Camus on Cassette: the 10 best existentially philosophical songs ever written


"Albert Camus once wrote, 'Maybe Christ died for somebody but not for me.' The inherent punk musicology of the French philosopher’s quote became apparent when Patti Smith borrowed heavily from it for the first line she would ever present to the world: 'Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.' This touchstone between the two worlds typifies how the expressive potential of music is often the most existentially questioning medium of any art form. There is a deft beauty to being able to probe at the greatest questions man has ever mused upon in three sweet minutes that can float by without ever scathing your psyche if your mood doesn’t much care to grapple with the wherefores of the human comedy. However, that same song can catch you on a window-gazing day, and it seems to encapsulate the purpose of life somewhere in its sweet refrain. ..."



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Alligator Records: Crucial Blues Chicago, Crucial Slide Guitar Blues, Crucial Harmonica Blues, Crucial Guitar Blues, Crucial Texas Blues

“One of three simultaneously released, budget-priced Alligator blues compilations (the other two are Crucial Guitar Blues and Crucial Harmonica Blues), Crucial Chicago Blues is a 12-track anthology of the Chicago-based label's hometown artists. Harp players such as Carey Bell, James Cotton, and Junior Wells share space with guitarists Fenton Robinson, Magic Slim, Son Seals, and Lonnie Brooks, who nearly steals the show with his solo on a live "Cold Lonely Nights." Muddy Water's pianist, Pinetop Perkins, is the only keyboard entry and oldest performer. In fact, the album should put "contemporary" in its title, since the classic blues performers most fans associate with Chicago -- such as Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf -- were never Alligator artists and hence are not included. ..."

AllMusic

YouTube: Various – Crucial Chicago Blues 49:09

YouTube: Various – Crucial Slide Guitar Blues 53:25

YouTube: Various – Crucial Harmonica Blues 47:57

YouTube: Various – Crucial Guitar Blues 57:13

YouTube: Various – Crucial Texas Blues 53:38

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The Rent Was Too High So They Threw a Party


"Minnie Pindar was at home  in Harlem on a Saturday in 1929, and she had a party to throw. She and her sister, Lucibelle Pindar, had passed out invitations, printed on cheap, white card stock, promising a good time in their ground floor apartment at 149 West 117th Street. 'Refreshments Just It' and 'Music Won’t Quit,' the invitation read. Their invitation, one of dozens of similar party invitations tucked into the Langston Hughes papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library, hints at the rich but difficult lives of Black people living in New York at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance. On that Saturday, Nov. 2, the Pindar sisters likely readied their home to welcome guests. Maybe they moved the furniture to make room for dancing. Maybe Ms. Pindar wore her best dress. There would likely be revelry and laughter that night, but throwing the party was a necessity. Every guest was expected to give them a quarter. The rent was due. ..."


 
 A black and white video shows a bustling street scene in New York in 1939.
 
2009 February: Harlem Renaissance, 2010 August: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2010 October: Apollo Theater, 2014 May: History of Harlem, 2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday, 2015 February: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2017 June: During Prohibition, Harlem Night Clubs Kept the Party Going, 2018 March: How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement, 2018 March: Rent party, 2018 December: The Sheck Wes story, 2019 January: Apollo Theater Is Celebrated in a New Graphic Novel, 2019 April: Minton's Playhouse, 2019 June: Loïs Mailou Jones, 2019 June: An Artist on Paying Homage to Harlem, and Using Found Fabrics in Paintings, 2019 October: Lenox Lounge, 2020 March: Bebopped and Rebopped: The Births of Bebop and Invisible Man, 2020 July: The Theater Where Ella Fitzgerald Got Her Start, 2020 August: A Walk Through Harlem, New York’s Most Storied Neighborhood
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Weimar culture

The Blue Angel (1930) was directed by Josef von Sternberg.

"Weimar culture was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler's rise to power in 1933. 1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture. Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some authors also include the German-speaking Austria, and particularly Vienna, as part of Weimar culture. Germany, and Berlin in particular, was fertile ground for intellectuals, artists, and innovators from many fields during the Weimar Republic years. The social environment was chaotic, and politics were passionate. ... Leading Jewish intellectuals on university faculties included physicist Albert Einstein; sociologists Karl Mannheim, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse; philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Edmund Husserl; political theorists Arthur Rosenberg and Gustav Meyer; and many others. ..."






Prostitutes buy cocaine capsules from a drug dealer in Berlin, 1930. 
The capsules sold for 5 marks each.
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Hüsker Dü, The Fastest Band In The World


"Hüsker Dü began when Greg Norton met Grant Hart at a record store in West St. Paul. Bob Mould comes to a Ramones show and the power trio is born. The band creates a label, Reflex records, and soon bond with Dead Kennedys front man, Jello Biafra. The Huskers put out the first Minnesota hardcore vinyl, Land Speed Record. The Replacements are their major rivals, comments Tommy Stinson."




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Maps of the April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse


"On April 8, the moon will slip between the Earth and the sun, casting a shadow across a swath of North America: a total solar eclipse. By cosmic coincidence, the moon and the sun appear roughly the same size in the sky. When the moon blocks the glare of the sun, the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, will be briefly visible. Below are several maps of the eclipse’s path as well as images of what you might experience during the event. The eclipse will begin at sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, then cut through Mexico and cross the United States from Texas to Maine. Most of North America will see a partial eclipse, but viewers within the deepest shadow — a band sliding from Mazatlán, Mexico, to the Newfoundland coast near Gander, Canada — will experience a total solar eclipse. ..."
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The Cult of the Criterion Collection: The Company Dedicated to Gathering & Distributing the Greatest Films from Around the World

"There was a time, not so very long ago, when many Americans watching movies at home neither knew nor cared who directed those movies. Nor did they feel particularly comfortable with dialogue that sometimes came subtitled, or with the 'black bars' that appeared below the frame. The considerable evolution of these audiences’ general relationship to film since then owes something to the adoption of widescreen televisions, but also to the Criterion Collection: the home-video brand that has been targeting its prestige releases of acclaimed films squarely at cinephiles — and even more so, at cinephiles with a collecting impulse — for four decades now. ..."




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Looking for Lorca in New York


"For a son of the titular city, reading Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York is akin to curling into your lover, your nose dipped in the well of their collarbone, as they detail your mother’s various personality disorders. Yes, Federico, yes, my mother is thoroughly racist and takes every opportunity to remind me, her sometimes destitute child, about the silent cruelty of money. 'At least you got to leave,' I want to tell him. 'Imagine being stuck with her for the rest of your life.' He would likely understand my irrational attachment; after all, he was so consumed by Spain, its art and its politics, that his country would go on to swallow him whole. Still, it is crucial for those of us with this sort of umbilical tether to unwind it and test how far it might stretch. ..."





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Carlo Giustini – Custodi (2019), Manifestazioni (2018)


"Since the release of La Stanza di Fronte, Treviso sound artist and cassette tape lover Carlo Giustini’s debut album, on ACR at the beginning of last year, the young musician’s music has traveled along a clear trajectory. The spectral drones and use of fidelity/absence-as-sound that dominated that curious tape have remained steadfast elements in Giustini’s work, but as he progressed through various releases on labels such as Bad Cake, Purlieu, and No Rent the presence of melody and other more traditional ambient qualities have become increasingly prominent. Custodi, his second release on the Rohs! ..."



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Soho Weekly News


"The folks pictured above are a small sampling of the talent that made up the Soho Weekly News over its run from 1973 to 1982. Thanks to a generous donation from Allan and Joanna Wolper of their rare, bound collection of 24 volumes of the Soho Weekly News, the newspaper will be preserved when it travels with the rest of the Soho Memory Project Archive to the New York Historical Society, its future home. But before any of this happens, let’s have a look inside this treasure trove of downtown history with none other than Allan Wolper himself, who has written a Soho Weekly News Who’s Who of sorts, from Edward Gorey and Rex Reed to Bruce Springsteen and beyond. The many boldfaced names included here are a testament to the paper’s journalistic excellence. ..."



Style Section spread photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe
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Phill Niblock (1933–2024)


"How different Phill Niblock’s life would have been if he hadn’t moved into a third-floor loft on Centre Street, near New York’s Chinatown, in 1968. It was his home for the rest of his life, and it was there that the composer/filmmaker/photographer transformed the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, originally a performing-arts organization founded by choreographer Elaine Summers, into one of the premier artist-run experimental-music venues of downtown New York. Spontaneously inaugurating its concert series in 1973 with a gig of his own—relocated at the last minute from the Kitchen, which was deemed unusable after a blood-soaked performance by Hermann Nitsch the night before—he hosted hundreds of now-legendary artists. It was the most convivial and soulful avant-garde music spot imaginable: The performances took place in Phill’s spacious living room, complete with a formidable sound system with self-built speakers, while the socializing centered in the kitchen. ..."


2024 January: Phill Niblock

Arthur Russell, Elodie Lauten, and others performing at Experimental Intermedia, New York, 1983–84.
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The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen

Mary Bowman compares the "feigned" historical echoing of Beren and Lúthien in the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" with Dante's echoing of Lancelot and Guinevere in his tale of Paolo and Francesca, here in an 1862 painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

"'The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen' is a story within the Appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It narrates the love of the mortal Man Aragorn and the immortal Elf-maiden Arwen, telling the story of their first meeting, their eventual betrothal and marriage, and the circumstances of their deaths. Tolkien called the tale 'really essential to the story'. In contrast to the non-narrative appendices it extends the main story of the book to cover events both before and after it, one reason it would not fit in the main text. Tolkien gave another reason for its exclusion, namely that the main text is told from the hobbits' point of view. The tale to some extent mirrors the "Tale of Beren and Lúthien", set in an earlier age of Middle-earth. This creates a feeling of historical depth, in what scholars note is an approach similar to that of Dante in his Inferno. ..."




In Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, the tale is brought from the appendix into the main narrative, and (shown) Arwen brings the banner of the White Tree to Aragorn, and they are married. In the book these are separate events. Aragorn is shown wearing a circlet; Tolkien described the crown in the book as a taller version of the helmets of the city guard, and in a later letter as resembling the Hedjet of Upper Egypt
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“It’s This Line / Here” : Happy Belated Birthday to James Schuyler


"... The tiny, beloved 'Salute'—which is not the poem that I mean to discuss—both gathers and separates, does and then undoes what the poem says Schuyler meant to do but never did. (And isn’t this, the play of assembly and disassembly, to a certain extent just what verse is? How part and whole relate or fail to as the poem unfolds in time is a basic drama of poetic form.) Schuyler’s enjambments—at once distinct and soft, like the edge of a leaflet or the margin of a petal—are sites of hesitation where meanings collect before they’re scattered or revised. ..."



Fairfield Porter -  Portrait of James Schuyler
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Anthéne & David Cordero, Lost Under the Sea (Home Normal)


"Behind the nom de musique Anthéne is Torontonian Brad Deschamps, who also runs the fine label Polar Seas. David Cordero is from Cádiz, the ancient Spanish port. Both are prolific ambient composers worth cherishing. This album, featuring a photo of a foggy Toronto harbor by the former, is the result of file trading between the two and inspired by the vastness of the Atlantic that separates them. In its serene, beatless unfolding, Lost Under the Sea is Platonic-ideal ambient music, soft and comely with a hint of mysterious. The duo seamlessly mesh their guitars, tapes, 'modular,' glockenspiel and the merest wisp of wordless vocals to produce a very gentle undertow. There is actually nothing patently aquatic to the sound of Lost Under the Sea, no burbling brooks or sloshing waves, even though each title refers to water. As a whole, wet or dry, it is an exemplary album, and the penultimate track “Across Estuaries” is one of the most gorgeous pieces you’ll ever hear.  - Stephen Fruitman"




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Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records (2019)

""The story of Trojan Records, the most iconic British ska/rocksteady/reggae label, is inextricably linked to that of the Jamaican community in Britain. For seven years, the label — alongside very few others — served as the cultural voice for those who had recently traded the warm beaches of the West Indies for the rain-lashed streets of Hackney. It was a voice that sung for different reasons: sometimes with thoughts of home, sometimes lovelorn, sometimes with warnings or messages to the youth. Then it collapsed. Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records, directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, is the latest attempt to grasp the musical and social significance of the ska/rocksteady/reggae evolution. And it does not do it alone. A legion of greying legends appear across Rudeboy — Bunny Lee, Toots Hibbert, Pauline Black, and Derrick Morgan, to name but a few — and grant the audience some expert insights. ..."

Honi Soit

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records (official trailer)

YouTube: Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records    1:25:16

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Too Little, Too Late: On American Media Executives’ Hypocritical Support of Palestinian Journalists

Internally displaced Palestinians gather to collect food donated by a charity group, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Palestine, March 14, 2024.

"When it comes to righteous causes, I generally believe it is important to leave space for people to have an onramp to join at any time. If someone has not been actively supporting campaigns against racism, transphobia or injustice of various kinds, I do not want stigma or shame to keep any individual from joining the cause. The best response when someone shows up for the first time at an activism meeting or organizational space is not to embarrass them but to say, 'Welcome aboard!' However, I do not extend the same grace to welcoming people nor institutions in positions of enormous power, especially when they are still causing and benefiting from the unjust conditions people with less power than they wield are organizing against. It is in this spirit in which I read an open letter, 'News outlets express solidarity with journalists in Gaza' to be too little, too late, and too hypocritical. ..."





Palestinians gather to receive aid outside an UNRWA warehouse as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, in Gaza City, March 18.
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The Clash – "White Riot" (1977), White Riot - Directed By Rubika Shah (2020)


"'White Riot';is a song by English punk rock band the Clash, released as the band's first single in March 1977 and also included on their self-titled debut album. ... There are two versions of the song: the single version (also appearing on the US version of the album released in 1979), was one of the first songs they recorded at CBS Studio 3 on Whitfield Street in Central London, after signing with CBS Records. ... Lyrically, the song is about class economics and race and thus proved controversial; some people thought it was advocating a kind of race war. ... In an interview with the New Musical Express in December 1976, Joe Strummer responded angrily to the suggestion that some people misinterpreted the 'White Riot' lyrics as racist, saying, 'They're not racist! They're not racist at all!'. Strummer pointed out that inner-city black youth were now fighting back against poverty and heavy-handed policing. 'White Riot' was a call to arms to white youth to fight back in the same way and have, in the words of the song, 'a riot of my own'. ..."

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An elegy for a surreal East Village dive bar that welcomed those in the shadows


"There’s something about legendary East Village bars that leave New Yorkers mourning them even decades after they close their doors. The tenth anniversary of the shuttering of Mars Bar in 2011, the gritty dive on Second Avenue and East First Street, merited tribute posts recalling its eclectic mix of regulars. Brownie’s, on Avenue A, pulled the plug in 2002, but Gen X fans are still reminiscing about the bands they saw there. So it seems unusual that one old-school East Village haunt has no Facebook fan group posting photos and videos, no articles bemoaning the reasons behind its closure. 
That haunt would be Eileen’s Reno Bar, a hole in the wall at 175 Second Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets. ..."


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VA - The World Needs Changing. Street Funk & Jazz Grooves 1967-1976 (2013)


"... Fortunately for those of you who like multi-artist collections, we’re sending a couple your way in the next two months, starting off with this wonderful look at black American music from the late 60s to the mid-1970s – basically from the start of funk to the rise of disco. The music within brings together a cross section of great sounds that would grace – and in many cases already have – any DJ’s record box. Take Little Eva, whose medley of ‘Get Ready / Uptight’ was championed by Eddie Piller at Snowboy’s Goodfoot Night at Madam Jo Jo’s and is now a clubland staple. Willard Posey’s medley was a big Keb Darge spin at the same venue a decade earlier, whilst Esther Marrow’s wondrous vocal version of ‘Walk Tall’ has for a long time been one of my DJ secret weapons. ..."






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A Researcher Chisels New Perspectives on Ancient Art

Sculpted in 521 BCE, the Behistun relief in Iran is a massive carving with more than 400 lines of inscription and huge figurines. Its size, location and visibility suggest it was used for propaganda.

"Whether pelted by sleet in spring or slapped by a harsh summer sun, groups of graduate and post-doctoral students have clambered, undaunted, through the rocky Zagros Mountains near Iraq’s border with Iran. Their feet slipping in the mud and skittering through ravines, they have lugged tripods and long-lens, high-resolution digital cameras to document reliefs that artists carved into the limestone mountainside more than 3,000 years ago. This spring marks the seventh expedition that Zainab Bahrani, chair of Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology, has conducted in northern Iraq and southwestern Turkey since establishing the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments project in 2012.  ..."


A centuries-older stone staircase and rock reliefs, paying equal attention to the site’s Islamic and pre-Islamic elements.
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Ström Noir – Jouska & Hands Like Clouds – Mountain King (Blue Marble 1972)


"Blue Marble 1972 is a new label from Poland, launched with unique styling. Its music is boxed in a taller, slightly skinnier version of the classic digipak, which is a great look, particularly when graced by such nice cover art and striking typography. These are the imprint’s first two releases. The legend of the 'mountain king' is a pan-European messianic fable re-told countless times, about an ancient monarch or champion who sleeps under a distant mountain and who, when the time is come, will rise and lead his people to glory. Mountain King by Hands Like Clouds is the tenth-year anniversary edition of a one-off effort made available only in a tiny run by the Polish ambient artist who records as Ghosts of Breslau, accompanied by a host of sidemen from the Portuguese psychedelic folk group The Joy of Nature. ..."

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Big Road Blues Show: Learning The Blues – Forgotten Blues Heroes 25

Willie Guy Rainey, Palmetto, GA, Sept. 1978

"Today’s show is part of a semi-regular feature I call Forgotten Blues Heroes that spotlights great, but little remembered and little recorded blues artists that don’t really fit into my weekly themed shows. This time out, several down home musicians who recorded a handful of records between the late 60s and early 80s. Singer and guitar/ukulele player Lewis 'Rabbit' Muse was born in Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He recorded two fine, long-out-of-print albums, for the Outlet label in the mid-70s. Willie Guy Rainey played music at parties and on the streets of small towns near Atlanta. He finally began playing bars in Atlanta and was 'discovered' by music teacher, Ross Kapstein. Guy recorded one album, Willie Guy Rainey in 1978 with the help of Kapstein for Southland in 1978 and was the subject of a short film. George and Ethel McCoy were a brother and sister duo who lived in St. Louis and who’s aunt was Memphis Minnie. ..."


Rabbit Muse, back cover of Muse Blues 
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Gallery New Orleans

Double galleries at the LaBranche Buildings in the French Quarter

"In New Orleans, a gallery is a wide platform projecting from the wall of a building supported by posts or columns. Galleries are typically constructed from cast iron (or wrought iron in older buildings) with ornate balusters, posts, and brackets. The intricate iron balconies and galleries of the French Quarter are among the renowned icons of New Orleans. The City of New Orleans provides specific definitions for platforms projecting from the face of the building, differentiating between balconies and galleries. Balconies typically have a projection width of up to 4 feet (1.2 m), lacking supporting posts and a roof structure. In contrast, galleries are platforms extending beyond property lines to cover the full width of the public sidewalk, supported by posts or columns at the street curb. Galleries may or may not include a roof cover. ..."

Pontalba's monogram on ironwork


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Hélène Vogelsinger – Bird Singer

Panharmonium by Rossum Electronic

"1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why? There are so many! I’ll go with the first one that comes to mind; The satisfaction of turning an arpeggio into a celestial pad in just a few seconds, it’s by turning the mix knob of the Panharmonium (Rossum Electronic) that you can achieve it. Layering is truly integral to my musical identity. And this module is just incredible for that purpose. There isn’t a piece where it’s not present. ... 3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.? It’s been years and years since I’ve properly been on vacation, but when I travel, it’s never without my session setup; my two modular cases, my small Mackie mixer, my portable recorders, and the battery that powers all this little world. It fills up the car trunk quite a bit, I must admit, but nothing is impossible with my old Volvo; the modularmobile  I always have at least one recorder on me, to capture as many sounds and atmospheres as possible. A reflex that stayed with me after my video game sound design training. ..."



Two modular cases in the trunk of The ModularMobile
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The Hundred Years' War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi (2020)


"The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is a 2020 book by Rashid Khalidi, in which the author describes the Zionist claim to Palestine in the century spanning 1917–2017 as late settler colonialism and an instrument of British and then later American imperialism, doing so by focusing on a series of six major episodes the author characterizes as 'declarations of war' on the Palestinian people. In the book, Khalidi—historian and Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University—argues that the struggle in Palestine should be understood, not as one between two equal national movements fighting over the same land, but rather as 'a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will.' In addition to the more traditional sources and methods employed by a historian, the author in this book draws on family archives, stories passed down through his family from generation to generation, and his own experiences, as an activist in various circles and as someone who has been involved in negotiations among Palestinian groups and with Israelis. ..."





Large bundles of personal possessions are carried on the head of Palestinian women and children flee the Israeli offensive that established the state of Israeli in 1948.
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