​Roadrunning: Joshua Clover in Conversation with Alex Abramovich

Jonathan Richman around 1972, with Modern Lovers

“What follows is part of an email exchange between Alex Abramovich and Joshua Clover about Jonathan Richman’s song ‘Roadrunner.’ Their conversation takes the scenic route, beginning with a materialist definition of rock ’n’ roll and ending by arguing over the Velvet Underground (too ironic? Too elitist?). Along the way, they touch on the nature of influence, poetry versus criticism, art versus revolution, the specificity of rock ’n’ roll freedom, and what it means to drive with no way out. ...”

Judge Rejects Trump’s Bid to Keep Papers Secret in Jan. 6 Inquiry

 
Former President Donald J. Trump can assert executive privilege, a judge ruled, but President Biden is not obliged to honor that assertion.

“A federal judge on Tuesday night rejected a bid by former President Donald J. Trump to keep secret papers about his actions and conversations leading up to and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters.In a 39-page ruling, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that Congress’s constitutional oversight powers to obtain the information prevailed over Mr. Trump’s residual secrecy powers — especially because the incumbent, President Biden, agreed that lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 riot should see the files. ...”

Downtown 81 - Edo Bertoglio (1980-81)

 
Downtown 81, a ‘lost’ no-budget film shot on location in Manhattan some nineteen years ago, finally had its debut last month, at Cannes. Directed by Edo Bertoglio and written by Glenn O’Brien, this lighthearted document of the East Village scene stars a twenty-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat as himself, with countless hipster cameos, including hip-hop pioneer Fab Five Freddie, ’80s Fiorucci designer (and the film’s producer) Maripol, record-label guy Marty Thau, and Blondie chanteuse Debbie Harry as the fairy princess. But the real star of the film is the gritty milieu of a New York long gone. A lot has happened in nineteen years. Now that the Lower East Side has become something of an Epcot simulacrum of itself, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic for Ye Olde Loisaida’s antique bohemian realities: brazen dope dealers, trash-strewn lots connecting burned-out buildings, artist-musician inhabitants lugging their own equipment to gigs. ...”

Dark Waters - Todd Haynes (2019)

 
Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan. The story dramatizes Robert Bilott's case against the chemical manufacturing corporation DuPont after they contaminated a town with unregulated chemicals. It stars Mark Ruffalo as Bilott, along with Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman. The film is based on the 2016 New York Times Magazine article ‘The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare’ by Nathaniel Rich. ...”

​The mystery of the “same sky” postcards

 
“James Brouwer has been collecting postcards for more than 30 years. His collection numbers over 11,000; images of old-age homes, ugly restaurants, onlookers, and 1960s advertising are neatly organized in boxes in his Canadian home. But James started to notice that some of his postcards — dozens, in fact — appeared to have the exact same sky. Looking even closer, he noticed that the same-sky postcards were all made by one publisher: Dexter Press out of West Nyack, New York. ...”

​Guest Mix: Arabic Tapes and Records with Habibi Funk

 
“Jannis from Habibi Funk played some awesome gems from his Berlin flat on My Analog Journal guest mix. As a collector and music lover, Zag is a huge fan of his label and him as a selector, owning almost all of the releases that they release. Last week when Jannis asked if he can make a guest mix for the channel, Zag was thrilled! In this mix, you will hear some legends like Ziad Rahbani and Ahmed Fakroun. And he’s playing both tapes and records. Honestly, we enjoyed every second of it and hope you will too. ...”

​Down and out in George Orwell’s Paris: A guide to the secret Paname

 
“To begin our guide to Paris: the city of love, luminosity and four macaroons for a mortgageable fee — we start with a little-known condition called Kalopsia. This alluring word denotes the delusion of things appearing more beautiful than they actually are. It is commonly induced in Asian tourists when visiting the French capital owing to a sizeable smack of a Parisian culture shock. That is not to say that Kalopsia sufferers overrate the beauty of the Sine or marvel a little too much at the Eiffel Tower, but that they sport such rose-tinted eyes that coughed out phlegm on the pavement is transfigured into a tramp’s oyster that somehow represents an abstraction of civility. ...”
 
Cafe du Dome

Driving by the Lake With John Ashbery

 
“It was convenient for John Ashbery, and dumb luck for me, that I was living in Rochester and could pick him up at the airport whenever he arrived from New York to visit his mother. Sometimes, because he didn’t like to fly, he’d arrive at the bus station instead; but I could meet him there too. It was an arrangement from which we both might profit, he explained, not profit in the American sense but in a way best expressed if you said it in French, profiter de. And thus we began my unexpected education, a kind of improvised fellowship with visiting tutor and bonus bits of wisdom delivered in French. ...”

LitHub: By Douglas Crase (October 28, 2020)

​When the Solution Is the Problem

 
That split-second when everyone thinks the ends justify the means.

“Not once, in two decades, had David Beckham heard the moment. He had witnessed it at the time, of course. More than that, in fact: He had summoned it and created it and lived it. He had, presumably, watched the moment more than once in the intervening years, too. But it was not until a couple weeks ago that he sat down and listened to it. The moment he did was — obviously — captured for posterity, a social media post as meta as they come: a man recording his own reaction to a recording of himself. As Beckham listens, he has a look of fierce concentration on his face, mixed with just a little genuine concern, as if he really does not know how it all ends. The audio plays in the background, an echo of his past: the last couple minutes of the BBC radio commentary of England’s meeting with Greece on the road to the 2002 World Cup. …”

 

Reading Around New York

 
1979 | The New York Public Library

“On Thursday, May 3, 1979, the New York Times staff photographer Fred Conrad visited the main branch of the New York Public Library. A crowd had gathered on the steps outside — in groups, in pairs, talking, eating. But among this gathering, a few sat slightly apart, heads bent. They appeared oblivious to those around them, unaware of the photographer’s lens. They were reading. Even in the busiest of places, if you have a good book, you can retreat into solitude. And when you live in a city like New York, a book can be even more than a story at your fingertips. It can also be a respite, an escape, a sanctuary, a diversion and a travel companion. ...”

 
1961 | Barnard College

Creation Rebel - Dub From Creation (2004)

 
“This is the seminal first studio work by revered dub producer Adrian Sherwood (Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, African Head Charge), engineered by Dennis Bovell (Fela Kuti, The Slits, Orange Juice). Dub From Creation was originally released on pre-On-U Sound label Hitrun in 1978. Recommended for fans of Scientist, King Tubby and the Wackies label. A classic of the genre unavailable on vinyl since original release and now commanding high prices second-hand. Feeling quiet nostalgic and honoured that this one came my way for a review as it is choc a bloc with memories of dubbist sessions from the late 70s and 80s, whence as a student of the I ‘n’ I music vibes I would literally close my ears to virtually everything else. As long as it was dub it was dubbed. ...”

Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented

 
“‘We regarded ourselves as engineers, we maintained that we were building things…we put our works together like fitters.’ So declared the artist Hannah Höch, describing a radically new approach to artmaking in the 1920s and ’30s. Such wholesale reinvention of the role of the artist and the functions of art took place in lockstep with that era’s shifts in industry, technology, and labor, and amid the profound impact of momentous events: World War I, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the rise of fascism. Highlighting figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, John Heartfield, and Fré Cohen, Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented demonstrates the ways in which artists reimagined their roles to create a dynamic art for a new world. ...”

​‘Computer Games’: How George Clinton’s Solo Debut Played To Win

 
“Could the old funkateer still deliver the goods? Parliament-Funkadelic, the 70s masterfunkers, ran out of road as the 80s arrived, caught in a traffic jam of contractual hassles, personnel problems, personal problems, and overstretch. Parliament, Parlet, Funkadelic, Brides Of Funkenstein, Bootsy, Sweat Band, Philippe Wynne, the aborted project with showman-guitarist Roger Troutman… there was only so much Uncle Jam could cope with. And music was moving fast, with rap and electro trouncing funk as the kids’ choice, while even mainstream dance music was growing increasingly electronic. It was time to regroup, but how? George Clinton, leader of P-Funk, knew what to do. ...”

War and Peace - Sergei Bondarchuk (1967)

 
War and Peace (Russian: Война и мир, trans. Voyna i mir) is a 1966–67 Soviet war drama film co-written and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and a film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace. The film, released in four installments throughout 1966 and 1967, starred Bondarchuk in the leading role of Pierre Bezukhov, alongside Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Ludmila Savelyeva, who depicted Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova. ... War and Peace also won the Grand Prix in the Moscow International Film Festival, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Since its release, the film is often considered to be the grandest epic film ever made, with many asserting its monumental production as unrepeatable and unique in film history. ...”

This Week's Sky at a Glance, November 5 – 13

 
“Nova Cassiopeiae 2021 is still magnitude 8.4 as of November 5th, more than 7 months after it erupted. Charts and comparison stars. Friday, November 5.  At dusk this week, the Jupiter-Saturn line in the southern sky tilts only mildly, as shown below. Look far to their lower right for bright Venus. As evening progresses, Venus sets and the tilt of the giants steepens. The Summer Triangle Effect. Here it is early November, but Deneb still shines near the zenith as the stars come out. And brighter Vega is still not far from the zenith, toward the west. The third star of the 'Summer' Triangle, Altair, remains very high in the southwest (high upper right of Jupiter and Saturn). They seem to have stayed there for a couple months! Why have they stalled out? ...”

​Making It: Pick up a spot welder and join the revolution.

 
Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome Patent 1965

January 5, 2014: "In January of 1903, the small Boston magazine Handicraft ran an essay by the Harvard professor Denman W. Ross, who argued that the American Arts and Crafts movement was in deep crisis. The movement was concerned with promoting good taste and self-fulfillment through the creation and the appreciation of beautiful objects; its more radical wing also sought to advance worker autonomy. The problem was that no one in America seemed to need its products. The solution, according to Ross, was to provide technical education to the critics and the consumers of art alike. This would stimulate demand for high-quality objects and encourage more workers to take up craftsmanship. ...”

Off the Rim: Jim Carroll

 
December 2010: “If there is one moment when the 1995 film adaptation of ‘The Basketball Diaries’ manages to come alive, it occurs when the preening, miscast Leonardo DiCaprio—playing the teen-age Jim Carroll—gets nearly as wet as he soon will in ‘Titanic.’ Carroll and his buddies are shooting baskets in a Manhattan playground after having attended the funeral of their pal Bobby, who has died of leukemia at the age of sixteen. The skies suddenly open, but the boys play on through a rain-lashed catharsis. As DiCaprio hangs by his arms from the basketball hoop, soaked and giddy with rage and release, the soundtrack delivers Carroll’s most famous song, a blasting, propulsive necrology called ‘People Who Died’: Teddy’s sniffing glue, he was 12 years old / He fell from the roof on East Two Nine / Cathy was eleven when she pulled the plug / On 26 reds and a bottle of wine. . . .Those are people who died, who died / Those are people who died, who died / They were all my friends, and they just died. ...”

2009 September: Jim Carroll, 2014 October: Catholic Boy (1980)

Culture Clash In Havana Cuba - Experiments In Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1, Vol. 2

 
Cuba: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1 is the new album compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that explores the many new styles that emerged in Cuba in the 1970s as Jazz, Funk, Brazilian Tropicalia and even Disco mixed together with Latin and Salsa on the island as Cuban artists experimented with new musical forms created in the unique socialist state of Cuba. ...”

​Your Garden Isn’t Winding Down: It’s Still Lichen Season

 
Unpainted wood garden furniture is a popular substrate for colonies of certain lichens, including common greenshield (Flavoparmelia caperata), spangled rosette (Physcia millegrana), hammered shield (Parmelia sulcata) and a crustose species called Lecanora strobilina.

“What are lichens? They are neither plant nor animal. If that doesn’t make them inscrutable enough, there is also this: A lichen might, at first glance, be mistaken for an errant wad of chewing gum or a misplaced splatter of paint.But they are very much living creatures and are thought to be one of the earliest land-dwelling forms of life. They are among the most widespread, too, present on every continent, covering an estimated 8 percent of the planet’s land. They inhabit even Antarctica and the harshest deserts, including some places where plants and animals cannot thrive. Closer to home, you may find them happily taking up residence on your wooden garden bench or picket fence, stone walls or other rock surfaces, or on the trunks and branches of trees and shrubs. ...”

 
 Rhizocarpon geographicum

Spiritual Jazz 12: Impulse!

 
“... Home to John and Alice Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Yusef Lateef, McCoy Tyner and countless other musical pioneers, Impulse! was the most important and forward-thinking jazz label of the 1960s. With the music-first attitude of an independent but the clout of a major, producers Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele made Impulse the defining imprint of a crucial decade of social upheaval that still resonates today. They hand picked the top players of the moment and gave them freedom to record the music they wanted, setting out their stall with a bold slogan – ‘The New Wave Of Jazz Is On Impulse!’ ...”

​The Many Giants of Black Baseball

 
The Harlem River and 155th Street. The Polo Grounds isn’t the only ballpark in NYC that disappeared.

The first all-New York World Series occurred 100 years ago, as the Giants beat the Yankees in eight games, all played at the Polo Grounds of Coogan’s Hollow, at 155th Street along the Harlem River. (The better-known ‘Coogan’s Bluff’ technically refers to the ridge that overlooked the park.) But as Major League Baseball neared its 1921 finish, the Series was not the only game in town. It might not even have been the best. Elsewhere in NYC, Black teams like the Lincoln Giants, the Brooklyn Royal Giants, the Bacharach Giants, and the visiting Chicago American Giants—yes, they were all Giants in those days—showcased elite-level baseball. On weekends and holidays, Black fans traversed the city to cheer on their teams in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Upper Manhattan, and Queens. ...”

The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

 
The Second Sex (French: Le Deuxième Sexe) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949. She published it in two volumes, Facts and Myths and Lived Experience (Les faits et les mythes and L'expérience vécue in French). Some chapters first appeared in Les Temps modernes. One of Beauvoir's best-known books, The Second Sex is often regarded as a major work of feminist philosophy and the starting point of second-wave feminism. ... The first French publication of The Second Sex sold around 22,000 copies in a week. It has since been translated into 40 languages. The Vatican placed the book on its List of Prohibited Books. The sex researcher Alfred Kinsey was critical of The Second Sex, holding that while it was an interesting literary production, it contained no original data of interest or importance to science. ...”

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978)

 
Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) is the tenth studio album by American rock band Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, released in October 1978 by Warner Bros. Records. The album emerged from production difficulties surrounding Bat Chain Puller, an album Captain Beefheart recorded for DiscReet and Virgin Records in 1976. DiscReet co-founders Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa feuded over the production of the album, because Cohen funded the production with Zappa's royalty checks. Captain Beefheart recorded a new album titled Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) due to Zappa withholding the master tapes of the original Bat Chain Puller album. ...”

​The Year of Prophetic Desire

 
“The American Right throbs with prophetic desire, from The Late Great Planet Earth, the classic End Times fantasy of Reaganite revanchism, to QAnon’s ‘great awakening’. This is not the prophetic desire of the multitude, of which Hardt and Negri speak. The subcultural apocalyptic anticipations of the United States at the turn of the millennium, with its curious ambivalent opening to the ‘alien’ and the ‘alt’, and its distrust of overpowering elites, had transversal elements that partially flowed into anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements. By plague year, however, these currents had been skilfully canalised by online far-right entrepreneurs into outright authoritarian longing. The reactionaries yearn, not for the immanent power of the multitude, but for a word from their celestial trump card. ...”

TriBeCa Gallery Guide: New York’s Most Vibrant Art Scene

 
Looking south on Cortlandt Alley in TriBeCa.

Galleries have been moving to TriBeCa for a good five years, but the migration has finally hit critical mass. As everyone from tiny new project spaces to the blue-chip titan David Zwirner floods in, this cast-iron and cobblestone neighborhood in Manhattan — south of Canal, north of Vesey and west of Broadway — is no longer just one option of many. For any New York-area gallery that needs to move or is opening another branch, TriBeCa is now the most exciting place to show contemporary art — the destination that has to be considered. There are now at least 41 galleries in TriBeCa, according to the real estate broker Jonathan Travis — who placed 22 of those himself — compared with fewer than 20 galleries two years, and still more are set to move in. ...”

 
Works by Milton Graves, the visionary drummer who died this year, at Artists Space. In his remarkable practice and worldview, art, medicine, plants, human perception, the nervous system and the cosmos are all connected

Zonal Marking: From Ajax to Zidane, the Making of Modern Soccer – Michael Cox (2019)

 
August 24, 2019: “In life, it takes time to create successful ideas and concepts. Scientists and researchers spend years, even decades, analyzing and studying data to create trials or a study before publishing the results to the world. … I mention this because it may seem odd at first to take a 17-year period and be able to identify seven overarching and different tactical revolutions in soccer in Europe. However, Michael Cox has long established himself as a tactical observer par excellence and his new book argues that the dominant soccer cultures in Europe in the recent past have existed for merely 2-4 years. Zonal Marking: From Ajax to Zidane, the Making of Modern Soccer makes the claim that we have seen six dominant styles of soccer in Europe since 1992 with each based around a national soccer culture. …”