Lou Reed ~ Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984

"Full Concert Setlist: 0:00:00 - Sweet Jane 0:04:05 - I'm Waiting For My Man 0:08:15 - Martial Law 0:12:57 - Down At The Arcade 0:17:22 - Legendary Hearts 0:20:48 - There She Goes Again 0:24:48 - Turn Out the Light 0:29:58 - My Red Joystick 0:35:19 - Average Guy 0:38:50 - Street Hassle 0:44:24 - Sally Can't Dance 0:50:10 - Walk On The Wild Side 0:56:09 - Satellite Of Love 1:03:21 - New Sensation 1:11:08 - A Gift 1:14:56 - Doin' The Things That We Want To 1:19:12 - Waves Of Fear 1:22:27 - I Love You Suzanne 1:25:35 - White Light / White Heat 1:29:54 - Turn To Me 1:34:40 - Kill Your Sons 1:40:19 - Coney Island Baby 1:45:46 - Maybe - The Chantels 1:49:35 - He's Gone 1:53:18 - People Who Died - Jim Carroll 1:58:47 - Rock 'N' Roll Personnel: Lou Reed - Vocals, Guitar Robert Quine - Guitar Fernando Saunders - Bass, Vocals Peter Wood - Keyboards Lenny Ferarri - Drums"
No Depression
YouTube: Full Concert - 09/25/84 - Capitol Theatre (OFFICIAL) 

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale, 2013 October: Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), 2014 June: The Bells (1979), 2014 August: New York (1989).

David Lynch: ‘I’ve always loved Laura Palmer’

"If you follow David Lynch into the woods he will not hold your hand. He cannot guarantee you will find your way home. He truly hopes that you’ll emerge unscathed. The director, painter and transcendental meditation disciple has never been one to explain his work and, on the occasion of the release of the Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery box set, no measure of nostalgia will sway him. He’s sitting on a chaise longue in a hotel suite not far from his Los Angeles home when we meet, exuding charisma and an egoless confidence. At 68, Lynch looks vital, present. He’s dressed in his usual uniform: dark jacket, white shirt buttoned up, a blaze of rockabilly hair atop his weatherbeaten face." 24 July 2014
Guardian

2008 September: Twin Peaks, 2010 March: Twin Peaks: How Laura Palmer's death marked the rebirth of TV drama, 2011 October: Twin Peaks: The Last Days, 2014 October: Welcome to Twin Peaks.

Zoe Leonard: Analogue

Analogue detail. 1998–2007
"This exhibition presents Zoe Leonard’s Analogue—a landmark photographic project conceived over the course of a decade—which documents, in 412 color and black-and-white photographs, the eclipsed texture of 20th-century urban life as seen in little bodegas, mom-and-pop stores with decaying facades and quirky handwritten signs, and shop windows displaying a mixed assortment of products. Shooting with a vintage 1940s Rolleiflex camera, a tool 'left over from the mechanical age,' as Leonard puts it, the artist took her own neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side as a point of departure. She then followed the global trade of recycled merchandise—used T-shirts, old-fashioned shoes, discarded Coke advertisements, the old technology of Kodak camera shops—to far-flung places in Eastern Europe, Africa, Cuba, and Mexico...."
MoMA

2014 June: Available Light

A Food Tour of Seinfeld’s New York

"It’s no secret that 'Seinfeld,' arguably the most 'New York' comedy in recent television history, was actually filmed in Los Angeles. But that hasn’t stopped tourists from flocking to the Upper West Side of Manhattan to see if they really can order a 'big salad' from the 'Seinfeld restaurant.' With the show making its streaming television debut on Hulu this month, New York food spots like Tom’s Restaurant that have become synonymous with “Seinfeld” could see an increase in business from nostalgic fans. Just don’t try to get a bagel from H & H, Kramer’s one-time place of employment. The Kenny Rogers Roasters and its blinding red neon chicken is also long gone, as is the Royale Pastry Shop (called Royal Bakery and Schnitzers on the show), the bakery responsible for a marble rye worth mugging an old lady for and a black-and-white cookie that could bridge racial divides."
NY Times

2011 August: Seinfeld

Leaving Alaska

"The trail is barely visible, unless you know it’s there. I step off the dirt road and into the woods. The ground receives me with the familiar caress of home. I float down the trail—my feet intimately familiar with each little dip and rise, each stray root protruding from the ground. The trail is worn smooth. But on both sides the powder-light glacial soil is blanketed with a thin layer of moss and lichen, low-bush cranberry, and Labrador tea. For one week each spring, the color and perfume of wild roses fill these woods. There are paper birches and spruce, both black and white. But the predominant tree here is populus tremuloides—quaking aspen. ..."
New Yorker (Video)
YouTube: Echoes of Inhabitance - John Luther Adams, A Sonic Geography Of Alaska

The Newtown Pentacle: far within

Continental Iron Works
"A bright, light, sunshiney day, in Today’s Post. Recently, the Federal NOAA agency placed a plaque at Bushwick Inlet’s U.S.S. Monitor Museum site, signifying the launch site of the United States’ first ironclad war ship from the spot in Greenpoint. One made it a point to arrive early, there was an event planned which involved dignitaries speaking and children singing, and take a bit of time to get 'artsy – fartsy' with the camera and grab some shots. The one above is a stitched panorama, representing around 200 degrees of view. Just to the right of center are some of the big condo buildings in Williamsburg, and at far right are the tanks of Bayside Fuel. That’s Franklin Street on the other side of the fence, btw, behind an overgrown fence line which one didn’t explore except with a zoom lens. ..."
The Newtown Pentacle

David Behrman - Wave Train

"From the Italian avant-garde reissue specialists Alga Marghen comes this early experimental recording from American composer David Behrman, all of which was previously unreleased. A collection of works recorded between 1959 and 1968 with members of his Sonic Arts Union performing on many of the tracks, big names in avant-garde -- Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley, and Alvin Lucier -- all contribute to the realization of these astonishing early electronic works. Renowned pianist David Tudor and new-music percussion extraordinaire Cristoph Caskel appear on the 1959 recording 'Canons,' an exquisite short piece that begs the question why this material was never available earlier. A 12-page color booklet accompanies the CD with photographs of the performers and instruments that created this futuristic wonder-world of electronic compositions. An important archival discovery from the American avant-garde."
allmusic
Smithsonian: If Clouds Could Make Music, What Would it Sound Like?
Discogs
Spotify
vimeo: Grove, Cloud Music (excerpts)
YouTube: Installation of "Cloud Music"

2010 October: Roulette TV: David Behrman, 2012 January: The Siren Orchestra, 2014 May: On the Other Ocean/Figure in a Clearing (1977).

Bill Berkson with Jarrett Earnest

Alex Katz, “Shining Leaves” (1969)
"I met the legendary poet and critic Bill Berkson as a bratty 19-year-old art student in his final class at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he is professor emeritus after teaching writing and art history for 25 years. Around that time I interviewed him about taste for a zine I made with my then boyfriend—one of the first in a format that has become a major part in my intellectual life. Shortly after, the artist Isabelle Sorrell and I began to compile a book as an homage to him. All these years later, the new volume For Bill, ANYTHING: Images and Text for Bill Berkson has just been published by Pressed Wafer, bringing together new and archival writing and art works by 75 contributors, covering aspects of Berkson’s work and life, including collaborations with friends like Joe Brainard, Philip Guston, Jim Carroll, and many others. ..."
Brooklyn Rail
W - Bill Berkson
PBS: Be like poet Bill Berkson and start kissing anyone you can find (Video)
Poetry Foundation
amazon: Bill Berkson

There Was a Time: The History of Uncle Tupelo

"If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: One man’s lazy embedding of YouTube videos is another man’s history of Uncle Tupelo. Consider it a documentary, minus all the boring interviews, montages, and the Ken Burns move where a voice intones dramatically as a camera slowly pans across a black and white photo, and a lonesome banjo picks underneath. Here all you’re getting are videos and my liner notes. Don’t act like you don’t love it. ..."
adios lounge (Video)
YouTube: St Louis, Mo 1994 05 01 [Full Gig]

2011 July: Uncle Tupelo, 2012 December: No Depression, 2013 August: March 16–20, 1992, 2014 January: Still Feel Gone (1991).

The Punk Singer - Kathleen Hanna (2013)

Wikipedia - "The Punk Singer is a 2013 documentary film directed by filmmaker Sini Anderson and produced by Anderson and Tamra Davis. The film is about feminist singer Kathleen Hanna who fronted the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, and who was a central figure in the riot grrrl movement. The title of the film is taken from Julie Ruin song 'The Punk Singer', from Hanna's 1998 solo effort. Using a combination of interviews and archival footage including live band performances, the film traces the life and career of Hanna from her troubled upbringing and her start in spoken word performance poetry, through her riot grrrl zines, her prominent punk and dance-punk bands, her coining of the phrase 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' for Kurt Cobain, her solo career as Julie Ruin, her feminist activism, her marriage to Beastie Boys member Adam Horovitz, and ending with Hanna's 2010 diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease and the severe treatments she endures to combat it. ..."
Wikipedia
NPR: Silent For Years, A Riot Grrrl Steps Back To The Mic
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Documentary - THE PUNK SINGER - TRAILER, Bikini Kill, Girls to the Front, Kathleen Hanna is....The Punk Singer, a documentary

Hugh Mundell & Augustus Pablo - Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version)

"... What is perhaps most notable about 'Jah Will Provide' is the performance, both lyrically and vocally, that Augustus Pablo coaxes out of a 16 year old Mundell, who brings the word, sound, and power of an old soul to the session. It is clearly evident that this song and performance are divinely inspired because it does not seem possible that such an inspired recording could come solely from the mind, heart, and soul of a 16 year old youth. But hey, that’s Pablo’s gift, right? Bringing inspired music out of talented, yet unexperienced youths. Just look what he was able to do with Jacob Miller, another young man who wrote and performed on a higher plane."
Midnigh Traver Blog (Video)
YouTube: Jah Will Provide + Hungry (Dub Version)

2010 September: Hugh Mundell, 2009 December: Augustus Pablo, 2011 November: King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo and King Tubby, 2011 May: East of the River Nile, 2013 January: King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, 2015 April: Valley of Jehosaphat (1999).

Hotel Melancholia by Suzanne Joinson

Western Motel, Edward Hopper, 1957
"There was a period in my life when I spent a lot of time in hotel rooms. It was normal to skit from Shanghai to Dublin via Vilnius and Rome in a month, and then begin the loop all over again: Athens, Novosibirsk, Kuala Lumpur. I travelled alone to these cities and when I got there I was required to stand on stages, sit on panels and talk endlessly. ... I lived in a hotel in Moscow called the Cricket for a month. In European countries, I stayed in compact three-star rooms, while in the Middle East it was always big chains: the Sheraton, the Radisson or the Hilton Nile. Here and there, depending on local deals and the nature of my stay, I’d take a room in one of the iconic, colonial-style hotels from the novels of Graham Greene or Agatha Christie: the American Colony in Jerusalem, the Pera Palace in Istanbul or the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai. I travelled like this from my mid-20s for a decade. Sometimes I was single, other times in a relationship, and the eternal transience suited me at the start. It was fun, for a few years, until suddenly it wasn’t."
aeon

Tom Johnson - The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982

"The emergence of new music in New York City was 'followed closely by Tom Johnson in his weekly columns in the Village Voice. In some cases, especially in the early 70's when the music was still largely unknown, his articles were the only published reports of events and premiers that are now of historical importance.' This music's 'evolution in New York lofts was more complicated, and involved far more people, than is generally understood today.' These articles put the whole story back together. Johnson was a long-time admirer of his teacher, Morton Feldman, and of John Cage, who might be considered the patron saints of the movement, but he focussed his critical attention on the new forms of music evolving among composers of his own generation such as Philip Corner, Alvin Lucier, Charlie Morrow, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Charlemagne Palestine, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, and many others. And sometimes his style of writing was as innovative as the music. - Theseus"
The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982
[PDF] The Voice of New Music - Editions 75
Soundcloud: The Voice of New Music by Tom Johnson (for Matt Hinkley)

2011 February: Tom Johnson, 2012 May: Rational Melodies, 2013 March: Tom Johnson In Los Angeles, 2013 May: An Hour for Piano (1985).

New Steps - Sun Ra Quartet (1978)

"New Steps is one of several albums done with this basic lineup in January of 1978. This album is billed to the Sun Ra Quartet, but it sounds like there's a bass player present on at least some of the cuts (it could be Ra, but he'd need three hands). There are two standards amongst a program of Ra originals, and things get started with a stellar version of 'My Favorite Things.' ... In fact, the remainder of the album is on the mellow side ('When There Is No Sun' is the only track with vocals), and features some great statements by John Gilmore and Ra. Michael Ray is in fine form as well, if somewhat less exuberant than usual. With such a small group, solo space is ample, and Luqman Ali's understated drumming really holds things together nicely. New Steps is another fabulous release from Sun Ra, but all the Horo albums can be difficult to find."
allmusic
W - New Steps
Spotify
YouTube: My Favorite Things, Moon People, Sun Steps, etc.

Dance at Bougival - Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1883)

Dance at Bougival, 1883
"The open-air cafés of suburban Bougival, on the Seine outside Paris, were popular recreation spots for city dwellers, including the Impressionist painters. Renoir, who was primarily a figure painter, uses intense color and lush brushwork to heighten the sense of pleasure conveyed by the whirling couple who dominate the composition. The woman’s face, framed by her red bonnet, is the focus of attention, both ours and her companion’s."
MFA (Video)
New Yorker: Renoir at The Frick: Go See “Dance at Bougival”
Renoir's Paintings Dance Together Again (Video)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes

Basketball’s Obtuse Triangle

"The sacred text arrived at dusk on a Thursday in November. I opened the package and found a 216-page, red hardbound book with worn buckram corners that brought to mind something used to teach high school geometry 50 years ago. The previous owner had inscribed his name on the flyleaf and made sufficient notations in the margins throughout that I recalled a story about an old N.B.A. player whose teammate asked him why he underlined every sentence in the books he took on road trips. 'That’s so I know I’ve read them,' he said. The University of Kansas’ union bookstore had stamped the book 'USED' and then penciled in a secondhand price, $5.50. Yet my Amazon third-party seller had charged me more than $160. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Three Sides to This Story (Oct. 27, 2014)
W - Tex Winter
Tex Winter and the pursuit of perfection (Video)

"Fever" - Little Willie John (1956)

"'Fever' is a song written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, who used the pseudonym John Davenport. It was originally recorded by American R&B singer Little Willie John in 1956 and released as a single in April of the same year. ... Little Willie John reportedly disliked the song, but was persuaded to record it, on March 1, 1956, by King Records owner Syd Nathan and arranger and producer Henry Glover. 'Fever' is a soul and rhythm and blues minor key opus with an arrangement consisting of low saxophones played by Ray Felder and Rufus 'Nose' Gore and a jazz guitar by Bill Jennings. The vocal style of Willie John is similar to moaning and he is backed by finger snaps."
Wikipedia
Re-Viewing influences: Little Willie John, Albert Ayler, late 'Trane
YouTube: "Fever" (1956), "Fever"

Anywhere in Time: A Conlon Nancarrow Festival

"In the eighteen years since his death, the music of composer Conlon Nancarrow has steadily grown in influence and infamy. Viewed as a fascinating anomaly during much of his lifetime, Nancarrow created staggeringly complex pieces with rhythmical structures—borrowed from boogie-woogie and the atonal avant-garde, and, eventually, formed in his own unique language—that he achieved through highly unusual means. After fighting in the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s fascist regime, Nancarrow returned to the United States but was refused a passport renewal on the basis of his political beliefs. He responded by relocating in 1940 to Mexico City, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Working in near isolation, Nancarrow ceased writing music for live performers and instead turned to the only means of realizing his musical vision in the precomputer era: composing for the player piano. ..."
Whitney (Video)
NY Times
Conlon Nancarrow’s Math-Mad Music (Video)
W - Conlon Nancarrow
Conlon Nancarrow: A Chronology By Kyle Gann
facebook
YouTube: Study for Player Piano No. 37, Study for Player Piano No. 21 (Canon X), 3rd Study for Player Piano 'Boogie Woogie Suite' Audio + Sheet Music, Studies 2B, 3a, 3e and 5 for Player Piano
YouTube: A Sense of Place: The Life and Work of Conlon Nancarrow (Documentary) 28:48

A Fine Blend: The Quietus Writers' Favourite DJ Mix Albums

"Almost 20 years after the release of Coldcut's 70 Minutes Of Madness mix album, Joe Clay recently spoke to the members of Coldcut's about the mix's production and legacy - you can read the interview here. Now, a large selection of tQ contributors have come forth to offer up their favourite DJ mixes for your perusal, accompanied by their thoughts on each choice. It's a wide-reaching list taking in a vast array of officially released mix albums, mixtapes and free-to-download online mixes across a number of genres, so keep reading and you could possibly discover a mix or two you're yet to uncover. So here, in no particular order, are tQ writers' favourite mixes. ..."
The Quietus (Video)

Summer solstice sun rises on gathering of 23,000 at Stonehenge

"Thousands of people descended on Stonehenge to mark this year’s summer solstice. Police said around 23,000 were at the neolithic site in Wiltshire on Sunday, down on the estimated 36,000 who attended last year and the 30,000 expected. Other revellers – including hippies and pagans – visited the nearby Avebury stone circle to witness the sun rising on the longest day of the year. Despite cloud in the area, visitors were able to get a glimpse of the sun after it came over the horizon at 4.52am. People beat their drums and pointed their cameras at Stonehenge just as the sun appeared. Some visitors said this year’s solstice sunrise was one of the best they had seen. ..."
Guardian (Video)
BBC: Stonehenge summer solstice celebrations see thousands gather
W - Stonehenge
Stonehenge
Smithsonian: New Light on Stonehenge
History: Who Built Stonehenge? (Video)

“Rubble Kings” Opens Today: Gangs, Graffiti, Hip-Hop in 1970s NYC

"... An outstanding recounting of the fierce gang culture born of despair and 'white flight' that blighted New York City, Rubble Kings helps put in perspective the evolution of a people being pushed out of the American Dream grabbing it by the balls and reclaiming it as their own, remaking it in their image. That may be the overly romantic view of an unjust and needlessly brutal time full of violence and murder, with innocent everyday people caught in the middle as victims. And certainly as oppressed as these former gang members were, the thought may cross your mind that the heroic roles depicted in this story are reserved for one gender almost exclusively. That said, props to the director Shan Nicholson that Rubble Kings presents a meaningful and compelling context for the unwinding of the social, political, institutional constructs that shook folks to the bone; an economic violence that decimated neighborhoods and communities. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art (Video)

Doris Salcedo

Shibboleth - Form of a 167-metre-long crack in the floor of the gallery.
"This major retrospective will survey the searing, deeply poetic work of Doris Salcedo (b. 1958, Bogotá, Colombia). Over the past three decades, Salcedo's practice has addressed the traumatic history of modern-day Colombia, as well as wider legacies of suffering stemming from colonialism, racism, and other forms of social injustice. Originating in lengthy research processes during which the artist solicits testimonies from the victims of violent oppression, her sculptures and installations eschew the direct representation of atrocities in favor of open-ended confluences of forms that are fashioned from evocative materials and intensely laborious techniques. ..."
Guggenheim
Wikipedia
PBS: art21 (Video) 54:30
NY Times: From Doris Salcedo, Domestic Vessels of Trauma and Loss
SF MoMA: Doris Salcedo discusses her artistic identity
YouTube: TateShots

SNUB TV

"SNUB TV – the creative partnership of Brenda Kelly and Peter Fowler – burst onto TV screens via Janet Street-Porter’s BBC 2 DEF II slot in 1989. It was not ‘youth TV’ but it had the attitude, confidence and style of the blossoming independent label scene of the late ‘80s. These were the days that saw the first indie stars begin to have crossover radio hits: The Smiths, New Order, Depeche Mode. But where could you hear this music outside John Peel’s R1 show? It wasn’t easy. TV and radio had no place for new music – even giants like New Order were ignored. MTV wanted glossy, high-end videos – a financial and aesthetic anathema to most left field music of the day. There was nothing represented the vibrancy, eclecticism and artiness of the music scene that was thriving out of the limelight. SNUB was going to change that. ..."
SNUB TV
Wikipedia
‘Do you remember ‘Night Flight’?’ (Video)
Sights Unheard: SNUB TV (Video)
YouTube: SNUB TV

The Residents - "My Window" (2005)

"Steven said, 'Little Ted was dead'
I read in a letter today
The same for Monica's monkey he said
Quietly it passed away

Mister Coo Coo has fallen asleep
His eyes were black and his beak was brown
Mister Coo Coo has fallen asleep
But soon his home will be underground

The wind was cold and the world was old
When I went to my window today
The sky was dark as a hopeless heart
When I went to my window today"
YouTube: "My Window"

In Chile’s National Stadium, Dark Past Shadows Copa América Matches

"SANTIAGO, Chile — A haunting yellowish glow radiates from the tiny section of empty wooden benches and crumbling concrete behind the north goal at Estadio Nacional. All around this space there is noise: 47,000 soccer fans screaming and jumping in delight as Chile’s national team plays Ecuador in the opening game of the Copa América. But no one sits on those benches. They are reserved in perpetuity, a somber memorial to the thousands of people who were beaten and tortured here 42 years ago in the home of Chilean soccer. Estadio Nacional, the site of six games in this year’s Copa América, including the final on July 4, is perhaps the most infamous sports arena in the world. For nearly two months after the Sept. 11, 1973, military coup that overthrew Chile’s democratically elected Marxist president, the stadium served as a makeshift prison camp where as many as 20,000 men and women suffered at the hands of a military junta, led by the right-wing army chief, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, that had seized control of Chile. ..."
NY Times

The "Blonde On Blonde" Missing Pictures

"This page shows the pictures on the gatefold sleeve of the vinyl release of 1966’s Blonde On Blonde that have not made it into the regular CD insert (the artwork for the gold CD is different as shown below). If you know who any of these people are, please contact me or make a posting to my Facebook page. The inside layout was revised in the USA from 1968 onwards to remove the picture of Claudia Cardinale, but printings outside the USA preserved the original layout. Both the 2002 re-release of the US mono mix of Blonde On Blonde by Sundazed and the 2010 re-release of the mono set by Columbia/Legacy/Sony Music use the 7-photo picture shown above, they have not managed to get permission to reproduce the original sleeve. For more details see International Mono Releases. ..."
Bob Dylan's Officially Released Rarities and Obscurities
Searching For A Gem
Missing Blonde on Blonde Photographs
Blonde on Blonde. The Record That Can't Be Set Straight. Part II - The Versions in Detail
Part II - The Versions in Detail

2010 August: Blonde on Blonde (1966), 2011 February: "I Want You", 2013 July: ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’ | Classic Tracks, 2015 April: "Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" (1966).

John Ashbery & Guy Maddin: Collages

John Ashbery, The Painter, 2014, collage, 15" x 20 1/2".
"The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new collages by celebrated poet John Ashbery and acclaimed avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin. Each artist will be represented by a group of collages completed within the last year. This is the fourth gallery exhibition to focus on Ashbery’s collages since his solo debut in 2008. Maddin and Ashbery were mutual fans from a distance until they were introduced a few years ago. Soon they were collaborating. ... When talking about their shared love of collage-making, Maddin remarked '…I suppose this gluey and scissory medium is where the sensibilities of each other’s chosen fields come closest…where we unroll for the public the secret blueprints for the little visual collisions…'"
Tibor de Nagy Gallery
Paris Review: Gluey and Scissory
Paris Review: Eleven Collages - John Ashbery
'The Forbidden Room': Sundance Review

2011 July: John Ashbery - Postcard Collages, 2012 January: John Ashbery - Recent Collages

THE EARTH MOVES. A documentary about Einstein on the Beach.

"New film about Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach, and the connection between physics, opera, and human imagination. ... Iconic, groundbreaking, game changing, genre defying––these are just a few phrases used to describe Einstein on the Beach, a rarely performed avant-garde opera created by composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson. Called an 'opera' because no other term comes close, the four and a half hour work breaks all of the rules of conventional opera and abandons narrative and traditional orchestral arrangements. Through Einstein on the Beach, Glass and Wilson reshaped the old and classical form of opera into something completely new. Over the last 35 years, four productions of Einstein on the Beach have toured across the globe from New York and Tokyo to Paris and Melbourne. The work was revolutionary when it was first performed and is now considered one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century. ..."
kickstarter (Video)

2011 May: Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera (1985)

"Fine and Mellow" - Billie Holiday (1957)

"... The show’s performance of 'Fine and Mellow' reunited Billie Holiday with her estranged long-time friend and stirring collaborator Lester Young for the final time. Jazz critic Nat Hentoff, who was involved in the show, recalled that during rehearsals, they kept to opposite sides of the room. Young was very weak, and Hentoff told him to skip the big band section of the show and that he could sit while performing in the group with Holiday. During the performance of 'Fine and Mellow', Webster played the first solo. 'Then', Hentoff remembered: Lester got up, and he played the purest blues I have ever heard, and [he and Holiday] were looking at each other, their eyes were sort of interlocked, and she was sort of nodding and half–smiling. It was as if they were both remembering what had been—whatever that was. And in the control room we were all crying. When the show was over, they went their separate ways. Within two years, both Young and Holiday had died."
Fine and Mellow » Billie Holiday
YouTube: Fine and mellow (1957)

2010 April: Billie Holiday, 2014 December: "Strange Fruit" (1939), 2015 February: The Hunting of Billie Holiday

Summer of '49 - David Halberstam

"For people in their 50's now, the summer of 1949 was the morning of life, when to be young (and a Yankee fan) was very heaven. That summer was supposed to belong to the Boston Red Sox, with Casey Stengel, thought to be a clown, newly installed as Yankee manager, and Joe DiMaggio out of the opening-day lineup with bone spurs in his foot. It was, as a broadcaster observes in this irresistible sports history, 'the last moment of innocence in American life.' The book's author, David Halberstam, adds that the pace of living would soon accelerate 'from the combination of endless technological breakthroughs and undreamed-of affluence in ordinary homes.' The opening game of the World Series that autumn would be the first baseball game televised to a mass audience, so the character of the game would soon change. ..."
NY Times
Homerunweb
ESPN: "Summer of '49" by David Halberstam
amazon

Leon Bridges

Wikipedia - "Leon Bridges is an American gospel and soul singer from Fort Worth, Texas. ... Bridges began writing and performing 1950s and '60s-style soul music that was described by Austin 360 as 'a transmission straight from the heart.' He began to attract followers and his break into the music industry has been attributed to a run-in he had at a bar with White Denim guitarist Austin Jenkins. The duo discussed clothing and a few weeks later Jenkins and his bandmate Joshua Block ran into Bridges during a performance in north Texas. It was Bridges's performance of 'Coming Home' that caught the attention of Block and Jenkins. Bridges worked on his first few tracks with Jenkins and Block as producers. They were recording an album with vintage equipment, using an artist with an authentic, old sound."
Wikipedia
NPR: First Listen: Leon Bridges, 'Coming Home' (Video)
facebook, twitter
YouTube: Coming Home, Better Man, There She Goes, Chain Gang (Sam Cooke Cover), I Was Wrong / Smooth Sailing - Paris, Mai 2015, Flowers - The Depot, Lisa Sawyer, My Love Stays

A Community Mural Festival in NYC, Highlights From Welling Court 2015

Icy & Sot
"An annual mural tradition of non-pretense, New York hosted the 6th Annual Welling Court mural festival this weekend in a working class neighborhood in Queens, thanks to a grassroots couple who hustle to match artists with walls and opportunity. More than a hundred artists, whose styles span the graffiti-urban art-street art spectrum, participate every year in this community event that eschews the creeping fingers of commercial interests and the pontificating tongues of the art critics. That is not the point here. That’s not why you fell in love with Street Art and the unvarnished expression of the creative spirit. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

Ellis Island

PASSAGES Immigrants at Ellis Island awaiting a ferry to the city.
Wikipedia - "... In the 35 years before Ellis Island opened, over eight million immigrants arriving in New York City had been processed by New York State officials at Castle Garden Immigration Depot in Lower Manhattan, just across the bay. ... Artesian wells were dug, and landfill was hauled in from incoming ships' ballast and from construction of New York City's subway tunnels, which doubled the size of Ellis Island to over six acres. While the building was under construction, the Barge Office nearby at the Battery was used for immigrant processing. The first federal immigrant inspection station was an enormous three-story-tall structure, with outbuildings, built of Georgia pine, containing all of the amenities that were thought to be necessary. It opened with celebration on January 1, 1892. ..."
Wikipedia (Video)
NPS: Ellis Island - History & Culture
History (Video)
Scholastic: Ellis Island Interactive Tour With Facts, Pictures, Video (Video)
NPR: For New Immigrants To The U.S., Ellis Island Still Means A Lot (Video)
Scholastic: Virtual Field Trip to Ellis Island

2011 August: Monk Meredith - "Ellis Island" (1981)

Small Press / Mimeograph Revolution, 1940s–1970s

Thomas Edison Stencil Duplicator 1940: mimeograph
"We are pleased to offer for sale a captivating and important research collection of little magazines and other printed materials that represent, chronicle, and document the proliferation of avant-garde, underground small press publications from the forties to the seventies. The starting point for this collection, 'A Secret Location on the Lower East Side,' is the acclaimed New York Public Library exhibition and catalog from 1998, curated by Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips, which documented a period of intense innovation and experimentation in American writing and literary publishing by exploring the small press and mimeograph revolutions. ..."
Granary Books

2010 November: The Great Mimeograph Revolution

20 years of space photos: an oral history of Astronomy Picture of the Day

"Try to name as many websites as you can that are more than 20 years old. It's not that easy, right? As someone who was around for the arrival of the World Wide Web, even I have trouble remembering what was around in those early days. Google didn't start until 1997. Angelfire and Craigslist launched in 1996. Others, like Pets.com, didn't make it. But 20 years ago this week, in an office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, gamma ray astronomers Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell created a simple website that still thrives today: the Astronomy Picture of the Day, or APOD."
The Verge

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Nocturama (2003)

"Until 1997, The Nick Cave Songbook read like a set of William Blake Mad Libs filled in by undertakers, jilted lovers and John Wayne Gacy, with a few American folk covers thrown in for variety. Cave had built his career and reputation on twenty glorious years of human misery; God was an alien creature to be feared, and true love was just the first step toward some poor soul meeting a gruesome end. But then, after the grisly Murder Ballads LP, it seems Nick and Jesus sat down and sorted out their differences. With The Boatman's Call and No More Shall We Part, the anger of Cave's youth had finally lapsed into spiritual angst; murderous desire had given way to simple longing. ..."
Pitchfork
W - Nocturama
allmusic
YouTube: Nocturama (2003)

2008 August: Nick Cave, 2010 November: Henry Lee - Nick Cave & PJ Harvey, 2011 March: The Boatman's Call, 2011 December: B-Sides & Rarities, 2012 January: Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - White Lunar, 2013 January: "We No Who U R", 2013 April: No More Shall We Part, 2013 June: The Secret Life Of The Love Song/The Flesh Made Word (1999), 2013 October: The Abattoir Blues Tour (2007), 2014 March: Push the Sky Away (2013), 2014 May: Live from KCRW (2013), 2014 July: I Am the Real Nick Cave, 2014 March: God Is In The House (2001).

America Is Hard to See

Charles Demuth (1883-1935), My Egypt, 1927
"Drawn entirely from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s collection, America Is Hard to See takes the inauguration of the Museum’s new building as an opportunity to reexamine the history of art in the United States from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Comprising more than six hundred works, the exhibition elaborates the themes, ideas, beliefs, and passions that have galvanized American artists in their struggle to work within and against established conventions, often directly engaging their political and social contexts. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown appear alongside beloved icons in a conscious effort to unsettle assumptions about the American art canon. ..."
Whitney Museum of American Art
[PDF] Whitney Museum of American Art - Press Office
New Yorker: Seeing Music. By Alex Ross.
NY Times: Review: New Whitney Museum’s First Show, ‘America Is Hard to See’
WSJ: ‘America Is Hard to See’ Review: Old Favorites in Provocative New Company
At the New Whitney Museum, America Is Actually Very Easy to See

Queens Jazz Trail Map

"While New Orleans may boast that it is the 'birthplace of jazz,' New York City's borough of Queens has its own proud claim: it has been the 'home of jazz,' the residence of choice for hundreds of the music's leading players. The award-winning Queens Jazz Trail map (originally commissioned by Flushing Town Hall) shows the different neighborhoods and sites that are part of this hidden jazz history. Featuring portraits of jazz greats and drawings of their houses, this pictorial map makes a beautiful poster. The back of the map contains a short history of jazz in Queens; the addresses of homes once occupied by jazz musicians; and sites of current interest to jazz fans. ..."
Ephemera Press

Red Army (2014)

"... This stirring, crazy story — a Russian novel of Tolstoyan sweep and Gogol-esque absurdity — is recounted in 'Red Army,' Gabe Polsky’s jaunty collage of a documentary. Mr. Polsky is a tireless researcher and a dogged interviewer, sometimes to the annoyance of his subjects. In an early sequence, his pushiness earns a raised middle finger from the great defenseman Vyacheslav Fetisov, but Mr. Fetisov’s occasionally grumpy participation is crucial to the film. As handsome as any movie star, thoughtful and temperamental, he is both narrator and hero, and serves as a guide to the curious, vanished world of high-level Communist athletics. Mr. Fetisov was at the core of a team distinguished by speed and fluidity. The architect of their approach was Anatoly Tarasov, a coach whose roly-poly physique seemed at odds with his devotion to grace and finesse on the ice."
NY Times - A. O. Scott
Wikipedia
Another New Trailer for Gabe Polsky's USSR Hockey Doc 'Red Army'
Huffington Post: Documentary Showcases USSR's Hockey Culture (Video) 20:00
YouTube: Red Army Official Trailer #1, CLIP - I Was Born In The Soviet Union

The Art of Boxing: George Bellows

"Club Night", 1907
"George Bellows is of the Ashcan School and the school of hard knocks: both institutions are rooted in realism. Bellows' interest in boxing coincided with the rise of other realists, though of different dimensions. The author Jack London and president Teddy Roosevelt were ascendent, immensely popular figures with turn of the century, hardscrabble Americans. At the time London was writing, Roosevelt was bullying, and Bellows was painting, the sport of boxing was drawing immense crowds across the country. There is a raw, primal intensity to Bellows' paintings of boxing matches. With slashing brushstrokes of thickly applied paint, he is able to capture the animal violence and muscular brutality of man. The energy and intensity of the bout is captured in both the clashing pugilists and in the frenzied crowds surrounding the ring. 'The atmosphere around the fighters is a lot more immoral than the fighters themselves,' Bellows once remarked. ..."
The Mantle
NGA: The Art of Boxing—George Bellows at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (Video)

William S. Burroughs - The Electronic Revolution (1971)

Wikipedia - "The Electronic Revolution is an essay collection by William S. Burroughs that was first published in 1970 by Expanded Media Editions in West Germany. A second edition, published in 1971 in Cambridge, England, contained additional French translation by Henri Chopin. The book is available in its entirety in later editions of The Job, a book of interviews conducted by Daniel Odier that elaborate on the topics contained therein. The book is divided into two parts. Part one, entitled 'The Feedback from Watergate to the Garden of Eden' invokes Alfred Korzybski’s views characterising man as 'the time binding machine' due to his ability to write. ... Part two, 'Electronic Revolution' concerns the power of alphabetic non-pictorial languages to control people. ..."
Wikipedia
[PDF] The Electronic Revolution - Swiss Institute
[PDF] Feedback: Media Parasites and the Circuits of Communication (Dada and Burroughs) - Arndt Niebisch
The London Consortium » Scratches, Traces, Spacings

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs.

The Sketchbook Project Presents Online 17,000 Sketchbooks, Created by Artists from 135 Countries

"If you love something give it away. If it doesn’t come back to you, it was never really yours… Or, it’s a labor of love you created under the auspices of the Brooklyn Art Library, with the full knowledge that giving it away is a cost of participation. Every year, thousands of artists, from the experienced to the fledgling, pay a nominal fee to fill a 5×7 sketchbook with a custom barcode. Upon completion, the books are to be mailed back to the one room Art Library, to become part of the permanent collection, currently over 34,000 volumes strong (17,000 of which appear online). Visitors receive free library cards that allow them to view as many volumes as they like in-house, three at a time. Artists willing to cough up a slightly more substantial fee can have their book digitized for online viewing at The Sketchbook Project. ..."
Open Culture
The Sketchbook Project
New Yorker: Inside a Stranger’s Sketchbook

Lightnin' Hopkins - The Texas Bluesman (1967)

"Lightnin' Hopkins had already recorded dozens, if not hundreds, of sides for various labels by the time he hooked up with Chris Strachwitz in the late '50s, but his recordings for Strachwitz's Arhoolie label are some of the rawest and strongest of his career. Originally released in 1968, this classic slab of Texas blues is reissued here on high quality vinyl with an exact reproduction of the paste-on sleeve. Includes limited time download card. 'Sam Hopkins was a Texas country bluesman of the highest caliber whose career began in the 1920s and stretched all the way into the 1980s. Along the way, Hopkins watched the genre change remarkably, but he never appreciably altered his mournful Lone Star sound, which translated onto both acoustic and electric guitar. Hopkins' nimble dexterity made intricate boogie riffs seem easy, and his fascinating penchant for improvising lyrics to fit whatever situation might arise made him a beloved blues troubadour.'"
Elusive Disc
Spotify
DailyMotion: The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins (1968)
YouTube: Once Was A Gambler, Meet You At The Chicken Shack, Bald Headed Woman, Tom Moore Blues, Watch My Fingers/a>, Love Like A Hydrant, Slavery Time, I Would If I Could, Bud Russell Blues, Come On Baby, Money Taker, Mama Blues, My Woman, Send My Child Home To Me, Have you ever loved a woman, Black And Evil

Barista

Wikipedia - "A barista ... is a person, usually a coffeehouse employee, who prepares and serves espresso-based coffee drinks. ... Baristas generally operate a commercial espresso machine, and their role is preparing and pulling the shot; the degree to which this is automated or done manually varies significantly, ranging from push-button operation to an involved manual process. Espresso is a notoriously finicky beverage and good manual espresso making is considered a skilled task. Further, preparation of other beverages, particularly milk-based drinks such as cappuccinos and lattes, but also non-espresso coffee such as drip or press pot, requires additional work and skill for effective frothing, pouring and most often latte art. The barista usually has been trained to operate the machine and to prepare the coffee based on the guidelines of the roaster or shop owner, while more experienced baristas may have discretion to vary preparation or experiment."
Wikipdia
Barista
Inside The Barista Class
YouTube: il barista, How to Make a Latte Art Heart | Perfect Coffee, Arte Latte - Especialistas del Café S.A.

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse

ROB - Funky Rob Way (1973)

"Benin’s Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou may have been the most sonically prescient African electric band of the 1970s. The collective’s amalgam of Afro-beat, highlife and ancient local rhythms remains fresh, timeless even, nearly 40 years on, a perhaps unintended map or blueprint for later — and geographically distant — musical journeys and constructions. The band’s first full-length album, made in 1973 under the leadership of singer/frontman Vincent Ahehehinnou, offers evidence of this from the very first track. ... Fellow Analog Africa reissue Funky Rob Way by Ghanaian singer ROB is a very different amalgam, but perhaps one of ’70s West Africa’s strangest and most fascinating albums. Under the musical direction of Ghanaian Army highlife bandleader and arranger Amponsah Rockson, ROB variously murmurs, croons and exhorts his way through spacious — and sometimes spartan — disco/Afro-beat tracks. There’s a kind of radical cosmic funk on display here: Repeating elements are staggered, shifted, and shuffled with sharp precision; wah-wah and other ’70s electronic textures are ubiquitous, utilized in adventurous and exciting ways."
Dusted Magazine (Video)
ParisDJs
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: AFROFUNK 70s, More, Boogie On

Astor Piazzolla - Libertango (1972)

"While you might not be familiar with the term 'nuevo tango', you'll probably recognise this catchy number from Argentine composer Piazzolla. He revolutionised tango music, by incorporating elements of jazz and classical music into his traditional tango compositions. Piazzolla is undoubtedly the master of the genre, and his 'Libertango' (a portmanteau that incorporates 'Libertad' and 'Tango') is one of the most performed of his works. Spicy rhythms and a fiendish melody have kept this one at the forefront of modern Tango, with countless brilliant interpretations to explore. It even features an accordion, adding a folky element to the music."
Classic fm (Video)
Wikipedia
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: Libertango (1974)[full album]

2008 March: Astor Piazzolla, 2010 September: Astor Piazzolla Remixed, 2011 February: Adios Nonino, 2011 April: Milonga del angel, 2011 August: 1985. Utrecht, Netherlands, 2014 May: Live at The Montreal Jazz Festival (1986).