VP Records

"VP Records is an independent Caribbean-owned record label in Queens, New York. The label is known for releasing music by notable artists in reggae, dancehall and soca. The VP Records label was founded in 1979 by the late Vincent 'Randy' Chin and his wife Patricia Chin, who owned the Randy's Records store in Kingston, Jamaica (as seen in the 1978 film Rockers), as well as the Studio 17 recording studios. In the mid-1970s, the Chins moved to New York City, setting up a record store in Brooklyn called VP Records in 1975, from which they sold and distributed records. In 1979, they relocated the store to Jamaica, Queens. ..."
Wikipedia
Red Bull: How a Kingston record store powered the Jamaican dancehall culture of today
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: VP 35th Anniversary Pop-Up Exhibit

Vincent and Pat Chin in the 1980s. Image via VP Records

Curtis Mayfield - New World Order (1996)

"In 1990, Curtis Mayfield was struck by a falling lighting rig during an outdoor concert in New York, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. New World Order was the gospel-tinged soul pioneer's triumphant return, his first and final studio release since the incident. In order to record his final album, he positioned his broken body by laying on his back so that he could intake the necessary oxygen to sing, one painstaking line at a time. ... With a team of contemporary R&B producers beside him to do the physical work he was no longer capable of, Mayfield miraculously delivered the album with stunning vocal delivery. The album's lyrical urgency and poetic prowess underscored the album's true musical power - the undeniable persevering power of Mayfield himself. ..."
Soul Music (Video)
W - New World Order
Genius (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: New World Order (Official Music Video), New World Order 13 videos

2013 June: Roots (1971), 2014 May: Super Fly (1972), 2014 July: There's No Place Like America Today (1975), 2014 September: Back to the World (1973), 2014 October: Omnibus (1995), 2015 March: "Freddie's Dead" (1972), 2019 January: Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go (1970)

‘Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s’ Explores a Vital Chapter in Downtown History

L–R: Ted Daniel, Milford Graves, Frank Lowe, Juma Sultan, Noah Howard, James DuBoise, unknown, Sam Rivers, and Ali Abuwi outside Studio We, 1973
"In the late 1960s and 1970s, with New York City’s socioeconomic scaffolding rickety and near collapse, abandoned industrial spaces in Lower Manhattan were buttressed by artists. Painters, appropriators, and sculptors converted nineteenth-century sweatshops into studios, and dance-happy DJs turned these same buildings into the first cathedrals of disco. One of the most fecund, though least documented, scenes was chiseled out by jazz musicians, most young, black, and with eclectic leanings. These post-Coltrane free players, and free thinkers — shunned by a mainstream in the midst of commodifying the 'counterculture' — lived, rehearsed, and performed in these loft spaces, usually in or around Soho. ..."
Voice
NY Times - Jazz Lofts: A Walk Through the Wild Sounds By Stanley Crouch (April 17, 1977)
W - Loft jazz
new york’s free jazz loft scene, with tom marcello’s photos from studio rivbea
University of California - Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s by Michael C. Heller, amazon

Meet the “artist laureate” of the East River

“Henderson Houses”
"The East River—its bridges, boats, and natural beauty—has inspired centuries of artists. But few have depicted the river with the richness and romanticism of Woldemar Neufeld. Neufeld’s journey to New York City was marked by tragedy. Born in Southern Russia in 1909, his Mennonite family immigrated to Waterloo, Ontario, after his father was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1920 following the Russian Revolution, states the Waterloo Public Library. After establishing himself as an artist in 1933, he continued studying at the Cleveland Institute of Art and Case Western Reserve University. In the mid-1940s, he, his wife, and his young family moved to Manhattan. ..."
Ephemeral New York
Woldemar Neufeld

“East River in Winter”

Today Belongs to Workers

"For most Americans, Labor Day marks a change in the seasons: summer has ended, football is about to begin, and millions of students return to school. Celebrations consist of taking advantage of deep discounts on patio furniture and mattresses. Not that there’s much political enthusiasm for Labor Day on the Left, either. Many depict it as a tokenistic 'gift' from capitalist politicians who wanted a sanitized May Day, that could capture militancy and disperse it into 'responsible' channels. This narrative calls Labor Day a 'bosses’ holiday' that marks the working class’s historic defeat. This not only misrepresents the day’s history, but also forces us to choose one holiday over the other, as if there were not enough room on the calendar for two days that celebrate workers. ..."
Jacobin
W - Labor history of the United States

2015 September: Take a Labor Day Tour of Blue-Collar Art, 2018 September: When Labor Day Meant Something

Battle of Crécy

The Battle of Crécy, from a 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Jean Froissart's Chronicles
"The Battle of Crécy (known in some older English sources as 'Cressy') took place on 26 August 1346 in north-east France between a French army commanded by King Philip VI and an English army led by King Edward III. The French attacked the English while they were traversing northern France during the Hundred Years' War resulting in an English victory and heavy loss of life among the French. ... The English then laid siege to the port of Calais. The battle crippled the French army's ability to relieve the siege; the town fell to the English the following year and remained under English rule for more than two centuries, until 1558. Crécy established the effectiveness of the longbow as a dominant weapon on the Western European battlefield. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Hundred Years' War: Battle of Crecy 1346

Map of the route of Edward III's chevauchée of 1346

Young Marble Giants- Wurlitzer Jukebox (1979)

"Most music – well, unless it is totally experimental and off the wall – has roots. You can see where it has come from, what influences play upon it, what the inspiration is. With the benefit of hindsight you can also see where it was going, what it would lead to. There is none of this with Young Marble Giants. They can’t be compared to anybody else – either in their past or their future. They arrived in 1978, split up in 1980, and released one album and two EPs. YMG were like nothing before and since. Colossal Youth (the album) was their first release i.e. before the EPs and it turned up in 1980, like nothing else at the time, so different, but perfectly formed. It was if they had followed a different path to get where they were; it was just a different kind of music. ..."
Toppermost (Video)

2015 August: Young Marble Giants

Cooking with Italo Calvino - Valerie Stivers

The piecrust Tower of Babel. From the bottom: plain, chocolate almond, rosemary, oatmeal, and mascarpone.
"In the novel The Baron in the Trees, by Italo Calvino (1923–1985), Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, a young man from a noble family, apple of his parents’ eyes, climbs a tree one night during dinner—because he is refusing to eat his dinner—and then never comes down for the rest of his life. It’s a strong stance on a meal. It’s also a strong stance on our world, 'the world as it is,' as Calvino once wrote in a letter. The young baron retreats because he is revolted by the decadence, provincialism, militarism, stupidity, and corruption of his aristocratic family, who serve, among other things, as a stand-in for the Italian Communist Party. ..."
The Paris Review

2020 April: Invisible Cities (1972)

Lynn Varnado ‎– Tell Me What's Wrong With The Men (1973)

"Producer Miles Grayson was behind some of the most in-demand and impossible to find funk and soul records to emerge from the US West Coast. One of his discoveries was Lynn Varnado, known today for her northern soul masterpiece ‘Wash And Wear Love’. As that 45 is so expensive, the B-side ‘Tell Me What’s Wrong With The Men’ rarely gets the exposure it deserves. This 7-incher should rectify that. To make it even more irresistible, the flip features her first-time-on-single sister funk masterpiece ‘Staying At Home Like A Woman’."
Ace Records
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Tell Me What's Wrong With The Men, Wash And Wear Love, AIN'T THAT SOMETHING, Second Hand Love + Staying At Home Like A Woman, Staying At Home Like A Woman

40 Years Later, Reggae’s Heart Still Beats in the Bronx

Lloyd Barnes
"Lloyd Barnes carried a shopping bag full of cleaning supplies up to a humble recording studio tucked above a financial services center and a Caribbean restaurant in the Eastchester neighborhood of the Bronx. A colleague was in a session with a dancehall vocalist, and Barnes pointed out his most recent nonmusical project, a custom-upholstered sofa embroidered with his record label’s logo: a dreadlocked Lion of Judah with its tail cocked up aggressively, and a flag displaying a star of David next to the name Wackie’s. ..."
NY Times
The Complete Force: Wackies, A Primer (Video)
W - Wackies, W - Lloyd Barnes
Discogs
YouTube: Wackies Sampler vol 1 1:11:15, Wackies Sampler vol. 2 1:14:28, Wackies Sampler vol. 3 1:19:20

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

Donald Trump greets families of the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2017.
"When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that 'the helicopter couldn’t fly' and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true. Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, 'Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.' In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as 'suckers' for getting killed. ..."
The Atlantic

Octavio Paz

"Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.  ... A prolific author and poet, Paz published scores of works during his lifetime, many of which have been translated into other languages. His poetry has been translated into English by Samuel Beckett, Charles Tomlinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser and Mark Strand. His early poetry was influenced by Marxism, surrealism, and existentialism, as well as religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. ..."
Wikipedia
New Directions
Return (An Etching for Octavio Paz)
NYBooks: In a Cuban Prison - Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Claude Roy, and Phillippe Sollers, et al.
W - The Labyrinth of Solitude, [PDF]
Bill Moyers - A Poet a Day: Octavio Paz (Video)

Peter Adjaye #6

"In VF Live, our favourite collectors take you inside their homes, record shops, and studios, for intimate mixes and performances. Sound artist Peter Adjaye returns for His sixth set, diving into his collection of post-colonial African records. 'This is my return to ever growing research into the post-colonial independence music of Africa,' says Adjaye. 'This set really reaches all four corners and these musicians stand tall in the musical history of the mighty continent: all the way east to west to south — from Mali, Ethiopia, South Africa, Ghana to Burkina Faso.' Watch and listen to the set above, and check out the tracklist below. ..."
The Vinyl Factory (Audio)
The Vinyl Factory: Peter Adjaye (Audio)
W - Peter Adjaye
YouTube: VF Live: Peter Adjaye #6

The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Century

"From Rick Steves comes a thought-provoking documentary that revisits the rise of fascism in Europe, reminding us of how charismatic figures like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler came to power by promising to create a better future for their frustrated, economically-depressed countries--a future that recaptured the glory of some mythologized past. Once in power, these fascist leaders replaced democracy with a cult of personality, steadily eroded democratic norms and truth, ratcheted up violence, and found scapegoats to victimize--something facilitated by the spread of conspiracy theories and propaganda through modern media. They would lead their nations into war, and ultimately ruin, but not before creating a playbook for other charismatic autocrats who entice voters with simplistic solutions to complex problems. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
Rick Steves: Fascism in Europe 1:00, The Story of Fascism in Europe 59:19
NYBooks: Ur-Fascism - Umberto Eco (June 22, 1995)

Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion

"Surrealism began, point blank, with life-and-death questions that everyone else ignored or pretended to ignore: questions of everyday life, suicide, madness, nature, poetry, love, language, and absolute revolt. The most audacious dreams of centuries suddenly were dreamed anew and brought to fruition in this new and unexpected 'communism of genius' that plunged its roots deep in the manifold forms of outlawed subjectivity. Here was a dialectical leap of world-historical implications, transforming once and for all the conditions of thought, art, poetry, and life itself. ..."
From a Secret Location
W - Arsenal/Surrealist Subversion
W - Franklin Rosemont
[PDF] Arsenal 1

Tangier Days: the Edes in Morocco, 1936-52

Jim and Helen Ede in Tangier, c. 1937
"We are delighted to share with you our latest series, ‘Tangier Days: the Edes in Morocco, 1936-52’. Drawing on material from the Kettle’s Yard Archive and Swan family archive, the series takes a closer look at the years Jim and Helen Ede – Kettle’s Yard’s creators – spent living in Tangier, Morocco. ... ‘Whitestone’, the Edes’ new house in Tangier, could not have been more different to Hampstead: radical in its modernist design, perched on a high ridge of land with views stretching far across the surrounding landscape. Nevertheless, the Edes continued their habit of surrounding themselves with people that interested them. Their home once again became a social hub for the community of expat writers, artists, socialites and diplomats that had flocked to Tangier – then an ‘International Zone’ – and its promise of cosmopolitan freedom. ..."
Kettles Yard
W - Jim Ede

1942 map of Tangier, showing Sidi Amar and 'the Mountain'

‘Doc At The Radar Station’: How Captain Beefheart Came Back Fighting Fit

"As the 80s rolled around, many iconic artists from the 60s would struggle to find their place in the decade. Captain Beefheart, however, though boasting a 60s discography that re-wrote what was possible for a mere three-minute song, came back revitalized. The punk and new wave scenes of the late 70s and early 80s had embraced his creative freedoms, while Beefheart himself, after seemingly turning his back on boundary-pushing music, unleashed a late-period Magic Band that asserted his credentials as one of rock’s true visionaries. They super-charged themselves for 1980’s Doc At The Radar Station, released in August 1980 as his penultimate album. ..."
udiscover (Audio)
The Quietus: The Best Batch Yet? Captain Beefheart's Doc At The Radar Station Revisited (Video)
YouTube: Doc At The Radar Station 12 videos

2009 October: Captain Beefheart, 2010 December: Captain Beefheart, Art-Rock Visionary, Dead At 69, 2011 October: Interview with Captain Beefheart, 2013 August: This Is The Day (1974-Old Grey Whistle Test), 2014 July: Safe as Milk (1967), 2014 August: Some YoYo Stuff: An observation of the observations of Don Van Vliet by Anton Corbijn (1993), 2015 January: It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, 2016 November: Doc at the Radar Station (1980), 2017 October: Works on Paper, 2017 November: How Nona Hendryx Captured the World of Captain Beefheart

Charles Lloyd - 8: Kindred Spirits (Live From the Lobero)

"A staggering statement of will and love, 8: Kindred Spirits (Live at The Lobero) big bangs from thin air with 'Dreamweaver,' a twenty-one minute excursion that doubles down on Charles Lloyd's casually grand schemata that anything and everything goes, that as long as we're all in the music's same head space we can know peace. It's how he's gotten by to where he is in his moment: balancing life's blues and cantors, its whiplash and zeal, within a free-form framework accessible to everyone's ear and, by way of human biology, everyone's head. ..."
All About Jazz (Audio)
NY Times: Charles Lloyd Revels in the Flow on a Stellar Live Album
W - 8: Kindred Spirits (Live From the Lobero)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Dream Weaver (Live), Requiem (Live From the Lobero Theatre), La Llorona (Live)

Joseph Cornell, Our Queequeg

Exhibition view, “Objects by Joseph Cornell,” Copley Galleries, September 28–October 18, 1948.
"I knew Joseph Cornell just a little bit and saw him only a few times. To Julien Levy must go the credit for having discovered him as an artist. I can only take credit for having responded to him with a bang as early as about 1947. As I remember, I met him as he was coming off an elevator and I was leaving the old Hugo Gallery, where I’d been with Iolas laying some groundwork for a gallery I was going to open in Beverly Hills. He was carrying two shopping bags full of boxes and Iolas must have introduced us, as I remember following them back into the gallery. I saw what was in the shopping bags and managed to buy an entire exhibition from Joseph—roughly fifty pieces. I think the deal was consummated at a nearby ice cream parlor. Cornell was gaunt and gray and shabby. ..."
The Paris Review

Announcement and exhibition catalogue for “Objects by Joseph Cornell,” Copley Galleries, 257 North Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, September 28–October 18, 1948.

2007 November: Joseph Cornell, 2011 April: Rose Hobart (1936), 2012 December: Joseph Cornell's Manual of Marvels, 2015 May: Joseph Cornell: Navigating The Imagination, 2016 January: Joseph Cornell: Worlds in a Box (1991), 2009 April:Stan Brakhage, 2011 December: Burial Path/The Process/The Machine of Eden, 2012 August: The Dante Quartet (1987) - Stan Brakhage, 2016 July: Gnir Rednow (1960) - Joseph Cornell / Stan Brakhage, 2018 May: Bookstalls (1930s)

The Sublime World Of Leonard Bernstein’s Broadway Productions

"Next to the great George Gershwin, no other American composer can claim to have worked across as many musical genres, except for Leonard Bernstein. A musical genius who enlightened our lives, Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) seemed equally at ease in classical, theatre, jazz and, in at least one instance (Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront) film scores; across them all, his work was consistently compelling, singular and sublime. Here’s a look at how one of America’s greatest composers conquered the Broadway stage and beyond. ..."
udiscover (Video/Audio)
Vanity Fair: Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and the Road to West Side Story
W - West Side Story
W - Leonard Bernstein, W - Jerome Robbins
Discogs, amazon: Bernstein On Broadway

Left, Jerome Robbins, photographed in his apartment in N.Y.C. by Philippe Halsman, 1959; right, director-choreographer Robbins on the set of West Side Story with Chakiris and Verso.

2017 October: How Bernstein shook up the status quo with ‘On the Waterfront’

The True Cost of Lionel Messi’s Declaration of Independence

"... This is what Messi was giving up on Tuesday when he and his representatives sent Barcelona official confirmation of his intention to leave the club. He is not just ending a relationship with the club that spans two decades, that has seen him transformed from a 13-year-old kid signed on a contract written on the back of a napkin into, arguably, the finest player soccer has ever seen. He is not just breaking a bond between player and team that has come to seem symbiotic. Barcelona is not Barcelona without Messi. But would Messi be Messi without Barcelona? He lifted this team to greatness, this club to unmatched prominence, but the converse was also true for a long time: Barcelona was not just his platform, his stage, it was a character in his story. ..."
NY Times

The Algiers Motel Incident - John Hersey (1968)

"The Algiers Motel incident occurred in Detroit, Michigan, United States, throughout the night of July 25–26, 1967 during the racially charged 12th Street Riot. At the Algiers Motel, approximately one mile east of where the riot began, three civilians were killed and nine others abused by a riot task force composed of the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Police, and the Michigan Army National Guard. Among the casualties were three black teenage boys killed, and two white women and seven black men wounded as a result. ... Charges of felonious assault, conspiracy, murder, and conspiracy to commit civil rights abuse were filed against three officers. Charges of assault and conspiracy were also filed on a private security guard. All were found not guilty. ..."
Wikipedia
LA Review - Against Active Forgetting: On John Hersey’s “The Algiers Motel Incident”
The Crimson - The Algiers Motel By Charles M. Hagen (July 12, 1968)
amazon

Charlie Parker at 100: What to Read, Watch and Dig

"Charlie Parker’s brief swing through this world kicked off a century ago on Saturday with his birth in Kansas City, Kan. Eleven years later, he would take up the saxophone. A couple of years after that, inspired by the hot bands tearing up K.C. in the ’30s, the man who was later known as Bird dedicated himself to his instrument, the alto, woodshedding for 11 to 15 hours a day, he would later say. A decade later, the complexity, beauty and 'tommy-gun velocity' (as Stanley Crouch once put it) of his improvisations would hasten jazz’s departure from the dance hall. With his bebop cohort of Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach and others, Bird declared 'Now’s the Time,' thrilling audiences and scarifying critics, who mostly took a while to catch up to the advanced harmonics and polyrhythms. His brash modernism jolted New York and then the world. And then, just 34 years into a life of epochal consequence, Parker died, his body ravaged by appetites as outsized as his genius. ..."
NY Times (Video)
Discogs: 100 Reasons We Love Charlie Parker For His 100th Birthday (Video)
PBS - Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker (Video)
Charlie Parker - The 1949 Downbeat Interview
A Bird’s Life: How Charlie Parker Changed The Course Of Jazz History (Video/Audio)

Charlie Parker at Jimbo’s Bop City, 1950s.

2011 July: Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, et al 1950, 2012 July: The Charlie Parker Story, 2014 May: Afro-Cuban jazz, 2014 December: The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948, 2017 February: Bird in Boston · Live at the Hi-Hat 1953-1954, 2018 February: Bop City, 2019 November: What Is Bebop? Deconstructing Jazz Music’s Most Influential Development

Jackson Heights, Global Town Square

"With a population of around 180,000 people speaking some 167 languages, or so locals like to point out, Jackson Heights in north-central Queens, though barely half the size of Central Park, is the most culturally diverse neighborhood in New York, if not on the planet. The brainchild of commercial real estate developers in the early years of the last century who hoped to entice white, middle-class Manhattanites seeking a suburban lifestyle a short subway ride away, Jackson Heights has become a magnet for Latinos, those who identify as L.G.B.T.Q., South Asians and just about everybody else seeking a foothold in the city and a slice of the American pie. Suketu Mehta is a New York University professor and the author of 'Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found' and 'This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto.' What follows is the latest in a series of (edited, condensed) walks around the city. ..."
NY Times (Interactive)

2018 April: The Many Languages (and Foods) of Jackson Heights, 2019 November: How to pick a New York City neighborhood

Imaginary Landscapes: The turntable as instrument

"Exploring radical turntablism in experimental music with Shiva Feshareki, Haroon Mirza, Philip Jeck and more. From Daphne Oram’s unrealised electronic manipulations to Grand Wizard Theodore pulling back records in ’70s New York city, artists and musicians have constantly found new frontiers for turntables and the playback of recorded music. Spanning movements at the interface of art and music from surrealism, Bauhaus, and Fluxus, to hip-hop, house, and techno, the use of the turntable as an instrument has enabled artists to explore dialogues between past and present, found and original sounds, and live and recorded performance. Taking its name from John Cage’s Imaginary Landscapes series, which envisions the surface of a record as topography, the film follows eight contemporary sound artists and musicians who are pushing the boundaries of the instrument today. ..."
The Vinyl Factory (Video)

The Origins of Sprawl

Aerial view of Levittown, Pennsylvania.
"'The property they [developers] built on had been farmland, overlooked by a big rickety-looking wood frame house,' the science fiction writer William Gibson tells me of his time living in a Charlotte, North Carolina, suburb ('on Blackberry Circle, where all the homes seem to have been built in 1954') that today is called Collingwood. 'I once referred to it [the farmer’s home] as a poor people’s house, and my father corrected me, saying that they [the farmer who owned the land] had lots more money than we did, because they’d sold the rest of their land to the company he worked for, which had built the development,' he recalls of the property the homes were built on. Gibson once described living in that suburb as 'like living on Mars,' with no grass and orange clay all around. I remember reading that and thinking about how much his suburban experience sounded like an old sci-fi story. ..."
The Paris Review

2010 September: Cyberpunk, 2010 October: Bruce Sterling, 2011 July: William Gibson, 2015 May: Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology - edited by Bruce Sterling (1986), 2015 July: A Global Neuromancer, 2016 May: The Difference Engine - William Gibson and Bruce Sterling (1990), 2017 August: Sprawl trilogy, 2019 February: Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk & Postmodern Science - Edited by Larry McCaffery (1992), 2019 December: How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real, 2020 May: We’re on the Brink of Cyberpunk

Duke Ellington’s Legacy - Nat Hentoff, Ellington Uptown (1952)

"Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of the most original and wide-ranging composer in American history. (Charles Ives was second). Duke Ellington’s life and works should be explored and enjoyed in classrooms and concerts at middle schools, high schools, and colleges all around the nation. That may already happen in a few places; but by and large, most younger Americans remain culturally disadvantaged in their ignorance of Edward Kennedy Ellington. Recently, I called a mail-order house that specializes in hard-to-get recordings of various kinds. I was looking for a set of V-discs that the Ellington orchestra had recorded during the Second World War. The first person I talked to had never heard of Ellington. ..."
Voice
W - Ellington Uptown
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Ellington Uptown (Full Album) 6 videos

Tracking the Suspect in the Fatal Kenosha Shootings

"A teenager who walked among protesters in Kenosha, Wis., carrying a military-style semi-automatic rifle was arrested and faces a charge of first-degree intentional homicide in connection with shootings that left two people dead on Tuesday night. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident, appeared on multiple videos taken throughout the night by protesters and bystanders who chronicled the events as peaceful protests gave way to chaos, with demonstrators, armed civilians and others facing off against one another and the police in the darkened streets. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times - Live Updates: Justice Department to Investigate Jacob Blake Shooting
NY Times - Justice Dept. to Open Investigation Into Kenosha Shooting (Video)
NY Times - Led by N.B.A., Boycotts Disrupt Pro Sports in Wake of Blake Shooting

Down Through the Faulkner Bloodline, Pride and Racial Guilt Commingled

"William Clark Falkner was a tall man—the order for his coffin specified 6’2”—and a talented one, good with a pen or a pistol, and with a balance sheet too. Even after the Civil War he had cash in his pockets, at a time when nobody else in Mississippi seemed to have any at all. He had grown up poor in Tennessee and then drifted south, learning just enough law to become a creditable attorney, while also finding more sensational ways to make money. In 1845, when he was 20, he took down a murderer’s jailhouse confession, had it printed, and sold it beneath the gallows. He was silver-tongued, and he needed to be, for he was also quarrelsome, killing two men in arguments and then talking his way out of the consequences. ..."
LitHub

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner, 2015 October: William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels, 2015 November: Interviews William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12, 2016 April: Absalom, Absalom!! (1936), 2016 May: The Sound and the Fury (1929), 2016 October: The Snopes Trilogy (1940, 1957, 1959), 2016 December: Light in August (1932), 2017 February: As I Lay Dying (1930), 2017 June: The Wild Palms (1939), 2017 August: Sanctuary (1931). 2017 September: The Unvanquished (1938), 2017 October: 20 Pieces of Writing Advice from William Faulkner, 2017 November: Yoknapatawpha County, 2018 February: Go Down, Moses (1942), 2018 June: Flags in the Dust (1973), 2019 May: Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950), 2019 October: Sartoris (1929)

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