"Playground Twist" - Siouxsie and the Banshees (1979)

Wikipedia - "'Playground Twist' is a song by English post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees. It was released in 1979 by record Polydor as the sole single from the band's second album, Join Hands (1979). ... NME's Roy Carr hailed the single and wrote: 'If Ingmar Bergman produced records, they might sound like this. The listener is immediately engulfed in a maelstrom of whirling sound punctuated by the ominous tolling of church bells, phased guitars, thundering percussion, a surreal alto sax and the wail of Siouxsie's voice. It demands to be played repeatedly at the threshold-of-pain volume to elicit its full nightmarish quality'. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Playground Twist, The Staircase

2017 April: "Hong Kong Garden" / "Voices (On The Air)" (1978)

The Vietnam War Is Not Over

Marines marching in Danang, Vietnam, March 15, 1965
"'The Vietnam War' Ken Burns says in a recent interview, 'was the most important event in American history since World War II.' But, he explains, it’s also an event that tore the United States apart, a war whose wounds have not yet healed, a war we often try to forget. In the very first interview of this ten-part, eighteen-hour documentary, 'The Vietnam War,' author Karl Marlantes describes how 'coming home from the war was close to as traumatic as the war itself.' For years, he continues, no one really wanted to talk about what had happened. 'It’s like living in a family with an alcoholic father — shh, we don’t talk about that.' With their new documentary, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick suggest that we not only do need to talk about the war, especially the terrible divisions it left behind, but that together we can begin to overcome them. In addition to recounting the bloody history of the Vietnam War, their documentary seeks to facilitate a kind of collective therapy, where all sides, Americans and Vietnamese, the North and the South, GIs and antiwar activists, can finally begin to work towards closure. ..."
Jacobin
Washington Post: When Ike Was Asked to Nuke Vietnam
Jacobin: The Forgotten Interventions
America’s amnesia
amazon: Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement by Tom Hayden
New Yorker: Ken Burns’s American Canon
New Republic: The Insidious Ideology of Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War
Guardian: Hell No review: celebration of Vietnam protests can inform resistance to Trump by Tom Hayden
Guardian - Ken Burns: How Vietnam War sowed the seeds of a divided America
New Yorker: The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People

2017 September: Give Peace a Chance

Street View of '80s NYC

"In the '80s, you could run scared through Times Square beneath a marquee for the movie 'Running Scared,' which stood right next to a store called 'Video Peeps.' You can now get a glimpse of Gotham's grittier days through an interactive map that collected hundreds of thousands of digitized archival photos organized by address. Map co-creator Jeremy Lechtzin told DNAinfo New York that he and geocode partner Brandon Liu came up with an algorithm to organize the more than 800,000 images and arrange them as seamlessly as possible for Google Street View-like effect. ..."
Stroll Through Gritty '80s NYC With This Interactive Map
80s.NYC

The Story Behind Devo’s Iconic Cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”

In 1977, the band Devo—five misfits from Ohio with a love of performance art—took Mick Jagger’s classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and mutated it beyond recognition.
"One afternoon in 1978, Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale—the two prime architects of the band Devo—were fidgeting in Peter Rudge’s office, near the Warwick Hotel, in Manhattan, with Mick Jagger. Rudge was the Rolling Stones’ manager, and Devo had recorded an odd cover of the band’s hit '(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction' — so odd that their label said they needed Jagger’s blessing to release it. Mothersbaugh put the tape in a boom box and pressed Play. As the sounds of the cover filled the room, Jagger sat stone-faced. What he was hearing didn’t sound much like the 'Satisfaction' he’d written. Keith Richards’s iconic riff was gone, and the original melody was nowhere to be found. Was this a homage, Mick must have wondered, or were they mocking him? ... For thirty seconds or so, the men sat in silence, listening to the weird robo-funk coming from the boom box. Then something changed. ..."
New Yorker (Video)
W - “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

2009 December: Devo, 2011 September: We Are Devo!, 2015 February: Mark Mothersbaugh's Synth Collection

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA

Detail from a mural by the Oaxacan artist collective Tlacolulokos at the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, from a show, “Visualizing Language: Oaxaca in L.A.”
"I guess there’s a God. During one of the meanest passages in American national politics within living memory, we’re getting a huge, historically corrective, morale-raising cultural event, one that lasts four months and hits on many of the major social topics of the day: racism, sexism, aggressive nationalism. True, the hugeness of the thing is a problem, and the contents are uneven. But it’s a gift, worth a trip to puzzle over and savor. And if the timing is right, that’s semi-accidental. The event, called 'Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA,' is the latest of three successive multi-venue extravaganzas in and around this city, spaced several years apart, and bankrolled by the Getty Foundation. The first was an overview of art in Southern California from 1945 to 1980; the second was devoted to architecture and design. ..."
NY Times: A Head-Spinning,Hope-Inspiring Showcase of Art
Economist - Pacific Standard Time LA/LA: 1,100 artists from 45 countries
LA Weekly - How to See All of PST: LA/LA in 14 Days (Part I) (Video)
LA Times - From Donald Duck to Donald Trump, an unprecedented look at Latin American art holds up a mirror to the U.S.
LACMC: Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at LACMA (Video)

A secret alley behind a street in Hell’s Kitchen

Clinton Court
"Is there anything quite as enchanting as coming across a quiet hidden courtyard in the middle of a dense Manhattan neighborhood? It’s especially magical when the courtyard is just a quick walk from the hustle and bustle of Times Square. That was my reaction when I took a walk through tiny Clinton Court in Hell’s Kitchen. This secret space is about halfway down the busy tenement block between 9th and 10th Avenues. It’s accessible through a long slender walkway behind a heavy iron door, which you can find to the right of the residence at 422 West 46th Street. The door is locked, of course. But it’s worth the trip if you can catch a glimpse of the courtyard from the street through the door. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Rivers and Tides: Working With Time - Fred Frith (2001)

"Rivers and Tides: Working With Time is Fred Frith's score to a film by Thomas Riedelsheimer about the 'land art works' of Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is preoccupied with the natural processes of water, beaches, and tides, and these elements are used extensively in his art. After viewing the film, Frith not only took his cues from the sounds of nature (the actual sound of water recurs throughout), but composed music that uncannily echoes the processes involved as well. Anyone who has spent time at the shore will recognize these elements: the repetition of waves on the beach, the inexorability of the tides, and a sense of time that can be so slowed as to be almost static. All of that is reflected beautifully in Frith's score, principally through piano, violin, and soprano sax. As with any large body of water, the music is mostly serene but can have some discord at times as well, as heard in 'Part III.' with its martial drumbeat and generally noisier demeanor. Rivers and Tides demonstrates that Frith is not only a skewed pop genius and fearless improviser, but a remarkably empathetic soundtrack composer as well."
allmusic
W - Rivers and Tides (soundtrack)
amazon
YouTube: Rivers and Tides: Part I. —, Part VI (Rivers and Tides {Working with time, 2003), Part II. —, Part III. —, Part VII. —

2007 November: Andy Goldsworthy: Roof, 2012 March: Rivers and Tides, 2012 June: Andy Goldsworthy 1987 Grizedale

SEE IT: Chuck Close gives first video tour of his subway art

"Next stop, an underground Close encounter. Acclaimed artist Chuck Close gives his first personal, on-camera tour of his 12 subway mosaics on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with RealClear Life. On view since January, the ceramic 'Subway Portraits' at the 86th St. Q train station include composer Philip Glass, photographer Cindy Sherman and Close’s ex-wife Sienna Shields. ... The dozen mosaics, 10 of which tower over 9 feet tall, are the largest public art works Close has made. It’s the first time the artist has worked with tiles. There are two self-portraits, along with one of late musician Lou Reed. 'Let’s roll down and look at Lou,' says Close, who’s used a motorized wheelchair since a spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed. ..."
NY Daily News
What Does Chuck Close Have Against Public Art?
Legendary Painter Chuck Close on Public Art, Diversity and His Ex-Wife (Video)

2008 August: Chuck Close, 2015 September: Chuck Close: Red Yellow Blue, 2016 July: The Mysterious Metamorphosis of Chuck Close

Fellini Satyricon - Federico Fellini (1969)

Wikipedia - "Fellini Satyricon, or simply Satyricon, is a 1969 Italian fantasy drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini and loosely based on Petronius's work Satyricon, written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome. The film is divided into nine episodes, following the scholar Encolpius and his friend Ascyltus as they try to win the heart of the young boy Gitón, whom they both love, within the film's depiction of a surreal and dreamlike Roman landscape and culture. ... Petronius's original text survives only in fragments. While recuperating from a debilitating illness in 1967, Fellini reread Petronius and was fascinated by the missing parts, the large gaps between one episode and the next. The text's fragmentary nature encouraged him to go beyond the traditional approach of recreating the past in film: the key to a visionary cinematic adaptation lay in narrative techniques of the dream state that exploited the dream's imminent qualities of mystery, enigma, immorality, outlandishness, and contradiction. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Fellini Satyricon By Vincent Canby (March 1970)
Guardian - From the archive, 10 September 1970: Fellini and a half
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Satyricon Official Trailer #1, Three Reasons: Fellini Satyricon

2017 March: Roma (1972)

City Lights Journal

"The very image of the counterculture, the City Lights Bookstore opened its doors on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood in 1953. At first, under the name of the Pocket Bookshop, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin sold only paperbacks and magazines; the name was changed in 1955 when the famous Pocket Poets Series began with Ferlinghetti’s own Pictures of the Gone World. The series and the bookshop flourish to this day. In 1956, a few months after the famous Six Gallery reading, Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, causing a firestorm of controversy when he was arrested and tried for the sale of obscene material in 1957. Ferlinghetti was acquitted, and the powerful little book of poems has since sold over a million copies. The poem itself was a watershed work for the New American Poetry, and is still contemporary in its angry protest. ..."
From a Secret Location

Explore Parts Unknown

"Explore Parts Unknown is a mobile-first immersive guide featuring original stories and video, premium photography, and engaging interactives. Inspired by the Emmy-winning CNN Original Series Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, we’re recreating Bourdain’s journeys and diving deeper into the places, people, and stories he’s encountered. Explore Parts Unknown is an editorial partnership between CNN and Roads & Kingdoms—an independent media company focused on food, politics, and travel based in New York and Barcelona. Together, we have built a digital universe for the Bourdain super-fan to learn what he knows, go where he went, eat what he ate, and see what he saw. Born from Bourdain’s contagious passion for culture, food, travel, and adventure, Explore Parts Unknown highlights our shared obsessions: authentic food, culture, people, travel."
Explore Parts Unknown - Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Video)

2013 August: Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Robert Fripp & Brian Eno - The Essential Fripp & Eno (1994)

"This compilation of the recorded collaborations between guitarist Robert Fripp and producer/conceptualist/musician Brian Eno is taken from two album-length recordings made for the Island subsidiary Antilles in 1974 and 1975, No Pussyfooting and Evening Star, with an unreleased 1979 session added on. 'The Heavenly Music Corporation' and 'Swastika Girls,' totaling 39 minutes, make up the whole of No Pussyfooting. Both of these pieces are slowly evolving reel-to-reel tape experiences that are hypnotic and remain revelatory decades later. 'Wind on Water"'and 'Evening Star' account for half of the latter album's first side; they are easily the two most beautiful and 'melodic' cuts issued by the pair. The remaining 22 minutes are the previously unissued, four-part 'Healthy Colours.' These cuts are radically different from their predecessors -- they're more rhythmic, employing digital drum loops, a plethora of dynamic samples, and a wider array of sound effects and treatments. ..."
Jazz Rock Fusion Guitar
allmusic (Audio)
Discogs
amazon
DailyMotion: Evening Star
YouTube: Wind On Water, 1. Healthy Colours I 2. Healthy Colours II 3. Healthy Colours III 4. Healthy Colours IV

The Unvanquished - William Faulkner (1938)

Wikipedia - "The Unvanquished is a 1938 novel by the American author William Faulkner, set in Yoknapatawpha County. It tells the story of the Sartoris family, who first appeared in the novel Sartoris (or Flags in the Dust). The Unvanquished takes place before that story, and is set during the American Civil War. Principal characters are Bayard Sartoris, John Sartoris (Marse John, Father), Granny, Ringo (Morengo), Ab Snopes, Cousin Drusilla, Aunt Jenny, Louvinia, and the lieutenant (a Yankee soldier). Although The Unvanquished was first published as a whole in 1938, it consists of seven short stories which were originally published separately in The Saturday Evening Post, except where noted. ... The Unvanquished is told in seven episodes—sometimes immediately following one another, other times separated by months or years—spanning the years 1862 to 1873. The book begins with Bayard Sartoris and his slave friend Ringo playing in the dirt on the Sartoris plantation. ..."
Wikipedia
Gogol's Overcoat - Faulkner Friday: The Unvanquished (1938)
Google - A Reader's Guide to William Faulkner: The Novels
amazon

2011 September: Southern Gothic, 2014 February: William Faulkner, 2015 October: William Faulkner Draws Maps of Yoknapatawpha County, the Fictional Home of His Great Novels, 2015 November: Interviews William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12, 2016 April: Absalom, Absalom!! (1936), 2016 May: The Sound and the Fury (1929), 2016 October: The Snopes Trilogy (1940, 1957, 1959), 2016 December: Light in August (1932), 2017 February: As I Lay Dying (1930), 2017 June: The Wild Palms (1939), 2017 August: Sanctuary (1931)

Access denied: wheelchair metro maps versus everyone else's

Just nine out of 303 metro stations in Paris are fully accessible.
"The metro can be the quickest way to get around many big cities. Unless you’re in a wheelchair. Although it has invested recently in improving accessibility, the London Underground – the world’s oldest metro, opened in 1863 – still only has 71 out 270 tube stations accessible by wheelchair or mobility scooter from street to platform. Given that 21 of those require ramps and staff assistance to board trains, the number of fully accessible stations – which people in wheelchairs can use independently – is just 50. ..."
Guardian
Guardian - Accessing cities with a disability: what have your experiences been?

Mithkal Alzghair

Displacement
"When we see a Syrian body today, it’s usually emerging from rubble, bloodied and stripped, or worse, already dead. If Syrians are not represented as victims of war, they appear as refugees in foreign lands, awkwardly juxtaposed with locals or aid workers. Beyond the tragic photograph, what do we ever learn about their bodies, or their lives? And why do we get a front seat to their agony? As if they haven’t lost enough, in a flash, they perpetually lose control over their own image. In Displacement, a double-bill dance performance staged at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London this July, choreographer and dancer Mithkal Alzghair put the audience face to face with a moving Syrian body, and gave it the space to speak for itself. The moving, and at times unsettling, performance was part of London’s Shubbak Festival—a multidisciplinary, biannual arts festival that emerged in the expectant Arab Spring moment of 2011 with a vision to bring the most exciting Arab artwork to an international audience. ..."
Guernica - Mithkal Alzghair: Dancing Displacement
Learning How to Live with Exile (Video)
Writing about dance
vimeo: Mithkal Alzghair 8 Videos
YouTube: Déplacement

Artists on Political Art

Carrie Mae Weems
"To coincide with the November issue of Artforum on art and politics, artforum.com presents artists Carrie Mae Weems, Matthew Weinstein, Marilyn Minter, Hans Haacke, Nadia Ayari, Nancy Chunn, and Vitaly Komar as they discuss political art."
ARTFORUM (Video)

An Ode to Acts of Kindness on the New York City Subway

"For many New Yorkers, their subway line is a second home. They see their neighbors on the same route; they know which car will be closest to their exit; and they have favorite spots for the ride. Andre Wagner, who has been taking photographs in the subway since 2013 and whose book,'Here for the Ride,' will be published this week, likes to stand in front of the doors. 'I can see everything in the car that way,' he said. With a background in social work, he was interested in capturing acts of kindness, among other things, in the confined spaces. I wanted to witness those acts of humanity happening in this very public space,' he said. 'People giving up their seats to a mother and child or helping hold the door for someone running to catch the train.' ...”
NY Times

2017 August: Capturing Love, the Brooklyn Way

Soul Exorcism Redux - James Chance & The Contortions (2007)

"Recorded in June of 1980, Soul Exorcism proves that jazz, funk, experimental, and new wave make quite an intoxicating mix when perfected. James Chance sums up the proceedings perfectly in the liner notes, where he states that the music perfectly reveals the essence and soul of New York City (even though it was recorded in Rotterdam). Backed up by a stellar backing band, which Chance himself calls one of the most volatile units he's worked with, the Contortions simply shine. Like most other Contortions recordings, cacophony rears its head from time to time, but that's what the band uses to paint different moods and textures: it's not used haphazardly. ... [In 2007 the Roir label reissued the album as Soul Exorcism Redux. Three tracks from a 1987 demo session were added to the end of the track list along with new art work.]"
allmusic
popmatters
amazon, iTubes
YouTube: Soul Exorcism Redux 

2009 December: James Chance, 2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 January: Buy - James Chance and the Contortions (1979), 2015 July: James White And The Blacks - Off White (1979), 2015 October: Pat Place, 2016 January: Lost Chance (1981), 2017 January: Twist Your Soul: The Definitive Collection (2010), 2017 April: Contort Yourself / (Tropical) Heatwave full 12” (1979), 2017 May: Filmed by Libin+Cameron: James White & The Blacks (1980 Live Performance Hurrah NightClub), 2017 August: Live Aux Bains Douches - Paris 1980.

Give Peace a Chance

College students in Boston march against the Vietnam war, October 16, 1965.
"Say what you will about the Vietnam War, it had a great soundtrack. Feature and documentary filmmakers have, of course, long appreciated this—cue 'The End' by the Doors for the unforgettable opening sequence of 1979’s Apocalypse Now, and, about a decade later, Bob Dylan’s 'A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall' for a long, wet, and ominous combat patrol sequence in HBO’s documentary, Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987). Ken Burns’s twenty-ninth historical documentary, The Vietnam War (2017), co-directed with longtime associate Lynn Novick, falls within this tradition of depicting the war. ... If Burns tends to gravitate toward lighter topics, the Vietnam War is decidedly not one of them. So it was with some trepidation that I sat down to binge-watch the eighteen hours of The Vietnam War. Despite an occasional and, to my ears, strained suggestion that the war was in some ways the product of good intentions gone awry, this series is Burns at his bleakest. Unfortunately, this perspective is applied somewhat indiscriminately, to include antiwar protesters as well as policymakers. ..."
Dissent

The Best Health Care System in the World: Which One Would You Pick?

"To better understand one of the most heated U.S. policy debates, we created a tournament to judge which of these nations has the best health system: Canada, Britain, Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and the U.S.. 'Medicare for all,' or 'single-payer,' is becoming a rallying cry for Democrats. This is often accompanied by calls to match the health care coverage of 'the rest of the world.' But this overlooks a crucial fact: The 'rest of the world' is not all alike. The commonality is universal coverage, but wealthy nations have taken varying approaches to it, some relying heavily on the government (as with single-payer); some relying more on private insurers; others in between. Experts don’t agree on which is best; a lot depends on perspective. But we thought it would be fun to stage a small tournament. We selected eight countries, representing a range of health care systems, and established a bracket by randomly assigning seeds. ..."
NY Times

Parcel of Rogues - Steeleye Span (1973)

"Parcel of Rogues is the group's first real rock album, featuring a sound clearly rooted in modern sensibilities, with the guitars turned up very loud for the first time. The singing is still modeled on traditional patterns, and is quite beautiful (especially 'One Misty Moisty Morning' and 'Allison Gross'), but the resonances and undertones of electric guitars are everywhere -- the result is a record that, in some ways, recalls Fairport Convention's Liege & Lief (the record that led indirectly to the spawning of Steeleye Span in the first place), with some very flashy playing by Bob Johnson on some of the breaks. ... A lot of the time it works -- the ominous and dazzling 'Cam Ye O'er Frae France' would not have succeeded half as well without amplification, and every fan of the group should hear this track at least once. ..."
allmusic
W - Parcel of Rogues
amazon, iTunes, Spotify
YouTube: Parcel of Rogues 39:12

Philosophy As a Way of Life - The New York Public Library

The School of Athens (Scuola di Atene) by Raphael
"Philosophy, as it is practiced today, is abstract, theoretical, and detached from life, just one academic subject among others. In the Greco-Roman world, it was something quite different, argues the French philosopher Pierre Hadot. Philosophy then was a way of life. Not merely a subject of study, philosophy was considered an art of living, a practice aimed at relieving suffering and shaping and remaking the self according to an ideal of wisdom; 'Such is the lesson of ancient philosophy: an invitation to each human being to transform himself. Philosophy is a conversion, a transformation of one's way of being and living, and a quest for wisdom.' It is the practice of what Hadot calls "spiritual exercises" that brings about self-transformation and makes philosophy a way of life. ..."
The New York Public Library

Pina Bausch Company: ‘This Is Theater, and These Are Humans’

Pina Bausch in “Café Müller” in Lisbon, 2008.
"What does a dance company do when its sole choreographer and leader, a figure as charismatic and intense as Pina Bausch, dies, leaving her dancers without a clear path forward? This was the situation faced by Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch in the summer of 2009, when Bausch succumbed to cancer, just days after her diagnosis. The dancers, on tour in Poland, made the decision to perform that night, and the next, and then another week, another year. Eight years and three artistic directors later, they’re still at it. For the next two weeks, they will be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, performing a double bill of archetypal Bausch’s works from the 1970s, 'Café Müller' (1978) and 'The Rite of Spring' (1975). These were included in the company’s first season at the Brooklyn Academy, their introduction to the New York audience, back in 1984. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: The Ghosts and Rites of Pina Bausch
Sadler's Wells

tumblr: Pina Bausch: 1972-1988, 1988-2009, Pina Bausch: Costumes, Video, Sourcebook - Etc.

PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016)

"On 2011's Mercury Prize-winning Let England Shake, PJ Harvey connected World War I bloodbaths with the 21st century world in harrowing, moving ways. Its follow-up, The Hope Six Demolition Project, feels like a companion piece with a wider focus and more urgent mood. For this project -- which also includes the 2015 book of poetry The Hollow of the Hand and a film -- Harvey and her Shake collaborator, war photographer Seamus Murphy, emphasized documentation: The pair spent years researching in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C.; later, Harvey was literally transparent about the recording process, making Hope Six at a recording studio behind one-way glass for public audiences at London’s Somerset House. Befitting its origins, the album's sound is blunt and raw, mixing rock, blues, jazz, spirituals, and field recordings into the musical equivalent of photojournalism. Indeed, The Hope Six Demolition Project often resembles a collection of dispatches. ..."
allmusic
W - The Hope Six Demolition Project
Guardian: The Hope Six Demolition Project review – potent, beautiful songs and minor lyrical missteps (Video)
The Atlantic: P.J. Harvey vs. Humankind
amazon
YouTube: The Community Of Hope, The Hope Six Demolition Project (Album Trailer), The Wheel, The Orange Monkey

2009 November: PJ Harvey, 2011 May: Let England Shake, 2013 May: Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, 2013 July: White Chalk (2007), 2014 July: LSO St Luke's in London (2005), 2015 March: Who Will Love Me Now (1996), 2016 January: Rid of Me (Big Day Out festival...Sydney, 2001).

Vicki Anderson - Message From The Soul Sisters (George T Refix)

"One of James Brown's Soul Sisters. According to Mr. Brown's autobiography, Vicki Anderson was the best female singer he had in his revue. She Joined Brown in 1965 replacing Anna King and she held her position there until she was replaced by Marva Whitney 3 years after in 1968. But she re-joined after Marva departed in 1969 for further three years until Lyn Collins took over. She disapeared after she left Brown for a while and resurfaced in 1975 with a single, featuring a cover of Rufus & Chaka Khan Hit Once You Get Started and Bobby Womack's Stop On By on Browns I-Dentify label, but this single failed to do any damage, and after this, Vicki never showed any signs to do studio work but she was regulary appearing in James Brown Funky People revue in the late 80s, and again with Bobby Byrd in the early 90s."
Soundcloud: Message From The Soul Sisters (George T Refix)
YouTube: message from the soul sisters

2016 September: Vicki Anderson: Mother Popcorn - The Anthology

Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017)

Wikipedia - "Harry Dean Stanton (July 14, 1926 – September 15, 2017) was an American actor, musician, and singer. Stanton's career spanned more than sixty years, during which he appeared in the films Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Christine (1983), Repo Man (1984), Paris, Texas (1984), Pretty in Pink (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Wild at Heart (1990), The Straight Story (1999), The Green Mile (1999), Alpha Dog (2006), Inland Empire (2006), Lucky (2017), and others. ... His breakthrough part came with the lead role in director Wim Wenders' film Paris, Texas (1984). Playwright Sam Shepard, the movie's screenwriter, had spotted Stanton at a bar in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1983 while both were attending a film festival in that city, and the two fell into conversation. 'I was telling him I was sick of the roles I was playing,' Stanton recalled in a 1986 interview. 'I told him I wanted to play something of some beauty or sensitivity. I had no inkling he was considering me for the lead in his movie.' ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Harry Dean Stanton, Character Actor Who Became a Star, Dies at 91
Guardian: Harry Dean Stanton, cult American actor, dies aged 91 (Video)
Variety: Whose Final Starring Role Might Be His Best
Rolling Stone - Harry Dean Stanton: 10 Essential Movies (Video)

2012 March: Paris, Texas (1984), 2014 August: Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

Fela Power Show: Batch 4 (2011)

"Fela Power Show: Batch 4 is the concluding, eight-disc chapter in Knitting Factory Records' 26-disc reissue program of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti albums and early singles. It starts on the 1979/80 cusp of the dissolution of Afrika 70 and the formation of Egypt 80, when Kuti made the landmark Vagabonds In Power (1979), Coffin For Head Of State (1980) and Original Sufferhead (1981). It finishes with three late masterpieces—Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense (1986), Beasts Of No Nation (1989) and Underground System (1992). Kuti did not record as prolifically during the years covered by Batch 4 as he did during his 1970s' purple period: political campaigning occupied much of his time during the first half of the 1980s, he served a 20 month prison sentence on trumped up currency smuggling charges mid-decade, and he continued to be arrested, beaten up and jailed with odious frequency right up until his death in 1997. But his music remained as rich as ever. ..."
Part 21 - Final Fela Kuti Masterpieces Reissued
amazon
YouTube: Power Show - Live in Berlin - 1978

Emma Allen

"The New Yorker is known for its probing investigative reporting, deep-dive profiles and Pulitzer-winning criticism. But increasingly people are reading it for a few laughs. As the magazine expands its internet presence, the amount of original humor it produces has grown, with comic essays and cartoons often making up about a third of its most popular articles online. In some ways, that’s a return to the roots of the magazine, which began as a Jazz Age humor publication that championed James Thurber, Robert Benchley and Charles Addams, and helped define comedy for decades. 'With The New Yorker,' Russell Baker wrote, 'American humor began to master the arts of understatement, to refine the crudities of old-fashioned burlesque into satire, to treasure subtlety and wit.' As the new cartoon editor of the magazine, Emma Allen, 29, has become a steward of this tradition. ..."
NY Times: At The New Yorker, the Cartoonists Draw, but the Vision Is Hers
New Yorker: Adrian Tomine’s New York
Drawn and Quarterly

Bob Dylan – Black Diamond Bay – May 25, 1976 Salt Lake City

"Up on the white veranda
She wears a necktie and a Panama hat
Her passport shows a face
From another time and place
She looks nothin’ like that
And all the remnants of her recent past
Are scattered in the wild wind
She walks across the marble floor
Where a voice from the gambling room is callin’ her to come on in
She smiles, walks the other way
As the last ship sails and the moon fades away
From Black Diamond Bay ..."
NFS
DailyMotion: Black Diamond Bay – May 25, 1976 Salt Lake City

Boujeloud - Master Musicians of Joujouka (2008)

"Second of two records recorded in Joujouka, in the Rif mountains of Morocco by Frank Rynne, after the touching day-to-day life music, this second release is about the (almost pagan) ritual of Boujeloud. It was produced under the direction of Mohamed Hamri. The group on this CD includes veteran Joujouka musician Mujehid Mujdoubi (1893-1997). The production records the music of Boujeloud or Pan, the ancient deity still recognized in the small Moroccan village of Joujouka."
Sub Rosa
W - Boujeloud, Master Musicians of Joujouka
Slate: The Master Musicians of Joujouka Brian Jones 40th Anniversary Festival 2008 (Video)
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: JOUJOUKA INTERZONE - Master Musicians of Joujouka trailer HD, Master Musicians of Joujouka interview, Boujeloud and Brian Jones Joujouka very Stoned
YouTube: Master Musicians of Joujouka

2015 December: Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka (1971)

Heldon – Heldon II: Allez-Teia (1992)

"Allez Teia, originally released in 1975, was Heldon's second album. It is rightly considered an early, trance-inducing, electronic masterpiece. It is the only album in the Heldon cannon to feature acoustic guitar. Overall, I'd say that this is the most trippy and spacey Heldon material, it basically begs for you to break out the bong! It features the trademark 70s Heldon/Pinhas instrumental sound: waves of fuzz-tone, post Frippian guitars, ARP and VCS3 synthesizers, tape loops and mellotron, all building towards a monstrously delirious denouement. A absolutely stone(d) classic of the progressive rock scene of the 70s – searing, instrumental spacemusic, bridging electronics and psychedelic guitar in a legendary fashion."
Cuneiform Records (Audio)
allmusic
Swan Fungus
amazon
YouTube: In Wake Of King Fripp

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library

The main branch (now formally called the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building) of the New York Public Library.
"The main branch of the New York Public Library — the Beaux-Arts landmark at Fifth Avenue and 42 Street with the stone lions — opened its doors to a ravenous population on May 24, 1911. More than 50,000 souls are said to have flowed through its marble grandeur, inaugurating what has been an intimate, mutually sustaining union between the public and its library. In his magnificent new documentary 'Ex Libris: The New York Public Library,' Frederick Wiseman takes his camera into those same halls as well as into more humble city branches. He sweeps into atriums and down corridors, pauses in reading and meeting rooms, and lays bare this complex, glorious organism that is the democratic ideal incarnate. ..."
NY Times: We the (Library-Card Carrying) People of ‘Ex Libris’
Vanity Fair: Frederick Wiseman on his Latest Film, Ex Libris, and His 50-Plus-Year Career
Roger Ebert
New Yorker: Frederick Wiseman’s Utopian Vision of Libraries in “Ex Libris” (Richard Brody)
W - Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
MUBI: EX LIBRIS - Trailer

2015 August: The New York Public Library, 2015 August: Underground New York Public Library, 2016 January: Lifting the Veil on the New York Public Library’s Erotica Collection, 2016 March: 11 Essential Feminist Books: A New Reading List by The New York Public Library, 2017 September: Get NYPL Digital Collections Tab for Your Browser

Meet the New Interactive Sky Chart!

"At long last, I’m proud to announce the release of Sky & Telescope’s much-loved Interactive Sky Chart! We worked with Chris Peat (heavens-above.com) to make a number of changes — the vast majority of them under the hood — so that you’ll have a reliable sky chart that you can take with you into the night. The biggest development is that we’ve moved the code base that runs the Interactive Sky Chart from a Java-based platform to an HTML5 platform. We made the move because Java was never supported on iPhones or iPads, and some browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox, have also stopped supporting the software plugin. The new version of the Interactive Sky Chart runs natively in the browser, no plugin required. What that means for you, the user, is that there won’t be any more hoops to jump through just to get the sky chart to work. And when you call up the Interactive Sky Chart on your mobile device, it’ll work there too. ..."
Sky & Telescope

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide

"This completely reconceived and rewritten guide to the Metropolitan Museum's encyclopedic holdings—the first new edition of the guidebook in nearly thirty years—provides the ideal introduction to almost 600 essential masterpieces from one of the world's most popular and beloved museums. It features a compelling and accessible design, beautiful color reproductions, and up-to-date descriptions written by the Museum's own experts. More than a simple souvenir book, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide provides a comprehensive view of art history spanning five millennia and the entire globe, beginning with the Ancient World and ending in contemporary times. It includes media as varied as painting, photography, costume, sculpture, decorative arts, musical instruments, arms and armor, works on paper, and many more. Presenting works ranging from the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur to Canova's Perseus with the Head of Medusa to Sargent's Madame X, this is an indispensable volume for lovers of art and art history, and for anyone who has ever dreamed of lingering over the most iconic works in the Metropolitan's unparalleled collection."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide
NY Times: Make the Most of the Met
amazon

Period: Roman Period. Reign: reign of Augustus Caesar. Date: completed by 10 B.C.. Geography: From Egypt, Nubia, Dendur, West bank of the Nile River

Lee Konitz in Harvard Square (1954)

"You don’t have to be a hard core fan to recognize that Konitz at his best is a wonderfully inspired improviser, and these ’54-’55 recordings capture him in peak form. His phrasing, attack, and the beautiful flow of ideas will make believers out of any but those who just can’t hear what he’s after with that tone at all. The only problem I have with early Konitz is that his pianists-including demigod Lennie-often employed very predictable phrasing. Incongruously, these same pianists specialized as composers in pieces of spectacular rhythmic complexity. Much of Ronnie Ball’s playing here, and his excellent 'Ronnie’s Tune' and 'Froggy Day,' are offered in evidence. Lee’s 'No Splices' and 'Ablution' are also musical tongue twisters a la Tristano. Seven tracks feature Peter Ind and Jeff Morton, with Percy Heath and Al Levitt doing duty on three live tracks. Both bassists sound great, both drummers subsidiary. The live tracks show how hot this supposed iceberg could be, and may surprise listeners who do not know his spectacular Motion date with Elvin Jones."
Jazz Times
W - Lee Konitz in Harvard Square
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: In Harvard Square 1954 (full album)

Amazingly, The Indians Are Even Better Than They Seem

"The Cleveland Indians are officially on baseball’s greatest hot streak in more than eight decades. With 21 consecutive victories, they’re now tied for the longest winning streak in MLB history with the 1935 Chicago Cubs, moving one game ahead of the 2002 'Moneyball' Oakland A’s for the American League’s all-time record. If the Indians tack on another win, they’ll break a record older than the franchise’s World Series drought — perhaps a portent of more history to be shattered next month. And yet, even after all that winning, the Indians’ record still (still!) masks a much better ballclub underneath it. That’s right, the team that has won 21 straight is better than you think. ..."
FiveThirtyEight (Video)
YouTube: Amazingly, the indians are even better than they seem

The Complex Geometry of Islamic Art & Design: A Short Introduction

Islamic Art Patterns | Islamic motifs, whether floral, calligraphic orgeometric
"When you think of the accomplishments of the Islamic world, what comes to mind? For most of this century so far, at least in the West, the very notion has had associations in many minds with not creation but destruction. In 2002, mathematician Keith Devlin lamented how 'the word Islam conjures up images of fanatical terrorists flying jet airplanes full of people into buildings full of even more people' and 'the word Baghdad brings to mind the unscrupulous and decidedly evil dictator Saddam Hussein.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)

"(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" - The Clash (1977)

Wikipedia - "'(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais' is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash. It was originally released as a 7-inch single, with the b-side 'The Prisoner', on 16 June 1978 through CBS Records. ... The song showed considerable musical and lyrical maturity for the band at the time and is stylistically more in line with their version of Junior Murvin's 'Police and Thieves' as the powerful guitar intro of "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" descends into a slower ska rhythm, and was disorienting to a lot of the fans who had grown used to their earlier work. ... '(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais' starts by recounting an all-night reggae 'showcase' night at the Hammersmith Palais in Shepherd's Bush Road, London, that was attended by Joe Strummer, Don Letts and roadie Rodent and was headlined by Dillinger, Leroy Smart and Delroy Wilson. ..."
Wikipedia
Genius (Audio)
YouTube: (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais (Live), (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais

The Peculiar Poetry of Paris’s Lost and Found

It was under Napoleon, in 1804, that lost objects began to be centralized at the headquarters of the Police Prefecture, and not long after that the Bureau of Found Objects was officially formed.
"On the southern edge of Paris, a five-thousand-square-foot basement houses the city’s lost possessions. The Bureau of Found Objects, as it is officially called, is more than two hundred years old, and one of the largest centralized lost and founds in Europe. Any item left behind on the Métro, in a museum, in an airport, or found on the street and dropped, unaddressed, into a mailbox makes its way here, around six or seven hundred items each day. Umbrellas, wallets, purses, and mittens line the shelves, along with less quotidian possessions: a wedding dress with matching shoes, a prosthetic leg, an urn filled with human remains. The bureau is an administrative department, run by the Police Prefecture and staffed by very French functionaries—and yet it’s also an improbable, poetic space where the entrenched French bureaucracy and the societal ideals of the country collide. ... It is with a similar hint of romance that many French people d’un certain âge embrace this mythical public service, though those in the younger generation, armed with smartphones and having never heard the song, often do not know of its existence. ..."
New Yorker

John Zorn - Naked City (1990)

"Like a car radio stuck on scan mode, John Zorn's 'Naked City' skips unstoppably from style to style. Country twang, noise, arena rock, New Orleans R & B, reggae, polka, hard-core rock, bossa nova and Mr. Zorn's sentimental favorite, greasy organ-combo themes of detective shows and films noirs with throbbing saxophone solos - they all turn up in segments that might last 30 seconds (if they're lucky) before the next jolting genre hop. Mr. Zorn doesn't bother with transitions. While he and his musicians create every sudden textural shift themselves, without technological assistance, his guides are the splice, the jump cut, the video edit - not to mention the jack-in-the-box and its more sinister relatives in funhouses and horror movies. In his music, coherence is barely more than propinquity; one sound or style simply doesn't predict the next. ..."
NY Times: THERE ARE 8 MILLION STORIES IN JOHN ZORN'S NAKED CITY By JON PARELES (April 8, 1990)
W - Naked City
amazon, Spotify
YouTube: Naked City (Live), You Will Be Shot (Live), A Shot In The Dark (Amsterdam 1989), James Bond Theme (Amsterdam 1989) John Zorn - sax, composer, Joey Baron - drums, Fred Frith - bass, Wayne Horvitz - kbds, Bill Frisell - gtr.
YouTube: Naked City [Full Album]

2009 March: John Zorn, 2010 August: Spillane 2011 October: Filmworks Anthology : 20 Years of Soundtrack Music, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 January: Bar Kokhba and Masada, 2013 September: Masada String Trio Sala, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010), 2014 March: "Extraits de Book Of Angels" @ Jazz in Marciac 2008, 2015 June: The Big Gundown - John Zorn plays Ennio Morricone (1985), 2015 July: News for Lulu (1988), 2016 March: Film Works 1986-1990, 2017 March: John Zorn Is Rolling The Stone From Avenue C To The New School.

Italian neorealism

Rome, Open City (1945) - Roberto Rossellini
Wikipedia - "Italian neorealism (Italian: Neorealismo), also known as the Golden Age of Italian Cinema, is a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class, filmed on location, frequently using non-professional actors. Italian neorealism films mostly contend with the difficult economic and moral conditions of post-World War II Italy, representing changes in the Italian psyche and conditions of everyday life, including poverty, oppression, injustice, and desperation. ... Neorealist films were generally filmed with nonprofessional actors although, in a number of cases, well-known actors were cast in leading roles, playing strongly against their normal character types in front of a background populated by local people rather than extras brought in for the film. They are shot almost exclusively on location, mostly in rundown cities as well as rural areas due to its forming during the post-war era. ..."
Wikipedia
cineCollage :: Italian Neorealism
10 great Italian neorealist films
15 Essential Italian Neorealism Films You Need To Watch
NY Times: Neorealism in Postwar Italy
YouTube: How Italian Neorealism Brought the Grit of the Streets to the Big Screen, Italian Neorealism

Bicycle Thieves (1948) - Vittorio De Sica

Eileen Myles Remembers John Ashbery

"John Ashbery died nearly a week ago. He was born in 1927 and he died this year, our year, 2017. He was perfectly ninety. His birthday was July 28th. In honor of this big one people recorded his long poem 'Flow Chart' and sent it to him, they (we) wrote paragraphs about who he and his work was for them. He received all these encomiums, they made him happy and then he died. John was a Leo. He leaves a partner, David Kermani who he lived with for over 30 years. In his life-time John Ashbery published more than 20 books, the 8th of which, Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror in 1976 won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle making him the most celebrated poet of our time. Nobody else got all three. So he was a famous poet for the last forty years of his life and he was a generous one, blurbing books, writing recommendations, and pieces like this, so many, when important peers of his died. Of his generation he was the last man standing, and the great one. He was a sweet and a generous and a private man. ..."
OUT

2008 June: Eileen Myles, 2010 August: Inferno, 2015 February: “A Thrashing, Generous Intelligence”: Eileen Myles’s Inferno chosen for Slate/Whiting Second Novel List, 2015 August: The Women of the Avant-Garde, 2016 April: The Poet Idolized by a New Generation of Feminists

Painting prewar New York from the outside in

"Art that captures a single moment of beauty and activity on New York’s streets is always captivating. But there’s something to be said for images that reveal something about Manhattan from a far away vantage point, showing a city not in the center but on the sidelines. Leon Kroll, born in New York in 1884 and a contemporary of George Bellows, Robert Henri, and other social realists, gives us that sidelined city. Kroll, who studied at the Art Students League and exhibited at the famous 1913 Armory Show, was known for his nudes and country or seaside landscapes, and he also painted Central Park, Broadway, and other city locations. ..."

Ephemeral New York
W - Leon Kroll
The Athenaeum