TAXI: A History of the New York Taxi Cab

"In this episode, we recount almost 175 years of getting around New York in a private ride. The hansom, the romantic rendition of the horse and carriage, took New Yorkers around during the Gilded Age. But unregulated conduct by ‘nighthawks’ and the messy conditions of streets due to horses demanded a solution. At first it seemed the electric car would save the day but the technology proved inadequate. In 1907 came the first gas-propelled automobile cabs to New York, officially ‘taxis’ due to a French invention installed in the front seat. By the 1930s the streets were filled with thousands of taxicabs. During the Great Depression, cab drivers fought against plunging fare and even waged a strike in Times Square. In 1937, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia debuted the medallion system as a way to keep the streets regulated. By the 1970s many cabdrivers faced an upswing of crime that made picking up passengers even more dangerous than bad traffic. Drivers began ignoring certain fares – mainly from African-Americans – which gave rise to the neighborhood livery cab system. ..."
The Bowery Boys: New York City History

2012 June: Taxicabs of New York City, 2015 March: In New Exam for Cabbies, Knowledge of Streets Takes a Back Seat

The 10 biggest reggae basslines, according to Trojan Sound System

"London's Trojan Sound System, formed just over a decade ago now, are one of the UK's finest examples of the power of the sound system culture. Inspired by the legendary reggae label of the same name, the Trojan crew have been spreading their message of love and unity through ska, roots, dub, and dancehall since 2004, headlinging club shows, captivating festival crowds and supporting legendary Jamaican acts such as The Wailers, Luciano, Sly and Robby and the late great Gregory Isaacs amongst others. The bassline aficionados return next month with their new track Time Is The Answer a response to the curreny state of political unrest and troubles sweeping the globe. ..."
DUMMY (Video)
CLASH: Trojan Sound System Mix (Video)
W - Trojan Records
YouTube: TROJAN SOUND SYSTEM // The 10 biggest reggae basslines

Building Radical America

"In 1967, Paul Buhle founded Radical America. The journal published sophisticated investigations of the struggles of the day, from black liberation to feminism; introduced American readers to a wide range of political currents, such as Italian autonomism; and explored American radical history, particularly the 1930s, for inspiration. In this interview, which originally appeared in Viewpoint Magazine, Salar Mohandesi discusses with Buhle the historical conjuncture that gave rise to the project, the journal’s aims, and the American radical tradition. ... Radical America may have been among the last left-wing journals printed on a single-sheet press, the pages collated by comrades, then stapled copy by copy, and mailed out, very cheaply, to the SDS chapters and individual subscribers. At first, it was typed on a green plastic surface that allowed easy correction for errors."
Jacobin
Brown University Library
The Search for a Useable Past: An Interview with Paul Buhle on Radical America
W - Radical America

Fela Kuti & Egypt 80 - Arsenal TV3 Catalonian (1987)

Wikipedia -"... The musical style of Felá is called afrobeat, a style he largely created, which is a complex fusion of Jazz, Funk, Ghanaian/Nigerian High-life, psychedelic rock, and traditional West African chants and rhythms. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native 'tinker pan' African-style percussion that Kuti acquired while studying in Ghana with Hugh Masekela, under the uncanny Hedzoleh Soundz. The importance of the input of Tony Allen (Fela's drummer of twenty years) in the creation of Afrobeat cannot be overstated. Fela once famously stated that 'without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat'. Afrobeat is characterized by a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals, and a musical structure featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. A riff-based "endless groove" is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style guitar, and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song. Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one, building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer. The horn section then becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes. Fela's band was notable for featuring two baritone saxophones, whereas most groups were using only one of this instrument. ..."
W - Fela Kuti
allmusic
YouTube: Arsenal TV3 Catalonian TV 36mins. approx.

Nuart Day 3 : Picking Up Pace and Sandra Chevrier’s Dramatic Eyes

Sandra Chevrier. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway.
"A fever pitch is possibly overstating the tempo but not by much as Day 3 at Nuart continued to be wet and gray and at times a little windy (not typically good for stencil work by the way). A couple of people have gotten a cold – possibly due to painting in the rain for hours on end, possible due to drinking back at the hotel late into the evening, one cannot be quick to surmise. Regardless, the artists are full of industry and the results are appearing right here before your dramatic and alluring eyes. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

Take a Labor Day Tour of Blue-Collar Art

America Today: City Building, 1930–31, Thomas Hart Benton
"'Poor art for poor people.' In the 1930s, the painter Arshile Gorky wielded that phrase like a weapon, disparaging what he saw as propagandist figurative art, art that often depicted and ennobled the American worker. And Gorky was far from alone in his scorn, as painting raced toward the purities of Abstract Expressionism. ... But the arrows of history and taste bend in mysterious ways. And with Labor Day at hand, New York finds itself — partly by happenstance, partly by design — in the middle of what might be described, with apologies to Gorky, as a rich moment for art about the working class, whose embattled existence is once again an issue in a presidential campaign. ..."
NY Times
Metropolitan Museum of Art: America Today: City Building, 1930–31, Thomas Hart Benton
Whitney: John Chamberlain, Velvet White, 1962
Reimagining Modernism—Expanding the Dialogue of Modern Art

Neil Young - Zuma (1975)

Wikipedia - "'Cortez the Killer' is a song by Neil Young from his 1975 album, Zuma. ... The song is about Hernán Cortés (Cortés' name has an alternate Anglicized spelling in the song title), a conquistador who conquered Mexico for Spain in the 16th century. 'Cortez the Killer' also makes reference to the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and other events that occurred in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Instead of describing the battles of Cortés with the Aztecs, the lyric in the last verse suddenly jumps from third person narrative to first person, and possibly over a time span of centuries as well, with a reference to an unnamed woman: 'And I know she's living there / And she loves me to this day. / I still can't remember when / or how I lost my way.' The lyric suggests a lost love affair and brings a personal aspect to what was otherwise an historical narrative, suggesting a connection between broken relationships and the imperial invasion by someone else. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Zuma
Zuma by Neil Young
Neil Young's Use of North American History
YouTube: Cortez the Killer (Live), Cortez the Killer, Cortez the Killer (acoustic 1999)
YouTube: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma (1975) [full album]

2008 February: Neil Young, 2010 April: Neil Young - 1, 2010 April: Neil Young - 2, 2010 May: Neil Young - 3, 2010 October: Neil Young's Sound, 2012 January: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, 2012 June: Like A Hurricane, 2012 July: Greendale, 2013 April: Thoughts On An Artist / Three Compilations, 2013 August: Heart of Gold, 2014 March: Dead Man (1995), 2014 August: Ragged Glory - Neil Young + Crazy Horse (1990), 2014 November: Broken Arrow (1996), 2015 January: Rust Never Sleeps (1979), 2015 January: Neil Young the Ultimate Guide, 2015 March: Old Black.

Hip Hop Family Tree 1975-1983 Gift Box Set

"To celebrate the resounding critical and commercial success of the first two volumes of Ed Piskor’s unprecedented history of Hip Hop, we are offering the two books in a mind-blowingly colorful slipcase, drawn and designed by the artist. As if that’s not enough, in addition to the two books and the slipcase itself, Piskor has drawn a 24-page comic book ― Hip Hop Family Tree #300 ― specifically for this boxed set that elegantly reflects the confluence of hip hop and comics, which was never more apparent in the early 1990s than with the famous Spike Lee-directed Levi Jeans commercial starring Rob Liefeld, who went on to create Youngblood and co-found Image Comics, not to mention ending up on the radar of gangster rapper Eazy E. Piskor tells this story as a perfect parody/pastiche/homage to ’90s Image comics. Full color."
amazon: Hip Hop Family Tree 1975-1983 Gift Box Set
Ed Piskor Is Making Hip-Hop History, One Panel at a Time
5 Questions with Ed Piskor

2012 January: The Hip-Hop Family Tree: A Look Into the Viral Propagation of a Culture, 2012 August: ‘Hip Hop Family Tree’ Comics Explain Genesis of the Genre, 2013 October: The Hip Hop Family Tree.

Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985

"Tom Waits：Vocal, Victor Feldman：Bass marimba, Larry Taylor：Acoustic bass, Randy Aldcroft：Baritone horn, Stephen Taylor Arvizu Hodges：Drums, Fred Tackett: Electric guitar.
Rattle Big Black Bones
in the Danger zone
there's a rumblin' groan
down below
there's a big dark town
it's a place I've found
there's a world going on
UNDERGROUND"
YouTube: Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money, 2014 March: Telephone call from Istanbul (1987), 2014 November: Rain Dogs (1985), 2015 February: Mule Variations (1999), 2015 April: Swordfishtrombones (1983), 2015 July: Alice (2002).

Jem Cohen - Evening’s Civil Twilight In Empires of Tin (2007)

"The Vienna International Film Festival (Viennale) takes place in October of each year. For the 2007 edition, New York filmmaker Jem Cohen was commissioned to close the festival, which he did with his program entitled Evening’s Civil Twilight In Empires Of Tin. This piece, inspired by Joseph Roth’s novel The Radetsky March, is a meditation on the decline of empires, juxtaposing images from the twilight stages of the Hapsburg empire and WWI with footage from present-day Vienna and Cohen’s hometown of Brooklyn, NY, where he traces his own visual meditations on the twilight of American empire. ... The result is a sort of agit-prop hallucination, a string of film vignettes bound by the poetry of Roth’s writing and by the sounds and songs of the live musicians."
Constellation
Filmmaker Magazine
amazon
YouTube: Empires of Tin

2014 January: Jem Cohen, 2014 June: Museum Hours (2012), 2014 November: Interview with Jem Cohen, 2014 December: This Is a History of New York (1987).

"Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes

The Piazza del Popolo (Veduta della Piazza del Popolo)
"Even in Paris, in one of the ugliest parts of the town, I know a window from which one can see across a first, a second, and even a third layer of jumbled roofs, street beyond street, a violet bell, sometimes ruddy, sometimes too, in the finest ‘prints’ which the atmosphere makes of it, of an ashy solution of black; which is, in fact, nothing else than the dome of Saint-Augustin, and which imparts to this view of Paris the character of some of the Piranesi views of Rome. (Swann's Way)
Paintings in Proust, Eric Karpeles
W - Piazza_del_Popolo

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

Memphis Blues - Important Postwar Blues 4 CD

"This 4-disc set collects over 100 post-war blues sides recorded in Memphis, just about all for Sam Phillips' Sun label (in fact, quite a number of tracks are duplicated on the multi-disc Sun blues box issued a number of years ago). Early sides by such major blues artists as Howlin' Wolf, Little Milton, James Cotton, and Roscoe Gordon are here, but it's usually the lesser known artists that provide the surprises and highlights: Woodrow Adams, Hot Shot Love, Raymond Hill, Pat Hare, and L.B. Lawson all knocked my socks off with their recordings. A number of inclusions are alternate takes. The blues from Memphis offer a wide variety of styles, from boogie-woogie to the deepest down-home heartbreakers. JSP specializes in 4-disc boxes revolving around particular themes, and all of them are superb: lots of music, great selections, the best sound available - all at a bargain price. This set is no exception. Post-war blues fans will find this set a total knockout; I call it a must-have set. Grab it while you can. - Bomojaz"
amazon
YouTube: Honeyboy Edwards- Sweet Home Chicago, Woodrow Adams - The Last Time, Rosco Gordon - Roscoe's Boogie, Little Junior's Blue Flames - Feelin' good, Midnight Showers Of Rain - Willie Nix, Don't Dog Me Around - Eddie Snow, Tiger Man - Rufus Thomas Jr, Bobby Bland - Dry Up Baby

Contact sheets: where the magic and chaos of photographs comes alive

Stuart Franklin’s contact sheet from Tiananmen Square, 1989, containing the famous “tank man shot”.
"Henri Cartier-Bresson, co-founder of the famed Magnum agency, once likened the contact sheet to the analyst’s couch. 'It’s all there: what surprises us is what we catch, what we miss, what disappears.' Today, the contact sheet has all but disappeared as digital technology has rendered the analogue camera a thing of the past, beloved only of purists and a coterie of young obsessives who fetishise film and the alchemy of the darkroom. In 2011, the publication of the photobook Magnum Contact Sheets seemed like an epitaph on the whole elaborate, hands-on process of pre-digital photography. Four years on, a new exhibition, which opens at FOAM Amsterdam on 11 September, is framed as 'a tribute to analogue technique' – further evidence that what was once taken for granted is now seen as almost absurdly old-fashioned. ..."
Guardian

George Bellows, "Pennsylvania Station Excavation," 1907-1909

Pennsylvania Station Excavation, 1907
"I wanted to make sure to see the George Bellows exhibition at the Metropolitan before it closes February 18, in order to see a few paintings that had been recommended to me by Susan Bee, in particular three paintings done between 1907 and 1909 of the excavation of the site for Pennsylvania Station. The paintings are easel sized and painted in a loose expressionistic style that is a eerie and awkward combination of Goya, Velasquez, Courbet, with a Brueghel quote in the bottom right corner of a dark worker against a snow white background but, despite these historical allusions, they are  imbued with a regionalist, Americanist feel. And yet, as one viewer I overheard say, these paintings are ferocious. In the first, Pennsylvania Excavation, the organized city is a far off dream against the blackened rock, earth, and gravel pit covered by snow and white mist from the steam engine of a work train dwarfed by the scale of site. ..."
a year of positive thinking
Boston Globe
Brooklyn Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arthur Russell

Wikipedia - "Arthur Russell (born Charles Arthur Russell, Jr.; May 21, 1951 – April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, singer and musician whose work spanned the genres of classical, disco, experimental, folk and rock. Notable artists who collaborated with Russell include Steve Reich, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Talking Heads, Jennifer Warnes, Bootsy Collins, and Nicky Siano. During his lifetime, Russell found the most commercial success in New York's underground dance and disco scene throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although he recorded a considerable number of songs, the musician's near-chronic inability to finish projects resulted in an extremely limited amount of released output during his life. ..."
Wikipedia
The making of Is It All Over My Face?
allmusic
Dummy (Video)
Arthur Russell and Steve D’Acquisto’s Loose Joints classics reissued by West End Records (Video)
amazon: Arthur Russell
amazon: Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992
YouTube: Dinosaur L ‎(Arthur Russell) – 24→24 Music (Full Album), Loose Joints - Is It All Over My Face, Loose Joints "Is It All Over My Face" (Original Male Version), Loose Joints - Tell You (Today) (Original 12" Vocal), Dinosaur - Kiss Me Again 12" (Side A, 1978), Arthur Russell - Some Imaginary Far Away Type Things A.K.A. Lost In The Meshes, Arthur Russell - Ocean Movie, Arthur Russell - World Of Echo

Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of The Brown Sisters

The Brown Sisters. 2010
"In August 1974, Nick Nixon made a photograph of his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters. He wasn’t pleased with the result and discarded the negative. In July 1975 he made one that seemed promising enough to keep. At the time, the Brown sisters were 15 (Mimi), 21 (Laurie), 23 (Heather), and 25 (Bebe). The following June, Laurie Brown graduated from college, and Nick made another picture of the four sisters. It was after this second successful picture that the group agreed to gather annually for a portrait, and settled on the series’ two constants: the sisters would always appear in the same order—from left to right, Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie—and they would jointly agree on a single image to represent a given year. Also significant, and unchanging, is the fact that each portrait is made with an 8 x 10" view camera on a tripod and is captured on a black-and-white film negative. ..."
MoMA
MoMa - Nicholas Nixon: 40 Years of the Brown Sisters
NY Times: Forty Portraits in Forty Years
amazon
vimeo: ICP Photobook Flip: The Brown Sisters

8 Unconvential Ways to Make Music (and Buck Capitalism)

"There are thousands of guides that purport to set you on the road to satisfying artistic expression. But all those millions of articles and forum posts are variations on the same theme: you need to buy this and that and gain technical proficiency in x and y. The inescapable visibility and consistency of these step-by-step plans create the perception that they are the only way of getting into music, so impressionable and soft-skinned newcomers end up on the same creative path using similar tools. Following this 'correct' method often leads to music that’s proscribed by technological interfaces and exclusionary ideologies. Basically you’re setting yourself up to suck capitalist dick if you follow to those guides, so here’s some strategies for making music that resists the clawing hands of the status quo with minimum expenditure and maximum freedom."
Electronic Beats (Video)

99 Objects

Juliana Force at the Whitney Studio Club, 1921 - Guy Pène du Bois (1884–1958)
"99 Objects is a series of in-gallery programs each focused on a single work of art from the Whitney’s collection. Speakers include artists, writers, Whitney curators and educators, and an interdisciplinary group of scholars. The collective result will be a constellation of unique perspectives on singular works of art. Programs take place daily."
Whitney - 99 Objects

Cast of 'The Warriors' to Reunite in Coney Island One Last Time

"In 1979, The Warriors chronicled the pilgrimage of a gang of leather-clad street kids as they fought their way through the Wild West of the Bronx back to their home turf out on Coney Island. At the time, the film was slammed as 'stiff' and 'sterile' by Roger Ebert, but has over the years become the quintessential cult classic — a campy take on what was already one of the city’s most violent, gang-infested eras. Now, more than three decades after the film’s theatrical release, the Warriors are once again making their way back to Brooklyn. On September 13, for one day only, members of the original cast will reunite at the Surf Pavilion on Coney Island — perhaps, they say, for the last time ever. ..."
Voice
W - The Warriors
The Warriors “Last Subway Ride Reunion” (Video)
The Warriors Will Reunite At Coney Island’s Surf Pavilion (Video)
VOICE - Remember the Warriors: Behind the Chaotic, Drug-Fueled, and Often Terrifying Making of a Cult Classic
Movies We Love: The Warriors
YouTube: The Warriors part 1 of 9

Movement Ex: Golden Age Hip Hop's Great Lost Album

"As this series has wended its meandering path through an inevitably subjective selection of albums that made their mark on your correspondent during the dog days of the 20th century, the focus has usually fallen on acknowledged classics. From time to time I've looked at lesser-hailed records by generally highly regarded artists, and on one occasion I've attempted to recontextualise an album that I felt history had been unduly generous towards. There have been a couple of times where the albums I've written about were debuts by artists who didn't exactly go on to colonise the listening public's attentions, but even in those instances the records under discussion had had an extensive and generally positive contemporary critical reception and sold in reasonable quantities by the standards of the day. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
RedefineHipHop: Movement Ex & Born Allah (Artist Profile)!!

OP Magazine / Tape Op

Wikipedia - "OP Magazine, based in Olympia, Washington, was a music fanzine published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network (leading to the title, which extends the abbreviation LMN to LMNOP) from 1979 to 1984. It was known for its diverse scope and the role it played in providing publicity to DIY musicians in the midst of the cassette culture. The magazine was co-founded by Foster, Toni Holm, Dana Squires, and David Rauh. An emphasis of the magazine was "articles about music written by musicians", and regular contributors included Victoria Glavin (Victoria Barreca), Peter Garland, Eugene Chadbourne, and Larry Polansky. When Foster ended OP after only twenty-six issues, (labeled A-Z, with topics within beginning with that issue's letter), he held a conference, offering the magazine's resources to parties interested in carrying on; two magazines became the dual successors to OP's legacy: attendant journalist David Ciaffardini went on to start Sound Choice, which published until 1992, while Scott Becker, alongside Richie Unterberger, founded Option, lasting until 1998."
Wikipedia
Tape Op
NY Times: Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift
W - Tape Op
The Handmade Tale: by Kathleen McConnell
facebook

Softer Targets - Jenny Holzer

Lustmord Table, 1994
"Hauser & Wirth Somerset is pleased to announce ‘Softer Targets’, a major solo exhibition by Jenny Holzer, featuring both new work and a selection of significant pieces drawn from over three decades of the artist’s career. The renowned American artist is best known for using language to make art, utilising a range of techniques to employ the power of words. Since 2004, Holzer has explored the use of text from declassified and other government documents. ... Crossing the threshold into the Pigsty gallery, the viewer is confronted with two wooden tables covered in carefully displayed human bones, some with inscribed silver bands. ‘Lustmord Table’ (1994) is a work conceived in response to conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, continuing Holzer’s themes of sex, war and death. The genesis of Holzer’s ‘Lustmord’ text series was an assignment for Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Published in 1993 as colour photographs of handwritten text on skin, and a special white card printed in blood ink, it represented the artist’s reaction to the war and reports that rape was used tactically. ..."
Hauser & Wirth
Telegraph
Elephant

2008 January: Jenny Holzer, 2011 June: Jenny Holzer Installation at the Guggenheim and Protect Protect

Patrick Van Caeckenbergh

Wikipedia - "Patrick Van Caeckenbergh (born 1960) is a Belgian artist. Born in Aalst, East Flanders, he now lives and works in Sint-Kornelis-Horebeke, Belgium. Patrick Van Caeckenbergh has secluded himself from the outside world and as a hermit critically studies the world and his own life. He creates illusive collages and bizarre sculptures of figures and phenomena within an imaginary and fabulous realm. He starts with ordinary, everyday things and creates some sort of magical assemblages by restructuring and reorganizing them. More than being an artist or a philosopher, Van Caeckenbergh is a tinkerer: he manipulates, mends and experiments with his material. Instead of being created in a mechanical and technical fashion, his work comes into being within a dynamic, natural process, characterized by coincidence and obscurity. ..."
Wikipedia
Lehmann Maupin
Elephant
patrick van caeckenbergh, les bicoques (Video)

The Cities - Paul Blackburn

"... Then a thin sky blue spine catches your eye, and the old Grove Press logo, always a sign of something interesting, and as you fold it down into your hand, you see that it is The Cities by Paul Blackburn.  Flipping through the pages you notice that someone has written comments in the margins of some of the poems, and though you agree with Steiner that an avid reader always has a pencil close by, this is blue ballpoint pen.  The crabbed scrawl is enough to make you slip the volume back onto the shelf until you spy the previous owner’s name on the fly leaf and realize that you hold in your hand a literary artifact. The Cities is probably Paul Blackburn’s best known and most accessible selection of poems. ..."
Someone Else’s Paul Blackburn
Paul Blackburn in Memphis, 1967
Silliman's Blog
amazon

2008 August: Paul Blackburn, 2012 November: Yankee go home (PoemTalk #59), 2013 January: Cronopios and Famas - Julio Cortazar (Paul Blackburn), 2013 August: Paul Blackburn and Das Rhinegold, 2015 May: The Grinding Down.

Sun Ra - The Singles (1996)

"Back in the mid-'50s, bandleader Sun Ra decided to get his music to his audience through a more direct process by starting his own label, Saturn Records. Equal parts creative futuristic vision and small-time Southern R&B bandstand hustle, these 45s were pressed in unbelievably small quantities (sometimes in runs of only 50 copies), making them the holy grail of Sun Ra collectibles. The collection of singles runs a neat 30-year time-frame and features everything from Sun Ra with an embryonic form of his Arkestra doing backup duties behind doo-wop groups and R&B slopbucket singers like 'Space Age Vocalist' Yochannon to wild-ass sonic experiements from the late '70s into the early '80s that would have atmospherically fit on any of his avant-garde albums. Pieced together for this release from the contributions of private collectors around the world -- and sonically cleaned up far beyond the audio capabilities of the original vinyl they were pressed on -- these 49 three-minute opuses will alternately confuse, astound, confound, delight, and illuminate Sun Ra fans of all stratas of involvement. A major piece of puzzle that is the man, now in place."
allmusic (Video)
Rockin' With Sun (Ra) (Video)
YouTube: Sun Ra Singles Disc 1, Sun Ra Singles Disc 2, Love in outer space, The Blue Set, Mayan Temples

For Fitz Henry Lane and Other 19th-Century Painters, Catalogues Raisonnés Go Digital

Salem Harbor, 1853
"New technology and fresh perspectives are jumpstarting efforts to assemble exhaustive lists of works by 19th-century American painters, sometimes in progress for decades. Next month a consortium of museums interested in the Massachusetts maritime painter Fitz Henry Lane (1804-65) will introduce a website, fitzhenrylaneonline.org, documenting about 320 paintings, drawings and prints at various institutions. Much of the material is being drawn from the Cape Ann Museum, in Mr. Lane’s hometown, Gloucester, Mass., and images on the website will be linked to infrared paint analyses, biographies of Mr. Lane’s clients, newspaper ads for his suppliers, maps of harbors where he sketched and portraits of owners of the ships moored there. ..."
NY Times
Gloucester's Own: Fitz Henry Lane
W - Fitz Henry Lane
Athenaeum forums

50 Years After Dylan Played Forest Hills, Al Kooper Recalls 1965's Electric Summer

"Not quite what you expect to hear from a man recalling the part he played in one of the most controversial moments in rock 'n' roll history, but this is how Al Kooper remembers the moment when Bob Dylan went electric. On July 25, 1965, Dylan and his band faced a grimacing audience when they deviated from their anticipated program and played an electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. Backed by the Butterfield Blues Band, keyboardist Barry Goldberg, and 21-year-old organist Kooper — the man responsible for the organ lick that soars throughout 'Like a Rolling Stone,' which had been released as a single less than a week prior to the Newport show — Dylan raced through a seventeen-minute set. ... Fifty years later, Kooper has spent a significant portion of the past few months reliving that set and the album — Highway 61 Revisited — that followed it, in both New York (at Lincoln Center Out of Doors) and Newport. ..."
Village Voice (Video)
The Most Decisive Moment in Rock History - 50 Years Ago (Video)
YouTube: Bob Dylan Live at the Newport Folk Festival

Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television

"Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television is the first exhibition to explore how avant-garde art influenced and shaped the look and content of network television in its formative years, from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. During this period, the pioneers of American television—many of them young, Jewish, and aesthetically adventurous—had adopted modernism as a source of inspiration. Revolution of the Eye looks at how the dynamic new medium, in its risk-taking and aesthetic experimentation, paralleled and embraced cutting-edge art and design."
The Jewish Museum (Video)
NY Times - Review: ‘Revolution of the Eye’ Examines Art’s Influence on Early TVA
Yale: Revolution of the Eye

"Meditations On Integration" - Filmed in Belgium on April 19 1964.

"'Meditations on Integration,' which is properly titled 'Praying with Eric' (or 'Meditations (For a Pair of Wirecutters)', is an extended work by Charles Mingus premiered at a Town Hall concert on April 4, 1964. It is his musical interpretation of the history of the American Negro, from the terror and despair of traveling on board the cramped, filthy and life threatening slave ships, to the degrading conditions of slavery itself, the joy of emancipation, and the struggle for civil rights through the turbulent early 1960s. Because Mingus was recorded in concert on numerous occasions during his European tour later that same month, many different versions exist. The piece begins ominously with dark blasts from trumpeter Johnny Coles and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, accompanying Eric Dolphy's forlorn sounding flute and Mingus' mournful arco bass, driven by Dannie Richmond's drums. ..."
allmusic
Open Culture: Classic Charles Mingus Performance on Belgian Television, 1964 (Video)
YouTube: Meditations On Integration (Eric Dolphy on Bass Clarinet and Flute)

2012 August: The Blues and the Abstract Truth - Oliver Nelson, 2013 August: Out to Lunch! - Eric Dolphy, 2014 October: Outward Bound - Eric Dolphy (1960).

Young Marble Giants

Wikipedia - "Young Marble Giants are a post-punk band formed in Cardiff, Wales in 1978. Their music is constructed around the vocals of Alison Statton along with the minimalist instrumentation of brothers Philip and Stuart Moxham. Young Marble Giants were formed from the ashes of 'True Wheel' which also included friends Matthew Davis and Louise Porter (later signed to EMI) Stuart Moxham wrote the majority of the band's songs, and his writing was often deceptively simple-seeming, giving the YMG's classic work a fragile yet powerful quality. Their sound was characterised by Phil's prominent bass lines, Stuart's rhythm guitar (a mapleglo Rickenbacker 425) and Galanti electric organ lines and Statton's tentative vocals. Stuart Moxham's girlfriend Wendy Smith lent Stuart the money to buy the Rickenbacker. ..."
Wikipedia
Pitchfork
Young Marble Giants Relive Their Colossal Youth
The Quietus - Colossal Youths: Young Marble Giants Interviewed
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth (Full Album), Collected Works(Full Album), Peel Session 1980 - Searching For Mr. Right, Brand New Life, Final Day, Posed by Models, N.I.T.A., Live Keystone Berkeley 10:25:80 (Full show)

Chelsea, Manhattan

Wikipedia - "Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The district's boundaries are roughly 14th Street to the south, 30th Street to the north, the western boundary of the Ladies' Mile Historic District – which lies between the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and Seventh Avenue – to the east, and the Hudson River and West Street to the west. To the north of Chelsea is the neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen (also known as 'Clinton'), as well as the Hudson Yards; to the northeast is the Garment District; to the east are NoMad and the Flatiron District; to the southwest is the Meatpacking District; and to the southeast is Greenwich Village and the West Village. ... The neighborhood is primarily residential, with a mix of tenements, apartment blocks, city housing projects, townhouses, and renovated rowhouses, but its many retail businesses reflect the ethnic and social diversity of the population. The area has a large gay population. Chelsea is also known as the center of the New York art world, with over 200 galleries in the neighborhood."
Wikipedia
NYC Visitor Guide
YouTube: Chelsea, Manhattan (Part 1), (Part 2)

2010 October: Hotel Chelsea, 2012 July: 112 Greene Street, Arena Hotel Chelsea, 2015 January: They Say Art Is Dead in New York. They’re Wrong., 2015 April: Chelsea Piers: New York City in the Age of the Ocean Liner, 2015 May: 10 Galleries to Visit on the Lower East Side.

The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008

"A recent review of The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 in Eoagh by poet and filmmaker Alison Watkins prompted us to finally spend some quality time over the holidays reading/looking at this gorgeous and timely compilation. Edited by Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill and published by Fantagraphic Books in Seattle, the anthology captures (as Watkins puts it) 'the explosion of visual poetry that surfaced as the result of computerization and digitization intersecting the humanities in the decade between 1998-2008.' In particular, Watkins’s review notes how the anthology highlights the way the digital and computerized tools of visual poetry are transforming not only visual poetry, but how we experience all poetry. ..."
Poetry Foundation
rain taxi
[PDF] The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008
The Paris Review: Vispo
amazon
YouTube: The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008

Please Return To: Mail Art from the Ray Johnson Archive

"Artist Ray Johnson's (1927-1995) body of work spans many media, but he is best known for his intricate and complex collages. His mail art project, The New York Correspondance [sic] School, utilized the postal system as a means of dissemination, circumventing the commercial art world. In his life, Johnson was close to key figures including Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Jim Rosenquist and Jasper Johns, and he is associated with several significant art movements. Johnson continued to produce work until his suicide in 1995, and is the subject of the cult classic documentary film How to Draw a Bunny. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, and is held in major public and private collections. ..."
Prentice Art
NY Times - Review: Recalling Ray Johnson, a Pioneer of Mail Art
I Is an Other: The Mail Art of Ray Johnson
artnet
The Paris Review: Please Forward Contents

2011 January: Ray Johnson, 2014 May: The Sinking Bear & Ray Johnson’s A Book About Death

East Village Other

Wikipedia - "The East Village Other (often abbreviated as EVO), was an American underground newspaper in New York City, New York, issued biweekly during the 1960s. It was described by The New York Times as 'a New York newspaper so countercultural that it made The Village Voice look like a church circular.' Published by Walter Bowart, EVO was among the first countercultural newspapers to emerge, following the Los Angeles Free Press, which had begun publishing a few months earlier. It was an important publication for the underground comix movement, featuring comic strips by artists including Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Gilbert Shelton and Art Spiegelman before underground comic books emerged from San Francisco with the first issue of Zap Comix. ..."
Wikipedia
East Village Other
Meet The Indie Newspaper Man Who Documented The East Village In The 1980s
The Untold Sixties: When Hope Was Born
The Local East Village

Berlin Atonal Festival: Caught Between Style and Substance?

"The resurrected Berlin Atonal festival is the kind of success that founder Dimitri Hegemann probably couldn’t have imagined back in 1990, when the fifth and final edition of the festival’s first incarnation ended. While Berlin’s landscape has changed irrevocably since then, its art-punk industrial and noise legacy remains. That restless spirit is aptly housed in the Kraftwerk, a former power plant in the city center whose cavernous concrete interior provides Atonal’s main stage and contains a complex of clubs including Tresor and Ohm, all of which are employed for the festival. ..."
Electronic Beats
Electronic Beats: “All of a sudden, noise was music” – Dimitri Hegemann on the legacy of Berlin Atonal
Electronic Beats: Thunder, lightning, a brick in the face – Berlin Atonal 2014 reviewed
Electronic Beats: Articles

The Word is Beat: Jazz, Poetry & the Beat Generation

"It is the aspiration of much literature that it wants to change the way we look at the world, but few authors and poets have been as influential as the group of writers labeled the Beat Generation. They saw a lot that they did not like about American society in the fifties when they came of age, and they did their best to change it through their literature and a new practice of living. They grew up in the climate of the Cold War and felt the pending threat of the nuclear bomb, but instead of being paralyzed by fear, they directed their energy towards changing society and created their own subculture in places as diverse as Greenwich Village in New York, San Francisco and Paris. They rebelled against capitalism, war and middle-class values and they championed freedom, sexuality, spirituality and the mind-expanding use of drugs. In many ways, their Bohemian life style anticipated the great youth rebellion in the sixties, but the soundtrack of their revolt was not rock 'n' roll, but jazz, an art form that also influenced their way of writing. ..."
All About Jazz

2009 August: Beat Generation, 2010 April: Beat Hotel, 2010 October: "Howl" - Allen Ginsberg, 2012 April: The Beats — A Graphic History, 2012 December: Jazz poetry, 2013 January: Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.

The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders

"I want to talk to you about a socialist from Vermont. Born in New York, he was active in the anti-Vietnam and civil rights movements in the 1960’s before moving to the town of Burlington, where he spent the next several decades creating a new set of socio-political ideas that combined the basic outlines of old European socialist ideology with the harsh realities of modern industrial capitalism, as well as a powerful critique of the ecological havoc wrought by the global hegemony of greenhouse gas pollution. But wait! If you thought this was the beginning of a stump speech for Senator Bernie Sanders, you are dead wrong. In fact I am referring to the late Murray Bookchin, a man who, in many ways, was the striking opposite of what Bernie Sanders is in every way. Bookchin was a scholar, activist, and writer whose polemics against capitalism but also cultish politicking on the far left and opportunism by people like Bernie Sanders make for great reading nine years after the man died in 2006. ..."
counterpunch
murray hates bernie: Murray Bookchin, “The Bernie Sanders Paradox: When Socialism Grows Old” (1986)
Campaign Zero
Logos - Review: Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy
Books: Murray Bookchin's 'The Next Revolution'
amazon - The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy

2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983)

Luke O'Sullivan "Cool Shelter"

"My work is about the intersection of built environments and subterranean systems. I create drawings and sculptures of fantastical urban environments. Often inspired by dystopian and science fiction films, I combine recognizable architectural forms and impossible buildings to make diorama-esque works. Early Nintendo games, animations, and maps of caves helped shape my imagination and approach to drawing. The recent works in 'Cool Shelter' explore the relationship between an overworld and underworld. Screen printed drawings and patterns on wood occupy the underground labyrinths with various stations, ladders, and wiring. Three-dimensional textures and two-dimensional façades blend together to create a layered industrial landscape."
Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Luke O'Sullivan
Interview: Sculptor Luke O’Sullivan Discusses His New Series “Cool Shelter”
juxtapoz

Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco and Punk

"I don’t think anyone can deny that New York in the 1970’s and 80’s was the place to be. From the birth of disco, to the influx of punk music and clubs like CBGB’s (when it was still cool to be seen there), New York was the center of a culture explosion so large, even the Brit’s were trying to take a page out of it’s book. But with the good, always comes the bad. New York was facing high crime rates due to the crack and pandemic, poverty, and high crime that was sweeping the streets, especially in Harlem and the Bronx. But with those bad times, New Yorkers found a way to show their true colors and some of the best music the world had ever heard would come out of those poor slums over the course of two decades from punk groups The Ramones and Blondie to disco at Studio 54 and uptown to the Bronx for some hip hop throw downs. ..."
nokturnalist
YouTube: Once Upon a Time in New York: The Birth of Hip Hop, Disco and Punk - Part 1/4, Part 2/4, Part 3/4, Part 4/4

NYRB 10th Anniversary Complete Classics Collection

"The NYRB Classics series began in 1999 with the publication of Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica, and now, ten years later, we are pleased to offer for the first time, exclusively at Amazon, the NYRB 10th Anniversary Complete Classics Collection. The collection spans the eclectic range of the NYRB series, from new translations of canonical figures such as Dante and Chekhov and fiction by modern masters such as Vasily Grossman and Mavis Gallant to narrative history and literary criticism, travel writing, cookbooks, memoirs from such writers as Norman Mailer and Patrick Leigh Fermor, and unclassifiable classics on the order of J.R. Ackerley's My Dog Tulip and Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Browse through all 250 NYRB Classics in the collection below, in alphabetical order by author. Also see our companion set, the New York Review Children's Collection, as well as curated lists of favorite books in the list from Francine Prose, David Leavitt, and NYRB Classics editorial director Edwin Frank."
amazon
New York Review Books
A Different Stripe: Notes from NYRB Classics

2014 September: The New York Review of Books

Walker Evans: A Life's Work

Interior View of Heliker/Lahotan House, Walpole, Maine, 1962
"Walker Evans (1903–1975) was one of the great per-sonalities of 20th century photography. He first came to public attention through his documentation of poverty in America at the time of the Great Depression that began at the 29th of October 1929 with the Black Friday and dominated the 1930s. Until today his reception is closely linked to the photographs he produced in the 1930s. The exhibition displays with well over 200 original prints from the years 1928 to 1974 both, the icons of his oeuvre, as well as rarely published photographs. His work played a decisive role for what is called the 'documentary style'. For decades, right up to the present, the prolific photographic oeuvre of Walker Evans has acquired an increasingly model character. With his sober documentary fashion he recorded a uniquely authentic picture of America, and like no other before him showed a particular feel for both the everyday and the subtle. ..."
Wall Street International
ArtBlart

2011 June: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 2011 May: A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, 2013 June: Cotton Tenants: Three Families, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2014 October: Walker Evans: The Magazine Work, 2014 December: Walker Evans: Decade by Decade.

The Wounded Angel - Hugo Simberg (1903)

Wikipedia - "The Wounded Angel  (1903) is a painting by Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg. It is one of the most recognizable of Simberg's works, and was voted Finland's 'national painting' in a vote held by the Ateneum art museum in 2006. Like other Simberg works, the atmosphere is melancholic: the angelic central figure with her bandaged eyes and bloodied wing, the sombre clothing of her two youthful bearers. The direct gaze of the right-hand figure touches the viewer. ... The same road still skirts Töölönlahti Bay today. In Hugo Simberg’s time, the park was a popular spot for leisure-time activities among the working classes. At the time, many charity institutions were located in Eläintarha park; in The Wounded Angel the healthy boys are carrying the injured girl towards the Blind Girls’ School and the Home for Cripples. She clutches a bunch of snowdrops, symbolic of healing and rebirth. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Hugo Simberg

Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York’s Rivers 1900–1940

Kurt Albrecht, Untitled (Brooklyn Bridge), c. 1920
"Rivers epitomize the timeless beauty and vitality of nature; they are also engines of commerce and progress. 'Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York’s Rivers 1900–1940,' organized by the Hudson River Museum, explores a specific instance of that paradox. The seventy works in the exhibition record changes to the regional landscape, defined in the nineteenth century by the Hudson River School as a new eden, and discover a twentieth-century iconography based on skyscrapers and bridges. The word sublime came into use in the eighteenth century to describe feelings of awe at manifestations of natural power such as storms and mountains. In the twentieth century, artists responded to man-made engineering feats with comparable wonder. ..."
Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies Center
The Hudson River Museum
Industrial Sublime: How New York City’s Bridges and Rivers Became a Muse of Modernism
[PDF] Industrial Sublime
amazon
YouTube: Industrial Sublime: Modernism and the Transformation of New York's Rivers 1900 - 1940

Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture - Thurston Moore (2005)

"... The advent of the cassette tape some 30 years ago made it possible for anyone with a tape deck and some tunes to be a record producer, mixing and matching songs, genres and bands. And become at-home record producers we did. Cheap and convenient, customized mix tapes made the perfect personal gift. We made tapes for friends, lovers — we shared the depths of our souls through the carefully chosen songs. We aggregated our favorite party songs, ballads for suffering through heartbreak and our loudest, angriest punk rock anthems. Thurston Moore, of pioneering art-rock-noise band Sonic Youth, explores the magic of the mix tape in a new book, Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture. ..."
NPR
The Emotional Design of the Mixtape
Pitchfork: This Is Not a Mixtape
CASSETTE REVIVAL
Wikipedia
WIRED: The Best 90 Minutes of My Life
amazon

ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins

The Temple of Baalshamin, part of the ancient ruins of Palmyra, in 2014.
"Militants from the Islamic State set off explosions at a temple in the ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria, activists and government officials said on Sunday, continuing a pattern of destruction that they have visited upon historical sites across the territory they control there and in Iraq. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist and monitoring group based in Britain, said Sunday in a statement that Islamic State fighters detonated “a large quantity of explosives” that they had arranged around the Temple of Baalshamin, one of the most grand and well-preserved structures in the sprawling complex of ruins. A government official told reporters that it was heavily damaged by the blast. ..."
NY Times (Slide Show)
NY Times: The Islamic State’s Advantage at Historic Sites

Delaney & Bonnie - Motel Shot (1971)

Wikipedia - "Motel Shot is the fifth studio album by Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, released in 1971. The album, their third for Atco/Atlantic (catalog no. SD 33-358) and fifth overall, is a mostly acoustic set. The album's title refers to the impromptu, sometimes late-night, jam sessions pursued by touring musicians when on the road. In the liner notes, Delaney Bramlett dedicates the album to 'My mom who sang alto.' Bonnie Bramlett wrote 'If this album can make one person feel half of what I felt on this session, then I am happy. It is to all of you with love.' ...  Other standout tracks include 'Long Road Ahead', 'Sing My Way Home' and 'Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad'. Guest musicians on the album include Leon Russell, Duane Allman, Stephen Stills, Dave Mason, John Hartford, Clarence White, Gram Parsons, Bobby Whitlock and Joe Cocker. ..."
Wikipedia
Stuck In The Past!
Delaney & Bonnie & Friends: Six Degrees of Swampland
YouTube: Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Come On In My Kitchen (Duane Allman), Long Road Ahead, Talkin' About Jesus, Don't Deceive Me (Please Don't Go), Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad (Duane Allman), Lonesome And A Long Way From Home
YouTube: Motel Shot (1971) Full Album

2014 February: Delaney & Bonnie & Friends: Copenhagen December 10, 1969, 2014 September: Home - Delaney & Bonnie (1969), 2015 March: The Original Delaney & Bonnie & Friends (1969).