Introducing the Librarian Action Figure: The Caped Crusader Who Fights Against Anti-Intellectualism, Ignorance & Censorship Everywhere

"We've featured action figures that pay tribute to some cultural icons like Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo. But now comes a new action figure that honors a less appreciated cultural force--all of the great librarians, those crusaders for the printed and electronic word, who 'keep it all organized for us and let us know about the best of it.' Standing almost four inches tall and made of hard vinyl, the librarian action figure is based on Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl. She has 'a removable cape that symbolizes how much of a hero a librarian really is.' The action figure should come in handy in your own fights again anti-intellectualism, censorship and ignorance. Enjoy!
Open Culture
W - Nancy Pearl

Musicians Backstage in the 1970s: The Photos

Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Bob Marley of The Wailers playing guitar and keyboards backstage at the Odeon, Birmingham, United Kingdom, July 18, 1975.
"It was the post-Beatles decade—years of soul and rock and disco and punk. The 1970s was the era that fully embraced the change of the '60s counterculture, a time when artists waged their own protests against wars, social injustice, and the rapidly shifting American Dream. Some of the greatest names in contemporary music reached their zenith in the '70s. Here's what was happening behind the scenes."
Esquire

The Case for the Subway

"Long before it became an archaic, filthy, profligate symbol of everything wrong with our broken cities, New York’s subway was a marvel — a mad feat of engineering and an audacious gamble on a preposterously ambitious vision. 'The effect it is to have on the city of New York is something larger than any mind can realize,' said William Gaynor, the New York mayor who set in motion the primary phase of its construction. A public-works project of this scale had never before been undertaken in the United States, and even now, more than a century later, it is hard to fully appreciate what it did for the city and, really, the nation. Before the subway, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that New York would become the greatest city on earth. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants fleeing poverty and persecution were arriving on its doorstep every year, but most of them were effectively marooned, herded into dark, squalid tenements in disease-ridden slums. The five boroughs had recently been joined as one city, but the farms and villages of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens might as well have been on the other side of the planet from Manhattan’s teeming streets. ..."
NY Times

Nyege Nyege: East Africa's new wave

"Electronic music is booming in East Africa, and a small collective based in Kampala is at the heart of it all. Aaron Coultate travelled to Uganda to hear their story. When she first walked into the Tilapia nightclub, Hibo Elmi had been living in Kampala for about a year. Her childhood had taken her across East Africa. Elmi's parents left Somalia during the early-1990s civil war, and she lived in Kenya and Ethiopia before arriving in Uganda's capital. ... In hope of finding a more welcoming environment, the sisters set out to explore Kampala's party scene. By this point, in 2013, Tilapia was already one of Kampala's best late-night spots, attracting a Pan-African crowd. ... This outsider spirit applied to both Boutiq Electroniq's crowd and its music. While many Kampala club nights are soundtracked by commercial dancehall, reggae or hip-hop, at Boutiq Electroniq you'd hear music from across Africa that didn't get much airtime in clubs—kuduro, tarraxinha, balani, coupé-décalé, soukous—plus Western electronic music like house, techno and grime. ..."
Resident Advisor (Audio)
24 Things to Know Before You Go to Kampala
W - Kampala
Uganda’s Nyege Nyege Tapes are blazing trails for East African outsider music (Audio)
Independent - Nyege Nyege Festival review: The irresistible urge to dance
Nyege Nyege Tapes
Soundcloud: Nyege Nyege Tapes
YouTube: Nyege Nyege Music

Major League Baseball's Statcast Can Break Sabermetrics

"... That’s what Joe Inzerillo—the executive vice president and chief technology officer of MLB Advanced Media—said in a league press release announcing baseball’s revolutionary new player-tracking system, Statcast. It hasn’t quite been a decade since that quote; it hasn’t quite, in fact, been three years. But route efficiency, the metric in question, has already disappeared. Using a combination of cameras and radar to track the ball in every position it reaches as well as every player on the field at all times, offering a theoretically perfect or at least perfectible view of every game played in every major-league season, Statcast offers nearly limitless possibilities for baseball analysis by producing an incredible amount of raw data, some of which is packaged into specific metrics designed by a team of people at MLBAM. ..."
Deadspin (Video)

Podcast 523: Scanner

"It's a challenging task trying to condense a career like that of Robin Rimbaud's into a digestible introduction. For close to 30 years now, Rimbaud has been a major force in sonic art, crafting experimental sound pieces that connect a beguiling array of genres for concerts, installations, and recordings. His commissioned pieces include campaign work for Nike Hyperfuse, Chanel, and Stella McCartney, as well as scores for the UK Olympics' The Big Dance in Trafalgar Square, the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the world’s first ever Virtual Reality ballet with the Dutch National Ballet, and collaborations with Bryan Ferry, Wayne McGregor, Merce Cunningham, Mike Kelley, Miroslaw Balka, Torres, Michael Nyman, Carsten Nicolai, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson, and Hussein Chalayan, amongst many others. ..."
xlr8r (Audio)

2012 October: Scanner, 2015 December: Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), 2017 September: The Great Crater (2017)

Social Ecology: Communalism against Climate Chaos - Brian Tokar

"Since the 1960s, the theory and praxis of social ecology have helped guide efforts to articulate a radical, counter-systemic ecological outlook with a goal of transforming society’s relationship to non-human nature. For many decades, social ecologists have articulated a fundamental ecological critique of capitalism and the state, and proposed an alternative vision of empowered human communities organized confederally in pursuit of a more harmonious relationship to the wider natural world. Social ecology helped shape the New Left and anti-nuclear movements in the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of Green politics in many countries, the alter-globalization movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and most recently the struggle for democratic autonomy by Kurdish communities in Turkey and Syria, along with the resurgence of new municipal movements around the world — from Barcelona en Comú to Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi. ..."
ROAR

2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders, 2016 October: Why Bernie Was Right, 2015 October: The Ecology of Freedom (1982), 2016 July: Murray Bookchin’s New Life, 2017 January: Reason, creativity and freedom: the communalist model - Eleanor Finley, 2017 February: Socialism’s Return, 2017 April: The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 (1977), 2017 December: Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939.

The hymn of journals, poetic and public

"With today’s ubiquitous social media and all that sharing entails, the idea of poetry that delves into the personal and utilizes actual journals would command an especially astute and unique precision — one that Stacy Szymaszek’s Journal of Ugly Sites & Other Journals deftly delivers, reminding us of the raw power of the poetic personal / personal poetic, and how uncommon poetry with this kind of depth is nowadays. Reading this book reminds me that the current Facebook-Twitter-Instagram environment is no match for the curated and hymn-phonic id, as extrapolated through an artistic lens of a writer in high command of a journal she renders and crops into a poetic-nonfiction narrative. This is not 'confessional' poetry, with all that connotes, of Plath et al. This is not even under the tired moniker of 'personal' poetry. Despite the fact that Szymaszek has indeed pulled from her journals, it does not feel like 'mining' journals 'for material.' It is something more chiseled. ..."
Jacket2
amazon

Onyx Collective’s New York City Jazz Odyssey

Onyx Collective, outside Warsaw, December 8, 2017 (L to R) Austin Williamson, Julian Soto, Jack Gulielmetti, Isaiah Barr, Julius Rodriguez, Nick Hakim, Felix Pastorius
"There used to be a club on 51st Street and Lexington Avenue owned by a Japanese gentleman who would greet music fans at the door. The club, which closed last week, was called Somethin’ Jazz, and in 2014 it was the place to see Onyx Collective, at the time a fresh-faced ensemble of young musicians making a name for themselves. You could catch the group on a Saturday night or maybe a Wednesday, depending on the month. Onyx performances were known for being experimental — the group could play an evening of free-form jazz or something soulful laced with soothing vocals, but no one set or lineup was the same. One night they could be a bebop trio, and the next they might blossom into a six-headed funk-soul colossus. With each performance, the group transformed the seemingly conventional space into something new and exciting. The crowds they drew were often an unusual assortment of folks — downtown art types, hip-hop heads from the outer boroughs, hype beasts, straightlaced jazz dudes. In other words, a variety of people not typically found at a jazz spot on the east side of midtown. ..."
Voice (Video)
ONYX Collective Is Injecting Jazz Cool Into N.Y.C.’s Downtown Scene
Discogs
Lower East Suite Part Two (Audio)
YouTube: 'Fruit Stand', "East River", "Color Images", 'Snake Charmer', The Mask, Steam Rooms,

How Not to Impeach

"WORCESTER, Mass. — With Democratic control of Congress after 2018 increasingly plausible, those who most intensely seek the impeachment of President Trump are organizing, agitating — and conducting a veritable clinic in how not to exercise one of the Constitution’s most solemn powers. Investigations are still underway, but 58 House Democrats have already voted to consider impeaching Mr. Trump. Tom Steyer, a Democratic megadonor, is running a multipronged campaign calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment on grounds ranging from his North Korea policy to allegations of obstruction of justice. It is true that impeachment is a political rather than a criminal device, but not like this. It requires the kind of political judgment concerned with the public good, not with gaining electoral advantage. The prudent path forward lies somewhere between 'fiat justitia, ruat caelum' and 'Vox populi, vox Dei' — 'let justice be done though the heavens fall' on one hand and 'the voice of the people is the voice of God' on the other. ..."
NY Times

The 2017 Jacobin Mixtape

"Let’s not kid ourselves: 2017 was a weird year. Since Inauguration Day, things have been kind of a blur at your neighborhood socialist magazine. As the first year of the Trump presidency, 2017 brought an endless onslaught of awful delivered from on high. But it also brought a groundswell of popular resistance, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. And no, we’re not talking about the tuxedoed cadre of #TheResistance, bunkered at their year-end office parties, giddily recapping twelve months of subtweets and talk-show zingers. We’re talking about the thousands of ordinary people who stood up to Trump and his noxious coalition this year. We’re talking about those who flooded airports in defense of Muslim travelers, who braved alt-right violence in Charlottesville and Boston, who put their careers on the line to expose sexual violence in American workplaces. And, yes, we’re talking about whatever hero of socialist labor sent a box of rank shit to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s new Washington digs, just in time for Christmas. For our part in 2017, we think we did a pretty good job. ..."
Jacobin

Old New York’s sleigh carnival began in January

"Imagine a city where every January, when winter is at its most brutal and bone-chilling, New Yorkers parked their stages and omnibuses and excitedly hitched their horses to sleighs (like these in Central Park in the 1860s). What was dubbed the 'sleighing carnival' was an annual event in the 19th century metropolis (below, on Wall Street in 1834). Once snow was on the ground and it was packed hard into the road, large sleighs were brought out for public transportation; 'light' sleighs appeared too, kind of a personal carriage for joyriding, according to the Carriage Journal. ... 'The rapidity with which they are driven, at the rate of 10 or 12 miles an hour, is very delightful, and so exciting, that the most delicate females of New York think an evening drive, of 10 or 20 miles, even in the hardest frost, conducive to their amusement and health.' The sleighing carnival last through the end of the century. (Above left, in Prospect Park.) Snow arrived in New York mid-January 1892, recalls the Carriage Journal, 'and a regular sleighing carnival was the result.' ..."
Ephemeral New York

Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction

Aello. 1930
"Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction is a comprehensive survey of Picabia’s audacious, irreverent, and profoundly influential work across mediums. This will be the first exhibition in the United States to chart his entire career. Among the great modern artists of the past century, Francis Picabia (French, 1879–1953) also remains one of the most elusive. He vigorously avoided any singular style, and his work encompassed painting, poetry, publishing, performance and film. Though he is best known as one of the leaders of the Dada movement, his career ranged widely—and wildly—from Impressionism to radical abstraction, from Dadaist provocation to pseudo-classicism, and from photo-based realism to art informel. Picabia’s consistent inconsistencies, his appropriative strategies, and his stylistic eclecticism, along with his skeptical attitude, make him especially relevant for contemporary artists, and his career as a whole challenges familiar narratives of the avant-garde. ..."
MoMA (Video)
NY Times: Francis Picabia, the Playboy Prankster of Modernism
Voice: Picabia, Nihilism, and Searching for Meaning In Art in 2017 by Richard Hell
amazon

Catalonia’s Elections Take Spain Back to Square One

"'Could either of you tell me the unemployment rate in Catalonia?' Jordi Évole asked Inés Arrimadas and Marta Rovira on his TV show Salvados in what became the inaugural debate of Catalonia’s December 21 regional-election campaign, held just nine days before the vote. ... Évole continued with his opening round of questions, asking for the number of refugees currently given asylum in Catalonia, the number of temporary buildings used in Catalan schools, and the number of Catalan women murdered by their partners in the year to date. Neither of the candidates could provide any of the answers. And that, it quickly became clear, was the point of the exercise: One issue—Catalan independence—had so polarized an entire region of Spain that many other important issues, from corruption to austerity, were being completely ignored. And the rhetoric on both sides had reached such a fever pitch that it had managed to distort the basic picture of reality. ..."
The Nation
Guardian - 'I voted with my conscience': Catalans more resigned than expectant on election day
Spain’s crisis re-ignited as Catalan separatists win vote

2017 October: Catalonia Leaders Seek to Make Independence Referendum Binding, 2017 October: Catalonia: Past and Future - Luke Stobart, 2017 October: Spain moves to take over Catalonia after region declares independence, 2017 November: Spain’s Conflict Over Catalonia Is Covering Up Massive Political Corruption

The Year in Illustration 2017

“A year of Trump-related articles requires a year's worth of Trump-related imagery. How do we avoid repeating the same images over and over? Brilliant illustrators to the rescue.” — Nathan Huang, art director
"Every year The New York Times commissions thousands of original illustrations from independent artists around the globe. Artists are asked to distill the most compelling aspects of stories and create a powerful experience. They often have just hours to make images that move, provoke and enrich the act of reading. During years of tumult and uncertainty, illustrators use the medium’s inherent flexibility to comment on a rapidly evolving social, political and economic landscape. When a single subject dominates the news, artists find new ways to elaborate on it without succumbing to dull repetition. They clear away the noise and get to the point, using pen, pencil, brush, stylus, cut paper, clay, motion and raw code to produce indelible images that resonate. Below is a selection of notable art The Times published in 2017."
NY Times

Sun Ra’s ‘Happy New Year to You’ doowop single (and a Christmas song too!)

"Sun Ra had his share of offbeat and amusing records—his Batman and Robin album and his limbo album spring to mind as typical (atypical?) Sun Ra curiosities.Sun Ra was born Herman Poole Blount, but he was universally known as Sonny in the first decades of life. Sonny Blount moved from Birmingham, Alabama. to Chicago in 1945—it was there that his interest in Egyptology and Afrofuturism took root. ... El Saturn released two LPs during the 1950s, Super-Sonic Jazz and Jazz In Silhouette, but before either of those, Sun Ra released an amusing doowop holiday single by a combo called the Qualities on Satur Records (sic). The single was super basic and clearly manufactured with the intention of making a quick buck. The A side was called 'It’s Christmas Time' and the B side was called 'Happy New Year to You.' ..."
Dangerous Minds (Audio)
YouTube: The Qualities (Sun Ra) ‎- Happy New Year To You!, Sun Ra Presents The Qualities (Single) (1960)

Oonops Drops - Jazz'n'Beats 2

"Oonops drops the second part of his Jazz’n’Beats episode. He blends a selection of jazz cuts in a smooth combination with jazzy beats and raps by acts like Digable Planets, DJ Mitsu The Beats, Twit One, FilzFlo, Gagle and many more. This time he gets supported in an exclusive guest mix by Soundtrax (360° Records), a german producer and the tour DJ of german rap legend Torch. He presents a well chosen mixture of tunes by A Tribe Called Quest, Kendrick Lamar, Joey Bada$$, US3 and many more. And now lay down and enjoy these musical treats. Check out the first volume here: www.mixcloud.com/brooklynradio/oonops-drops-jazznbeats and don’t forget to visit your host Oonops on Mixcloud and Facebook and his guest Soundtrax here. ..."
Brooklyn Radio (Audio)

Vieux Silence - Elodie (2017)

"Elodie is a band that operates at the point where silence and sound come together. When I saw the core duo of guitarist Andrew Chalk and flautist Timo van Luijk perform at London’s Café Oto some years ago, you could have heard the proverbial pin hit the deck as Chalk caressed the quietest of notes out of his acoustic six-string and van Luijk breathed softly into his flute. These days, and notably for this release, Vieux Silence, on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ imprint, Elodie have expanded their line-up to include pianist Tom James Scott (who has already appeared on two Elodie LPs this year), Jean-Noël Rebilly on clarinet and some pedal steel guitar at times from Daniel Morris. But true to the ethos that has animated Elodie from day one, the results remain muted, quiet and, for Vieux Silence, decidedly nocturnal. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
Brainwashed
Boomkat (Audio)
Soundcloud: 'Au Point du Jour' (SOMA027)
amazon
YouTube: Vieux Silence 8 videos

Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution, 1936–1939.

"The Spanish Social Revolution has been long neglected in English language works. Its importance as a revolutionary event and model, and as a concrete example of workers’ self-management by the people is just not recognized. My purpose in this collection is to provide an introduction to this unique experience. In my first chapter and friend Bookchin’s introductory essay, a general overview and context is presented. Most important, of course, is that this was a real experience for the people who took part. Through their words and deeds and the observations of the authors used in this collection, it is hoped that the reader will gain a meaningful understanding of the aims and organization of the anarchist collectives. The material has been divided into two main sections. ..."
The Anarchist Library
amazon

2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders, 2016 October: Why Bernie Was Right, 2015 October: The Ecology of Freedom (1982), 2016 July: Murray Bookchin’s New Life, 2017 January: Reason, creativity and freedom: the communalist model - Eleanor Finley, 2017 February: Socialism’s Return, 2017 April: The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years 1868-1936 (1977).

Un biglietto del tram - Stormy Six (1975)

"... Stormy Six were formed in Milan in the mid sixties and began their career as a 'beat' band. Later their music turned to folk and West Coast and finally to progressive rock. In 1975 Stormy Six released their fourth album, Un biglietto del tram, on the independent label L'Orchestra that they contributed to found. The line up featured Franco Fabbri (guitar, vocals), Umberto Fiori (guitar, vocals), Carlo De Martini (sax, violin), Tommaso Leddi (violin, mandolin, balalajka, guitar), Luca Piscicelli (bass, vocals) and Antonio Zanuso (drums). The overall sound on this album is acoustic and well refined featuring an original blend of folk, classical and progressive rock influences. In the early seventies the band got involved in politics and kept tight links with the left-wing protest movements and lyrics on this work reflect the commitment of the band. 'Un biglietto del tram' is, in fact, a concept album based on some events of the last period of World War II and celebrates the Italian Resistance movement against the Nazi-Fascists. ... -andrea"
Progarchives
W - Un biglietto del tram
YouTube: Un Biglietto del Tram [Full album, 1975]

Solar and Lunar Eclipses in 2018

This plot shows key events in the total lunar eclipse on January 31, 2018
"Two total lunar eclipses occur this year, the first since late 2015, in January and July. Meanwhile, three solar eclipses take place in 2018 — all of them only partial cover-ups. If you're one of the estimated 154 million U.S. adults who watched the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017 — and that's most of us! — you know how incredible such events can be. So when will the ones in 2018 occur? Read on to find out! Up to seven eclipses of the Sun and Moon can take place in one year, though the last time that happened was 1982, and the fewest possible is four. This year we'll get three solar eclipses (alas, all partial events) and two total lunar eclipses spaced six months apart. ..."
Sky & Telescope

Artist Pauline Bastard Turns Found Objects and Debris into Stunning Sculptural Cameras

"French artist Pauline Bastard, has created a great series of sculptural cameras constructed from found objects which she has compiled over the last few years during travels in Bratislava, Sao Paulo, Bruxelles, New York, Los Angeles and London. Made with an assortment of broken and worn debris, these objects represent the fragmented memories of places visited. She says, 'I have progressively integrated my constant moving around in my work. I always create works when I travel, I have like rituals in every city I go through, I pick up things and then produce an object.'"
Junk Culture
Pauline Bastard (Video)
GALERIE EVA HOBER (Video)

MoMA Upends Its Collection to Celebrate Late Careers

Joan Jonas’s “Reanimation,” a video-sculpture installation that mixes Arctic landscapes, folk tales, music and hanging glass, is a recent acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art. The piece is part of the museum’s exhibition “The Long Run.”
"What good is an art collection if a museum doesn’t shake it up once in a while? The Museum of Modern Art has increasingly been acting on this principle. Its latest upending is 'The Long Run,' a yearlong installation that is utterly engaging if slightly mild: around 130 works of art spread throughout the galleries and hallways of its fourth floor. With a couple of exceptions, these works have been made since 1970 by, as the title implies, artists with careers of some length. The presentation forsakes the myth of Modernism that the Modern is identified with — of art as ceaseless progress fomented almost entirely by the innovations of ambitious young (white) men. ..."
NY Times

Into the Light: Jean Béraud and his Paris chronicle

The Bal Mabille
"Jean Béraud (1849-1935) was not an Impressionist, but then neither was he not impressionist. Like Jules Bastien-Lepage, he used some features of Impressionist style, but remained outside the movement as such. He was born, the son of a sculptor, in Saint Petersburg, and started his training as a lawyer just before the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870. Following that, he switched to painting, becoming a pupil of Léon Bonnat in 1872. Le Bal Mabille (before 1882) may have been one of his earliest paintings. The Bal was a very popular open-air dance hall which took place on a location which would be in Avenue Montaigne in Paris. Started in 1831, it operated until 1875, and was demolished in 1882. It is claimed that the polka and can-can were introduced there, and it was struck by shells during the Franco-Prussian War. ..."
Eclectic Light
W - Jean Béraud
W - Bal Mabille

Parisienne place de la Concorde

Interview: Archie Shepp on John Coltrane, the Blues and More

"Saxophonist, educator and playwright Archie Shepp has long been a crucial figure in American jazz. Complex and multifaceted, he’s difficult to pigeonhole, but his first decade-and-a-half as a leader includes some of the most forceful and important jazz – free, bluesy, swinging, gospelized – ever recorded. Shepp debuted in Cecil Taylor’s band in 1960, but it was a friendship with John Coltrane that finally brought Shepp into the spotlight: He played on tracks that were recorded for A Love Supreme, but not released until 2002, and also appeared on 1965’s Ascension. The two saxophonists’ groups also split a live LP, 1965’s New Thing at Newport. Shepp’s Impulse! debut as a leader, Four for Trane, featured reworkings of four Coltrane compositions and one of his own. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

2015 March: Attica Blues (1972), 2016 June: Archie Shepp - The Magic of Ju-Ju (1967), 2011 November: John Coltrane Quartet, Live at Jazz Casual, 1963, 2012 March: John Coltrane 1960 - 1965, 2012 September: "Naima" (1959), 2012 October: Blue Train (1957), 2013 April: The World According to John Coltrane, 2013 November: A Love Supreme (1965), 2014 July: New Photos of John Coltrane Rediscovered 50 Years After They Were Shot, 2014 November: Coltrane’s Free Jazz Wasn’t Just “A Lot of Noise”, 2015 February: Lush Life (1958), 2015 May: An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”, 2015 July: Afro Blue Impressions (2013), 2015 September: Impressions of Coltrane, 2015 December: Giant Steps (1960), 2016 January: Crescent (1964), 2016 April: The Church of Saint John Coltrane, 2016 July: Soultrane (1958), 2016 December: Dakar (1957), 2017 July: The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music, 2017 October: Live at the Village Vanguard (1962)

The Antidote to Macri

"Argentinian politics have long been a case study in contradictions. Its labor movement has been among the strongest in Latin America since its birth at the turn of the twentieth century. On the back of mighty labor, Juan Domingo Peron rose to power in the 1940s, granting historic concessions to the workers and beginning a long populist tradition that wedded working-class leadership to bourgeois politics. Peronism has ever since encompassed a wide spectrum of politics (from right-wing to center-left) who only share among themselves their loyalty to 'the General' and the conviction that Peronism is the ultimate vehicle to power. Former presidents Néstor and Christina Fernandez Kirchner form a conspicuous case within the Peronist tradition. On the cusp of a booming economy after the 2001 crash, they implemented sweeping welfare programs for the poor and, after years of a fruitful alliance, staged a high-profile campaign against conservative media. But they left all mainstays of neoliberalism untouched. ..."
Jacobin
W - Néstor Kirchner
Guardian - Néstor Kirchner: Argentina's independence hero
W - Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
NY Times: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
Jacobin: Argentina’s New Order

From the Counter: Beirut

"Join us Monday, June 26th at our next From the Counter destination with Discogs. We're travelling to Beirut, Lebanon to broadcast from the historic Chico Records – home to the largest collection of Middle Eastern records in the world. This iconic space will host our next 100% vinyl session. Chico Records came up on the map in the sixties. And featured on this event's flyer is one of the first photos ever taken inside the record shop of the original Chico Records crew. An archive that's rich with Lebanese groove history, it's an apt next addition to our From The Counter series. On the bill we have expert digger  Jannis Strutz, aka Habibi Funk. Strutz specialises in Arabic music, matching the setting of Chico Records perfectly. Alongside him will be Ernesto Chahoud, aka Spindle. Chahoud's musical colour promises an eclectic set – from the deepest funk to Northern Soul and beyond."
Boiler Room
SOUNDCLOUD: Ernesto Chahoud Boiler Room Beirut DJ Set
YouTube: Ernesto Chahoud Boiler Room Beirut DJ Set

2017 July: Lebanon: Various artists - Jakarta Radio 010 Mix

The Barca Way Spreads Far From Catalonia

"Everywhere you look, the fingerprints are visible. They are there in those places where the lights shine brightest, and they are there where the lights don’t shine at all. At the summit of the Premier League; among the rich and famous of the Champions League; at suburban schools in the United States; at provincial, second-tier clubs in China; at village teams in Africa: In every corner of the world and at every level of soccer, there are indelible traces of Barcelona. Wherever they are found, they are present for the same reason. Across the planet, the word Barcelona — the idea of Barcelona — has over the last decade come to connote not just success but beauty, too. That has inspired countless clubs, large and small, to try to distill and import the magic, to find someone to sprinkle a little of that stardust on them. ..."
NY Times

Cineaste

Wikipedia - "Cineaste is an American quarterly film magazine that was established in 1967. The first issue of Cineaste was published in Summer 1967. The launching company was Cineaste Publishers, Inc. The founder and editor-in-chief is Gary Crowdus. It is published quarterly. Cineaste publishes reviews, in-depth analyses, and interviews with filmmakers and actors. ... The journal Jump Cut cited the magazine as contributing to left politics in the United States. The Jump Cut editors wrote: 'Cinéaste has provided information and analysis unavailable elsewhere, and by so doing it has helped build a stronger left film culture in the U.S. Specifically, Cinéaste has focused attention on independent left filmmaking, on third world films, and on progressive examples of mainstream film. It has also provided a political analysis of those films, raising criticism within a left context and thereby generating and continuing the political dialogue essential to advancing political film work.' ..."
Wikipedia
Cineaste
Cineaste Films (Video)

The 2017 Progressive Honor Roll

"'Resistance' was the watchword for 2017. Resistance not just to Donald Trump, but to a status quo that gave our most powerful bully pulpit to an actual bully. Progressives not only refused to go backward in 2017; they demanded a new conversation that challenged old orthodoxies. The hashtag #MeToo became the bellwether for a national dialogue about sexual abuse, workplace discrimination, and equal rights that is opening the way for societal transformation. The stunning electoral victories of nontraditional candidates in unexpected places signaled that a new politics really is possible. What began as a frightening and frustrating year ended with Alabama voters rejecting one of Trump’s most vile allies in favor of a decent Democrat, Doug Jones, who claimed his victory in that state’s senatorial contest by citing one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite quotations: 'The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' Here are some of the progressives who bent the arc in 2017. ..."
The Nation

NKAME: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón

Detail of La cena (The Supper), 1991
"The Cuban artist’s big, richly textured collographs—made by running collaged cardboard through a printing press—are populated by mysterious, silhouetted figures with piercing, almond-shaped eyes. They derive from the mythological world of the all-male, Afro-Cuban secret society Abakuá. Ayón, who took her own life in 1999, when she was thirty-two, was particularly fascinated by the female figure Sikán, who, legend has it, was sentenced to death for betraying Abakuá secrets to her lover. In these austere works, she is a commanding protagonist, portrayed alone with animals, or in tense scenes that refer to both Renaissance painting and Abakuá myth. One room of the museum is filled with six lush iterations of the same scene, made in 1988, of an initiation banquet in which women replace the expected male apostles in the 'Last Supper'-inspired composition. This edifying show suggests that Ayón may have sought to reflect, through her stylized lexicon, the sexual politics and economic turmoil of her time—and that she may have identified with the character of Sikán in deeply personal, even tragic, ways."
New Yorker
NY Times: From Cuba, a Stolen Myth
El Museo del Barrio
FOWLER MUSEUM (Video)

Where was the original WPIX yule log filmed?

"WPIX Channel 11’s strangely mesmerizing Yule Log is a Christmas tradition for New Yorkers from the 1960s to the 1980s. So it was quite a disappointment to discover that the yule log so many of us grew up on was actually shot in a fireplace in California. The original 16mm footage, a 17-second loop first shown on Christmas in 1966, was actually and appropriately filmed in a fireplace at Gracie Mansion, where Mayor John Lindsay lived at the time. But when Channel 11 wanted to upgrade the deteriorating film to 35mm in 1970, they got a definitive no from the Lindsay administration. ..."
Ephemeral New York (Video)
W - Yule Log (TV program)

Jennifer Egan - Manhattan Beach (2017)

Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1943
"In the opening pages of 'Manhattan Beach' — Jennifer Egan’s first novel since she won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for 'A Visit From the Goon Squad' — an 11-year-old girl named Anna Kerrigan visits the titular stretch of Brooklyn shoreline on a winter day in the company of her father, Eddie, and an underworld figure named Dexter Styles. Though this encounter in 1934 is brief, and circumstances quickly send the three characters in disparate directions, readers will understand that their fates have just become inextricably intertwined. They may also understand, rightly, that this will turn out to be a more traditional novel than the raucous and inventive 'Goon Squad,' although the two books offer many of the same pleasures, including fine turns of phrase, a richly imagined environs and a restless investigation into human nature. The willing suspension of disbelief does not exist in a single form. In the context of different types of stories, the suspension of disbelief asks very different things of us, poses different problems and offers different rewards. ..."
NY Times: In ‘Manhattan Beach,’ Jennifer Egan Sets a Crime Story on the Waterfront
The Nation: Shadow Worlds
New Yorker: Jennifer Egan’s Travels Through Time
Guardian: Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan review – remarkable cinematic scope
The Atlantic: Jennifer Egan’s Surprising Swerve Into Historical Fiction
amazon

Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77

"This is the 20th anniversary 2015 expanded edition of one of Soul Jazz Records earliest definitive releases: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, a stunning and ground-breaking collection of music, bringing together Latin, Soul, Jazz, Funk and more from the melting pot of New York City in the 1970s. Out-of-print for more than ten years, this new edition has been fully digitally remastered with new tracks. Nu Yorica! is one of Soul Jazz Records most critically acclaimed albums of all time. The album features seminal Latin artists such as Eddie Palmieri, Joe Bataan, Machito, Ocho, Grupo Folklorico, Cortijo, Ricardo Marrero, Cachao and many more. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Soul Jazz Records Presents Nu Yorica! Culture Clash In New York City: Experiments In Latin Music 1970-77 17 videos

Dancing Down the Years

"The bravest thing a dancer can do is grow old. Dancers exist in a world in which youth is overly prized, and in which the window for a body to maintain its flexibility and speed gradually closes — until the day it seems to slam shut. The body’s deterioration is real for everyone, but dancers better than others grasp how imperceptible shifts weaken the greater whole. Growing old is not for the weak, but dancing old is grit incarnate. 'The reason I’ve been able to dance for so long,' Gus Solomons Jr., 79, said, 'is absolute willpower.' Mr. Solomons, Douglas Dunn, Eiko Otake and Brenda Bufalino are the subjects of this exploration of dancers and the aging body. ..."
NY Times (Video)

The Jam - The Gift (1982)

"In an article for Time Out in March 1982, Pete Townshend wrote of his initial encounters with the young Paul Weller. Despite both being of the mod ilk, the pair clashed on the importance of breaking the American market – among other things. The Jam’s frontman, though a fan of early Who, saw the band then as one of the 'establishment rock acts' that punk had burst out against and wasn’t interested in Townshend’s seemingly commercial motivations. ... It was just a few short months after Townshend’s words were published that Weller announced to his bandmates that The Jam were over. Punk was completely dead by 1982. The surviving bands who had risen from the working classes to rebel against stadium rock were now looking at much bigger venues, bigger money, and in Weller’s case, a bigger moral dilemma. The Jam’s energy was still electric, and Weller’s political convictions still seethed, yet he was becoming more and more aware of the contradiction in becoming an ‘over-25’ idol of the dissatisfied youth. ..."
The Quietus - Present And Correct: The Jam's Final Album The Gift Revisited 30 Years On (Video)
W - The Gift
YouTube: The Gift (Full Album)

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

Rabih Abou-Khalil – Between Dusk and Dawn (1987)

Wikipedia - "Rabih Abou-Khalil (Arabic: ربيع أبو خليل‎, born August 17, 1957 in Lebanon)^[1] is an oud player and composer. He is known for fusing traditional Arab music with jazz, European classical music, and other styles. Rabih Abou-Khalil grew up in Beirut and moved to Munich, Germany during the civil war in 1978. He lives part-time in Munich and part-time in the South of France with his wife. ... He has often blended traditional Arab music with jazz, rock and classical music, and has earned praise such as 'a world musician years before the phrase became a label—makes the hot, staccato Middle Eastern flavour and the seamless grooves of jazz mingle as if they were always meant to.' ..."
Wikipedia
Discogs
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Between Dusk and Dawn (Full Album)

Instrumental Instruments: Atari ST

"As the 1980s reached their midpoint, the idea of using computers to make music was gathering momentum. Still, it was far from a mainstream pursuit. Those with access to money and high-end studios could use the pioneering but cumbersome Fairlight CMI, while home enthusiasts with a Commodore 64 had a few very simple 'tracker' style sequencers to choose from. When the computer music revolution finally did arrive in earnest, it was thanks not to a dedicated music-making machine but rather a personal computer: the Atari ST. The story of the computer’s development, and its battle for supremacy with Commodore’s Amiga range, has since become the stuff of legend, with both playing their part in bringing home computing to the masses. At the heart of the Atari ST story is Jack Tramiel, a fearlessly hard-nosed businessman whose life was the embodiment of the American dream. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy
Vintage: Atari 520ST
Jack Tramiel’s Commodore 64, Atari ST in Music, Remembered, as Vision Lives On [Obituary, Gallery] (Video)
[PDF] Music Mouse™ - An Intelligent Instrument - Laurie Spiegel
W - MIDI

2012 January: Dr. T's Music Software

Looking at Sports and Race in America

Jesse Owens crossing finish line in race in large stadium
"Thirty-seven years ago, the baseball player Curt Flood, fresh off his final, dismal year as a professional athlete, published a memoir titled 'The Way It Is.' It cannot be called a great book, but its literary quality was a secondary concern. In the autumn of 1969, Flood had refused to be traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies. He sat out the 1970 season, while he fought a lawsuit that eventually reached the Supreme Court. He lost his case, but it resulted, a few years later, in the creation of free agency.  ... The outlines of Flood’s story—black athlete takes a principled stand and is maligned for his 'ingratitude'—are familiar. The theme connects Flood to Muhammad Ali and, now, to Colin Kaepernick. Most significantly, it gives the lie to a facile mythology about sports transcending the divisions of American society; they have just as often been a barometer of the resistance to social change, even when that change might bring the country more in line with its purported ideals. ..."
New Yorker (Video)

TAPE LOOP DRONECHESTRA (LIVE AMBIENT 4 TRACK TAPE LOOPING)

"The TAPE LOOP DRONECHESTRA is an experiment in live multi layered tape looping. Two auxiliary walkmans with separate tape loop parts are being played and fed into the 4 track through the left and right inputs. Their volume is being controlled by their corresponding slider. The 4 track itself is also playing a tape loop and has parts recorded on to each of its 4 tracks. Those individual loops are being played by their corresponding track knob. Everything is then processed through delay and reverb from the Zoom MS-50G and run straight into garageband."
TAPE LOOP DRONECHESTRA (LIVE AMBIENT 4 TRACK TAPE LOOPING) (Video)

2017 September: Three Decks, Six Minutes, Twelve Layers

100 Images From Cassini’s Mission to Saturn

"NASA’s Cassini spacecraft burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere on Friday, after 20 years in space. Cassini Arrives at Saturn - Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, after a seven-year voyage. It was the first spacecraft to orbit the ringed planet. ... A short video about the end of the Cassini mission."
NY Times (Video)

55 Best Lesser Known Art Museums, Artist Studios, and Art Centers in Northeast USA

Monhegan Island by Richard Moore - Monhegan Museum
"Think 'World Class Art Museums in the Northeast USA' and big city 'majors' come to mind: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to start. Of course, all of these institutions are worthy of note, and are covered extensively by the press. But there are other museums that, though they might take up a fraction of the real estate and square footage (read: less overwhelming), are equally worthy of your time - and just might surprise you. The following small city and smaller town Art Museums, Artists home studios, and Art Centers in the Northeast are often overlooked and shouldn’t be. Add these to the 'Best College Art and History Museums' for a more comprehensive list. Additional information on these and complete itineraries for hundreds of 'Offbeat Northeast' getaways can be found on GetawayMavens.com. ..."
Huffington Post

Loscil - Endless Falls (2010)

"You could reasonably argue that all ambient music seeks in some way to lull its listener into a meditative haze, and some artists pursue this feeling more directly than others. Scott Morgan is one of those guys. Unlike Tim Hecker or Pantha du Prince, who draw from more intricate arrangements, Morgan lays his sounds bare and lets them go right to work. Recording as Loscil since the early 2000s, he's built an impressive catalogue of pensive, minimal records that turn computerized sounds into something strangely soothing-- the kind of music you want to listen to flat on your back, eyes fixed at the ceiling. While each of his records is at least good, it started to feel by 2006's Plume like Morgan had reached a creative plateau. His latest effort, Endless Falls, breathes some new life into the Loscil project. ..."
Pitchfork
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Endless Falls [Full Album]

Terry Riley - Moscow Conservatory Solo Piano Concert (2001)

"The following pieces appear without any editing of the performance. Large sections of these pieces are improvised and I have attempted to preserve the spontaneity of this special evening by presenting my first concert in Moscow exactly as it was played. ARICA is a composition that is based on an earlier work of mine, A RAINBOW IN CURVED AIR and shares some of the 14 beat cycle structure although having very different tonalities and overall approach to improvisation. It alternates the Lydian and Phrygian modes with tonal centers 1/2 step apart. HAVANA MAN dates from the late 1980's although some of the themes I composed as early as 1966 in Sweden. It is intentionally Latin in temperament and contains many themes, which are sometimes reordered in sequence according to spontaneous choices that are made during performance. ..."
Long Arms Records (Audio)
Discogs
YouTube: Moscow Conservatory Solo Piano Concert April 18th, 2000 38:58

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, 2017 September: Terry Riley On Tape Loops