Art Bears - Coda To "Man & Boy"

"This track arguably features Fred Frith's most stunning attempt at reinventing the guitar. If more people would look at the instrument in a similar way- 'Why not try and play the guitar like it's a tuba and see what happens?'- the ol' fascist-killing machine might still have some life in it yet! Still...I do kind of miss Dagmar Krause's always devastating vocal histrionics. From discogs: 'Recorded live at Cantu, N. Italy on cassettedeck, 2 mikes. One-sided 7" on clear vinyl, other side is printed in silver."
YouTube: Coda To "Man & Boy"

2010 February: Art Bears, 2012 July: The Art Box.

The Legend of Rita - Volker Schlondorff (2001), Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies

Wikipedia - "Die Stille nach dem Schuß or The Silence after the Shot is a 2000 German film that was released in English as The Legend of Rita (the website IMDB calls this choice of title translation 'unfortunate'). It is an account of fictionalised exiled West German radical left Red Army Faction members, though the fictional characters all have close parallels to several real-life RAF members. After a brief overview of the initial bank robberies of the 2nd of June Movement with the distribution of chocolate kisses as well as a disastrous prison break at the Westberliner Prison, the group flees, via the Friedrichstraße train station, into the German Democratic Republic."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Top 10 Berlin Wall Movies
YouTube: The Legend of Rita (Trailer)
YouTube: The Legend of Rita 1:37:47

Alexander Trocchi

Wikipedia - "Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi (30 July 1925 – 15 April 1984) was a Scottish novelist. Trocchi was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and Italian father. After working as a seaman on the Murmansk convoys, he attended University of Glasgow. On graduation he obtained a traveling grant that enabled him to relocate to continental Europe. In the early 1950s, he lived in Paris and edited the literary magazine Merlin, which published Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Christopher Logue, and Pablo Neruda, amongst others."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Mean streets
Walk On Gilded Splinters: In Memorandun To Memory 13 April 1969.
A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds - Alexander Trocchi
sigma: A Tactical Blueprint - Alexander Trocchi
Alex Trocchi In Conversation With Allen Ginsberg, November 8 l979, London - Part 1, Part 2
YouTube: A Life in Pieces - Part 1/2, Part 2/2

Flash Light - Tom Verlaine (1987)

"With this release, Tom Verlaine comes full circle to the style of his initial solo album. This great platter has an energized, mostly no-nonsense feel to it that is extremely appealing. Production is meticulous, if not normally showy as on his previous album, Cover. Flash Light is chock-full of rocking numbers of all kinds, ranging from straight-ahead, meat-and-potatoes types ('Cry Mercy, Judge' and 'Say a Prayer'), to the quirkier 'Bomb' and 'Annie's Tellin' Me,' to the walloping big beat of 'A Town Called Walker,' 'The Funniest Thing' and 'One Time at Sundown' are earnest mid-tempo selections that in places suggest Dire Straits."
allmusic
W - Flash Light
The Wonder
Part One of The Interview with S.R.P.
YouTube: Bomb, A Town Called Walker, At 4 a.m., Song, Annie's Tellin' Me, The Scientist Writes A Letter, The Funniest Thing

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

Tellus #23 - The Voices of Paul Bowles

"Till the age of 40, Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was a composer and music critic, composing for Broadway musicals, Hollywood movie scores, incidental music for ballet. He once aknowledged to be a composer of ‘hotel music’, though his serious music calls to mind that of Copland, Virgil Thomson, Francis Poulenc or Satie. It is actually when he get tired of writing easy music that he turned to writing literature."
UbuWeb (Sound)

2007 November: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site, 2010 February: Paul Bowles (1910-1999), 2011: January: Halfmoon (1996).

LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital

"LaToya Ruby Frazier: A Haunted Capital uses social documentary and portraiture to create a personal visual history of an industrial town’s decline. Through approximately 40 photographic works of her family and their hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier offers an intimate exploration of the effects of deindustrialization on the lives of individuals and communities. Home to one of America’s first steel mills, Braddock now has a population below 2,500 and has been declared a 'distressed municipality'."
Brooklyn Museum
Art In America - Haunted: Q&A with LaToya Ruby Frazier
NY Times: The Flesh and the Asphalt, Both Weak
Guernica - Kirsten O’Regan: These Dark Histories

Wooden Joe Nicholas

"Wooden Joe Nicholas was one of the more primitive trumpeters to record in New Orleans. He was perhaps most notable in his early days for his very loud volume and for his endurance, important assets for brassmen at parades. By the time Nicholas (the uncle of clarinetist Albert Nicholas) got on records, he gave the impression of being much older than he actually was, and he was clearly past his prime. Early on he played clarinet and throughout his career he occasionally doubled on that instrument. Nicholas was quite familiar with Buddy Bolden, although he did not switch to cornet until he played with King Oliver in 1915."
allmusic
W - Wooden Joe Nicholas
YouTube: Eh La Bas (Original Artesian Hall Version), Up Jumped The Devil, St Louis Blues, All The Whores (go crazy 'bout the way I ride), The Lord Will Make A Way (Ann Cook), Lead Me On

2011 July: The Cradle Is Rocking

Raymond Chandler

Wikipedia - "Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker)."
Wikipedia
The Raymond Chandler Web Site
NY Times: Raymond Chandler
amazon: Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler on Writing
Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder"(1950)

Bob Dylan ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ | Classic Tracks

"... Then, after the musicians were woken up just before four in the morning of the 16th, they recorded three takes of ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’, the first of which ended up on the album. Indeed, if ever there was an opportunity for them to familiarise themselves and get to grips with the main man’s improvisational approach, this was it. A soulful, 11-minute, 23-second ode to Dylan’s then-new wife, former Playboy Bunny Sarah Lowndes, ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ was set apart from the rest of the often-witty yet acerbic Blonde On Blonde by occupying the double album’s entire fourth side. Diving headlong into surreal imagery, the track features its author at his poetic peak as, playing harmonica and acoustic guitar to the band’s traditional, loping 6/8 waltz arrangement, he nonchalantly sings about your childhood flames on your midnight rug, and your Spanish manners and your mother’s drugs, and your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs...."
SOS
W - Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands
allmusic
Bob Dylan Song #81: Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
vimeo: Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

2010 August: Blonde on Blonde (1966)

Gramsci Monument

"This year’s most captivating new art work—Thomas Hirschhorn’s summerlong 'Gramsci Monument,' an installation at a city housing project in the South Bronx—excites so many thoughts that you may, as I did, want help thinking them. Start with the artist. Hirschhorn, fifty-six, a rangy and intense Swiss, is on hand all day, every day, at his tree-house-like village of purpose-built shacks, set on open land amid the brick towers of the Forest Houses, which are home to thirty-four hundred people."
New Yorker: House Philosopher by Peter Schjeldahl
W - Antonio Gramsci
NYT: A Summer Place in the South Bronx
Gramsci Monument
Dia Art Foundation
Art Observed
YouTube: The Gramsci Monument, Gramsci Monument

Motor City's Burning - Detroit from Motown to the Stooges

"Documentary looking at how Detroit became home to a musical revolution that captured the sound of a nation in upheaval. In the early 60s, Motown transcended Detroit's inner city to take black music to a white audience, whilst in the late 60s suburban kids like the MC5 and the Stooges descended into the black inner city to create revolutionary rock expressing the rage of young white America."
YouTube: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Strand Bookstore

Wikipedia - "The Strand Bookstore is an independent bookstore located at 828 Broadway, at the corner of East 12th Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, two blocks south of Union Square. In addition to the main location, the store's Central Park kiosk is open on fair weather days at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 60th Street."
Wikipedia
Strand Bookstore
Celebrating The Strand Book Store
NY Times: At Home With Millions of Books
YouTube: Book Row: The history of the Strand Bookstore with Fran Lebowitz

White Chalk - PJ Harvey (2007)

"The quiet ones are always the scariest. Polly Jean Harvey's appearance on the cover of White Chalk -- all wild black hair and ghostly white dress -- could replace the dictionary definition of eerie, and the album itself plays like a good ghost story. ... White Chalk is Harvey's darkest album yet -- which, considering that she's sung about dismembering a lover and drowning her daughter, is saying something. It's also one of her most beautiful albums, inspired by the fragility and timelessness of chalk lines and her relative newness to the piano, which dominates White Chalk; it gives 'Before Departure' funereal heft and 'Grow Grow Grow' a witchy sparkle befitting its incantations. Most striking of all, however, is Harvey's voice: she sings most of White Chalk in a high, keening voice somewhere between a whisper and a whimper."
allmusic
Wikipedia
Dailymotion: When under ether & The piano, White Chalk, Grow grow grow and Silence, The Mountain
YouTube: The Piano, Silence

2009 November: PJ Harvey, 2011 May: Let England Shake, 2013 May: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.

Geeshie Wiley

Wikipedia - "Geeshie Wiley (sometimes rendered as Geechie Wiley) was an American female blues singer and guitar player. She recorded three records in the early 1930s. There are no known photographs or images of the artist in existence. Ishman Bracey (whose testimony may not be reliable) stated Wiley hailed from Natchez, Mississippi, and was romantically linked to Papa Charlie McCoy. It is thought that in the 1920s she worked in a medicine show in Jackson, Mississippi. Some evidence suggests that Wiley may have married Casey Bill Weldon following his divorce from Memphis Minnie."
Wikipedia
Illustrated Geeshie Wiley discography
YouTube: Last Kind Words Lyrics, Skinny leg blues, Eagles On A Half

Hands Over the City - Francesco Rosi (1963)

Wikipedia - "Hands Over the City (Italian: Le mani sulla città) is a 1963 drama film directed by Francesco Rosi. It is a story of political corruption in post-World War II Italy. A ruthless Neapolitan land developer and elected city councilman, Edoardo Nottola (Rod Steiger), manages to use political power to make personal profit in a large scale suburban real estate deal. However, after the collapse of a residential building, the Communist councilman Da Vita initiates an inquiry on Nottola's possible connection to the accident."
Wikipedia
Slant Magazine
Contact Music
amazon
YouTube: Hands Over the City, The Limits Of Our Investigation

In Fairfield Porter / James Schuyler country: Penobscot Bay, Maine

 Fairfield Porter, Penobscot Bay with Peak Island, 1966
"I’m currently on vacation on the coast of Maine, an area I’ve read a lot about — especially in relation to Fairfield Porter and James Schuyler — but never visited before. In Camden yesterday, from the top of Mount Battie, I saw the whole sweep of Penobscot Bay and caught a glimpse of Great Spruce Head Island in the distance, the island owned by the Porter family, where Schuyler spent so many summers living with Fairfield and his wife and kids, and where Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and other poets came for extended visits. You might say that Great Spruce Head Island is the northernmost outpost of the New York School."
Locus Solus: The New York School of Poets

2008 May: Fairfield Porter, 2010 June: Fairfield Porter - 1, 2011 August: "Respect For Things As They Are" - by John Ashbery, 2013 March: "The Great Spruce" by Alex Carnelevale. 2008 January: James Schuyler, 2009 October: James Schuyler: Six New Recordings Added, 2011 March: Broadway: A Poets and Painters Anthology, 2011 December: An Anthology of New York Poets, 2012 July: A Schuyler of urgent concern.

Fred Frith / Joey Baron - Klub "Mózg" Bydgoszcz, Poland (2006)

"01. Fred Frith Solo Concert. 02. Interview with Frith. 03. Interview with Baron. 04. Joey Baron Solo Concert.
YouTube: Klub "Mózg" Bydgoszcz, 47:25

Drawn the Road Again - Chandler O'Leary

"My name is Chandler O’Leary. I live in Washington state with my lovely husband (whom I refer to as 'the Tailor' because he makes his own clothes and wishes to remain anonymous) and our tiny stick-shift Subaru sedan. We both love to travel, but I’m the real nut in the family. For one thing, I have lived all over the U.S. and even in Italy—so the urge to wander is deeply ingrained. And I am the one who will choose the squiggliest line on the map, rather than the Interstate highway, every single time."
Drawn the Road Again
Anagram Press - Blog

Undressed: The Fashion of Privacy

Edgar Degas, pastel, Woman at her Toilette.
"Presented as a companion to the major exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, which investigates Impressionist artists’ expressive use of contemporary fashion in depictions of public life, this exhibition focuses on the private side of apparel—and the lack thereof. Featuring more than 120 drawings and prints, as well as select paintings, photographs, and materials from the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Undressed explores the connotations of informal dress and undress in intimate, personal situations."
The Art Institute of Chicago
Undressed: The Fashion of Privacy - Images
Art Institute of Chicago Exposes the Fashions of Intimacy

2012 December: Impressionism and Fashion (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), 2013 March: Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity.

The Dude Company - The Art of Basketball

"An explosive re-purposing of the iconic official NBA Game Basketball and Backboard as defined by some of today’s most celebrated graffiti and street artists. Presented by Public Works Department. Curated by Billi Kid and James & Karla Murray. charles le brigand."
vimeo: The Dude Company - The Art of Basketball

Rough Cut - Pina Bausch (2007)

"... The Berliner Festspiele always brings the most stunning and creative shows to Berlin. Tonight, was no exception. All the energy that emanated from this dancing performance flooded the audience, giving them no other option than hanging on and enjoying the ride. The female dancers, in colourful ball-gown style dresses, run, jump and somehow float around the huge stage. The male dancers, many times carrying, throwing and spinning these beautiful creatures, seem infatigable. This passionate combination of woman and man on stage, interlacing their bodies is very liberating. However, I was sometimes melancholic when the facial expressions and body movements were full of sad emotion. The music also emphasised this feeling."
My Journeys
Dance Photos
Reportage : ROUGH CUT de Pina Bausch
Choreographer Pina Bausch Stages 'Rough Cut' Portraying Korean Culture
[PDF] Rough Cut: Phenomenological Reflections on Pina Bausch’s Choreography
Tanztheater Wuppertal

2008 May: Pina Bausch, 2009 June: Pina Bausch 1940-2009, 2012 August: Pina Bausch Costumes.

The Heart of Saturday Night - Tom Waits (1974)

"If Closing Time, Tom Waits' debut album, consisted of love songs set in a late-night world of bars and neon signs, its follow-up, The Heart of Saturday Night, largely dispenses with the romance in favor of poetic depictions of the same setting. On 'Diamonds on My Windshield' and 'The Ghosts of Saturday Night,' Waits doesn't even sing, instead reciting his verse rhythmically against bass and drums like a Beat hipster. Musically, the album contains the same mixture of folk, blues, and jazz as its predecessor, with producer Bones Howe occasionally bringing in an orchestra to underscore the loping melodies."
allmusic
W - The Heart of Saturday Night
YouTube: The Heart Of Saturday Night (Full Album) 41:36
YouTube: San Diego Serenade 1975, Drunk on the Moon, Diamonds on My Windshield, The Heart Of Saturday Night

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55".

Adam Thirlwell

Wikipedia - "Adam Thirlwell (born 22 August 1978) is a British novelist. His work has been translated into thirty languages. He has twice been named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. ... He is also the author of a project on the novel and translation, which includes a book first published in 2007, which was chosen as a book of the year by Tom Stoppard in The Guardian and A. S. Byatt in the Times Literary Supplement; and, as guest editor, an anthology of multiple translations for McSweeney's Quarterly."
Wikipedia
New Republic: How Baudelaire Revolutionized Modern Literature; Genocide and the Fine Arts (Claude Lanzmann); Visionary Materialism (Arthur Rimbaud, John Ashbery); My Novel, My Novel (Roland Barthes).
Granta - Interview: Adam Thirlwell
The Quietus: Adam Thirlwell On The Great Gatsby
YouTube: Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013

Aoife O'Donovan - "Fossils"

"... If her aim was to mold a collection which encompasses a broad range of sensibilities including pop and country/rock more nuanced tracks, nonetheless the Boston native artist is determined to keep in the album framework a distinctively folk core. 'Fossils' is impressively interpreted by Aoife's ethereal voice and her capacity to move sometimes abruptly from a melancholy tone to a rough and somewhat stark one without losing the sensuality of the vocals, gives the listener the impression of having to do with a remarkable piece of work, sure making it one of the finest albums in the Americana landscape you can hear in this 2013."
No Depression
NY Times: From Gowanus to Bonnaroo
W - Aoife O'Donovan
YouTube: Red & White & Blue & Gold, Beekeeper, Lay My Burden Down, Oh, Mama, Fire Engine, Tears of Healing Rain/ After the Rain

2011 June: Crooked Still - Some Strange Country, 2011 October: Crooked Stills - EP Friends Of Fall, 2011 October: Interview: Aoife O' Donovan of Crooked Still Shares Memories While Looking Ahead.

War - The World Is a Ghetto

"War's third album as an act separate from Eric Burdon was also far and away their most popular, the group's only long-player to top the pop charts. The culmination of everything they'd been shooting for creatively on their two prior albums, it featured work in both succinct pop-accessible idioms ('The Cisco Kid,' etc.) as well as challenging extended pieces such as the 13-minute 'City, Country, City' -- which offered featured spots to all seven members without ever seeming disjointed -- and the title track, and encompass not only soul and funk but elements of blues and psychedelia on works such as the exquisite 'Four Cornered Room.'"
allmusic
W - The World Is a Ghetto
YouTube: The Midnight Special 1973 - Cisco Kid, Cisco Kid, City Country City, Four Cornered Room, The World Is A Ghetto, Where Was You At, Beetles In The Bog

Hopper Drawing

Study for Nighthawks, 1941 or 1942.
"Hopper Drawing is the first major museum exhibition to focus on the drawings and creative process of Edward Hopper (1882–1967). More than anything else, Hopper’s drawings reveal the continually evolving relationship between observation and invention in the artist’s work, and his abiding interest in the spaces and motifs—the street, the movie theatre, the office, the bedroom, the road—that he would return to throughout his career as an artist."
Whitney
NY Times: A Master, Between the Lines
amazon: Hopper Drawing
VIDEO: Drawings of Edward Hopper at the Whitney

2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration.

The Chess Records Story

"From Muddy Waters to Bo Diddley to Chuck Berry to Etta James, Chess Records helped solidify Chicago as one of the music centers of the world and became the bridge between rural southern blues and the emergence of both rock and soul music. And the documentary The Chess Records Story tells an awful lot of that history in a pretty short time. It is great watching and a virtualy musical history lesson."
Soul Track
YouTube: The Chess Records Story 01, 02, 03, 04

Michael Nyman: Composer in Progress, In Concert (2010)

"This special DVD boxed set pairs an insightful documentary on composer Michael Nyman's artistic life with a live concert recording of the Michael Nyman Band at Studio Halle. Known for his minimalist soundtracks to such movies as Man on Wire and The Piano, Michael Nyman also has an increasing passion for film and photography, as Composer in Progress demonstrates."
amazon
YouTube: Michael Nyman in Progress - Trailer, Silvia Beck. Michael Nyman. Composer in Progress. 2010, Michael Nyman in Concert

2008 April: Michael Nyman, 2010 August: Decay Music, 2010 December: After Extra Time, 2011 March: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2011 August: Michael Nyman Band, 2011 December: The Draughtsman's Contract - Peter Greenaway, 2012 March: Time Lapse.

Montage

Wikipedia - "Montage ... is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information. The term has been used in various contexts. It was introduced to cinema primarily by Eisenstein, and early Russian directors used it as a synonym for creative editing. In France the word 'montage' simply denotes cutting. The term 'montage sequence' has been used primarily by British and American studios, which refers to the common technique as outlined in this article. The montage sequence is usually used to suggest the passage of time, rather than to create symbolic meaning as it does in Soviet montage theory. From the 1930s to the 1950s, montage sequences often combined numerous short shots with special optical effects (fades, dissolves, split screens, double and triple exposures) dance and music. They were usually assembled by someone other than the director or the editor of the movie."
Wikipedia
W - Soviet montage theory
YouTube: Soviet Montage Cinema, Eisenstein's 5 "methods" of montage
YouTube: Movies in movies: A montage

Life in Five Seconds

"In our jet-fuelled, caffeine-induced, celebrity-a-minute world, who actually has the time to learn a thing or two? C’mon, let’s face it, life’s too bloody short. What you need is instant knowledge. Life in Five Seconds takes 200 world events, inventions, great lives, places, animals and cultural icons that you really need to know about, and then, hey presto!, cuts away all the useless details. The Last Supper, Lady Gaga, the moon landings, the Mona Lisa, the invention of electricity, Ikea, the Berlin Wall, celebrity chefs and everything in-between. This is the perfect gift for anyone with a sense of humour … and a short attention span."
Life in Five Seconds
YouTube: Quercus Books, Life In Five Seconds: The Beatles, Life In Five Seconds: Minotaur, Life In Five Seconds: Michael Jackson