos Season 4, Tony Calls Off Hit, Carmine Jr Speaks To Lupertazzi Management, Ralph Reaches Out To Johnny Sack, Tony And Silvio Talk About Ralph, Tony Plans A Surprise Trip, Carmela And Furio Talk

2020 July: The Sopranos - Season 1, 2020 July: Season 2, 2020 August: Season 3

A Walk Through Harlem, New York’s Most Storied Neighborhood

Langston Hughes on the stoop of his building. The Hughes house today.
"It’s a refuge and magnet, storied crucible and cradle, a cultural capital, shaped by waves of migration, a recent tsunami of gentrification and the ongoing struggles for racial justice. Harlem is the American saga packed into one neighborhood, its architecture a palimpsest of African-American and Latino experience in the city and of much else that has defined New York over the centuries. Lead designer for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye began to explore the area while working on a mixed-used housing development at 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue called Sugar Hill, which opened in 2015. That same year he won the commission to do a new home for the Studio Museum in Harlem and moved to Harlem with his family. ,,,"
NY Times

Muhammad Ali in a crowd outside Hotel Theresa.

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, 2017 June: During Prohibition, Harlem Night Clubs Kept the Party Going, 2018 March: How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement, 2018 March: Rent party, 2018 December: The Sheck Wes story, 2019 January: Apollo Theater Is Celebrated in a New Graphic Novel, 2019 April: Minton's Playhouse, 2019 June: Loïs Mailou Jones, 2019 June: An Artist on Paying Homage to Harlem, and Using Found Fabrics in Paintings, 2019 October: Lenox Lounge, 2020 March: Bebopped and Rebopped: The Births of Bebop and Invisible Man, 2020 July: The Theater Where Ella Fitzgerald Got Her Start

The British Museum is Full of Looted Artifacts

"As critics and fans wrote excitedly upon its release, Marvel’s Black Panther did an excellent job of creating sympathy for its villain. Many found Erik Killmonger’s radicalism more appealing than the hero’s moderation for some specific reasons, beginning with the heist at the 'Museum of Great Britain,' a thinly fictionalized British Museum. 'In one scene,' writes gallerist Lise Ragbir at Hyperallergic, 'the blockbuster superhero movie touches on issues of provenance, repatriation, diversity, representation, and other debates currently shaping institutional practices.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)

How the Criterion Collection Crops Out African-American Directors

"Linda Koulisis sensed an opportunity. It was September 2016, and Koulisis, a talent agent and former film producer based in Los Angeles, was in New York for a special screening of Charles Burnett’s 'To Sleep With Anger,' a critically admired but little-seen film she had worked on in 1990. Burnett, who is African-American, was also in town for the screening. And Koulisis, who is white, joined him for an appointment with the Criterion Collection, the producer of a revered DVD and Blu-ray line of classic and contemporary films that has existed in various forms since 1984. ..."
NY Times
Criterion Collection

Wayne Shorter ‎– Mr. Gone (The Best Of The Early Years)

"... The only way we could be certain that the figure in the photograph was [Wayne] Shorter was if we recognized the piercing eye reflected in the open lid of the compass from the moody photographs on the jackets of the classic Blue Note albums he recorded in the 1960s. Though Shorter and Verve, his label, probably intended no such thing, that cover represented his career since leaving Davis. At least two generations of musicians have followed where that band led. Shorter was the most emulated saxophonist in jazz, and arguably the most influential composer, from the early 1970s straight through the 1990s—but you wouldn't know it from his spotty output over those thirty years, during which his early work only loomed larger the further he strayed from it. ..."
The Atlantic: A Real Gone Guy
W - Wayne Shorter
Discogs - Mr. Gone (The Best Of The Early Years)
amazon: Mr. Gone (The Best Of The Early Years) 10 CD

2015 December: JuJu (1964), 2015 December: Art Blakey - Paris Jam Session (1959), 2019 August: Night Dreamer (1964), 2019 July: Blue Note Records at 80: Can a Symbol of Jazz’s Past Help Shape Its Future?

Periwinkle, the Color of Poison, Modernism, and Dusk - Katy Kelleher

Claude Monet, Water Lilies
"On a stretch of rural road not far from my house, there is a small wood where, once a year, for just a few short and cold days, the ground turns a magnificent shade of purple. In a reversal of fortunes, the stand of gracious Maine trees becomes secondary to the ground cover below. When the periwinkles are blooming, it’s hard to have eyes for anything else. The delicate mist is an impossibly soft color, like clouds descending into twilight, like the snowfall in an Impressionist masterpiece. It’s a color that almost doesn’t belong here—it’s a plant that certainly doesn’t. Periwinkle goes by many names. You might know her by one of her more fabulous monikers, like sorcerer’s violet or fairy’s paintbrush. ..."
The Paris Review

Charlotte Berrington, Vinca Minor

A New Interactive Map Shows All Four Million Buildings That Existed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

"New Yorkers have borne witness to a noticeable uptick in the number of shiny, new buildings going up in the city over the last few years, crowding the waterfront, rising from the ashes of community gardens and older, infinitely more modest structures. Their developers have taken care to top load them with luxury amenities—rooftop cabanas, 24-hour fitness clubs, marble countertops, screening rooms. But one thing they can’t provide is the sense of lived history that imbues every old building with a true sense of character, mystique, and oft-grubby charm. I fear that the occupants of these newer buildings won’t have nearly as much fun as the rest of us searching for our current addresses on the NYC Municipal Archives’ interactive map, above. ..."
Open Culture

8 Takeaways From the Senate Committee Report on Russian Interference

Democrats and Republicans could not agree on whether the facts they uncovered about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election added up to coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
"For more than three years, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigated Russia’s operations to influence the 2016 election. The fifth and final volume of its report on the inquiry, released on Tuesday, runs for nearly 1,000 pages and is likely to stand as the definitive bipartisan government examination of Moscow’s interference. The report revealed new details about Russian links to the Trump campaign in 2016 and offered broad warnings for future elections. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russia
***NY Times: Trump Phone Calls Add to Lingering Questions About Russian Interference
*****NY Times: Opinion - The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016. Case Closed.

How to Celebrate a Complicated Win for Women

Suffragists in Greenwich Village in New York, circa 1912.
"There’s a historical haze confounding plans to observe the coming 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. It descends, first, in definitions: 'That’s the one that guaranteed a right to vote to all American women, right?' Not exactly. The 'women’s suffrage' amendment, like the 15th Amendment before it, which sought to protect the political rights of former slaves, guaranteed nothing. It simply told states that being female could no longer be a reason to bar citizens from voting. To African-American women living in states with systems in place to block African-American men from voting, the amendment provided neither clarity nor power. Haze also makes it difficult to see what merits celebration. ..."
NY Times
W - Women's suffrage in the United States
The Atlantic: How Women’s Suffrage Improved Education for a Whole Generation of Children
YouTube: 5 Things You Should Know About the Suffrage Movement

“Bringing Back Bowery: Public Art as Protest” at Howl! Happening and on the Streets on and off the Bowery

"Following the murder of George Floyd, the spirit of resistance that once characterized Lower Manhattan once again permeated its streets, as the boarded-up stores became canvases for politically driven murals. Several of these artworks no longer on the streets are on view in a splendid exhibition — curated by Sono Kuwayama, Bob Holman and Howl! Happening — at Howl! on 6 East 1st Street. Others remain on the streets. The image featured above, Black Trans Lives Matter,  was fashioned with acrylic and house paint on plywood by Maya Edelman, Scooter LaForge, and Sono Kuwayama. Several more images follow — from both the Howl! exhibition and its neighboring blocks. ..."
Street Art NYC

The noted painter Izhar Patkin, as seen on Cooper Square

BeatCaffeine’s 15 Most Essential Sun Ra Records

"Sun Ra was one of the most originally unique and forward-thinking composers and bandleaders of the last century. Claiming that he came to Earth from Saturn to spread the message of peace, the experimental pianist/ keyboardist and his ever-evolving ensemble the Arkestra fused together 40s era big band swing with bebop, the blues, free improvisation, spacey electronics, call-and-response chants, and psyched-out jazz-funk grooves to create a signature sound that always seemed to push the boundaries. Born in Birmingham, Alabama as Herman Poole Blount, the bandleader eventually changed his name (not legally) to Le Sony’r Ra, which led to being called Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian God of the Sun). ..."
beat caffeine (Video/Audio)

Silas Hogan & other Swamp Blues artists

"Silas Hogan wasn’t quite as individualistic as any of the ‘big four’ Swamp Blues guys but any one of those records he made at Crowley, Louisiana could serve as an excellent illustration of the idiom making him almost the archetype swamp blues man. He had the gravitas (and his own version of the slow blues) of Lightnin’ Slim, the Jimmy Reed soundalike harp sound on his medium tempo chugalongs, a compositional style that emphasised the down and out aspects of life – rats and roaches get mentions as do chemicals, bearing in mind this was oil country – and he wasn’t even averse to the odd foray into swamp pop territory. But he was no spring chicken when the first record proudly bearing the name 'Silas Hogan' rolled off the Excello production line in 1962. ..."
Silas Hogan & other Swamp Blues artists (Video)
W - Swamp blues
Lazy Lester helped invent the swamp-blues sound half a century ago (Video)
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs - 1, 2

2013 October: Silas Hogan

Four Ways of Looking at Agnès Varda

"Over the course of an adventurous career that encompassed narrative and documentary filmmaking as well as photography, sculpture, and video installation, Agnès Varda was a shape-shifter who merged her deep engagement with social reality with a playful, endlessly inventive approach to form. But no matter how sweeping her vision or how risk-taking her style, her work was always rooted in moments of intimacy and her tenderness toward the lives she depicted. To celebrate the release of The Complete Films of Agnès Varda earlier this week, we spoke with four contemporary filmmakers—Ashley Connor, Anna Rose Holmer, Kirsten Johnson, and Lauren Wolkstein—about the scenes from her oeuvre that resonate most deeply with them. Their selections, drawn from different periods in Varda’s six-decade filmography, turn our attention to her genius for capturing small gestures and exchanges that illuminate complicated human truths. ..."
Criterion (Video)

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), 2017 February: Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1976), 2017 April: Agnès Varda’s Art of Being There, 2017 April: AGNÈS VARDA with Alexandra Juhasz, 2017 August: Agnès Varda on her life and work - Artforum, 2017 October: Agnès Varda’s Ecological Conscience, 2018 March: Faces Places - Agnès Varda and JR (2017), 2018 July: Vagabond (1985), 2019 March: Agnès Varda, Influential French New Wave Filmmaker, Is Dead at 90, 2019 April: Mur Murs (1980), 2020 May: Socialism and cha-cha-cha: Agnès Varda's photos of Cuba forgotten for 50 years

Reissued: African Vinyl in the 21st Century

"The golden age of vinyl records is long past in Africa, but the market for rare and reissued African vinyl outside the continent has been growing steadily since the early 2000s. DJs and collectors have turned an obsession with rare records and forgotten gems from Cape Town to Tangiers into an international reissue and compilation industry, led by record labels such as Soundway, Strut and Analog Africa. This program explores some of the complex and shifting dynamics of neocolonialism, cultural ownership and audience in the African vinyl market. We’ll hear stories from label owners, DJs and artists, touching on controversies around Nigerian disco funk reissues, new career opportunities for sometimes-obscure African artists, the unique vinyl culture in South Africa, and much more. Produced by Morgan Greenstreet and Alejandro Van Zandt-Escobar, with Nenim Iwebuke. ..."
Afropop (Audio)
Afropop: Reissued: African Vinyl Playlist (Video)
Soundcloud (Audio)
YouTube: Reissued: African Vinyl in the 21st Century - 22 videos

CBGBs And The Birth Of New York Punk

"You’ve probably heard of CBGBs, but we’d wager you’ve never given a second’s thought to what the initials stand for. It might be one of the great misnomers in rock, because its name stood for Country, Bluegrass & Blues. But the initials CBGB would become completely intertwined with the American punk and new wave movement that coalesced inside its less-than-salubrious portals. The club was opened by owner Hilly Kristal at 315 Bowery in New York’s East Village, on the intersection with Bleecker Street. ... This shadowy, dank and entirely unglamorous location incubated some of the most urgent, edgy and creative rock music ever performed. From Patti Smith to the Ramones, Television to Talking Heads and Blondie to Joan Jett, CBGB was the headquarters of cutting edge American music and the place where lifetime-long careers were born. ..."
udiscover (Video)
amazon: CBGB & OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock

2009 April: CBGB, 2011 January: CBGB's the roots of punk documentary, 2013 September: CBGB's Final Show With Patti Smith - 15 October 2006, 2016 May: 1976-1978 CBGB's House Photographer, 2016 December: Live at CBGB's (1976), 2018 October: Punking Out, a Short 1978 Documentary Records the Beginning of the Punk Scene at CBGB’s, 2019 May: A Conservative Impulse in the New Rock Underground

Ghost Storefront Revealed in NYC’s Upper East Side

"A 19th-century storefront has been revealed on Lexington Avenue and East 73rd Street in the Upper East Side Historic District. Photographer Ryan Lahiff spotted the antique signage and ornamentation which had previously been covered up by white paint and scaffolding. With the scaffolding gone and the paint stripped away, those who walk by can see into the past of this historic building. The storefront was previously occupied by Le Terraine, a store that sold kitchenware. That store has since closed and the awnings which used to hang over the storefront have been removed. The removal of the awnings revealed a splendidly ornate first story cornice that runs nearly the entire length of the Lexington Ave. facade. ..."
untapped cities
W - East 73rd Street Historic District

Kayhan Kalhor

"Kayhan Kalhor ( Persian: كيهان كلهر‎) (born 24 November 1963 in Kermanshah, Iran) is a Kurdish kamancheh player from Iran, composer and master of classical Iranian traditional music. ... Kayhan Kalhor has a wide range of musical influences, uses several musical instruments, and crosses cultural borders with his work, but at his center he is an intense player of the Kamancheh. In his playing Kalhor often pins Iranian classical music structures to the rich folk modes and melodies of the Kurdish tradition of Iran. Kalhor has composed works for and played alongside the famous Iranian vocalists Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri. ..."
Wikipedia
Kayhan Kalhor (Video)
YouTube: Kayhan Kalhor Setar Solo 55:34, Kayhan Kalhor: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert 11:59

Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art

Rudolf Schlichter Damenkneipe (Women's Club), c. 1925
"Opening 4 October 2019, Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art explores the social and artistic role of cabarets, cafés and clubs around the world. Spanning the 1880s to the 1960s, the exhibition presents a dynamic and multi-faceted history of artistic production. The first major show staged on this theme, it features both famed and little-known sites of the avant-garde – these creative spaces were incubators of radical thinking, where artists could exchange provocative ideas and create new forms of artistic expression. Into the Night offers an alternative history of modern art that highlights the spirit of experimentation and collaboration between artists, performers, designers, musicians and writers such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Loïe Fuller, Josef Hoffmann, Giacomo Balla, Theo van Doesburg and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, as well as Josephine Baker, Jeanne Mammen, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Ramón Alva de la Canal and Ibrahim El-Salahi. ..."
Barbican
Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art, Barbican review - great theme, disappointing show
Joseph Scissorhands
amazon
YouTube: Curator Florence Ostende on Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art

Recreation at the Barbican of the bar at Cabaret Fledermaus, designed by Josef Hoffmann

What Do Paramilitaries in the Streets of Portland Signal for November?

"In recent weeks, the Trump administration has begun pulling paramilitary forces from various domestic security agencies and dispatching them to domestic protests within the US. Headlines like the infamous Tom Cotton op-ed, 'Call in the Troops,' are not helping us achieve any clarity on what exactly they are doing and which agencies they come from. All of this, of course, is happening four months ahead of a presidential vote in which one of the candidates (the president) has been cagey about accepting the results of the election. We asked writers and veterans Phil Klay and Matt Gallagher, along with military scholar Risa Brooks, to consider the developments of the last month, in Portland and elsewhere, and to look ahead to November. ..."
LitHub

2020 July: Portland Protest Tactics: Umbrellas, Pool Noodles and Fire, 2020 August: Inside the Battle for Downtown Portland

Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History - Harvey Pekar

"For the blink of an eye in the 1960s, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), was the 900-pound gorilla on the American left, commanding center stage and drawing up the game plans for anti-war and radical activity. And yet by the end of the decade it was more like Franz Kafka's Hunger Artist: alone, self-isolated, emaciated, a victim of its own delusions and blunders. ... But there are other histories, thousands of them that make the movement harder to pin down tidily: the personal stories of individuals who gave their lives to it, and it is those stories that historian Paul Buhle, artist and writer Harvey Pekar, and artist Gary Dumm attempt to capture in their 'Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History.' ..."
Saluting peace, love and the heyday of '60s activism
amazon

2009 December: Harvey Pekar, 2018 August: Jazz Jams With Harvey Pekar

The Particular Texture and Joy of Homemade Ice Cream

"Because my husband, Michael, and I lived in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn before we met, we share memories that go back to our childhoods. We remember when there was a Woolworth’s on Avenue J — it was where I bought candy with my weekly allowance. We remember blackout cake from Ebinger’s and pizza from DiFara, now famous but then the local slice joint. So one recent night, when we were finishing dinner and Michael said, 'I was thinking about the ice cream at that restaurant near Coney Island Avenue,' I jumped in and said, 'Remember how it always had itsy bits of ice in it!' It was just the point he wanted to make. The ice was always there, but somehow still always unexpected. I liked it. ..."
NY Times

2014 August: Ice Cream, 2016 March: Spring comes to brownstone Brooklyn in 1949, 2016 July: Gelato, 2017 May: Maximalism or Minimalism? The Modern Ice Cream Lover’s Dilemma, 2020 January: First Snow By Jill Talbot