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"A month ago, we released Surveyor—a new tool for geotagging photos in our collections. Thousands of people have already helped us put the history of New York City on the map (but we still need your help). To make exploring our beautiful, historical street photos of NYC even easier, we’re releasing a new tool: the NYPL Digital Collections Tab. NYPL Digital Collections Tab is a browser extension that shows a curated image of New York City from our Digital Collections every time you open a new tab. Inspired by Google’s Earth View—which shows global satellite imagery in new tabs—adding the extension to your browser is a great way to discover photos from the Library’s collections. And if you think you know where in New York City the photo in your tab was taken, one click will bring you to Surveyor! ..."
New York Public Library

2015 May: Mapping the New York That Once Was

Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act

"If ever there was a writer in flight from his name, it was Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa is the Portuguese word for 'person,' and there is nothing he less wanted to be. Again and again, in both poetry and prose, Pessoa denied that he existed as any kind of distinctive individual. 'I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist,' he writes in one poem. 'I’m the gap between what I’d like to be and what others have made of me. That’s me. Period.' In his magnum opus, 'The Book of Disquiet'—a collage of aphorisms and reflections couched in the form of a fictional diary, which he worked on for years but never finished, much less published—Pessoa returns to the same theme: 'Through these deliberately unconnected impressions I am the indifferent narrator of my autobiography without events, of my history without a life. These are my Confessions and if I say nothing in them it’s because I have nothing to say.' ..."
New Yorker

2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem.

"Sister Morphine" - Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithfull (1969)

Wikipedia - "'Sister Morphine' is a song written by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull released the original version of the song as the B-side to her Decca Records single 'Something Better' on 21 February 1969. ... In the U.K. Faithfull's single was withdrawn by Decca due to the drug reference in the title, after an estimated 500 copies had been issued, but in other countries the single remained in release. In some territories such as the Netherlands, Italy and Japan, 'Sister Morphine' appeared on the A-side. ...  After a legal battle Faithfull retained her rights as a co-author, acknowledged by the 1994 Virgin Records reissue of the Stones' album catalogue from Sticky Fingers through Steel Wheels. The personnel for the Faithfull version is Marianne on vocals, Jagger on acoustic guitar, Ry Cooder on slide guitar and bass guitar, Jack Nitzsche on piano and organ, and Charlie Watts on drums. The Stones' version features Jagger on vocals, Richards on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, Cooder and Nitzche again on slide guitar and piano respectively, Bill Wyman on bass, and Watts again on drums. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
YouTube: The Rolling Stones (RARE LIVE VERSION), Marianne Faithfull, The Rolling Stones (Port Chester, N.Y. 1997), Marianne Faithfull (Jazz Open Stuttgart 2009)


2008 June: Marianne Faithfull, 2010 November: Marianne Faithfull - 1, 2013 January: Broken English: Deluxe Edition, 2013 November: Before the Poison (2005), 2014 August: Kissin' Time (2002), 2014 October: Broken English short film by Derek Jarman (1979), 2015 March: Give My Love to London (2014), 2017 March: Strange Weather (1987)

2015 August: Exile on Main Street (1972), 2015 October: "Let's Spend the Night Together" / "Ruby Tuesday" (1967), 2015 December: Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (1971), 2016 January: Some Girls (1978), 2016 January: The Rolling Stones (EP), 2016 March: Five by Five (EP - 1964), 2016 May: "The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling — Ireland 1965", 2016 December: Singles Collection: The London Years (1989), 2017 June: Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967)

Found in an NYC Junk Shop: Forgotten Postcards between Two Haiku Masters

"Found at the bottom of an old mailbox in a New York antiques store, what’s written on the back of these postcards perfectly captures the iconic arts scene in New York’s early 1960s– a city that was hosting the likes of Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Jack Kerouac and countless more forgotten artists, jazz musicians and poets of an era gone by… The handwritten notes and unreleased poetry brought to life with illustrations, are all from a Haiku poet known as the Arizona Zipper, addressed to Cor Van de Huevel, another Haiku poet particularly influential in bringing Haiku to New York and the United States in the 1960s. Together, the pair were the pioneers of American Haiku poetry in the 1960s. But for those that don’t know, by now you might very well be asking yourself– what the heck is Haiku?! Haiku is the ancient Japanese art of a very short form of poetry. ..."
MESSY NESSY
Cor Van de Huevel
Poets & Writers
amazon: Books by Cor van den Heuvel
FORA.tv: 07. Cor van den Heuvel Reads

The Nubians of Plutonia / Bad and Beautiful - Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra (c.1958-1959)

"Along with his Arkestra, astral traveler and free jazz cornerstone artist Sun Ra amassed an unthinkably dense discography that chronicled their explorations in sound that grew away from the big-band sound of their beginnings into increasingly more experimental and spectral fare as the years went on. Even when engaging in more standard genres of music, Ra and company were a far cry from traditional, and the often murky, underwater-by-way-of-outer-space recording quality of many of their albums just added to the otherworldly feel of their music. This collection pairs two fantastic albums made in different times of transition for the group. ... The album still finds the band playing standards, but hints at the spectral territory they would soon branch off into with more daring percussion choices and interestingly spacious dynamics."
allmusic
W - The Nubians of Plutonia / Bad and Beautiful
W - Bad and Beautiful
amazon
YouTube: The Nubians of Plutonia (1958-59) 7 videos

I used to lead tours at a plantation. You won’t believe the questions I got about slavery.

The Old Plantation (Slaves Dancing on a South Carolina Plantation), ca. 1785-1795
"Up until about a year ago, I worked at a historic site in the South that included an old house and a nearby plantation. My job was to lead tours and tell guests about the people who made plantations possible: the slaves. The site I worked at most frequently had more than 100 enslaved workers associated with it— 27 people serving the household alone, outnumbering the home's three white residents by a factor of nine. Yet many guests who visited the house and took the tour reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owners. ..."
Vox (Video)

Too Much Pressure - The Selecter (1979)

Wikipedia - "Too Much Pressure is the first album by British ska band The Selecter. After the band's official formation in 1979 in Coventry, following the release of a song entitled 'The Selecter' by an unofficial incarnation of the band, the band's hit single 'On My Radio' prompted their labels 2 Tone and Chrysalis to ask the band to record their debut album. ... The album contains original material, mostly composed by band founder and guitarist Neol Davies, as well as numerous ska and reggae cover versions, in a similar fashion to the Specials' debut album. ... Critical reception to Too Much Pressure was positive. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice awarded the album a score of 'A-', advising listeners to 'play loud.^' He commented how, 'except for songwriter-guitarist Neol Davies, these two-toners are black, reassuring in a movement that calls up fears of folkie patronization. Lead singer's a woman, too, a refreshing piece of progress no matter how self-consciously progressive its motives.' ..."
Wikipedia
The Hackskeptic's View (Video)
amazon, Spotify, iTunes
YouTube: Too Much Pressure (Live), On My Radio (Live), Missing Words (Live), Murder (Live)

Marseille

Wikipedia - "Marseille, also known as Marseilles, is a city in France. The capital of the Bouches-du-Rhône department and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, Marseille, on France's south coast, is the country's second largest city, after Paris, with a population of 852,516 in 2012, and an area of 241 km² (93 sq mi), the 3rd-largest metropolitan area in France after Paris and Lyon. Known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as Massalia (Greek: Μασσαλία, Massalía), Marseille was the most important trading centre in the region and the main commercial port of the French Republic. Marseille is now France's largest city on the Mediterranean coast and the largest port for commerce, freight and cruise ships. ..."
Wikipedia
Lonely Planet
Telegraph
YouTube: Marseille

2014 April: Night Walk in Marseille

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan (1966)

Wikipedia - "'Visions of Johanna' is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. Dylan first recorded the song in New York City in November 1965, under the working title of 'Freeze Out', but was dissatisfied with the results. When the Blonde on Blonde recording sessions moved to Nashville in February 1966, Dylan attempted the composition again with different musicians, and decided to release this performance. All the alternate versions of the song have been officially released, but some only on a limited edition collectors set: many of them are November 1965 or later 1966 studio outtakes, and two others live performances from his 1966 world tour. Several critics have acclaimed 'Visions of Johanna' as one of Dylan's highest achievements in writing, praising the allusiveness and subtlety of the language. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Watch the video for Bob Dylan's Visions of Johanna (Video)
"Visions of Johanna"
YouTube: Visions Of Johanna (Belfast 6 May 66)

Capturing Love, the Brooklyn Way

"'One of the things that I noticed quickly,' the photographer Andre Wagner said of moving to Bushwick, Brooklyn, from Omaha in 2012, is 'how you can see the affection of people out in public because so many things happen on the streets.' Mr. Wagner drew upon his background in social work when he started taking photos. 'Living in Brooklyn, I see a lot of that family interaction, which I’m really interested in capturing.' He took these photos in April, roaming between Downtown Brooklyn, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Williamsburg and Bushwick. Mr. Wagner is also interested in the way different people come together on New York City subways and buses. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: Sunday Best in Harlem and Brooklyn
Meet Andre D. Wagner, The Photographer Documenting The Poetic Side Of New York City (Video)
Andre D. Wagner
Instagram

Something Wild - Jonathan Demme (1986)

Wikipedia - "Something Wild is a 1986 American action comedy film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels and Ray Liotta. It was screened out of competition at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. This film has some elements of a road movie, and it has acquired a cult status. In New York City, Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is a seemingly conventional banker whose wife has left him. In a café, a brunette (Melanie Griffith) who calls herself Lulu spots him leaving without paying. After a teasing confrontation, the two leave in a car that, Lulu says, she acquired from a divorce. They embark on a bizarre adventure, including crashing and abandoning the car, stealing from a liquor store and leaving a diner without paying. ..."
Wikipedia
Roger Ebert
NY Times: Something Genre Crossing, Something Bold
YouTube: Something Wild - Official Trailer, Something Wild clip

Soccer in Sun and Shadow - Eduardo Galeano (1993)

"Eduardo Galeano — the famous Uruguayan writer, journalist, and political activist — passed away Monday at the age of 74. He was most widely celebrated (and defamed) for his incisive critiques of Western imperialism and capitalism, as well as his lilting, graceful prose. ... Soccer fans will know him as the author of El fútbol a sol y sombra, or Soccer in Sun and Shadow. The book offers a cultural history of the beautiful game, using his trademark poignant verse to shape history and politics and economics and personal experience into a sort of paper sculpture— beautiful, unexpected, and somewhat transient. There’s a lot of darkness in the story Galeano tells—the 'shadow' in the book title, as it were—yet he unfurls and shares his joy and love for the sport throughout. Football, for Galeano, was an intimate and indelible part of life— and more often than not, it represented the better parts of it. Galeano was more than a fan; he was a pilgrim, telling a story that was equal parts hard labor sentence, passionate love affair and fleeting moment of rapture. ..."
Paste
Guardian - Eduardo Galeano: Uruguayan whose writing got right to the heart of football
Under the Sun
Google
amazon

2015 April: Eduardo Galeano (3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015)

Judson Dance Theater

"Performance of Yvonne Rainer's The Mind is a Muscle: Trio A, Judson Memorial Church, Greenwich Village, New York, 1966
Wikipedia - "Judson Dance Theater was a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village, Manhattan New York City between 1962 and 1964. It grew out of a composition class taught by Robert Dunn, a musician who had studied with John Cage. The artists involved were avant garde experimentalists who rejected the confines of Modern dance practice and theory, inventing as they did the precepts of Postmodern dance. ... The first Judson concert took place on July 6, 1962, with works created by Steve Paxton, Fred Herko, David Gordon, Alex and Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer, Elaine Summers, William Davis, and Ruth Emerson. ..."
Wikipedia
ARTFORUM: Judson Memorial Dance Theater 50th Anniversary
The First Concert of Dance at the Judson Dance Theater
NY Times: HOW THE JUDSON THEATER CHANGED AMERICAN DANCE By JACK ANDERSON (Jan. 31, 1982)
[PDF] Judson Church: Dance, an essay by George Jackson
YouTube: A JUDSON DANCE THEATER

Program for Fantastic Gardens, Judson Dance Theater, 1964. Design: Carol Summers.

Steeped in controversy: Tea guru in the fight of a lifetime

A hand-carved door on David Lee Hoffman's property.
"David Lee Hoffman will not show me his tea cave. The Lagunitas cave where Hoffman, owner of the Phoenix Collection, is aging tens of thousands of pounds of tea is well-known in the industry. 'All in This Tea,' Les Blank’s 2007 documentary about Hoffman, pictures him loading boxes into it. Marin County, which has been suing Hoffman for more than a decade to bring his 2-acre estate to code, has listed the cave in its extensive complaints. Yet Hoffman still treats it as a secret. 'It’s not open to the public,' he tells me. That may be because most of the teas stored at the Last Resort, his home and 'ecological research center' in the Lagunitas hills, are puers, a genre of Chinese tea equivalent to cult Cabs or single-malt scotches. Hoffman is one of the most storied tea vendors in the United States, and his puers may be worth millions of dollars, albeit to a minuscule cadre of collectors. ..."
Steeped in controversy: Tea guru in the fight of a lifetime
Inside Druid Heights, a Marin County counter-culture landmark
Act Now: Save The Last Resort - A Working Model of Sustainability in Marin County, CA (Video)
W - All in This Tea
True Films (Video)
YouTube: All In This Tea (Bullfrog Films clip)

2013 April: Les Blank

5 Cassette Players Walk into an Aphex Twin Cover

"The past week or so have been big news in Aphex Twin land, from the opening of his own digital superstore, at aphextwin.warp.net, packed with extra tracks and candid bits of liner notes, to a headlining gig at a Japanese music festival, and the subsequent inevitable price spike for a commemorative tape of the concert. Lost in the tumult was this little video cover of 'Rhubarb,' the third track from the Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 album. In the video it’s being performed on the Crudman — well, on a quintet of Crudmen. The Crudman is an ingenious hack of a Walkman. ..."
disquiet (Video)

How Mushrooms Became Magic

"If you were an American scientist interested in hallucinogens, the 1950s and 1960s were a great time to be working. Drugs like LSD and psilocybin—the active ingredient in magic mushrooms—were legal and researchers could acquire them easily. With federal funding, they ran more than a hundred studies to see if these chemicals could treat psychiatric disorders. That heyday ended in 1970, when Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act. It completely banned the use, sale, and transport of psychedelics—and stifled research into them. ... For Slot, that was a shame. He tried magic mushrooms as a young adult, and credits them with pushing him into science. ..."
The Atlantic

Balcony Seats to the City

A newly arrived immigrant eats noodles on the fire escape in New York City.
"Even in quickly evolving New York City, there’s something romantic about slowing down, stepping out of the fast currents of foot traffic, and looking up. Few neighborhoods will disappoint. Look up high, especially in Manhattan, and you can see the built history of the big city play out in the architectural details and ornamental facades of buildings, awnings and balconies standing out like grooves in record, ready to reveal the story of each block. Within the skyscraper canyons of Midtown, you can spot the pinnacles of great towers, and the cranes of greater towers in the making. But look a little lower, around the corners and in the alleyways, and you’ll see a structure with a romantic connection to an older New York City, zig-zagging down towards the streets. ..."
CURBED (Video)

Paul Violi Archive

Flyer for Paul Violi reading at 98 Greene Street Loft, May 8, [197?].
"The Paul Violi archive offers the opportunity to explore the life and work of poet and small press publisher Paul Violi. It is particularly strong in its illumination of the poet's creative process, especially as viewed through the lens of his unique relationship with fellow poets Tony Towle and Charles North. ... Paul Violi was born on July 20, 1944 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in Greenlawn, Long Island. He spent time at St. Mark's Poetry project and was an active part of the New York poetry world. Violi was the Poetry Project’s interim Director (1977) and also served on its advisory board (1978–1981). In spring 1970, he took a workshop at the Poetry Project with Tony Towle where he also met Charles North. The three developed a unique, supportive and creative relationship that lasted until Violi’s death in 2011. ..."
Granary Books
W - Paul Violi
Paul Violi
Poetry Foundation
NY Times: Paul Violi, a Poet Both Wry and Sly, Dies at 66

Le Mellotron presents Paris DJs X Todd Simon

"4 years ago Paris DJs invited Le Mellotron to cook up two mixes exploring the link between Jazz and Hip Hop. 2 years ago Le Mellotron hosted an exclusive Paris DJs mix of Latino Funk & Hispanic Jerk covers on their site. Last year Le Mellotron invited Paris DJs on their former boat on the Seine in the center of Paris for a 3 hours takeover where founders Djouls, Loik Dury & Grant Phabao were there deejaying 45s and some of their own productions. Following up on what has now become a tradition, this summer on monday, june 22nd, Le Mellotron are glad to invite again Paris DJs, for a 2 hours DJ set with special guest Todd Simon, coming straight from Los Angeles and bringing a box of 45s for a super fun set blending jazz, afrobeat, upbeat-jamaican and off the radar funk!! ..."
ParisDJ (Audio)
ParisDJ: Le Mellotron - From Jazz To Hip Hop (Audio)
ParisDJ: Le Mellotron - From Jazz To Hip Hop, PT. 2 (Audio)
ParisDJ: Le Mellotron (Audio)

RIP Village Voice 1955-2017

"Without it, if you are a New Yorker of a certain age, chances are you would have never found your first apartment. Never discovered your favorite punk band, spouted your first post-Structuralist literary jargon, bought that unfortunate futon sofa, discovered Sam Shepard or charted the perfidies of New York’s elected officials. Never made your own hummus or known exactly what the performance artist Karen Finley did with yams that caused such an uproar over at the National Endowment for the Arts. The Village Voice, the left-leaning independent weekly New York City newspaper, announced on Tuesday that it will end print publication. The exact date of the last print edition has not yet been finalized, according to a spokeswoman. ..."

NY Times: After 62 Years and Many Battles, Village Voice Will End Print Publication
Esquire: Generations of Village Voice Writers Reflect on the Paper Leaving the Honor Boxes
NPR: New Yorkers Mourn End Of An Era As 'Village Voice' Ceases Print Edition
NPR: Former Village Voice Editors And Writers Remember Its Outsized Impact On Music
It Takes a Village: A ‘Village Voice’ Reading List
W - Village Voice
Google - The Village Voice


Village Voice: The Shaggs, Music Downtown - Kyle Gann, The Voice Lays Off J Hoberman, John Wilcock: New York Years, 1954-1971 (Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall), Love Goes to Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York City That Changed Music Forever, The Essential Ellen Willis, Ocean of Sound - David Toop (1995), Tom Johnson - The Voice of New Music: New York City 1972–1982, 50 Years After Dylan Played Forest Hills, Al Kooper Recalls 1965's Electric Summer, St. Mark’s Place: It’s Party Time in the East Village!, Mark Alan Stamaty, Gem Spa, Village Voice NYC Albums , Jonas Mekas, J. Hoberman, The Quad Cinema's Facelift Caps Off a New Golden Age of NYC Cinema, Damn. - Kendrick Lamar (2017), Jeremiah Moss Was Here

March selection - Ceints de Bakélite

"It’s been long time since I haven’t posted anything on the blog, even though I have bought some great 78s in the past months. Instead of writing a long article as usual, I decided this time to share with you a selection of recordings from my collection. I only wrote a very short description for each track. Instrumental Zourna (Turkey). An hypnotic track from Turkey featuring a Zurna solo with a drum accompaniment. A record from the late 20’s or early 30’s on the British branch of Columbia. Its central label features a sticker from the now-disappeared shop of Léon Nichanian, that used to sell Armenian, Greek and Turkish records in Paris’ Belleville neighbourhood. ..."
Ceints de Bakélite (soundcloud)

The City So Nice They Can’t Stop Making Movies About It By A.O. Scott

Filming “Taxi Driver” on the streets of New York.
"According to City Hall, on any given day there are around 120 film and television projects in production in New York. About 12,000 permits are issued a year, resulting in the intermittent irritation of non-industry-connected residents as we try to park our cars or push our strollers. We might complain, but really we wouldn’t want it any other way. Trailers, craft service tables and production assistants policing sidewalks with clipboards and walkie-talkies have long been fixtures of New York life. They are also the building blocks of a virtual city, a second metropolis extracted from and existing alongside the real one. For natives, transplants and tourists alike, it can be hard to tell where the actual New York leaves off and its cinematic doppelgänger begins. And it would be downright impossible to pick just one movie that sums up the experience of the city. Still, it might be interesting to try. ..."
NY Times
One Film, One New York (Video)

Miles of Aisles - Joni Mitchell (1974)

"Miles of Aisles is a four-sided live album with a greatest-hits feel to it that collects 18 numbers from Mitchell's successful concert tour of last winter. It's a strong album of her best songs performed mostly informally, backed on sides one and four by reedman Tom Scott and his band — an interesting album because it displays an occasional awkwardness that provides a glimpse into the artist's mercurial character. Although she constantly maintains a stunning professional control over her own performance, much of the pleasure of this record comes from the new band arrangements of songs we've heard often (one or two of which I've heard to death). Even 'Woodstock,' which is now something of a hoary hippy anthem, gets a clever revitalization through Robben Ford's biting guitar work that constructs a personality of its own as the concert builds. ..."
Rolling Stone
W - Miles of Aisles
amazon
YouTube: Miles of Aisles 18 videos

2015 July: Blue (1970), 2015 Novemer: 40 Years On: Joni Mitchell's The Hissing Of Summer Lawns Revisited, 2016 August: On For the Roses (1972), 2016 November: Court and Spark (1974), 2017 February: Hejira (1976)

Remembering Red Vienna

"When it comes to progressive urban planning and municipal administration, 'Red Vienna' (1919–1934) remains a common reference point. Best known for its housing programs, this radical municipal project also entailed comprehensive social improvements that included health care, education, child care, and cultural reform efforts. Red Vienna represents a historically specific, social-democratic response to social and political questions that remain relevant today: the distribution of wealth, access to infrastructure, and the reorganization of reproductive labor. Against the backdrop of contemporary challenges to left, urban politics — the struggle for the right to housing, for public reinvestment, and against the rising right — we should look back on this sweeping interwar project to draw out the possibilities and limits of progressive urban politics within a conservative state. ..."
Jacobin
W - Red Vienna
MIT: The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934
Weimar: Red Vienna
YouTube: Vienna Karl Marx-Hof, between 1927 and 1930

Frederick Wiseman’s - National Gallery (2014)

"Though 'Interstellar' pounds the eardrums mercilessly with Hans Zimmer’s overbearing music, the noisiest movie coming out this week is Frederick Wiseman’s 'National Gallery,' which opened on Wednesday at Film Forum. The documentary is about the London museum of the title, and is set almost entirely within its confines. The three-hour-long film has no musical score and no apparent added sound effects. What it does have is a lot of of talking, much of which takes place in the presence of masterworks on display. A lot of that talk is a distraction and an annoyance on the order of construction noise—and yet that superfluous and distracting vocal drone is the canny intellectual underpinning of Wiseman’s movie. ..."
New Yorker (By Richard Brody)
NY Times: Framing the Viewers, and the Viewed
Guardian: National Gallery (Video)
PBS (Video)
National Gallery London
W - National Gallery
twitter
YouTube: NATIONAL GALLERY Official US trailer, Top 10 Paintings at the National Gallery London, London: The National Gallery & Gift Shop

The UVA Class the White Supremacists Didn’t Take

"In 2001 Richard Spencer received his B.A. from the University of Virginia. Jason Kessler graduated in 2009. My cousin Julian Bond, the erudite, firebrand civil rights icon, taught at the school from 1992 through 2012. He traveled from D.C. to Charlottesville for twenty years, educated nearly five thousand students. Julian’s class, The History of the Civil Rights Movement, was an elective. It seems almost a certainty that neither Spencer nor Kessler would have taken it. Perhaps back then Kessler, the organizer of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right rally, and Spencer, at the time not yet a Nazi, were already steeping hate like tea and crafting a new society on the Lawn. Or dreaming of a purely white nation as they passed UVA’s Rotunda — all while Julian opened volume after volume of his life and the lives of others he had known. Julian would have spoken about SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which he helped organize. ..."
Voice

The return of the KLF: pop's greatest provocateurs take on a post-truth world

"So why exactly did the KLF set £1m on fire? It’s been a burning question for 23 years, as pop’s greatest provocateurs chose to let rumour, conjecture and myth around the publicity stunt – held on the Scottish island of Jura and ending their career on 23 August 1994 – swirl about unanswered for two decades. Until now. The project formed by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1987, which has lain dormant in a self-imposed moratorium of 23 years, returned at 00.23am on the morning of Wednesday 23 August. As Drummond and Cauty drove into a backstreet of Liverpool in an ice-cream van to begin three days of events, their first new work – a trilogy of dystopian fiction, an 'end of days story', called 2023: A Trilogy – simultaneously dropped online. Yet this is not a book for those looking for straightforward answers, and is as abstruse as the KLF themselves, who have published it under their other moniker, the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. ..."
Guardian
Guardian - GoogleByte v Beyon-Say: an exclusive extract from the KLF's chilling novel about the world in 2023
amazon: 2023 by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu.
BBC: The KLF return 23 years after bowing out of the music industry (Video)
 
2009 May: The KLF, 2011 June: Justified & Ancient, 2013 May: "3 a.m. Eternal", 2013 November: "America: What Time Is Love?" / "What Time Is Love?", 2017 March: Embrace The Contradictions: The Strange World Of... The KLF

Fela Kuti - Ikoyi Blindness / Kalakuta Show (1976)

"A two-for-one set, Ikoyi Blindness was a middle-of-the-pack release in a sea of mid-'70s Fela Kuti records that featured two songs and about a half-hour's worth of music. The rhythms were a little tighter and more highlife-influenced than they had been on albums from earlier in the decade. 'Ikoyi Blindness' itself was pretty typical of Kuti's efforts from the period, both in its structure, which built up to a call-and-response vocal, and in its taut two-chord melodic base. 'Gba Mi Leti Ki N'Dolowo (Slap Me Make I Get Money)' is a little more interesting due to its choppier rhythms, more vibrant percussion, stuttering low guitar riff, and extended haunting electric keyboard lines. By the time of 1976's Kalakuta Show, Kuti's releases were starting to seem not so much like records as ongoing installments in one long jam documenting the state of mind of Nigeria's leading contemporary musician and ideological/political dissenter. ..."
allmusic
afrobeat, afrofunk, afrojazz, afrorock, african boogie, african hiphop ...
amazon
YouTube: Ikoyi Blindness, Gba Mi Leti Ki N'Dolowo, Kalakuta Show, Dont Make Garan Garan

New York’s Oldest Subway Cars, Beautiful Symbols of a Sad Decline

Though now a symbol of the New York City subway system’s state of disrepair, the R32 cars are genuinely a marvel of mid-twentieth-century engineering.
"In 1964, the New York City Transit Authority introduced the shiny, stainless-steel R32 subway car. 'There was a very special inaugural trip that took place on today’s Metro-North line into Grand Central Terminal, welcoming the trains into New York,' James Giovan, an educator at the New York Transit Museum, told me recently. The R32s were dubbed Brightliners. By 1965, six hundred had been built. With their brilliant corrugated bodies, they bore little resemblance to other cars. They were praised for having the clearest intercom system. Their plastic benches marked the end of gritty rattan-wicker seats. ..."
New Yorker

Resisting Gentrification, Rezoning and Displacement in East Harlem with The Harlem Art Collective at the Guerrilla Gallery

"A range of artworks and writings — by members of the Harlem Art Collective aka HART and the East Harlem community — on the theme No Rezoning, No Displacement, No Gentrification have made their way onto the Guerrilla Gallery on East 116th Street. The image pictured above — painted by Kristy McCarthy aka DGale and Zerk Oer — features a color-coded map with median prices of real estate sales and incomes of East Harlem residents, illustrating how increasingly difficult it is for working-class folks to afford to live in their own community. Several more images follow..."
Street Art NYC

World Spirituality Classics 1: The Ecstatic Music of Turiya Alice Coltrane (2017)

"Ashrams, physically speaking, are not easy to reach. Traditionally set at some remove, they are expanses of nature and silence and deliberate living that involve meditation, yoga, and communal meals. They instill a pleasant buzz. To visit the Sai Anantam Ashram, which Alice Coltrane founded and directed from 1983 until her death a decade ago, required a winding and mountainous Southern California drive; one could easily miss the gate. When you approached the entrance, as Franya J. Berkman wrote in her 2010 book Monument Eternal, the music of Coltrane and her devotees floated up from speakers set beside the dirt driveway. Coltrane’s rare ashram tapes have long been mythical. In the mid-1970s—after a rich musical life steeped in Detroit churches and bebop piano, as an accompanist to her husband John and over a decade composing her own visionary cosmic jazz—Coltrane began to retreat from public and secular life. ..."
Pitchfork (Audio)
NPR (Spotify or Apple Music)
Luaka Bop (Audio)
amazon
YouTube: Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda

2015 December: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharaoh Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors (1994), 2016 January: Ptah, The El Daoud - Alice Coltrane & Pharoah Sanders (1970), 2016 November: Tauhid (1967), 2017 May: The Pharoah Sanders Story: In the Beginning 1963-1964

Pere Ubu & Peter Laughner - Two First Singles (1975-76)

"Pere Ubu emerged from the urban wastelands of mid-'70s Cleveland to impact the American underground for generations to follow; led by hulking frontman David Thomas, whose absurdist warble and rapturously demented lyrics remained the band's creative focus throughout their long, convoluted career, Ubu's protean art punk sound harnessed self-destructing melodies, scattershot rhythms, and industrial-strength dissonance to capture the angst and chaos of their times with both apocalyptic fervor and surprising humanity. Named in honor of Alfred Jarry's surrealist play Ubu Roi, Pere Ubu was formed in the autumn of…"
iTunes
YouTube: Two First Singles 1975-76
First Single A - 30 Seconds Over Tokyo 6:21 B - Heart Of Darkness 4:44 Second Single A - Final Solution 4:38 B - Cloud 149 2:32

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), 2016 December: Don't Expect Art (1980), 2017 January: New Picnic Time (1979), 2017 June: Allen Ravenstine

Agnès Varda on her life and work - Artforum

"Agnès Varda discusses her life and work, from her films—which helped launch the French New Wave—to her photography, sculptures, and installations, on view at Blum & Poe in New York from March 2 to April 15, 2017." 16:25
ARTFORUM (Video)

August 2010: Agnès Varda, May 2011: The Beaches of Agnès, 2011 December: Interview - Agnès Varda, 2013 February: The Gleaners and I (2000), 2013 September: Cinévardaphoto (2004), 2014 July: Black Panthers (1968 doc.), 2014 October: Art on Screen: A Conversation with Agnès Varda, 2015 September: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Plaisir d’amour en Iran (1976), 2017 April: Agnès Varda’s Art of Being There, 2017 April: AGNÈS VARDA with Alexandra Juhasz.

The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance - August Wilson (1992)

"I wish to make it clear from the outset, however, that I do not have a mandate to speak for anyone. There are many intelligent blacks working in the American theatre who speak in loud and articulate voices. It would be the greatest of presumptions to say I speak for them. I speak only myself and those who may think as I do. In one guise, the ground I stand on has been pioneered by the Greek dramatists—by Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles—by William Shakespeare, by Shaw and Ibsen, and by the American dramatists Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. In another guise, the ground that I stand on has been pioneered by my grandfather, by Nat Turner, by Denmark Vesey, by Martin Delaney, Marcus Garvey and the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. ..."
Princeton University McCarter Theatre
PBS: The Ground on Which I Stand (Video) 2:30
YouTube: The Ground on Which I Stand ($)

2017 July: Fences (2016)

When the South Held the Keys - An interview with Matt Karp

Henry Clay speaking on the Compromise of 1850 in the Senate, ca. 1855.
"In the years before the New Deal, the ex-Confederate states were, as Seth Ackerman put it, 'a desperately poor, single-crop farm region with a per capita income roughly half the national average and a third the level of the Northeast.' And its ruling class was no exception — few would make the mistake of calling the postbellum elite 'cosmopolitan.' When history is read backwards, the continuities between the postwar and pre-war ruling classes of the Southern states are magnified and exaggerated.  ... But Princeton historian and Jacobin contributing editor Matt Karp’s new book This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy makes clear that this is a mistake. ..."
Jacobin
JuntoCast
Dissent - Booked: When Slaveholders Controlled the Government, with Matthew Karp
amazon

Augustus Pablo - In Fine Style (2003)

"London's Pressure Sounds label followed up their El Rocker's compilation (an excellent introduction to the musical vision of Augustus Pablo) with this set of rare 7" and 12" sides from the Jamaican innovator. Songs are grouped by rhythm, with multiple versions of seven Pablo productions making up the 17 tracks here. Because of this, In Fine Style may not be the recommended entry point for beginners. Collectors, however, will be greatly rewarded, and novices willing to dive in will experience firsthand the art of the version. Deejays Jah Levi (aka singer Hugh Mundell) and Jah Iny appear on a couple of tracks, but the remainder of the set is given over to Pablo's excursions on piano, organ, clavinet, xylophone, and his trademark melodica. ... It's an essential chapter, both in Pablo's story, and in the history of reggae."
allmusic
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: In Fine Style 55:03

The Playa Provides: A Journey of Starting Over at Burning Man

"I arrived at Burning Man with a suitcase of costumes and a backpack stuffed with my whole life. I had just left New York for good, and for the next 8 days, the desert was my new home. With tens of thousands of feathered & leathered creatures strutting and fire-spewing art cars crawling, The Playa, the dry lake basin that holds the annual festival, was a maze of disorient and fantasy. The temptation to lose myself to the desert nights, to become a dot in the LED glitterscape, was strong. But this wasn’t my first rave, and I was here for so much more than just the party. I was on the mend and I was on my own for the first time. I was here to reclaim my life on my terms. I just happened to be doing it one of the world’s most legendary gatherings. I had a lot to learn. The day I left Brooklyn was the day I started over. I woke up in a hungover daze; the night before was my 'goodbye, forever' party, which involved too many drinks to count followed by 3 a.m. tacos, a late night cry precluding a fitful sleep. ..."
The Medium
indiegogo (vimeo) 2:29
YouTube: Burning Man: A Journey Through The Playa 27:55
YouTube: Deep Tunes for Deep Playa (Vol 6) 1:29:29

amazing Burning Man in photography

2007 November: Burning Man, 2009 August: Burning Man - 1, 2013 January: Timelapse-icus Maximus 2012 "A Burning Man for Ants", 2016 October: A Brief History of Who Ruined Burning Man

Two Prince Street relics on a pre-SoHo building

"SoHo’s cast-iron commercial buildings have long been repurposed into expensive lofts and boutiques. But hiding in plain site on the handsome, two-story brick and iron building between Greene Street and Wooster Place are two relics, nods to the neighborhood’s late 19th and 20th century manufacturing past. These metal signs, advertising the services of a lithographer and engraver as well as an office supplies seller, flank the ends of 120-125 Prince Street, actually two separate buildings constructed in 1892-1893 with a common facade. 'Stationery, Office Supplies, Paper, and Twine” states the one on the right. Twine? To wrap packages in an era before masking tape. ..."
Ephemeral New York
W - Pearl Street (Manhattan)
Forgotten NYC: PRINCE STREET

What's In My Bag? Paul Weller

"Paul Weller is a British guitarist, singer and songwriter nicknamed The Modfather, a founding member of The Jam and Syle Council, and a successful solo artist. The Jam formed in 1972 with Paul Weller and his school friends, guitarist Steve Brookes, bassist Bruce Foxton, and drummer Rick Buckler. When Brookes left the band shortly after its formation, they decided to remain a three-piece. At the time their debut album, In the City (Polydor, 1977), was released Weller was just 19 years old. With their third album, 1978's All Mod Cons (Polydor), Weller's songwriting took a huge leap forward, demonstrating that he was not limited to writing punk songs. ..."
Amoeba (Video)

2009 March: The Jam, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980), 2014 December: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982, 2015 March: "Town Called Malice" / "Precious", 2015 July: The Gift (1982), 2015 September: "Strange Town" / "The Butterfly Collector" (1979), 2016 April: "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" (1979), 2017 January: Absolute Beginners EP (1981), 2017 March: David Watts / "A" Bomb In Wardour Street (1978).

Woods Hole

Wikipedia - "Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, near Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. The population was 781 at the 2010 census. It is the site of several famous marine science institutions, including Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Woods Hole Research Center, NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (which started the Woods Hole scientific community in 1871), the Woods Hole Science Aquarium, a USGS coastal and marine geology center, and the home campus of the Sea Education Association. ..." Brad. Woods Hole, May 3-12, 1975.
Wikipedia
W - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, a village on Cape Cod
YouTube: Drawbridge at Woods Hole Cape Cod Massachusetts

Jane Fay Baker, Winter Parking: Woods Hole, Woodcut

"I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)" - James Brown (1967)

Wikipedia - "'I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)', also known as 'I Can't Stand It', is a song written and recorded by James Brown in 1967. It is the most successful of the handful of recordings he made with The Dapps, a band of white musicians led by Beau Dollar. The single release of the song, on which its tempo was mechanically sped up, rose to #4 on the Billboard R&B chart and #28 on the Pop chart. The single's B-side, 'There Was a Time', also charted. 'I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)' was included on the 1968 album I Can't Stand Myself When You Touch Me, where it was labeled 'Pt. 1'. A 'Pt. 2', which appeared later in the album, never received a single release. ...  James Chance and the Contortions covered the song on the 1978 No Wave compilation album No New York. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me) (Parts 1&2), James Chance & the Contortions - I Can't Stand Myself