"Patti Smith made waves in New York’s punk scene when she released her debut album, Horses, which blended avant-garde techniques with simple chord progressions and spoken word poetry. She is now regarded as a ‘punk poet laureate’ and has significantly influenced artists from Madonna to Johnny Marr and Morrissey to Orville Peck. During her time in New York, Smith developed an intense relationship with artist Robbert Mapplethorpe, who she saw as her kindred spirit. The pair were bound to each other romantically, platonically, and creatively, remaining close until he died in 1989. ...”
In sun and shadow
"On this month’s show we wrap up our focus on sports and music with a look at the cultural politics of the world’s most popular sport, Football. We are doing so in anticipation of the upcoming Men’s World Cup tournament taking place in Qatar this November and December. For it, we’ve invited special guests Sean Jacobs and Tony Karon who host the football podcast Eleven Named People, to select some songs and talk about the anti-colonial contours of the global game, and what they anticipate in the upcoming Cup. ...”
Here’s what Russia’s attacks may indicate about its weapons stockpile.
"The Russian missile and drone attacks that killed at least 19 people across Ukraine on Monday were traumatic and wide-ranging, but they were not as deadly as they could have been, in the context of a war that has included widespread civilian killing. That has renewed questions over the quality of Russia’s weapons and about the capacity of its forces to carry out President Vladimir V. Putin’s military designs. Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said it could be a sign that Russia’s guided missiles are not very effective, or that it is running short of precision munitions. Most of the missiles targeted energy and other civilian services, in what Mr. Putin said was retaliation for a blast on Russia’s bridge to occupied Crimea. ...’
A Russian rocket serves as a reminder of the relentless bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine.
“Manteca”--Dizzy Gillespie Big Band with Chano Pozo (1947)
"The jazz standard ‘Manteca’ was the product of a collaboration between Charles Birks ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie and Cuban musician, composer and dancer Luciano (Chano) Pozo González. ‘Manteca” signified one of the beginning steps on the road from Afro-Cuban rhythms to Latin jazz. In the years leading up to 1940, Cuban rhythms and melodies migrated to the United States, while, simultaneously, the sounds of American jazz traveled across the Caribbean. Musicians and audiences acquainted themselves with each other’s musical idioms as they played and danced to rhumba, conga and big-band swing. ...”
The Entire Archives of Radical Philosophy Go Online: Read Essays by Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler & More (1972-2018)
"On a seemingly daily basis, we see attacks against the intellectual culture of the academic humanities, which, since the 1960s, have opened up spaces for leftists to develop critical theories of all kinds. Attacks from supposedly liberal professors and centrist op-ed columnists, from well-funded conservative think tanks and white supremacists on college campus tours. All rail against the evils of feminism, post-modernism, and something called ‘neo-Marxism’ with outsized agitation. For students and professors, the onslaughts are exhausting, and not only because they have very real, often dangerous, consequences, but because they all attack the same straw men (or ‘straw people’) and refuse to engage with academic thought on its own terms. ...”
Putin’s ‘Mass Strike’ on Ukraine Draws Furious Condemnation
"KYIV, Ukraine — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia unleashed the broadest aerial assault against Ukraine’s civilians and critical infrastructure since the early days of Moscow’s invasion, hitting cities across the country on Monday in far-reaching strikes that drew furious international condemnation. Russia’s attacks killed at least 11 people nationwide and wounded 89 others, the Ukrainian authorities said, and knocked out power and other key services in multiple cities. President Biden condemned ‘the utter brutality of Mr. Putin’s illegal war,’ and India and China, key trading partners of Moscow that have avoided direct criticism of Mr. Putin, renewed calls for immediate de-escalation. ...”
BBC: Shock and horror after Russia's wave of strikes across Ukraine (Video)
President Vladimir Putin ordered a series of missile strikes against cities across Ukraine, killing at least 11 people. It was the broadest aerial assault against civilians and critical infrastructure since the early days of Moscow’s invasion.
Albert Ayler – Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70)
"Albert Ayler was a mysterious figure. His recording career was relatively brief, beginning in 1962 and ending in 1970, with several of the entries live performances released many years after his passing. His demise itself was a bizarre circumstance. Revenant Records, by all accounts the most ambitious and thorough of all box-set minded labels, has now released a nine+ CD set of Ayler whose mystery has rubbed off a little on the project. Its coming was announced by a series of all black ads with little on them but what has become the set’s slogan: ‘Trane was the Father…Pharoah was the son…I am the Holy Ghost.’ The result? Most probably the highwater mark in the often underwhelming realm of box sets. ...”
A New Brushstroke Analysis Reveals Vermeer Was Not the Painstaking Perfectionist Art Historians Long Thought
"For generations, art historians believed Johannes Vermeer was a perfectionist who worked very slowly—a theory supported by his precisely placed brush strokes and relatively limited career output. But in examining one of the painter’s masterpieces, researchers at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C., found that may not have actually been the case. Underneath Woman Holding a Balance, Vermeer’s classic canvas dated from around 1664, are layers of spontaneous brushstrokes, chemical imaging has exposed. ...”
2009 September: Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid, 2011 February: Vermeer: Master of Light, 2013 October: Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis, 2015 December: This Is Not a Vermeer ™, 2017 January: The Art of Painting (1665–1668), 2021 December: Museum rivalry ‘could make Dutch Vermeer show last of its kind’, 2021 December: Okay Cupid: Reopening Vermeer’s love letter to contradiction
Woman Holding a Balance (c. 1664)
An American in Ukraine Finds the War He’s Been Searching For
"SOLEDAR, Ukraine — ‘Please, come with me.’ He was begging. He didn’t have much time. The Russians were blasting this town in eastern Ukraine with rockets, airstrikes and thundering artillery. The ground shook. Andrew Milburn, a retired Marine colonel, could have been hanging out at home, 6,000 miles away in the Florida suburbs, enjoying retirement. Instead he was standing in Soledar, a town under fierce assault, black smoke filling his nostrils, staring at a Ukrainian woman he had never met, pleading with her to evacuate. ‘Please,’ he tried again. ‘You will die here.’ The woman had long gray braids and a face etched by countless sorrows. When she refused to leave, Mr. Milburn nearly exploded with frustration. ...”
"The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" - Bob Dylan (1967)
"‘The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest‘ is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan which was released as the fifth track on his eighth studio album John Wesley Harding (1967). The track was written by Dylan and produced by Bob Johnston. It was recorded in one take on October 17, 1967, at Columbia Studio A in Nashville. The song's lyrics refer to two friends, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest. Lee asks Priest for a loan of money. Priest offers the money freely. Lee spends it in a brothel over 16 days, then dies of thirst in Priest's arms. It has been suggested by commentators that the song refers to Dylan's relationship with his manager Albert Grossman or to his contractual negotiations with his record company. The song received a largely negative critical reception. ...”
One Ring
"The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring and Isildur’s Bane, is a central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). It first appeared in the earlier story The Hobbit (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and re-wrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins‘s quest to destroy the Ring. Critics have compared the story with the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner‘s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen; Tolkien denied any connection, but at the least, both men drew on the same mythology. …“
2010 January: The Lord of the Rings, 2018 January: An Atlas of Literary Maps Created by Great Authors: J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island & More, 2019 January: The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More, 2020 January: Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve, 2020 August: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth - Robert Foster (1971), 2021 September: When the Nobel Prize Committee Rejected The Lord of the Rings..., 2021 October: When J.R.R. Tolkien Worked for the Oxford English Dictionary..., 2022 March: J.R.R. Tolkien Tolkien Estate
Crimea Bridge Explosion Disrupts Crucial Supply Route for Russian Forces
"A major explosion severely damaged the bridge connecting Russia’s mainland to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, disrupting traffic on a crucial artery for the supply of fuel, military equipment and food to Russian troops fighting to hold ground in southern Ukraine. The bridge, opened by President Vladimir Putin to great fanfare in 2018, was meant to symbolize the might of the Russian state and the permanence of Russia’s annexation of the peninsula four years earlier. Russia even released a feature movie about its construction. Russia’s investigations committee said three people died after the early-morning explosion on Saturday of a truck on the bridge’s roadway next to a supply train that was carrying fuel. Some demolition experts who analyzed footage of the blast questioned the Russian version and said that the explosion must have come from under the bridge, caused either by an explosives-laden boat, manned or unmanned, or by shaped charges placed by divers. ...”
Black smoke billowed from a fire on the Kerch Strait Bridge that links Crimea to Russia on Friday.
Newcastle United’s transfer, stadium and investment plans one year after takeover
"This is the first of three articles this week to mark the one-year anniversary of Newcastle United’s controversial takeover by a Saudi-backed consortium. Today George Caulkin and Chris Waugh explain how the club has changed in 12 months. Tomorrow Oliver Kay visits Saudi Arabia to ask questions about how the takeover is perceived there, football’s role in the country and allegations of sportswashing. On Friday Matt Slater examines the degree of Saudi involvement and influence at the Premier League club. ..."
Guerrilla warfare
"Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare in which small groups of combatants, such as paramilitary personnel, armed civilians, or irregulars, use military tactics including ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, hit-and-run tactics, and mobility, to fight a larger and less-mobile traditional military. Although the term ‘guerrilla warfare’ was coined in the context of the Peninsular War in the 19th century, the tactical methods of guerrilla warfare have long been in use. In the 6th century BC, Sun Tzu proposed the use of guerrilla-style tactics in The Art of War. ...”
Guerrilla warfare during the Peninsular War, by Roque Gameiro, depicting a Portuguese guerrilla ambush against French forces. The term "guerrilla" was coined during this conflict, which occurred in the early 19th century.
.png)
‘They Are in a Panic’: Ukraine’s Troops Size Up the Enemy
"STAVKY, Ukraine — Racing down a road with his men in pursuit of retreating Russian soldiers, a battalion commander came across an abandoned Russian armored vehicle, its engine still running. Inside there was a sniper rifle, rocket propelled grenades, helmets and belongings. The men were gone. ... After months of static fighting and holding the line under withering Russian artillery barrages, Ukrainian soldiers are exulting over their smashing of Russian lines in the northeast three weeks ago, and their recapturing of swaths of territory seized by Russian troops earlier this year. They have almost retaken the whole of Kharkiv Province, as well as territory in each of the four regions that President Vladimir V. Putin claims to have annexed for Russia. ...”
Fighters with the Carpathian Sich battalion searching houses used by Russian soldiers in the recently recaptured village of Stavky.
"Pretty Little Angel Eyes" - Curtis Lee (1961)
"... What resulted was an infectious master take of a tune written by Lee and Boyce: ‘Pretty Little Angel Eyes,’ recorded at the moldy, rat-inhabited Mira Sound Studio (an optimal environment for acoustically dynamic record-making, as Spector discovered). The uncomplicated song came alive with an agile arrangement, heavy on the backbeat with precise and well-timed harmonies by the Halos (who weren't credited on the label). Lee's lead vocal was also nicely done, a step up from earlier efforts. It couldn't miss. Hitting the charts in July '61, it was top ten throughout most of August into early September. ...”
Late Afternoon in Our Meadow - Camille Pissarro (1887)
"This painting has an uncanny, cinematic feel like the final shot of some epic Italian film of rural life. The woman in the light-bathed field is isolated and still as a statue. The whole world seems to stop and think as a warm golden day comes to a close. This elegiac mood is intensified by the sense of almost infinite colours contained in the sunshine, for Pissarro, one of the founders of impressionism, here adopts Georges Seurat’s very different aesthetic, dotting his canvas with pointillist pinpoints of different colours, meant to mix in your eye. The effect is strange and distancing as it freeze-frames the afternoon.”
Ukraine war: The families who made it through the new Iron Curtain
"Moscow's move to annex parts of Ukraine has sent a new Iron Curtain down across a vast swathe of territory - cutting off an unknown number of people from their own country. Until 1 October, Ukrainians were able, with difficulty, to move to and from across the front lines. From a crossing point at Vasylivka, on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, some would travel to nearby non-occupied Zaporizhzhia to visit relatives, buy food or medicines. But many left for good, carrying what they could with them, in search of new lives in areas not under Russian occupation. Some travelled on to Europe. ...”
Vanity Fair - “Dad, You Have to Come—Or We Will Be Adopted!”: One Ukrainian Family’s Harrowing Wartime Saga (Video)
Damaged and burned vehicles are seen at a destroyed part of the Illich Iron and Steel Works Metallurgical Plant in Mariupol, April 18, 2022.
Provincetown Players
"The Provincetown Players was a collective of artists, writers, intellectuals, and amateur theater enthusiasts. Under the leadership of the husband and wife team of George Cram ‘Jig’ Cook and Susan Glaspell from Iowa, the Players produced two seasons in Provincetown, Massachusetts (1915 and 1916) and six seasons in New York City, between 1916 and 1922. The company's founding has been called ‘the most important innovative moment in American theatre.’ Its productions helped launch the careers of Eugene O'Neill and Susan Glaspell, and ushered American theatre into the Modern era. ...”
Lewis Wharf, first home of the Provincetown Players in 1915
Gas Mask | The Left - Apollo Brown (2010)
"A new Detroit classic from producer Apollo Brown who composes a smokey, rust riddled trip through the soul of Detroit. A lush sonic cityscape that layers piano over haunting samples and pits Journalist 103s narrative word play against DJ SoKos cuts. The Left is the sound of Detroit and along for the ride are Guilty Simpson, Finale, MarvWon, Paradime, Invincible, Frank West and Mu. Welcome Back. ...”
Putin’s Crazy Days
"Every time you think the madness in Vladimir Putin’s Russia has reached its peak, it goes up another notch or two (or ten). The end of September and the start of October saw a dramatic escalation of insanity. First, Putin went on TV to declare that four occupied Ukrainian regions would immediately and irrevocably become a part of Russia after ‘referenda’ conducted quite literally at gunpoint—and to deliver an anti-Western rant that dramatically illustrated the horseshoe theory of politics by rattling off a list of Western crimes that included everything from colonialism and the slave trade to the bombing of Hiroshima to same-sex marriage (’Parent No. 1 and Parent No. 2′) and multiple genders. Then, Putin’s mad dream of Novorossiya triumphant crashed in less than 24 hours when one of its cities, Lyman, was recaptured by Ukrainian troops—and Ukrainian forces continued their forward march to reclaim the lands Putin had just proclaimed to be Russian forever. ...”
All of Aaron Judge’s Homers, From 1 to 62
"... Aaron Judge matched Babe Ruth’s 1927 season by hitting his 60th home run of the season on Sept. 20. He matched Roger Maris with his 61st homer of the season on Wednesday in Toronto. And he established a new American League record with his 62nd of the season in the second game of a doubleheader on Tuesday. ... Pitcher: Jesús Tinoco, TEX | Inning: 1 | Distance: 391 feet | With one more monstrous blast — this one on the road Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas — Judge stands alone, having passed Roger Maris for the A.L.’s single-season record. Pitchers had avoided throwing him strikes for days, but Tinoco made a mistake and Judge took advantage. ...”
Frantz Fanon unveiled
"As a child in the 1960s, my mother would routinely pass a secondary school on her way home in downtown Algiers named Lycée Frantz Fanon. To her, the name was quite peculiar, since all the other schools had newly Arabic names, alluding to different figures within the independence movement and Algerian history more broadly. She was perplexed as to why this school kept this seemingly white French name, only to learn much later in life—from her son, a particularly angsty postcolonial teen—that it was named for a black man from the Caribbean and that he had made contributions to Algeria’s independence movement. ...”
2017 October: The Wretched of the Earth (1961), 2021 January: Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask - Isaac Julien (1995), 2022 July: The Political Writings from Alienation and Freedom
Back in the Fight
"UTO, Sweden — The last time this famously neutral country went to war, Napoleon was on the back foot in France and Britain was preparing to burn Washington. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended 200 years of global pacifism for the children of the Vikings. And so it was that as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia issued veiled threats late last month about unleashing nuclear war, the United States was holding military exercises with Sweden, one of NATO’s most recent applicants. While the war raged in Ukraine, hundreds of Marines joined their Swedish counterparts for maneuvers in the Baltic Sea, on and around some of Sweden’s 100,000 mostly uninhabited islands. In the cold rain and under heavy fire, they scrambled up slippery rocks, landed combat boats on shores and crawled on their bellies through forested ravines. ...”
Desolation Journal By Jack Kerouac
"Read any biography of Jack Kerouac and here’s essentially what you’ll learn: that in the summer of 1956 he spent two months in a mountaintop shack as a fire lookout for the US Forest Service in the North Cascades in Washington State, and nothing much happened. Mostly he was bored. Jack’s experience on Desolation Peak marked the climax of his involvement with Buddhism and of a decade of restless travel; it’s the high point of his journeying and spiritual seeking. A voracious reader, he nevertheless chose to go up the mountain without any books, only his personally typed copy of the Diamond Sutra, which he planned to read every day and transcribe yet again, this time in language more accessible to American readers, in order to achieve the enlightenment that he was certain would result. ... —Charles Shutterworth”
2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959), 2015 December: Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken, 2016 July: Mexico City Blues (1959), 2017 February: The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990), 2017 May: The Subterraneans (1958), 2017 June: The Town and the City (1950), 2018 January: Big Sur (1962), 2018 March: A Slightly Embarrassing Love for Jack Kerouac, 2019 March: Jack Kerouac’s “Beat Paintings:”..., 2020 April: Book of Dreams (1960), 2020 August: Camp Like Kerouac in a Fire Lookout Station, 2022 March: The road well travelled: 100 years of Jack Kerouac, 2022 July: Literary Tourism: Jack Kerouac’s New York
Holger Czukay - On The Way To The Peak Of Normal (1981)
"‘On The Way To The Peak Of Normal’ is the third album by Holger Czukay, originally released in 1981. After ‘Movies’, his first post-Can solo album, Czukay continued exploring the methods of sampling and laidback jamming on this follow-up. The side long ‘Ode To Perfume’ / ‘Fragrance’ coasts along on some heavily twangy guitar, shortwave static, treated vocals, and drunken trumpet, all in a hypnotic late night groove. Intended as environmental music for some underlit, velvet clad chillout room, the album can be seen as one long rumination on improvised understatement.“
2011 September: Can, 2011 February: Plight & Premonition, 2013 October: Flux + Mutability - David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1989) , 2014 June: Holger Czukay - Der Osten Ist Rot, Rome Remains Rome (1984/7), 2016 March: Invaders Of The Heart - Jah Wobble (1982), 2017 April: Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay - Snake Charmer (1983), 2017 June: The Legend Lives On… Jah Wobble In Betrayal (1980), 2017 July: Can - The Singles (2017), 2017 September: Holger Czukay (1938-2017), 2019 September: Cinema (2018), 2020 January: Persian Love (1979)
I Lived in Russia? Annexation Is News to Key City Reclaimed by Ukraine.
"LYMAN, Ukraine — As dusk gathered on Sunday, Elena Kharkovska stood in the courtyard of her apartment block, contemplating what she had just learned: Without ever moving, she had supposedly lived in Russia for one day. President Vladimir V. Putin decreed on Friday that four regions of Ukraine — including the province of Donetsk, which includes Ms. Kharkovska’s hometown, Lyman — had been annexed into Russia. But before the news could reach her, Ukrainian soldiers were in control of the city again, as Russian forces retreated. Without electricity, radios or the internet, residents of the city of Lyman said, they were unaware of the grandiose ceremony Mr. Putin held at the Kremlin on Friday to celebrate an annexation that the world largely condemned as a sham. ...”
A badly damaged building in Lyman, a strategic rail hub.
They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election — and Reaped the Rewards
"Five days after the attack on the Capitol last year, the Republican members of the House of Representatives braced for a backlash. Two-thirds of them — 139 in all — had been voting on Jan. 6, 2021, to dispute the Electoral College count that would seal Donald J. Trump’s defeat just as rioters determined to keep the president in power stormed the chamber. Now one lawmaker after another warned during a conference call that unless Republicans demanded accountability, voters would punish them for inflaming the mob. ...”
An aide inspected the official tally to certify the vote hours after rioters had stormed Congress to disrupt the transfer of power.
Impulse! Records: How a classic jazz imprint is reinventing itself for new generations
"With an orange and black template and exclamation-point-ending aesthetic that came to define the label in the 1960s and ’70s, it’s tempting to refer to Impulse! Records in the past tense, as if the 60-year-old jazz label hadn’t continued to pursue and release records by young players and composers that align with the mission and aesthetic laid out by founder Creed Taylor. But while Impulse! is best known for its profound influence on music culture through releases by John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Albert Ayler and dozens more, across the past half-decade the imprint has issued revelatory work by shock-of-the-new players, many of them British....”
Ukraine retakes a key city Putin claimed to have annexed. Here's why it matters.
"Ukraine said it had retaken full control of a key eastern city on Sunday, handing the Kremlin another stinging setback just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed that the area would belong to his country forever. The recapture of Lyman represents a symbolic and strategic victory for Kyiv, which vowed its forces would push deeper into occupied territory after forcing Moscow's military into its latest bloody and humiliating retreat. Western officials and observers said Russia’s loss of a logistics hub key to the supply of forces in the south and east was a significant development that could pave the way for more. ...”
Ukrainian soldiers scavenge an abandoned Russian T-90A tank in Kyrylivka, in the recently retaken area near Kharkiv on September 30.
State of Siege - Costa-Gavras (1972)
"Revolutionary times are times of revelation: they uncover and flood with light what has long been darkly buried. Implicit in the above exchange between a kidnapped Philip Michael Santore (Yves Montand) and his masked Tupamaro inquisitor, Hugo (Jacques Weber), in Costa-Gavras’s State of Siege (1972) is the unassailable conviction that politics forms the hidden skeleton of our world. Anyone who can be bothered to dig beneath the surface quickly strikes his shovel against these grim, intractable bones, the ossified determinants of who holds power and who does not. Looming invisibly over the interrogation is Costa-Gavras, supremely aware that he wields in his lens a uniquely effective kind of shovel. Indeed, this to him is what the cinema is: ‘a way of showing, exposing the political processes in our everyday life.’ ...”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)