Procol Harum - A Salty Dog (1969)

"This album, the group's third, was where they showed just how far their talents extended across the musical landscape, from blues to R&B to classical rock. In contrast to their hastily recorded debut, or its successor, done to stretch their performance and composition range, A Salty Dog was recorded in a reasonable amount of time, giving the band a chance to fully develop their ideas. The title track is one of the finest songs ever to come from Procol Harum and one of the best pieces of progressive rock ever heard, and a very succinct example at that at under five minutes running time -- the lyric and the music combine to form a perfect mood piece, and the performance is bold and subtle at once, in the playing and the singing, respectively. ..."
allmusic
W - A Salty Dog
Spotify
YouTube: A Salty Dog (Live), Pilgrim's Progress / Quite Rightly So / Magdalene, The Devil Came From Kansas, Still There'll Be More
YouTube: A Salty Dog [Full album, 1969]

2009 July: Procol Harum, 2011 December: Broken Barricades, 2013 April: "Homburg", 2013 June: Procol Harum (1967), Home (1970).

Renzo Piano: how to build the perfect sandcastle

"My career started when I was a child and I built my first sandcastle on the beach in Genoa, where I grew up. Making things has always been a pleasure for me – happy hands, happy mind – and making sandcastles was my training in fantasy. Now, as an architect constructing buildings like the Shard, I have to think about the final result, but as a child making castles of sand I didn’t, they were ephemeral. I have four children; the oldest is 50 and the youngest 16, so I have been making sandcastles for a long time. There is no age limit – you can enjoy making a sandcastle however old you are, although it helps to think like a child. Here’s how to do it. ..."
Guardian

Dolce Vita? From the Liberty to Italian Design (1900-1940)

"In Italy in the early twentieth century the decorative arts were used to interpret the desire for progress of a nation that had only just found its unity. Cabinetmakers, ceramicists and glass-makers all worked together with the leading artists, creating a veritable 'Italian style'. This period of extraordinary creativity is recalled through around a hundred works in a chronological display. The 'Liberty' style, which came into its own at the turn of the century, is recalled with designs by Carlo Bugatti, Eugenio Quarti and Federico Tesio mixed with works by the Divisionist painters. A second section is devoted to Futurism, its esthetic inspired by progress and speed extending to every aspect of life. ..."
Musée d'Orsay
Artsy

Watch Stewart Brand’s 6-Part Series How Buildings Learn, With Music by Brian Eno

"Stewart Brand came onto the cultural scene during the 1960s, helping to stage the Acid Tests made famous by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and later launching the influential Whole Earth Catalog (something Steve Jobs described as 'Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along'). He also vigorously campaigned in 1966 to have NASA release a photograph showing the entirety of Earth from space — something we take for granted now, but fired humanity’s imagination back then. ... Above you can watch How Buildings Learn, Brand’s six-part BBC TV series from 1997, which comes complete with music by Brian Eno. Based on his illustrated book sharing the same title, the TV series offers a critique of modernist approaches to architecture (think Buckminster Fuller, Frank Gehry, and Le Corbusier) and instead argues for 'an organic kind of building, based on four walls, which is easy to change and expand and grow as the ideal form of building.'”
Open Culture (Video)

2009 April: CoEvolution Quarterly, 2010 April: The Whole Earth Catalog, 2013 December: THE WHOLE EARTH: California and The Disappearance of The Outside, 2010 May: Ken Kesey, 2013 April: Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey (1964)

Rip Rig + Panic ‎– Bob Hope Takes Risks (1981)

"Most people'll tell you that Rip Rig + Panic were a noisier version of Pigbabg. Not that 'most people' have the slightest inkling who Pigbag actually were of course, let alone Rip Rig + Panic. RR+P stumbled stinking, blinking, scratching their heads & (I imagine) hitching up their britches, out of the mangled wreckage of The Pop Group sometime in 1981. Initially a loose knit experimental musical collective fronted by The Group's avant garde jazzbo Gareth Sager (with drummer Bruce Smith in tow), they released a succession of irreverent singles & albums on Virgin Records that seemed commercially unorthodox at the time &, even with 20-odd years hindsight, still sound singularly radical & anarchic. ..."
I Love Total Destruction
Spotify
YouTube: Bob Hope Takes Risks, Hey Mr E! A Gran Grin With a Shake of Smile, Peel Session 1981 1. Symphony In Dave's Flat (0:07) 2. A Grand Grin And A Shaky Smile Please Mr Barman (5:11) 3. Pullover No Sox (10:09)

2010 December: Rip Rig and Panic, 2015 February: "You're My Kind of Climate" 12 inch mix

"It Hurts Me Too"

Wikipedia - "'It Hurts Me Too' is a blues standard that is 'one of the most interpreted blues [songs]'. First recorded in 1940 by American blues musician Tampa Red, the song is a mid-tempo eight-bar blues that features slide guitar. It borrows from earlier blues songs and has been recorded by many blues and other artists. 'It Hurts Me Too' is based on 'Things 'Bout Comin' My Way', recorded by Tampa Red in 1931 (OKeh 1637). The melody lines are nearly identical and instrumentally they are similar, although the latter has an extra bar in the turnaround, giving it nine bars. ... Several versions of 'It Hurts Me Too' were recorded in the 1940s and 1950s, including those by Stick McGhee and Big Bill Broonzy. When Elmore James recorded it in 1957 (Chief 7004), he (or Chief's owner, Mel London, who is credited on the release) supplied some of the lyrics that are most familiar today. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Tampa Red, Elmore James, Junior Wells Chicago Blues Band, Big Bill Broonzy, Joe Carter

The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965

"W. Eugene Smith sits at the fourth-floor window of his dilapidated loft at 821 Sixth Avenue, New York City, near the corner of Twenty-eighth Street, the heart of Manhattan’s wholesale flower district. He peers out at the street below, several cameras at hand loaded with different lenses and film speeds. His window faces east from the west side of Sixth Avenue. The dawn light begins to rise behind the Empire State Building and other Midtown skyscrapers looming over the modest neighborhood. Three musicians stand together on the sidewalk below talking and laughing. One holds an upright bass in its case, another has a saxophone case slung over his shoulder, and the other is smoking a cigarette. It is six o’clock in the morning; the temperature is a moderate thirty degrees. The musicians are going home after a night-long jam session. Smith snaps a few pictures."
Jazz Loft Project
Jazz Loft Project: Radio (Video)
amazon
Nasher
NPR - Tales Of The Tape: Introducing The Jazz Loft (Video)
YouTube:The Jazz Loft Project: An Interview with Sam Stephenson

LAttitudes

"This literary and cartographic exploration of Los Angeles reorients our understanding of the city in highly imaginative ways. Illuminated by boldly conceived and artfully rendered maps and infographics, nineteen essays by LA’s most exciting writers reveal complex histories and perspectives of a place notorious for superficiality. This chorus of voices explores wildly different subjects: Cindi Alvitre unveils the indigenous Tongva presence of the Los Angeles Basin; Michael Jaime-Becerra takes us into the smoky, spicy kitchens of a family taquero business in El Monte; Steve Graves traces the cowboy-and-spacemen-themed landscapes of the San Fernando Valley. Overlooked sites and phenomena become apparent: LGBT churches and synagogues, a fabled ‘Cycleway,’ mustachioed golden carp, urban forests, lost buildings, ugly buildings. What has been ignored, such as environmental and social injustice, is addressed with powerful anger and elegiac sadness, and what has been maligned is reexamined with a sense of pride: the city’s freeways, for example, take the shape of a dove when viewed from midair and pulsate with wailing blues, surf rock, and brassy banda."
Abandon All Despair Ye Who Enter Here (Video)
Heyday
LA Mag
LA Times: LAtitudes navigates the histories and cultures of L.A.

Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise (2010)

"Strange can exist anywhere, but we have a habit of thinking only the maximal and unhinged-- Captain Beefheart, Basement Jaxx, R. Kelly-- are truly weird. How bizarre can the music of Philip Glass or Wolfgang Voigt really be? It seems contained, planned; the curio is the choice to be so on-keel in the first place. One of my favorite aspects of Nicolas Jaar's debut full-length, Space Is Only Noise, is how thoroughly it scatters this misconception. Space is leftfield electro-pop, far-flung and without reserve, but it is also patient, quiet, and small. Jaar is a Providence via New York via Chile producer. He is 21, he attends Brown University, and he already has several well regarded singles and EPs to his name in addition to running the Clown & Sunset imprint. Requisite hot remixes: check. ..."
Pitchfork (Video)
allmusic
Nicolas Jaar interview: “Ghosts that appear inside the silence.” (Video)
YouTube: Space Is Only Noise (2010) 45:57

2013 September: Nicolas Jaar, 2014 January: Other People, 2015 May: Nicolas Jaar Soundtracks Short Film About Police Brutality and #BlackLivesMatter

Stowaways and Crimes Aboard a Scofflaw Ship

"CHIOS, Greece — The rickety raft made of empty oil drums and a wooden tabletop rolled and pitched with the waves while tied to the side of the Dona Liberta, a 370-foot cargo ship anchored far from land in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa. 'Go down!' yelled a knife-wielding crew member, forcing two Tanzanian stowaways overboard and onto the raft. As angry clouds gathered on the horizon, he cut the line. Gambling on a better life, the stowaways had run out of luck. They had already spent nine days at sea, most of the time hiding in the Dona Liberta’s engine room, crouched deep in oily water. But as they climbed down onto the slick raft, the men, neither of whom knew how to swim, nearly slid into the ocean before lashing themselves together to the raft with a rope."
NY Times (Video)
Ninety Percent of Everything
The Disorder Of Things
Ghostly Ship Graveyards from Around the World

I still love Kierkegaard

"I fell for Søren Kierkegaard as a teenager, and he has accompanied me on my intellectual travels ever since, not so much side by side as always a few steps ahead or lurking out of sight just behind me. Perhaps that’s because he does not mix well with the other companions I’ve kept. I studied in the Anglo-American analytic tradition of philosophy, where the literary flourishes and wilful paradoxes of continental existentialists are viewed with anything from suspicion to outright disdain. In Paris, Roland Barthes might have proclaimed the death of the author, but in London the philosopher had been lifeless for years, as anonymous as possible so that the arguments could speak for themselves. Discovering that your childhood idols are now virtually ancient is usually a disturbing reminder of your own mortality."
aeon

2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics.

The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms (1980)

"Even the cover is a winner, with a washed-out look that screams new wave via horn-rimmed glasses, even more so than contemporaneous pictures of either Elvis Costello or the Embarrassment. But if it was all look and no brain, Crazy Rhythms would long ago have been dismissed as an early-'80s relic. That's exactly what this album is not, right from the soft, haunting hints of percussion that preface the suddenly energetic jump of the appropriately titled 'The Boy With the Perpetual Nervousness.' From there the band delivers seven more originals plus a striking cover of the Beatles' 'Everybody's Got Something to Hide' that rips along even more quickly than the original. The guitar team of Mercer and Million smokes throughout, whether it's soft, rhythmic chiming with a mysterious, distanced air or blasting, angular solos. But Fier is the band's secret weapon, able to play straight-up beats but aiming at a rumbling, strange punch that updates Velvet Underground/Krautrock trance into giddier realms."
allmusic
W - Crazy Rhythms
Pitchfork
YouTube: Crazy Rhythms (Live)
YouTube: Crazy Rhythms (Full Album || 1980, Stiff Records)

Roma Street Art Tribes as Captured by Dioniso Punk

"Disorderly, discordant, and richly chaotic, these two videos are centered around the Italian street art paintings and artists whom you will recognize from our earlier postings on community/gallery organized urban art programming – but within the context of historical art publicly displayed, peoples movements, patronage, fascism, the classics. Dioniso Punk allows everyone to talk – neighbors, artists, organizers, curators, public philosophers, elected officials, psychologists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, posers, professors, historians, students, an opera singer, the petite bourgeoisie, international visitors and hapless puzzled opinionated locals. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art (Video)

Reflections on a Marine Venus - Lawrence Durrell (1953)

"Reflections on a Marine Venus, a very personal memoir by leading 20th century novelist Lawrence Durrell, explores life on a magical and enchanting island (Rhodes) right after World War II. It is about Greece when it was a demiparadise. But it is also about the distillation of life and experience, the savoring of all the exquisite pleasures, physical, sensual, and intellectual, available on one lovely island at one time, and that might still be there for us to discover in our own time."
Axios Institute
amazon - Reflections on a Marine Venus
Lawrence Durrell on Love, Life and No Escape
Where the Tigers Were: Travels Through Literary Landscapes

2011 December: The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell, 2013 September: Villa that inspired Lawrence Durrell faces demolition, as Egypt allows heritage to crumble, 2014 August: Prospero’s Cell (1945), 2015 April: Bitter Lemons (1953–1956), 2015 May: Caesar's Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence.

Ramparts

Wikipedia - "Ramparts was a glossy illustrated American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 through 1975. Unlike most radical magazines of the day, Ramparts was expensively produced and graphically sophisticated, effectively reaching an audience that may have been put off by the grittier "movement" publications of the time. ... The early magazine included notable pieces by Thomas Merton and John Howard Griffin, but one observer compared its design to 'the poetry annual of a Midwestern girls school.' Change was in the wind, however. Located as it was on the outskirts of San Francisco, the West Coast epicenter of 1960s explosion of opposition to the Vietnam War and anti-establishment counterculture, the magazine's orientation radically changed along with the world around it. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Back When Ramparts Did the Storming
NY Times: Scoop
NY Times: ‘A Bomb in Every Issue’
amazon: A Bomb in Every Issue
The Ramparts I Watched
YouTube: Team Video: Ramparts Magazine

Unfinished Stories: Snapshots from the Peter J. Cohen Collection

"Spanning the 20th century, the almost 300 found photographs in 'Unfinished Stories' depict a century of image-making by private photographers. 'A quick shot fired by a hunter without deliberate aim,' reads the original definition of a snapshot from the early 19th century. The term 'snapshot,' popularized shortly after the invention of Kodak’s box camera in the 1880s, came to describe photographs of everyday life using a handheld camera. Speedy new technology boosted the ability to create a visual diary, commemorating events and personal moments, road trips and holidays. Now, more than a century later, these once ubiquitous and now historic, silver gelatin photographs are rapidly being replaced by Instagram and other digital forms of photography, hence a new appreciation for such photographs. ..."
MFA
Google

A Guide to the French Revolution

Henry Singleton, "The Storming of the Bastille."
"Today people all over the world celebrate the 1789 storming of the Bastille Saint-Antoine — a dramatic popular rebellion that sparked the French Revolution. But what was the French Revolution, how did it reshape Europe and the world, and what relevance does it have to the workers’ movement today? Here’s a short primer, lovingly compiled by Jacobin to mark the occasion."
Jacobin

2014 February: French Revolution Digital Archive

Barrington Levy - Love Your Brother Man: The Early Years

"Since acquiring Trojan's deep catalog, Sanctuary has done a very good to excellent job with the seminal reggae label when it comes to single-artist collections. With vibrant and informative packaging, a crucial track list, and some 12" mixes that are truly stunning, Love Your Brother Man falls into the 'excellent' category. Covering Barrington Levy's early years, what you have here is the blueprint for dancehall singing that held on strong up until the gruff badmen made things much more frantic in the mid-'80s. Levy took the standard roots croon and added a bouncy hiccup to it that emphasizes emotion and allowed singers a totally new, less mannered way to show off their skills. Levy made delivery much more important than pitch control; here, you can listen to how it happened. Slang-filled, feel-good numbers intermingle with righteous spiritual tracks with Levy's effervescence holding it all together. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Love Your Brother Man - The Early Years (Full Album)

Leviathan - Andrey Zvyagintsev (2014)

Wikipedia - "Leviathan ... is a 2014 Russian drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev, co-written by Zvyagintsev and Oleg Negin, and starring Aleksei Serebryakov, Elena Lyadova, and Vladimir Vdovichenkov. ... Set in fictional town of Pribrezhny (shot in the coastal town of Teriberka, Murmansk Oblast), Russia, the plot follows the tragic series of events that affect Kolya (Aleksei Serebryakov), a hotheaded car mechanic, his second wife Lilya (Elena Lyadova) and his teenage son, Roma (Sergey Pokhodyaev). The town's crooked mayor Vadim (Roman Madyanov) has undertaken a legal plot to expropriate the land on which Kolya's house is built. Kolya attempts to fight back with the help of an old army friend turned lawyer, Dima (Vladimir Vdovichenkov). The narrative offers a grim outlook on dark and icy aspects of human nature and on modern fissures in social contracts, particularly ones found in the abuses of modern law. The film attempts to unmask the truth behind moral aspects of superficial friendliness, blind love and undeserved trust."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
Guardian: Cannes 2014 review: Leviathan - a new Russian masterpiece
NY Times: Champion of the Lone Russian Everyman
YouTube: A film by Andrey Zvyagintsev, Andrey Zvyagintsev Russian Drama

Gentleman - Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1973)

"Gentleman is both an Africa 70 and Afro-beat masterpiece. High marks go to the scathing commentary that Fela Anikulapo Kuti lets loose but also to the instrumentation and the overall arrangements, as they prove to be some of the most interesting and innovative of Fela's '70s material. When the great tenor saxophone player Igo Chico left the Africa 70 organization in 1973, Fela Kuti declared he would be the replacement. So in addition to bandleader, soothsayer, and organ player, Fela picked up the horn and learned to play it quite quickly -- even developing a certain personal voice with it. To show off that fact, 'Gentleman' gets rolling with a loose improvisatory solo saxophone performance that Tony Allen eventually pats along with before the entire band drops in with classic Afro-beat magnificence. 'Gentleman' is also a great example of Fela's directed wit at the post-colonial West African sociopolitical state of affairs. His focus is on the Africans that still had a colonial mentality after the Brits were gone and then parallels that life with his own."
allmusicZ
W - Gentleman
Fela Kuti: Music, Politics and Women
Spotify
YouTube: Gentleman, Expensive Shit, Fefe Naa Efe

V. S. Naipaul - Guerrillas (1975)

Paul Theroux: "It is hard for the reviewer of a wonderful author to keep the obituarist's assured hyperbole in check, but let me say that if the silting-up of the Thames coincided with a freak monsoon, causing massive flooding in all parts of South London, the first book I would rescue from my library would be 'A House for Mr. Biswas,' by V. S. Naipaul. Apart from anything else, it would be immensely helpful when the water subsided, since it is one of the century's best fictional examples of a householder struggling against unfriendly conditions in a village--'a place that was nowhere, a dot on the map of the island, which was a dot on the map of the world.' The island is Trinidad, where Naipaul was born in 1932, and he has written about it with insight and compassion in many of his thirteen books."
NY Times
Wikipedia
Naipaul's Guerrillas..."
amazon

2012 February: V. S. Naipaul, 2013 February: A Bend in the River (1979).

Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends

An Out-of-Doors Study, 1889
"Throughout his career, the celebrated American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) created portraits of artists, writers, actors, and musicians, many of whom were his close friends. Because these works were rarely commissioned, he was free to create images that were more radical than those he made for paying clients. He often posed these sitters informally—in the act of painting, singing, or performing, for example. Together, the portraits constitute a group of experimental paintings and drawings—some of them highly charged, others sensual, and some of them intimate, witty, or idiosyncratic. The exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends, which opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 30, brings together about 90 of these distinctive portraits, including numerous loans from private collections. It will also explore in depth the friendships between Sargent and those who posed for him as well as the significance of these relationships to his life and art. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art: About the Exhibition
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Audio Guide
NY Times: Highlights From 'Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends' at the Met
Guardian - Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends review – invention, sex and sadness
amazon - Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends

Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums

"Born in 1941, I expected that George Clinton's choices for his Baker's Dozen would span the decades and his own musical life; from his mother's taste in blues, to his formative years spent loving Motown and writing at the Brill Building, through to his psychedelic awakening and subsequent (and continued) genre experimentation. And although all of these periods come up during the duration of our chat, it is one single trip to the record store that characterises nearly half of his choices. At around the age of '29, maybe 30', Clinton purchased his sacred audio library, including records by Sly And The Family Stone, The Beatles, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream. ..."
The Quietus

2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic.

Young Composers Series: John Adams, Michael Nyman, Paul Dresher, Ingram Marshall - February 5, 1979

Ingram Marshall – Fog Tropes/Gradual Requiem
"My head is still swimming from all the music I confronted at the New International Young Composers Concerts Series, sponsored by the Reich Music Foundation. At least half of the time the compositional level was extremely high, and many of the works reached into areas of musical style that have never been encountered by New York concertgoers. I don’t think it’s possible to fully process that much information in only a few days, but I can at least offer a few generalities and a few basic observations on four composers who were represented on these three concerts at the Guggenheim Museum, January 16-18. ..."
Tom Johnson: The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982

2010 June: John Adams - Nixon in China (1987), 2012 September: Obscure No. 2: Ensemble Pieces – Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, Gavin Bryars (1975), 2008 April: Michael Nyman, 2010 August: Decay Music, 2010 December: After Extra Time, 2011 March: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2011 August: Michael Nyman Band, 2011 December: The Draughtsman's Contract - Peter Greenaway, 2012 March: Time Lapse, 2013 July: Composer in Progress, In Concert (2010).

The Rise of Sneaker Culture

"From their modest origins in the mid-nineteenth century to high-end sneakers created in the past decade, sneakers have become a global obsession. The Rise of Sneaker Culture is the first exhibition to explore the complex social history and cultural significance of the footwear now worn by billions of people throughout the world. The exhibition, which includes approximately 150 pairs of sneakers, looks at the evolution of the sneaker from its beginnings to its current role as status symbol and urban icon. Included are works from the archives of manufacturers such as Adidas, Converse, Nike, Puma, and Reebok as well as private collectors such as hip-hop legend Darryl 'DMC' McDaniels, sneaker guru Bobbito Garcia, and Dee Wells of Obsessive Sneaker Disorder. ..."
Brooklyn Museum
amazon - Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture
NY Times: Missing Sneaker Culture at the Brooklyn Museum
Vanity Fair: The 7 Most Museum-Worthy Sneakers
The "Rise of Sneaker Culture" Exhibit Showcases Some of the Rarest Sneakers in Existence (Video)
Slam: ‘The Rise of Sneaker Culture’ Exhibit (PHOTOS)

Tour de France 2015: Team Time Trial Win Bolsters American’s Shot at Podium

BMC Racing on their way to victory on stage 9 of the Tour de France
"BMC, the American team that includes the winner of the opening time trial of this year’s Tour de France, followed up by winning Sunday’s team event against the clock. The win by BMC, the reigning world champion in the team time trial, was tight, with the team beating Team Sky of Britain by a single second. But regardless of the margin, the result further elevated expectations that BMC’s leader, the American Tejay van Garderen, will be on the podium in Paris in two weeks. After Sunday’s ninth stage, van Garderen was in second place over all, just 12 seconds behind Chris Froome, Sky’s leader. ..."
NY Times
Tour de France: BMC win team time trial in Plumelec
Martin abandons Tour de France due to fractured collarbone
Tour de France: Stybar wins stage 6 on short, punchy hill in Le Havre
‘Cavendish has to prove that he’s still the fastest sprinter’ says team boss - (Video) Stage 5
Tour de France: Tony Martin wins cobbled stage 4 in Cambrai

Steephill: Live Dashboard
LeTour (Video)
Guardian: Tour de France 2015 (Video)

2008 July: Tour de France 2008, 2009 July: Tour de France 2009, 2010 July: Tour de France 2010,  2011 July: Tour de France 2011, 2012 July: 2012 Tour de France, 2015 July: 2015 Tour de France

The Jam - The Gift (1982)

Wikipedia - "The Gift is the sixth and final studio album by English punk rock/mod revival The Jam. It was originally released on 12 March 1982 by Polydor as the follow-up to The Jam's critically and commercially successful 1980 album Sound Affects. The songs were largely recorded during 1981 to 1982, assisted by Peter Wilson, and is generally regarded as the culmination of the smoother, more adult-oriented sound of the band's later work. It was one of the band's most successful studio albums, reaching No. 1 in the UK. ..."
Wikipedia
The Quietus: Present And Correct: The Jam's Final Album The Gift Revisited 30 Years On (Video)
BBC Review
Spotify
YouTube: The Gift (Full Album) 1982

2009 March: The Jam, 2011 December: Down in the Tube Station at Midnight, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980), 2014 December: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982, 2015 March: "Town Called Malice" / "Precious".

Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye

The Bridge at Argenteuil and the Seine, 1885
"In 1875 Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) submitted a painting of floor scrapers to the jury of the Salon, the official exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. The work was rejected, but Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir admired it and encouraged him to exhibit with the impressionists. Caillebotte’s canvas, depicting shirtless laborers finishing a wood floor, became one of the sensations of the second impressionist show in 1876. Describing the picture in terms of its realism and modernity, admirers praised its 'truth' and 'frank intimacy,' while critics deemed it 'crude' and 'anti-artistic.' Caillebotte was thrilled by the impressionists’ fresh, radical vision. Over the next six years he participated regularly in their exhibitions, submitting paintings of the people and places he encountered in and around Paris. ..."
National Gallery of Art
NY Times: Review: Paris Is Reborn in ‘Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye’
U.Chicago - Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye

2014 April: Gustave Caillebotte

Nas presents the Real Hip-Hop – video

"Rapper Nasir 'Nas' Jones and director Adam Sjoberg take us on a world tour of breakdancing in the most unexpected places, as we visit the slums, shanty towns and ghettos of the world, where hip-hop really means something. With jaw-dropping breakdancing moves, b-boys and b-girls in Uganda, Yemen, Cambodia and Colombia give us an inspiring tribute to the uplifting power of music and movement"
Guardian (Video)
Nas Presents A Documentary About Hip-Hop’s Impact In Uganda, Yemen And Other Countries (Video)
Nas-Produced 'Shake the Dust' Shines Light on Global B-Boys (Video)
Shake The Dust (Video)
W - Nas
vimeo: The SlumGods of Mumbai: hope, hip-hop and the Dharavi way | Guardian Docs

Drawn + Quarterly Comics Enters a New Era

"Publishing houses, no less than people, have personalities. To be sure, certain large corporate presses have identities that are primarily mercenary, with catalogues consisting almost entirely of a mishmash of aspiring bestsellers. But among the smaller, individually run literary presses, the ones that nurture the books most likely to last, logos are marks of character. To see the emblem of a quality publisher on the spine of a book is to have a measure of its ambition and merit. From New Directions we expect strenuous modernist experimentation, from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux substance and style, from McSweeney’s mischievous playfulness not just in the words but also in the book design. ..."
New Republic