The Lathe of Brooklyn

 "The great Touch Radio podcast has uploaded audio from just a few days ago. The concert in question was a show at Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Eleh was the headliner, and the opener was Lary 7 (pictured above in a photo of the event from Touch). Charactertistic for the Touch Radio series, there’s close to no information about the event provided. What there is is half an hour of increasingly violent chafing, noises of mechanisms in action, echoed in a reverberant space."
disquiet
NYT: In a Dark Church, Nuances of Sound Turn Symphonic Eleh (US Debut) + Lary 7

Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry of Eugenio de Andrade

"Eugénio de Andrade’s poetry has always exhibited a carefully evoked simplicity. Through naked word and image, he strives to convey what he calls 'the rough or sweet skin of things.' Distrustful of abstractions, he focuses on the world of matter, proclaiming a love for 'words smooth as pebbles, rough as rye bread. Words that smell of clover and dust, loam and lemon, resin and sun.'"
Poetry International Rotterdam
amazon: Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry of Eugenio de Andrade

Ghost Signs

"A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising signage that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The signage may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. Ghost signs are found across the world with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada having many surviving examples. Ghost signs are also called fading ads and brickads. In many cases these are advertisements painted on brick that remained over time. Old painted advertisements are occasionally discovered upon demolition of later-built adjoining structures. Throughout rural areas, old barn advertisements continue to promote defunct brands and quaint roadside attractions."
Wikipedia
The Basement Geographer
Ghost Sign Project (Video)
Ghost signs: Jersey's commercial history is written large in faded paint on city buildings
Ghost Signs Part 1, Part 2
Portland's ghost signs
Ghost Signs
American Ghosts : About Ghost Signs
Ghostsigns
San Francisco Ghost Signs: A Tour of SF's Historical Advertisements
NYT: The Handwriting on the Wall Says, ‘GiGi Young Originals’

Trampin' - Patti Smith

"Patti Smith kicks off her ninth album, Trampin', with what sounds like a call to arms: 'Come on, girl/ Come on, boy/ Be a jubilee.' That word, 'jubilee,' hangs heavy with meaning. Commonly connoting a commemorative celebration, this Biblical term also refers to a period of emancipation for Hebrew slaves. It was adopted by the abolition movement in the 1800s and by the civil rights movement a century later."
Pitchfork
W - Trampin'
YouTube: My Blakean Year, Mother rose, Trampin', Peaceable Kingdom, Trespasses, Cash, Cartwheels, Gandhi

Ultimate Dr. Sir Warrior

"Christogonus Ezebuiro Obinna (1947, Imo State, Nigeria – June 2, 1999), the Ultimate Dr. Sir Warrior, was the leader of the Oriental Brothers International Band which ruled the Nigerian highlife music scene for several decades. He modernized highlife music. His style remains an epitome of defined music with meaning, direction, and purpose."
Wikipedia
amazon: Oriental Brothers
YouTube: Uwa atuola m ujo, Nwanyi Di Ya Bu Eze, Onye Tara Nye Ibe Ya, Otu nwa, Onye Oma Mmadu, Nwa da di nma, Chi awu otu

Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years

"For decades, critics have observed that Andy Warhol exerted an enormous impact on contemporary art, but no exhibition has yet explored the full nature or extent of that influence. Through approximately forty-five works by Warhol alongside one hundred works by some sixty other artists, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years juxtaposes prime examples of Warhol's paintings, sculpture, and films with those by other artists who in key ways reinterpret, respond, or react to his groundbreaking work. What emerges is a fascinating dialogue between works of art and artists across generations."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Images
About the Exhibition
amazon
Reuters: Warhol’s art influence shown at the Met (Video)

"Naima" - John Coltrane

Wikipedia - "'Naima' is a ballad composed by John Coltrane in 1959, and named after his then-wife, Juanita Naima Grubbs. It first appeared on the album Giant Steps, and is notable for its use of a variety of rich chords over a bass pedal. It is mainly made up of a slow, restrained melody, though there is also a brief piano solo. One of Coltrane's most famous compositions, he recorded it numerous times."
Wikipedia
John Coltrane: Naima
YouTube: Naima (Belgium 1965), Naima (alternate take)

Vollmond - Pina Bausch

"It’s been over a week since I saw Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch perform Vollmond (Full Moon) at Brooklyn Academy of Music, yet many of the images from the piece – and the endless downpour of water – still linger in my memory. ... But the twelve dancers were utterly mesmerizing as they frolicked, climbed, kissed, yearned, tumbled, and flung themselves through a nonstop array of dream-like vignettes set against a rainstorm. A large boulder and a dip in the stage to create a flowing river transported the audience to a separate, mystical setting far from earth. At full moon, these fierce spirits let themselves go."
Dancing Perfectly Free
Interview Working with Pina Bausch
Tanztheater Wuppertal
NYT: Swimming Through Bausch’s World
YouTube: Vollmond (Full Moon), Dominique Mercy solo 2007, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch at BAM

2008 May: Pina Bausch
2009 June: Pina Bausch, 1940-2009

"Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)" - Pet Shop Boys

Wikipedia - "'Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)' is a 1991 single by UK synthpop duo Pet Shop Boys. The song is a medley of covers of U2's 'Where the Streets Have No Name' and 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You', the 1960s single by Frankie Valli, though in an arrangement informed by the 1981 disco version of the song by Boystown Gang rather than the original."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You) 1991 album, Live - Performance, Live - Mexico City

Christopher Felver

"Even a partial list of photographer/filmmaker Christopher Felver’s subjects reads like a roster of America’s mid-century avant garde. The collection presented here is new work—photographs of structural elements transformed through his critical eye into lyrical mosaics. There is a mysterious nature to these images, and when juxtaposed into a grid system, the division of space and contrasting tonal values result in a new language, functioning almost as an ancient alphabet—agents of a short story."
Natural Curiosities
Christopher Felver
amazon: Christopher Felver
vimeo: Ferlinghetti - Trailer
YouTube: BEAT Book, John Cage - Talks About Cows & One/Seven
musica: Cecil Taylor: All The Notes

Talking Heads: Live at Wembley Arena 1982

"Intro, Life During Wartime, Big Blue Plymouth, Once in a Lifetime, Mind, Big Business, I Zimbra, Slippery People, Psycho Killer, My Big Hands, Swamp, What a Day That Was, Crosseyed and Painless"
YouTube: Talking Heads: Live at Wembley Arena 1982

Ghosts in the Machine

"... The works assembled trace the complex historical passage from the mechanical to the optical to the virtual, looking at the ways in which humans have projected anthropomorphic behaviors onto machines that have become progressively more human. In place of a traditional, chronological approach, 'Ghosts in the Machine' is conceived as an encyclopedic cabinet of wonders: bringing together an array of artworks and non-art objects to create an unsystematic archive of man’s attempt to reconcile the organic and the mechanical."
new museum
new museum: Time Machines (Video)
NYT: Technology Advances, Then Art Inquires
TimeOut: "Ghosts in the Machine"

Gangnam Style

Wikipedia - "'Gangnam Style' is a 2012 Korean pop single by the South Korean rapper PSY. It is widely praised for its humor, catchy rhythm as well as Psy's unusual dance moves. The song was released on July 15, 2012, where it debuted at number one on the Gaon Chart. The music video has been viewed over 180 million times as of September 15, 2012, making it the most watched K-pop video in YouTube history."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Gangnam Style
Wired: William Gibson on Punk Rock, Internet Memes, and ‘Gangnam Style’
The Atlantic: Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea's Music Video Sensation

Biutiful - Alejandro González Iñárritu

Wikipedia - "Biutiful is a drama film directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu and starring Javier Bardem. It is González Iñárritu's first feature since Babel and fourth overall, and his first film in his native Spanish language since his debut feature Amores perros. The title Biutiful refers to the phonological spelling in Spanish of the English word beautiful."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Biutiful – review (Video)
NYT: Biutiful (2010)
YouTube: Biutiful, Birds, Arrest

2011 June: Babel

Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice) - John Fahey

Wikipedia - "Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice) (or simply, Fare Forward Voyagers) is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1973. It contained three songs, one comprising a complete side of the original LP. ... In reviewing Fare Forward Voyagers for Allmusic, music critic Eugene Chadbourne compared it to Indian ragas, but diverging from ragas in that "\'the compositions are something in the order of unpredictable miniature symphonies, each with different sections, variations, and developments.'"
Wikipedia
amzon
MUTANT SOUNDS
YouTube: Fare Foward Voyagers, When The Fire & The Rose Are One, Thus Khrishna On The Battlefield

2009 March: John Fahey
2011 March: Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965)

Wilbert Harrison

Wikipedia - "Wilbert Harrison (January 5, 1929 – October 26, 1994) was an American rhythm and blues singer, pianist, guitarist and harmonica player. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, Harrison had a Billboard #1 record in 1959 with the song 'Kansas City'. The song was written in 1952 and was one of the first credited collaborations by the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Harrison recorded 'Kansas City' for the Harlem based entrepreneur Bobby Robinson.
Wikipedia
YouTube: Stagger lee, Kansas City, Wilbert Harrison - Let's Work Together, Lets Work Together-Canned Heat, The horse, A Woman In Trouble, 1960

Sugar Minott - No vacancy + dub Version

"Another tough cultural number that was rounded up for Sugar Minott's 1984 self-produced Slice of the Cake. Here the singer is backed by Roots Radics, who lay down a tough rhythm of big, booming beats and phat bass, but brightened by the sublime brass, whose smokey solos and muted blasts of accents are so integral to the Radics' rich sound. Meanwhile, Minott portrays the archetypal Jamaican -- searching for work, applying for jobs that he's never going to get, his shabby clothes and natty hair two more strikes against him. The pickneys are hungry, but all the stores sport signs reading 'No Vacancy.'"
allmusic
YouTube: No vacancy + dub Version

2010 June: Sugar Minott

Riders of the Purple Sage - Zane Grey

Wikipedia - "Riders of the Purple Sage is Zane Grey's best-known novel, originally published in 1912. Most critics agree that it played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre. ... One of the main aspects of the west highlighted by Riders of the Purple Sage was the distance between towns and the mostly uncharted areas between them. The west was often characterized by little towns approximately 50 miles apart from each other. In these sections, locations like Deception Pass and Surprise Valley are found often. Several thematic elements play a role in Riders of the Purple Sage including the significance of morality, honor, redemption, isolation and religious confrontation."
W - Riders of the Purple Sage
W - Zane Grey
amazon: Zane Grey
W - Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater

Fulcrum Press - Ed Dorn

Idaho Out (Fulcrum Press, 1965). Cover drawing by Fielding Dawson.
"... Clark never claimed to be the author of the authoritative womb to tomb Dorn biography, and A World of Difference certainly leaves plenty of space for others to step forward with their own research on Dorn while providing a lot of helpful primary information, particularly about Dorn in the 50s. As one reviewer notes in the in Edward Dorn: American Heretic, the book on Gunslinger has yet to be written, and of course, it’s the 70s where I see Dorn’s real innovation and brilliance in full form, where he breaks away from the Black Mountain College years and turns toward, what an art historian might call, the ‘mature work,’ while Dorn in the 80s tells me more about that dark decade than Dorn ‘himself.’ But I’m getting ahead of myself."
MIMEO MIMEO: Fulcrum
MIMEO MIMEO: Fulcrum Press
MIMEO MIMEO: Recollections Of Gran Apacheria
MIMEO MIMEO: Hands Up!
MIMEO MIMEO: Wild Dog
MIMEO MIMEO: Manchester Square
MIMEO MIMEO: Some Late Dorn
MIMEO MIMEO: Dorns Views, Interviews, and Other Prose

2007 December: Edward Dorn, 1929-1999
2011 February: Slinger
2011 April: The North Atlantic Turbine

Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Wikipedia - "Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self reliance. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts."
Wikipedia
Walden - an annotated edition by Henry David Thoreau - 1854
Walden Study Text
YouTube: Part 1 - Walden Audiobook by Henry David Thoreau (Ch 01), (Chs 02-04), (Chs 05-08), (Chs 09-11), (Chs 12-15), (Chs 16-18), (Ch 17)

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau

Peekskill Project V: The New Hudson River School

"In the 19th century a group of painters who became known as 'The Hudson River School' shared a strong love for the landscape of this region. For them, as for their patrons, it was a love affair with the marvelous landscape of this young country. The period of the Hudson River School was short lived, spanning some thirty years, with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole and Frederic Church among the most important artists of the 'School.' Several of the artists did not reside in the area, yet continued to be impacted upon and draw artistic inspiration from the beauty of the Hudson River and its surrounds."
Peekskill Project V: The New Hudson River School
Peekskill Project V: Beyond the Museum Walls
Peekskill Project V - Kick Off (Video)

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - A short film

"...Cave’s baritone is rich here, a tone more befitting the smooth, heartbroken tone of the song than the strangle he’d been applying to the rest of the Eternity material. The Bad Seeds show early signs of the tender noise they’d perfect over time, with Blixa Bargeld’s guitar feeding back in a sort-of moan while Mick Harvey snaps out a martial dirge. It’s a moving performance, one completely devoid of irony, and Cave’s first naked moment as a solo artist."
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds :: Firstborn Is Dead
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - A short film (PART 1), (PART 2)

The Turin Horse - Béla Tarr

Wikipedia - "The Turin Horse ... is a 2011 Hungarian drama film directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, starring János Derzsi, Erika Bók and Mihály Kormos. It was co-written by Tarr and his frequent collaborator László Krasznahorkai. It recalls the whipping of a horse in the Italian city Turin which is rumoured to have caused the mental breakdown of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The film is in black-and-white, shot in only 30 long takes by Tarr's regular cameraman Fred Kelemen, and depicts the repetitive daily lives of the horse and its owner."
Wikipedia
Guardian: The Turin Horse
Slant: The Turin Horse
YouTube: The Turin Horse - opening scene
YouTube: Béla Tarr Regis Dialogue with Howard Feinstein 1:21:24

2012 January: The Man from London

Heiner Goebbels

Wikipedia - "Heiner Goebbels (born 17 August 1952) is a German composer, music director and professor at Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Goebbels, who studied sociology and music in Frankfurt/Main, is a composer notable for his mixture of styles, drawing from sources as varied as classical music, jazz, and rock music. He started playing Eislerian music in the Duo Goebbels/Harth (1975-1988) with saxophonist Alfred Harth and has composed music for theatre, film, and ballet, although he has since then broadened his repertoire to concerts. His oeuvre includes the opera Landschaft mit entfernten Verwandten (Landscape with Distant Relatives, 2002). Goebbels co-founded the avant-rock group Cassiber (1982–1992) with Alfred Harth, Chris Cutler and Christoph Anders."
Wikipedia
Heiner Goebbels
Heiner Goebbels - Biography
Telegraph: Interview with composer Heiner Goebbels
amazon: Heiner Goebbels
vimeo: Heiner Goebbels winner of 2012 International Ibsen Award
A Room for London (Video)
YouTube:Walden - Ensemble Klang, The experience of things, BERLIN Q DAMM(1981), Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth - Der Stürzende Mensch, Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth: Le rappel des oiseaux

2012 May: Cassiber

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde

Astarte Syriaca (1877), Dante Gabriel Rossetti
"Combining rebellion, beauty, scientific precision and imaginative grandeur, the Pre-Raphaelites constitute Britain’s first modern art movement. This exhibition brings together over 150 works in different media, including painting, sculpture, photography and the applied arts, revealing the Pre-Raphaelites to be advanced in their approach to every genre. Led by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) rebelled against the art establishment of the mid-nineteenth century, taking inspiration from early Renaissance painting."
Tate
Guardian - Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at Tate Britain – in pictures
Guardian: Review

John Wilcock: New York Years, 1954-1971 (Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall)

Wikipedia - "John Wilcock (b. Aug 4, 1927, in Sheffield, England) is a British journalist known for his work in the underground press, as well as his travel guide books. One of the five co-founders of the New York Village Voice, Wilcock shook up staid publishing in the USA. His influences extended to several continents, including Australia and the United Kingdom, where — in his mild-mannered way — he pushed the boundaries of image and speech. The counterculture was nothing but a dull puddle until Wilcock kicked out the jams and ignited the underground press, which attracted absurd prosecutions that of course boosted circulations. An unsung hero of the sixties, Wilcock also served three years as a travel editor at The New York Times.
Wikipedia
The Atlantic - John Wilcock: The Puppet Master of '60s Underground Newspapers
John Wilcock: New York Years, 1954-1971 (Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall)

Renata Adler

Wikipedia - "Renata Adler (born October 19, 1938 in Milan, Italy) is an American author, journalist and film critic. Adler was born in Milan, Italy, and grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. (Her parents had fled Nazi Germany in 1933.) After gaining a B.A. in Philosophy and German from Bryn Mawr, where she studied under José Ferrater Mora, Adler studied for an M.A. in Comparative Literature at Harvard under I. A. Richards and Roman Jakobson, before pursuing her interest in Philosophy, Linguistics and Structuralism at the Sorbonne, where she gained a D. d'E.S. under the tutelage of Jean Wahl and Claude Lévi-Strauss. ... Her novel Speedboat won the Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel of 1976. In 2010 members of the National Book Critics Circle called for the novel to be returned to print."
Wikipedia
Quotes from Renata Adler's "Speedboat"
NYT: Breaking Up With Jake
amazon: Renata Adler

Power, Corruption & Lies - New Order

Wikipedia - "Power, Corruption & Lies is the second studio album by New Order, released in May 1983 on Factory Recordings. It is more electronic-based than their previous album Movement, with heavier use of synthesizers. The album was included by Rolling Stone magazine on its list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: Age Of Consent, The Village, Leave Me Alone, We All Stand
YouTube: Power, Corruption & Lies 57:29

2009 February: New Order
2011 May: Movement
2011 October: Low-Life
2011 December: Brotherhood
2012 May: Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division

Venture Inside of Quebec’s Garden of Decaying Books

"Berlin landscape architect Thilo Folkerts and Canadian artist Rodney LaTourelle designed the Jardin de la Connaissance back in 2010 as an installation for the International Festival des Jardins de Metis in Quebec. As time passed, the some 40,000 books and wood plates making up the walls of their garden have decayed and dissolved, while new life has also found its way in to the space."
Flavorwire

Arthur Lipsett - Very Nice, Very Nice

"Arthur Lipsett's first film is an avant-garde blend of photography and sound. It looks behind the business-as-usual face we put on life and shows anxieties we want to forget. It is made of dozens of pictures that seem familiar, with fragments of speech heard in passing and, between times, a voice saying, "Very nice, very nice." It was critically acclaimed and plays frequently in festivals and film schools around the world."
NFB
W - Arthur Lipsett
senses of cinema, Arthur Lipsett
YouTube: Very Nice, Very Nice, 21-87 (1964), Strange Codes (1974)- Part 1, Part - 2, Part - 3

The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins

"No one knows why exactly Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophone colossus, hasn’t recorded a good studio album since the 1960s. Though he ranks alongside Charlie Parker and John Coltrane as one of the greatest jazz saxophonists in history, some say that his style was irreparably damaged by years spent experimenting with funk, disco, and fusion in the seventies and eighties. Yet anyone who has seen Rollins perform on a good night knows that, even at eighty-one, he is still capable of playing with the same brilliance that first made giants like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk take an interest in him in the 1950s."
NYBooks (Video)
Wikipedia
Sonny Rollins (Video)
YouTube: First Move [1974], Live In 65 & 68 44:01, Live In 65 & 68 - 2 42:37, Sonny Rollins Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club '74 51:16, A Love Supreme '74, Sonny Rollins '74: Rescued! 58:14, Sonny Rollins: Beyond the Notes BBC Arena Documentary 59:14, I'm Old Fashioned

lignum - 2002, Ann Hamilton

"Sited in a stone barn built in 1823, lignum was formed in response to the building's history as a structure for the storage of grain and its location between the estate's 16th century castle and the extensive surrounding forests and their attendant perception as material resource and cultural reserve."
Ann Hamilton Studio
Ann Hamilton’s lignum in context(s)

2007 November: Ann Hamilton
2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton
2010 March: Ann Hamilton - 1
2010 December: Ann Hamilton: An Inventory of Objects
2011 January: stylus
2011 April: indigo blue
2011 December: Objects

London Underground Calling: Yuri Suzuki’s iconic Tube Map radio

"Sound artist and designer Yuri Suzuki has produced a radio based on Harry Beck’s iconic London Underground Map. Suzuki’s radio was made as part of the Designers in Residence, and will be on display at the London Design Museum until January 13th, 2013."
Dangerous Minds
Yuri Suzuki

Fred Frith - COSA BRAVA - Banlieues Bleues Live (2008)

"It is hard to classify a performer like the English guitarist Fred Frith. He has been playing guitar since the age of 13 and he is now 62. Over those almost 50 years he has ventured into just about every nook and cranny of the guitar repertoire, performing with so many groups in so many different styles that his Wikipedia entry runs the risk of looking like a laundry list. His primary interest, however, has always been in improvisation."
Beyond the fringes of chamber music at the Great American Music Hall
YouTube: COSA BRAVA - Banlieues Bleues Live (2008), 37:57

We Own the Night: The Art of the Underbelly Project

"On the copyright page of 'We Own the Night: The Art of the Underbelly Project', curators Workhorse and PAC include on their thank you list 'all the people who know how to keep a secret and keep their mouths shut!' I’m one of these people, having been shown an early proposal for the book version of this extraordinary undertaking. An agent clued me in; a few days later I was at photographer Martha Cooper’s apartment and asked if she’d caught wind of 'Underbelly.' She’d heard all about it and was hoping to receive an invitation to the underground gallery. It was summer 2010 and the project was wrapping up. In late October of the same year, the secret was out when the New York Times ran a feature about an art installation that very few people would ever see."
Salon: Inside the ultimate subway graffiti project
The Underbelly Project: New York
The Underbelly Project (Video)
NYT: Street Art Way Below the Street, Oct. 2010 (Video)
amazon: We Own the Night: The Art of the Underbelly Project

"Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)" - Tom Browne

Wikipedia - "'Funkin' for Jamaica (N.Y.)' is a 1980 single by jazz trumpeter, Tom Browne. The single -- a memoir of the neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens where Browne was born and raised -- is from his second solo album, Love Approach. Browne got the idea for the song while he was at his parents' home. The vocals for the single were provided by Toni Smith, who also helped compose the song. The song hit number one on the U.S. R&B chart for a month. 'Funkin' for Jamaica' peaked at number nine on the dance chart and made the Top 10 on the UK singles chart."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Funkin' for Jamaica

"Ghost Town" - The Specials

Wikipedia - "'Ghost Town' is the title of a 1981 song by the British ska band, The Specials. The song spent three weeks at number one and ten weeks in the top 40 of the UK Singles Chart. Addressing themes of urban decay, deindustrialisation, unemployment and violence in inner cities, the song is remembered for being a hit at the same time as riots were occurring in British cities. As such, it is remembered as a major piece of popular social commentary."
Wikipedia
SOS: The Specials 'Ghost Town'
Guardian: Ska for the madding crowd
YouTube: The Specials - Ghost Town

2009 October: The Specials

I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard by Matt Wolf (2012)

"Thanks to the generosity of filmmaker Matt Wolf, PennSound is able to share an exclusive clip from his new documentary short, I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard, with our listeners. Below, you'll also find the film's trailer and a brief synopsis. For more information, please visit the film's website. Modesty, whimsy, and clarity of design grace the work of Joe Brainard (1941-1994), an artist and writer whose evocations of memory and desire perhaps found their greatest expression in his memoir-poem I Remember."
PennSound (Video)
I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard by Matt Wolf
Keep the Lights On Film
ARTFORUM: Matt Wolf

2008 February: Joe Brainard
2010 November: I Remember
2011 October: A State of the Flowers Report
2011 November: Joe Brainard: A Retrospective
2012 March: Bolinas Journal

Johnny Osbourne

Wikipedia - "Johnny Osbourne (born Errol Osbourne, 1948) is a popular Jamaican reggae and dancehall singer, who rose to success in the late 1970s and mid 1980s. His album Truths and Rights was a notable roots reggae success, and featured 'Jah Promise' and the album's title track, 'Truths and Rights'. However, he is probably best known for his mid 1980s dancehall reggae hits 'Buddy Bye' (based on King Jammy's Sleng Teng riddim), 'Ice Cream Love' and 'Water Pumping'."
Wikipedia
Roots Archives - Johnny Osbourne
YouTube: Truth and Rights, Eternal Peace, All I Have is Love, Jahovia, No Ice Cream Love, Here I Come Again, Johnny Osbourne & Aswad - Don't Bite The Hand 12" 1979, Ready Or Not, In Your Eyes

John Cage's Los Angeles

"John Cage was born Sept. 5, 1912, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles. There is no plaque. Nor are there plaques anywhere in L.A., Long Beach, Santa Monica or Claremont, cities where Cage grew up, studied and gave his first concerts. And became John Cage. He was, perhaps, the greatest music radical of the 20th century. He composed using chance procedures. His music honored silence along with sound. He made no distinction between traditional musical sounds and what some call noise. He embraced, rather than escaped from, messy urban life as well as anarchic nature. He was controversial, to say the least, but his influence has been, and continues to be, extraordinary. No one in the last century did more to change the way much of the world now thinks about, makes and consumes art."
LA Times
LA Times: A cross section of John Cage compositions (Video)
LA Times: John Cage's reach extended well beyond experimental music
LA Times: In art as in music, John Cage reveals the world within
LA Times: Events honoring John Cage at 100

2008 February: John Cage
2010 January: 4′33″
2010 October: Indeterminacy
2010 November: Silence: lectures and writings
2011 January: Toy piano
2011 May: Imaginary Landscape No. 1 (1939)
2012 February: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It (1990)
2012 April: John Cage Unbound: A Living Archive

Hyuro New Mural In Besancon, France

"After the controversial mural painted in Atlanta just over a week ago (covered), Hyuro is back in Europe where she painted this beautiful mural in Besancon, France. The new piece is part of this year's Bien Urbain festival and features four women dressed up as sheep enthralled in a ritual dance while being observed, but not intimidated by three wolves. As usual this Argentinean artist delivers a haunting mural where the restricted palette highlights the composition and symbolism of the piece."
Street Art News
Bien Urbain - France (Video)
Hyuro
Juxtapoz

Paul Eluard - A Moral Lesson

"... Paul Eluard was briefly involved with the Dada Movement, but soon helped to found Surrealism, though he would later break from that movement as well. Throughout his life, Eluard perceived poetry as an action capable of arousing awareness in his readers, and recognized it as a powerful force in the struggle of political, sexual, and social change. Published in 1949, A MORAL LESSON explores evil and good as slightly unpredictable forces which at times might be perceived as indistinguishable. Yet Eluard explores the two with a determined effort to transform evil into good."
SPD Books
Double Change
amazon: A Moral Lesson

Diffusion Over Sublimation - Benjamin Dauer

Magnolia (Taken with instagram)
"They may break champagne bottles over the bows of ships to inaugurate their voyage, but Benjamin Dauer took a plosive-free approach when he tested out his newly rebuilt studio. He reconstructed the studio “from the ground up,” and then set about an initial work, built much like his studio largely from pre-existing pieces but experienced in a new light. In other words — his words — the track, titled 'Driving Stage,' is 'a little remix.'"
disquiet (Video)
Benjamin Dauer (Video)
Benjamin Dauer Blog (Video)
SoundCloud (Video)
YouTube: Harmony Bound

Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes

Nancy
"David Zwirner Gallery recently gave the late figurative painter Alice Neel prime real estate in its prominent Chelsea locale, also releasing an accompanying exhibition catalogue by Radius Books. Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes, which marked the second time Zwirner exhibited her work since taking over representation of her estate in 2009, gives a glimpse into the last two decades of Neel’s life as a working artist in New York, from 1964 to 1983. Neel’s intimate portraits of her friends and family become a painted diary, documenting what it was like to be a part of her immediate milieu."
The Brooklyn Rail
David Zwirner: Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes
amazon: Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes
YouTube: Alice Neel "Late Portraits & Still Lifes" at DAVID ZWIRNER

2010 October: Alice Neel

Youssou N'dour - Djamil

"N'Dour has become one of the biggest names in Sahelian pop, certainly in the eyes of non-African enthusiasts. Djamil is a collection of previously unreleased cuts (unreleased in France, anyway) from 1984 and 1985. On one level, you know what to expect. But most of the numbers here are less synthesized, more straightforward -- and at the same time quite rich, with excellent horns as well as the usual very individual singing."
allmusic
YouTube: Djino‬‏, Nanette Ada, Laye Fall, Bekoor, Wagane Faye, Xale Yi Rew Mi

2009 December: Youssou N'dour

Peter Gourfain

Hen Eys Tru Ile, 1993
"... Although Gourfain prefers the existing ambiguities of his images rather than supplied meaning, a sociopolitical ambiguous Americana is present in many of his prints. The stylized images, dark contrast and heavy line lend gravitas to the subjects. In Gourfain’s prints, Romanesque figures and objects mingle. Images emerge from each other and body parts from new objects and characters, delineated by text and the occasional splash of color. Heads roll and shadows loom in the landscape as figures intertwine and repel amongst ladders and chairs, creating a firm uncertainty, to which the artist does not comment."
Projects Gallery
Projects Gallery - 1
flickr
Brooklyn Museum

Buster Brown

Wikipedia - "Buster Brown (August 15, 1911 – January 31, 1976) was an American blues and R&B singer best known for his hit, 'Fannie Mae'. Brown was born in Cordele, Georgia, and in the 1930s and 1940s he played harmonica at local clubs and made a few non-commercial recordings. ... In 1959 at almost fifty years of age, he recorded the rustic blues, 'Fannie Mae', which featured Brown's harmonica playing and whoops, which went to # 38 in the U.S. Top 40, and to #1 on the R&B chart in April 1960. His remake of Louis Jordan's 'Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby' reached # 81 on the pop charts later in 1960, but did not make the R&B chart."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby, Fannie Mae, Doctor Brown, Sugar Babe, Don't Dog Your Woman, Lost In A Dream, Crawlin King Snake, The Madison Shuffle, I'm Gonna Make You Happy (1943), War Song, I`m Gonna Make You Happy

Little Italy

Old Mulberry - Early 1900s
Wikipedia - "Little Italy is a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, New York City, once known for its large population of Italians. Today the neighborhood of Little Italy consists of Italian stores and restaurants. Historically, Little Italy on Mulberry Street, extends as far south as Canal Street, as far north as Bleecker, as far west as Lafayette and as far east as the Bowery. It borders Chinatown at Bowery."
Wikipedia
Little Italy
Video:Walking Tour of Little Italy's San Gennaro Festival
YouTube: Tour of NYC's Little Italy: Where wise guys got whacked, The Best Places to Eat in Little Italy NYC

La La La Human Steps - Amelia

"... Choreographer Edouard Lock believes that dance, like language, has its power not in the meaning of the words or steps, but rather in their syntax or structure. In 'Amelia' he uses repetition, modification, and the partial isolation of moments through lighting to create the world in flux as he wants us to see it. This piece, while having to do with memories of a transvestite he once knew, deals more with the actual act of remembering."
Ballet Dance Magazine
amazon: La La La Human Steps: Amelia (2002)
YouTube: Amelia

2008 July: La La La Human Steps
2010 May: David Bowie - "Look Back In Anger"
2010 September: Mondo Beyondo

The Motorcycle Diaries

Wikipedia - "The Motorcycle Diaries (Spanish: Diarios de motocicleta) is a 2004 biopic about the journey and written memoir of the 23-year-old Ernesto Guevara, who would several years later become internationally known as the iconic Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. The film recounts the 1952 expedition, initially by motorcycle, across South America by Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado. As the adventure initially centered around youthful hedonism unfolds, Guevara discovers himself transformed by his observations on the life of the impoverished indigenous peasantry."
Wikipedia
W - The Motorcycle Diaries (book)
amazon: The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
1952, The Motorcycle Diaries
YouTube: The Motorcycle Diaries Trailer, The Motorcycle Diaries Official Film Trailer

2010 March: Che