Sings Reign Rebuilder - Set Fire to Flames (2001)

Wikipedia - "Sings Reign Rebuilder is the debut album of the Canadian band Set Fire to Flames. It was released by Alien8 Recordings, FatCat Records in 2001. An underlying concept in the work is the lyingdyingwonderbody, which consist of spoken word passages dealing with theoretical and political concepts that concern global climate and love. The album was recorded in a century old house (either named or later dubbed 15 Ontario) apparently bound for destruction. From the liner notes: 'your bulldozers and wrecking ball can make match-sticks out of the rickety staircase and crookt/creaking floorboards---but they can't erase the recording that was made here.' As such, several sounds usually edited out of the recording process, including creaking floors, paper shuffling and outside noises, were left intact on the final album. ..."
Wikipedia
Discogs
allmusic (Audio)
YouTube: Sings Reign Rebuilder [Full Album] 1:13:33

One Sky By Women Who Draw

"On August 13, 2017, at precisely 12:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, 88 artists all over the world stopped what they were doing, looked up, and drew the sky. What each artist saw was unique to the time, the weather, and the place. The locations ranged from Tel Aviv to Brooklyn, Buenos Aires to rural Georgia. Some saw different hues of blue. Some saw black, pink, or gray. Some saw stars or clouds or fog or rain. Here it was summer. There it was night. In one place a fire left a heavy brown haze. Whatever sky the artist saw, they captured it on paper in their own unique style. They were, at that exact moment, separate skies. But when we view these drawings together, they become one far-stretching, simultaneous world view. They become a portrait of one shared sky. —Wendy MacNaughton and Julia Rothman, co-founders of Women Who Draw
One Sky By Women Who Draw

How Bernstein shook up the status quo with ‘On the Waterfront’

"In his autobiography A Life (1988), director Elia Kazan outlined the reasons 'On the Waterfront' (1954), universally regarded as his greatest film, was a success. ... Curiously, Kazan failed to mention Leonard Bernstein’s music, the only score that the American composer-conductor ever wrote specifically for a film. 'On the Waterfront' received 12 Academy Award nominations, including one for its score; it won eight Oscars, including best picture, director, screenplay, cinematography, and of course, actor. ... With its tortured history, however, 'On the Waterfront' was a surprising Oscar winner, and remains a polarizing film in some quarters to this day. Many viewed the film’s subject — corruption on the East Coast docks — as Kazan’s allegorical response to his naming names during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1952. Because of Kazan’s pariah status, Brando and Bernstein initially refused to work with him on 'Waterfront.' As newcomers, Eva Marie Saint (as Edie Doyle, Terry’s love interest) and Rod Steiger (as Charley, Terry’s brother, and underling of corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J. Cobb) presumably were in no position to object to Kazan’s politics. ..."
Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Audio)
Leonard Bernstein - On the Waterfront
On The Morality Of 'On The Waterfront' (Video)
LA PHIL: On the Waterfront (complete film with live orchestra)
W - Leonard Bernstein
amazon
YouTube: Symphonic Suite from 'On the Waterfront' 19:41

2015 January: On the Waterfront - Elia Kazan (1954)

Interview with Lucy R. Lippard

"Lucy R. Lippard interviewed at her summer home in Maine. Lippard discusses the emergence of Conceptual Art and the related exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum’s Sackler Center for Feminist Art. For more, read Lippard’s 500 Words."
vimeo: Interview with Lucy R. Lippard

2012 October: Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art

K Frimpong & His Cubano Fiestas - The Blue Album (1976)

"Out of the Afrobeat/Highlife capital of the USA – Minneapolis, MN – come two reissues of mid-1970s Ghanian music. Of course, I’m joking in regards to Minneapolis, but in all seriousness, Secret Stash has become a reissue label to look for. Not content to focus on any one genre, they’ve also tackled Peruvian, Persian, and even porno groove titles to name a few. Secret Stash’s output is primarily deluxe vinyl (along with deluxe packaging) and digital only with the one exception being the first Peña which saw the label’s only CD release. K Frimpong And His Cubano Fiestas’ self-titled album and The Blue Album, aptly titled due to the shading on the album cover, were back-to-back titles issued in 1976 (The Blue Album) and 1977 (self-titled). ..."
REVIVE (Video)
amazon
YouTube: The Blue Album 37:46

Walden Wasn’t Thoreau’s Masterpiece

"In late 1849, two years after Henry David Thoreau left Walden Pond—where he had lived for two years, two months, and two days in a cabin that he had built himself—he began the process of completely reorienting his life again. His hermit-style interlude at the pond had attracted quite a bit of attention in his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. 'Living alone on the pond in ostentatious simplicity, right in sight of a main road,' his latest biographer, Laura Dassow Walls, writes, 'he became a spectacle,' admired by some and belittled by others. Thoreau’s subsequent life change was less conspicuous. Yet it engaged him in a quest more enlightening and relevant today than the proud asceticism he flaunted throughout Walden, a book that has never ceased to inspire reverence or provoke contempt. ..."
The Atlantic (Audio)

2009 April: Henry David Thoreau, 2012 September: Walden, 2015 March: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), 2017 March: Civil Disobedience (1849), 2017 April: The Maine Woods (1864), 2017 June: This Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal, 2017 July: Pond Scum - Henry David Thoreau’s moral myopia. By Kathryn Schulz, 2017 July: Walden, a Game

L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antonioni (1960)

Wikipedia - "L'Avventura (English: The Adventure) is a 1960 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, and Lea Massari. Developed from a story by Antonioni, the film is about a young woman's disappearance during a boating trip in the Mediterranean. Her lover and her best friend, during the subsequent search for her, become attracted to each other. The film is noted for its careful pacing, which puts a focus on visual composition and character development, as well as for its unusual narrative structure. According to an Antonioni obituary, the film 'systematically subverted the filmic codes, practices and structures in currency at its time.' Filmed on location in Rome, the Aeolian Islands, and Sicily in 1959 under difficult financial and physical conditions, L'Avventura made Monica Vitti an international star. ... L'Avventura influenced the visual language of cinema, changing how subsequent films looked, and has been named by some critics as one of the best ever made. However, it has been criticized by others for its seemingly uneventful plot and slow pacing, along with the existentialist themes. Youngblood has stated that 'very few films in the history of cinema have broken the standard rules of cinematic grammar so elegantly, so subtly, as this film.' Jonathan Rosenbaum has called it a masterpiece. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times - 'L'Avventura':Film by Michelangelo Antonioni Opens (April 5, 1961)
Roger Ebert
amazon
MUBI: L'Avventura (Video)
YouTube: Three Reasons: L'avventura, DEAR ANTONIONI... : from a letter by Roland Barthes (1997)

2011 September: Red Desert (1964), 2014 December: The Passenger (1975), 2017 April: Blow-Up (1966)

Enter the The Cornell Hip Hop Archive: A Vast Digital Collection of Hip Hop Photos, Posters & More

"The music and the culture of hip-hop are inseparable from the Bronx, Queens, Harlem, and Brooklyn, NY. And now that the form is a global culture that exists in online spaces as much as it does where people meet and shake hands, its documentary history may be more valuable than ever. Hip-Hop began, unquestionably, as a regional phenomenon, and its formal qualities always bear the traces of its matrix, a confluence of African-American, Caribbean, and Latin American socio-cultural experiences and creative streams, meeting with new consumer audio technology and a drive toward countercultural experiments that took hold all over New York amidst the urban decay of the 70s. We know the story in broad strokes. Now we can immerse ourselves in the daily life, so to speak, of early hip hop, thanks to a partial digitization of Cornell University’s vast hip hop collection. The physical collection, housed in Ithaca New York, contains 'hundreds of party and event flyers ca. 1977-1985; thousands of early vinyl recordings, cassettes and CDs; film and video; record label press packets and publicity; black books, photography, magazines, books, clothing, and more.' ...”
Open Culture
The Cornell Hip Hop Collection

A History of American Protest Music: This Is the Hammer That Killed John Henry

"In the folktale, a powerful black steel-driving man named John Henry challenges the steam drill to a race, beats it, and dies. In some versions, John Henry is almost seven feet tall. In others, he wears fine clothes and commands any price for his work. In our national consciousness, he stands for the common man, beaten by industrialization, but unbowed. Songs about John Henry became popular in the early 20th century. He is a folk hero in all—by resisting either the dehumanizing effects of technology or a racist power structure. His story helped give rise to an iconic American “blues ballad” as well as the 'hammer song:' a rhythmic style which helped synchronize the work of manual laborers on railroads, prison work farms, and logging camps. Each axe or hammer blow rang out in rhythm to the tune, and as the tempo of that industrialized century increased, this would ultimately become the backbeat of rock and roll. ..."
Longreads (Video)
Longreads: ‘We Have Got Tools and We Are Going to Succeed’ (Video)

Kamasi Washington - Harmony of Difference EP (2017)

"... Instead of a jazz label, that record came out on Flying Lotus’ imprint, Brainfeeder, and Washington’s band got booked to play clubs and festivals that typically host indie rock or rap groups; which is to say that so far, nothing about Washington’s rise fits an established template. His music is very much of jazz, but the context he and his collaborators have created sits slightly outside it. Continuing the trend, Washington’s new EP, Harmony of Difference, comes courtesy of Young Turks, a sublabel of XL that has released music by Jamie xx and FKA twigs, and it contains music written for an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2017 Biennial. Harmony of Difference was originally part of a multimedia work that illustrated how forces that seem to be working in opposition could come together as a composite of complex beauty...."
Pitchfork
WeTransfer Studios x Kamasi Washington Present (Audio)
The Atlantic: The Nuanced Bluster of Kamasi Washington
Kamasi Washington reveals new Harmony of Difference EP: Stream/download (Audio)
Notey
amazon

2015 December: The Epic - Kamasi Washington (2015), 2016 December: Throttle Elevator Music featuring Kamasi Washington (2016), 2017 April: Harmony of Difference (EP - 2017), 2017 June: "The Rhythm Changes", 2017 August: What's in my Bag?

Baking With Kafka - Tom Gauld (2017)

"Baking With Kafka is another collection of Gauld's strips for The Guardian, and it's Gauld doing riffs and gags. I prefer his long-form work as it's drier and more restrained in its humor, but that's not to say that his pure gag work ins't entertaining as well. This collection of strips isn't so much a collection of strips about literary concerns in the vein of a Kate Beaton, but rather a series of meta-literary strips. That is, they are strips about writing, about the tedious business of publishing, about the cynical nature of advertising, about the way books become product, but most of all about books qua books. It pokes gentle fun at fantasy quests, literary cliches, romance tropes as well as the workshops aimed at writers desperate to get published. ..."
D&Q: Tom Gauld's Baking With Kafka
Tom Gauld
amazon

The Master In Downward-Facing Dog: Sikh Painting And Cultural Appropriation

David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps; Gurbux Singh’s Guru Gobind Singh; A poster based on Gurbux Singh’s painting, with added sword in hand
"A hand points over the mountains to Italy, or Kashmir; a man who is the French Emperor, or a Guru, urges us to follow. David’s painting of Napoleon can look ridiculous to us – the lead-guitarist mid-solo – but that’s because it was painted as propaganda, not as a true likeness. When Gurbux Singh painted Guru Gobind Singh a century and half later, he used David’s Napoleon as a model to convey a different set of ideas; ideas which have refracted into completely different meanings. It is only one exchange in a long history, speaking to the heart of contemporary debates about ownership and cultural appropriation. ..."
The Quietus

Ranjit Singh and the Golden Temple, by Schoefft

Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller (1949)

Wikipedia - "Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances, and has been revived on Broadway four times, winning three Tony Awards for Best Revival. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. ... Willy Loman returns home exhausted after a business trip he has cancelled. Worried over Willy's state of mind and recent car accident, his wife Linda suggests that he ask his boss Howard Wagner to allow him to work in his home city so he will not have to travel. Willy complains to Linda that their son, Biff, has yet to make good on his life. Despite Biff's promising showing as an athlete in high school, he failed in mathematics and was unable to enter a university. ..."
Wikipedia
Death of a Salesman at Fifty: An Interview with Arthur Miller
amazon
YouTube: Death of a Salesman - Directed by Elia Kazan
YouTube: Arthur Miller interview on "The Death of a Salesman" (1999)

2011 April: The Misfits (1961), 2012 June: Before Air-Conditioning (1998), 2014 December: The Crucible (1953), 2015 December: A View from the Bridge (1955), 2016 January: Arthur Miller’s Brooklyn

Dave Rawlings Machine With Gillian Welch: Tiny Desk Concert

"David Rawlings is a remarkably gifted producer, session guitarist and singer who's most widely known for his contributions to other musicians' work — particularly his longtime partnership with folk and traditional country artist Gillian Welch. But when he and Welch stopped by NPR for this Tiny Desk Concert, it was to promote Rawlings' own album — the first he's ever recorded under his name (actually, it's under the moniker Dave Rawlings Machine). For A Friend of a Friend, Rawlings took on lead vocals and songwriting duties, and got some of his old friends to help out. Welch appears throughout the album, of course, along with other artists such as Ketch Secor and Morgan Jahnig of Old Crow Medicine Show. ..."
NPR (Video)

2009 February: Gillian Welch, 2012 July: Harrow Harvest, 2012 September: By The Mark (2004), 2014 February: BBC FOUR Sessions: Gillian Welch, 2016 December: Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg (2016), 2017 August: Time (The Revelator) (2001).

Proust's À la recherche – a novel big enough for the world

"I pulled my copy of À la recherche du temps perdu off the shelf just last week. There – I've said it. I was looking for the passage right at the beginning where he conjures up that feeling of waking in the middle of the night and not knowing where you are, or indeed at first who you are. It's a feeling which – as the narrator confesses around nine pages into his exploration of this fleeting sensation – never lasts more than a few seconds, but which he finds so unsettling it calls into question the stability of the entire world. ..."
Guardian
TLS: Marcel Proust and the limits of cork lining
Marcel’s Marginalia

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust, 2015 September: "Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes, 2015 September: In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way: A Graphic Novel, 2016 January: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919), 2016 February: Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator, 2016 May: The Guermantes Way (1920-21), 2016 August: Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time — Patrick Alexander, 2016 October: My Strange Friend Marcel Proust, 2017 March: Sodom and Gomorrah (1921-1922), 2017 August: Letters To His Neighbor by Marcel Proust ; translated by Lydia Davis.

47Soul

"Last month, something special happened. 47Soul – a supergroup uniting four alternative-music figureheads who share roots in Palestine – performed in the West Bank. For the musicians, it was an emotional homecoming. Despite having rocked huge crowds across Europe – including at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival and Womad (World of Music, Arts and Dance) – the group’s headline slot on July 27 at the Palestine International Festival marked the first time the four members were permitted to perform their twisted electro take on the country’s street music to a native audience. Why? Passports. The band members share Palestinian heritage – but due to population displacement, they are scattered and none have Palestinian Authority papers. ..."
Palestinian supergroup 47Soul stay true to their roots
Is Shamstep a Made-Up Genre For Hipsters—or a Defining Movement of Arab Youth Culture?
Soundcloud: 47SOUL | السبعة و أربعين
facebook, twitter
YouTube: "Intro to Shamstep", "Don't Care Where You From", Mo Light, Dabeekeh, Every Land
YouTube: 47Soul

Finding Ashbery

"With the passing of poet John Ashbery, we have been reflecting on where we've found him in the collection—not just as author, but as translator, editor, interviewee, blurb writer, and even lyricist. With this blog series, we hope to share with you the lessor-known periodicals featuring Ashbery and expose you to our rich collection. In this post, we highlight three literary journals which feature his early work. ..."
New York Public Library
RealityStudio: John Ashbery at the Folger Library

In the Jungle Groove - James Brown (2003)

Wikipedia - "In the Jungle Groove is a compilation album by American funk musician James Brown, released in August 1986 by Polydor Records. Originally issued to capitalize on the popularity of Brown's music in hip hop circles at the time, it includes the first album release of the much-sampled single 'Funky Drummer' (1969), along with a selection of previously unreleased tracks, alternate takes, and remixes. The original recordings were produced by Brown, while the reissue was produced by Cliff White and Tim Rogers. A similar follow-up compilation, Motherlode, was released in 1988. The album's title is taken from a song Brown recorded in the studio in August 1970. ... A remastered and expanded 2003 reissue of In the Jungle Groove added a bonus track, an extended version of 'Blind Man Can See It' from the Black Caesar soundtrack album. ..."
Wikipedia
amazon
YouTube: In the Jungle Groove

Catalonia Leaders Seek to Make Independence Referendum Binding

"BARCELONA, Spain — A day after a referendum on independence for Catalonia that was marred by clashes between supporters and police officers, the Spanish region’s leaders were meeting on Monday to determine how to convert the vote into a state free from the rest of the country. Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said late Sunday that Catalans had won the right to have their own state and that he would soon present the result of the referendum to the regional Parliament to make it binding. The Catalan government announced that 90 percent of almost 2.3 million voters had voted in favor of independence. But several issues stood in the way of a consensus on the vote: The figures could not be independently verified, the voting registers were based on a census whose validity is contested and — most importantly — Spain’s constitutional court had ordered that the referendum be suspended. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: Catalonia’s Independence Referendum, in Photographs
W - Catalonia
NY Times: Catalonia’s Independence Vote Descends Into Chaos and Clashes (Video)
YouTube: Catalonia Independence Referendum 2017: FC Barcelona & Catalan Independence, Catalonia Wants Independence From Spain, Catalonia independence referendum

Aidan Baker – The Sea Swells A Bit/Triphstyc (2006)

"... The Sea Swells a Bit serves as a wonderful elucidation as to what is on offer here, which is to say, almost nothing, but a strangely captivating nothing that extends far beyond the sum of its parts. The opening ten seconds of the title track sound like any one of million post-rock interludes — a light, overtly ghostly plucking of an evocative chord lost in the grasp of a well-used E-bow — but then, where you’d fully expect a crescendo or further variation rendered in some form of anthemic distortion, Baker instead does … nothing. Or nothing perceivable, at any right. Whilst it’s true that at some point drums creep into the mix, and that the delay swells into a subtle and formless cacophony, these events — and these events alone — are introduced slowly over the course of twenty-plus minutes, a inconceivably measured drift from one state to another, abundantly similar state. ..."
freq (Video)
YouTube: The Sea Swells A Bit 2006 (Full Album)

Theoretical Girls - U.S. Mille / You Got Me (1978)

Wikipedia - "Theoretical Girls were a New York-based no wave band formed by Glenn Branca and Jeff Lohn (a conceptual artist and composer) that existed from 1977 to 1981. Theoretical Girls played only about 20 shows (three of which took place in Paris). It released one single ('U.S. Millie'/'You Got Me'), which had some attention in England where it sold a few thousand copies. The band was never signed by a record company, but is well regarded as an early leading No Wave group that mixed classical modern ideas of composition with punk rock. This experimental music was mostly supported by the New York art world and minimal art music audience. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: U.S. Mille, You Got Me

Mystical Symbolist Poetry and the Salon de la Rose+Croix

Fernand Khnopff, I Lock My Door Upon Myself, 1891
"Mystical Symbolism: The Salon de la Rose+Croix in Paris, 1892–1897 celebrates the series of six annual Salons organized by the writer, critic, and Rosicrucian Joséphin Péladan. In his Salons de la Rose+Croix, Péladan featured works by an international group of artists—part of the Symbolist movement, a late 19th-century trend that reacted against the literalness of Naturalism and Realism and rejected what they perceived as the ugliness of modern life. Symbolist poetry held great appeal for these artists, who sought to provoke allusive moods and visionary states of mind. Below, listen to poems by Charles Baudelaire, Christina Rossetti, and other writers who may have inspired the Rose+Croix artists, read by poet Tom Healy. ..."
Guggenheim (Soundcloud)
Brooklyn Rail
New Yorker: The Occult Roots of Modernism
NY Times: Mystical Symbolists in All Their Kitschy Glory
NY Times: What It’s Like to Hear the Same Piece of Music for 19 Hours (Video)
W - Salon de la Rose + Croix
VOICE: Explore the Weird World of the Symbolists at the Guggenheim
Soundcloud: Symbolist Poetry and the Salon de la Rose+Croix

The Usual - Photos by Emily Frances

Kellogg's Diner, Williamsburg
"To step into a diner is to step into a time warp, offering a glimpse inside a world of pay phones, grandma’s chocolate cake, and jukeboxes with 2001’s Billboard Top 40. You can buy the chance to grab a stuffed animal with a claw, or you can rely on the certainty of getting a rubber ball for twenty-five cents. You can order a Western omelette at 6 p.m. This standstill is part of their charm. There is something familiar about these establishments that draws us back to them. And something a little strange. Below, we present snapshots of four diners of Brooklyn." (August 21, 2014)
BYLYNR

Don Van Vliet - Works on Paper

"Objectively critiquing the visual art works of a famous musician (or actor, or novelist, etc.) is no small order. How do you not immediately view the work through the lens of the music that you already know well and potentially love and/or loathe? When the artist in question is none other than Captain Beefheart, aka Don Van Vliet, already iconic for his wildly unpredictable approach to blues and rock n’ roll, that subjectivity gets mired in even more layers of preexisting opinion, and in my case, a deep and long-standing love and appreciation. But in the case of Van Vliet’s paintings and sculptures, an understanding of the man’s music actually helps understand what he was trying to do with visual art. ..."
The Quietus - Look At My Beef Art: Works On Paper By Don Van Vliet
Michael Werner
artnet

2009 October: Captain Beefheart, 2010 December: Captain Beefheart, Art-Rock Visionary, Dead At 69, 2011 October: Interview with Captain Beefheart, 2013 August: This Is The Day (1974-Old Grey Whistle Test), 2014 July: Safe as Milk (1967), 2014 August: Some YoYo Stuff: An observation of the observations of Don Van Vliet by Anton Corbijn (1993), 2015 January: It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper, 2016 November: Doc at the Radar Station (1980).

Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops

La Closerie des Lilas, Paris
"Writers and coffee go together like espresso and steamed milk. Everywhere you look, there's a writer plugging away on their laptop in a cafe, usually with a steaming cup of joe by their side. Caffeine stimulates the brain and increases productivity—something I know because I drank three cups of coffee before writing this blog post—but that's not the only reason why writers huddle in coffeehouses. Cafes all over the world have long been hubs for writing communities, like the Beats or the Lost Generation, to discuss ideas, read poetry, and of course, write. Many of these historical sites are still around, serving coffee and tea to the next generation of young writers in Paris, New York, and Rome, who, like their bohemian forebears, are looking for a cheap place to hang out that's not their apartment. Here are seven of our favorite literary cafes from around the globe. ..."
The New York Public Library

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business.

Charles Mingus - Blues & Roots (1960)

Wikipedia - "Blues & Roots is an album by Charles Mingus, recorded in 1959 and released in 1960. It has been reissued twice as a CD, first by Atlantic Records, and then again by Rhino Entertainment in 1998. Mingus explained the birth of this record in the album's liner notes: 'This record is unusual—it presents only one part of my musical world, the blues. A year ago, Nesuhi Ertegün suggested that I record an entire blues album in the style of Haitian Fight Song (in Atlantic LP 1260), because some people, particularly critics, were saying I didn't swing enough. He wanted to give them a barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy. I thought it over. I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I've grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing. So I agreed.' ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
amazon
YouTube: Blues & Roots (Full Album) 1:12:41

2015 August: "Meditations On Integration" - Filmed in Belgium on April 19 1964., 2016 February: XXL’s A Great Day in Hip Hop: 16 Years Later (2014), 2017 May: Mingus at the Bohemia (1955)

Dubcast Vol.05 (Mixed by Bent Back Sounds)

"For the fifth installment of our Dubcast series, we’ve collaborated with fellow Brooklynite and label head Bent Backs Sound. Passionate about the 80’s era of reggae, Bent Backs Sound has collected records for over 10 years before becoming a label in its own right. The first part of this dubcast pays tribute to some of the artists and labels who influenced the sound via a fine vinyl selection. The second part of the dubcast serves as a Bent Backs Records showcase, showing off some killer exclusive dubplates and leaking unreleased tracks freshly out of the dub factory."
Brooklyn Radio (Mixcloud)

Terry Riley On Tape Loops

"In this video, via castlelizard, composer and performer Terry Riley discusses his 1950-1960 experiments with reel to reel recorders and tape loops. Riley’s tape looping was an important aspect of his 1963 work Music For The Gift and later recordings, like his 1969 release, A Rainbow In Curved Air. The influence of Riley’s tape loop pieces can be seen in Brian Eno’s early ambient albums, Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics and directly and indirectly in the work of many other looping artists. The video is from Doug Aitken’s Station to Station project."
Synthtopia (Video)
The Birth of Loop - A Short History of Looping Music (Video)
Early tape loop experiments with Eno, Fripp, Terry Riley, and Pauline Oliveros (Video)

Tape Echo on 2 Machines, from: David Keane: Tape Music Composition, 1980

2010 Sepember: Sampling, 2011 Sepember: Frippertronics, 2012 January: Loop, 2012 May: Tape loops
December 2007: Terry Riley, March 2010: In C, December 2010: Terry Riley & Gyan Riley, April 2011: Terry Riley - Shri Camel: Morning Corona, Terry Riley rare footage, live in the 70s, 2014 March: Kronos Quartet Plays Terry Riley: Salome Dances for Peace (1989), 2014 June: Solo piano works, Moscow Conservatory. April 18th, 2000, A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969), 2017 August: “A Particular Glow” – On Loving Terry Riley.

View of the World from 9th Avenue - Saul Steinberg

Wikipedia - "View of the World from 9th Avenue (sometimes A Parochial New Yorker's View of the World, A New Yorker's View of the World or simply View of the World) is a 1976 illustration by Saul Steinberg that served as the cover of the March 29, 1976, edition of The New Yorker. The work presents the view from Manhattan of the rest of the world showing Manhattan as the center of the world. ... The work has been imitated and printed without authorization in a variety of ways. The Columbia parody led to a ruling by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. in favor of Steinberg because of copyright violations by Columbia Pictures. The work is regarded as one of the greatest magazine covers of recent generations and is studied by art students around the world. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Saul Steinberg

The Mind of John McPhee

"When you call John McPhee on the phone, he is instantly John McPhee. McPhee is now 86 years old, and each of those years seems to be filed away inside of him, loaded with information, ready to access. I was calling to arrange a visit to Princeton, N.J., where McPhee lives and teaches writing. He was going to give me driving directions. He asked where I was coming from. I told him the name of my town, about 100 miles away. ... McPhee has built a career on such small detonations of knowledge. His mind is pure curiosity: It aspires to flow into every last corner of the world, especially the places most of us overlook. Literature has always sought transcendence in purportedly trivial subjects — 'a world in a grain of sand,' as Blake put it — but few have ever pushed the impulse further than McPhee. ..."
NY Times
W - John McPhee
The Paris Review: John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction No. 3

Mumbo Jumbo - Ishmael Reed (1972)

Wikipedia - "Mumbo Jumbo is a 1972 novel by African-American author Ishmael Reed. Literary critic Harold Bloom cited the novel as one of the 500 most important books in the Western canon. Mumbo Jumbo has remained in print for 45 years, since its first edition, and has been published in French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and British editions, with a Chinese translation currently in production. Set in 1920s New York City, the novel depicts the elderly Harlem houngan PaPa LaBas and his companion Black Herman racing against the Wallflower Order, an international conspiracy dedicated to monotheism and control, as they attempt to root out the cause of and deal with the "Jes Grew" virus, a personification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom. ... Historical, social, and political events mingle freely with fictional inventions. ..."
Wikipedia
Wormholes through History / Ishmael Reed and the Psychic Epidemic
Guardian - Mumbo Jumbo: a dazzling classic finally gets the recognition it deserves
fractious fiction
amazon

Scanner - The Great Crater (2017)

"Over the last twenty give years Robin Rimbaud – Scanner has traversed the experimental terrain between sound, space and image, connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres – a partial list would include sound design, film scores, computer music, avant garde, contemporary composition, large-scale multimedia performances, product design, architecture, fashion design, rock music and jazz.With a catalogue busy with commissions, soundtracks and studio releases it’s extremely rare to find a new studio recording, so The Great Crater stands out by measure of this. Invited by the label Glacial Movements to create a new album he focused on the tale of strange circles appearing in Antarctica. ..."
Glacial Movements (Audio)
Igloo Magazing (Video)
amazon, iTunes

Johnny Cash - Highway 61 Revisited & The Man Comes Around

"This is my edit of Johnny's reading of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and his own song The Man Comes Around. Both songs were in a 2003 movie The Hunted, starring Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones."
YouTube: Highway 61 Revisited & The Man Comes Around

2012 November: Ain't No Grave, 2011 October: Hurt, 2013 May: 4 Classic Sun Records, 2014 April: Ridin' The Rails The Great American Train Story (1974)

Fred Herzog Modern Color

"Fred Herzog is known for his unusual use of colour in the fifties and sixties, a time when art photography was almost exclusively associated with black and white imagery. The Canadian photographer, who once said: 'I wanted to show the world the way it is', obsessively documented Vancouver, mainly focusing on working class people, and their connections to the city around them. He worked almost exclusively with Kodachrome slide film for over 50 years, and only in the past decade has technology allowed him to make archival pigment prints that match the exceptional colour and intensity of the Kodachrome slide. In this respect, his photographs can be seen as a pre-figuration of the New Colour photographers of the seventies. Now, highlights of his wonderful work can be enjoyed in a new book entitled Fred Herzog Modern Color, which brings together over 230 images, many never before reproduced, and featuring essays by acclaimed authors David Campany and Hans-Michael Koetzle. ..."
Pioneer Fred Herzog's delicious colour street photographs of 1950s & '60s Vancouver
Book review: Modern Color by Fred Herzog
amazon
vimeo: Fred Herzog Modern Color

An introduction to Conny Plank in 10 records

"Conny Plank was the producer who shaped Germany’s electronic music sound like no other, influencing the development of ambient, new wave, hip-hop, house and techno in the process. With a new documentary about his life and work out this month, we scratch the surface of Conny Plank’s prolific output, from Kraftwerk to Eno and beyond. Among the unreleased items in producer-engineer Conny Plank’s archive is a Marlene Dietrich big-band session which, legend has it, Plank engineered in Hamburg in the mid-1960s. Another is several hours of collaborative work he recorded with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne a decade later, which Plank’s estate has said it is preparing for release. Of the two items, it is the Stockhausen that would seem to sit most comfortably among the main body of Plank’s output. Then again, it may be that Plank’s radical experimentalism is the reason the Dietrich has never seen the light of day. ..."
The Vinyl Factory (Video)
W - Conny Plank

"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