John Wesley Harding - Bob Dylan (1967)

Wikipedia - "John Wesley Harding is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on December 27, 1967 by Columbia Records. Produced by Bob Johnston, the album marked Dylan's return to acoustic music and traditional roots, after three albums of electric rock music. John Wesley Harding shares many stylistic threads with, and was recorded around the same time as, the prolific series of home recording sessions with The Band, partly released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. ... Most of the songs on John Wesley Harding have pared-down lyrics. Though the style remains evocative, continuing Dylan's strong use of bold imagery, the wild, intoxicating surreality that seemed to flow in a stream-of-consciousness fashion has been tamed into something earthier and more crisp."
Wikipedia
Rolling Stone: John Wesley Harding, February 24, 1968
47 Years Ago: Bob Dylan’s ‘John Wesley Harding’ Album Released
Revisiting Dylan’s ‘John Wesley Harding’
amazon, Spotify
YouTube: John Wesley Harding Full Album

The Dust & Grooves DJ Residency at Donna. Brooklyn, NY. January 2015

"Following the success of our book launch parties across the globe, we’re very happy to team-up with DONNA to host our first Vinyl Residency for the month of January. A month long weekly DJ residency (Thursdays in January) curated by Dust & Grooves, that will bridge the gap between nerdy record collectors, their collections and the dance floor. Each evening is themed by genre, era, global region. Donna is an intimate cafe during morning and early afternoon, a nationally ranked cocktail bar and club in the evening to late night hours. With minimal, South American themed architecture, high ceilings and support of a Klipsch sound system, the music can be heard clearly – and felt."
Dust & Grooves (Video)

From Syria, an Atlas of a Country in Ruins

"Recent satellite image analysis by Unitar-Unosat, an agency of the United Nations, reveals vast devastation in cities across Syria from the civil war that started nearly four years ago. The four cities below are among those analyzed by the agency, which examined images taken before and during the conflict."
NY Times

A Nightclub Map of Harlem

"Numbers gambling formed part of the rhythm of Harlem’s street life. A map of arrests for playing the numbers in 1925 features almost every corner on Fifth, Lenox, Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Those arrests generally took place in the morning, when players seeking to place bets on their way to work and before before the publication of the daily number at 10 a.m. created a flurry of activity.  By all accounts, making such arrests would not have been difficult: the New York Age reported that runners and collectors followed 'a regular schedule each morning, picking up their collections and there is nothing clandestine or hidden in their movements,' as they walked 'boldly and openly along, picking up the slips with the money from the players on the streets.'”
Digital Harlem Blog
Putting Harlem on the Map (2012 revision)
"Go late!": A Night-Club Map of Harlem
A 1932 Illustrated Map of Harlem’s Night Clubs: From the Cotton Club to the Savoy Ballroom
Full size image here

2015 May: History of Harlem

The Usual Suspects (1995)

Wikipedia - "The Usual Suspects is a 1995 German-American neo-noir^[3] crime thriller film directed by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite and Kevin Spacey. The film follows the interrogation of Roger 'Verbal' Kint, a small-time con man who is one of only two survivors of a massacre and fire on a ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. He tells an interrogator a convoluted story about events that led him and four other criminals to the boat and of a mysterious mob boss known as Keyser Söze who commissioned their work."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: The Usual Suspects (1995) - Original Trailer

Five years of the sun in three minutes

"On February 11, 2010, NASA launched its Solar Dynamics Observatory -- a spacecraft equipped with sensors, cameras and telescopes all with one mission: an in-depth examination of the star at the centre of our solar system -- the sun. ... Solar flares, coronal mass ejections, sunspots, eruptions; the imaging equipment on the observatory has allowed researchers to see how these evolve and what causes them. Photographs in different wavelengths have allowed researchers to study the sun's plasma, temperatures, magnetic fields and activity, and atmosphere and corona."
c|net
YouTube: NASA | SDO: Year 5

A Day In the Life of Havana

"It's seldom that we get a view from inside Cuba. Here's a short film by photographer Jason Row about the city of Havana – it's beautiful old buildings, absurdly preserved American car fleet from the late fifties, the crushing poverty, and the eerie calm of living under the boot heel of a great slobbering pig dictator whose every breath is an insult to all Cubans everywhere. Why those poor sorry dimwits haven't walked into the dictator's house and eliminated him is far beyond my own comprehension or even my interest. People who are ruled by blathering psuedo-communist retards are truly beneath contempt. How's that for some travel commentary? To hell with Havana. Let's take Cuba and put up a Marriott. How difficult could it be? They have four soldiers riding in a 1959 Ford. Their guns are rusted shut."
YouTube: A day in the life of Havana (May 9, 2011)

Guillaume Apollinaire - Alcools (1913)

"Alcools, first published in 1913 and one of the few indispensable books of twentieth- century poetry, provides a key to the century's history and consciousness. Champion of 'cubism,' Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) fashions in verse the sonic equivalent of what Picasso accomplishes in his cubist works: simultaneity. Apollinaire has been so influential that without him there would have been no New York School of poetry and no Beat Movement. This new translation reveals his complex, beautiful, and wholly contemporary poetry. Printed with the original French on facing pages, this is the only version of this seminal work of French Modernism currently available in the United States."
amazon
Reviewed by Marjorie Perloff
W - Alcools
BBC: Alcools. The Essay, Paris 1913 Episode 3 of 5 (Video)
Poets: "Zone"

Tom Waits - Mule Variations (1999)

"... So Mule Variations delivers what fans want, in terms of both songs and sonics. But that also explains why it sounds terrific on initial spins, only to reveal itself as slightly dissatisfying with subsequent plays. All of Waits' Island records felt like fully conceived albums with genuine themes. Mule Variations, in contrast, is a collection of moments, and while each of those moments is very good (some even bordering on excellent), ultimately the whole doesn't equal the sum of its parts. While that may seem like nitpicking, some may have wanted a masterpiece after five years, and Mule Variations falls short of that mark. Nevertheless, this is a hell of a record by any other standard."
allmusic
Pitchfork
W - Mule Variations
Spotify, tumblr: #mule variations
YouTube: Hold On, What's He Building?, Chocolate Jesus, House Where Nobody Lives
YouTube: TheEWFX29 - Mule Variations (1999)

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money, 2014 March: Telephone call from Istanbul (1987), 2014 November: Rain Dogs (1985).

At the Museum of London, the City That Sherlock Holmes Knew

John O’Connor’s “From Pentonville Road Looking West: Evening”

"A riveting exhibition here at the Museum of London has capitalized on the full-blown Sherlockmania that seems to have seized the Western world, judging by a new spate of movies, television shows and books. Unexpectedly, the show, 'Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die,' which has drawn record numbers to the museum and continues until April 12, does not focus on the stories about Holmes or his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, though an opening section shows some early notebooks and illustrations as well as a rare portrait of the author in his 30s."

NY Times
Design Decoded and Sherlock Holmes
The Mystery of 221B Baker Street
Sherlock Holmes brought to life at The Museum of London (Video)
W - Sherlock Holmes

Violette - Martin Provost (2013)

"Nearly every character in Violette, Martin Provost's scholastically dense biographical study of landmark French writer Violette LeDuc, makes a point somewhere in the film to criticize its protagonist at length, bemoaning her appearance, her immaturity, her writing skill, her insistence on being. Among the literary circuit of 1940s Paris into which she's bullishly inserted herself, LeDuc is a literal piece of work, a project and process constantly in need of redrafting. She's not merely a creator of texts, but a text herself: Her sexual voracity, self-abasing neurosis, and stubborn commitment to impossible ideals provide the raw material for literary heavyweights like Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) and, in particular, Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain) to shape their own New Woman, a bodily reflection of their own existentialist agendas."
Slant
“A World of Noise and Fury:” Martin Provost’s Violette (Video)
NY Times: A Difficult Woman, With a Past Worth Writing About
Sound, fury and écriture féminine in Violette (2013): a review
W - Violette
ARTFORUM: Trailer for Martin Provost’s Violette, 2013

“A Thrashing, Generous Intelligence”: Eileen Myles’s Inferno chosen for Slate/Whiting Second Novel List

"The poet Eileen Myles is, of course, also an accomplished writer of fiction, and her recent novel Inferno has just been named one of the five books on the Slate/Whiting Second Novel List.  In a glowing review of the book on Slate, Sasha Weiss hails Myles’s coming-of-age novel for capturing something essential about the experience of being a young and hungry writer in a New York that no longer exists. ..."
Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets (Video)
Slate: The Yearning of Artists
Bookslut
Inferno (A Poet's Novel) - Eileen Myles
amazon
vimeo: Eileen Myles reads an excerpt from INFERNO (a poet's novel)

2010 August: Inferno

One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North

Panel No. 1 "During World War I, there was a great migration north by southern African Americans" 1940-41
"In 1941, Jacob Lawrence, then just 23 years old, completed a series of 60 small tempera paintings with text captions about the Great Migration, the multi-decade mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North that started around 1915. Within months of its making, the series entered the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Memorial Gallery (today The Phillips Collection), with each institution acquiring half of the panels. Lawrence’s work is now an icon in both collections, a landmark in the history of modern art, and a key example of the way that history painting was radically reimagined in the modern era."
MoMA
NY Times: Reassembling a History Told in Paint
YouTube: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series returns to MoMA

Inside the Dial Tone-Inspired Sound Art Exhibits of Aura Satz

Sketch for 'Dial Tone Operator', 2014
"The dial tone, that curious electronic sound of latent communication, is the subject of two ongoing telephonic sound art pieces by Aura Satz. The first piece is currently showing at the Hayward Gallery's Mirrorcity exihibition, which features work by London-based artists who are influenced by sci-fi, new speculative philosophies, and the internet age. Satz's installation is called Dial Tone Operator (listen to an excerpt here) and explores the dial tone as "spatialized binaural music" while referencing the time back in the 1950s when female telephone operators were replaced by this expectant signal. ..."
the creators project (Video)
Listen: Dial Tone Drone with Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, Aura Satz (Video)
DIAL TONE OPERATOR & DIAL TONE DRONE: Sound Installation & Telephone Composition

WNYU - 89.1 FM New York

Wikipedia - "WNYU-FM (89.1 FM) is a college radio station owned and operated by New York University. Until 2004, it served lower Manhattan and surrounding areas, but thanks to a new booster, it now broadcasts to the tri-state region. ... WNYU has been home to Plastic Tales from the Marshmallow Dimension as well as the legendary New Afternoon Show since 1980, when programmer Sal LoCurto flipped the format from progressive rock to new wave, creating a U.S. launching pad for an entire new generation of music including The Human League, Heaven 17, R.E.M., Public Image Limited as well as NYC and Hoboken acts such as The dB's, The Fleshtones, The Bongos, Liquid Liquid, KONK, ESG, The Individuals and The Bush Tetras. ..."
Wikipedia
WNYU-FM - Listen Live
YouTube: Popular WNYU-FM Videos

Filling the Ice House (1934) - Harry Gottlieb

Filling the Ice House, 1934
"As workers like these knew well, it was cold, hard work filling the icehouses of upstate New York. In January 1934, artist Harry Gottlieb signed on with the PWAP and looked for American workers he could paint near his home in the artists' colony of Woodstock, New York. He found these men harvesting ice off lakes and streams as local men had done every winter since the early 1800s. They sawed the thick layer of natural ice into long strips and then cut off large blocks. As Gottlieb's painting shows, the red-faced workers dressed in warm coats used long hooks and wooden ramps to maneuver the slick, heavy ice into large commercial icehouses where they neatly stacked the blocks. Straw or sawdust packing minimized melting in warm weather. Throughout the year icehouses along the Hudson River stored ice that was shipped by train to New York City. Families and grocers put the ice into insulated iceboxes that kept food from spoiling. Artificial freezing dominated ice production after World War I, and then electric refrigerators became popular. When Gottlieb documented the natural ice business it was gradually melting away."
American Art
W - Harry Gottlieb

Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015)

Wikiedia - "Dean Edwards Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015) was an American head coach of men's college basketball. Originally from Emporia, Kansas, Smith has been called a 'coaching legend' by the Basketball Hall of Fame. Smith is best known for his 36-year coaching tenure at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Smith coached from 1961 to 1997 and retired with 879 victories, which was the NCAA Division I men's basketball record at that time. Smith has the 9th highest winning percentage of any men's college basketball coach (77.6%). During his tenure as head coach, North Carolina won two national championships and appeared in 11 Final Fours."
Wikipedia
SI: Dean Smith, legendary North Carolina basketball coach, dies at 83
Dean Smith Quotes
Photo gallery: Dean Smith and Michael Jordan through the years
ESPN: Dean Smith was a true gentleman (Video)
YouTube: Carolina Basketball - Dean Smith Tribute, Michael Jordan Talks about Carolina Tar Heel Basketball, Dean Smith - Sportscentury

"Death Letter Blues" - Son House

Wikipedia - "'Death Letter', also known as 'Death Letter Blues', is the signature song of the Delta blues musician Son House. It is structured upon House's earlier recording 'My Black Mama, Part 2' from 1930. House's 1965 performance was on a metal-bodied National resonator guitar using a copper slide. One commentator noted that it is 'one of the most anguished and emotionally stunning laments in the Delta blues œuvre.' Lyrically, the song is about a man who learns of the death of the woman he loves through a letter delivered to him early in the morning. The narrator later views her body on the cooling board at the morgue, attends her funeral, and returns to his home in a state of depression. House's lyrics draw from traditional sources."
Wikipedia
Google - "Death Letter Blues"
YouTube: "Death Letter Blues" (Live), Death Letter Blues - 1967 (Live)

The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets - David Lehman

"WHEN JOHN ASHBERY, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler (pronounced 'SKY-luh') first lived in New York, the Korean War was in progress and McCarthyism was the scourge of freethinking intellectuals. It was the era of Levittown* and the 'silent generation' when the original Guys and Dolls was on Broadway, suburban flight was in progress, New York had three baseball teams and at least one of them played in the World Series every year. In an age of split-level conformism, the poets of the New York School put their trust in the idea of an artistic vanguard that could sanction their deviations from the norm."
Jacket2
Jacket2: The Plot Against the Giant . .
NY Times: Last One Off the Barricade Turn Out the Lights - Audio: John Ashbery reads from 'Sleepers Awake' (September 18, 1996. 3 mins.)
amazon

Old music: King Curtis – Memphis Soul Stew

"Kick the kids out, turn up the volume, turn back the years and damn the neighbours for a few minutes of bliss. This minor classic illuminated my later school years to the point of exam-threatening distraction, occupying that rock-soul slot of the 60s with Arthur Conley's 'Sweet Soul Music' and Sam & Dave's 'Soul Man', crossover music that couldn't quite make it's mind up how rock'n'roll it wanted to be but which spread joy just the same. It rumbles through the gears, hitting the top of the hill half-way through and stays there, sustained by King Curtis Ousley's educated sax and the thumping rhythms of a Memphis sound crew who knew exactly what was demanded from them to make this a radio smash. ..."
Guardian
W - King Curtis
YouTube: Memphis Soul Stew, Memphis Soul Stew (Live)

Piero di Cosimo

“The Finding of Vulcan on Lemnos,” by the compulsively original Florentine master.
"Are we ready for a five-hundred-and-fifty-three-year-old overnight sensation? The first major retrospective of Piero di Cosimo, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., affords a very long-needed grasp on the strangest master of the Florentine Renaissance. Forty-four paintings, most of them from American and European collections, tell nearly as many stories. The paintings of religious subjects are inventive; those of mythological scenes are outlandish. Born in 1462—ten years after Leonardo and thirteen before Michelangelo—Piero bemused even his contemporaries in Western art’s greatest generation."
New Yorker: Change Artist - Peter Schjeldahl
W - Piero di Cosimo
Washington Post: Piero di Cosimo, a misunderstood master, at the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art

The Noise And How To Bring It: Hank Shocklee Interviewed

"Noise. That's what everyone calls it. That's even what Public Enemy call it. A wall of noise. A collage of noise. I never really thought that was a good description of Public Enemy. Noise implies randomness; implies the accidental, the emergent. The very opposite of signal. To me, Public Enemy are all signal and no noise. Listen to a track like 'Brothers Gonna Work It Out' from Fear Of A Black Planet. Sure, it conjures up images of chaos. Sure it carves up and glues together slices of Prince, James Brown, Melvin Bliss and many others, with total disregard for musical compatibility. But random, accidental? Not to these ears."
The Quietus
Hank Shocklee: A journey into noise with Public Enemy's chief producer (Video) 2:02:47
Looking For The Perfect Beat Machine
The Making of Ice Cube’s “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”
YouTube: Artist Interview: Hank Shocklee (Bomb Squad), Artist Interview: Hank Shocklee (Bomb Squad) Deleted Scenes

2009 May: Public Enemy, 2011 July: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 2012 February: Fear of a Black Planet, 2012 August: Apocalypse 91… The Enemy Strikes Black, 2012 December: A Dozen Pivotal Moments in the 30 Year Career of Public Enemy, 2014 June: "Prophets of Rage" (2011).

Common Wealth

Malcolm X Speaks for Us, 1969, Elizabeth Catlett.
"The story of African Americans in the visual arts has closely paralleled their social, political, and economic aspirations over the last four hundred years. From enslaved craftpersons to contemporary painters, printmakers, and sculptors, they have created a wealth of artistic expression that addresses common experiences, such as exclusion from dominant cultural institutions, and confronts questions of identity and community. This generously illustrated volume gathers works by leading figures from the nineteenth century to the present—Henry Ossawa Tanner, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Lois Mailou Jones, Gordon Parks, Wifredo Lam, Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall—alongside many others who deserve to be better known, including artists from the African diaspora in South America and the Caribbean."
MFA
Architectural Digest
MFA Publishes Common Wealth, Book of Art by African Americans
amazon: Common Wealth

Burtalist tower blocks paper cut-outs

"A collection of paper cut-out models representing brutalist architecture of London from 1960s-1970s. The series features various buildings scattered around the districts of Camden, Southwark and Tower Hamlet. The `raw concrete` London tour begins with iconic tower blocks (Balfron Tower and Space House), leads through council estates doomed to premature demolition (Robin Hood Gardens and Aylesbury Estate) and concludes with a classic prefab panel block (Ledbury Estate). The collection is made up of five illustrated models to assemble. Printed on 100% recycled paper. includes a short technical note on the architects, year of construction and exact location of each building."
ZUPAGRAFIKA: Burtalist tower blocks paper cut-outs
Behance: BRUTAL LONDON
Behance: BLOK WSCHODNI/ EASTERN BLOCK
W - Brutalist_architecture

Oh Moscow - Lindsay Cooper (1991)

Wikipedia - "Oh Moscow is a 1991 live album by English experimental musician and composer Lindsay Cooper. It is a recording of a song cycle of the same name performed at the 7th Victoriaville Festival in Quebec, Canada on 8 October 1989. ... The song cycle reflects on the Cold War that divided Europe at the time. Oh Moscow was composed in 1987 by Lindsay Cooper, an English experimental musician from Henry Cow and the Feminist Improvising Group. The song texts were written by English film director, screenwriter and singer Sally Potter."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Lindsay Cooper: An Appreciation, An Interview with Chris Cutler
Guardian: A Celebration of Lindsay Cooper review – avant garde pioneer remembered
Grooveshark
YouTube: "Oh Moscow" 1991 Volgograd

December 2009: Lindsay Cooper, 2010 February: Art Bears, 2011 April: Rags (1980)/The Golddiggers (1983), 2012 July: The Art Box - Art Bears, 2012 November: David Thomas And The Pedestrians - Variations On A Theme, 2012 November: News from Babel, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 October: Art Bears Songbook - 2010-09-19 - Rock In Opposition Festival, 2014 April: Lindsay Cooper, 1951-2013.

Lush Life - John Coltrane (1958)

"Lush Life (1958) is among John Coltrane's best endeavors on the Prestige label. One reason can easily be attributed to the interesting personnel and the subsequent lack of a keyboard player for the August 16, 1957 session that yielded the majority of the material. Coltrane (tenor sax) had to essentially lead the compact trio of himself, Earl May (bass), and Art Taylor (drums). The intimate setting is perfect for ballads such as the opener 'Like Someone in Love.' Coltrane doesn't have to supplement the frequent redundancy inherent in pianists, so he has plenty of room to express himself through simple and ornate passages. Unifying the slippery syncopation and slightly Eastern feel of 'I Love You' is the tenor's prevalent capacity for flawless, if not downright inspired on-the-spot 'head' arrangements that emerge singular and clear, never sounding preconceived. ..."
allmusic
W - Lush Life (1958)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Lush Life (1957) [Full album] 36:30

2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now's the Time

"Now’s The Time", 1985
"Jean-Michel Basquiat took the New York City art world by storm in the early 1980s and gained international recognition by creating powerful and expressive works that confronted issues of racism, identity and social tension. Although his career was cut short by his untimely death at age 27, his groundbreaking drawings and paintings continue to challenge perceptions, provoke vital dialogues and empower us to think critically about the world around us. Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now's the Time marks the first major retrospective of the artist's work in Canada and will feature close to 85 large-scale paintings and drawings from private collections and public museums across Europe and North America."
Art Gallery of Ontario
jeremyforeshew
YouTube: 'Jean-Michel Basquiat: Now's the Time'

2013 April: Saving Basquiat: Seeing the Art Through the Myth-Making at Gagosian

Mark Mothersbaugh's Synth Collection

"The bright green, circular building of Mutato Muzika in Los Angeles is easy to spot when cruising down Sunset Boulevard. But most people might not realize it contains the creative hub of Mark Mothersbaugh, a founding member of DEVO turned award-winning Hollywood composer. Famous for his use of the synthesizer, Mothersbaugh has accumulated a vast collection over the years. We had the chance to check out a small selection of Mothersbaugh synths and spent some time talking about the future of music with the prolific artist."
Cool Hunting (Video)
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART DENVER - Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia

2009 December: Devo, 2011 September: We Are Devo!

Houston Bowery Wall

Graffiti artist Crash paints Popeye-Inspired mural
"The initiative to program the Houston Bowery wall in New York City and invite artists to work there was a renaissance for one of the highest regarded mural walls in the United States. Keith Haring made the wall infamous by painting an original mural as a gift to the community in the late 1970's. With ownership of the wall, the Goldman family felt a sense of responsibility to bring art and beauty to the public on a grand scale. The future of the wall will hold many a renaissance, forwarding movements of its own accord. With each rebirth the wall's program will broaden and reach out further to include established and emerging street artists from the United States and around the world who have a powerful message of hope, possibility and inspiration to young and old.'
arrestedmotion (Video)
Bowery Boogie (Video)
W - Bowery Wall
The History Of The Bowery/Houston Street Graffiti Mural Wall In NYC
vimeo: Bowery Wall Mural Resurrections

2011 July: The Bowery Poetry Club, 2013 June: Bowery, 2014 October: Houston Street.

The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism

"On this week’s Political Scene podcast, the New Yorker staff writer Jon Lee Anderson joins host Dorothy Wickenden to talk about the current status of the war against Islamic radicalism. The two discuss the ways in which terrorism is expanding across the Middle East, the dystopian vision of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and the limited impact of ISIS’s defeat in the Syrian town of Kobani. ... You can listen to the full episode in the stream above. You can also subscribe to the podcast for free on iTunes or via RSS. Listen to the latest episodes of all New Yorker podcasts here."
New Yorker (Video)

2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works.

Rip Rig and Panic "You're My Kind of Climate" 12 inch mix

"Rip Rig + Panic (named after an album by jazz saxophonist Roland Kirk) were short-lived ('81-'83) but superfun as evidenced by this rambunctious 1982 guest appearance on the cult British sitcom The Young Ones. The new songs on The Cherry Thing have a similar charge: 'We didn’t need to talk or think too much about what we were going to do', Cherry says. 'We were almost allergic to that—there was a kind of urgency and a definite, definite feeling that we were meant to be together.' Three RR+P members regrouped in 1985 as Float Up CP, but put out just one album, Kill Me in the Morning, but this is supposed to be a party!"
SPIN
YouTube: "You're My Kind of Climate" 12 inch mix, The Young Ones H/Q...Rip, Rig & Panic ( Interesting )
YouTube: "God" [FULL ALBUM]

2010 December: Rip Rig and Panic

Soul Strut : EST. 1999

"Soul Strut has been a taste-making, trend-setting vinyl record community. Trends have come and gone and still we celebrate 15 years of life. Please enjoy an archive of classic DJ mixes, important records to the crate digging continuum, and a world famous discussion forum."
Soul Strut (Video)

A History of Ideas: Animated Videos Explain Theories of Simone de Beauvoir, Edmund Burke & Other Philosophers

"The UK’s Open University has become a dependable source of very short, online video introductions to all sorts of things, from weighty subjects like religion, economics, and literary theory to lighter, but no less interesting fare like the art and science of bike design. With breezy tone and serious intent, their animated '60-Second Adventures' make seemingly arcane academic ideas accessible to laypeople with no prior background. Now they’ve teamed up with writer and BBC broadcaster Melvyn Bragg of In Our Time fame for a series of video shorts that run just a little over 60 seconds each, with animations by Andrew Park of Cogni+ive, and narration by comedic actor Harry Shearer from Spinal Tap, The Simpsons, and, most recently, Nixon’s the One."
Open Culture (Video)
BBC: A History of Ideas (Video)
YouTube: Radio 4

The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink

"Rehearsals for Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 'The Threepenny Opera' ended near dawn on Aug. 31, 1928, the day of its premiere. They had not gone well. The leading lady had absented herself to care for her dying husband. Returning to find her role diminished, she quit two days before opening. Another actor had walked out, heading for the train station before a producer lured him back. Helene Weigel, Brecht’s future wife, insisted on playing the part of the brothel madam as a double amputee. Then she was rushed to the hospital with suspected appendicitis and the part was axed."
NY Times: An Unlikely and Tumultuous Pair, Making History in Avant-Garde Theater
LA Times: 'The Partnership' looks anew at Brecht's creative circle
amazon

2009 December: Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht, 2011 August: W - Communards’ Wall 1871, 2012 March: The Threepenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, 2012 July: Supply and Demand: Songs by Brecht / Weill & Eisler - Dagmar Krause, 2013 March: Pina Bausch - "The Seven Deadly Sins".

The Hunting of Billie Holiday

"From his first day in office in 1930, Harry Anslinger had a problem, and everybody knew it. He had just been appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics—a tiny agency, buried in the gray bowels of the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.—and it seemed to be on the brink of being abolished. This was the old Department of Prohibition, but prohibition had been abolished and his men needed a new role, fast. As he looked over his new staff—just a few years before his pursuit of Billie Holiday began—he saw a sunken army who had spent fourteen years waging war on alcohol only to see alcohol win, and win big. These men were notoriously corrupt and crooked—but now Harry was supposed to whip them into a force capable of wiping drugs from the United States forever."
Politico
BILLIE HOLIDAY IN WASHINGTON,DC

2010 April: Billie Holiday, 2013 May: Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black, Starring a 19-Year-old Billie Holiday, 2014 December: "Strange Fruit" (1939).

Celebrated Outlaws : Graffiti pioneers in The Source (1993)

"Four pages article written by Ricky Powell, covering various graffiti kings : Daze, Revolt, Zephyr, Futura 2000, Dondi, Team and Lee. Published in the 'True School' special issue of The Source, November 1993."
If I Haven't

The French Connection (1971)

Wikipedia - "The French Connection is a 1971 American dramatic thriller film directed by William Friedkin and produced by Philip D'Antoni. It stars Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, and Roy Scheider. The film was adapted and fictionalized by Ernest Tidyman from the 1969 non-fiction book by Robin Moore. It tells the story of New York Police Department detectives 'Popeye' Doyle and Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo, whose real-life counterparts were Narcotics Detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso. Don Ellis scored the film. ... "
Wikipedia
Grantland - The Greatest Living American Actor at 85: Gene Hackman Is Retired But Still in Charge (Video)
Roger Ebert: Interview with Gene Hackman, November 28, 1971
The French Connection film locations
Guardian - The French Connection: shock of the old
amazon
YouTube: The French Connection - Trailer

Neil Young the Ultimate Guide

"Some trivia, before pushing the play button:In the top 20 the two charts are quite similar: even if in different positions, 15 songs are the same. Both include Buffalo Springfield and CSNY songs. While After the Gold Rush album is the most present album in the Mojo chart, in Rolling Stone's Top 100 it stops at #3 (6 songs in the playlist), after Harvest and Tonight's the Night (both with 7 songs)."
amazon
100 GREATEST NEIL YOUNG SONGS (Spotify)
Spotify

2008 February: Neil Young, 2010 April: Neil Young - 1, 2010 April: Neil Young - 2, 2010 May: Neil Young - 3, 2010 October: Neil Young's Sound, 2012 January: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, 2012 June: Like A Hurricane, 2012 July: Greendale, 2013 April: Thoughts On An Artist / Three Compilations, 2013 August: Heart of Gold, 2014 March: Dead Man (1995), 2014 August: Ragged Glory - Neil Young + Crazy Horse (1990), 2014 November: Broken Arrow (1996), 2015 January: Rust Never Sleeps (1979).

Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s Universe

"Matt Zoller Seitz is a film historian, TV critic (for New York magazine and Vulture.com), filmmaker and the editor of Roger­ebert.com. He is also a connoisseur of the oeuvre of the idiosyncratic filmmaker Wes Anderson and the creator of “The Wes Anderson Collection,” a medley of essays, interviews and illustrations in a coffee-table-size book published last year. It is as hyper-designed and meticulous as an Anderson film. Mr. Seitz has capped himself with 'The Grand Budapest Hotel,' out Feb. 10 from Abrams, a rapturously focused work dedicated to that film. Its impending publication neatly coincides with the movie’s Golden Globe award Sunday, and we spoke with Mr. Seitz this week, curious about what led him to tumble down the Anderson rabbit hole with such gusto and commitment."
NY Times
vimeo: Video Essay: "Wes Anderson's Favorite New York Movies" (Bonus)

2013 November: Wes Anderson Honors Fellini in a Delightful New Short Film, 2013 November: Rushmore (1998), 2013 Decemher: Hotel Chevalier (2007), 2014 March: Wes Anderson Collection, 2014 April: The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies, 2014 July: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 2014 August: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), 2014 December: Welcome to Union Glacier (2013).

Otis Rush, 1956-1958: His Cobra Recordings

"Otis Rush's debut recordings for the Cobra label are defining moments of Chicago blues. Seldom had a young Windy City artist recorded with this much harrowing emotion in both his singing and playing, simulataneously connecting with the best that Delta blues had to offer while plunging headlong into the electric future. These are the songs that continue to be the building blocks of his legend; 'All Your Love,' 'Double Trouble,' 'I Can't Quit You, Baby,' 'Groaning the Blues,' 'It Takes Time,' and 'Checking on My Baby' are all singular masterpieces. This single disc collection features all sixteen Cobra sides issued as singles plus the bonus of four alternate takes, all presented here with the best sound to date. These are milestone recordings in the history of the blues and an essential part of anyone's collection."
allmusic
W - "Double Trouble"
amazon
YouTube: Double Trouble, I`Cant Quit You Baby, All Your Love (I Miss Loving), Violent love, Jump Sister Bessie, Checking on my baby, Sit Down Baby, Love that woman, My Baby (She's a Good 'Un), If You Were Mine, Little Red Rooster

'Absolutely temporary': Spicer, Burgess, and the ephemerality of coterie

"In an unpublished letter to Robin Blaser and Jim Felts from the mid–1950s, Jack Spicer cautions his addressees against preserving their correspondence for posterity. 'This will become a literary document,' he warns, 'if you don’t burn it.' Similarly, in a list outlining 'What to do with the Boston News Letter' scrawled in one of Spicer’s notebooks, he advises readers of the poetry pamphlet to '[p]ost whatever pages of it you think well of in the most public place you can find — i.e. an art gallery, a bohemian bar, or a lavatory frequented by poets,' and to '[b]urn or give away the pages you do not want to make public. Do not keep them.' In their biography of Spicer, Kevin Killian and Lew Ellingham refer to the Boston newsletter as an 'exercise in poetic community' marked by 'a curious blend of acid raillery and low camp.'”
Jacket2

2007 November: Jack Spicer, 2010 February: mad cartographer (PoemTalk #28), 2010 April: Manroot and Acts, 2011 January: 5 Poems by Jack Spicer, 2012 July: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer

Things Gone & Things Still Here

"The pieces in this little volume have all been republished in subsequent collections of [Paul] Bowles's stories, but I still prefer to read them as they first appeared, in an edition published by Black Sparrow Press in 1977. Four of the stories -- 'Allal,' 'Mejdoub,' 'The Fqih,' and 'The Waters of Izli,' form a natural group, both in style and setting. "Istikahara, Anaya, Medagan and the Medaganat" and the title story, though also set in North Africa, stand somewhat apart as they take the form of historical anecdotes rather than fiction. All take place in a Moslem Maghreb in which European influence is felt only distantly, if at all. Women are hardly present, and when they are they're generally up to no good. ..."
Dreamers Rise
Black Sparrow Press

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996), 2013 July: Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles, 2014 January: Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles (1998), 2014 March: The Sheltering Sky (1949).

Africa Express Announce Terry Riley's In C Mali

"It was 50 years ago this month when Terry Riley's iconic minimalist composition 'In C' received its world premiere. To mark the anniversary, Africa Express—the organization that brings together musicians from multiple cultures, continents, and genres—will release an album featuring their 41-minute version of the piece. Africa Express Presents... Terry Riley's In C Mali is out digitally on November 24 and physically on January 26 via Transgressive. It was co-produced and mixed by Mouse on Mars' Andi Toma. That's a five-minute sample above." Pitchfork (Video)
YouTube: Africa Express Presents... Terry Riley's In C Mali (5 minute Edit), Africa Express Presents... Terry Riley's In C Mali 40:50

December 2007: Terry Riley, March 2010: In C, December 2010: Terry Riley & Gyan Riley, April 2011: Terry Riley - Shri Camel: Morning Corona, Terry Riley rare footage, live in the 70s, 2014 March: Kronos Quartet Plays Terry Riley: Salome Dances for Peace (1989).

Making Pictures: Three for a Dime - Maxine Payne

"In the 1930s, the Massengill family of rural Arkansas built three portable photography studios on old truck frames, attached each to the back of any car that would run, and started a mobile photo booth business that would last for a decade. Without formal training or help, the Massengill family invented and improvised ways to mimic the popular photo booths they had seen in drugstores and brought their business to the dirt roads and open fields they knew well. Making Pictures: Three for a Dime, featuring Massengill family prints and photo albums collected by the artist Maxine Payne, illuminates a sliver of the Depression-era South previously unseen by the public."
Dust-to-Digital
Dust-to-Digital: Images & Recordings from Arkansas
Dust-to-Digital: Dust-to-Digital: Arkansas at 78 RPM: Corn Dodgers and Hoss Hair Pullers (Video)
MAKING PICTURES: THREE FOR A DIME EXHIBITION

Buy - James Chance and the Contortions (1979)

Wikipedia - "Buy is the debut studio album by American no wave band James Chance and the Contortions. It was released in 1979 through ZE Records. All About Jazz critic Trevor MacLaren wrote: 'Through the anger and aggression Chance made a solid record that had a sound like nothing before or since,' describing the album as 'a great disc that sounds as original and cutting edge as when it was released'. Dean McFarlane of Allmusic stated: 'His hybrid of free jazz sax blowing and agitated funk takes the contortions up a notch from the four tracks the band contributed to the Eno-produced No New York compilation.'"
Wikipedia
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Contortions - Buy (Full Album)

2009 December: James Chance, 2011 December: No New York

Crunchy, organized by Gregory Linn and Clayton Press

"As an adjective, 'crunchy' typically connotes a hard texture and/or a crisp, loud sound when something is bitten, or chewed. 'Soggy,' 'crunchy’s' antonym, connotes wet, usually soft, and heavily dull. According to the late economic journalist, Nico Colchester, 'Crunchy systems are those in which small changes have big effects leaving those affected by them in no doubt whether they are up or down, rich or broke, winning or losing, dead or alive… (while) Sogginess is comfortable uncertainty.' For this show, the organizers, – Clayton Press and Gregory Linn, – relied upon Colchester’s concept of 'crunchiness' as a point of departure to challenge common expectations about how paintings are made and what they convey. ..."
marianne boesky gallery
marianne boesky gallery: exhibition works
marianne boesky gallery: installation views
Paris Review: Crunchy Systems

Screaming Phantoms, Tomahawks, Phantom Lords, Dirty Ones and other gangs of 1970s Williamsburg, Brooklyn

"My new column for A24 Films (a tie-in to the new movie A Most Violent Year) is up on their site devoted to culture and events from 1981. For this article, I look at what some of the dangerous undercurrents to life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1981. 'By the 1970s, Williamsburg was best known for its steeply rising crime rate, harboring both violent street-gang activity and organized crime.' You can read the whole article here. During my research for this piece, I found this rather startling map in the New York Times, August 1, 1974, charting out the various turfs of northern Brooklyn street gangs.  This is not a souvenir from the film The Warriors, but an actual list of the many violent gangs which kept Brooklyn a very dangerous place to walk around in during the 1970s."
Bowery Boys (Video)

2010 August: The Warriors, 2014 September: BAM: Retro Metro.

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper

"One of the most exciting aspects of reintroducing so much rare and incredible music to the world is being able to finally make available material that’s been in label-vault limbo since the day it was recorded, vital sounds locked away from the deserving ears of the legions of devoted music fans we at Sundazed count ourselves among. ... Recorded in part as the follow-up to Safe as Milk, Beefheart’s debut from earlier that year, the world-shattering material on It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper was rerecorded, truncated, and issued—without the Captain’s approval—as Strictly Personal in 1968. ..."
Sundazed
Captain Beefheart Radar Station
Albums That Never Were
YouTube: The Plain Brown Wrapper Sessions 1:58:50

2009 October: Captain Beefheart, 2010 December: Captain Beefheart, Art-Rock Visionary, Dead At 69, 2011 October: Interview with Captain Beefheart, 2013 August: This Is The Day (1974-Old Grey Whistle Test), 2014 July: Safe as Milk (1967), 2014 August: Some YoYo Stuff: An observation of the observations of Don Van Vliet by Anton Corbijn (1993).