Bachar Mar-Khalifé - Ya Balad (2015)

"... On his third album, Ya Balad, Bachar Mar-Khalifé sings lovelorn songs in Arabic to the homeland that he feels separated from. On this teaser track, Kyrie Eleison, which was originally composed for Hicham Ayouch’s film Fièvres, Mar-Khalifé, who is nicknamed The Saint, implores God to spare humankind: 'Leave us alone!' Describing his struggles with his faith, he says: 'I tick all the boxes for being a believer, but I do not love God.' But despite this, he implores the creator for an end to all religious controversies. - John Doran"
Guardian
Infine (Video)
Rhythm & Booze (Video)
YouTube: Bachar Mar-Khalifé - Ya Balad (Full Album)

The Cuba Libre Story

Camp Liberation Army (1895)
"Cuba - the island where dreams clash. It was the gateway to the New World, the port of call for the American underworld, a crossroads for drug smuggeling. It has brought us cigars, sugar and rum. And a Socialist Revolution: Cuba stands for schools for everybody, and an eternal struggle for freedom. Cuba may seem synonymous with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, but its history was shaped by adventurer Christopher Columbus, freedom fighter José Martí, Dictator Fulgenico Batista, Mafia Boss Meyer Lansky and many others. ..."
LOOKS
Shadow and Act
NY Times - Decades in the Making: Fidel Castro’s Obituary
vimeo: Cuba, l’histoire secrète / The Cuba Libre Story #1

2015 August: ¡Cuba, Cuba! 65 Years of Photography, 2016 May: The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball (1999), 2016 November: Fidel Castro (1926–2016)

Wallace Berman - American Aleph

"Untitled (Multi-color Shuffle, A-4 Neil Young)," 1969, Verifax collage with acrylic.
"Kohn Gallery is pleased to present Wallace Berman—American Aleph, the artist’s first comprehensive Los Angeles retrospective in almost four decades. Commemorating the 40th anniversary of Berman’s accidental death at age 50, the exhibition surveys the entire oeuvre of this seminal American artist from the late 1940s until 1976. Berman has been long heralded as one of the most significant and influential artists to emerge in Southern California. Spiritually inclined, yet steeped in popular culture and the political events of the day, he conducted reconnaissance far beyond the borders of Southern California, mining the American psyche and broadcasting his ideas through mysterious letters, publications, and multi-layered art works. ..."
Kohn Gallery
Artsy
artbook
W - Wallace Berman
NY Times: A Return Trip to a Faraway Place Called Underground
Wallace Berman 1926-1976
YouTube: All is Personal : The Art of Wallace Berman, Aleph (1966)

A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James

"How to describe Marlon James’s monumental new novel 'A Brief History of Seven Killings'? It’s like a Tarantino remake of 'The Harder They Come' but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner, with maybe a little creative boost from some primo ganja. It’s epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. It’s also raw, dense, violent, scalding, darkly comic, exhilarating and exhausting — a testament to Mr. James’s vaulting ambition and prodigious talent. 'Brief History' uses the story of the 1976 assassination attempt on Marley as a kind of trampoline, bouncing off that terrible event into a multilayered, choral inquiry into Jamaican politics and poverty, into race and class, and into the volatile relationship between the United States and the Caribbean. ..."
NY Times: Jamaica via a Sea of Voices
W - A Brief History of Seven Killings
amazon

Thad Jones: The Magnificent Thad Jones (1956)

"... 1956, the list of names coming through Blue Note’s door, this was a time of giants, Miles, Monk, Powell, Nichols, Burrell, Silver, Blakey, Donaldson, Dorham, Mobley, Morgan, Rollins. Amidst this galaxy, Thad Jones recorded two titles for the label, at Van Gelder’s Hackensack home. Thad’s trumpet, remember, it’s just a pipe and some valves, has a purity of tone and expressiveness that draws you to listen. ... Billy Mitchell’s tenor is firm, polished, his phrasing bluesy, not unlike Lou Donaldson’s alto but in the lower tenor register. On April in Paris he slips between the sheets, full-on boudoir sax. Here and on other tracks he weaves skilfully through the charts. ..."
LondonJazzCollector (Video)
NY Times: Be-Bop's Generous Romantic (May 28, 1994)
Blue Note
W - The Magnificent Thad Jones (1956)
amazon
YouTube: April in Paris, Billie-Doo, If I Love Again, If Someone Had Told, Thedia, I've Got a Crush on You, Something to Remember You By

Sky & Telescope 2017 Observing Calendar

"The Sky & Telescope 2017 Observing Calendar combines gorgeous astrophotography and special monthly sky scenes that illustrate the positions of the Moon and bright planets. It also highlights important sky events each month, including solar and lunar eclipses, meteor showers, conjunctions, and occultations of bright stars by the Moon. ... The calendar features images of galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, as well as gorgeous photos of the Sun and Earth. The Hubble and other space telescopes produced some of these photos, while others were captured by amateur and professional astrophotographers."
Sky & Telescope

John Renbourn - Lost Sessions (1973)

"In 1973, shortly after the breakup of the legendary Pentangle, co-lead guitarist John Renbourn recorded a full album's worth of songs for a solo project. He abandoned the set, instead releasing an entirely different collection of songs as THE HERMIT later that year. The abandoned songs, previously available only via underground tape-trading networks, surfaced several years later as THE LOST SESSIONS. These nine songs aren't bad at all, though they show Renbourn exploring a slightly poppier direction that isn't always right for his playing style. ... Not the very best starting place, but Renbourn's fans will be very happy to hear these LOST SESSIONS."
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Lost Sessions (full album)

2011 September: Faro Annie, 2012 November: John Renbourn - Sir John Alot, 2013 May: The Lady and the Unicorn, 2014 February: Bert &; John (1966), 2014 October: The Hermit (1976), 2015 March: John Renbourn: ceaseless explorer of song – appreciation., 2015 November: The Attic Tapes - John Renbourn (2015), 2016 November: Cruel Sister (1970) - Pentangle

Sticky Notes Bearing Election Hopes and Fears Removed from Subway

Thousands of sticky messages of anger, outrage and hope were posted on subway station walls after the presidential election.
"The thousands of sticky notes lining a subway station wall in Manhattan bearing messages about the 2016 presidential race came down on Friday, marking the end of one of the most significant public expressions of emotion in response to the election results. But the notes will not be forgotten. A trove of them will be preserved by the New-York Historical Society, officials said. The notes were part of a spontaneous public art forum that began after an election that jolted the country, especially in areas like New York that generally sided against President-elect Donald J. Trump. The first notes went up in the tunnel linking the 1/2/3 and F train platforms at 14th Street in Manhattan, and soon spread to Union Square and other subway stations in the city and beyond, including Boston, San Francisco and Toronto. ..."
NY Times
WBUR - 'Just Share Something Positive': Post-Election Subway Art Project Moves Online
Hopeful Post-It Notes Appear On 'Walls Of Empathy' At Three SF BART Stations, Post-Election
Toronto And New York Subway Stations Covered In Notes Protesting Donald Trump (Video)

Our Kind of Traitor (2016)

Wikipedia - "Our Kind of Traitor is a 2016 British spy thriller film directed by Susanna White and written by Hossein Amini, adapted from John le Carré's novel of the same name. Starring Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Damian Lewis, and Alicia von Rittberg, the film was released in the United Kingdom on 13 May 2016 by Lionsgate. As part of a plan to launder billions of dollars in London, 'the Prince' – the head of the Russian Mafia – creates a new bank and has its financial oligarchs sign over their accounts to him. The first oligarch to do so is murdered alongside his family by a blue-eyed assassin. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: A Professor Drawn to the Mob in ‘Our Kind of Traitor’ (Video)
John le Carré
YouTube: Our Kind of Traitor Official Trailer #1

All of Wes Anderson’s Cinematic Commercials: Watch His Spots for Prada, American Express, H&M & More

"They say a filmmaker qualifies as an auteur if you can identify their work from any given shot. That might strike even cinephiles as a difficult task unless the filmmaker in question is Wes Anderson, who for twenty years’ worth of feature films now has defined and refined a cinematic style increasingly unique to him and his host of regular collaborators. What qualities constitute the unmistakably Andersonian? Vibrant colors, especially red and yellow. Old buildings. Uniforms. The sounds of the British Invasion. Perfect symmetry. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

2013 November: Wes Anderson Honors Fellini in a Delightful New Short Film, 2013 November: Rushmore (1998), 2013 Decemher: Hotel Chevalier (2007), 2014 March: Wes Anderson Collection, 2014 April: The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies, 2014 July: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 2014 August: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), 2014 December: Welcome to Union Glacier (2013), 2015 January: Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s Universe, 2015 July: Books in the Films of Wes Anderson: A Supercut for Bibliophiles, 2015 November: Moonrise Kingdom (2012), 2015 December: Chapter 8: "The Grand Budapest Hotel", 2016 June: Here's pretty much every song used in a Wes Anderson film, 2016 November: Watch Come Together, Wes Anderson’s New Short Film.....

Rothko: Dark Palette

Black in Deep Red, 1957
"Mark Rothko was a great artist with highfalutin aims, which he summarized, in 1956, as 'tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.' That’s a lot to claim for fuzzy rectangles on paper or canvas. But at least the 'and so on' holds true. No other painter can occasion feelings so intense, so directly. His pictures are emphatically objects. They are in scale with a viewer’s body, but their color and brushwork have a disembodying effect. You may endorse the artist’s terms for this flustering tension, at a risk of tipping sensation into sentimentality. But his best work will unsettle even a skeptic’s rational ken. The drama persists, though with diminished power, in 'Rothko: Dark Palette,' at the Pace gallery (on view through Jan. 7), a show that is long on doom. ..."
New Yorker: The Dark Final Years of Mark Rothko
NY Times: Mark Rothko’s Dark Palette Illuminated
PACE
“Neither Flesh nor Fleshless”

Unsettled Scores - Various Artists (1994-1995)

"The idea came from Forever Einstein's Chuck Vrtacek: to put together an album of Cuneiform Records artists interpreting tunes from their label mates. Since the label had a pretty stable roster by 1994-1995, with most of them sharing some common musical aesthetics, the project has the possibility of being interesting. And it is. Unsettled Scores is not a compilation album or a label sampler. ... Other renderers/renderees include Forever Einstein, The Muffins, Piero Milesi, David Borden, Birdsongs of the Mezosoic, Phil Miller, Henry Kaiser, U Totem, Virgil Moorefield, and Forrest Fang. Any fan of the Cuneiform roster will find something to like in here, but Univers Zéro aficionados will be particularly delighted."
allmusic
Cuneiform Records (Video)
Amazon
Progarchives
YouTube: Onde Crépusculaire, Kit Watkins, Coco Roussel - Hobart Got Burned

Was (Not Was) - (The Woodwork) Squeaks (1987)

"Put out by ZE a year after Was (Not Was) made the hop to Geffen for their second album, (The Woodwork) Squeaks is a six-track grab bag LP of cuts taken from numerous 7" and 12" singles, originally issued from 1980 to 1982. Upon release, cynics might've seen it is an opportunistic move on the part of ZE when, in truth, it was a necessary and helpful one. The worst aspect of the group's self-titled 1981 album was that it failed to include the nonsensical disco-funk of 'Wheel Me Out,' the group's creative apex. ...  ZE's 2004 reissue of this release is drastically different and uses all of the extra space allowed by the compact disc format to compile more rarities."
allmusic (Video)
Discogs
YouTube: Spy In The House Of Love - TOPPOP
YouTube: (The Woodwork) Squeaks 10 videos

Talking blues

Wikipedia - "Talking blues is a form of folk music and country music. It is characterized by rhythmic speech or near-speech where the melody is free, but the rhythm is strict. Christopher Allen Bouchillon, billed as 'The Talking Comedian of the South,' is credited with creating the 'talking blues' form with the song 'Talking Blues,' recorded for Columbia Records in Atlanta in 1926, from which the style gets its name. ... A talking blues typically consists of a repetitive guitar line utilizing a three chord progression which, although it is called a 'blues', is not actually a twelve bar blues. The vocals are sung in a rhythmic, flat tone, very near to a speaking voice, and take the form of rhyming couplets. ..."
Wikipedia
JOHN GREENWAY -- OBVIOUS SOURCE OF DYLAN'S TALKING BLUES (Video)
Folk Archivist (Video)
YouTube: Chris Bouchillon - Talking Blues (1926), Mean Talking Blues - Woody Guthrie, Mean Talkin Blues ~ Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan - Talkin' John Birch Society Blues, Bob Dylan - Talkin' World War III Blues (March 10th 1964)

Brian Eno - The Ship (2016)

"There aren't many artists who, with 40-plus years of record-making under their belts, still see each record as a way to challenge their own paradigms with something new and different. For Brian Eno, however, this kind of challenge is core to his identity as a musician. The Ship, Eno’s newest release and his sixth on Warp, somehow manages to feel distinct from all the work he’s done. He describes this divergence as a desire 'to make a record of songs that didn’t rely on the normal underpinnings of rhythmic structure and chord progressions but which allowed voices to exist in their own space and time, like events in a landscape.' The Ship is broken into four tracks that more or less flow into one fluid 48-minute suite of music. ..."
Pitchfork
W - The Ship
Brian Eno on Kanye West, David Bowie and His Immersive LP 'The Ship'
Guardian
amazon, Spotify
YouTube: The Ship, Fickle Sun (iii) I’m Set Free

DADA Companion

Johannes Baader, Collage A, Sous-titre: Gutenberggedenkblatt, 1919.
"Subversive and irreverent, Dada, more than any other movement, has shaken society's notions of art and cultural production. Fiercely anti-authoritarian and anti-hierarchical, Dada questioned the myth of originality, of the artist as genius suggesting instead that everybody should be an artist and that almost anything could be art. Surrealism, Constructivism, Lettrism, Situationism, Fluxus, Pop and OpArt, Conceptual Art and Minimalism: most twentieth-century art movements after 1923 have roots to Dada. Dada works still have a radicality and freshness that attracts today's culture jammers and disrupters of life as usual. Emerging during the crisis period of the First world war, Dada's strategies of critiquing the dominant culture have been used by radical groups ever since. ..."
DADA Companion

Battle Over Aleppo Is Over, Russia Says, as Evacuation Deal Reached

A member of Syria’s government forces in Aleppo.
"BEIRUT, Lebanon — Russia declared on Tuesday that the four-year battle over Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, was over, as the last remaining rebel fighters agreed to turn over their territory to the Syrian government. While pro-government forces were moving in, United Nations officials said they were receiving multiple reports of execution-style killings. The deal was announced just as civilians inside the rebel enclave said they had lost hope. They had spent days huddled in abandoned apartments under heavy shelling, as those with a record of opposing the government said they were bracing for arrest, conscription or death. ..."
NY Times: Battle Over Aleppo Is Over, Russia Says, as Evacuation Deal Reached
NY Times: Aleppo Evacuation Effort Restarts, and Assad Calls It History in the Making (Video)

2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency, 2015 December: A Brief History of ISIS, 2015 December: U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State, 2016 January: Ramadi, Reclaimed by Iraq, Is in Ruins After ISIS Fight, 2016 February: Syrian Officer Gave a View of War. ISIS Came, and Silence Followed., 2016 March: Brussels Survivors Say Blasts Instantly Evoked Paris Attacks, 2016 April: America Can’t Do Much About ISIS, 2016 June: What the Islamic State Has Won and Lost, 2016 July: ISIS: The Cornened Beast, 2016 October: Archaeological Victims of ISIS Rise Again, as Replicas in Rome.

Marcel Broodthaers

La Conquête de l'espace, 1975
Wikipedia - "Marcel Broodthaers (28 January 1924 – 28 January 1976) was a Belgian poet, filmmaker and artist with a highly literate and often witty approach to creating art works. Broodthaers was born in Brussels, Belgium, where he was associated with the Groupe Surréaliste-revolutionnaire from 1945 and dabbled in journalism, film, and poetry. After spending 20 years in poverty as a struggling poet, at the end of 1963 he decided to become an artist and began to make objects. He performed the symbolic act of embedding fifty unsold copies of his book of poems Pense-Bête in plaster, creating his first art object. ..."
Wikipedia
MoMA - Marcel Broodthaers: A Retrospective (Video)
NY Times: ‘Marcel Broodthaers,’ a Knot of Riddles in a MoMA Retrospective
New Yorker: Marcel Broodthaers’s Brussels, and Mine
artnet (Video)
YouTube: Fridericianum: Marcel Broodthaers, A Voyage on the North Sea (Marcel Broodthaers, 1974), Major Works at MICHAEL WERNER

Icy & Sot “Let Her Be Free” Book Launch | Art Exhibition (Manhattan, NYC)

"We first met Icy and Sot the summer they arrived in New York. Their name was already preceding them on the Internet because even while still in Iran, they had developed a network of friends and collectors who had helped them to show their art in Europe. Images of their work had already caught our eye. We were lucky to be the first to interview them here. That is how the friendship began–as immigrants to New York ourselves, we had a good feeling about them because they exhibited the right signs for success here. We’ve seen what sort of steely core you need to have internally to survive in this city and what alchemy of dreams, determination, and luck one will need to succeed as artists. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art
Let Her Be Free (ICY & SOT)
Icy & Sot (Video)
amazon

The Cost of Living EP - The Clash (1979)

Wikipedia - "The Cost of Living is an EP by the English punk rock band The Clash. It was released on 11 May 1979 in a gatefold sleeve. The EP was produced by the band and Bill Price, it marked a transition in musical styles for the band, bridging the intensity of their earlier, punky albums with the broader, more American influenced rock and roll yet to come on London Calling, most evident on the folk rocking 'Groovy Times' and 'Gates of the West'. The Clash's cover of Sonny Curtis' 'I Fought the Law' became one of the definitive recordings of the song, and remained in the band's live set list for much of the rest of their career. ..."
Wikipedia
Burning Aquarium
YouTube: 1. I FOUGHT THE LAW. 2. GROOVY TIMES. 3. GATES OF THE WEST. 4. CAPITAL RADIO. 5. CAPITAL RADIO ADVERT 6. I FOUGHT THE LAW - Hidden Track
YouTube: I Fought the Law, Capital Radio, Groovy Times

Temples for the Literary Pilgrim

Shakespeare and Company in Paris has a team for web orders and has added a cafe.
"PARIS. Shakespeare and Company. From its antique typewriters to the age-cracked tomes on groaning shelves, Shakespeare and Company, the legendary Paris bookstore, offers visitors a chance to step into a time capsule. The stuff of myth whispers from musty corners: Allen Ginsberg once stripped naked there for a poetry reading. Anaïs Nin left her will under the bed of the bookstore’s eccentric founder, George Whitman, who hosted legions of writers before he died in 2011. Henry Miller hailed the place simply as 'a wonderland of books.' That it has been ever since Mr. Whitman set up shop in 1951 at 37, rue de la Bûcherie, on the site of a medieval monastery facing the brooding towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. ..." PORTO, PORTUGAL Livraria Lello; HANGZHOU, CHINA Zhongshuge Bookstore; SANTORINI, GREECE Atlantis Books; VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA Munro’s Books; BUENOS AIRES El Ateneo Grand Splendid; MEXICO CITY El Péndulo; KALK BAY, SOUTH AFRICA Kalk Bay Books; Quagga Rare Books and Art.
NY Times

A Radical Century: Mahmoud Refat Of 100 Copies Cairo Interviewed

"Cairo is a tale of two cities. But unlike in Dickens, it's a place where old and new sit side by side. With the old comes tradition – in my case a tanoura performance – a show chockfull of whirling dervishes, spiritual chanting and supplications. It is quite a spectacle – but it's something anyone can find out via a Lonely Planet guide. Then there's the new in the shape of electro chaabi and Egyptian music on a wider, more modern scale. It's the music of the streets and speaks to the Egyptian youth of today – chaabi is used to push hair gel, soft drinks, and car sales in Cairo, so this is a bona fide phenomenon that isn't going away any time soon. And at the heart of it is the record label and recording space, 100 Copies - a label, recording space and venue based in downtown Cairo that specializes in releasing jazz and experimental music not just from the Middle East, but from all over the world. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
Program: Egypt 3: Cairo Underground
Soundcloud: mahmoud refat
YouTube: Mahmoud Refat

Dakota Protesters Say Belle Fourche Oil Spill 'Validates Struggle'

A man takes part in a march with veterans to Backwater Bridge just outside of the Oceti Sakowin camp during a snow fall near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, U.S., December 5, 2016.
"A major oil spill just 150 miles from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in North Dakota has validated the concerns of those who spoke out against the project for months, activists said. State officials estimate that more than 176,000 gallons of crude oil has leaked from the Belle Fourche Pipeline over the past week into the Ash Coulee Creek in western North Dakota. A landowner discovered the spill near the town of Belfield on Dec. 5, according to Bill Suess, an environmental scientist with the North Dakota Health Department. The leak was contained within hours of its discovery, Wendy Owen, a spokeswoman for Casper, Wyoming-based True Cos., which operates the Belle Fourche pipeline, told CNBC.
NBC News (Video)
Democracy Now!: Dakota Access Pipeline (Video)
Twitter, facebook

2011 July: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown, 2012 September: The Ghost Dance, 2016 September: A History and Future of Resistance, 2016 November: Dakota Access Pipeline protests, 2016 December: Police Violence Against Native Americans Goes Far Beyond Standing Rock

#6 – Call Me Burroughs LP

"The English Bookshop (1965). An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles. Your finger runs along a series of spines searching for a hot track. Ah, there is one. You pull out the sleeve. A few taps. Lift the arm. Drop the needle. The snap, crackle and pop, this hiss are a prelude; there is an air of anticipation. Then you slump back as the warm sound that can only come from vinyl washes over your entire body and soul. The lives of vinyl junkies are full of ritual. Like with Bukowski collectors, I am envious of those deeply into music. ..."
RealityStudio
W - Call Me Burroughs LP
Open Culrture (Video)
YouTube: Call Me Burroughs LP 43:27

2009 May: Cut-up technique - 1, 2010 March: Cut-up technique, 2010 December: The Evolution of the Cut-Up Technique in My Own Mag, 2012 August: The Nova Trilogy, 2014 February: William Burroughs at 100, 2014 September: The Ticket That Exploded, 2014 November: What Is Schizo-Culture? A Classic Conversation with William S. Burroughs, 2015 June: The Electronic Revolution (1971), 2015 August: Cut-Ups: William S. Burroughs 1914 – 2014, 2015 December: Destroy All Rational Thought, 2016 January: Commissioner of Sewers: A 1991 Profile of Beat Writer William S. Burroughs, 2016 June: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981), 2016 September: # 1 – A Descriptive Catalogue of the William S. Burroughs Archive.

Studies in Scale - Excerpts by Emily Dickinson and Jen Bervin

"The following portfolio represents a small selection of works from The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems (Christine Burgin /New Directions in association with Granary Books, 2013). The 'gorgeous nothings' is an excerpt from Emily Dickinson’s manuscript A 821; in choosing it as the title for this project with Marta Werner, I was thinking of Dickinson’s own definition for nothing in a letter: 'By homely | gifts and | hindered Words | The human | heart is told | Of nothing – | ‘Nothing’ is | the force | That renovates | the World – ' and her definition for no: 'the wildest | word we consign | to Language.' These 'gorgeous nothings' are that kind of nothing. ..."
Poetry Foundation
Jacket2
The Paris Review
NY Times
NY Times: The Lost Gardens of Emily Dickinson
W - Emily Dickinson
amazon: The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson's Envelope Poems

Don't Expect Art - Pere Ubu (1980)

"A semi-approved bootleg limited to 500 copies. Original covers were promo jackets of Patti Smith's Horses album pasted over with printed pieces of paper front and back. Probably recorded in 1978 and mostly at Pirate's Cove. 'I Will Wait' was recorded at the Homestead Theater. No other details are remembered. Released on Tri-City Records in 1979. The label on Side 1 reads 'X-Mas Concert At Interstate Mall.' The label on Side 2 reads 'Live At Club Wow.' ... Cover of AOT This same bootleg was re-booted, unofficially, as Don't Expect Art (Impossible Recordworks IMP1-07) in 1980. 'Don't Expect Art' was an Ubu Communex injunction of the day so the source of the re-boot was probably also a fan. Song titles on both releases were disguised, undoubtedly an effort to avoid detection by the bootleg police."
U-Men Live At Interstate Mall - Pere Ubu
YouTube: (TheU-Men) - Don’t Expect Art (X-MasConcert) '80 full album

2008 April: Pere Ubu, 2010 July: Pere Ubu - 1, 2012 November: David Thomas And The Pedestrians - Variations On A Theme, 2013 February: Dub Housing, 2014 September: Carnival of Souls (2014), 2015 June: Street Waves / My Dark Ages (1976), 2016 January: Live at the Longhorn: April 1, 1978, 2016 February: Cloudland (1989), 2016 April: Architecture of Language 1979-1982, 2016 November: The Modern Dance (1978).

An Alt-Right Makeover Shrouds the Swastikas

Matthew Heimbach, who runs the Traditionalist Worker Party, at home in Paoli, Ind., with his son and wife. His group advocates replacing the United States with nation-states based on ethnicity and religion.
"A small but determined political organization in Detroit began to worry that its official symbol was a bit off-putting. With the group’s central philosophy suddenly finding traction in the daily discourse, appearances mattered. So in November, as the country’s divisive presidential campaign became ever more jagged, the National Socialist Movement, a leading neo-Nazi group, did away with its swastika. In its stead, the group chose a symbol from a pre-Roman alphabet that was also adopted by the Nazis. According to Jeff Schoep, the movement’s leader, the decision to dispense with the swastika was 'an attempt to become more integrated and more mainstream.' Let us pause. Not even two years ago, white supremacists like Mr. Schoep would rant from the fringe of the fringe, their attention-desperate events rarely worth mention. ..."
NY Times

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 November: Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests, 2016 November: Rust Belt, 2016 November: Autocracy: Rules for Survival, 2016 November: Rally in Brooklyn Park Condemns Swastikas and ‘Go Trump’ Graffiti, 2016 December: The Democratic Party Has Failed—We Need a Radical Vision to Defeat Trumpism

Dub Kings - King Jammy At King Tubby's (2011)

""Climbing in distinction from merely Prince Jammy to King Jammy, this student of King Tubby started out as Lloyd James, learning the tricks of dub production from one of the masters over the course of working on countless reggae productions throughout the '70s. Dub Kings collects some of Jammy's standout mixes, rugged rocksteady rhythms with a focus on sharp horn sections, especially notable on cuts like 'Wreaking Dub' and 'Pride and Ambition Dub.' These 18 tracks were all engineered at King Tubby's studio by King Jammy in the late '70s, and have an especially swimmy quality to them, awash in the type of echo trails, reverb, and generous negative space that made the sounds coming out of Tubby's studio worthy of royalty."
allmusic
Forced Exposure
YouTube: Dub Kings - King Jammy At King Tubby's

Joy Division - John Peel Session (1979)

"Joy Division recorded its first John Peel Session in January and second in November of 1979. The group's first full-length release, Unknown Pleasures, would hit the streets between the two -- around the same time Manchester's sewage system collapsed (at least the city had something to celebrate in its hometown band's brilliant debut). The sessions were originally available as separate EPs; the first included the initial four tracks, the second the remaining four. They were rendered somewhat redundant once combined into this recording. Then it too became redundant upon the appearance of the Heart & Soul box set in 1998 and The Complete BBC Recordings two years later. ..."
allmusic
YouTube: Transmission (Peel Sessions 1979 - Live)
YouTube: The Peel Sessions (Full Album)

2008 March: Ian Curtis, 2009 August: Factory: Manchester From Joy Division To Happy Mondays, 2010 November: Love Will Tear Us Apart, 2012 February: An Ideal for Living EP, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures, 2013 May: "Atmosphere"/ "Dead Souls"

Six Postcards From Famous Writers: Hemingway, Kafka, Kerouac & More

Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein, 1924
"Today we’ve gathered together a group of postcards from six of the most famous writers of the 20th century. (Please click the images to see them in a larger format.) Some of the cards are about business, others friendship. We found them all fascinating to glance through. ... In the summer of 1924, Ernest Hemingway traveled in Spain to attend bullfights. On June 9 he sent a postcard from Madrid to his mentor and fellow bullfighting fan Gertrude Stein. Hemingway was eager to fill Stein in on the latest developments. ..."
Open Culture

Band of Gypsys - Jimi Hendrix (1970)

Wikipedia - "Band of Gypsys is a live album by Jimi Hendrix and the first without his original group, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was recorded on January 1, 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City with Billy Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums, frequently referred to as the Band of Gypsys. The album mixes funk and rhythm and blues elements with hard rock and jamming, an approach which later became the basis of funk rock. It contains previously unreleased songs and was the last full-length Hendrix album released before his death. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
Band Of Gypsys was Jimi Hendrix’s funky contractual obligation (Video)
Hear Jimi Hendrix's Electrifying First Band of Gypsys Performance
amazon: Band of Gypsys, Machine Gun - The Fillmore East 12/31/1969
DailyMotion: Band of Gypsys Who Knows, Machine Gun
YouTube: Band Of Gypsys [Full]

2010 September: Jimi Hendrix, 2013 November: Watch Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’, the New PBS Documentary, 2014 July: Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock: The Complete Performance in Video & Audio (1969), 2014 October: Live at Monterey (1967), 2015 March: "Little Wing" (1967), 2015 November: Jimi Hendrix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Guitar in 1968.

Three Tales - Gustave Flaubert (1877)

Wikipedia - "Three Tales (Trois Contes) is a work by Gustave Flaubert that was originally published in French in 1877. It consists of the short stories 'A Simple Heart', 'Saint Julian the Hospitalier,' and 'Hérodias'. 'Dance of Death' is another story sometimes grouped with 'Simple Heart' and 'Saint Julian the Hospitalier' as Three Short Works. 'A Simple Heart', or Un cœur simple or Le perroquet in French, is a story about a servant girl named Felicité. After her one and only love Théodore purportedly marries a well-to-do woman to avoid conscription, Felicité quits the farm where she works and heads for Pont-l'Évèque, where she picks up work in a widow's house as a servant...."
Wikipedia
Three Short Works by Gustave Flaubert (Video)
amazon

2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert, 2013 March: Sentimental Education (1869)

William Kentridge - NAI010 (2016)

"The South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955) has achieved a worldwide reputation with his large, poetic and incisive installations. Over the last decades the versatile artist has developed a multidisciplinary way of working that combines film, animation, drawing, music and theater. Typical of his work are the powerful charcoal drawings that he turns into moving images. Kentridge's work explores the historically charged past of his native country. The artist is producing an impressive large-scale installation for EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, to be shown on eight large screens and accompanied by a soundtrack of an African brass band. This publication of Kentridge's texts, sketches, set photographs and film stills lays bare the process by which this unusual project came into being and places it within the context of his oeuvre."
artbook
Eye Film Museum, If ever we get to heaven, William Kentridge (1955, South Africa) (Video)
amazon

009 November: William Kentridge, 2011 April: The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art, 2013 August: Stereoscope (1999), 2015 October: “More Sweetly Play the Dance” (2015)

Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013)

"Three young black men are cruising in a ’54 Chevy, armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and a rifle. It’s dark, and they’re following a police car on patrol in north Oakland. In the confrontation that follows, the young men hold firm, refusing to put down their weapons, and they attract a small crowd of bystanders. As historians Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin document in their new book, Black Against Empire, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seal, the quick-witted leaders of the Black Panther Party were on their way to building a revolutionary movement that has yet to be replicated in the United States. The Black Panthers crafted their unique identity by advocating a form of “self-defense” that entailed militant defiance of police authority and brutality. ..."
Harpers
History
LA Times
amazon
YouTube: Black Against Empire 5:02

2011 December: Black Panther Party, 2014 July: Black Panthers (Agnès Varda, 1968 doc.), 2015 January: The Black Panthers Revisited, 2015 February: Black Panther Newspapers, 2016 February: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution.

In Chicago, Bodies Pile Up at Intersection of ‘Depression and Rage’

A damaged “No Guns” sign in the 3300 block of West Walnut Street last month.
"... Over Memorial Day weekend, when The New York Times tracked every shooting in this city, the largest concentration of them happened here, in about six square miles that make up Chicago’s 11th police district. Of 64 people shot that weekend, 16 were in this district. Three people were shot on this same stretch of Walnut Street. The Times returned to the blocks in the 11th District where the Memorial Day weekend shootings occurred to try to better understand Chicago’s crisis of violence. Residents along Walnut Street and at other crime scenes told of a fractured community — isolated by this city’s entrenched segregation, hollowed out by joblessness and poverty, and battered by resignation and indifference. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Sun Ra & His Arkestra - At Inter-Media Arts April 1991 (2016)

"... And then there's Sun Ra. Born in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, he absorbed the big-band sounds of Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson (whom he would later join) but spun their influences into something entirely new and bold to become a singular American figure — even if he maintained that he was from Saturn. Now, with Sun Ra and his Arkestra: At Inter-Media Arts, April 1991 (Modern Harmonic), a 25-year-old concert just released on double-CD and triple-vinyl, the bandleader's — yes — genius is on full display yet again. If Other Music on East 4th Street, a virtual shrine to the iconoclast, hadn't sadly closed earlier this year, they might've thrown a record-release party on account of this. ..."
VOICE: Sun Ra's Sunset
Dusty Groove
Discogs, iTunes
Modern Harmonic
YouTube: Sun Ra at Inter-Media Arts, 1991 16 videos

Beginnings - Meredith Monk (2009)

"The pieces in Tzadik's collection of early works by Meredith Monk have either never been released before or are heard in performances released here for the first time. Since her 1981 album Dolmen Music, Monk has recorded for ECM, and these selections (including some live performances) all predate that release. The album begins with a disarmingly simple version of Greensleeves, made in 1966; it's intriguing to hear Monk's distinctive voice conventionally used in a folk song. ... The album is a treasure for any fan of Monk's who wants to hear what she was doing early in her career, before her works were regularly recorded commercially."
allmusic
W - Beginnings
Listen: Meredith Monk recordings (Video)
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Quarry: The Rally (Live, 1977), The Tale, Candy bullets and moon

2008 March: Meredith Monk, 2009 September: Songs of Ascension - Meredith Monk and Ann Hamilton, 2011 February: Meredith Monk: A Voice For All Time, 2011 August: Ellis Island, 2012 December: Turtle Dreams, 2013 February: Quarry: The Rally (Live, 1977), 2014 November; 10 Things You Might Not Know About Meredith Monk, Volcano Songs (1994), 2015 June: Ellis Island, 2016 April: 16 Millimeter Earrings and the Artist’s Body (1966/1998).

Eleven Spring: A Celebration of Street Art (2016)

"Street art has always been transgressive, with underground artists marrying beauty with the power of illegal actions--art that went hand in hand with the very real danger of arrest. Now street art and graffiti have transitioned into a mainstream genre, and art on walls is as likely to be an ad coopting that power as an actual guerilla artwork. Eleven Spring: A Celebration of Street Art, out this week, celebrates a pivotal moment in that change. It's the tenth anniversary of a massive, five-floor collaboration that brought together street artists from around the world to take over the building at the titular address in Soho. The contributors, including Shepard Fairey, Swoon, JR, Faile, and more, are a laundry list of the '00s era heavyweights--many of whom have gone on to have successful careers inside the traditional art world. ..."
PAPER
ELBOW-TOE on Eleven Spring, Wooster Collective, Street Art and more
ObeyGiant
amazon

Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion (1959)

"Having come to the U.S. from his native Nigeria to study medicine, percussionist Babatunde Olatunji eventually became one of the first African music stars in the States. He also soon counted jazz heavyweights like John Coltrane ('Tunji') and Dizzy Gillespie among his admirers (Gillespie had, a decade earlier, also courted many Cuban music stars via his trailblazing Latin jazz recordings). And, in spite of it being viewed by some as a symbol of African chic, Drums of Passion is still a substantial record thanks to Olatunji's complex and raw drumming. ... [The 2002 CD reissue on Columbia/Legacy adds the track 'Menu Di Ye Jewe (Who Is This?)', which was recorded at one of the 1959 sessions for the album, but was previously unissued in the US.]"
allmusic
Pitchfork
W - Drums of Passion
Discogs
iTunes
YouTube: Drums of Passion 39:19

Libra - Don DeLillo (1988)

Wikipedia - "Libra (1988) is a novel written by Don DeLillo. It focuses on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and offers a speculative account of the events that shaped the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The book takes the reader from Oswald's early days as a child, to his adolescent stint in the US Marine Corps, through his brief defection to the USSR and subsequent marriage to a Russian girl, and finally his return to the US and his role in the assassination of Kennedy. In DeLillo's version of events, the assassination attempt on Kennedy is in fact intended to fail; the plot is instigated by disgruntled former CIA operatives who see it as the only way to guide the government to war on Cuba. ..."
Wikipedia
Q&A: Don DeLillo - Exploring 'Libra' and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
NY Times: DALLAS, ECHOING DOWN THE DECADES
In Retrospect: Troy Jollimore on Don DeLillo’s “Libra”
Perival

2010 October: Pafko at the Wall, 2012 May: Underworld , 2012 July: The Body Artist, 2013 September: White Noise, 2013 November: The Art of Fiction No. 135, 2014 July: Don DeLillo: The Word, The Image, and The Gun, 2014 October: Falling Man (2007).

Fanzines from the 1970s

"I started buying music fanzines in the late 1970s, and although most of them subsequently got lost or thrown away over the years I still have a few good ones from the punk and immediate post-punk era. Fanzines about various subjects had existed before, but the new wave of zines that emerged alongside the punk rock explosion (and in parallel with independent record labels, shops and distribution channels), became a vibrant DIY subculture channelling punk’s 'anybody can do this' attitude into print. These fanzines captured the energy and excitement of punk rock as it was actually happening. ..."
stillunusual...
W - Punk zine

2014 December: Paper Trail, 2016 May: Punk 1976-78

New Breed Workin' ~ Blues With A Rhythm

"The subtitle of Ace's fifth installment of New Breed R&B underscores the aesthetic behind their New Breed series: these collections focus on blues and hard R&B acts who cut singles infused by a distinctly grooving soul sensibility. Most of the 24 tracks featured on Blues with a Rhythm date from the '60s but there are a couple of cuts from the '50s -- Richard Berry's 'Big John' is from 1955, the same year as Little Walter's 'My Babe,' which also reworked 'This Train (Is Bound for Glory)' -- and everything is united by a deep, slinky groove. Even when the singers growl or the guitars crank out a 12-bar shuffle, this music feels like it was designed for dancefloors. The fact that some of this sensibility is no doubt accidental actually makes this more fun: it feels like this whole scene was tapped into a vibe so powerful that it could not be denied, it could only be expressed."
allmusic
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: New Breed Workin' ~ Blues With A Rhythm

Chomsky: Humanity Faces Real and Imminent Threats to Our Survival

"On Monday night, Democracy Now! celebrated its 20th anniversary at the historic Riverside Church in New York City. Among those who addressed more than 2,000 attendants was world-renowned linguistic Noam Chomsky, who spoke about the two most dangerous threats the human species faces today: the possibility of nuclear war and the accelerating destruction of human-fueled climate change. ..."
alternet (Video)
alternet: Noam Chomsky Unveils America's Deplorable History of Playing Footsie With Fascism (Video)

2011 January: Peak Oil and a Changing Climate, 2015 May: The Limits of Discourse As Demonstrated by Sam Harris and Noam Chomsky, 2015 October: Electing the President of an Empire, 2015 December: Noam Chomsky on Paris attacks

The Photography of Poet Arthur Rimbaud (1883)

"Arthur Rimbaud, far-seeing prodigy, 'has been memorialized in song and story as few in history,' writes Wyatt Mason in an introduction to the poet’s complete works; 'the thumbnail of his legend has proved irresistible.' The poet, we often hear, ended his brief but brilliant literary career when he ran off to the Horn of Africa and became a gunrunner… or some other sort of adventurous outlaw character many miles removed, it seems, from the intense symbolist hero of Illuminations and A Season in Hell. ..."
Open Culture
Arthur Rimbaud, poet and photographer
gettyimages: Poet Arthur Rimbaud Pictures and Images
NY Times: Where Rimbaud Found Peace in Ethiopia

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), 2016 March: Rimbaud in New York.