The John Wright Trio ‎– South Side Soul (1960)

 

The life of John Wright, the Chicago jazz pianist they call “South Side Soul" - “Chicago jazz pianist John Wright earned his reputation with a string of LPs for the Prestige label in the early 60s—his 1960 debut made such an impression that its title, South Side Soul, remains his nickname to this day. His discography has been sparse since then, but he's never stopped playing for long, and he's just had an especially eventful week. On Friday, August 29, Wright spoke at the ceremony to formally designate the 3800 block of South Prairie ‘Dinah Washington Way,’ reminiscing about his interactions with the great singer in the 1950s. ...”

Chicago Reader (Video)

W - South Side Soul, W - John Wright

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: South Side Soul (Full Album)

The Trauma of the Civil War Lives On in Faulkner’s Fiction

 

“In July, at his memorial service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the Honorable John Lewis was eulogized by three presidents. The sitting president was not among them. His absence was yet another assertion of the anti-Black hostility and xenophobia fouling the polity with renewed vigor. We lament the current social climate as though it were anomalous, an outbreak of pestilence, when in reality these iniquities reverberate through our American centuries. We need a prophet — a voice to call up the nation’s oldest stories, a reckoning with what was so that we might understand what is. In The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War, part literary biography, part Civil War history, Michael Gorra presents a cogent case for Faulkner as one such prophet. ...”

NY Times

LOA - Interviews - The Saddest Words: Michael Gorra on reading Faulkner now

W - Michael Gorra

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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), 2020 August: Down Through the Faulkner Bloodline, Pride and Racial Guilt Commingled

Charlotte Corday

 

Charlotte Corday (c. 1860), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

“Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont (27 July 1768 – 17 July 1793), known as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was executed by guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, who was in part responsible for the more radical course the Revolution had taken through his role as a politician and journalist. Marat had played a substantial role in the political purge of the Girondins, with whom Corday sympathized. His murder was depicted in the painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, which shows Marat's dead body after Corday had stabbed him in his medicinal bath. In 1847, writer Alphonse de Lamartine gave Corday the posthumous nickname l'ange de l'assassinat (the Angel of Assassination). ...”

Wikipedia

“David, Not a Feminist”: Paintings Depicting Charlotte Corday’s Assassination of Marat

YouTube: Charlotte Corday and the Death of Marat (Women and the French Revolution: Part 5)

 

Charlotte Corday being conducted to her execution, by Arturo Michelena (1889); the warden carries the red blouse worn by Corday and the painter Hauer stands at the right.

2014 February: French Revolution Digital Archive, 2015 July: A Guide to the French Revolution, 2016 April: Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, 2017 March: Paris Commune 1871, 2018 February: Flash Mob: Revolution, Lightning, and the People’s Will, 2020 February: The French Rural Revolution 1789-1793, 2021 June: Sans-culottes

​Jazzman Records reissues Ron Everett’s 1977 obscure soul jazz holy grail ‘Glitter of The City’

 

“One can make the argument, that the term ‘Holy Grail’ is sometimes used a bit too loosely, however that certainly isn’t the case when applied to Ron Everett’s 1977 obscure soul jazz masterpiece Glitter Of The City. Originally self-released in 1977 on a shoestring budget, UK’s Jazzman Records has recently reissued the essential recording as a part of it’s ongoing superb Jazzman Holy Grail series. Originally recorded as a seven-track album and circulated in small quantities among the Philadelphia region, this incredible recording spans a lot of territory, from soulful jazz grooves and blues, to spiritual jazz and Latin rhythms. ...”

beat caffeine (Audio)

Forced Exposure

YouTube: Ron Everett – The Glitter Of The City (1977) - [2021 - Album] 1:18:58

Fela Kuti and Afrika '70 -"I Go Shout Plenty"/"Why Black Man Dey Suffer"

 

“...  ‘I Go Shout Plenty’ was recorded in late 1976 or January 1977, but was not released until 1986, as the title track of an album which also included ‘Why Black Man Dey Suffer.’ The release was delayed for so long because the master tape was among the unissued recordings caught up in the aftermath of the Nigerian army’s destruction of Kalakuta Republic in February 1977. Decca Afrodisia, fearful of regime reprisals if it offered support to Fela, halted the release of any Afrika 70 record it thought the regime might deem “seditious.” In the lyric, Fela asserts his right to raise his voice in opposition to the Nigerian authorities. ‘I Go Shout Plenty’ is a typically fiery, mid-period Afrika 70 track. ...”

Holland Tunnel Dive

YouTube: "I Go Shout Plenty"/"Why Black Man Dey Suffer", Soundcloud: "I Go Shout Plenty"

The Louvre’s Art Sleuth Is on the Hunt for Looted Paintings

 

Emmanuelle Polack at the center in the Louvre which houses important materials for her research.

“PARIS — In a frenzied, four-day auction in the grand hall of the Savoy Hotel in Nice in June 1942, buyers bid on paintings, sculptures and drawings from ‘the cabinet of a Parisian art lover.’ Among the 445 pieces for sale were works by Degas, Delacroix, Renoir and Rodin. The administrator monitoring the sale, appointed by the French collaborationist Vichy regime, and René Huyghe, a paintings curator at the Louvre, knew the real identity of the art lover: Armand Isaac Dorville, a successful Parisian lawyer. They also knew that he was Jewish. ... The full history of the Dorville auction might have remained secret had it not been for Emmanuelle Polack, a 56-year-old art historian and archival sleuth. The key to her success in discovering the provenance of works that suspiciously changed hands during the Nazi Occupation was to follow the money. ...”

NY Times

William S. Burroughs - A Word Is a Word Is a Collage (1965)

 

Experimental Artworks - Kunsthalle Vienna

"... Voice dry as the voice of T.S. Eliot droning from a recording, accent still American after years away from America. Appearance as anonymous as a bank clerk’s, forgettable as a bank robber. Writer of books compared with Kafka, Joyce, and dirty postcards. His bruised readers nurse a sense of outrage and assault after trips through the Burroughs landscape, a desert of screams. All the time he talks he moves around the room, or groping for cigarettes, or gesturing with nervous hands. He lines the cigarette pack up with invisible parallels, rearranges the ash pattern in the ash tray. His work is sentences from newspapers, conversations, other authors, the title of something he is reading, things he hears, what is happening around him; it all makes a sort of collage. ...”

Reality Studio  

Reality Studio - The Naked Express: William Burroughs and Tom Veitch

 

Collage #6 - Tangiers, top; possibly Ahmed Yacoubi (?), bottom.  Silver gelatin print and scotch tape.

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive, 2016 December: #6 – Call Me Burroughs LP, 2017 January: A Visit to William S. Burroughs at the Beat Hotel in Summer, 1958, 2017 December: The Nova Trilogy (The Cut-up Trilogy), 2018 September: Material - The Road to the Western Lands (1998), 2019 March: Insect Trust Gazette (1964 / 1968), 2020 June: Broadsides - William S. Burroughs Collecting

​Bellotto: The Königstein Views Reunited

 

The Fortress of Königstein from the North, 1756–8 

“Sharply silhouetted against a pale evening sky is the Saxon fortress of Königstein.  Bernardo Bellotto (1722–1780) painted this historic site – a stronghold located approximately 25 miles south-east of Dresden, in the picturesque Elbe valley –not just once, but five times. In this exhibition we reunite these five monumental views, which includes our recently acquired view from the north, for the first time in more than 250 years. ...”

National Gallery

National Gallery: Bellotto

National Gallery: More paintings by Bernardo Bellotto 

W - Bernardo Bellotto

YouTube: A New Acquisition: Bernardo Bellotto's 'The Fortress of Königstein from the North'

Courtyard with the Brunnenhaus, 1756–8

Joni Mitchell - The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Demos

 

“This is a repost, if you downloaded originally from here this is the same version. If you have downloaded this from elsewhere, check you have this upgraded version as it is superior quality compared to previous editions. These unreleased demos and working versions appeared in a radically different finished form on the Hissing Of Summer Lawns released in November 1975. On the album Joni had continued her change in musical direction begun on Court And Spark (1974), away from her folk stylings towards jazz and what we would now label world music. ...”

100 Greatest Bootlegs

YouTube: The Hissing of Summer Lawns acoustic demos

2015 July: Blue (1970), 2015 Novemer: 40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited, 2016 August: On For the Roses (1972), 2016 November: Court and Spark (1974), 2017 February: Hejira (1976), 2017 August: Miles of Aisles (1974), 2017 October: Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius, 2018 March: Joni Mitchell: We look back over her extraordinary 50 year career, 2018 November: Free Man In Paris (1974), 2019 April: Mingus (1979), 2019 July: The Guide to Getting Into Joni Mitchell, the Blueprint for Human Experience, 2021 June: 50 Reasons to Love Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’

​Basketball Is Nothing Without Net

 

Anibal Amador has spent the last three years replacing the nets at the courts near his apartment in Manhattan.

“One of the most gratifying sounds in sports is the whoosh of a basketball snapping the netting on a perfect swish. Take away the net and all that’s left is the unsatisfying silence of a ball pushing air molecules around as it sails through the rim. Did it even go through? Sometimes it is hard to tell. That's why Anibal Amador, a 55-year-old former real estate agent from Manhattan, regularly dips into his own pocket to buy brand-new nets for playground rims. The city does not provide nets for the most part, but anyone who has played even one game of Hustle knows that the muted hush of a ball drifting through a netless rim turns even the most perfectly executed shot into an airball. ...”

NY Times

Gloria - John Cassavetes (1980)

 

“Gloria is a 1980 American neo-noir crime thriller film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It tells the story of a gangster's girlfriend who goes on the run with a young boy who is being hunted by the mob for information he may or may not have. It stars Gena Rowlands, Julie Carmen, Buck Henry, and John Adames. In the South Bronx, Jeri Dawn is heading home with groceries. Inside the lobby of her apartment building, she passes a man whose dress and appearance are out of place. The woman quickly boards the elevator. She is met in her apartment by her husband Jack Dawn, an accountant for a New York City mob family. ...”

Wikipedia

Chapter on The Making of Gloria (1979-1980)

amazon

YouTube: Gloria (1980) ORIGINAL TRAILER

2008 September: John Cassavetes, 2010 December: Shadows (1959), 2012 February: His Life and Work, 2012 July: A Constant Forge, 2013 June: Minnie and Moskowitz, 2013 July: BAM: Cassavetes - Jul 6—Jul 31, 2013, 2021 May: A Woman Under the Influence  (1974)

Requiem for a Dream

 

Paintings for the Art Fund of the Museum of Artistic Culture in the Museum Bureau of IZO Narkompros collection, Moscow, 1919–20.

“The idea of an avant-garde museum has something of the head-scratching quality of the oxymoron to it—because didn’t the avant-garde turn its back on institutions in hopes of engaging directly with life? (That said, why people consider institutions anathema to life has always been another head-scratcher for me.) In his 1909 Futurist Manifesto, F. T. Marinetti promised to destroy museums and other dusty sites of knowledge (’libraries, academies of every kind’) in order to make space for speed and dynamism. ...”

ARTFORUM

W - Manifesto of Futurism, W - Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

[PDF] The Futurist Manifesto - Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

First page of the English version Manifesto of Futurism as it appeared in Poesia (magazine)

​Before & After Funkadelic’s ‘Maggot Brain’

 

“On more than three dozen virtuosic, genre-blurring studio albums released from 1970 to 1982, George Clinton and the members of his rollicking Parliament-Funkadelic collective shaped the backbone and shook loose the booty of modern groove. Formed by singers in the orbit of a New Jersey barbershop in 1955, the group started as a Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers-style doo-wop act before leaning into Detroit soul. Ultimately they absorbed the culture of the late ’60s like sponges.The Parliaments transformed from a Motown-aspiring, matching-tie-and-handkerchief vocal group into tripped-out hippies in bell bottoms, headdresses and the occasional American flag diaper. They were turned on by psychedelic rockers like Jimi Hendrix and Cream; they hung out with punks like the MC5 and the Stooges; they enjoyed Black Power, free love and underground comics. ...”

NY Times (Audio)

​Christ Stopped at Eboli: Memories of Exile

 

“Francesco Rosi’s film Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) is based on Carlo Levi’s novelistic memoir of the same name, which became an instant classic of Italian literature when it appeared at the end of World War II, in 1945. In it, Levi recounts the year between 1935 and 1936, during which he was sent by the Fascist government to live in the small southern Italian town of Aliano (called Gagliano in the book and the movie). At the time, Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime would send political dissidents into a kind of internal exile, to live in remote towns in southern Italy, where they would be required to sign in with the local police every day. ...”

Criterion

Criterion: Christ Stopped at Eboli

W - Christ Stopped at Eboli (film)

amazon

YouTube: Christ Stopped at Eboli - Trailer

2013 July: Salvatore Giuliano (1962), 2013 July: Hands Over the City (1963)

​The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?

 

“After years of starting the day with a tall morning coffee, followed by several glasses of green tea at intervals, and the occasional cappuccino after lunch, I quit caffeine, cold turkey. It was not something that I particularly wanted to do, but I had come to the reluctant conclusion that the story I was writing demanded it. Several of the experts I was interviewing had suggested that I really couldn’t understand the role of caffeine in my life – its invisible yet pervasive power – without getting off it and then, presumably, getting back on. Roland Griffiths, one of the world’s leading researchers of mood-altering drugs, and the man most responsible for getting the diagnosis of “caffeine withdrawal” included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, told me he hadn’t begun to understand his own relationship with caffeine until he stopped using it and conducted a series of self-experiments. He urged me to do the same. ...”

Guardian

 

A coffee house in 17th-century London. 

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup, 2021 June: Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

​Breaking down England’s penalty heartbreak: At 10.49pm, Maguire slashes penalty home. At 10.54pm, everything changes

 

“It’s brutal sometimes, football. One by one, the players went to Bukayo Saka. They told him it would be OK, that they were proud of him, and that he should be proud of himself, too. They told him there was no blame and, even as they were saying it, they must have known their words made little difference. Maybe, in time, Saka will come to understand that, yes, he ought to be proud he played with such distinction during Euro 2020 that he was trusted, at the age of 19, to be part of the penalty shootout which decided the final between England and Italy. For now, though, what can anyone say to console a player who has suffered this kind of professional trauma? ....”

The Athletic

NY Times: How Italy Beat England to Win Euro 2020 (Video)

Leaving Euro 2020 - Brian Phillips

BBC: 'Out of despair, Italy have brought joy to a nation'

NY Times: After Defeat, England’s Black Soccer Players Face a Racist Outburst

Marcus Rashford mural vandalised after England lose Euro 2020 final

Guardian: England battle for survival instead of control as deep-lying issue resurfaces - Jonathan Wilson

Wikipedia: UEFA Euro 2020 Final

NY Times: In the Big Euro 2020 Game, I Knew the England I Was Rooting For

​A photographer's journey across California's iconic Route 66

 

 The Globetrotter Lodge in Holbrook, Ariz.

“Route 66, also known as the Will Rogers Highway, is arguably the most famous original road in the entirety of the United States. Having been established all the way back in 1926, it ran from Santa Monica, California, to Chicago, Illinois. As time rolled on, the route was bypassed by the Interstate road system and was officially removed from the US highway system in 1985. Since then, however, the journey has taken on a whole new meaning.As a historic reminiscence, its remnants are now labelled as a scenic byway with ‘Historic Route 66’ signs. Many roadside reminiscences and curiosities are left reminding the traveller of the exciting past when the country was developed for long-distance car travels. ...”

FAR OUT

NY Times: A Nostalgic (if Isolating) Road Trip Along Route 66

amazon: 66 on 66: A Photographer's Journey 

 Little remains of the Tonto Drive-In Theater in Winslow, Ariz.

​Lionel Messi and Argentina Beat Brazil in Copa América Final

 

The Copa América victory was Lionel Messi’s first major title with Argentina’s senior team, and the team’s first since 1993.

“Lionel Messi finally ticked the last empty box in his glittering soccer career on Saturday night, leading Argentina past host Brazil, 1-0, in the final of the Copa América in Rio de Janeiro.The trophy was Messi’s first with Argentina after a string of painful, agonizing, maddening failures, including perhaps the most demoralizing defeat of his career — against Germany in the World Cup final — inside the same stadium, Rio’s hulking Maracanã, in 2014.When the whistle blew to end the final, Messi — his relief palpable — dropped to his knees and was immediately surrounded by his teammates. Moments later, they were lifting him above their shoulders and tossing him in the air. ...”

NY Times (Video)

YouTube: Celebrations in Buenos Aires as Argentina claim Copa America title, Buenos Aires erupts as Argentina beat Brazil in Copa América final

ESPN: Copa America final preview: Will Neymar, Brazil beat Messi's Argentina?

NY Times: Lionel Messi Tries to Slay His Ghosts (July 9)

Head to Head: Comparing Tite and Scaloni's numbers ahead of the final (Video)

Eileen in Wonderland

 

Eileen Agar, Erotic Landscape, 1942, collage on paper

“In an undated note bequeathed to the Tate Archive in 1992, Eileen Agar (1899–1991) writes of her admiration for the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: ‘Lewis Carroll is a mysterious master of time and imagination, the Herald of Sur-Realism and freedom, a prophet of the Future and an uprooter of the Past, with a literary and visual sense of the Present.’ The same could be said of Agar, whose long career as an artist spanned most of the twentieth century and intersected with some of the prevailing movements of the time, including Cubism and surrealism. Her timeless work—including the oil painting Alice with Lewis Carroll—will be on view through August 29 at the Whitechapel Gallery’s ‘Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy,’ the largest exhibition yet of the sui generis artist’s oeuvre. A selection of images from the show appears below. ...”

The Paris Review

W - Eileen Agar

Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy (Audio)

Tate: Note on Lewis Carroll, describing him as ‘a prophet of surrealism’

 

Photograph of Agar wearing Ceremonial Hat for Eating Bouillabaisse, 1936

​Mapping the Field

 

Fuller

“Yet another semester online, yet another group of 22 amazingly dedicated, creative, intellectually generous, mutually supportive students representing ten or so programs from across The New School! Rather than working around our geographically distributed, mediated condition, we sought to center it — to map and reflect on the social and technical and ecological networks that connect us. ... Our fabulous teaching assistant, Emily Bowe, led us through some fantastic mapping labs, and three thematic student groups designed a few of our sessions, complete with thoughtfully conceived mapping exercises. This was a difficult year. ...”

Mapping the Field: Our Final Projects

Mapping the Field

 

Ashley’s “Exploring Foodways + Infrastructures of East New York” 

​Inside Laraaji’s Beautiful Meditation Music

 

“This month, Numero Group reissued Vision Songs Vol. 1, a collection of 11 pieces culled from a self-released 1984 meditation tape by New Age music legend Laraaji. These ‘celestial sounds,’ as Laraaji calls them, were originally released as a short run of 60-minute cassettes designed to guide and soundtrack transcendental meditation. Constructed in the artist’s Manhattan studio, Laraaji used an MT-70 Casio synthesizer, drum machine, and his long-standing signature instrument, the zither, to create works of longform electronic ambience. Vision Songs Vol. 1 was one of over 20 Laraaji releases that, in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, were almost exclusively available in a constellation of New Age book shops in cities along the East Coast of the United States. ...”

Bandcamp (Audio)

Laraaji: A Life in Music and Meditation (Video)

2021 February: The Eternal Life Aquatic with Laraaji

From Ritual to Romance - Jessie L Weston (1920)

 

“From Ritual to Romance, published in 1920, is perhaps most well known today for being the first work T S Eliot lists in his ‘Notes on The Waste Land’, where he says that Weston’s book suggested ‘Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism’ of his poem. Eliot, of course, later said these notes were a publisher’s requirement to bulk out the book publication of The Waste Land, which has led some to dismiss them entirely, or to see them as one more layer of obfuscation around the poem, and Eliot himself later said he regretted sending so many readers ‘on a wild goose chase after Tarot cards and the Holy Grail’. But From Ritual to Romance, which aims to trace a link between medieval Holy Grail romances and the earliest fertility rituals, certainly had its influence on what the poem says and how it says it. ...”

Mewsings

W - From Ritual to Romance, W - Jessie Weston

Voice: Joseph Campbell, Myth Master (1988)

W - Holy Grail

From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston [1920]

10 of the best Latin American novels – that will take you there

 

Plaza Fernández de Madrid (The Cartagena pictured in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel Love in the Time of Cholera

"A sense of place often has a political edge in Latin American writing. Even magic realism – which takes fantastic liberties with the contours of cities and pueblos, jungles and rivers – is rooted in the living, breathing, dying and warring world of its characters. Over five centuries, Hispanic authors have loaned from and contested European ideas about their world, adapting imported traditions (from naturalism to crime fiction to stream-of-consciousness) and reworking them to bring to life the vibrancy and vicissitudes of their youthful continent. The best novels are as alluring and stimulating as the most atmospheric places. To choose just 10 was only possible by imagining I was packing for a long road trip with limited baggage. I would take these, a comfortable hammock and a sturdy pillow. ...”

Guardian

Guardian: Fiction and hyper-reality

Guardian: The undefeated

 

Pelourinho, the historic centre of Salvador. Captains of the Sands by Jorge Amado