Disconcerted: A Music Critic’s Empty Nights

Webster Hall in Manhattan.
"Empty rooms. Empty stages. Empty seats. Empty dance floors. And not far away, empty lobbies, empty dressing rooms, empty back rooms, empty bar areas, empty kitchens, empty lounges, empty sound booths, empty loading zones. These were places animated by live music, with entire backstage workdays dedicated to presenting just a few hours of intangible sound — gigs, shows, concerts — for the audiences that gathered there, often with great anticipation and at significant cost. I already miss them dearly. Concerts have been shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic; schedules and calendars, at least in the short run and possibly for much longer, are empty too. ..."
NY Times

The United Palace, from the balcony.

Magical Land Art By Andy Goldsworthy

"Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, renowned in his field, that creates temporary landscape art installations out of sticks and stones, and anything and everything else that he finds outside. The son of a mathematician, Goldsworthy grew up working on farms before eventually getting his BA from what is now the University of Central Lancashire. 'A lot of my earth art is like picking potatoes,' he told the Guardian. 'You have to get into the rhythm of it.' Much of Goldsworthy’s land art is transient and ephemeral, leading many to view it as a comment on the Earth’s fragility. But for Goldsworthy, the picture is more complicated. ..."
boredpanda
amazon: Andy Goldsworthy

2007 November: Andy Goldsworthy: Roof, 2012 March: Rivers and Tides, 2012 June: Andy Goldsworthy 1987 Grizedale, 2017 September: Rivers and Tides: Working With Time - Fred Frith (2001), 2018 August: Hedge Walking: The Land Art Of Andy Goldsworthy

Titian: Love, Desire, Death review – whims of the gods made flesh

Female realm … Titian’s Diana and Actaeon, 1556-69.
"The women are the stars in Titian. Men barely get a look-in – and that look-in can be fatal. In his painting Diana and Actaeon, a young man out hunting has chanced on the goddess Diana and her court bathing naked in a woodland hideaway. As he pushes aside a soft pink hanging, he sees inside this female realm. His punishment is shown in another painting here: he will be turned into a stag and torn apart by his hounds. In Diana and Actaeon we see what he sees: women kneel and crouch, turn in horror and rush to cover. Titian’s brush shapes their flesh in ethereal yet weighty flicks of colour that capture form while being smokily suggestive. He called these paintings 'poesie', poetic pictures, with good reason, for they hover in a cloud of carnality and dreams. ..."
Guardian
W - Titian

‘An image of the Venetian sex trade itself’ … Danae, c1554–56.

How to Socially Distance and Stay Sane

"On Monday, The Times reported that British researchers studying the coronavirus had made a harrowing projection: If government and individuals don’t take sweeping actions to slow the virus’s spread and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die. Social distancing is one such action, now in increasingly wide effect. But how does it help, what exactly does it entail, and how do you practice it without sacrificing your physical and mental health? Here’s what public-health experts, journalists and others are saying. ..."
NY Times

Fehlfarben - 33 Tage in Ketten (1982)

“Fehlfarben is a Neue Deutsche Welle band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The band name is from a German term referring to cigars with a discoloured wrapper leaf and sold cheaply: singer Peter Hein was in this line of work at Xerox while in the band. Its founding members were Peter Hein (vocals), former Mittagspause (‘lunch break’), Thomas Schwebel (guitar, former Mittagspause, S.Y.P.H.), Michael Kemner (bass, former 20 Colors, Mau Mau, DAF, YOU), Frank Fenstermacher (saxophone, later Der Plan), Markus Oehlen and Uwe Bauer (drums, former Mittagspause, Materialschlacht). … Shortly after having released their debut album, Fehlfarben suffered the departure of lead singer Peter Hein owing to his frustration at the follow-up tour’s being lengthened from three to six weeks on short notice. He went back to his day job at Xerox, where he worked until 2003. …”
Wikipedia
Discogs
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: 33 Tage in Ketten (Full)

Robert Stone, Chronicler of America’s Decline

"... [Robert] Stone’s novels each capture the zeitgeist of a particular period. A Hall of Mirrors slashes into the underbelly of American racial anxieties as the civil rights movement, and resistance to it, get underway. Dog Soldiers somehow captures the whole spirit of the Vietnam era while barely setting a scene in Vietnam. A Flag for Sunrise delves into the dark side of the Monroe Doctrine, following the most corrupt machinations of American influence into the bloodiest crannies of Central America. Children of Light stages the cocaine-fueled, illusion-rich culture of eighties Hollywood. Outerbridge Reach swings the nineties boom-and-bust stock market cycle by the tail, shaking out its scariest social consequences. Damascus Gate discovers the sinister side of the U.S. engagement with Mideast politics in general and Israel in particular—among other things, as one must always say of any Robert Stone novel … a great many other things. ..."
The Paris Review

2013 September: Outerbridge Reach (1993), 2015 January: Robert Stone (August 21, 1937 – January 10, 2015), 2017 March: Damascus Gate (1998), 2020 February: The Total Anti-Totalist Robert Stone

Peter Tosh & Wailers - Downpresser (1971), Etc.

"A quintessential Lee 'Scratch' Perry Wailers single on Upsetter with an upsolute Righteous Upsetters dynamite dub on the flipside. As described in the recommended recent book BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS: THE DEFINITIVE DISCOGRAPHY by Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson, this original version of 'Downpresser' features Peter Tosh on vocal, Bob Marley & Bunny Wailer on harmony vocals, Carlton Barrett on drums, Aston 'Family Man' Barrett on bass, Alva 'Reggie' Lewis on guitar, Glen Adams on keyboards, Gladdy Anderson on piano, Uziah 'Sticky' Thompson playing percussion. Errol Thompsion engineered the whole affair at Randy's Studio 17 on a four track with Lee Perry producing. Almighty sounds. The composer credit on 'Downpresser' reads P. Touch. It is Peter's third recording of the traditional 'Sinner Man' which he first cut at Studio One in 1968. ..."
Popsiks, YouTube: PETER TOSH & THE WAILERS - Downpresser
YouTube: Burning Spear - Bad To Worse
YouTube: HUGH MUNDELL - Great Tribulation
YouTube: Toney Barrett ‎- Trying Man
YouTube: JOHNNY CLARKE - None Shall Escape The Judgement
YouTube: ERROL DUNKLEY - Movie Star
YouTube: Wailing Souls - Kingdom Rise Kingdom Fall
YouTube: AUGUSTUS PABLO - Crucial Burial
YouTube: Bunny Wailer - Rise & Shine
YouTube: JOE MORGAN - Basement Session

Dave Wesley - Tons de Quarto (2020)

"The first of two tracks from Dave Wesley released with the title 'Tons de Quarto,' the music comes across like some fierce collage mix of zigzagging field recordings and rampantly droning organ. It’s all about fleetingly quelled chaos — the volume lowered, and yet the action raised in inverse proportion. The organ-like sound comes in waves, wide hands pushing out arrhythmic patterns that ebb and flow in an expression of unrest and pent-up power. The other sounds are foreground and background, rough noises tossed about, and rapid patterning, the wind in motion. It’s a potent combination. Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/davewesley. Wesley is based in Porto, Portugal. More at arcticdub.bandcamp.com and YouTube."
disquiet: Quelled Chaos (Audio)
Arctic Dub (Audio)

The Workers Who Face the Greatest Coronavirus Risk

"As the coronavirus continues to spread throughout the United States, people with jobs that put them in physical contact with many others are at the greatest risk of becoming sick. Each bubble on this chart represents an occupation. The bigger the bubble, the more people do that job. The vertical position of each bubble is a measure of how often workers in a given profession are exposed to disease and infection. The horizontal position is a measure of how close people are to others during their workdays. Health care workers are at the greatest risk — they can encounter diseases and infections daily and typically work in close proximity to one another and their patients. Many are already under quarantine because of exposure to the virus. ..."
NY Times
NY Times - ‘It Has All Gone to Hell’: Businesses, Workers Bled Dry by Coronavirus
NY Times - As Coronavirus Deepens Inequality, Inequality Worsens Its Spread

A quiet Pike Place Market, which is usually crowded on Fridays with tourists and Seattleites grabbing lunch.

A Century Downtown: A Visual History of Lower Manhattan Hardcover – Matt Kapp

"It would be an understatement to say that Lower Manhattan has undergone radical change over the last hundred years. But the construction of the World Trade Center, September 11th, and the subsequent revitalization of the area is only one piece of the story. Once upon a time, Lower Manhattan was home to more than 300 vibrant electronics businesses, known as Radio Row. And Washington Street was once the home to Little Syria, the biggest Arab-American community in the country at the time. Matt Kapp looks at the rich and ever-shifting history of that part of Manhattan, picking out pivotal moments and tracing a line from 1919 to today in his new book, A Century Downtown: A Visual History Of Lower Manhattan. He looks at the rise of Wall Street and Newspaper Row, the battle between FDR and Robert Moses, the construction of the Twin Towers and the communities it offset, 9/11 and the battle to control its legacy, and the current economic boom. ..."
Incredible Photos Trace The History Of Lower Manhattan (Video)
NY Times: 5 Sites That Show How Much Lower Manhattan Has Changed
When Robert Moses Wiped Out New York’s ‘Little Syria’ By Matt Kapp
amazon

John Zorn’s Naked City – The Marquee Club, New York City, NY, 1992-04-09

"John Zorn’s Naked City April 9, 1992 The Marquee Club, New York, NY pro-shot (a neckey – voltarized upgrade) Personnel: John Zorn: Alto Sax Bill Frisell: Guitar Wayne Horvitz: keyboards Fred Frith : Bass Joey Baron: drums Yamatsuka Eye: vocals 01–opening titles 02–sunset surfer 03–asylum 04–terkmani tepee 05–party girl (false start)/party girl (right version) 06–shock corridor 07–speedfreaks 08–poisonhead 09–bonehead 10–blood duster 11–the catacombs (aka the vault or the inferno) 12–thrash jazz assassin 13–hellraiser 14–dead spot 15–sack of shit 16–metaltov 17–snagglepuss 18–the yodel (Big John Patton/Grant Green) 19–bone orchard 20–the list of adrian messenger (Jerry Goldsmith) 21–a night in tunisia (Dizzy Gillespie) 22–blood is thin 23–blunt instrument / end titles"
NeuGuitars (Video)

2009 March: John Zorn, 2010 August: Spillane 2011 October: Filmworks Anthology : 20 Years of Soundtrack Music, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 January: Bar Kokhba and Masada, 2013 September: Masada String Trio Sala, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010), 2014 March: "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008, 2015 June: The Big Gundown - John Zorn plays Ennio Morricone (1985), 2015 July: News for Lulu (1988), 2016 March: Film Works 1986-1990, 2017 March: John Zorn Is Rolling The Stone From Avenue C To The New School, 2017 September: Naked City (1990), 2019 July: The Book Beri’ah (2018)

Horace Silver - Doin’ The Thing (1961)

"... One of the hottest live sessions ever recorded by van Gelder on his portable equipment, at the Village gate before an appreciatively hip audience. RVG achieves that 'front seat in the club' atmosphere again, and the playing is astonishing. Junior Cook is cast as the young Mobley, his tone and swagger is so similar I’m not sure I could tell them apart. Silver’s solo really gets into the groove in a boogie-woogie pastiche which is head-shakingly rhythmic, whipping up the audience, who sound their appreciation. Forget 27 choruses of Diminuendo and Crescendo at ’56 Newport, Filthy McNasty ’61 is truly… nice. ..."
London Jazz Collector (Audio)
W - Doin’ The Thing
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: Doin' The Thing (Remastered 2006/Rudy Van Gelder Edition) 6 videos

2017 March: A Night at Birdland Vol. 1 - Art Blakey (1954), 2017 September: Sabu (1953), 2018 June: Song for My Father (1962)

The Plague - Albert Camus (1947)

The dance of death the careless and the careful.
"Usually a question like this is theoretical: What would it be like to find your town, your state, your country, shut off from the rest of the world, its citizens confined to their homes, as a contagion spreads, infecting thousands, and subjecting thousands more to quarantine? How would you cope if an epidemic disrupted daily life, closing schools, packing hospitals, and putting social gatherings, sporting events and concerts, conferences, festivals and travel plans on indefinite hold? In 1947, when he was 34, Albert Camus, the Algerian-born French writer (he would win the Nobel Prize for Literature ten years later, and die in a car crash three years after that) provided an astonishingly detailed and penetrating answer to these questions in his novel The Plague. ..."
LitHub: What We Can Learn (and Should Unlearn) From Albert Camus’s The Plague
Open Culture: Why You Should Read The Plague, the Albert Camus Novel the Coronavirus Has Made a Bestseller Again
W - The Plague
amazon

2011 October: Albert Camus on Nihilism, 2014 November: Albert Camus: Soccer Goalie, 2015 May: LISTEN: New Cave And Ellis Soundtrack, 2016 April: Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche, 2016 April: Algerian Chronicles (2013), 2017 November: The Stranger (1942), 2018 July: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960), 2019 September: Les Pieds-Noirs: Algeria’s Forgotten Footballers

This Week's Sky at a Glance, March 13 – 21

"... Betelgeuse is rebrightening. After bottoming out at about V magnitude +1.64 in early to mid-February, Orion's Betelgeuse was up to +1.3 as of March 8th, and the brightening seems to be speeding up a bit. The change from minimum is quite clear now to the eye; use Orion's other shoulder star, Bellatrix, as a comparison. During Betelgeuse's minimum brightness they appeared essentially equal. See The Fall and Rise of Betelgeuse. ... Saturday, March 14. Right after dark, five carnivore constellations stand upright in a row, from the northeast to south. They're all seen in profile with their noses pointed up and their feet (if any) to the right. They are Ursa Major the Big Bear in the northeast (with the Big Dipper as its brightest part), Leo the Lion in the east, Hydra the Sea Serpent in the southeast, Canis Minor the Little Dog higher in the south-southeast (lit by Procyon), and bright Canis Major the Big Dog lower in the south (lit by Sirius). ..."
Sky & Telescope

Trump’s False Claims About His Response to the Coronavirus

President Trump taking questions from reporters Friday at a news conference.
"The president inaccurately described travel restrictions he had announced, falsely blamed his predecessor for testing shortages and misstated the role Google was playing in mitigating the outbreak. As he declared a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump attempted to deflect criticisms of his administration’s response to the virus with inaccurate claims. Here’s a fact-check. ... False. The Food and Drug Administration issued a 'draft guidance' in 2014 in which it sought to extend its authority to regulate laboratory-developed tests. But it’s wrong to blame that effort for the scattered and insufficient delivery of coronavirus tests as the guidance was not particularly relevant to emergency situations and was never finalized or generally enforced. A law enacted in 2004 created the process and requirements for the use of unapproved products in public health emergencies. ..."
NY Times

Roma - Alfonso Cuarón (2018)

"Roma is a 2018 epic drama film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also produced, shot, and co-edited it. Set in 1970 and 1971, Roma follows the life of a live-in housekeeper of a middle-class family, as a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón's upbringing in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. The film stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira. The film had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on 30 August 2018, where it won the Golden Lion. ... In 1971, Cleodegaria 'Cleo' Gutiérrez is an indigenous live-in maid in an affluent household in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. The family's matriarch, Sofía, her husband, Antonio, her mother Teresa, their four young children, and another maid, Adela, also live in the house. Antonio, a doctor, leaves for a conference in Quebec. It becomes clear that Sofía and Antonio's marriage is strained. ..."
WikipediaNY Times - ‘Roma’ Review: Alfonso Cuarón’s Masterpiece of Memory (Video)
Variety: Alfonso Cuarón on the Painful and Poetic Backstory Behind ‘Roma’
TIME: The Real History Behind the Movie Roma
YouTube: ROMA | Official Trailer

Luther Allison ‎– Bad News Is Coming (1973)

"The very thing that made Luther Allison noteworthy became an albatross around his neck. Years after his initial run of records in the '70s, he was known for the same thing he was at the time -- he was the only blues artist on Gordy, or any Motown affiliated label. This was true and novel, but many focused on the novelty, not the truth, ignoring Allison's status as a terrific torchbearer of raw Chicago blues. Some of material illustrates some contemporary influence -- dig that funky groove and organ on 'Raggedy and Dirty,' or the rock-oriented slow burn of Mel London's 'Cut You A-Loose' -- but as his original title track illustrates, he can also deliver a torturous, impassioned slow grind. Still, this isn't an album about originality, it's a record how tradition can remain alive in a contemporary setting. ..."
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: "Bad News is Coming" - Full Album 11 videos

In Which Edna St. Vincent Millay Stares Into The Abyss

"At age 48 – looks fading, youth fading, genius (she thought) also fading — the extravagant American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay found herself staring blankly into the abyss that had moved with her all her life. Once she had written ecstatically of that 'conscious void' (her first encounter: a passage of poetry from Romeo & Juliet when she was five years old), of both 'the tangible radiance in which I stood' and 'the edge of nausea' that bordered it. Once it had left her thrilled, transcendent, outside herself; the “radiance” and the 'nausea' had been intertwined. But, at 48, interred at the farmhouse she and her husband had converted near the Berkshires, worn out by her lifelong hungers, that abyss was now dark to her — and it took it took two gin rickeys, a martini, eight cigarettes and several morphine shots, all before 1 p.m., to be able to face it. ..."
This Recording

2015 May: The Spinster Hall of Fame: Yes, Cut-out dolls of five pioneering women writers

A Solar System of Fire and Ice

The Galileo spacecraft caught a volcano erupting on Jupiter's moon Io in 1997.
"Rosaly Lopes spent five years carefully inspecting a churning landscape where molten rock spilled forth like the arced jets of a water fountain. Using data from an orbiting probe, she picked out eruptions across the fiery surface, eventually spotting 71 active volcanoes that no one had ever detected before. ... None of the volcanoes were on Earth, though. They were several hundred million miles away, on a moon of Jupiter called Io. Today, Io is known as the most volcanically active place in the solar system. Other volcanic spots are scattered across our neighboring planets and moons, too, and probably countless more in other solar systems across the universe. Recently, NASA announced it would fund proposals for four new robotic missions, all headed for a close look at these kinds of worlds—Io, Venus, and Triton, a moon of Neptune. ..."
The Atlantic

The Life of a Ghost Town

Century-old houses stand empty at the former Idarado Mine, near Silverton, Colorado. The homes were moved here in 1948 from Eureka, a nearby ghost town.
"There is a ghost town, high in the Colorado Rockies, inaccessible to all but the most rugged four-wheel-drive vehicles, that I’ve visited since I was a child. I’ll call the town Inez, instead of its real name, since the folks who live in that solitary spot are there for a reason: they don’t like being around a lot of people, and they aren’t interested in attracting tourists. Many of them are my relatives, too, and I’d like to stay on speaking terms. They aren’t hermits, exactly, but they aren’t very sociable, either. 'This is my hideout,' one put it. Inez, surrounded by a fortress of peaks, has always seemed like a remote and rustic Shangri-la, far from the rest of the world and the current time period. When I was a child, my family would jeep up the narrow, rocky shelf road that leads to Inez, climbing over the final crest and into an aspen valley and a town that wasn’t much more than a handful of old log cabins in various stages of decay. ..."
Alta

Built in 1892, this wooden powerhouse helped supply compressed air for mining operations near Crystal, Colorado.

Arte del mar: Artistic Exchange in the Caribbean

"Arte del mar ('art of/from the sea') explores the artistic exchange around the rim of the Caribbean Sea before the sixteenth century between the Taíno civilizations of the Antilles archipelago and their powerful peers on the continental mainland. Recent archaeological, ethnohistorical, and art-historical research has deepened our understanding of indigenous Caribbean concepts of ritual knowledge, ceremonial performance, and political power. Artists in the region—which includes the modern Antilles archipelago and countries such as Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, and Honduras—sought to express the distinct force of their deities and ancestors, known to the Taínos as zemí (or cemí), which pervaded the environment and was crucial to the foundation of communities. ..."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Video)
NY Times: The Art of Caribbean Exchange, in Gold, Stone or Hardwood

Bebopped and Rebopped: The Births of Bebop and Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison
"In the early 1940s, during after-hours jam sessions at Harlem clubs such as Minton’s Playhouse and Clark Monroe’s Uptown House, a group of young jazz musicians hailing from across the country began to develop a new sound, a new form of jazz music (Lott 598). Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie recalls that, during jam sessions at Minton’s, 'Theloni[o]us Monk and I began to work out some complex variations on chords and the like, and we used them at night to scare away the no-talent guys. After a while, we got more and more interested in what we were doing as music, and, as we began to explore more and more, our music evolved.' In this evolution, Gillespie notes, 'we were…playing, seriously, creating a new dialogue among ourselves, blending our ideas into a new style of music…You only have so many notes, and what makes a style is how you get from one note to the other…We invented our own way of getting from one place to the next.' ..."
New York City in the '40s
W - Invisible Man
“Invisible Man”: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem
NPR - Ralph Ellison: No Longer The 'Invisible Man' 100 Years After His Birth
New York City in the '40s: Ellison and Bebop

Gordon Parks. Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1952.

Does The Mayhem In The Champions League Race Open Up A Spot For … Burnley?

Could Burnley qualify for Champions League?
"The Premier League has felt more like a coronation than a competition this season. Liverpool opened up a gap at the top of the table as wide as the River Mersey and will almost certainly win its first Premier League title — and its first English top division title in 30 years. In lieu of a title race, Premier League fans have had to settle on a race for the top four and Champions League qualification. That race also looked to be predictable for much of the season, that is until UEFA (the governing body of European soccer) banned Manchester City from competing in next season’s competition for failing to comply with 'financial fair play' rules. Manchester City has appealed, but the ban stands for now. That means that, at least for now, the Premier League team that finishes in fifth place will qualify for next season’s edition of the Champions League. ..."
Five Thirty Eight

Aksak Maboul : Tout a une fin / Blaue Bleistift (2020)

"... In 1977, Marc Hollander formed a band in Belgium called Aksak Maboul. What kind of band, you ask? Oh, just your average avant-rock-cabaret-jazz combo. One that could evoke Bela Bartok, Duke Ellington, and Arab music in quick succession. You know, one of those bands. Their 1977 album Onze Danses pour Combattre la Migraine was a formative influence on me when I started the New Sounds program here at WNYC in 1982 and remains a signal achievement in genre-blind music. But Marc Hollander also formed a successful record label, Crammed Discs, and after releasing another album in 1980, the band essentially disappeared. So it is wonderful news to hear that Aksak Maboul is releasing a new album (a double-LP, as if that will make up for all the time passed) in May, and the announcement came with the release of this single, called 'Tout a une fin' ('Everthing Ends'). It features the band’s new vocalist Veronique Vincent (formerly of The Honeymoon Killers) and a fairly straightahead rock rhythm, at least to start. But the song acquires some strange tendrils of sound and eventually bursts into an electronic/orchestral climax."
New Sounds
Crammed - Aksak Maboul
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: Tout a une fin/everything ends (official video)

2014 November: Aksak Maboul, 2017 July: Made to Measure, Vol. 1 (1984), 2018 February: Before And After Bandits: Marc Hollander Of Aksak Maboul & Crammed Discs

Atypical Girls: The Female Punks Who Fought For Equality

"It’s sad to relate, but it’s a fact that, before female punks burst on the scene in the 70s, a woman in the man’s world of rock’n’roll had little chance of even being taken seriously, let alone being viewed on equal terms. Strong, independently minded women in rock were depressingly thin on the ground up to this point. Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick, the late Janis Joplin and acclaimed singer-songwriters including Joni Mitchell and Carole King had begun to make a mark in the late 60s and early 70s, but as far as all-girl bands were concerned only a few, such as Anglo-Canadians The She Trinity and New Hampshire proto-punks The Shaggs, dared to try writing and recording their own material, and those that did struggled to gain any kind of commercial foothold. ..."
udiscover (Audio/Video)

Taking Shape Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s

Omar El-Nagdi, Untitled, 1970. Mixed media on wood, 47 x 47 inches
"Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s explores mid-20th-century abstract art from North Africa, West Asia, and the Arab diaspora—a vast geographic expanse that encompasses diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. Comprising nearly 90 works by artists from countries including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the exhibition is drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah, UAE. The paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints on view here reflect the wide range of nonfigurative art practices that flourishes in the Arab world over the course of four decades. Decolonization, the rise and fall of Arab nationalisms, socialism, rapid industrialization, wars and mass migrations, and the oil boom transformed the region during this period. ..."
Grey Art Gallery
Brooklyn Rail
amazon

Menhat Helmy, Space Exploration/Universe, 1973.

Dollar Bin Mix #4 - Astral Jazz

"It's been a heady week, so I've dived deep into the Dollar Bin for a mix of far out jazz to cleanse the soul and feed the spirit. Join me on a trip to out there and back where you'll end in a lighter place. - Mr Chips. Note: All songs were taken from albums exclusively found in the Dollar Bins of my travels. Pops and clicks are all part of the experience. Track List: Stanley Turrentine - Gibraltar, Rashaan Roland Kirk - Black Root 10:19, Ramsey Lewis - Jungle Strut 13:26, Les McCann - The Harlem Buck Dance Strut 18:04, Charles Earland - Betty's Dilemma 24:02, Eddie Harris - Shorty Rides Again 32:14, Cannonball Adderley - Leo 40:42, Herbie Hancock - Fat Mama 43:33, Lonnie Liston Smith - Devika (Goddess) 47:17, Les McCann - The Dunbar High School Marching Band 52:23, Flora Purim - Uri (The Wind) 58:28, Deodato - Adam's Hotel 1:04:30, Leon Thomas - Echos 1:08:01, Rufus Harley - Scotch & Soul 1:13:36, Qunicy Jones - Oh Happy Day 1:18:38.
mixcloud (Audio)

The secret backhouse behind East 38th Street

"While walking through Murray Hill recently, I cut through the driveway of an apartment building to get from 38th to 37th Street without going all the way to Third Avenue. What I saw when I peered over the apartment building’s brick fence and into a yard next door surrounded by tidy brownstones made me stop in my tracks and ask myself: is that a backhouse? Backhouses aren’t uncommon in New York; these are small dwellings built behind a main house. Property owners in the late 18th and early 19th century put up backhouses for various reasons. Sometimes they served as a stable, but others were cheap houses landlords constructed on a lot to squeeze more tenants into the property and get more rent. I’d seen backhouses before, mostly downtown in the Village or Chelsea—like this backhouse, now hidden behind tenements in the East Village. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Cape Breton Island - Protest Song (2012), Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest (2012)

"On Cape Breton Island, where coal mining and steel making were once an essential part of the region’s culture and economy, protest song and verse are found in abundance. The Protest Song Project is an initiative of The Centre for Cape Breton Studies at Cape Breton University. The program’s goal is to preserve and promote the protest songs and verse that represent the region’s rich industrial heritage. ... These songs played an important role in the labour struggles of the 1920s and are an unexplored aspect of Cape Breton’s labour heritage. ... Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest. This is part two of a program to preserve, promote and make available the steel, mining and protest songs of the region. It tells stories about the struggles to survive strikes and hard times, the courage of workers wives, the fight by trade unionists and the oppression of international company owners. ..."
Protest Songs, Protest Songs – Volume 1 (Audio), Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest – Volume 2 (Audio)
Industrial heritage remembered
iTunes:: Cape Breton Island Protest Songs (Audio), Songs of Steel, Coal and Protest (Audio)
W - Cape Breton Island
YouTube: Albert Lionais - He Walked Right In

2015 October: History of the Acadians, 2012 February: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, 2012 December: Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler, 2011 June: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Alistair MacLeod, 2016 February: Island (2001), 2016 October: Alistair MacLeod - No Great Mischief (1999), October: Nova Scotia Lighthouse, 2017 April: Cape Breton fiddling

Burlington Progressives — lots of them — eye mayor’s office after council wins

The list of possible candidates is already long: Clockwise from top left: Carina Driscoll, Max Tracy, Gene Bergman, John Franco, Brian Pine and Ali Dieng.
"Burlington, VT — After the election of two new Progressives to the City Council Tuesday, another race was quickly on the minds of Burlington Progressives — the 2021 mayoral election. Party executive director Josh Wronski was less than a minute into his speech at a victory celebration Tuesday night when he crystal balled the party’s success boded well for its chances of taking back the mayor’s office next year. 'Miro Weinberger, we’re coming for you,' Wronski said. Already, Progressives are starting to float names of potential candidates to take on Weinberger, a Democrat who’s served since 2012. In an interview Friday, the mayor said he was months away from deciding, but allowed there was a 'good chance' he will run again for another three-year term. ..."
VTDigger (Audio)

Voters inside the Fletcher Free Library, the polling place for Burlington’s Ward 8, on March 3.

2017 December: Vermont Progressive Party, 2018 February: Carina Driscoll - Mayor: Burlington, Vermont - Progressives Party, 2018 February: Burlington officials grapple with controversial mural, 2017 May: 05401PLUS, 2019 May: Mayor and ‘Foreign Minister’: How Bernie Sanders Brought the Cold War to Burlington