Wanderer In The Colorful Fields - Jeannine Schulz (2021)

 

“Another beautiful album by Jeannine Schulz, Wanderer in the Colorful Fields is six tracks of music that feels a split second shy of being entirely on pause. Quite frequently the emphasis is on slight sounds played in reverse, time slipping backward, in which case it’s still a split second shy of pause, just from the other side of the divide. It’s hard to say if the sounds — which seem to include electric guitar and bells, but could be other things entirely — are treated here like objects under glass, carefully presented, or like natural occurences, chance moments happened upon. Either way, the results are delicate, elegant, and richly reflective. ...”

disquiet: A New Album from Jeannine Schulz (Audio)

Bandcamp (Audio)

2021 February: Jeannine Schulz’s “Rooms and Surfaces I”

The Water on Mars Vanished. This Might Be Where It Went.

 

“Mars was once wet, with an ocean’s worth of water on its surface. Today, most of Mars is as dry as a desert except for ice deposits in its polar regions. Where did the rest of the water go? Some of it disappeared into space. Water molecules, pummeled by particles of solar wind, broke apart into hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and those, especially the lighter hydrogen atoms, sped out of the atmosphere, lost to outer space. But most of the water, a new study concludes, went down, sucked into the red planet’s rocks. And there it remains, trapped within minerals and salts. Indeed, as much as 99 percent of the water that once flowed on Mars could still be there, the researchers estimated in a paper published this week in the journal Science. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Highlights From NASA’s Successful Landing on Mars (Feb. 19 - Video)

 

Inside Jezero Crater: NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Thursday in Jezero Crater, an ancient Martian lake roughly the size of Lake Tahoe. The rover will spend years exploring the river delta and making its way to the crater rim.

Krish Raghav - Redemption Songs

 

“... While most people associate reggae music with Bob Marley and other native Jamaican artists smoking marijuana, the truth is that the genre itself is a little more complicated than it seems. As a matter of fact, did you know that both Chinese and Jamaican producers were responsible for the creation and popularity of reggae music?To illustrate this point, here’s Krish Raghav’s ‘Redemption Songs!’ In the meantime, once you’ve finished, let me know in the comments below what you think about either the comic or on reggae music in general!I didn’t know that reggae music was extremely influential in Chinese culture prior to reading it and I’m half Chinese myself! ...”

Coffee and Comics #1

Redemption Songs (comic)

Bandcamp: How the Chinese-Jamaican Community Influenced the Development of Classic Reggae (Audio)

W - Chinese Jamaicans

Why “Houston Street” is pronounced that way

 

“You can always spot a New York newbie by their pronunciation of wide, bustling Houston Street—as if they were in Texas rather than Manhattan. But the way New Yorkers pronounce the name of this highway-like crosstown road that serves as a dividing line for many downtown neighborhoods begs the question: Why do we say ‘house-ton,’ and what’s the backstory of this unusual street name, anyway? It all started in 1788 with Nicholas Bayard III, owner of a 100-acre farm located roughly in today’s SoHo (one boundary of which is today’s Bayard Street). Bayard was having financial difficulties, so he sold off parcels of his farm and turned them into real estate in the growing young metropolis, according to a 2017 New York Times piece. ...”

Ephemeral New York

W - William Houstoun (lawyer)

2014 October: Houston Street

Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound Of British And Irish Folk 1966-75

 

“... Grapefruit Records' excellent 2015 anthology Dust on the Nettles went a long way in exploring this cosmic folk-rock collision, and five years later, they offer up a welcome sequel in Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound of British & Irish Folk 1966-1975. Like its predecessor, this set celebrates both the scenes' key players and its distant outliers, but shifts its focus to the eerier, more spiritual side of the folk-rock movement. Fans of the 1973 cult classic folk-horror film The Wicker Man, take note. While much-celebrated stalwarts (Fairport Convention, Pentangle, etc.) get their proper due, it's names like Oberon, Meic Stevens, and Jan Dukes de Grey that really conjure up the ancient mists. Enchanted recorders, frame drums, and dulcimers mingled with surreal backwards tape effects and rumbling organ drones as folk music became more progressive through the filter of artists like Comus, Dr. Strangely Strange, and Third Ear Band. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine

Discogs

amazon

YouTube: Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound Of British And Irish Folk 1966-75    30 videos

Greet Spring With a Visit to a Public Garden Image

 

Signs of spring: Daffodils at the New York Botanical Garden

“Last year, the pandemic shut the gates of many public gardens just as spring was on its way: According to a survey by the American Public Gardens Association, only about 4 percent of public gardens remained fully open as of March 30, 2020. Once public gardens began to reopen months later, they became places of natural respite for visitors, perhaps even more so than in the past. Making up for last year’s lost spring, these seven gardens around the country expect to be particularly glorious this year, offering a range of beloved spring flowers, traditional botanical collections and experiential outdoor spaces. At any garden changing conditions can make ephemeral blooms difficult to pin down, so plan on checking with the garden for updates (find more online at publicgardens.org), as well as for new protocols such as advance reservations, schedules, open areas and mask requirements. ...”

NY Times

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984

 

“Remember Downtown? No, no, not the sanitized, respectable SoHo and Chelsea of today, but the real down-and-dirty Downtown, when the East Village was an art scene, punk and new wave rock assailed the ears, graffiti spread like kudzu, and heroin and extreme style were the rage. While Downtown lasted, the AIDS plague peaked, police raided illegal lofts, and artists attacked Establishment institutions. It was an explosive era of Super-8 films; ‘no wave’ cinema; street art and performances; oral poetry; political engagement; feminist, gay and lesbian activism; clubs and alternative spaces. Though its denizens often boasted that they never ventured north of 14th Street, Downtown had porous borders. Geographically, it rambled as far uptown as the South Bronx, but it existed as much in the free-floating minds of its participants as in the confines of grungy streets and lofts. ...”

NY Times: The Downtown Scene, When It Was Still Dirty

The Brooklyn Rail

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984 PDF Online

'We've Lost the Line!': Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol

 

“The Times obtained District of Columbia police radio communications and synchronized them with footage from the scene to show in real time how officers tried and failed to stop the attack on the U.S. Capitol. By Robin Stein, Haley Willis, Danielle Miller and Michael S. Schmidt ...”

NY Times (Video)

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack, 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol

Various ‎– Funky Nassau - The Compass Point Story 1980-1986

 

“On a session-to-session basis, in slightly varying combinations, drummer Sly Dunbar, percussionist Uziah ‘Sticky’ Thompson, bassist Robbie Shakespeare, keyboardist Wally Badarou, guitarists Barry Reynolds and Mikey Chung, and engineer Alex Sadkin made up the in-house team at Island founder Chris Blackwell's Compass Point, a studio located just outside Nassau in the Bahamas. As Blackwell recalls in David Katz's excellent liner notes to this set, titled Funky Nassau: The Compass Point Story 1980-1986, ‘I wanted a new, progressive sounding band. I wanted a Jamaican rhythm section with an edgy mid range and a brilliant synth player.’ That's what he got, and more, and it made -- or, in the case of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, enhanced -- some of the most advanced and adventurous music of the '80s, a great deal of which went down a storm in clubs across the planet. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

Discogs (Video)

amazon

Russian Interference in 2020 Included Influencing Trump Associates, Report Says

 

The declassified report included details about election interference efforts by adversaries such as Russia and Iran.

“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the election last year, including by mounting covert operations to influence people close to President Donald J. Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released on Tuesday. The report did not name those people but seemed to refer to the work of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who relentlessly pushed accusations of corruption about Mr. Biden and his family involving Ukraine. ...”

NY Times

Manet: Three Paintings from the Norton Simon Museum

 

“Considered the father of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and, by some, twentieth-century abstraction, Édouard Manet (1832–1883) was a revolutionary in his own time and a legend thereafter. Beyond his pivotal role in art history as the creator of such iconic masterworks as Olympia (1862–63) and Luncheon on the Grass (1863), Manet’s vision has come to define how we understand modern urban life and Paris, the so-called ‘capital of the nineteenth-century.’ Next fall the Frick will present three Manet canvases from the collection of the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, marking the first time the paintings will be exhibited together elsewhere since their acquisition. The exhibition will present the paintings as examples encapsulating three ‘views’ of the artist’s life and work. ...”

The Frick Collection

YouTube: Manet: Three Paintings from the Norton Simon Museum

Imagining Nora Barnacle’s Love Letters to James Joyce Image

 

James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, seated on a wall in Zurich.

“The fact is no one should be able to read the intimate words that anyone writes to their partner—those outpourings are composed for two people only: the lover and the loved. But when you’re writing a novel about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, and the letters are published and are, well, just there, they become impossible to ignore. Whenever I told anyone I was writing a bio-fictional novel about Nora and Joyce, they would remark, with glow-eyed glee, ‘Oh, no doubt you’ll include the letters.’ And, yes, I have included them. But not quite as you might think. ...”

The Paris Review

James Joyce’s Love Letters

The Paris Review: James Joyce’s Love Letters to His “Dirty Little Fuckbird”

2011 March: Passages from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1965-67), 2013: Dubliners, 2014 May: The Dead (1987 film), 2014 May: “Have I Ever Left It?” by Mark O'Connell, 2014 July: Digital Dubliners, 2014 September: Read "Ulysses Seen", A Graphic Novel Adaptation of James Joyce’s Classic, 2015 January: The Mapping Dubliners Project, 2015 February: Davy Byrne’s, 2016 January: Port and Docks, 2016 February: Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists, 2016 April: Nassau Street, 2016 May: Stephen’s Green, 2016 October: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), 2016 November: Skerries, 2017 January: Walking Ulysses | Joyce's Dublin Today, 2018 October: Bloomsday Explained, 2020 March: Ireland’s Voices, 2020 June: Stephen Dedalus, 2020 November: The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps, 2021 January: The Socialism of James Joyce

The Story Behind the Iconic Bass-Smashing Photo on the Clash’s London Calling

 

“Pennie Smith was not a fan. Maybe that’s what made her the perfect photographer for The Clash. ‘She was never particularly into rock music,’ writes Rob Walker at The Guardian; she wasn’t starstruck or overawed by her subjects; and she also wasn’t even particularly in love with the most famous shot of her career — the iconic photo of bassist Paul Simonon raising his Fender Precision at New York’s Palladium, seconds before smashing it to bits.  ...”

Open Culture (Video)

N.C.A.A. Tournament Brackets: A Guide to the Madness

“Chaos is coming. A promise of every March but one since 1939 — that the N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments will thrill, infuriate, delight and fuel delusions of every sort — is about to have its pandemic-era test. But no one really doubts that the tournaments, assuming they happen as planned, will conjure up the full range of emotions that can make college basketball fans a proudly obsessive lot. No matter your level of fandom, here’s what you need to know about filling out your brackets, how the tournament will operate, where to watch the games, and more. ...”

NY Times

2021 NCAA Tournament Breakdown: Best Picks, Worst Draws, and Fun Facts for Each Region

NCAA: Quest for the Perfect Bracket (Video)

ESPN - 2021 NCAA Tournament Bracketology

SI - 2021 Men's NCAA Tournament Bracket Breakdown: A Region-by-Region Guide

W - 2021 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament

CBS - 2021 NCAA Tournament bracket predictions: March Madness expert picks, winners, upsets, favorites to win

Best Alt.Country Musicians: 10 Essential Artists

 

“The musicians who came to define the alt.country boom of the late 80s and 90s believed themselves to be outside of the country music establishment and its ethos of the time. As Lucinda Williams, one of the best alt.country musicians of the era, put it, ‘I definitely don’t feel a part of what I call the straighter country music industry of Nashville. I’m definitely not connected with that world. I guess I’m sort of considered an outlaw here, along with Steve Earle.’ The term alt.country (sometimes dubbed ‘insurgent country’) describes a number of musicians who eschewed the pop-infused country music that had begun to take hold in the late 70s and 80s. Though its roots reach back to country music icons such as Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, the most direct relevant forerunners to alt.country are Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers, who were playing a mix of traditional country music and rock from the late 60s. ...”

udiscover (Video)

Tracing Berenice Abbott’s steps in today’s Bowery

 

“After spending the 1920s as a cutting edge portrait photographer in Paris, Berenice Abbott returned to the United States to find that her documentary-like style of photography was out of fashion. In New York, Abbott ‘was unable to secure space at galleries, have her work shown at museums, or continue the working relationships she had forged with a number of magazine publications,’ states the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Lucky for Abbott—and for fans of her unromanticized images that speak for themselves—the Federal Art Project came calling. In 1935, it gave her the means to photograph the streets, buildings, and people of New York City. More than 300 resulting images were collected in Changing New York, published in 1939. ...”

Ephemeral New York

Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol

 

Trump supporters stormed Congress on Jan. 6 to thwart the certification of the presidential election, leading to the deaths of five people.

“A protester was burning an American flag outside the 2016 Republican convention in Cleveland when Joseph Biggs rushed to attack. Jumping a police line, he ripped the man’s shirt off and ‘started pounding,’ he boasted that night in an online video. But the local police charged the flag burner with assaulting Mr. Biggs. The city later paid $225,000 to settle accusations that the police had falsified their reports out of sympathy with Mr. Biggs, who went on to become a leader of the far-right Proud Boys. Two years later, in Portland, Ore., something similar occurred. A Proud Boy named Ethan Nordean was caught on video pushing his way through a crowd of counterprotesters, punching one of them, then slamming him to the ground, unconscious. Once again, the police charged only the other man in the skirmish, accusing him of swinging a baton at Mr. Nordean. ...”

NY Times (Video)

***NY Times: The Officers Danced at a Black Lives Matter Rally. Then They Stormed the Capitol. (Audio)

Mr. Biggs pummeled Gregory Johnson, above, a member of the Communist Party who burned the American flag at a protest in 2016.

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack

Guedra Guedra: Vexillology review – splicing Moroccan culture with sub-bass

 

“From the spiritual polyrhythms of gnawa to the looping vocalisations of Sufism and the percussive tessellations of Berber folk, the world of north African cultures meet in the music of Morocco. Producer Abdellah M Hassak, AKA Guedra Guedra, has taken these rhythms as the core of his work. His name comes from the Berber dance music performed on the guedra drum; his debut EP, 2020’s Son of Sun, explored these diffuse roots through a dancefloor filter, with added field recordings and electronic Midi sequencing, a junglist collage that straddles tradition and contemporary dance musics. ...”

Guardian (Audio)

SoundCloud (Audio)

YouTube: Guedra Guedra (Live) | Atlas Electronic 43:50

The Misfits - written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston (1961)

 

“The Misfits is a 1961 American drama western film written by Arthur Miller, directed by John Huston, and starring Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, and Montgomery Clift. The supporting cast features Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach and Kevin McCarthy. The Misfits was the last completed film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. For Gable, the film was posthumously released, while Monroe died in 1962. The plot centers on a newly divorced woman (Marilyn Monroe) and her time in Reno and Northern Nevada, spent with her friendly landlady Isabelle Steers (Thelma Ritter), an old school cowboy (Clark Gable), the cowboy's tow truck-driving and plane-flying friend (Eli Wallach) and their rodeo-riding, bronc-busting friend (Montgomery Clift) in Dayton, Nevada, and in the western Nevada desert in 1960. ... The making of The Misfits was troublesome on several accounts, not the least of which was the sometimes 100 °F (38 °C) heat of the northern Nevada desert and the breakdown of Monroe's marriage to writer Arthur Miller. Miller revised the script throughout the shoot as the concepts of the film developed. Meanwhile, while her marriage to Arthur Miller had issues, Marilyn Monroe was drinking too much after work, and was using prescription drugs; according to Huston in a 1981 retrospective interview, he was ‘absolutely certain that she was doomed’ a conclusion he reached while working on the film. ... Huston shut down production in August 1960 when Monroe went to a hospital for relaxation and depression treatment. ...”

Wikipedia

The City Review

“John Huston’s The Misfits is a studious, daring vision of American life depicting the same type of protagonists that always appealed to the great filmmaker—people who could be easily called losers, but whose streak of idealism and hopefulness, in the midst of their isolating displacement, makes them attractive and quite easily relatable for the audience. The status of this 1961 drama gained an additional burst by the fact that it was the last film Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe ever worked on, but its value hardly lies in trivialities like this. The main strengths of Huston’s celebrated film can be found in superb acting by Monroe, Gable, Montgomery Clift and Thelma Ritter, as well as Arthur Miller’s genuinely inspired script and director of photography Russell Metty’s astonishing black-and-white visuals. In its production phase, the film basically had to go through hell. ...” John Huston’s ‘The Misfits’ stands tall as a pearl of the sixties which isn’t going to fade into public oblivion any time soon (Video)

‘The Misfits,’ Marilyn Monroe’s final film, is bleak perfection

amazon

YouTube: The Misfits trailer, "I want you to meet my kids", "Too Afraid To Die, Too Afraid To Live", The Tragedy of The Misfits ||| Video Essay

YouTube: Marilyn Monroe And The  Making Of  "The Misfits"  -  Documentary 54:13

2012 June: Before Air-Conditioning (1998), 2014 December: The Crucible (1953), 2015 December: A View from the Bridge (1955), 2016 January: Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn, 2017 October: Death of a Salesman (1949), 2019 August: The Chelsea Affect

New Yorks Underground Societies | Cities of the Underworld

 

“Today, New York is the biggest city in the country... but it's got some dark secrets in its past. It was founded by covert groups, overrun with gangs and mob bosses, and ruled by secret societies. This is the true foundation of the city that never sleeps, and host Don Wildman is headed deep beneath the skyscrapers, taxicabs and street vendors into a New York that few have ever seen before. From a hidden Freemason tunnel and secret world of the Sandhogs, to mobster hideaways and gang escape routes, we're uncovering the secret societies that built New York--from the underground up.“

IMDb

YouTube: New York's Underground Societies | Cities of the Underworld (S2, E9) | Full Episode 42:58

Arto Lindsay: Space, Parades, and Confrontational Aesthetics

 

“I first Met Arto Lindsay at a party I hosted at my house to preview a new set by my band Zs.  Of course it was an honor and a privilege to have the man in my house—founding the band DNA alone makes him a legend! Arto and I have a mutual friend, Arto’s manager Ryu Takahashi, and through him we had occasion to meet a number of times over the next couple of years.  As I got to know Arto and his work better, I began to appreciate the breadth of his artistic vision.  Not only had Arto founded arguably the most important band from New York’s early-’80s No Wave scene, he is a well-known figure in Brazilian pop, collaborator of Matthew Barney’s, leader of parades, and thrower of sounds in space. Alexis de Tocqueville has said that Americans ‘cut through the form to the substance.’  Punk, which is quintessentially American, does just that.  Born of an urgency around reaching people through disruptive and confrontational aesthetics and social practice, punk is inherently populist at the level of essence. ...”

New Music USA (Video)

2009 October: Arto Lindsay, 2012 July: Lounge Lizards, 2015 October: The Golden Palominos - The Golden Palominos (1983), 2015 November: Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980), 2017 October: The Lounge Lizards - Lounge Lizards (1981), 2018 February: Arto Lindsay ... Simply Are, 2018 July: DNA - A Taste Of DNA (EP - 1981)

Tobias Karlehag: Karlehag’s “Spring”

 

“This is a dream of a piece by Tobias Karlehag, whose ‘Spring’ is an evershfting melodic line, supported by a shimmering sequence of ambient pads. The melody is quite brief and cyclical, and yet something about the accumulation of tones, the slight variations in permutations, the occasional appearance of what seem to be choral vocal samples, all adds up to something far more life-like than the individual parts might suggest. Throughout, Karlehag’s darts in and out of view, maintaining the balance, implementing small changes. This is the latest video I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at YouTube. More from Karlehag at tobiaskarlehag.tumblr.com. ...”

disquiet (Video)

YouTube: Tobias Karlehag

YouTube: Process - full album (2021) 38:13

Meet Alnilam, Orion's Belt Buckle

 

Alnilam in Orion, the Hunter, as seen in early winter.

“Alnilam is the middle star in the famous three-member belt of Orion, the Hunter. The belt is so easily recognizable because all three stars are spaced evenly in a (roughly) straight line and appear to be about the same brightness. But Alnilam stands out for being super massive, super distant, and, perhaps most intriguingly, super luminous. Picture the Sun on a hot summer day; think about the light you see and the heat you feel. This energy is so strong that it powers photosynthesis in plants, and in turn, almost everything other living thing on Earth. ...”

Sky & Telescope

W - Alnilam

The Ojibwe constellation of the Wintermaker includes the familiar stars of our Orion but his outstretched arms reach to include Procyon in Canis Minor and Aldebaran in Taurus.

A Special Day - Ettore Scola (1977)

 

“A Special Day (Italian: Una giornata particolare) is a 1977 Italian drama film directed by Ettore Scola and starring Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni and John Vernon. Set in Rome in 1938, its narrative follows a woman and her neighbor who stay home the day Adolf Hitler visits Benito Mussolini. It is an Italian-Canadian co-production. Themes addressed in the film include gender roles, fascism, and the persecution of homosexuals under the Mussolini regime. ... Much of the film's themes revolve around gender roles and the model of masculinity under fascist Italy. Antonietta is the donna madre, a mother figure who meets her feminine responsibilities in the regime by having six children, boasting one more will secure her the government bonus established for large families in 1933. The Fascist regime equates homosexuality with depopulation, and thus, Gabriele is suspected of treason. The bachelor tax of 1926 was a measure against this, and Gabriele has to pay it. While the stay-at-home mother and homosexual neighbor would seem to be an improbable pairing, both are minimized by the regime, and find comfort and some sympathy in each other. At the end of the film, domestic life will continue as usual, but "inner resistance" to Fascism has been awakened. ...”

Wikipedia

Criterion - A Special Day: Small Victories, A Special Day

sensesofcinema - Two Ordinary People; One Special Day

NY Times - Miss Loren and Mastroianni Light Screen as a Team in 'Special Day' By Vincent Canby

YouTube: A Special Day

The New American Poetry 1945–1960

 

“... For many, Grove Press really defined the character of the international literary underground. Donald Allen, the first editor at Grove (other than Rosset), edited the anthology The New American Poetry 1945–1960, the importance and influence of which cannot be overestimated—San Francisco Renaissance, Black Mountain, Beat, the New York School, are all here brought together and center stage. This book might well be considered the ‘flash point’ for the renaissance in literary writing and small press publishing that would flourish within a few short years of its publication. Along with its stable of European writers, Grove also published such Americans as Ted Berrigan (The Sonnets went through two printings totaling 6,000 copies), Paul Blackburn, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Jr., Richard Brautigan, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson, among many others. ...”

From a Secret Location

W - The New American Poetry 1945–1960

M. Perloff - Whose New American Poetry?: Anthologizing in the Nineties

Google: The New American Poetry 1945–1960

amazon

April 2019: Networking the New American Poetry

Patti Smith - People Have The Power (1988)

 

“People have the power, is probably one of the most famous and powerful protest songs of all time. It was written by Patti Smith and her late husband, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, and released as a lead single from the 1988’s album Dream of Life. Notably, we could say that this is the most ‘universal’ and ‘optimistic’ protest song written ever: it could easily adapt to any cause and eventually inspires optimism in those who sing the song, clearly stating that we have the individual power to realize our dreams of a better society by standing together.In an interview released at NME, Patti explained how she and her late husband tried to infuse the spirit of the ’60s into a modern protest song: We had both protested the Vietnam War when we were young. We had been part of the ’60s, where our cultural voice was really strong, and we were trying to write a song that would reintroduce that kind of energy. It’s sad for me but quite beautiful. It was really Fred’s song — even though I wrote the words, he wrote the music; the concept was his, and he wanted it to be a song that people sang all over the world to inspire them for different causes. ...”

WordsInTheBucket

YouTube: People Have The Power, Patti Smith with Choir! Choir! Choir! - People Have The Power

Dennis Brown - Money In My Pocket (1979)

 

“Originally a Jamaican hit for Dennis Brown in 1972, the self-penned 'Money In My Pocket' was recut by the singer-songwriter six years later, with the updated version proving even more successful, breaching the UK pop charts on 3 March 1979 before peaking five weeks later. ...”

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Money In My Pocket (original version), Money In My Pocket  v  Prince Mohammid - Cool Runnings