Germany in Two-Front War and the Schlieffen-Plan I THE GREAT WAR - Week 2

"Austria-Hungary starts the bombardment of Belgrade. What follows is a race of armies between all major powers in Europe. Nobody wants to be unprepared in case of an attack. Germany is implementing the Schlieffen-Plan to avoid a two front war by conquering Paris via Belgium. One thing gets clear in the first days at the Western Front: This war is going to be different - the modern warfare shows itself."
YouTube: THE GREAT WAR - Week 2
W - Schlieffen Plan

2014 December: The Great War: WWI Starts - How Europe Spiraled Into the Great War - Week 1

Devil Got My Woman Blues at Newport 1966

"Howlin' Wolf, Skip James, Son House, Bukka White and Rev. Pearly Brown Imagine you've stumbled into a juke joint where the mentor of Robert Johnson, Son House, and the idol of the Rolling Stones, Howlin' Wolf, 'dis' one another. Picture a place where Wolf taunts Bukka White while the robust Parchman Farm alumnus spins his proto-funk dance grooves and the spectral Skip James weaves his haunting Devil Got My Woman. It's an archetypal blues 'crossroads' where legends of the 1920s Delta and 1950s Chicago share the same musical space, suspended out of time in a super-real present, a non-specific 'bluestime.' This is no fantasy. ... The resultant film footage captures the blues experience in its first and truest milieu, one in which African-American men and women drink, dance, and share their troubles and triumphs. Brooding faces absorbing the wailing pleas of Son House and rubber-legged dancers strutting to Bukka's buoyant blues are as much a part of the mise-en-scene as the legendary principals of the cast."
amazon
Wild Realm Reviews
YouTube: Devil Got My Woman by Skip James, Howlin' Wolf - How Many More Years, Howlin' Wolf - Meet Me In The Bottom, Howlin' Wolf - Dust My Broom, Skip James - I'm So Glad, Pearly Brown - Blues

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys - Viv Albertine (2014)

Viv Albertine 'dances between insecurity and self-belief'.
"With a title that is an incantation and a picture of the gorgeous author on its cover, Viv Albertine's autobiography is quite something. It promises a punk snog'n'tell, but is a real tease: strident, uncertain, compelling, with a structure that jerks all over the place via snapshots of Albertine's life. It's a scrappy book, as in a scrapbook of memories – and scrappy, too, in the sense she is always up for a fight. Albertine's words are naive and in-your-face. Above all they talk about what it is not to be a Typical Girl. This is maddening and magnificent all at the same time – rather like her band, the Slits."
Guardian
NY Times: Clash, Crash, Redemption
Telegraph: Viv Albertine on 'shy' Sid Vicious, IVF and life after punk
amzon
YouTube: Viv Albertine on 'Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.', SLITS Clips 1978-2007 (including Viv and Ari interviews), The Slits' Viv Albertine on clothes, music and boys

2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2012 July: Subatomic Sound System meets Lee Scratch Perry & Ari Up of the Slits (7″ vinyl), 2014 September: Live in Cincinnati and San Francisco 1980.

Mitra Tabrizian

Wikipedia - "Mitra Tabrizian is a British-Iranian photographer and film director. She is also a professor of photography at the University of Westminster, London, England. Born in Tehran, Iran, Tabrizian studied at the Polytechnic of Central London in the 1980s. Tabrizian published her first monograph, Correct Distance, in 1990. Her photographic book Beyond the Limits, published in 2004, is a critique of corporate culture and is inspired by the works of Jean Baudrillard and Jean-François Lyotard. Her films include Journey of No Return (1993), The Third Woman (1991), and ‘'The Predator'’ (2004). Tabrizian has exhibited her work at the Tate, Modern Art Oxford, Gallery Lelong, New York, the Architectural Association, London, and numerous film festivals."
Wikipedia
Mitra Tabrizian
Photoparley
YouTube: Mitra Tabrizian

Stage Fright - The Band (1970)

Wikipedia - "Stage Fright, the Band's third album, sounded on its surface like the group's first two releases, Music From Big Pink and The Band, employing the same dense arrangements, with their mixture of a deep bottom formed by drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko, penetrating guitar work by Robbie Robertson, and the varied keyboard work of pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel's vocals on top. But the songs this time around were far more personal, and, despite a nominal complacency, quite troubling."
allmusic
W - Stage Fright
Stage Fright
Rolling Stone
YouTube: Stage Fright, The Shape I'm In
YouTube: Stage Fright (1970) [Full Album]


2009 July: The Band, 2011 June: Music from Big Pink, 2011 September: The Last Waltz, 2012 December: King Harvest 2012 January: Rare Concert Footage of The Band, 1970.

The Making of an American by Edward White

"This year marks the centenary of the publication of Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein’s collection of experimental still-life word portraits split into the categories of objects, food, and rooms, and which—excluding a vanity publication in 1909, which she paid for herself—was the first of Stein’s work to be published in the United States. Stein had hoped that this enigmatic little book would be her big break, the thing to convince the American people of her genius. That was not to be. Tender Buttons left critics bemused and made barely a dent on the consciousness of the wider reading public. There was no great clamor for more of her writing; Stein would have to wait another twenty years to become a household name."
The Paris Review

2007 November: Gertrude Stein, 2011 July: The making of "Tender Buttons", 2012 March: The Steins Collect, 2012 May: Gertrude Stein's War Years: Setting the record straight, 2014 November: Lost Generation.

George Bellows paints the raw New York winter

Snow Dumpers, 1911
"Realist painter and longtime East 19th Street resident George Bellows is best known for his bold views of amateur boxers as well as the grittiness of urban life in the early 20th century. He painted scenes showing every season. But there’s something about his depictions of New York beneath cold gray skies, covered in snow, or surrounded by ice that captures the city’s abrasive, isolating winters. ... Snow Dumpers, painted in 1911, shows us overcoat-clad city workers and snorting horses tasked with carrying loads of snow from Manhattan streets to be dumped into the choked-with-traffic East River. The skies over the river and Brooklyn Bridge look gray and frigid, and the snow has streaks of blue."
Ephemeral New York

Mulberry Street Bar

"... This Little Italy haunt was established over a hundred years ago, as a small bar called Mare Chiaro. Its rich history remains in its original subway tile floor, wooden bar, and pressed-tin ceiling. The bar stayed in the same family for a couple of generations, before being purchased in 2003 by current owner Ed Welsh. His updates have made the bar good for sports fans and karaoke lovers alike, but nothing beats the juke box stocked with Connie Francis, Frank Sinatra, and Four Tops. It has been the site of many films, including: Donnie Brasco, Men of Honor, and The Godfather Part III. Trying to pay with a credit card? Fuhgeddaboudit‎. They only take cash."
Untapped Cities
Little Italy: Mulberry Street Bar: The Death of a Dive, The Birth of a Burger
YouTube: Mulberry Street Bar Toni on NY with Jimmy V, Movies made at Mulberry Street Bar

You Will Summer in Detroit

"When I’m asked about Detroit, the questions often circle around news headlines: bankruptcy and blight, crime stats, bus problems. Whether things in the city really are that bad. Until I first traveled there about a year ago, those were my trigger thoughts about Detroit, too. That and Megatron’s freakish football skills. But after spending a big chunk of 2014 in Detroit, kicking it at Astro Coffee in Corktown, roaming the beautiful Belle Isle, stopping into Shinola in Midtown, meeting entrepreneurs and artists, barbers and chefs and teachers — even a mortician — I’m convinced Detroit is beginning its third act in a great American comeback story."
medium

Dial-A-Poem Poets - Big Ego (1978)

"American label set up in 1972 by the poet John Giorno, the earliest releases were exclusively poetry collections of the 'Dial-A-Poets' (John Giorno, William S Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage etc.): 'In 1961 I was a young poet who hung out with young artists like Andy Warhol, Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as with members of the Judson Dance Theatre. The use of modern mass media and technologies by these artists made me realize that poetry was 75 years behind painting and sculpture, dance and music. And I thought, if they can do it, why can't I do it for poetry. Why not try to connect with an audience using all the entertainments of ordinary life: television, the telephone, record albums, etc? It was the poet's job to invent new venues and make fresh contact with the audience. This inspiration gave rise to Giorno Poetry Systems.' - John Giorno"
Discogs
Discogs: Various ‎– Big Ego
UbuWeb (Video)

2012 June: The Dial-A-Poem Poets: The Nova Convention, 2014 March: The Dial-A-Poem Poets (1972).

Chocolate

Wikipedia - "Chocolate is a typically sweet, usually brown, food preparation of Theobroma cacao seeds, roasted and ground, often flavored, as with vanilla. It is made in the form of a liquid, paste or in a block or used as a flavoring ingredient in other sweet foods. Cacao has been cultivated by many cultures for at least three millennia in Mesoamerica. The earliest evidence of use traces to the Mokaya (Mexico and Guatemala), with evidence of chocolate beverages dating back to 1900 BC. In fact, the majority of Mesoamerican people made chocolate beverages, including the Mayans and Aztecs, who made it into a beverage known as xocolātl, a Nahuatl word meaning 'bitter water'. The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste and must be fermented to develop the flavor."
Wikipedia
What Chocolate Are You?
YouTube: First taste of chocolate in Ivory Coast, Documentary. The Dark Side Of Chocolate

Lost & Found: Hip Hop Underground Soul Classics (1995)

Wikipedia - "Lost & Found: Hip Hop Underground Soul Classics is a double-disc album featuring previously shelved albums Center of Attention by InI and The Original Baby Pa by Deda. Both albums were recorded in 1995 and produced entirely by Pete Rock except for five overall tracks produced either by Grap Luva or Spunk Bigga; Neither album had been officially released until this compilation came out. Both albums were recorded in 1995, and were scheduled to be released through Pete Rock's Soul Brother Records label."
Wikipedia
Pitchfork
Spotify
YouTube: Pete Rock - Lost & Found: Hip Hop Underground Soul Classics [Full Album]

Television - Adventure (1978)

"Television's groundbreaking first album, Marquee Moon, was as close to a perfect debut as any band made in the 1970s, and in many respects it would have been all but impossible for the band to top it. One senses that Television knew this, because Adventure seems designed to avoid the comparisons by focusing on a different side of the band's personality. ... Sure, Marquee Moon is a better album, but Adventure has one of the greatest guitar bands of all time playing superbly on a set of truly fine songs, and albums like this come along far too infrequently for anyone to ignore music this pleasurable simply on the grounds of relative evaluation; it's not quite a masterpiece, but it's a brilliant record by any yardstick."
allmusic
W - Adventure
Rolling Stone
aquarium drunkard
YouTube: Foxhole (Live)
YouTube: Adventure LP Outtakes,"I Need a New Adventure" boot,CD rip,16 songs,76 mins.

2007 November: Tom Verlaine, 2010 March: Tom Verlaine - 1, 2011 October: Warm and Cool, 2012 Nov: Little Johnny Jewel, 2012 December: Words from the Front, 2013 July: Flash Light, 2013 October: See No Evil, 2014 October: Dreamtime (1981), 2014 November: Marquee Moon (1977).

Home Movies of Duke Ellington Playing Baseball (And How Baseball Coined the Word “Jazz”)

"... In this clip unearthed by the Smithsonian earlier this year, we find two great American traditions intertwined — baseball and jazz. As John Edward Hasse explains in his online essay, jazz and baseball grew up together. According to some, the first documented use of the word 'jazz' came from a 1913 newspaper article where a reporter, writing about the San Francisco Seals minor league team, said 'The poor old Seals have lost their jazz and don’t know where to find it.' 'It’s a fact … that the jazz, the pepper, the old life, has been either lost or stolen, and that the San Francisco club of today is made up of jazzless Seals.' Or, if you listen to this public radio report, another use of the word can be traced back to 1912. That’s when a washed-up pitcher named Ben Henderson claimed that he had invented a new pitch — the 'jazz ball.'”
Open Culture (Video)

2011 November: Duke Ellington - "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)", 1943, 2011 September: "Take the A Train" - Duke Ellington, 2012 June: The Sound of Jazz (1957), 2013 May: Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black, Starring a 19-Year-old Billie Holiday.

Anna Matos on WallWorks NY — A New Gallery Space in the South Bronx

BUZ163
"Founded by John Matos aka Crash and Robert Kantor and directed by Anna Matos, WallWorks NY is a wonderful new gallery space at 39 Bruckner Boulevard in the South Bronx. While visiting its current  – and final – unofficial exhibit, Open Gallery, we had the opportunity to speak to Anna."
NYC Street Art

On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan (1954)

Wikipedia - "On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film about union violence and corruption amongst longshoremen. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. It is based on Crime on the Waterfront, a series of articles published in the New York Sun by Malcolm Johnson that won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. The stories detailed widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Manhattan and Brooklyn."
Wikipedia
filmsite
Hoboken Historical Museum, On the Waterfront Locations
Five Great Oscar-Winning Supporting Roles (Video)
NY Times (Video)
On the Waterfront: Everybody Part of Everybody Else
YouTube: Three Reasons, Aspect Ratio Visual Essay, Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones Discuss On the Waterfront

Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception

"Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception at The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 opens on 8 May, drawing upon MoMA’s unique and important collection of work by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs (b. 1959), who uses poetic and allegorical methods to explore the social realities of political concepts, including the cyclical nature of change in modernizing societies, the urban landscape, and patterns of economic progress. Alÿs’s personal, ambulatory explorations of cities form the basis for his practice, through which he compiles extensive documentation reflecting his process, producing complex and diverse bodies of work that include video, painting, performance, drawing, and photography."
aesthetica
MoMA (Video)
frieze
YouTube: Re-enactment by Francis Alys

Small.

Paul Chiappe, Untitled 48, 2010
"This group exhibition features a selection of international contemporary artists who adopt an intimate format to explore issues related to visual perception, personal and historical memory, the construction of gender stereotypes, and the power of the imagination. In an age when cavernous galleries and outsized images and objects suggest that bigger is necessarily better, working small carries a certain risk. It is a risk, however, that the nine artists in the exhibition are willing to take as they create minute worlds that absorb the viewer while resisting possession. The selected works range from graphite photo-realist renderings to interventions in found objects to site-specific installations, including a custom-made tabletop bearing microscopic figurations and a postage-stamp-sized watercolor inserted directly into the gallery wall."
The Drawing Center
issuu

New Year, Old Memories, in Times Square

"What does it say about New Year’s Eve that we mark the end of a year with mass consumption of an elixir that induces forgetting? Is it a ritual act of disdain for the past or fear of the future? Think of all the list-making at year’s end. Is it just so we’ll remember something of 2014 after we wake up on the other side? ... It is Burning Man, Fourth of July fireworks, the last day of school and a full-contact Black Friday sale-a-bration all wrapped up in one. Only New York would think that’s a good idea."
NY Times (19 Photo)

Ken Schles

View from 224 Avenue B
"Ken Schles is the author of Invisible City (1988; reprint 2014), The Geometry of Innocence (2001), A New History of Photography: The World Outside and the Pictures In Our Heads (2007), Oculus (2011) and Night Walk (2014). His books have been exhibited by The Museum of Modern Art, noted by the New York Times Book Review, cited in histories of the medium (Parr/Badger, Auer & Auer, 10x10 American Photobooks) and issued by some of the foremost publishers of our time (Steidl, Hatje Cantz, Twelvetrees Press). They're considered 'intellectual milestones in photography' (Süddeutsche Zeitung), 'hellishly brilliant' (The New Yorker), notable by New York Times and a favorite of the photographer Robert Frank."
Ken Schles
NY Times: The East Village, in the 1980s and Looking Back (14 Photo)

In This Week's Voice: The Year in Protests

"As we began to look back on 2014 for our last issue of this year, we found it awfully hard to see past the demonstrators. All of December has seemed like one long protest, with thousands clogging New York's streets (and bridges) night after night. Most came out to decry a grand jury decision that cleared an NYPD officer in the death of a man whose only crime appeared to be selling untaxed cigarettes. (Some came out to decry the protests.) The fate of 43-year-old Staten Island resident Eric Garner twinned to that of Michael Brown, a young man from a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. ... At least not right away. View this week's photo-essay feature story, The Year in Protests."
Voice
Voice: NYC Protests (Photo)

Great Dismal Swamp maroons

Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia by Thomas Moran, 1862
Wikipedia - "The Great Dismal Swamp maroons were freed and escaped slaves who inhabited the marshlands of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina. Although conditions were harsh, research suggests that thousands lived there between about 1700 and the 1860s. Harriett Beecher Stowe told the maroon people's story in her 1856 novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. The most significant research on the settlements began in 2002 with a project by Dan Sayers of American University." (flapjax at midnite)
Wikipedia
NY Times: Life in the Swamp
Slaves of the Great Dismal Swamp
NPR: Fleeing To Dismal Swamp, Slaves And Outcasts Found Freedom (Video)

Johanna's Visions - Melbourne 1966 - Bob Dylan

"Lights flicker from the opposite loft,
in this room the heat pipes just coughed,
the country music plays soft,
but there's nothing really nothing to turn off,
just Louise & her lover so entwined
& these vision of Johanna
that conquer my mind."
YouTube: Johanna's Visions - Melbourne 1966

The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics

"At first glance, and perhaps even at second and third glances, it may seem strange to place the names of Søren Kierkegaard and Bruce Wayne in the same sentence. However, Christopher Nolan’s recent trilogy of Batman films—Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012)—explore many of the same themes as the work of the Danish, existentialist philosopher. Nolan’s hero confronts fear, dread, loss, and isolation, human experiences that are among Kierkegaard’s deepest concerns."
The Knight of Faith and The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 January: Existential Comics.

The Crucible - Arthur Miller (1953)

Wikipedia - "The Crucible is a 1953 play by the American Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists. Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of 'contempt of Congress' for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended. The play was first performed at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E.G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight and Madeleine Sherwood."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: WHY I WROTE “THE CRUCIBLE” By Arthur Miller
Dramatizing History in Arthur Miller's "The Crucible"
Fear as Governance: Arthur Miller's The Crucible
YouTube: Salem, MA (1991): Crucible & Trials, The Crucible

2011 April: The Misfits (1961), 2012 June: Before Air-Conditioning (1998)

An Anthology of Concrete Poetry

"Primary Information has published several projects with materials by writers and artists who are well-represented in the Sackner Archive, including their most recent project, the republishing of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, the first comprehensive American anthology focusing on the international movement which began in the early 50s. Edited by Emmett Williams and originally published in 1967 by Something Else Press, this seminal book has been out of print for four decades."
Pamm
amazon: An Anthology of Concrete Poetry
An interview with Emmett Williams - Colophon Page
The Wall Street Journal Talks to Primary Information About Traditions of Artist Publishing, Anthology of Concrete Poetry Reprint
W - Emmett Williams

Charlie Parker - The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948

"Words can hardly describe the revolutionary effect of these seminal recordings -- collected here on eight full-length CDs, with a comprehensive 93-page booklet with original essays, photos, and detailed discographical information -- when first released. Charlie Parker's vision, spectacular technique, and style helped to transform the world of jazz in the 1940s, and it has never been the same. As with the efforts of creative visionaries, his early innovations were at first resisted by some as too radical, but with time, Bird became universally recognized for the genius he was. It is impossible to imagine any serious collection of 20th century music not containing at least some of the tracks collected on this splendid compilation. ..."
allmusic
JazzWax
Culture Vulture
amazon
MusicSense Disc 1
YouTube: Quasimodo [Take A], buzzy [Take A]

2011 July: Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, et al 1950, 2012 July: The Charlie Parker Story, 2014 May: Afro-Cuban jazz.

The Founding Fathers narrated by Chuck D

"This goes out to Kool Herc.............this goes out to the Cold Crush IV.....out to the Crash Crew, Sha-Rock, the 9 Crew, the Cassanova's & so many many more who were the ORIGINALS of what WE know what Hip Hop became but WE must also acknowledge that though Hip Hop is now credited with being started in the Bronx or more affectionately known to her natives as the BX, all of US MUST also acknowledge that Herc didn't create ANYTHING in particluar in the craft but.................it got honed & codified in the Bronx aka UPTOWN! This doc comes out with lil known FACTS about how a whole series of events occured for it to go down how it did. Why not learn a lil something while ya make money from it eh?"
Black Afrika
YouTube: The Founding Fathers narrated by Chuck D

Rise and Fall of the American Kiddie Ride

"On a recent Sunday afternoon in my neighborhood in Queens, I stopped to watch a mother, father, and their young child. The parents, in church suits with the mildly stoned look of the truly exhausted, leaned against each other. But their kid? Their kid was euphoric—rapturous, even—because she was riding a coin-operated pink dinosaur that slowly rocked back and forth while playing a chiptune version of 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'.”
Atlantic
YouTube: Vintage Baby Duck Kiddy Ride, 1950's Bally Space Ship rocket ride kiddie ride, Kiddie Ride (Quick Silver Horse), Kids riding the Bally Model T coin operated kiddie ride, Dino the Dinosaur Coin Operated Kiddie Ride

Demolished: The End of Chicago's Public Housing

"... Before Chicago built projects like the ones where Tiffany lived, the city’s poor lived in privately owned tenements in often terrible conditions. The tenements were teeming, with people living anywhere they could find space — in basements without light, alongside livestock, in tiny rooms with nothing but a bed and chicken-wire 'walls'.”
NPR - Demolished: The End of Chicago's Public Housing
W - Robert Taylor Homes
TIME: The End of Cabrini-Green
Harpers: The Last Tower - The decline and fall of public housing

The Jam - Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982

"The Jam. Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982. 01. Strangetown 02. Carnation 03. Town Called Malice 04. Happy Together 05. Boy About Town 06. Ghosts 07. Just Who Is The Five O'Clock Hero 08. Thats Entertainment 09. Tales From The Riverbank 10. Precious 11. Running On The Spot 12. Move On Up 13. In The Crowd 14. Private Hell 15. Pretty Green 16. Trans Global Express 17. The Gift 18. Circus 19. Pity Poor Alfie / Fever 20. Funeral Pyre 21. The Butterfly Collector 22. When You're Young"
YouTube: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982 FULL CONCERT

2009 March: The Jam, 2011 December: Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980).

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club

Wikipedia - "La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa E.T.C.) is an off-off Broadway theatre founded in 1961 by Ellen Stewart, and named in reference to her. Located on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the theatre grew out of Stewart's tiny basement boutique for her fashion designs; the boutique's space acted as a theatre for fledgling playwrights at night. La MaMa has evolved during its over fifty-year history into a world-renowned cultural institution. In its earliest days, La MaMa was a theatre dedicated to the playwright, encouraging young playwrights and primarily producing new plays, including works by Paul Foster, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Lanford Wilson, Sam Shepard, Adrienne Kennedy, Harvey Fierstein, and Rochelle Owens. La MaMa also acted as an international ambassador for off-off Broadway playwriting by touring downtown playwriting abroad during the 1960s."
Wikipedia
La MaMa
NY Times: Ellen Stewart, Off Off Broadway Pioneer, Dies at 91
YouTube: Women in Theatre: Ellen Stewart 26:47

The Year in Pictures, 2014

Italian sailors rescued 109 African migrants from a rubber boat in the sea between Italy and Libya in October.
"How close are you willing to get? That’s the question posed by the most potent photographs of 2014: How close? We founder in the shallows amid the constant nano-buzz of a modern culture. But with just one powerful still photograph — emphasis on still — you need to stop, stare, then drown in the image, tumble into its pure moment. And so many of those moments in 2014 where the ink seemed to bleed, where the pixels seemed to pulse with extra force, focused on the millions of people seeking some kind of refuge — in places like Myanmar, Syria and South Sudan, in Ukraine, Istanbul and Caracas. There were those displaced by violence, and others who sought shelter by embracing the very violence itself."
NY Times

20 Ways to Make People Fall in Love With Your Instagram: A Guide for Libraries and Other Cultural Institutions

"I recently attended the annual MCN conference in Dallas, TX, where lots of digitally-minded museum, library, and cultural people get together to learn from and about each other. While there, I gave an Ignite talk. Ignite is a specific style of talk where there are 20 slides, and each advances automatically after 15 seconds. The format forces you to get down to the nitty-gritty of what is important in your presentation, and makes for some exciting deliveries. My talk, naturally, was about something I am really passionate about: Instagram. Having co-managed the NYPL Instagram account (along with Billy Parrott, Managing Librarian, Art and Picture Collection) for the past 18 months, I shared my insights in a talk titled 'Your Instagram Doesn’t Have to Suck.' But it’s really Twenty Ways to Make People Fall in Love With Your Instagram."
NYPL
Instagram: NYPL
YouTube: MCN2014: Ignite Morgan Holzer

Night Train to Lisbon (2013)

Wikipedia - "Night Train to Lisbon is a philosophical novel by Swiss writer Pascal Mercier. It recounts the travels of Swiss Classics instructor Raimund Gregorius as he explores the life of Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese doctor, during António de Oliveira Salazar's right-wing dictatorship in Portugal. Prado is a serious thinker whose active mind becomes evident in a series of his notes collected and read by Gregorius. ... Raimund Gregorius is a teacher at a Swiss gymnasium in modern day Bern, expert in ancient languages (Greek, Latin and Hebrew). He encounters a mysterious woman, which leads him to find an intriguing book. To understand its author, Amadeu de Prado, he abandons his teaching position and goes to Lisbon, where he investigates Prado and Prado's associates. Amadeu de Prado was a doctor who lived during the Salazar Dictatorship, which began in 1928 and ended in 1974. Prado had a strong interest in literature and, because of this awareness, begins questioning the world, the experiences he knows, and the words contained in conversation and written thought. He writes these ideas in a series of notes and journal entries which his sister, Adriana, edits and publishes."
Wikipedia
Nighttrain to Lisbon
YouTube: Nighttrain to Lisbon Trailer - HD

Hymns of St. Bridget & Other Writings, by Bill Berkson and Frank O’Hara

"... Bill Berkson’s and Frank O’Hara’s Hymns of St. Bridget was inspired by a crooked steeple of St. Bridget’s Roman Catholic church in New York City. It was located across the street from O’Hara’s apartment on East 49th near Avenue A. ... These poems to a crooked New York steeple that embodies a name of some continuity and depth reflect an unconscious, buoyant freedom of association and word exhilaration with maximum image impact. Forget memory; think energy. Like urban experience these poems are to be lived in, read and enjoyed, not remembered or studied. They are to be committed to the heart’s strange accordion sack of word romance instead."
Jacket2
i said ok wow
The Owl Press
PennSound: Poetry in 1960 — A Symposium

2008 January: Frank O'Hara, 2010 February: USA: Poetry, 2010 October: Stones: Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara,  2011 October: City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara - Brad Gooch, 2012 December: USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara (1966), 2013 June: A Visual Footnote to O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died”: New World Writing and The Poets of Ghana, 2013 March: Happy Birthday, Frank O’Hara: The Beloved Poet Reads His “Metaphysical Poem”, 2014 June: Remembering Frank O’Hara’s Apartments, 2014 August: Lunch Poems (1964), 2014 November: In Which The Elements of Disbelief Are Very Strong In The Morning.

Mikey and Nicky - Elaine May (1976)

Wikipedia - "Mikey and Nicky is a 1976 film written and directed by Elaine May. Originally intended as a summer 1976 release, then moved to Christmas 1976 due to editing problems, Mikey and Nicky was released in New York City on December 21, 1976. ... When Nicky calls Mikey yet again to bail him out of trouble—this time a contract on his life for money he stole from his mob boss—Mikey, as always, shows up to help. Overcoming the obstacles of Nicky's paranoia and blind fear, Mikey gets him out of the hotel where he has holed up, and starts to help him plan his escape, but Nicky keeps changing the plan, and a hit man is hot on their trail. As they try to make their escape, the two friends have to confront issues of betrayal, regret, and the value of friendship versus self-preservation."
Wikipedia
Wednesday Editor’s Pick: Mikey and Nicky (1976)
NY Times
New Yorker - DVD of the Week: Mikey and Nicky
YouTube: Trailer VHS Rip, scene from "Mikey & Nicky", Mikey and Nicky

2008 September: John Cassavetes, 2010 December: Shadows (1959), 2011 June: A Woman Under the Influence (1974), 2012 February: His Life and Work, 2012 July: A Constant Forge, 2013 June: Minnie and Moskowitz, 2013 July: BAM: Cassavetes - Jul 6—Jul 31, 2013

Keith Jarrett - The Köln Concert (1975)

"... Nothing on this program was considered before he sat down to play. All of the gestures, intricate droning harmonies, skittering and shimmering melodic lines, and whoops and sighs from the man are spontaneous. Although it was one continuous concert, the piece is divided into four sections, largely because it had to be divided for double LP. But from the moment Jarrett blushes his opening chords and begins meditating on harmonic invention, melodic figure construction, glissando combinations, and occasional ostinato phrasing, music changed. For some listeners it changed forever in that moment. For others it was a momentary flush of excitement, but it was change, something so sorely needed and begged for by the record-buying public. Jarrett's intimate meditation on the inner workings of not only his pianism, but also the instrument itself and the nature of sound and how it stacks up against silence, involved listeners in its search for beauty, truth, and meaning."
allmusic
W - The Köln Concert (1975)
Spotify
YouTube: THE KÖLN CONCERT - complete

Paper Trail

A Concert of Dance Nos. 14, 15, 16, by Robert Morris. Judson Dance Theater, 1964
"Three years ago, PPP Editions published a limited-edition book called 100 Fanzines / 10 Years of British Punk 1976–1985. I have a copy and keep intending to give it to any number of friends who know more about the Clash, the Mo-dettes, or Attila the Stockbroker than I do, but I haven’t yet handed it over. I certainly wasn’t a fixture of the Thatcher-era punk scene, but I nonetheless feel nostalgic when I look through the book. ... The very notion of ephemera is curious: objects of little value that weren’t meant to be preserved but whose vulnerability, I imagine, appealed to someone. Political buttons, business cards, seed packets, and train timetables—scrappy artifacts that otherwise would have been lost to the dustheap."
The Paris Review
MoMA: Please Come to the Show, Part 2

This Is Not a Vermeer ™

"I wanted a Vermeer. I knew this would not be easy. Johannes Vermeer, that seventeenth-century Dutch 'master of light,' produced only 35 known paintings, which today are among the most valuable objects in the world. Art historians reserve a certain adjective for precisely these types of cultish obsessions, which are not beyond value, but rather are, as they say, priceless — that is, without price, simply because the marketplace has not publicly accessed numerative value."
Medium - Part 1, Uber for Art Forgeries - Part 2

2009 September: Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid, 2011 February: Vermeer: Master of Light, 2013 October: Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis.

A Cultural History of the Baseball Card

Baseball cards from 1910
"In a garage roughly 3,000 miles from where I’m writing this, there’s a long, white cardboard container filled with hundreds of cardboard rectangles—all the baseball cards I amassed as a child. I don’t think about that container very often these days, but somewhere in my mind lies the assumption—childish but still deeply held—that decades from now I’ll be able to sell the contents of that box for a modest fortune. Baseball cards, it strikes me now, were my first taste of capitalism. Sure, individual cards held sentimental value to me, but I also was conditioned to see my collection’s worth in monetary terms. It was a portfolio with training wheels. The series of historical events that led to the existence of this cardboard box—one of countless such boxes in countless garages—was catalyzed by a man named Sy Berger, who passed away last weekend."
Atlantic

Miles of Steam Pipes Snake Beneath New York

"First developed in the 1880s, New York City’s steam system is the largest in the world. No other urban steam system comes close. Today, 105 miles of steam pipe run beneath the streets of the city, delivering steam to 2,000 buildings for heating and cooling. Steam also sterilizes hospital equipment, presses clothes, and cleans restaurant dishes and cutlery. This episode of 'Living City,' a video series about New York’s infrastructure, looks at the history of the city’s steam system and explores how a technology that eliminated chimneys from the skyline in the early 20th century is helping reduce carbon emissions and provide a cleaner source of energy for New York in the 21st."
NY Times
W - New York City steam system
Slate: What’s That Thing? City Steam Edition
[PDF] Steam Distribution System

Battle of Hastings Street: Raw Detroit Blues & R&B from Joe's Record Shop 1953-1954

"My father, the late Joe Von Battle, was an important mid-century recorder and producer of blues and gospel music in Detroit, from 1945 until 1967. He owned the legendary Joe’s Record Shop, at 3530 Hastings Street, which, after the demolition of the Black Bottom community in the early 1960s, was relocated to 12th Street on Detroit’s West Side. Over the years he recorded legendary artists such as John Lee Hooker, Little Willie John, Johnnie Bassett, the Violinaires, the Serenaders, Little Sammy Bryant, Little Sonny, Jackie Wilson, Sonny Boy Williamson, and many, many others in his studio in the back of the shop, including a classic called The Hucklebuck by Paul Williams. He even recorded a Civil Rights song 'The Alabama Bus', by Brother will Hairston (backed by Washboard Willie), an obscure but significant Blues chronicle of the Alabama Bus Boycott."
Marsha Music
allmusic
Ace Records
amazon: Battle of Hastings Street: Raw Detroit Blues & R&B from Joe's Record Shop 1953-1954
YouTube: Marsha Music: Detroit's Black Bottom, Lafayette Park & Joe Von Battle
YouTube: Please Don't Think I'm Nosey - Eddie Kirkland, Dealing With The Devil - Eddie Burns, Vacation Blues Johnny Howard, Time For My Lovin' To Be Done - Eddie Kirkland, Hello Miss Jessie Lee - Eddie Burns, I Stayed Down - Johnny Wright, JB Boogie - Joe Weaver & his Blue Notes, Joe Weaver with the Don Juans - Baby I Love You So, Eddie Kirkland - Mistreated Woman, No Shoes - Eddie Kirkland

Dance at Le moulin de la Galette - Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)

Wikipedia - "Bal du moulin de la Galette (commonly known as Dance at Le moulin de la Galette) is an 1876 painting by French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. It is housed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris and is one of Impressionism's most celebrated masterpieces. The painting depicts a typical Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette in the district of Montmartre in Paris. In the late 19th century, working class Parisians would dress up and spend time there dancing, drinking, and eating galettes into the evening. Like other works of Renoir's early maturity, Bal du moulin de la Galette is a typically Impressionist snapshot of real life. It shows a richness of form, a fluidity of brush stroke, and a flickering light."
Wikipedia
Musée d'Orsay
KhanAcademy (Video)

2010 February: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 2010 July: Late Renoir, 2012 February: Renoir, Impressionism, and Full-Length Painting, 2012 September: Renoir: Between Bohemia and Bourgeoisie.

American Hustle (2013)

Wikipedia - "American Hustle is a 2013 American crime comedy-drama film directed by David O. Russell, from a screenplay co-written by Eric Warren Singer and Russell, loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. It stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams as two con artists who are forced by an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) to set up an elaborate sting operation on corrupt politicians, including the mayor of Camden, New Jersey (Jeremy Renner). Jennifer Lawrence plays the unpredictable wife of Bale's character."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Big Hair, Bad Scams, Motormouths (Video)
New Yorker: Grand Scam
YouTube: Official Trailer, Official TRAILER 1

A Fine Selection Of Independent Disco, Modern Soul and Boogie 1978-82

"It's fatal when a DJ tries to 'educate' their punters. It's not what you're there for. They've paid money for a good time, not to bask in the glory of your knowledge. It's fatal when a compilation tries desperately to hoodwink its listeners, clings to obscurantism and forgets to get people moving. Is this the compilation of the year? Quite possibly - certainly the collection that will put the most joy in your life, the most added urgency to your tarting up of a Saturday afternoon, the best gliding grace to your wee-smalls fumbling & stumbling later on. Those lovely Soul Jazz folks have put this comp together to accompany the equally well-appointed and lavishly covetable book DISCO: An Encyclopaedic Guide To The Cover Art Of Disco Records."
The Quietus
YouTube: Disco Sample Mix