The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography with Robin Blaser and Friends

"Robin Blaser is in his element in these monologues in interview format — personable, pedagogic, and himself a 'high-energy construct,' to not-quite-cite Charles Olson. By virtue of this book, the reader experiences Blaser as a unique force field of magnetic knowledge and charismatic charm. He is at home among the poets, themselves practitioners and friends, meeting in 1974 at someone’s house in Vancouver. The agenda is mixed: the taped sessions from which these talks are transcribed were apparently proposed by Warren Tallman to constitute or contribute to Blaser’s autobiographical memoir, and probably to dig into the complex nexus of a famous triad: Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Blaser. Their comradeship, quarrels, spites, and splits (among those involving other intimates) are one tale of the formation and impact of the 'Berkeley' or 'San Francisco Renaissance' in the New [North] American Poetry, a poetics and practice — with its accompanying lore — that energized these Canadian poets in distinctive ways. ..."
Jacket2: In his element
Bookslut
Google: The Astonishment Tapes
The Astonishment Tapes
Project MUSE
Of Robin Blaser

November 2007: EPC, November 2009: Robin Blaser (1925 - 2009), March 2010: The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, 2011 February: The Holy Forest, 2011 July: "Image-Nation 21 (territory", 2007 November: Jack Spicer, 2010 February: mad cartographer (PoemTalk #28), 2010 April: Manroot and Acts, 2011 January: 5 Poems by Jack Spicer, 2012 July: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, 2015 January: 'Absolutely temporary': Spicer, Burgess, and the ephemerality of coterie, 2015 March: San Francisco Renaissance

‘Downton Abbey’ Finale: A Grand British Story With an American Finish

"We felt it from the opening credits, didn’t we, Abbots? We heard the familiar chords. We watched Lord Grantham and his yellow lab (Isis? Tiaa?) take their last stroll together across the green. We registered the final iterations of the ringing bell, the simmering pot, the lamp, the chandelier. One last time, we thought. And no more. And the whole while Baron Fellowes seemed to be thinking: Right. Let’s clean this up, shall we? Indeed, from a certain angle, the final episode of “Downton Abbey” was just about getting people out of the fine messes their creator had gotten them into, and hustling them with all due celerity toward the finish line. ..."
NY Times
'Downton Abbey' series finale recap: A very fond farewell
Downton Abbey Series Finale Recap: Happy Enough
NY Times: ‘Downton Abbey,’ the Good, the Bad and the Forgotten

2012 March: Downton Abbey, 2013 February: Downton Abbey 3, 2015 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ and History: A Look Back, Recap: Rumble With Lord G!, 2015 February: Recap: Prayers for Lord G’s Truest, Furriest Love, 2015 February: Recap: The Crawleys Should Have Sent Their Regrets, 2015 February: Recap: Yes, It’s Called the Hornby Hotel, 2015 March: Recap: In the Finale, Mary Meets Mr. Handsome, 2016 January: Downton Abbey Returns for a Feel-Good Final Season, 2016 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 3 Recap: So Nice to See Him Again? , 2016 February: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 5: Bloody, Bloody Downton, 2016 February: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 8: Lady Mary, That Skinny You-Know-What.

Bush Tetras - Rituals EP (1981)

"In New York in the late '70s & early '80s, the Bush Tetras blazed brightly in the sweaty clubs of the Lower East Side, playing music that was a blend of funk rhythms & dissonant guitar riffs. Lead guitarist Pat Place had been the original guitarist & one of the founding members of the No Wave band The Contortions. With the Bush Tetras, she continued to pursue some of the musical ideas she had explored in that band, themes of driving rhythm & nihilistic trance...hypnotic, tribal, & dirty. Together with vocalist Cynthia Sley they produced the most distinctive aspects of the Tetras sound. Sley’s half-spoken, half-sung vocals, often repeating simple phrases over & over again, creating a hypnotic monotony similar to Place's guitar rhythms. ..."
Digital Meltd0wn
YouTube: Can't Be Funky, Funky Instrumental, Cowboys in africa, Rituals

2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 October: Pat Place

Ralph Willis

Wikipedia - "Ralph Willis (1910 – June 11, 1957) was an American Piedmont and country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. Some of his Savoy records were released under pseudonyms, such as Alabama Slim, Washboard Pete and Sleepy Joe. Willis was born near Birmingham, Alabama. In the late 1930s, Willis moved to North Carolina and started to play along with musicians who were familiar with Blind Boy Fuller. Willis recorded his debut material in 1944, and continued until 1953, issuing fifty tracks via several record labels including Savoy, Signature, 20th Century, Abbey, Jubilee, Prestige, Par, and King Records. ..."
Wikipedia
Record-Fiend
American Music
YouTube: New Goin' Down Slow, Door Bell Blues, I'm gonna rock, Old home blues, Income Tax Blues, Tell Me Pretty Baby, Somebody Is Got To Go, Cool That Thing, Ralph Willis & Brownie McGhee - Sportin' Life, Why'd You Do It, Christmas Blues, Mama Mama Blues, Gonna Hop On Down The Line, Going To Virginia, Comb Your Kitty Cat, Blues, Blues, Blues, Boar Hog Blues, Amen Blues, Everyday I Weep And Moan, Eloise, Alabama Trio Steel Mill Blues

Bad medieval book manners.

The Middle Ages being used to reinforce the Renaissance, as it were.
"Handle with care. Those who have worked with manuscripts in libraries and archives know that the casual relationship between the reader and the printed book stops at the door and a special covenant enters into force once we approach bound parchment (ok, some paper, too, mais j’en passe). ‘Be careful with that’, ‘no flash, please’, ‘don’t open it like that’, ‘use a book-rest, don’t you see you’re hurting it’ are ululations typical of a manuscript room. Needless to say, things were not quite like that in the long Middle Ages. Those manuscripts that have made it through fire and water, deliberate destruction or noxious negligence usually tell us stories of a book culture where the reader and the book were only slowly coming into a friendly bond. ..."
philobiblonia - Part 1, Part 2

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid List

"Throw on your favorite tie-dye, your jeans patched with bits of guitar strap, a North American Indian headband and, in the words of Dr. Leary, 'turn on, tune in, drop out.' Even though we did all those things (and a few more we don’t care to reveal), we still had a pleasantly far-out but tricky task in limiting the list of great songs to a mere psychedelic 16. So, we are gladiators entering the arena. The usually friendly crowd wants our blood. Shouts and murmurs ripple through the seats. How could you have forgotten 'Strawberry Fields Forever'? Speaking of berries, what about Strawberry Alarm Clock’s 'Incense And Peppermints'? 'Season Of The Witch' by Super Session? What about 'The Acid Queen' from The Who’s Tommy? ..."
song mango (Video)

Feminism Against Capitalism

Italian women at a labor protest in the 1970s.
"Socialism and feminism have a long, and at times fraught, relationship. Socialists are often accused of overemphasizing class — of placing the structural divide between those who must work for a wage to survive and those who own the means of production at the center of every analysis. Even worse they ignore or underplay how central other factors — like sexism, racism, or homophobia — are in shaping hierarchies of power. Or they admit the importance of these negative norms and practices, but argue that they can be rooted out only after we get rid of capitalism. Meanwhile, socialists accuse mainstream feminists of focusing too much on individual rights rather than collective struggle and ignoring the structural divides between women. ..."
Jacobin
The Italian Women's Movement 1968-1978
Italian feminism, workerism and autonomy in the 1970s
W - Feminism in Italy

Gnawa music

A 19th century Gnawa musician
Wikipedia -"Gnawa music is a rich repertoire of ancient African Islamic spiritual religious songs and rhythms. Its well preserved heritage combines ritual poetry with traditional music and dancing. The music is performed at 'Lila's', entire communal nights of celebration, dedicated to prayer and healing, guided by the Gnawa Maalem and his group of musicians and dancers. Though many of the influences that formed this music can be traced to sub-Saharan West-Africa, its traditional practice is concentrated in Morocco and the Béchar Province in South-western Algeria. ... Gnawa music is one of the major musical currents in Morocco. Moroccans overwhelmingly love Gnawa music and Gnawas 'Maalems' are highly respected, and enjoy an aura of musical stardom. ..."
Wikipedia

Claude McKay and Gnawa Music

"A dancer whips her hair and lifts and drops her chest as the thwacking bass sound of the sintir fills the air. There are cries of 'Ifriqiya!' and 'Kandisha!' The musicians call out the names of different saints and spirits and ask for healing as a soprano sax sounds over the vocals. The dancer lights two sticks on fire and begins passing the flames over her bare torso. The metal castanets beat faster, the dancer’s hennaed arms point upward, and she begins to spin and spin, the flames swirling around her head. The percussion stops—she drops to her knees, throws her head back, and pushes a flaming stick deep into her throat, extinguishing the fire with her lips. The restaurant crowd cheers loudly. The dancer walks “offstage,” and the waiters bring platters of food to the customers. These kinds of Gnawa music shows can now be seen regularly in New York City, if not always with the fire-eating—in Times Square, at music spots in Harlem, Latin clubs in Queens, impromptu jam sessions in Central Park. ..."
New Yorker

Feature: Gnawa Music of Morocco

"Dr. Chouki El Hamel received his doctorate from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in January 1993. ... He is currently finishing his book, “Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam” He contributed this essay to Afropop Worldwide for the program African Slaves in Islamic Lands. Westerners who have visited Morocco have likely encountered Gnawa musicians. In the coastal Atlantic town of Essaouira, where an annual festival of Gnawa music takes place, and in Marrakesh, at its spectacular central square called Jamaa el-Fna. The colorful gowns and caps of Gnawa musicians, covered with cowry shells, coupled with the distinct sound of their instruments – metallic castanets, heavy drums and a three-stringed bass lute (guembri) – provide both visual and audio confirmation of the Gnawa presence. ..."
World Music Productions (Video)

“There is Nothing Like This Festival”
"It’s late afternoon on the Atlantic Coast and a lazy wind is rolling in, weaving between surfboards and mint tea. I’m with a group of new friends in a café in Essaouira, Morocco. We’re all here for a unique world music festival, and I’m trying to figure out if this heady beach party is by Moroccans for Moroccans, or if it’s a watered-down experience Westernized enough for foreigners with deep pockets. 'It’s definitely for foreigners,' Walid, a twenty year-old student, tells me. It’s his second time attending the Gnawa Music Festival, this time with a group of dreaded friends in tow, all from the capital city of Rabat. ..."
Roads and Kingdoms

Morocco: Crossroads of Time (1995)

"Morocco has one of the world's richest cultural traditions, inspiring creative geniuses ranging from Henri Matisse and William S. Burroughs to Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix. Listening to this album, it's easy to see why these artists were so fascinated with this mystical culture, whose geographical location on ancient trade routes led to the incorporation of elements of Asian, African, European and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Ten songs and two ambient recordings made in the bustling marketplaces at Fez and Marrakesh take listeners on an aural tour of this magical land, from Paul Bowles' 1959 recording of Abdelkrim Rais' Andalusian orchestral ensemble to Zoughari's hypnotic Gnawa rhythms to Guedra's Sufi-style healing chants. The package includes a mixed-media book with 64 pages of photos, cultural insights, and detailed track listings, making Morocco: Crossroads of Time the most inexpensive ticket to an enriching Moroccan cultural experience you're likely to find."
allmusic
Discogs
amazom

[PDF] ]Moroccan Gnawa and Transglobal Trance - Penn Museum

YouTube: Morocco Gnawa Music Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19

25 Radical Things to Do in Greenwich Village

8th Avenue and Jane Street
"Flipping through Greenwich Village: A Photographic Guide by Edmund T. Delaney and Charles Lockwood with photographs by George Roos, a second, revised edition published in 1976, it’s easy to compare the black and white images with the look of today’s neighborhood and see how much the Village has changed. A long shot photograph of Washington Square taken up high from an apartment north of the park, and with the looming two towers of the World Trade Center off to the distant south in the background, reveals a different landscape than what we would encounter today. ..."
Walking Off the Big Apple

2009 May: Washington Square Park, 2010 January: Judson Memorial Church, 2011 February: Greenwich Village, 2011 July: East Village, Manhattan, 2012 July: MacDougal Street, 2013 August: The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village, 2014 August: South Village, 2014 October: Houston Street, 2015 September: Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, 2016 January: Chumley's

New Sensations - Lou Reed (1984)

"Lou Reed never struck anyone as one of the happiest guys in rock & roll, so some fans were taken aback when his 1984 album New Sensations kicked off with 'I Love You, Suzanne,' a catchy up-tempo rocker that sounded a lot like a pop tune. After reaffirming his status as one of rock's greatest poets with The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts, what was Reed doing here? Lou was having a great time, and his pleasure was infectious -- New Sensations is a set of straight-ahead rock & roll that ranks with the most purely enjoyable albums of Lou's career. Reed opted not to work with guitarist Robert Quine this time out, instead overdubbing rhythm lines over his own leads, and if the guitars don't cut quite as deep, they're still wiry and in the pocket throughout, and the rhythm section of Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher rocks hard with a tough, sinewy groove. ..."
allmusic
W - New Sensations
Spotify, iTunes
YouTube: New Sensation - 9/25/1984 (Live), Doing The Things We Want To, I Love You, Suzanne
YouTube: New Sensations Full album vinyl LP

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), 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984, 2015 October: The Blue Mask (1982).

"Make It Funky" - James Brown (1971)

Wikipedia - "'Make It Funky' is a song recorded by James Brown with The J.B.'s. It was released as a two-part single in 1971, which reached #1 on the U.S. R&B chart and #22 on the U.S. Pop chart. It features the band members chanting the song's title and a prominent organ part played by Brown himself. Bobby Byrd also contributes vocals and a spoken intro. Brown recorded a continuation of the song, titled 'My Part/Make It Funky', which was released as a second two-part single and charted #68 R&B. Parts 1 and 3 of 'Make It Funky' were included on the 1972 compilation album Soul Classics, while Parts 3 and 4 appeared on the album Get on the Good Foot. Live versions of 'Make It Funky' appear on the albums Revolution of the Mind and Live at the Apollo 1995."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Make It Funky Part 1 Thru 4 (Super Rare)

Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive

"TULSA, Okla. — For years, Bob Dylan scholars have whispered about a tiny notebook, seen by only a few, in which the master labored over the lyrics to his classic 1975 album 'Blood on the Tracks.' Rolling Stone once called it 'the Maltese Falcon of Dylanology' for its promise as an interpretive key. But that notebook, it turns out, is part of a trinity. Sitting in climate-controlled storage in a museum here are two more 'Blood on the Tracks' notebooks — unknown to anyone outside of Mr. Dylan’s closest circle — whose pages of microscopic script reveal even more about how Mr. Dylan wrote some of his most famous songs. There have long been rumors that Mr. Dylan had stashed away an extensive archive. It is now revealed that he did keep a private trove of his work, dating back to his earliest days as an artist, including lyrics, correspondence, recordings, films and photographs. ..."
NY Times
WSJ: Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive Heads to Tulsa (Video)
Pitchfork: Bob Dylan Secret Archives to Be Displayed in Tulsa (Video)

Adrian Tomine - Killing and Dying (2015)

"Brooklyn-based cartoonist Adrian Tomine has been drawing professionally since he was in high school. Now, at 41, he’s an in-demand illustrator whose work regularly graces the covers of the New Yorker and classy Criterion Collection movie re-releases. ... His new collection of short stories, Killing and Dying, is about as pure an expression of that love as an artist has produced during the recent boom in literary comics. Far more diverse in style than anything yet from the notoriously meticulous artist, Tomine’s six stories about people striving and failing span four years of the author’s life, and mark a significant change in the way he works. They’re also very funny. ..."
Guardian: New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine
Full-Stop
NY Times: Adrian Tomine’s ‘Killing and Dying’
amazon: Killing and Dying
Livestream: Adrian Tomine (Video)

Rimbaud in New York

"Boy genius, rebel, visionary, Rimbaud set off a bomb in the world of letters with the publication of Illuminations. 130 years later, this dazzling book of poems, written mostly in prose, continues to amaze. John Ashbery's recent highly-acclaimed translation offers us these poems through the wonderfully precise and always surprising language of one of America's greatest contemporary poets. For Rimbaud in New York, The Civilians create a wildly original, playful and enriching inquiry into the meaning and legacy of Illuminations, staging how these revolutionary poems continue to resonate in the American imagination, setting off explosions in the minds of new readers. ..."
The Civilians
BAM
‘Rimbaud in New York’ Conjures ’70s Bohemia Downtown
Soundcloud: BAMorg - Beyond Rimbaud in New York
[PDF] Rimbaud in New York

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 2015 May: Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery - 1875).

Sicario (2015)

Wikipedia - "Sicario is a 2015 American crime-thriller drama film directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin. Written by Taylor Sheridan, the film is about a principled FBI agent who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. ... During an FBI SWAT raid of a hideout occupied by suspected kidnappers in Chandler, Arizona, Agent Kate Macer, her partner Reggie Wayne, and their team discover dozens of corpses. While the team investigates, an improvised explosive device detonates, killing two officers. In the aftermath, Kate's boss, Dave Jennings, recommends her for a task force assembled by the Department of Defense and Matt Graver (a CIA Special Activities Division undercover officer) to implicate those responsible, including Sonora Cartel lieutenant Manuel Díaz. ..."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: Dark Places
Mexican Cartels and Wet Willies: The Story Behind 'Sicario'
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Sicario Official Trailer #1

When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (2013)

"In a moment I will tell you why Kendrick Lamar, a young rapper from Compton, deserves much of the acclaim, and, even more so, the analysis he has received, but first let us deal with the vanguard of black memoirists who came before him and in whose well-forged path he follows. In the summer of 1945, Ralph Ellison wrote a review of Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Wright’s semiautobiographical novel about his tough boyhood in Mississippi. In Ellison’s piece he suggested that Black Boy is shaped more by the blues tradition born from the same hard countryside as Wright than it is by any literary genre or narrative model. ..."
Los Angeles Review of Books

2015 December: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)

Roots Reggae Tape - Jamaica 1978 rare

"This is a real Roots Reggae mixtape with rare tracks from the golden era of Jamaican music. The Wailers & Johnny Lover - Sun is shining, The Righteous Flames - Must be a revolution, Maurice Wellington - Girl you’re so divine, Shenley Duffus - To be a lover, The Flames - Zion, Senya - Oh Jah come, Little Roy & Ian Rock - Christopher Columbus, Errol Dunkley - This train, Ronnie Davis - Money never build a mountain, The Ethiopians - The word is love, The Mighty Maytones - Ital queen, The Heptones - It’s like heaven, King Burnett & Lee Perry - I man free, Asher & Trimble - Humble yourself, Prince Alla - Bosrah, Morvin Brooks - Cheer up black man, The Royals - Make it believe, Gladstone Anderson - Rockers, Paul Freeman - Life is sweeter than money, Bob Marley - She used to call me data, Chenley Duffus - At the end."
YouTube: Jamaica 1978 rare

Ishtar gate and Processional Way

"The Pergamonmuseum was designed by Alfred Messel; its construction was overseen by Ludwig Hoffmann and lasted twenty years, from 1910 to 1930. A smaller building initially stood on the same site for a just few years before being torn down. It housed the important excavation finds unearthed by the Berlin museums, such as the frieze panels from the Pergamon Altar, reclaimed from the earth in digs that lasted from 1878 to 1886. Inadequate foundations, however, soon resulted in the building becoming structurally unstable and it had to be demolished. The new, larger Pergamonmuseum was built as a three-wing complex. The museum now houses three of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collections: the Antikensammlung, Vorderasiatisches Museum, and the Museum für Islamische Kunst. ..."
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
W - Ishtar Gate
BBC: The Great Gate of Ishtar
NY Times: Berlin’s Museum Tours in Arabic Forge a Bridge to Refugees
Ishtar gate and Processional Way (Video)
From Babylon to Berlin: The rebirth of the Ishtar Gate

Alfred Sisley, Banks of the Seine at By, 1839–1899

"A young girl in a blue dress, thought to be Sisley’s daughter Jeanne, walks along a path by the Seine. This is one of a group of paintings of local rivers that the artist made shortly after he and his family settled near Moret-sur-Loing, southeast of Paris. A scattering of white and yellow flowers suggests the scene was painted in spring. Sisley used a variety of different brushstrokes to record subtleties of light, color, and atmosphere."
The Clark
From Paris: A Taste for Impressionism

2009 May: Alfred Sisley, 2015 October: The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Ramble Ramble: Beyond Repair

"Start talking to people who ride bicycles, and you will discover they have one thing in common regardless of their background, ability, or social group. People who bike regularly see more of the world. For some time, I have been hoping to stumble upon an outlet that would present me a platform to begin sharing the observations, stories, and questions piling up from my daily ramblings and travel by bike. The idea with this new series of articles for Mn Artists is to seek out art within the Twin Cities, ride my bicycle to see it, and then write about my experience, including how I got there. ... I’m not at all the first to mark such definitions. Thoreau noted that “wild” is the past participle of willed. Other writers -- Gary Snyder, Terry Tempest Williams, Jack Turner, and Barry Lopez to name a few -- have similarly worked to clarify the discrepancies between wildness and wilderness, and to explain why wildness is so essential to human life. ..."
Explore Minnesota Art Scene

Bialy

Wikipedia - "Bialy (Yiddish: ביאלי‎), a Yiddish word short for bialystoker kuchen (Yiddish: ביאליסטאקער קוכען‎), from Białystok, a city in Poland, is a small roll that is a traditional dish in Polish and Polish Ashkenazi cuisine. A traditional bialy, or cebularz as it is known in Poland, has a diameter of up to 15 cm (6 inches) and is a chewy yeast roll similar to a bagel. Unlike a bagel, which is boiled before baking, a bialy is simply baked, and instead of a hole in the middle it has a depression. Before baking, this depression is filled with diced onions and other ingredients, including (depending on the recipe) garlic, poppy seeds, or bread crumbs. ..."
Wikipedia
Everything You Need To Know About The Bialy (Including A Recipe)
Inside New York's Cult of the Bialy
Bialy History - Brooklyn Bialy Recipe
NY Times: The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World By Mimi Sheraton
amazon
YouTube: NY Bialy, How The Oldest Bialy Bakery in the U.S. Makes Their Bialys

2014 November: Bagel

The 90 Minute Guide: Fela Kuti

"Few musical artists of the 20th Century have a biography as incredible as Fela Kuti’s. The Nigerian bandleader and pioneer of Afrobeat was born to politically progressive parents, attended university in London, started a highlife band in the ’60s which evolved into Africa 70, and recorded some early sessions in Los Angeles before having to split the country in a matter of days. In the ensuing years, Kuti would soon start a commune in Nigeria he dubbed the Kalakuta Republic, learn to play saxophone (and quite well at that) and increasingly compose funkier and more expansive Afrobeat tracks with lyrics detailing political and social strife in West Africa. One of his songs resulted in the burning and brutal attack on the Kalakuta Republic, and in return, Kuti sent a replica of his mother’s coffin to the Head of State. ..."
Treble (Video)

Don't You Be Afraid To Lie By Me: The Strange World Of... Bert Jansch

"A messy thatch of black hair and sideburns gazing back at the camera, a beehived girl on the floor... the cover of It Don't Bother Me, Bert Jansch's second solo LP, shows that '60s folk music wasn't averse to myth-making. He had chops, though, did Bert. ... The next five years before his debut album arrived were of Leonard Cohen-grade legend: squatting in squalor with The Incredible String Band's Robin Williamson, busking and playing through Britain and Europe with a girlfriend he married because she was too young to get a passport (they divorced pretty quickly), being deported from Tangiers back home on the way to Marrakech to make music (less mythically, he had contracted dysentery), and returning to a booze-and-weed fuggy flat chock-full of folk musicians, albeit in less exotic environs between Cricklewood and Kilburn. ..."
The Quietus (Video)

April 2010: Bert Jansch, 2011 October: Bert Jansch (November 1943 – October 2011), 2014 February: Bert Jansch / John Renbourn - Bert & John (1966), 2014 May: L.A. Turnaround (1974)

Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

The Motel, 2014
"Gagosian New York is pleased to present new photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Cathedral of the Pines (2013–14) was made during three productions in and around the rural town of Becket, Massachusetts. In images that recall nineteenth-century American and European paintings, Crewdson photographed figures in the surrounding forests, including the actual trail from which the series takes its title. Interior scenes charged with ambiguous narratives probe tensions between art, life, connection and separation, intimacy and isolation. The series comprises thirty-one digital pigment prints, each measuring 45 × 58 inches framed. In Woman at Sink, a woman pauses from her household upkeep, lost in thought. ..."
Gagosian
State: For Photographers, Living Life Is a Constant State of Preproduction
NY Times: Alone, in a Crowd, With Gregory Crewdson
Interview: Gregory Crewdson, Mystery in Everyday Life

The Travelling Record Man

"The bulky title of this disc was sparked by its documentation of recordings assembled by Joe Bihari of Modern Records on scouting trips through the South for talent between 1948 and 1953. ... Just two of the names on this 24-track anthology are famous: Howlin' Wolf, represented by an audition acetate of 'Riding in the Moonlight' (first issued in 1991), and Elmore James, whose two cuts appeared on an Ace box set in 1993. ... This is raw, Southern, just-post-World War II blues, caught in its transition from its rural roots to something more electric and citified. ... The fidelity is imperfect, as many of the tracks were taken from acetates or 78s, but has been cleaned up considerably by modern technology."
allmusic
Ace Records
Blues On Stage
Spotify
YouTube: Baby Face Turner - Blue Serenade, Drifting Slim - My Sweet Woman, Charley Booker - No Ridin' Blues, Howling Wolf - Riding In The Moonlight, Smokey Hogg - I'm Gonna Find Your Trick, Cairo Blues - Lil' Son Jackson, Joe Hill Louis - Good Morning Little Angel, Tiny Webb - Tiny's Down Home, Sunny Blair - Please Send My Baby Back Home, Elmore James - My Baby's Gone, Calvin Frazer - Rock house, Willie Nix - Lonesome Bedroom Blues, Rambling On My Mind - Robert Johnson

American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986

"This 2-disc DVD set from the National Film Preservation Foundation and Image Entertainment covers an era of filmmaking that is almost lost to authentic recall; an era when individual artists were able to make films of grace, daring and complexity on non-existent budgets, working mostly in 16mm, making up the rules as they went along and obeying no one’s authority but their own. The recent collapse of 16mm as a distribution, exhibition and production medium makes this DVD collection all the more compelling. Without it, many if not all of these films would completely vanish from our collective memory, as if they had never even existed. And that would be a great loss. For here, in an immaculate collection, are 26 films by a widely disparate gallery of artists, from Andy Warhol to Ron Rice, now available on DVD for the first time. ..."
Senses of Cinema
W - Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 (2008)
Slant
amazon
YouTube: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986 - 1/2, 2/2

David Johansen - David Johansen (1977)

"David Johansen's self-titled solo debut bears a closer resemblance to his work with the New York Dolls than any of his subsequent recordings, but the former Dolls singer cleverly crafted an album that played to his former band's strengths while establishing an identity of his own and delivering a set of tight but powerful hard rock. Where the Dolls were frequently sloppy and poorly focused (if often gloriously so), David Johansen rocks with a cleaner but equally emphatic guitar attack (courtesy Johnny Rao and Thomas Trask), while Johansen's vocals are noticeably more powerful and sharper than his earlier music. ..."
allmusic
W - David Johansen
Robert Christgau
“David Johansen” Might be the Perfect Album
YouTube: Girls (Live)
YouTube: Funky But Chic, Donna, Lonely Tenement, Frenchette, Cool Metro, Pain In My Heart, Not That Much, I'm A Lover

2012 January: The David Johansen Group Live, 2015 June: New York Dolls (1973)

A Bruised San Bernardino Shows Cultural Stirrings

"... Three years before the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino that took the lives of 14 people and wounded more than 20, Mr. Delgado, who teaches at California State University, San Bernardino, began collaborating with a photographer and fellow professor, Thomas McGovern, to document this city’s scrappy allure. Their work, which has included exhibitions, a book and a public art project, is leading an effort outside traditional cultural institutions to reinvigorate and redefine the city through the arts — a movement that has drawn support from many quarters: from longtime residents, from political, cultural and religious leaders and from young art activists. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: slideshow

Kenward Elmslie - Nite Soil (2000)

"Kenward Elmslie's way with words cuts a singular path through a polymath variety of forms. Jukebox hitlet sung by Nat King Cole. Ahead-of-their-time lingo works: The Champ, poem, City Junket, play. 'Balloons for Cartoons' by Joe Brainard is pureed anthropological tales of fantasy drinking establishments: 26 Bars. Quirky surreal poetry mosaics (Routine Disruptions) that prompted Michael Silverblatt, host of NPR's Book Worm program to finger Kenward as 'Hands down, my favorite contemporary poet.' Elmslie's verbal swath includes The Grass Harp (Broadway cult-fave musical) and annum 2000, Postcards on Parade, composed by Steven Taylor, a concept musical that deconstructs musicals. "
Granary Books
Small Press Distribution
amazon: Nite Soil
Jacket2
amazon: Blast From The Past: Stories, Posems, Song Lyrics & Remebrances

April 2008: Kenward Elmslie, PENNSOUND, Jacket #7, Wikipedia, 2011 February: Kenward Elmslie's poem songs

Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey

Wikipedia - "Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey is a coffee-table book published by Aria Multimedia Entertainment. It is a 420-page, leather-bound tribute to Hip Hop that showcases the roots, birth, evolution, and global impact of hip hop culture over the past four decades. The book consists of 30 original essays on the evolution of Hip Hop Culture; 40 original, individual profiles of influential game changers, from Kurtis Blow to will.i.am; playlists of the singles and albums essential to each of Hip Hop's past four decades; and 154 interviews with the most influential DJs, MCs, Producers, Graffiti Writers, B-boys, and B-girls of the culture. ... Featured game changers within the book include Jay-Z, Kanye West, Eminem, Run-DMC, Outkast, Queen Latifah, will.i.am, Sean Combs, 50 Cent, Will Smith, Missy Elliott, Native Tongues, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., and two dozen others. ..."
Wikipedia
Book Review: Hip Hop, A Cultural Odyssey (Video)
vimeo: Hip Hop A Cultural Odyssey…Know Your History!
YouTube: Hip-Hop: A Cultural Odyssey Exhibit & Book virtual tour

The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal (1839)

Wikipedia - "The Charterhouse of Parma (French: La Chartreuse de Parme) is a novel by Stendhal published in 1839. The Charterhouse of Parma chronicles the adventures of the young Italian nobleman Fabrice del Dongo from his birth in 1798 to his death. Fabrice spends his early years in his family’s castle on Lake Como, while most of the rest of the novel is set in a fictionalized Parma (both locations are in modern-day Italy). The book begins with the French army sweeping into Milan and stirring up the sleepy region of Lombardy, which was allied with Austria. Fabrice grows up surrounded by intrigues and alliances for and against the French — his father the Marchese comically fancies himself a spy for the Viennese. It is broadly hinted at that Fabrice may have actually been fathered by a visiting French lieutenant. The novel's early section describes Fabrice's rather quixotic effort to join Napoleon when the latter returns to France in March 1815 (the Hundred Days). Fabrice at seventeen is idealistic, rather naive, and speaks poor French. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: After Waterloo
NY Times: The Charterhouse of Parma
By STENDHAL. Translated by RICHARD HOWARD.
New Criterion: Howard’s rendering

The Middle Eastern And African Playlist by John Doran

The Trilogy Tapes - Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy
"Two years ago, those fine folk over at Guardian Music commissioned me to compile a regular playlist of tracks, videos and mixes from the Middle East and North Africa. The initial reservations about the idea were actually from me because I didn’t have any specialist knowledge of the region, musical or otherwise. However, thanks to exposure to a number of very different artists over the last decade and a half such as Omar Souleyman, Islam Chipsy, Oum Kalthoum, Konono Nº1, Tamikrest, Sadat & Alaa 50, I was persuaded that an unbridled enthusiasm for learning and digging would hopefully make up for my inexperience. ..."
The Quietus (Video)

Normandy Then and Now

The discovery that Edith Piaf spent part of her childhood in Bernay touched a vintage postcard of a street in an ordinary Normandy town with some much needed last century glamour.
"Shamelessly obsessed with Normandy, we are discovering fascinating corners of this delightful region by following a bundle of bewitching vintage postcards. Led by these carte postale, unearthed in brocantes from Le Tréport to Cherbourg, Alençon to Vernon, our travels are uncovering lots of: hidden histories, awesome art, brilliant brocante, amazing architecture, etc. Happily we are not alone! Normandy Then and Now has over 50,000 page views (and growing) every month. Our readers like to get involved and are a great source of ideas and knowledge. One of the many attractions of Normandy are the wonderful flea market brocante sales and shops that let everyone bring little bits of Normandy home. ..."
Normandy Then and Now

The Individuals

"Hoboken in the early 80s as recalled through the mist by Glenn Morrow. What success the Individuals had I attribute to being the first young musician to walk through the door of a brand new club in Hoboken New Jersey in the summer of 1977. I was surprised that a corner bar near my apartment wanted to have live original rock music. Hoboken was a ghost town in those days, plagued by arson, crime and poverty, as was New York City. So called 'urban blight' was in full effect before the age of gentrification. I had moved there to be near NYU where I was finishing college, renting six rooms for $65 a month on the top floor of a railroad apartment building. The shot and beer joint called Maxwell’s originally catered to the factory workers at the Maxwell Coffee plant that was directly across the street from where I lived. ..."
Bar/None Records
The Individuals - Aquamarine E.P. (1981)
The Individuals - Fields/Aquamarine
amazon: Fields & Aqua Marine, iTunes, Spotify
YouTube: Walk By Your House (live at Hurrahs)
YouTube: Dancing With My Eighty Wives, My three sons revolve around the earth, Can't Get Started, Jackie Said, "So"

Set and Reset (1983), Newark (1987), Present Tense (2003) - Trisha Brown

Set and Reset (1983)
"Trisha Brown, stricken with an illness that can't be evaded, is permanently retired from the stage and from choreography. Her works for proscenium theaters are also about to be retired by her company, which will continue as a project-based organization rather than one that tours established repertory. The valedictory New York City program of three Brown dances, performed in late January at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, represented much more than themselves: they stood for over 100 dance works in a more than half-century-long theatrical career by a brainy — and unemphatically witty — iconoclast, whose performing environments of choice ranged from opera houses, such as this one, to the surfaces of buildings, and whose achievements ranged from the choreography and direction of operas and classic song cycles to such postmodern experiments as a dance for urban living in the form of gestures relayed among performers positioned on Lower Manhattan rooftops. ..."
Impressions of The Trisha Brown Dance Company
BAM: The Trisha Brown Dance Company (Video)
NY Times - Review: From Trisha Brown, Three Last Dances (Maybe) in Brooklyn
YouTube: Set and Reset: Trisha Brown’s Postmodern Masterpiece

2008 May: Trisha Brown, 2010 December: "A Walk Across the Rooftops", 2011 January: Trisha Brown - Floor of the Forest (1970), 2011 March: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s, 2012 February: Dance/Draw, 2016 January: Dance, Valiant & Molecular.

The Dance of 1000 Faces

"I can’t count how many times I was on the verge to write about David Shillinglaw‘s art and than I stopped myself. Or rather, the more I delved into his work the more I found myself ‘lost’ in an endless play of mental associations and enjoyable abstract wanderings. It all started with The Dance of 1000 Faces, a book that ‘celebrates the artwork and adventures of David Shillinglaw‘ from 2010 to 2012. His journal drawings, wall murals and paintings look immediately joyful and funny. The artist creates an universe of faces with multiplied eyes and broad grins, complex labyrinths of lines and marks. An overall joyful chaos emanates from every work. ..."
Observatory Mansions
amazon
via com it (Video)

Saxophone Colossus - Sonny Rollins (1956)

"Bass drum. High hat. A primal, hollow beat in triple succession. The sequence repeats, increasingly accentuated with quick rim shot bursts and precision hits to the tom. Then, stage set, the sax leaps in. A bright Caribbean calypso melody, its refrain only twelve notes long. Its vibrancy and simplicity give it an instantaneous appeal—fitting, given the song's roots in a nursery rhyme native to the Virgin Islands. ... Saxophone Colossus was cut just four days before the death of Clifford Brown, in whose outfit [Sonny] Rollins, following stints with Davis, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk, had been playing until that point, and whose co-leader, Max Roach, is the one delivering that memorable drum intro on 'St. Thomas' (George Morrow, the Brown/Roach bassist, will get a mention in a moment). ..."
All About Jazz
W - Saxophone Colossus
YouTube: Saxophone Colossus (Complete Album)

2012 September: The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins, 2012 December: Village Vanguard, 2015 September: Rollins Plays for Bird (1957)

The Ghosts of Highway 20 - Lucinda Williams (2016)

"Lucinda Williams's second double album in two years is another fruitful collaboration with soundscaping guitarists Greg Leisz and Bill Frissell. But there's a noticeable shift  between this album and the last,  and not just because The Ghosts of Highway 20 is a concept album while 2014's Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone (only loosely organized around a poem by Williams's late father) is not. The difference is in the songs, which return Williams to an expressively melancholic mode most thought she'd abandoned since finding the most steady romantic partner of her life  in producer Tom Overby. Which is to say they're heavy, both for their conceptually focused lyrics — evocations of “rundown motels and faded billboards” along the titular southern Interstate— and lumbering, lengthy, soul-draining composition. ..."
Slant
NPR
Pitchfork
YouTube: Lucinda Williams on 'The Ghosts of Highway 20' 10:03
YouTube: The Ghosts of Highway 20 (Live), When I Look At The World, If There’s A Heaven
YouTube: The Ghosts of Highway 20 (Full)
01 - Dust 02 - House Of Earth 03 - I Know All About It 04 - Place In My Heart 05 - Death Came 06 - Doors Of Heaven 07 - Louisiana Story 08 - Ghosts Of Highway 20 09 - Bitter Memory 10 - Factory 11 - Can't Close The Door On Love 12 - If My Love Could Kill 13 - If There's A Heaven 14 - Faith & Grace

2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks", 2013 June: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 2013 August: Essence (2001), 2015 November: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.

Island - Alistair MacLeod (2001)

"Alistair MacLeod's is the most compact of literary careers. Over the last 33 years he has published 16 short stories, initially in literary journals and subsequently gathered in two modest collections, 'The Lost Salt Gift of Blood' (1976) and 'As Birds Bring Forth the Sun' (1986). In 1999, he published his first novel, 'No Great Mischief.' All of MacLeod's fiction, short and long, deals with life in Nova Scotia -- New Scotland -- on the eastern Canadian seaboard. His particular region is Cape Breton Island. The people in his stories are miners, fishermen, loggers, crofters, their wives and offspring. Historically, MacLeod's people are poised on a cusp. Their ancestors as far as the seventh generation followed the same hard path: they hauled nets, quarried the earth, felled trees, plowed and grazed the ungrateful, winter-blasted soil. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: "The Boat" (1968)
W - Island
Guardian: The isle is full of noises
amazon

2011 June: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Alistair MacLeod

The Legacy of Malcolm X

"Racial segregation was not the law in the postwar North, but it was the reality. In virtually all aspects of life, Northern blacks encountered racism and segregation. Blacks who left the South found themselves forced to live in huge urban ghettos and educate their children in inferior schools. Skilled or professional jobs were reserved for whites. Blacks were constantly subject to white authority, especially police harassment. ... In the first years of the civil rights struggle, the most significant organizational expression of this new movement was the Nation of Islam. By the late 1950s, the group’s membership reached an estimated one hundred thousand, with Malcolm X as its most prominent member. ..."
Jacobin: The Legacy of Malcolm X
Aljazeera
Malcolm X on Democracy Now!: Watch Speeches, Interviews with Activists & Biographer Manning Marable (Video)
The Atlantic: The Legacy of Malcolm X
Smithsonian: Why Malcolm X Still Speaks Truth to Power
On This Day In History 1965: Malcolm X Assassinated

2008 August: Malcolm X, 2012 August: Malcolm X at Oxford, 1964

West Oakland - 1940s and ’50s

"Seventh Street blossomed in the post-World-War-II era because of its proximity to Oakland’s waterfront, where workers had migrated from around the country to work in the naval shipyards during the war. Sailors and soldiers stationed at the military bases along the bay settled in West Oakland after the war, including a large number of African Americans from the South who brought with them the blues sounds from states like Louisiana and Texas. West Oakland also was the terminus of the transcontinental railroad and the West Coast headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first national black union. Read more of this entry or explore the people, places, clubs, and topics of 7th Street below."
Virtual Oakland Blues & Jazz
Oakland's legendary blues district getting a walk of fame
DEATH OF THE BLUES IN OAKLAND (Video), amazon: Blues City: A Walk in Oakland by Ishmael Reed
Saunders King on Charlie Christian and Early Electric Guitar (Video)
YouTube: Saunders King And His Rhythm - Swingin' (1946), SK Blues part 1&2 - Saunders King (1942), Mary Williams And Big Joe Williams - Oakland Blues, Oakland blues - Mississippi Johnny Waters, Lowell Fulson - Blue Shadows (1950), Let's Live Right - Lowell Fulson, Don't Talk Back · Big Mama Thorton

‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 8: Lady Mary, That Skinny You-Know-What

"This recap contains spoilers for Sunday’s episode of 'Downton Abbey.' Oh, Abbots. It seems love and marriage do go together like a horse and carriage. That at least was the conveyance last seen carrying Lady Mary Crawley and Henry Talbot into the Vale of Marital Bliss. For some reason, that old-fashioned spectacle translated for Lord G as 'a new couple in a new world,' but all I could see, Abbots, was the past dragging behind them like tin cans. And a trail that looks an awful lot like blood. Some of it was Mary’s. ..."
NY Times

2012 March: Downton Abbey, 2013 February: Downton Abbey 3, 2015 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ and History: A Look Back, Recap: Rumble With Lord G!, 2015 February: Recap: Prayers for Lord G’s Truest, Furriest Love, 2015 February: Recap: The Crawleys Should Have Sent Their Regrets, 2015 February: Recap: Yes, It’s Called the Hornby Hotel, 2015 March: Recap: In the Finale, Mary Meets Mr. Handsome, 2016 January: Downton Abbey Returns for a Feel-Good Final Season, 2016 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 3 Recap: So Nice to See Him Again? , 2016 February: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 5: Bloody, Bloody Downton.

Patti Smith’s Eternal Flame

"'No matter what anybody thinks about any of them,' said Patti Smith, 'every record I’ve done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy. We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on it.' In 1975, when Smith released her astonishing first album, Horses, she became the first member of the nascent CBGB crew to make it to vinyl, helping set a global revolution in motion. Her sinuous, searing poetry—first unleashed on the influential. independent single 'Hey Joe' / 'Piss Factory,' which actually predates the album—didn’t fit any simple definition of 'punk,' but its defiant outsider attitude sure did. ..."
cuepoint