Inside the Secret Negotiations to Free Evan Gershkovich


"Russia freed wrongly convicted Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as part of the largest and most complex East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, in which he and more than a dozen others jailed by the Kremlin were exchanged for Russians held in the U.S. and Europe, including a convicted murderer. Gershkovich and other Americans left Russian aircraft at roughly 11:20 a.m. Eastern time. at an airport in Turkey’s capital, Ankara. Gershkovich then was transported to an aircraft lounge on a Turkish bus. He and the other Americans boarded an aircraft to the U.S. 'They are safe, free, and have begun their journeys back into the arms of their families,' President Biden said in a post on X. Biden plans to greet Gershkovich and the other Americans at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, where they are expected to land around 11:30 p.m., the White House said. Vice President Kamala Harris is also expected to attend. ..."





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Accused Sept. 11 Plotters Agree to Plead Guilty at Guantánamo Bay

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The man accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and two of his accomplices have agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death-penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prosecutors said Wednesday. Prosecutors said the deal was meant to bring some 'finality and justice' to the case, particularly for the families of nearly 3,000 people who were killed in the attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field. The defendants Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi reached the deal in talks with prosecutors across 27 months at Guantánamo and approved on Wednesday by a senior Pentagon official overseeing the war court. ..."




People visiting the Sept. 11 memorial in Manhattan on the anniversary of the attacks last year.
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A People's History of Football - Mickaël Correia (2023)

Boys playing football in London on April 8, 1950.

"... Undeniably the beautiful game has of late become especially ugly. In A People’s History of Football, French climate journalist and Le Monde diplomatique correspondent Mickaël Correia argues that things have not always been this way — or at least not to such a grotesquely indefensible extent. The world’s most popular sport has an alternative, 'antiestablishment' history, which Correia seeks to uncover and defend. Though he dwells on the 'subversive aspect' of football, Correia is hardly a romantic. ... A People’s History of Football left this reader with the melancholic sense that an adversarial and popular vision of the game is quickly disappearing. It’s now unimaginable that a player would, as Brazil’s midfielder Sócrates did in 1984, justify their move to an Italian club by saying that doing so would provide them with an opportunity to read Antonio Gramsci in the original. ..."





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The Criminalization of Solidarity: The Stop Cop City Prosecutions

IWW rally on May Day 1914 in New York City in solidarity with Colorado miners

"Georgia’s sweeping and political application of conspiracy law echoes a tactic that shattered the left roughly a hundred years ago, when the U.S. government targeted socialist parties and militant unions with laws against criminal syndicalism, espionage, and sedition. ... A two-year occupation of the Weelaunee Forest, the site of the proposed complex, ended in early 2023 after police killed a forest defender known as Tortuguita and, over several months, charged forty-two people with domestic terrorism. The majority of those charged were attending a protest music festival in March while property destruction occurred nearly a mile away. In April, three activists distributing fliers about the police murder of Tortuguita were arrested and jailed for almost three months. ..."

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Who Were The I-Threes? Revealing The Powerful, Unique Voices Behind Marley’s Music


"... But few backing vocal groups had as strong a pedigree as Bob Marley’s trio of confirmation vocalists, The I-Threes. The I-Threes became an official part of Bob Marley’s organization in 1974. Their inclusion came in the wake of the break-up of The Wailers – a vocal group comprising Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. Tosh and Wailer had quit the group, feeling that they were being sidelined while Bob was being groomed for rock stardom at their expense. So Bob recruited his wife, Rita, who had been singing with The Wailers for the best part of a decade, along with Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths, to form The I-Threes. Their role was to sweeten and emphasize the message in the songs.  ..."



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Babylon Berlin


"Babylon Berlin is the most expensive German television drama ever made. It’s also the most successful, with its depiction of Weimar Republic-era Berlin having been shown in more than 100 countries worldwide. Since its early seasons this detective noir show has exploded with colour, razzle-dazzle, danger and sweeping set pieces, and it has now spent five years vividly bringing to life a decade-long flash of chaotic democracy that ended in economic turmoil, corruption and, ultimately, fascism. With its superb opening titles, breathless, trippy pace and extravagant song-and-dance numbers – last season even saw a turn from Bryan Ferry, singing a German jazz version of his song Bitter-Sweet – heady, dangerous times have never been better depicted. This season, the feel of the show has become even more menacing. ..."







Moka Efti, one of several glitzy nightclubs 
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Beach Scene by Degas, 1869-70


"There’s a radical new informality to this scene of the 19th century seaside. A girl who has been swimming rests while the family maid combs her hair – the kind of natural moment you would look long and hard to find in any British painting from the time when Degas painted this beach in northern France. By 1874, the experimental daring of Degas and others would be labelled Impressionism. But this is not a simple “impression”. On a closer look, a family walking in beach robes look like formally posed figures from a 15th century fresco and a couple by the shore are posed like cartoonish cut outs. Degas said he finished the picture in his studio, not on the beach. It is a provocative blend of observation and irony that shows his rare and elusive artistic mind."

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The Bottom Line


"The Bottom Line was a music venue at 15 West 4th Street between Mercer Street and Greene Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. During the 1970s and 1980s the club was a major space for small-scale popular music performances. It opened on Feb 11, 1974. ... The Bottom Line hosted an extremely wide variety of music and musicians. Among the thousands who performed on its stage were Eric Clapton, João Gilberto, Carl Perkins, Linda Ronstadt, The Manhattan Transfer, Patti Smith, Ringo Starr, The Police, Rockapella, Adrian Belew, Prince, Pat Benatar, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Miles Davis, Laura Nyro, Cheap Trick, Rory Gallagher, Chuck Mangione, Carl Hancock Rux, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, Leo Kottke, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Doc Watson, Barry Manilow, Dire Straits, Son Volt, Grayson Hugh, Dolly Parton, George Jones, The Pointer Sisters, Ravi Shankar, Ramones, The Brecker Brothers, Allan Holdsworth, Gato Barbieri, Bryan Ferry, Billy Joel, Yellow Magic Orchestra, David Bromberg, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and Van Morrison. ..."


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Robert Lighthouse Brings the Blues to a Ravaged Ukraine

Jamming in Kherson while the Russian army bombs the city: Robert Lighthouse on guitar, "Shoe Man Max" blowing harp, and a street musician on a homemade drum.

"Over more than 40 years of playing blues around the world — from a Hopi reservation in Arizona to Norway, Kenya, and his native Sweden — guitarist Robert Lighthouse had never heard Bob Dylan’s ballad 'John Brown.' This nettled the 60-year-old, a disciple of American music who’d thought himself familiar with the whole of the legend’s vast catalog. Simple and plaintive, 'John Brown' is a deceptive anti-war song, beginning as a patriotic fairy tale narrated by a young soldier’s proud mother. ... In late March 2024, Lighthouse returned from his third tour of Ukraine, where he played Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, Isaiah 'Doctor' Ross, and original songs for beleaguered locals and exhausted soldiers. Back in suburban Washington, D.C., where he has lived for close to 40 years, Lighthouse was surprised to learn that the song he’d written about the carnage in Ukraine closely resembled the one Dylan had recorded in 1962, at the Gaslight Cafe, on MacDougal Street. Lighthouse’s cris de coeur is called 'If They Won’t Book You in Heaven', and the lyrics, in part, go like this. ..."
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44 1/2 at a Glance: Selections from the Art Zoyd Box Set


"... Trying to make France's Art Zoyd fit into a single neat description is an exercise in futility. Sometimes they're fiendish sonic saboteurs bent on destroying listener's preconceptions about the way music works. Sometimes they're musical sorcerers conjuring strange but bewitching moments of lyrical beauty. You could call them the original post-rock band, moving on from the dark, stormy sounds of prog legends like Magma and King Crimson to something that makes even those fearless explorers sound conventional by comparison. You'd be equally accurate in dubbing them avant-classical composers, whose experimental visions are influenced by Stravinsky and Schoenberg. ..."


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Black Metropolis: Upholding Sugar Hill’s Radical Tradition - Greg Tate (1987)

Lenox and Malcom X New York Harlem Shuffle, Ed Gray

"... In effect my man had mojoed his way onto Central Park West, and I took his lore to heart when I could finally afford to discriminate between boroughs and pull-out beds, between rent-stabilized buildings and sleeping bags on floors where friends had set out the welcome mat. But while my friend sought door­men and oft-swept streets, I put my mojo to work on squatting me down in Wash­ington Heights. My reasoning was simple: That was where I’d found my kind of party people. We’re talking about that 25-to-35-year-­old posse of race-conscious black profes­sionals and community organizers whose politics are Pan-Afrikanist (if not just pro-black) and whose idea of culture with a capital K is Fela, Funkadelic, and later for all the black conservative bullshit. They all went to Howard, Columbia, or City College together and came up ho­meys in Harlem, the Bronx, or do-or-die Bed-Stuy. ..."


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Stompin' at the Savoy: The Original Indie-Label 1944-1961


"This four-disc overview of Savoy Records masterful achievement in issuing jump blues, R&B, doo wop, and proto-rock and soul records is one handsome collection. There are 84 tracks spanning the years 1944 (two years after Savoy went into business) and ending in 1961. While the majority of cuts were originally issued on Savoy, there are more than a few that come form one of Savoy's acquisitions -- of National in 1957. Here, the relative unknowns, such as Miss Sharecropper, the Dreams, and Chuz Alfred are side by side with Hot Lips Page, Billy Eckstine, Joe Turner, Doc Pomus, Wild Bill Moore, Nappy Brown, Jimmy Scott, and Big Maybelle just to mention a few. The first three discs here are arranged from 1944-'47, 1948-'51 1951-'55, 1955-'61 and are governed simply by subjective selection. The remastered sound is fine, warm and true and the liners annotate each track in detail. Savoy has been issuing compilation CDs for a long time now, but they've never done anything as fine as this -- especially for the budget price. ..."



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How Do You Restore a Chestnut Forest or an Apple Orchard? Very Slowly.

At the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, in Boylston, Mass., the grafted heirloom apple trees are already big enough to bloom. But fruit isn’t expected for a few more years.

"'Explore what’s in bloom now,' exclaims a banner on the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill’s website. And, indeed, there is much to see. The dramatic property in Boylston, Mass., includes two conservatories and 18 distinct gardens, both formal and naturalistic. The grounds offer sweeping views across the vast Wachusett Reservoir, as well as hiking trails that tuck into wilder portions of the garden’s nearly 200 acres. As director of horticulture, Mark Richardson is always attuned to the calendar of displays that his team provides to delight more than 225,000 visitors a year. But the garden has two additional compelling botanical projects — the planting of blight-resistant American chestnuts and the restoration of a historic apple collection lost to disease — that don’t show off in the same way. At least, not yet. ..."


The Boylston, Mass., site includes 18 distinct gardens, both naturalistic and formal. The Secret Garden is tucked under grand twin staircases and pergolas.
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Staffrider: Transient literatures and maps


"'Staffriders' are young working-class men who hang their bodies on the sides and on top of moving trains. By doing this they are playing with ideas of death and danger in attempting to avoid the electricity and the force of the moving train’s speed that moves the train. Staffriding is rooted in apartheid’s extractive economy and its demand for cheap black labor. Staffriders are the byproducts of an overcrowding influx of human labor moving from platform to platform in a rush against time to stamp their clock sheet ahead of the boss. They live on working-class economic margins, due to their unstable relationship to wage labor which prevents them from affording the cost of a train ticket. Overworked, underpaid, and with dompasses controlling their mobility, these young men respond to their precarious status by taking chances with time. ..."




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Chaos and Confusion: Tech Outage Causes Disruptions Worldwide


"Airlines grounded flights. Operators of 911 lines could not respond to emergencies. Hospitals canceled surgeries. Retailers closed for the day. And the actions all traced back to a batch of bad computer code. A flawed software update sent out by a little-known cybersecurity company caused chaos and disruption around the world on Friday. The company, CrowdStrike, based in Austin, Texas, makes software used by multinational corporations, government agencies and scores of other organizations to protect against hackers and online intruders. But when CrowdStrike sent its update on Thursday to its customers that run Microsoft Windows software, computers began to crash. ..."


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Musique Automatique : Königssee


"This one is quite simple, I'm using a technique Loopop showed in his video a few weeks ago :    • Sampler trick: Steve Reich/William Ba...   The idea is to use your tracks as virtual tape loops to get intricate and evolving patterns. ... Since this technique doesn't rely on the sequencer, I don't press Play at the beginning. Instead, I press a MIDI trig key that triggers a slow fade-in on the Pattern Volume (this is done with the MIDI loopback). The 8 loops are already playing freely in the background, not synchronized in any way. To get more variations on the long run, the volume of each track is very slowly modulated by a LFO. Tracks come and go, sometimes collide or leave room for each other. It's pretty cool to observe I think. ..."


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DONALD TRUMP’S FIRST TERM IS A WARNING


"This week, Republicans have tried to rewrite the four years of Trump’s presidency as a time of unparalleled peace, prosperity and tranquility: 'the strongest economy in history,' as Senator Katie Britt of Alabama put it. The difference between Trump and Biden? 'President Trump honored the Constitution,' said Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia offered Mr. Trump’s first term as an example of “common-sense conservative leadership.” The record of what Mr. Trump actually did in office bears little resemblance to that description. Under his leadership, the country lurched from one crisis to the next, from the migrant families separated at the border to the sudden spike in prices caused by his trade war with China to the reckless mismanagement of the Covid pandemic. And he showed, over and over, how little respect he has for the Constitution and those who take an oath to defend it. For Americans who may have forgotten that time, or pushed it from memory, we offer this timeline of his presidency. Mr. Trump’s first term was a warning about what he will do with the power of his office — unless American voters reject him. ..."

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A Sense of Rebellion


"A Podcast Series by Evgeny Morozov. Original music by Brian Eno. Forget the military or Silicon Valley: we owe our smart technologies - from toothbrushes to beds - to a band of eccentric 1960s hippies. Hidden away in a secretive, privately funded lab on Boston’s waterfront, these visionaries developed intimate, personal technologies a decade before Steve Jobs. But their rebellion was fraught with obstacles: the military-industrial complex, corporate resistance, and the founders’ larger-than-life personalities. As Silicon Valley adopted their ideas, the lab's vision for more humane and diverse technologies was twisted into something entirely different. A decade in the making, this podcast unravels their captivating and often tragic tale. It's all here: Cold War psychiatry, Maoism, LSD, the Rockefellers, Scientology, CIA’s forays into extrasensory perception, and even the advent of tech libertarianism. ..."


 
 

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Move Over, La Guardia and Newark: 18 Artists to Star at New J.F.K. Terminal

Global and rising talents at Terminal 6 (clockwise from top left): Charles Gaines, Laure Prouvost, Kerstin Brätsch, Nina Chanel Abney, Felipe Baeza, Eddie Martinez, Dyani White Hawk, Nevin Aladag.

"John F. Kennedy International Airport’s new Terminal 6, scheduled to open in 2026, will host installations by 18 contemporary artists hailing from seven countries, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced on Tuesday. The $4.2 billion facility in Queens will showcase the largest number of works of any New York airport by major figures from the United States, including Nina Chanel Abney, Teresita Fernandez, Charles Gaines and Barbara Kruger, alongside emerging international talents such as Felipe Baeza from Mexico, Kerstin Brätsch from Germany, and Uman, born in Somalia (all now living in New York). ..."

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How Spain ruthlessly exploited England’s lack of collective quality at Euro 2024


“Spain were worthy winners of the Euro 2024 final, but the investigation from England’s perspective should not be about how their opponents in Berlin were better on the night, but how they were so much better for the entire tournament. If you were to rank the 14 team performances by those two sides at this competition, in order of quality, you would list the seven by Spain and then the seven England ones. That was the extent of the difference. Spain impressed and enthralled in each game. They had weaknesses, like every side, but those weaknesses generally arose from their bravery and their commitment to attack. …”


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‘It was inhuman’: Why the Copa America final was delayed and dangerously close to disaster

“The black gates at the southwest entrance of Hard Rock Stadium had been closed for one hour and 45 minutes when a young child was hoisted on a guardian’s shoulders amid the crush of people waiting to get in for the CopaAmérica final. The boy waved his hands toward the police officers and security guards standing next to the lone door that was opening to let people into the stadium. He put his hands together as if in prayer, pleading with them to let him in. …”

NY Times/The Athletic

NY Times/The Athletic: Fox’s Copa America final coverage showed network is incapable of covering off-field turmoil(Video)

NY Times/The Athletic: Argentina are special – Copa America proves they just win

YouTube: FINAL COPA AMERICA‼️ COLOMBIA VS ARGENTINA 

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Turing test

"The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation was a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so the result would not depend on the machine’s ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. ..."

W – Turing test

W – Alan Turing

Slate: A Computer Program Finally Passed the Turing Test?

Guardian: What is the Turing test? And are we all doomed now?

YouTube: The original “Turing Test” paper is unbelievably visionary

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WOOL Urban Art Festival 2024: Celebrating a Decade of Street Art in Covilhã

Mário Belém. Wool 2019 Editon. Covilha, Portugal. June, 2024. 

"The WOOL Urban Art Festival, held annually in Covilhã, Portugal, is a renowned celebration of street art that has been transforming the city walls since its inception in 2011. This festival, sponsored and organized by a dedicated team committed to promoting social, cultural, and economic transformation through public art, has become a pivotal event in the urban art calendar. Covilhã, a city with a rich history in the wool industry, provides a unique backdrop –  with its steep cobblestone streets and historic architecture, offering a perfect canvas for murals and installations. 


Daniela Guerreiro. Wool 2024. Covilha, Portugal. June, 2024.
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40 Years of Experimental Dub Label On-U Sound Records: Nine Essential LPs


"By the time he was 21, Adrian Sherwood had already made several attempts at launching a record label. Sherwood—then a young London producer and DJ working with reggae and post-punk bands—co-founded Carib Gems, a label created to distribute Jamaican recordings locally, followed by Hitrun, through which he began to release some of his own productions. Then came 4D Records, briefly. It wasn’t until his fourth try, On-U Sound, which he co-founded with Kishi Yamamoto in 1980, that Sherwood ended up parlaying his love of reggae and dub into what he calls his 'life journey.' ..."

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Ley Lines: Palestine

Rasha Nahas, Amrat

"What is the sound of Palestine? For those in Gaza, the hum of Israeli drones permeates a soundscape punctuated by air strikes and the cries of children. Then there’s the sound of songbirds providing respite to embattled families, creatures whose ability to freely fly across man-made borders has been a motif of Palestinian literature for decades. But above all, Palestinian music in its rich history and diversity has remained a crucial thread knitting together a people in exile. Popular muses like Mohammed Assaf, rural folk traditions like dabke, militant resistance singers hailing the fedayeen, and diasporic innovators all display different articulations of Palestinian resistance and sumud (steadfastness). Contributions from musicians in solidarity have also been crucial in influencing the sound of Palestine. ... The notion that culture can transcend boundaries has become a bit of a truism, but in the case of Palestine, the fugitive, ephemeral nature of music has become a crucial tactic for connecting to one another and the land. Each Palestinian enclave is surrounded and separated; a system of city-specific IDs prevents Palestinians from moving freely within their own territory. Some Gazans have never left the Strip. ..."

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Editorial Board: Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead.


"Next week, for the third time in eight years, Donald Trump will be nominated as the Republican Party’s candidate for president of the United States. A once great political party now serves the interests of one man, a man as demonstrably unsuited for the office of president as any to run in the long history of the Republic, a man whose values, temperament, ideas and language are directly opposed to so much of what has made this country great. It is a chilling choice against this national moment. For more than two decades, large majorities of Americans have said they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and the post-Covid era of stubborn inflation, high interest rates, social division and political stagnation has left many voters even more frustrated and despondent. ..."

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Cooking Peppermint Chiffon Pie with Flannery O’Connor - Valerie Stivers


"Flannery O’Connor’s favorite meal at the Sanford House restaurant in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she lunched regularly with her mother, was fried shrimp and peppermint chiffon pie. O’Connor, after a diagnosis of lupus brought her home to Milledgeville in 1951, led a life in a farmhouse outside of town with her domineering mother, Regina, that bore some resemblance to a nun’s. Every morning started with Catholic Mass followed by cornflakes and a thermos of coffee in her spinster bedroom while she wrote for three hours. The writing time, she said, was her 'filet mignon.' Otherwise it seems she found most pleasures, especially the physical kind, to be base. In her fiction an amorous girl goes up to the hayloft with a man and gets her wooden leg stolen in the story 'Good Country People.' ..."


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The Vodoun Effect – Funk & Sato from Benin’s Obscure Labels 1972-1975


"Recording more than 50 albums and hundreds of 45s, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo were one of the most prolific bands of the 20th century. They were also one of the best. An innovative group that developed its own distinctive style of hard-driving funk but still found time to record in just about every style imaginable, from highlife, Afrobeat, and rumba to rock, jazz, soul, and folk. And yet, as of today, they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. That peers of Bembeya Jazz National, Orchestra Baobab, Rail Band, OK Jazz, Fela’s Africa 70, and every other great African band of the 1950s-70s has managed to remain this obscure and unheard is frankly baffling– and attributable more to the capricious nature of fame than any other single factor. The band’s geographic location probably didn’t help. ..."



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Belliphonic Bodies: Soundscapes of the Invasion

Taken while recording the soundscape of Kuyalnik in Odesa.

"War is an extremely aural experience, with sounds entering into the collective memory of affected societies. Its violence can only be fully understood when its acoustic aspects are also taken into consideration. These can help foster better understanding and empathy with affected persons and societies, while also examining how sound can influence the way war is presented and remembered. Wartime soundscapes can be quite variable and also highly personal, encompassing far more than the sounds of weaponry; conversations, movement, and nature, as well as silence and the lack of sound all play a part. Digging into their experiences and artistic work, artist Elza Gubanova and artist/curator Leon Seidel explore the sounds of war in Ukraine through various lenses, in conversation with the Ukrainian artist Oleh Shpudeiko aka Heinali and the Ukrainian curator Natalia Revko. ..."

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When Judith Jones Brought Sylvia Plath and Julia Child to American Bookshelves


"In November 1960, almost a year to date after William Koshland, longtime staffer at Knopf, delivered the manuscript of the book that would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking to editor Judith Jones, he stopped by her desk with another book in hand. This one was slim—a collection of poetry, Koshland said. Judith’s love of verse was almost as well-known around the office as her interest in food. Koshland said the volume was the poet’s debut. It had just been published in the UK by Heinemann; it wanted to know if Knopf would be interested in purchasing the American rights and publishing the book in the States. Koshland asked Judith if she’d give it a look. Judith set aside the work she’d been doing, opened to the first poem, and read: Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle / Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. / Thirty years now I have labored / To dredge the silt from your throat. / I am none the wiser. The collection was called The Colossus and Other Poems. Its author was Sylvia Plath. ..."

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The Sad State of Underground Retail in New York City


"At Columbus Circle, only one of the 40 shops that opened in its underground market eight years ago is still open today. At Fulton Center, the decade-old mall in a Lower Manhattan subway station is nearly vacant. In Midtown, empty storefronts line the Port Authority and Rockefeller Center stations. The state of retail in New York City’s vast underground subway system is, in a word, bleak. Nearly three-quarters of spaces in the transit network are empty, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a downward trend that began before the coronavirus pandemic but was exacerbated by it and the rise of remote and hybrid work. For travelers, the empty storefronts have created a sense of unease and urban decay. ..."

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The moment Dennis Hopper shot a tree while high on acid: “The tree was a grizzly bear”

“During the 1960s, an increased interest in drug use, sexual freedom and progressive politics bewitched the youth, leading to the hippie movement. Dennis Hopper dove headfirst into the world of drugs and alcohol, but he knew that the optimism spouted by hippies was futile. His directorial debut, Easy Rider, captured the dying breaths of the era, starring alongside Peter Fonda as a motorcycle rider travelling through the freeing expanses of the USA. Unfortunately, the characters both suffer tragic fates, with Hopper pointing out the false promises set out by America, supposedly the land of the free. ..."

FAR OUT (Video)

FAR OUT: The 10 craziest Dennis Hopper stories (Video)

FAR OUT: When John Wayne threatened to kill Dennis Hopper: “Where is that commie hiding?” (Video)

Outrageous Dennis Hopper Stories That Prove This Man Had No Chill

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Jazz Re:freshed Continues to Be Ground Zero for the New London Jazz Scene


"London’s young jazz renaissance of the last several years is the result of a tight group of artists, promoters, and labels working together to create a united scene. Central to the movement’s evolution was the community of musicians that coalesced around West London event series Jazz re:freshed, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Established by Adam Moses and Justin McKenzie in 2003, the Thursday night sessions became a platform for London’s emerging jazz underground—its supportive environment gave everyone from Nubya Garcia to Ashley Henry a place to hone their skills. Five years later, Jazz re:freshed has evolved to include a record label, started with a simple vision. ..."

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Star-Spangled Banner Performances: The 15 Most Awe-Inspiring Versions


"... With its wide range of notes, 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is considered to be one of the most challenging songs to sing. Performed regularly at sports games and ceremonial events, a handful of singers and musicians have the chance to perform the song live each year, as audiences listen with bated breath. Over the decades, many of the country’s biggest stars have tackled the song (some better than others), making their mark on the hallowed tune. Here’s a look back at 15 of the best 'Star-Spangled Banner' performances – from soulful balladry to all-out guitar shreds – proving that 'traditional' doesn’t always need to be dull. ..."

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Last Refuge of a Rock Critic: A Bicentennial Search for Patriotism - Greil Marcus


"Editors’ note, June 29, 2023: There was so much happening in New York City during the Bicentennial all those years ago that the Village Voice spread its coverage over two issues, spanning June 28 to July 12, 1976. The Big Apple was ready to party: King Kong had just left town and the Democrats were rolling in, preparing for their quadrennial convention two years after a Republican president — a liar, cheat, and bully who attempted to use his office to punish political and personal enemies — had resigned in disgrace. There was some sort of cosmic justice in Richard Nixon flaming out after winning re-election in a landslide but before he could preside over the Bicentennial, that nationwide celebration of American democracy’s survival after one civil war, two world conflicts, and countless cultural battles. It was in the Spirit of ’76 that Greil Marcus, author of the previous year’s Mystery Train — a monumental collection of essays delving into the heart of rock ’n’ roll to reveal a luminous chunk of America’s soul — undertook a wide-ranging disquisition on the meaning of patriotism in the pages of the Village Voice. (Mark Alan Stamaty’s boisterous, labyrinthine cartoons added to the wild and woolly mood.) ... My, how times have changed. —R.C. Baker ..."

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