Harper's Magazine

Wikipedia - "Harper's Magazine (also called Harper's) is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in June 1850, it is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (Scientific American is the oldest). The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010. Harper's Magazine has won many National Magazine Awards."
Wikipedia
Harper's Magazine

Emmet Gowin

Maggie and Donna Jo, Danville, Virginia
Wikipedia - "Emmet Gowin (born 1941 in Danville, Virginia) is an American photographer. He first gained attention in the 1970s with his intimate portraits of his wife, Edith, and her family. Later he turned his attention to the landscapes of the American West, taking aerial photographs of places that had been changed by humans or nature, including the Hanford Site, Mount St. Helens, and the Nevada Test Site. Gowin taught at Princeton University for 25 years and has influenced an entire generation of new photographers through his own work and his academic career."
Wikipedia
Pace/MacGill Gallery
John Paul Caponigro
Imaging a Shattering Earth
YouTube: Emmet Gowin

Rudy Green

"Rudy Green (also spelled Greene on the label of some of his recordings) is not exactly a household name. Rock n roll fans may know him from his two wildest songs, 'Juicy Fruit' and 'Wild Life', which have been included on several compilations that claim to offer 'frantic', 'red hot' or 'screaming' R&R. ... Only two photographs have ever been published of Green, one of which shows him picking with the guitar behind his head, a stunt for which T-Bone Walker was well known. The guitar playing on Green's recordings shows him to be an ardent disciple of T-Bone. Rudy made his first, unremarkable recordings in Nashville, for Jim Bulleit's Bullet label in 1946."
Rockabilly
YouTube: My Mumblin' Baby, Juicy Fruit, Wild Life, Teeny weeny baby, It's you I love

Kate Brooks

Wikipedia - "Kate Brooks (born 1977) is an American photojournalist who has covered the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan since September 11, 2001. At age 20, while studying Russian and photography, Kate became actively involved in the plight of Russian orphans, starting a non-profit aid group to help the children at an institution outside of Moscow, while documenting their lives. ... Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Brooks moved to Pakistan to photograph the impact of U.S. foreign policy on the region and life in post-Taliban Afghanistan. In 2003, she covered the American invasion of Iraq and the beginning of the insurgency for Time Magazine."
Wikipedia
Kate Brooks
The Atlantic: Photojournalist Kate Brooks Reveals the Human Cost of War (Video)

Cuba 2012 (BBC Documentary)

"Adventurer and journalist Simon Reeve heads to Cuba to find a communist country in the middle of a capitalist revolution. Two years ago Cuba announced the most sweeping and radical economic reforms the country has seen in decades. From ending state rationing to cutting one million public-sector jobs, one of the last communist bastions in the world has begun rolling back the state on an unprecedented scale."
YouTube: Cuba 2012 58:50

2009 April: Chelsea Visits Havana, 2011 June: Robert Farris Thompson, 2012 September: Where Is Cuba Going?, 2012 November: Carlos Garaicoa.

Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)

Wikipedia - "Neil Young: Heart of Gold is a 2006 documentary and concert film by Jonathan Demme, featuring Neil Young. The film was made in the summer of 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and was released to theaters on February 10, 2006. The film documents Young's premiere of his songs from his album Prairie Wind at the Ryman Auditorium."
Wikipedia
Jonathan Demme Talks NEIL YOUNG JOURNEYS
amazon
YouTube: Neil Young: Heart of Gold CLIP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Los Angeles Review of Books

"The Los Angeles Review of Books is a nonprofit, multimedia literary and cultural arts magazine that combines the great American tradition of the serious book review with the evolving technologies of the Web. We are a community of writers, critics, journalists, artists, filmmakers, and scholars dedicated to promoting and disseminating the best that is thought and written, with an enduring commitment to the intellectual rigor, the incisiveness, and the power of the written word."
Los Angeles Review of Books
W - Los Angeles Review of Books
Soundcloud

Detropia (2012)

Wikipedia - "Detropia is a 2012 documentary film, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, about the city of Detroit, Michigan. It focuses on the decline of the economy of Detroit due to long-term changes in the automobile industry, and the effects that the decline has had on the city's residents and infrastructure."
Wikipedia
Detropia (Video)
PBS: Independent Lens (Video)
Washington Post
NY Times

Hamburger

Wikipedia - "The hamburger most likely first appeared in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The modern hamburger was a product of the culinary needs of a society that was rapidly changing due to industrialization, and therefore, people had less time to prepare as well as to consume meals. Americans contend that they were the first to combine two slices of bread and a steak of ground beef into a 'hamburger sandwich'. Part of the controversy over the origin of the hamburger is because the two basic ingredients, bread and beef, were prepared and consumed separately for many years before their combination. Shortly after its creation, the hamburger was prepared with all of the now typically characteristic trimmings, including onions, lettuce, and sliced pickles."
W - History of the hamburger
W - Hamburger
A Hamburger Today
Online Etymology Dictionary
YouTube: Hamburger America Trailer, Hamburger America Documentary 54:03

Out to Lunch! - Eric Dolphy

"Out to Lunch! stands as Eric Dolphy's magnum opus, an absolute pinnacle of avant-garde jazz in any form or era. Its rhythmic complexity was perhaps unrivaled since Dave Brubeck's Time Out, and its five Dolphy originals -- the jarring Monk tribute 'Hat and Beard,' the aptly titled 'Something Sweet, Something Tender,' the weirdly jaunty flute showcase 'Gazzelloni,' the militaristic title track, the drunken lurch of 'Straight Up and Down' -- were a perfect balance of structured frameworks, carefully calibrated timbres, and generous individual freedom. Much has been written about Dolphy's odd time signatures, wide-interval leaps, and flirtations with atonality."
allmusic
W - Out to Lunch!
YouTube: "Hat and Beard" – 8:24; "Something Sweet, Something Tender" – 6:02; "Gazzelloni" – 7:22; "Out to Lunch" – 12:06; "Straight Up and Down" – 8:19.

John Fahey - Railroad (1983)

Wikipedia - "Railroad is an album by American fingerstyle guitarist and composer John Fahey, released in 1983. It was originally released as Railroad 1 by mistake. The Shanachie Records reissue is correctly labeled as Railroad. It was his last principal recording for Takoma Records, the label he founded in 1959. ... [Stewart Voegtlin] commented Fahey 'coasted through enough records; he labored honestly at others. Railroad undoubtedly shows both approaches, but holds enough magic in its shallow well to keep those that seek a bare bones account of the man that made it mired in stubborn stories that do little to lay the self-proclaimed primitive bare.'"
Wikipedia
Stylus
YouTube: The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick, Delta Dog Through The Book Of Revelation, Life Is Like A Mountain Railroad, Imitation Train Whistles Po' Boy, Summer Cat By My Door, Afternoon Espee Through Salem, Enigmas And Perplexities Of The Norfolk And Western, Charlie Becker's Meditation

2009 March: John Fahey, 2011 March: Your Past Comes Back to Haunt You (The Fonotone Years 1958-1965), 2012 September: Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice), 2013 February: The Mill Pond

Open Content Program

Eugène Atget. Fête du Trône, 1923
"... The Getty adopted the Open Content Program because we recognized the need to share images of works of art in an unrestricted manner, freely, so that all those who create or appreciate art—scholars, artists, art lovers, and entrepreneurs—will have greater access to high-quality digital images for their studies and projects. Art inspires us, and imagination and creativity lead to artistic expressions that expand knowledge and understanding. The Getty sincerely hopes that people will use the open content images for a wide range of activities and that they will share the fruits of their labors with others."
The Getty - Open Content Program
Getty Museum Launches ‘Open Content Program,’ Shares 4,600 Images Free
The Public Domain Review
Explore the Collection
Getty Search Gateway
Videos: Touring the Collection

Rutu Modan

Wikipedia - "Rutu Modan (Hebrew: רותו מודן‎, born 1966) is an Israeli illustrator and comic book artist. ... Modan's first full length graphic novel tells the story of Koby Franco, a 20-something cab driver working in Tel Aviv. Franco's mundane everyday life is interrupted when a female soldier approaches him, claiming his estranged father was killed by a suicide bomber at a train station. He and the young woman begin searching for clues to see if Franco's father, whom the soldier was romantically involved with, is dead or alive."
Wikipedia
The Comics Journal: The Rutu Modan Interview
heflinreps:
The Paris Review - A Week in Culture: Rutu Modan, Cartoonist
NY Times: Rutu Modan - Mixed Emotions
amazon: Rutu Modan

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi

"Gifted with a deep, gutsy voice and a talent for writing songs that reflect on the daily life and struggles of the people of his homeland, Oliver 'Tuku' Mtukudzi is one of Zimbabwe's greatest artists. His blending of Southern African music traditions, including mbira, mbaqanga, jit, and the traditional drumming styles of the Korekore, has created such a unique sound that it has been respectfully dubbed 'Tuku music.'"
allmusic
Wikipedia
NPR: 'Left Alone,' Oliver Mtukudzi Sees Music As Therapy (Video)
YouTube: Kupokana, Neria, Todii, Ndakuvara, Pindurai Mambo, Ngoma'ne Hosho, Kunze Kwadoka

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place

"A century ago, one section of Vienna played host to Adolf Hitler, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Tito, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Stalin. In January 1913, a man whose passport bore the name Stavros Papadopoulos disembarked from the Krakow train at Vienna's North Terminal station. Of dark complexion, he sported a large peasant's moustache and carried a very basic wooden suitcase."
BBC

Wikipedia - "Travesties is a play by Tom Stoppard. The play centres on the figure of Henry Carr, an elderly man who reminisces about Zürich in 1917 during the First World War, and his interactions with James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses, Tristan Tzara during the rise of Dada, and Lenin leading up to the Russian Revolution, all of whom were living in Zürich at that time."
W - Travesties

James Brown - There It Is (1972)

"Brown's Polydor debut, Hot Pants, was nothing more than an inferior remake of the title track baited with a batch of half-baked vamps. There It Is, his second Polydor studio album, was a marked improvement. Not that he put much into this one either. This 1972 effort collected five of his best early-'70s tracks and mixed in minimal filler. 'Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing' and 'There It Is (Parts 1 and 2),' with its bebop-style horns, were both innovative and hard driving to a fault. ..."
allmusic
W - There Is Is
YouTube: Sinister Salad Musikal's Weblog (Video)

The Books We’ve Lost - Charles Simic

Browsing on Charing Cross Road, London
"Used-book stores are disappearing in our day at an even greater rate than regular book stores. Until ten years ago or so, there used to be a good number of them in every city and even in some smaller towns, catering to a clientele of book lovers who paid them a visit in search of some rare or out-of-print book, or merely to pass the time poking around. Even in their heyday, how their owners made a living was always a puzzle to me, since typically their infrequent customers bought nothing, or very little, and when they did, their purchase didn’t amount to more than a few dollars."
The New York Review of Books

The Revolution of St. Vincent

"Record Kicks has released a monster reissue of a Tropical Funk Holy Grail with The Revolution of St. Vincent’s 'The Little You Say'. This 45, originally on the Wirl label has been coveted and sought after by Funk vinyl collectors for some time. Hailing from the island of St. Vincent and founded by Harold 'Ploomie' Lewis in the early 1970′s, this side has been in demand by many collectors and usually carries a very high price tag. With an island heavy vibe, this organ and horn stomper will not disappoint."
Flea Market Funk (Video)
YouTube: The Little You Say, Discoringue

Essence - Lucinda Williams (2001)

"Between her well-documented determination to retail full control of her music and the plain-spoken willfulness of her best-known songs, Lucinda Williams is practically the working definition of a strong woman you do not want to mess with, but she reveals a very different side of her musical personality on her sixth album, Essence. Subtle and often stark, Essence is an unusually quiet and frequently downbeat set that depicts a fragile emotional vulnerability which rarely makes its presence felt in Williams' music; there's an unadorned longing in songs like 'Blue' and 'Lonely Girls' that's new and deeply affecting, and the leaf-in-the-breeze quaver of Williams' voice on 'I Envy the Wind' is as heart-rending as anything she's ever committed to tape."
allmusic
W - Essence
The Graham Weekly Album Review #1242
YouTube: Essence, Out of touch, Blue, Reason to Cry, Get right with God, Steal your love, Lonely Girl

2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks", 2013 June: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

The Black Mountain Review

"First impressions. Some people take their cue from a handshake, the eyes, a bank statement, or the shine of one’s shoes. I make a beeline for the bookshelves. Forget reading palms. One’s library is a window into one’s soul. Go through my books and I stand naked before you. So I was excited to get a series of e-mails from Steve Clay of Granary Books attaching selections from the library of Robert Creeley. The institutions had first crack at the lot and, if there were no takers, the doors were thrown open to the collectors."
RealityStudio
W - Black Mountain poets
Poetry Foundation: "Projective Verse" (1950) by Charles Olson
MimeoMimeo
YouTube: The Rise of The Black Mountain Review

Pina Bausch - Ahnen (1988)

"One of the world's most influential choreographers, she is based in an obscure German town where her avant garde, often violent, work attracted furious hostility. Her own company rebelled over her methods but more recently, after she overcame personal tragedy, critics have noted a lighter touch. John O'Mahony reports."
Guardian
Ahnen (1988)
Ursula Kaufmann
Bettina Stöß Photographie

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

Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles

"Paintings in Proust is a companion guide to a monumental twentieth century work of art. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, one of the most expansive literary creations ever composed, is a vast novel teeming with visual references. Author Eric Karpeles has combined his experiences as painter and writer to create a lavishly illustrated book that illuminates the winding corridors of Proust's singular, labyrinthine masterpiece. For newcomers to Proust's work, Paintings in Proust functions as a complementary guidebook, providing a firmer ground from which to undertake the task of plunging into a novel famously known for its complexity and its length."
Paintings in Proust
Telegraph
amazon
vimeo: Radio Proust

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust.

Indonesian gamelan medley from Java, Sunda and Bali

"Indonesian Gamelan Medley from Java, Sunda and Bali performed by Amadinda Percussion Group, Triginta Percussion, Péter Szalai and László Tömösközi (2008).
YouTube: Indonesian Gamelan Medley from Java, Sunda and Bali

2009 October: Electric Junkyard Gamelan, 2011 March: Gamelan, 2011 June: Margaret Mead & Gregory Bateson - Trance and Dance in Bali, 2011 June: Gamelan gong kebyar, 2012 March: Joko Sutrisno & Group.

The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village

"Prepare yourself for a great walking tour of Greenwich Village through historical periods and many changing landscape. Wear good shoes and bring a camera, for the book is almost exhausting in its coverage. Also bring a good map, as the author and editors provide none and surprisingly too few historical photographs. The first thing to do is Google a good map and print it, for John Strausbaugh refers to streets and locations on every page. For images he substitutes his detailed and comprehensive historical research of the place and its personalities enhanced by his storytelling ability and some beautifully descriptive detail, as in..."
New York Journal of Books
Pinterest
Untapped Cities
WSJ: When the Village Was the Vanguard
amazon
YouTube: Author Traces History of Greenwich Village

2009 May: Washington Square Park, 2010 January: Judson Memorial Church, 2011 February: Greenwich Village, 2011 July: East Village, Manhattan, 2011 September: The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920–1925, 2012 July: MacDougal Street.

March 16–20, 1992 - Uncle Tupelo

"Produced by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, March 16-20, 1992 represents Uncle Tupelo's full evolution into a true country unit; with the exception of the eerie squalls of guitar feedback which haunt Jeff Tweedy's mesmerizing 'Wait Up,' there's virtually no evidence of the trio's punk heritage. Instead, the all-acoustic album -- a combination of Tupelo originals and well-chosen traditional songs -- taps into the very essence of backwoods culture, its music rooted in the darkest corners of Appalachian life. An inescapable sense of dread grips this collection, from the large-scale threat depicted in the stunning rendition of the Louvin Brothers' 'The Great Atomic Power' to the fatalism of the worker anthems 'Grindstone' and 'Coalminers'; even the character studies, including a revelatory 'Moonshiner,' are relentlessly grim. A vivid glimpse at the harsh realities of rural existence, March 16-20, 1992 is a brilliant resurrection of a bygone era of American folk artistry."
allmusic
Wikipedia
YouTube: Grindstone, Coalminers, Wait Up, The Great Atomic Power, Moonshiner, Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down, Black eye, I Wish My Baby Was Born, Shaky Ground

2011 July: Uncle Tupelo, 2012 December: UNCLE TUPELO Part – Thoughts On An Artist / Looking For A Way Out,

Daft Punk "Lose Yourself To Dance" AKA Daft Signz

"Every wednesday at a suburban Los Angeles park in North Hollywood, a group of talented individuals come together to create a form of self-expression you may have never experienced before: a mind-blowing synthesis of sign spinning and street dance. Daft Signz celebrates this California-born phenomenon."
vimeo: Daft Punk "Lose Yourself To Dance" AKA Daft Signz

Snap Noir: Snapshot Stories from the Collection of Robert E. Jackson

"A total of 61 black and white photographs, framed in white/black and matted, and hung against grey and white walls in the main rooms of the gallery. All of the photographs are vintage gelatin silver prints, made by unknown photographers from generally undated negatives. The prints are arranged into groups ranging in size from 4 to 21 prints. All of the prints come from the collection of Robert E. Jackson. There is no photography allowed in the gallery, so the installation shots at right are via the Pace/MacGill website."
DLK COLLECTION
NPR: Photography Phone Call: Are Snapshots Dead? (vimeo)

DJ Kool Herc - 11 August, 1973

Wikipedia - "Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), also known as Kool Herc, DJ Kool Herc and Kool DJ Herc, is a Jamaican-born American DJ who is credited with originating hip hop music in the early 1970s in The Bronx, New York City. His playing of hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown was an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s. Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record, which emphasized the drum beat—the 'break'—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two turntable set-up of disco DJs, Campbell used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using hard funk, rock, and records with Latin percussion, formed the basis of hip hop music."
Wikipedia
Kool Herc: We are Still Here on the Block as Hip Hop Turns 40 This Weekend (Video)
New York: 40th anniversary - The Holy House of Hip-hop
BBC: 40 years on from the party where hip hop was born
amazon: Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
YouTube: Kool Herc "Merry-Go-Round" technique, Kool Herc Old School

2010 May: Kon + Amir Present: The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Samples Of All Time, 2011 July:The Wheels Of Steel: An Ode To Turntables, 2012 April: B-boying, 2012 August: ‘Hip Hop Family Tree’ Comics Explain Genesis of the Genre, 2012 November: An Intro To Rebel Hip-Hop Of The Arab Revolutions, 2012 November: Cuba Hip Hop.

Art Made from Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved, Transformed

"They stalk books with X-Acto knives, tiny sandblasters, glue, paint, scissor, and a shared obsession for giving new form to old things. The resulting sculptures, as pictured in the upcoming Art Made From Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved and Transformed (Chronicle Books), extend the shelf life for phone books, encyclopedias, pulp fiction and fairy tales. Instead of winding up in the landfill, ink-on-paper artifacts can now be rejiggered as astonishing text objects that have nothing to do with words."
Stories That Jump Off The Page: See Stunning Art Made From Books
amazon

Arthur Rimbaud Documentary

"Slide show of images from the life and travels of poet Arthur Rimbaud. Images of 19th century Charleville, Paris, the Commune, France, London, Belgium and many photographs of Aden and Harar taken by Rimbaud himself. Infamous manuscripts in Rimbaud's handwriting; biographical drawings by Delahaye and friends."
YouTube: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado).