A Definitive Ranking of Every Character on 'The West Wing'

"As of this month, The West Wing is 15 years old. We'll pause as you absorb how long you've been without Jed Bartlet and his merry band in your life. Doesn't it feel like just yesterday we all fell in love with Aaron Sorkin's bastion of liberal idealism wrapped up in fast-paced dialogue usually said while walking? ... But what those shows lack that The West Wing had in spades was a collection of well-written, heart-infused characters. These were the kind of people you wanted to know in your own life. They could make you feel inspired about politics in our nation's worst moments of cynicism. Simply put, it was one of the best TV ensembles ever."
TheWire (Video)
W - The West Wing
WIRED Summer Binge-Watching Guide: The West Wing (Video)
amazon

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

Siouxie Sioux
"Today I am pleased to bring you samplings of a handful of my favorite bands. It so happens they are all mostly-female or female-fronted punk bands. This fact to me seems almost incidental to my enjoyment—these are all fantastic musicians, songwriters, and/or personalities. And yet their commonalities are highly remarkable all the same. Punk introduced aggressive, all-female bands like The Slits and frontwomen like Siouxie Sioux who never had to play vulnerable objects, desperate seductresses, jilted lovers, femme fatales, etc. and yet still manifested their power in their sexuality as well as in their fierce intelligence and fury. In the late ’70s, women strode out in front as leaders in punk scenes in the UK and US, and helped to change the gender politics of rock and roll."
Open Culture (Video)
W - All-female band
Women of the punk era
[PDF] Rip “Her” To Shreds: How the Women of 1970s
We Are the Grrls: Women in Music Before, During, and After Riot Grrl
[PDF] The History of Rock Music: 1989-1994

2009 November: Riot Grrrl, 2010 October: Ari Up (17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010), 2013 February: Women in Punk, 2013 July: Grrrl, Collected

Erik Kwakkel

6. Drawings on a collection of books from the Pillone collection (Christie's)
"I am a book historian at Leiden University, The Netherlands, where I study medieval manuscripts – books from before the invention of print. My research and teaching is hands-on, with real objects on the table. A good day for me is having medieval dirt on my hands. I am also directing a project on twelfth-century manuscript culture: 'Turning Over a New Leaf: Manuscript Innovation in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance'. If you want to know more about my work, check out my research profile or my project’s website. Also, if you are interested in watching some lectures I gave, some of them are available here."
medievalbooks
Erik Kwakkel

Tom Clark - Edward Dorn (1929-1999)

Stripped bare by drought and grasshoppers. Grant County, North Dakota: July 1936
"... Ed was born and grew up in Eastern Illinois, on the banks of the river Embarrass (a tributary of the Wabash). He never knew his father. His mother was of French-Canadian ancestry, his maternal grandfather a half-Indian Quebecois railroad man ('master pipefitter in the age of steam'). He attended a one-room school, and while in high school played billiards with the local undertaker for a dime a point. 'Brought up off and on during / the intensity of depression nomadism,' he followed the wandering work-searches of his several 'exodus relatives' down 'bleak grit avenues' of a childhood whose anxious, difficult instruction, though he was always shy of speaking of it, never ceased to underlie and complicate the moral and historical vision of his work."
Jacket# Nine
Tom Clark - Edward Dorn: On the Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck

2007 December: Edward Dorn, 1929-1999, 2011 February: Slinger, 2011 April: The North Atlantic Turbine, 2012 September: Fulcrum Press.

The 10 Best Townes Van Zandt Songs

"Townes Van Zandt, the elegant Texas troubadour who authored some of the finest songs ever written over the course of his 52 troubled years, was always quick to make it known that he was very much in on the cruel joke of his destiny. During a checkered, if frequently brilliant, recording career — often derailed by label concerns, production difficulties and Townes’ own recalcitrance — he produced a handful of outstanding albums possessing gallows humor titles like The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. Johnny Cash once famously bragged in song about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. Townes seemed committed to a similar experiment on his own physical being, drinking with such masochistic abandon and candid reportage that he made himself a veritable art project of personal desiccation — he would carefully record the minutes as all of us watched him die a Kafkan death."
stereogum (Video)
W - Townes Van Zandt

2014 March: Heartworn Highways - James Szalapski (1975)

Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals

"Born in 1932 and raised near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a steelworker family, Michals was a pioneer in the 1960s when he broke away from established traditions of documentary and fine art photography. Rather than respecting the primacy of the photographic print, Michals added handwritten messages and poems to the paper surface. Instead of accepting the widely recognized dominance of a powerful single image, so respected by masters like Ansel Adams or Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michals created sequences of multiple images to convey visual stories. He has always considered himself to be a storyteller. Inspired by Surrealist painter Réné Magritte, Michals experimented with double and triple exposures to expand the meaning and interpretation of his subject."
Carnegie Museum of Art
Google
amazon
Duane Michals: The StoryTeller (vimeo)

2011 October: Duane Michals, 2014 May:The Last Sentimentalist: A Q. & A. with Duane Michals

Billy Bragg - Peel Session

"Because Bragg started his career as a solo act, these live-in-the-studio radio transcriptions don't offer anything you can't find on Back to Basics. But fanatics will enjoy the occasional lyric deviations, and 'A13 Trunk Road to the Sea' (a rewrite of 'Route 66' with British directions) is a keeper."
allmusic
W - The Peel Sessions Album (Billy Bragg album)
Billy Bragg: The Complete Peel Sessions (1983-2001) FIVE CD SET!
YouTube: Peel Session 1991, Peel Session 1983, Greetings To The New Brunette (Peel Session), A Lover Sings
YouTube: All you Fascists (are bound to lose)

2011 November: Billy Bragg, 2012 November: Strange Things Happen (Live on The Tube 1984), 2012 December: The Internationale, 2013 May: Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions, 2014 June: Tooth & Nail (2013)

America a Prophecy

"... This groundbreaking anthology from the early 1970s takes such an approach in presenting the poetry of the North American continent, from pre-Columbian times to the present. It includes many recognized poets of the period, though appearing here in often unexpected contexts, and others who have been overlooked but whose contributions to the development of poetry are revolutionary. Starting from their own moment, the editors have read back into the more distant past and selected from broad American traditions works that had thitherto been considered outside the realm of poetry proper: the native poetry of the American continent, African-American sermons, blues and gospels, and the sacred, often innovative poetry of such radical religious groups as the Shakers."
SPD
amazon
Seven Words for Jerome Rothenberg by Peter Middleton
Jacket2: Helen Vendler on "America: A Prophecy," ed. Rothenberg & Quasha, with Rothenberg's reply

Moyra Davey: Burn the Diaries

"ICA presents a new body of work by Moyra Davey based on the artist’s recent reading of Jean Genet. The act of reading has long been integral to Davey’s work, which is full of images of books; however this is the first time Davey has ever made a book specifically for a gallery installation. Moving between photography, writing, and film, Moyra Davey’s highly personal and methodical work draws deeply on the form of the essay. Her art interprets and critiques her own experience as an artist through a generous frame of literary, philosophical, and cultural references, drawing as well on objects, memories, and even dust. Assembling a rich variety of texts, Davey uses them as the materials from which she constructs an almost romantic yet decisively biting point of view."
ICA
artbook@
INTERVIEW WITH MOYRA DAVEY
art21

The Perfect Beat

"We make ourselves lists in order to know if we think what we think. I’ve wondered for years—while feeling uncomfortable with the wondering—whether there are any 'perfect recordings.' Obviously, there aren’t. But there are records that had a significant impact on me, as both a musician and a listener, and it seemed like something would come out of arraying them as a list. Maybe. 'Perfect' is an appealing word when compared to 'best': it’s patently ridiculous, but it also hints at the mystical belief that there are no mistakes. ... So here are the five volumes of lists, as Twitter timelines and Spotify playlists; they are also available to stream as a single Rdio playlist featuring all two hundred songs. Because of catalogue holes and a few cursor mistakes, all three lists are slightly different. No single answer, then, which feels right."
New Yorker

Photographs from the Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

"Phillips is thrilled to showcase an exhibition of highlights from the sale of Photographs from the Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, to be offered in New York and London in Fall 2014. A leading international institution, the Art Institute of Chicago has been a pioneer in collecting artwork from every place and period, amassing one of the most reputable and comprehensive collections in the world. As part of that pioneering mission, the Art Institute has shown photographs as art since 1900, and for nearly 65 years the museum has pursued a vigorous acquisitions program of tremendous range and excellence."
Phillips
Phillips: Auction

Carnival of Souls - Pere Ubu (2014)

"Pere Ubu's 18th album, Carnival Of Souls, inspired by and derived from the band's live soundtracking of Herk Harvey's classic 1962 B-movie of the same name, is out on Fire Records next Monday, September 8. As is currently stated in bold on the front page of the band's website: 'the album is not about the movie' but rather 'a complex sensual response to living in a world overrun by monkeys and strippers who tickle your ears, cajole you to join in with their cavorting and then become vindictive when you decline'. It is also a wonderfully dark, pulsating road trip through a nightmare landscape mapped out in analogue and digital electronics, treated guitars, clarinet, voodoo drums and of course, David Thomas' unmistakeable otherworldly vocals."
The Quietus
Home of Ubu Projex
Pere Ubu – New Album Carnival of Souls (Video)
DROWNED IN SOUND (Video)
YouTube: Irene

2008 April: Pere Ubu, 2010 July: Pere Ubu - 1, 2012 November: David Thomas And The Pedestrians - Variations On A Theme, 2013 February: Dub Housing.

You Are Quite Unnecessary, Young Man!

Antonin Artaud
"The English translation of Roberto Bolaño’s excellent final novella, A Little Lumpen Novelita, is out this month. The book opens with an epigraph by Antonin Artaud, who was born today in 1896: 'All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.' Since I read it about a month ago, I’ve thought of this quotation every day, often as I’m writing—you can imagine the rat-a-tat of my keyboard punctuated with an occasional 'All writing is garbage.' It’s a bracing sentiment, taunting and misanthropic, and a truer one than most of us would care to admit."
The Paris Review

2009 November: Antonin Artaud, 2011 August: La Coquille et le Clergyman - 1926, Germaine Dulac.

UR New York

"Our mission as a collective is to create an urban industrial esthetic to our art by combining mediums such as photography, silk-screening, graphic design, and graffiti,using elements of our everyday lives we create surreal environments which individuals can relate to in one way or another. Each piece tells the story of our lives, our struggles, and our environments. We want to inspire creativity amongst people specifically the youth so they can pick up where we leave off."
UR New York (Video)

Fela Kuti - Alagbon Close (1975)

"Fela wrote Alagabon Close to lampoon the police after he was detained at the police station — which, not coincidentally, is located in a cul de sac of the same name. In this deeply anti-establishment song, Fela describes the harsh tactics that the police employ to control society, detailing their favoritism of the wealthy elite and their mistreatment of the poor. In Alagbon Close, Fela tells us, you can be detained indefinitely, you will be brutalized, you will be treated as an animal — the police have no respect for human beings. The song represents one of the first times anyone had directly taken on the Nigerian authorities in such a overt, brash manner. 'I No Get Eye For Back', a song emanating from a lyric in 'Alagbon Close', is a more melodic, instrumentally focused piece."
Fela Kuti
sputnik music
YouTube: Alagbon Close, I No Get Eye For Back

Cobra Records

Wikipedia - "Cobra Records (together with its Artistic subsidiary) was an independent record label that operated from 1956–1959. The label was important for launching the recording careers of Chicago blues artists Otis Rush, Magic Sam and Buddy Guy and 'signaled the arrival of a new generation of [blues] artists and a new sound ... to be called the West Side Sound.' Cobra Records was started on Chicago's West Side in 1956 by Eli Toscano (a record store and television-repair shop owner), with help from promoter Howard Bedno. When his previous record label, Abco Records, failed to generate much interest, Toscano approached Willie Dixon about working for Cobra. Dissatisfied with his arrangement with Chess Records, Dixon joined Cobra."
Wikipedia
Grooveshark : The Cobra Records Story (Video)

"Waterfront--Brooklyn" ca. 1934 - Harry Shokler

"This image shows a busy Brooklyn harbor with a view of Manhattan in the distance. Many artists during the 1930s focused on laborers and industrial scenes to emphasize the value of hard work in pulling the country out of the Depression. The smoking chimneys, groups of workers, and tracks in the snow evoke a sense of activity and perseverance in the face of hardship. To Americans in the 1930s, the skyscrapers of New York symbolized the city’s achievements and sustained the hope that the country’s economy would recover."
Smithsonian American Art Museum

A Little Chaos: A Short Crime Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Enfant Terrible of New German Cinema

"If you ever want to feel like you have been wasting your life, look to the short but spectacularly productive life of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Within fifteen years – the span of his professional career –Fassbinder cranked out 40, count ‘em 40, feature films. That’s roughly 3 movies a year. But that’s not all. He acted in 36 movies, some his own, some directed by others. He also wrote and directed 24 stage plays, did two TV series and a handful of radio plays. The man was motivated. Of course, he also died of a drug overdose at the age of 37 and his personal life was so notoriously self destructive that it was the subject of at least one documentary. Make of that what you will."
Open Culture (vimeo)

2014 May: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 2014 June: Effi Briest (1974), 2014 July: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974).

Afropunk Before Afropunk

"Last week, for the first time in years, I missed the Afropunk festival. The musical movement began as an extension of a 2003 documentary of the same name, a wonderful film conceived and directed by James Spooner. The festival has grown considerably since the days it was held on a small street across from the Brooklyn Academy of Music. While Spooner himself has been long gone from the scene, Afropunk continues to grow under the watchful eye of music industry vets Matthew Morgan and Jocelyn Cooper. Although the two have gotten flack from some who think that most of the acts included lately aren’t punk enough, criticism hasn’t stopped the festival from becoming one of the most popular NYC summer events, attracting crowds from across the world."
Ebony (Video)
AfroPunk
49 Photos: Hot Style, Slammin' Music At Afropunk Fest In Brooklyn (Video)
W - Afro-Punk: The Rock
Bright Lights
YouTube: Afro-Punk - Trailer
YouTube: Afro-Punk: The Rock [FULL-LENGTH] 1:06:52

Back to the World - Curtis Mayfield (1973)

"Back to the World, the first album Curtis Mayfield recorded and released after hitting number one with the intense inner-city vignette Superfly, returned him to a steady balance of optimism for the future and direct social commentary regarding the problems of his people. The lead single, 'Future Shock,' was inspired by Alvin Toffler's 1970 book of the same name, which warned readers that industrial society was changing so radically that environmental and social problems could be endemic for decades. ..."
allmusic
W - Back to the World
Rolling Stone
Back to Living: Curtis Mayfield and the Making of 'New World Order'
YouTube: Pusherman, Back to the world, New World Order, Right On For The Darkness

2013 June: Roots (1971), 2014 May: Super Fly (1972), 2014 July: There's No Place Like America Today (1975).

Stefanie Klavens

"Stefanie Klavens has a love for 20th century pop culture and Americana. In her articulate photographic series, titled 'Vanishing Drive-Ins,' Klavens documents the disintegration of the American drive-in. Once a popular social and entertainment aspect, it has been slowly disappearing from the United States. As Klavens explains, 'The drive-in has suffered the same fate as the single screen theater. Before World War II the drive-in was a modest trend, but after the war the craze began in earnest, peaking in popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960’s. Drive-ins were ideal for the modern family, everyone jumped into the car, no babysitter needed.'"
The Art Of Disappearing: Stefanie Klavens Documents Vanishing Drive-Ins
Stefanie Klavens
‘Celluloid Dreams’: A Photographers Quest to Preserve the Memory of Historic Theaters Across America

2010 July: Drive-in theater

Brian Eno - Making Space

"Released in 2006 in collaboration with the Lumen London Gallery exhibit of 77 Million paintings, this is a compilation of previously recorded but unreleased tracks, some co-written by Leo Abrahams. All form a smooth, easy and quite spacey entity. Never officially released. Truly a stand-out compilation in the Eno canon, one of his best albums... all the more so for the surprise factor; this had been a very hard one to find."
YouTube: Making Space
New Yorker: Ambient Genius. The working life of Brian Eno.

The Pre-Raphaelite Legacy - British Art and Design

"The Pre-Raphaelites galvanized the British art world in the second half of the nineteenth century with a creative vision that resonates to this day. Rejecting contemporary academic practice as vacuous and stifling, they sought to produce work that was vivid, sincere, and uplifting. Their name affirms their initial sources of inspiration: medieval and early Renaissance art from before the era of Raphael. Originally championed by a small, secret brotherhood, the movement swiftly gained adherents, who introduced new approaches and ambitions."
MetMuseum
MetMuseum: Selected Exhibition Objects
NY Times: Pining for a Burnished Time, Long Ago and Far Away

A Road Through Shore Pine - Robert Adams

"... A Road Through Shore Pine focuses on a series of 18 never-before-seen photographs made in Nehalem Bay State Park, Oregon, in the fall of 2013. ... In A Road Through Shore Pine, [Robert] Adams traces a contemplative journey, first by automobile, then by foot, along an isolated, tree-bordered road to the sea. As presented through Adams’s 11 × 14-inch prints, the passage takes on the quality of metaphor, suggestive of life’s most meaningful journeys, especially its final ones. For this group of photographs, all of which were printed by Adams himself, the artist returned to the use of a medium-format camera, allowing the depiction of an intense amount of detail."
Fraenkel Gallery
amazon
Google

Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger

Wikipedia - "Franny and Zooey is a book by American author J. D. Salinger which comprises his short story "Franny" and novella Zooey /ˈzoʊ.iː/.  The two works were published together as a book in 1961, having originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1957, respectively. Franny and Zooey, both in their twenties, are the two youngest members of the Glass family, which was a frequent focus of Salinger's writings."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Review by JOHN UPDIKE, September 17, 1961
NYBook: Justice to J.D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger: Seeing the Glass Family (Franny and Zooey)

2010 January: J. D. Salinger, 2012 July: The Catcher in the Rye, 2012 October: Nine Stories.

Woody Guthrie - "The Ranger's Command", "To Hear Your Banjo Play", "Greenback Dollar", "John Henry"

"Come all of you cowboys all over this land,
I'll teach you the law of the Ranger's Command:
To hold a six shooter, and never to run
As long as there's bullets in both of your guns.

I met a fair maiden whose name I don't know;
I asked her to the roundup with me would she go;
She said she'd go with me to the cold roundup,
And drink that hard liquor from the cold, bitter cup.

We started for the canyon in the fall of the year
Expecting to get there with a herd of fat steer;
And the rustlers broke on us in the dead hours of night;
She 'rose from her warm bed, a battle to fight.

She 'rose from her warm bed with a gun in each hand,
Said: Come all of you cowboys and fight for your land,
Come all of you cowboys and don't ever run
As long as there's bullets in both of your guns."
YouTube: "The Ranger's Command", (Ranger's Command), "To Hear Your Banjo Play", "Greenback Dollar" and "John Henry", Pete Seeger talks about Woody Guthrie

Passing Stranger :: The East Vilage Poetry Walk

"Passing Stranger is a sound-rich chronicle of poets and poetry associated with the East Village. Narrated by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, it contains site-specific poetry, interviews with poets, archival recordings and music by John Zorn. Click on the blue dots to explore the virtual version or download the walking tour and go to the East Village for the ultimate experience."
Passing Stranger :: The East Vilage Poetry Walk (Video)
NY Times: Chasing Ghosts of Poets Past
Passing Stranger: Poetry in NYC's East Village (Video)

Anarchism in America (1983)

Wikipedia - "Anarchism in America is a 1983 documentary, directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, and produced by Pacific Street Films. ... The film includes interviews with influential anarchists Murray Bookchin, Paul Avrich, Jello Biafra, Mollie Steimer and Karl Hess, and with poet Kenneth Rexroth. It also discusses the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Revolution, the influence of Emma Goldman and the case of executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. The film labels anarchism as the only ideology that is staunchly anti-authoritarian, and discusses how anarchist ideals align with the revolutionary, independent spirit of America from rural communities to urban zones."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Anarchy in the U.S.A. - ‘Sasha and Emma,’ by Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich
Anarchist films (Video)
Anarchism and Film (Video)
YouTube: Anarchism in America Documentary (Part 1 of 8)

House of Cards

Wikipedia - "House of Cards is an American political drama television series, developed and produced by Beau Willimon. It is an adaptation of a previous BBC mini-series of the same name and is based on the novel by Michael Dobbs. ... Set in present-day Washington, D.C., House of Cards is the story of Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), a Democrat from South Carolina's 5th congressional district and House majority whip who, after being passed over for appointment as Secretary of State, initiates an elaborate plan to get himself into a position of power. His loyal wife, Claire Underwood (Robin Wright), assists him in this endeavor. The series is primarily about ruthless pragmatism, manipulation, power and doing bad things for the greater good."
Wikipedia
Salon: How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets
NY Times: Giving Viewers What They Want
YouTube: Original Series House of Cards - Trailer, Season 2 - Official Trailer, Genius Quotes of Frank Underwood, House of Cards (7min)

Sonny Clark - Cool Struttin' (1958)

"Recorded in 1958, this legendary date with the still-undersung Sonny Clark in the leader's chair also featured a young Jackie McLean on alto (playing with a smoother tone than he had before or ever did again), trumpeter Art Farmer, and the legendary rhythm section of bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones, both from the Miles Davis band. The set begins with one of the preeminent 'swinging medium blues' pieces in jazz history: the title track with its leveraged fours and eights shoved smoothly up against the walking bass of Chambers and the backbeat shuffle of Jones. Clark's solo, with its grouped fifths and sevenths, is a wonder of both understatement and groove, while Chambers' arco solo turns the blues in on itself. ..."
allmusic
W - Cool Struttin'
100 Greatest Jazz Albums
YouTube: Cool Struttin' 53:38