The Musical Wanderings of Don Was

 
“Is Don Was the definitive musical journeyman of the late 20th century? Born Don Fagenson in Detroit in 1952, he co-founded the funk/pop band Was (Not Was), of ‘Walk the Dinosaur’ fame; won four Grammys in the far-flung genres of country, children’s music and blues; serves as president of the jazz powerhouse Blue Note Records; made documentary films about The Beatles and Brian Wilson; and has produced albums for the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elton John and Willie Nelson. It’s exhausting to  think about. ...”

​Andrew Watson: The 'most influential' black footballer for decades lost to history

 
Watson is also depicted in a mural at the site of the original Hampden Park

"There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. ..."

Lanquidity (Definitive Edition) - Sun Ra (1978/2021)

 
“That’s how Sun Ra responded when Philly Jazz Records owner Tom Buchler visited the late jazz giant at his Philadelphia apartment early in the summer of 1978 in an attempt to discuss the upcoming studio session that would yield the album Lanquidity. In the liner notes assembled especially for a new expanded double-disc edition of the album, Buchler recalls his expectations. ... Of course, anyone familiar with Sun Ra can easily picture the train of thought those conversations must have followed, which is easy to reconstruct thanks to multiple longform monologues with Ra expounding on likeminded topics that are now available online. By the time he met Buchler, Ra—born Herman Blount, but later changing his legal name to Le Sony’r Ra—had advanced his central message for decades. ...”

​The Dangers of Distracted Parenting

 
“Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents. Yes, parents now have more face time with their children than did almost any parents in history. ...”

​The Trojan Story

 
“Since 1968, Trojan Records has been synonymous with the reggae, rocksteady, dub, and ska genres.  The U.K. label founded by Lee Gopthal and Island Records' Chris Blackwell was instrumental in spreading those Jamaican sounds throughout the world and popularizing such key artists as Jimmy Cliff, Desmond Dekker, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, and The Maytals.   By 1971, Trojan - with its focus on 45 RPM singles - had amassed enough hit records to release a label anthology. ... The Trojan Story was the first large-scale release to celebrate the music of Jamaica to the world at large.  The three-disc, 50-song anthology was curated by Trojan label manager Rob Bell, Dandy Livingstone, Webster Shrowder, and Joe Sinclair. ...”

Absolut Cuba - Raúl Cañibano

 
Viñales - His approach means we find genuine people in his pictures, who never appear manipulated or contrived

Absolut Cuba is Raúl Cañibano‘s declaration of love to his native country. His surprising, caring, yet incredibly precise take and his lightning-fast, instinctive and gripping intellect let him capture moments which might seem totally familiar: normal everyday life in urban or rural settings. This makes him one of the most gifted photographers in Latin America. His project Tierra Guajira pays tribute to Cuban farmers in an almost anthropological approach – tracing his own childhood in the east of the country. Raúl Cañibano combines it with pictures from his series Ciudad, Fe por San Lázaro and Ocaso to let us sense the heart and soul of Cuba. His images are truthful and convey a sense of identity. They are filled with tradition, happiness, tragedy and magic. ...”

​Concrète Dschungel: Einstürzende Neubauten’s Kollaps At 40

 
“Feral musicians emerging from the rubble of bombed-out West Berlin and creating themselves out of their own blood and guts very much feels like a tale from another age. In a world of coffee shop startups, utilitarian computer software and ersatz bedroom electronica as aural wallpaper, building your own percussive instruments from scrap might seem primitive, complex, redundant even. But in 1981, when Einstürzende Neubauten made Kollaps, it was revolutionary. For the briefest of moments they tried to be conventional, but it didn’t last long. The Moon Club in Berlin on April 1st, 1980 was the scene of Naubauten’s first ever show, after Blixa Bargeld overheard a promoter telling somebody else that an act was needed for the following Tuesday night; he formed the band there and then and blurted out the name - ‘collapsing new buildings’ - to give them something to put on the poster. ...”

2010 September: Einstürzende Neubauten, 2012 September: Imaginary Sounds Feature, 2013 September: Alles Wieder Offen (2007)

​Whirlpool Galaxy

 
Whirlpool Galaxy (M51A or NGC 5194), the smaller object in the upper right is M51B or NGC 5195

“The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, and NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is estimated to be 31 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions. What later became known as the Whirlpool Galaxy was discovered on October 13, 1773, by Charles Messier while hunting for objects that could confuse comet hunters, and was designated in Messier's catalogue as M51. ...”

When J.R.R. Tolkien Worked for the Oxford English Dictionary and “Learned More … Than Any Other Equal Period of My Life” (1919-1920)

 
“When J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings appeared in the mid-1950s, its first critical readers held some diverging views on the books’ quality. On the one hand, there was praise for the revival of fantasy for grown-ups, and comparisons to great epics of the past. On the other hand, Tolkien’s prose was excoriated for its wordiness, length, and seemingly inexhaustible obsession with obscurities. Both perspectives seemed to miss something important. ... The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) remains an indispensable reference for scholars of language and literature, but it is not itself a typical academic text. ... The experience as an OED lexicographer prepared Tolkien for his lifelong career as a philologist. It also informed his literary technique, argue Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner, the authors of Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary and former OED editors, all. ...”

​Assassin's Creed Ambience- The Most Beautiful music from AC 1 to AC: Odyssey

 
“Here you can find the most beautiful music you will ever hear. Some of the tracks can be classified as classical or ethnic music. Remember... the music tells a story... a story that is more powerful than any hand-written text. Words are weak and often meaningless. Words can describe different objects and events. But can they directly transfer feelings? Here comes the music. The music itself is one complex collection of emotions. All you have to do is just to listen and feel... feel every sound you hear, feel every story that's behind these sounds. I managed to collect the most beautiful and the most emotional tracks from all of the main Assassin's Creed games (that exist until this moment). Tracks are sorted according to the game release dates. In the video I labeled all of the historical periods and places that tracks represent. ...”

Smoke - Wayne Wang and Paul Auster (1995)

 
Smoke is a 1995 American independent film by Wayne Wang and Paul Auster. The original story was written by Paul Auster, who also wrote the screenplay. The film was produced by Greg Johnson, Peter Newman, Kenzo Horikoshi, and Hisami Kuroiwa. Among others, it features Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Stockard Channing, Harold Perrineau Jr., and Forest Whitaker. The film follows the lives of multiple characters, all of whom are connected via their patronage of a small Brooklyn tobacconist store managed by Auggie (Harvey Keitel). Brooklyn Cigar Co. was located on the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West. Auggie has been taking photographs of the store from across the street at 8:00am every morning and has been collecting all his photos in albums. A recently-widowed writer Paul Benjamin (William Hurt) spends an evening with Auggie, during which Auggie tells Paul of his photographs, which he describes as his ‘life's work’. ...”

Louder in Lagos

 

“In the shadow of Nigeria’s 61st Independence Day, Africa Is a Country radio stops over in Lagos on its tour of African club cultures inspired by the Ten Cities book project. ... That narrative is one that focuses on individual artists’ success, propelled by a general surprise around Africans’ access to wealth, itself fueled by a long tradition of single African stories.  At a time when Wizkid has sneaked his way into our daily subconscious via the banal stream of mainstream radio, even making it on to that holy commercial grail of US black radio that black international stars have been trying to crack for decades, we would be wise to remember that the push and pull dynamics of national history that have shaped the Lagos music scene (and its urban environment in general) are inseparable from the music itself. Take a listen on Worldwide FM or below via Mixcloud, and if you have an account there, go ahead and hit follow to keep up on all the latest episodes. ...”

​Extending the Family at Fazunchar Festival in Portugal with Isaac Cordal

“It’s a curious pleasure to meet some of the extended members of the Isaac Cordal businessmen after all these years, isn’t it? For a decade or so you’ve been seeing his balding men in rumpled suits installed on ledges and window sills – contemplating their ennui, reviewing their rotten deeds, realizing they had wasted their lives playing the stock market only to feel empty.  Now it’s time to meet the family? Now the Spanish street artist expands the circle as he attends the Fazunchar Festival in Figueiro dos Vinhos in Portugal, and you are seeing his new sculptures perched in new spaces throughout the village. ...”

​My frame is true: new wave posters – in pictures

 
“Andrew Krivine began collecting music industry flyers and posters in 1977 on his annual trip from the US to see family in London. ... By the time he’d finished college in the early 80s (spending a year in the UK as well as studying in Chicago), he’d amassed around 5,500 items of memorabilia for punk and new wave LPs, gigs and clubs. The finest of these have now been collected in the book Reversing into the Future (published by Pavilion on 14 October, £35). In a time before Spotify and YouTube, poster art was key to a band selling their sound to an audience. ...”

​Anni Albers on How to Be an Artist

 
Anni Albers revered experimentation. During her early days studying under Paul Klee at the Bauhaus school, in the 1920s, she set out to expand the scope of weaving by using new, daring methods and materials. ‘I heard [Klee] speak and he said take a line for a walk,’ she once recalled to Nicholas Fox Weber, director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. ‘And I thought, I will take thread everywhere I can.’ In her textile practice, Albers ecstatically mingled organic and synthetic fibers; loom-weaving and hand-weaving; representation and abstraction; art and utility. The resulting lively, bristling compositions revolutionized weaving and helped shape the burgeoning traditions of abstraction. ...”

Impulse Records: Music, Message and the Moment

 
“Those of us for whom Impulse has been as important a part of our cultural lives as Blue Note, perhaps even a more important one, will not be satisfied until the label reissues its entire catalogue on remastered CDs and audiophile vinyl. In the meantime, it would be churlish to do anything other than applaud such signs of Impulse's rejuvenation as its signing of reed player Shabaka Hutchings and welcome every tickle of its back catalogue such as this mostly well compiled, thoughtfully annotated 4xLP / 2xCD compilation marking the label's 60th Anniversary. ...”

​Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans

 
“When the Hirshhorn Museum told Laurie Anderson that it wanted to put on a big, lavish retrospective of her work, she said no. For one thing, she was busy. She has been busy now for roughly 50 years, hauling her keyboards and experimental violins all over the world to put on huge bonanzas of lasers and noise loops and incantatory monologues that she delivers in a voice somewhere between slam poetry, an evening newscast, a final confession and a bedtime story. Although Anderson plays multiple instruments, her signature tool has always been her voice. Words emerge from her mouth deliberate and hyperenunciated, surrounded by unpredictable pauses. She piles up phrases the way van Gogh piled up brush strokes. ...”

​Brew: A Brief History of Coffee

 
“To some, their morning coffee is an elixir from heaven, their wake-up in a cup, or simply… necessary to carry on.  With its energizing properties and storied past, it has an interesting history that deserves to be remembered. This is original content based on research by The History Guy. ...”

Chasing New Revenue, FIFA Is Considering Major Move to U.S.

 
FIFA officials toured the United States in September, visiting possible host cities for the 2026 World Cup. 
 
"Looking to expand its global footprint beyond its cloistered headquarters next to a zoo on the outskirts of Zurich, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is studying the feasibility of moving its financial engine, the commercial operation that produces billions of dollars in revenues for the organization, to the United States. The possible move will be determined by technical factors including the suitability of locations on both coasts, the ease of acquiring work visas for overseas staff members and tax rules, according to an official with direct knowledge of the discussions who declined to speak publicly because a final determination had yet to be made. The operations involved represent a vital part of FIFA’s business: They oversee FIFA’s sale of sponsorships and broadcasting rights, which represent some of the most lucrative properties in global sports. ..."

Albert Camus on the Responsibility of the Artist: To “Create Dangerously” (1957)

 
“Literary statements about the nature and purpose of art constitute a genre unto themselves, the ars poetica, an antique form going back at least as far as Roman poet Horace. The 19th century poles of the debate are sometimes represented by the dueling notions of Percy Shelley — who claimed that poets are the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’ — and Oscar Wilde, who famously proclaimed, ‘all art is quite useless.’ These two statements conveniently describe a conflict between art that involves itself in the struggles of the world, and art that is involved only with itself. In the mid-twentieth century, Albert Camus put the question somewhat differently in a 1957 speech entitled ‘Create Dangerously.’ ...”

​Whistle-Blower Says Facebook ‘Chooses Profits Over Safety’

 
“John Tye, the founder of Whistleblower Aid, a legal nonprofit that represents people seeking to expose potential lawbreaking, was contacted this spring through a mutual connection by a woman who claimed to have worked at Facebook. The woman told Mr. Tye and his team something intriguing: She had access to tens of thousands of pages of internal documents from the world’s largest social network. In a series of calls, she asked for legal protection and a path to releasing the confidential information. ... On Sunday, Frances Haugen revealed herself to be ‘Sean,’ the whistle-blower against Facebook. ...”

How Gramercy Park became the only private park in Manhattan

 
“The story begins in 1831, when Samuel B. Ruggles, a New York City lawyer and real estate investor, had an idea. The metropolis was growing fast, pushing past its Lower Manhattan borders and creeping up to 14th Street and beyond. The builders of all the new houses and commercial buildings didn’t always care much about urban planning, and Manhattan’s naturally hilly topography was being leveled and turned into streets and building lots. Ruggles knew that elite New Yorkers would pay big to reside in a different kind of setting, even if it was somewhat north of the posh sections of the city. ‘He recognized the value of centering residences around inviting open spaces within Manhattan’s strict city grid,’ stated the National Parks Service. ...”

Jan. 6 Was Worse Than We Knew

 
“However horrifying the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in the moment, we know now that it was far worse. The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis — not primarily because of the violence and mayhem inflicted by hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters but because of the actions of Mr. Trump himself. In the days before the mob descended on the Capitol, a corollary attack — this one bloodless and legalistic — was playing out down the street in the White House, where Mr. Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and a lawyer named John Eastman huddled in the Oval Office, scheming to subvert the will of the American people by using legal sleight-of-hand. ...”

Van Dyke Parks: Enjoying the Distraction of Collaboration

 
“A chance to talk with the man who penned the line ‘columnated ruins domino’ in the Beach Boys’ epic song ‘Surf’s Up’? Yes, please. His recent collaboration, Van Dyke Parks orchestrates Verónica Valerio: Only in America – Solo en América, is a sonic treat, featuring Verónica’s vocals and harp and Van Dyke’s unique arrangements, and is well worth checking out. A conversation with Van Dyke is a rollicking affair of big words, grand statements, history lessons, piano tinkling, and unabashed humanitarian positivity. ...”

Discogs: Van Dyke Parks Orchestrates Verónica ValerioOnly In America Solo En America (Video)

​VF Live: Jayson Wynters

“Broken beat, house, and techno records from his Birmingham HQ. In VF Live, our favourite DJs take you inside their homes, record stores, and studios, for intimate mixes and performances.DJ, producer, and Cafe Artum founder Jayson Wynters makes his VF Live debut, playing Broken beat, house, and techno records from his Birmingham HQ. First cutting his teeth in the garage scene as an MC in the late ’90s, Jayson has continued his musical journey weaving through different scenes in his hometown, as well as further afield – in the UK and across the globe. ...”

Yale Says Its Vinland Map, Once Called a Medieval Treasure, Is Fake

 
The Vinland Map was unveiled in 1965 by a Yale team that believed it was made in 1440. A new team found a titanium compound used in inks first produced in the 1920s.

“Doubts crept in around Greenland, which looked so good it was frankly suspicious, and questions soon spread all over the map: about the wormholes, the handwriting and, most important, the weirdly crumbling ink. For over half a century, scholars have fought over the authenticity of the Vinland Map, which Yale University unveiled to the world in 1965; at the time, calling it evidence of Viking explorations in the western Atlantic, the first European depiction of North America and a precious medieval treasure. Yale now says someone duped a lot of people. ...”

Jah Lloyd - “No Tribal War/Ark Of The Covenant” (1975)

 
“... Released in 1972, this single is one of the very first to be released by Teem, the label of Patrick Lloyd Francis, Jah Lloyd's birth name. Francis began his singing career with the Mediators in the mid-60s. At the end of the decade, he recorded for Rupie Edwards and Lee Perry. For a while, Francis became their record salesman, frequenting the studios and getting closer to King Tubby, with whom he studied the technical aspect of music. In the early 70s, Pat Francis started producing and founded his Teem label. Inspired by U-Roy, Big Youth or Dilinger, he took the name Jah Lloyd and recorded his first Deejay style productions at Randy's Studio - with the support of Edwards and the help of Perry. ...”

​The 12 Defining Scenes of ‘The Sopranos’

“A word of warning: Your favorite scene from The Sopranos is probably not on this list. Yes, that one—the scene whose absence immediately invalidates everything you’re about to read. Poor you. The thing about lists of great moments from canonical shows is that they’re always wrong. Still, the futility of the exercise comes with its own form of validation. You could probably ask 100 die-hard fans to each list the key scenes from The Sopranos and get minimal crossover: This shows not only the sheer number of high points the series hit during six (and a half) seasons, but also the multitudes it contained. ...”