Where ‘Block Party’ Has a Score of Meanings

Kahlil Robert Irving, “Street Block: Lost/Found/Chance,” collagraph and collaged found objects, 2017.
"Crushed cans, old playing cards, burned out cigarette butts, a lone, fading and bright red bow — the beauty and detritus of urban life — were culled from the streets by Kahlil Robert Irving, a 26-year-old artist who has mixed found objects into a collagraphic print hanging in a turn-of-the-century Brooklyn limestone that houses the Jenkins Johnson Projects. The work, 'Street Block: Lost/Found/Chance' is a fitting introduction to the gallery’s latest exhibition. Called 'Block Party,' a riff on the New York summertime tradition, the group show features an array of emerging voices including Devin N. Morris, Alex Jackson and Kenturah Davis. What’s refreshingly missing are the images one might expect of a city in seasonal repose. Instead, the exhibition casts its gaze on the grittier, more pressing concerns people in urban communities discuss when they come together: race, gender, immigration, violence and gentrification. ..."
NY Times

Three Tales - Gustave Flaubert (1877)

"I found myself a copy of Flaubert’s 1877 short story collection Three Tales in order to read ‘Herodias’, his piece about the last few days of John the Baptist. I did this because I’m interested in John the Baptist. Accuse me of whatever you like. I’m not ashamed. ‘Herodias’ is the final tale in the book and, being a pedant, I felt obliged to read the two that proceeded it first. These were ‘A Simple Heart’ and ‘The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator’. The opener, and the longest of the three, details the life of a serving woman. ... I enjoyed this slim volume and will almost certainly rectify the shameful situation of my never having read Madame Bovary as soon as possible. Great stuff."
Triumph of the Now
W - Three Tales (Flaubert)
amazon

Ancestor Work In Street Basketball

"I had just attended the 2013 Community Awareness Tournament in Roxbury. It was dark. I walked aimlessly along St. Mary’s Street near Boston University. Painful images of the young boys and men of Roxbury flooded my head. That afternoon Russell had asked me to read Marvin’s 'Let It Be Magic' poem at halftime to the crowd. I couldn’t do it. Grief racked my body. I left the game. Tears rolled down my eyes as the full impact of the interviews and stories of Boston’s black young men hit me. This wasn’t a few suffering individuals — it was a collective injury. Take Marlon, whom I mention in the introduction. He was a long and skinny six-foot-two-inch player from Roxbury, versatile as a Swiss army knife. He shot threes from deep, made defenders fall with his hesitation dribble, and dunked on players off of one leg. A rhythmic beat reverberated through his head and the sound would grip his body during games. ..."
Longreads
Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball

2011 June: American Basketball Association, 2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2012 November: Your Guide to the Brooklyn Nets, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2013 October: Rucker Park, 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 June: Basketball’s Obtuse Triangle, 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 October: Loose Balls - Terry Pluto (2007), 2015 November: The Sounds of Memphis, 2015 December: Welcome to Smarter Basketball, 2015 December: New York, New York: Julius Erving, the Nets-Knicks Feud, and America’s Bicentennial, 2016 January: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (1994), 2016 January: A Long Hardwood Journey, 2016 March: American Hustle - Alexandra Starr, 2016 November: 2016–17 College Basketball, 2017 November: 2017-18 College Basketball, 2017 March: N.C.A.A. Bracket Predictions: Who the Tournament Experts Pick, 2017 June: The Rise and Fall of the High-Top Sneaker, 2018 January: Chaos Is This College Basketball Season’s Only Constant, 2018 February: Heaven is a Playground, 2018 March: The End of March Madness?, 2018 March: The 2018 March Madness Cinderella Guide

"Habibi Funk 003 Mix" by Jannis of Jakarta Records (Mix of Arabic 60s & 70s Vinyl)

“'Earlier this month, I was in North Africa for another digging trip and ended up finding quite some records I didn’t know before or I had no copy of, so I felt it was time for another mix,' says Jakarta Records’ Jannis Stürtz of his June 2015 excursion. He has previously laid down some Arabic heat for those of us who obsess about finding previously unheard tunes. Thus, Jannis drops Habibi Funk 003 Mix, with music from Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon. 'After every mix I make, I feel like, Uhh, getting enough records I like for the next one will be tough,' he continues. 'But every time, I end up getting proven wrong by the rich musical heritage of Arabic musicians that worked on combining local influences with Western musical traditions. Just like Dalton, the Tunisian band we just re-released on our new Habibi Funk label, who are also prominently featured on this mix.' ...”
Wax Poetics (Audio)
Soundcloud (Audio)

The Pan American

"In at least one instance, a book by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano may have saved a life. In 1997, Víctor Quintana—a Mexican congressman and anticorruption activist—was abducted by paid assassins, brutally beaten, and threatened with death. By his account, he survived by distracting his assailants with stories about soccer—quirky and lyrical tales drawn from a history of the game that Galeano had recently published. After listening to the adventures of Pelé and Schiaffino, Maradona and Beckenbauer, the killers decided to let Quintana live. 'You’re a good guy,' one told him. In another case, a book by Galeano proved less propitious. A battered copy of The Open Veins of Latin America, his seminal history of hemispheric exploitation, was found in the knapsack of a guerrilla who was killed fighting El Salvador’s death-squad government. 'The book was mortally wounded,' Galeano later recalled. 'A bullet hole went from the front cover right through the back.' ..."
The Nation
NY Times: 'There Is a Woman Stuck in My Throat'
amazon: The Book of Embraces


2015 April: Eduardo Galeano (3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015), 2017 August: Soccer in Sun and Shadow (1993)

The Strange World Of... Jon Hassell

"Now in his seventh decade of making music, the electronic pioneer Jon Hassell joins us to look back on some of the albums he has made that have shaped the way he performs and thinks about music. Always a visionary, with an interest in the esoteric and the sensual as well as the technical and the cerebral, Hassell is maybe best known for developing the otherworldly musical style known as "Fourth World". The term summed up his very unique way of blending the minimalist techniques he’d studied with African percussion, world music and his own electronically manipulated trumpet playing. Since the 1960s he’s also worked on film scores, immersive meditative installations, Indian ragas and collaborations with the likes of Talking Heads, Björk, Moritz Von Oswald and Carl Craig. ..."
The Quietus (Audio)
world music magazine #5 - 1994
Discogs (Video)

A Free Press Needs You

"In 1787, the year the Constitution was adopted, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to a friend, 'Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.' That’s how he felt before he became president, anyway. Twenty years later, after enduring the oversight of the press from inside the White House, he was less sure of its value. 'Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,' he wrote. 'Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.' ... In 2018, some of the most damaging attacks are coming from government officials. Criticizing the news media — for underplaying or overplaying stories, for getting something wrong — is entirely right. News reporters and editors are human, and make mistakes. Correcting them is core to our job. But insisting that truths you don’t like are 'fake news' is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the 'enemy of the people' is dangerous, period. These attacks on the press are particularly threatening to journalists in nations with a less secure rule of law and to smaller publications in the United States, already buffeted by the industry’s economic crisis. ..."
NY Times

Meet Me at the Fair: In Praise of Film Books

"I’m holding in my hands a novelization of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s masterpiece A Matter of Life and Death. It’s an elegant, slim hardcover, published in 1946. The author credited is Eric Warman. I’m familiar with movie novelizations, of course, but I think of them as having had their heyday in the Sixties and Seventies. In truth, they’ve been around since the days of silent cinema. Either way, it’s fascinating to see one from 1946 — for a title that was extremely hard to see for many years, no less. (Happily, the film is now out on Criterion, and all is right with the world.) I haven’t read this novel, and I don’t plan on buying it, but it does feel good to be able to hold the delicate little thing in my hands. It’s just one of the books on display at the Metrograph’s first annual book fair, being held this Saturday and Sunday at the Lower East Side cinema. The idea of a book fair grew out of the theater’s plans for its own bookstore, which is located on the second floor. ..."
Voice

Bob Dylan - Drifter's Escape / John Wesley Harding (1967)

Wikipedia - "'Drifter's Escape' is a song written by Bob Dylan that he recorded for his 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Columbia Records released it as a single in the US and the UK in 1969 as the B-side to 'I Threw It All Away'. The song was recorded in four takes on October 17, 1967. CBS Records International also issued the song paired with 'John Wesley Harding' in some markets. Dylan wrote 'Drifter's Escape' on a train in New York while traveling to the first session for the John Wesley Harding album. The lyrics provide a Kafka-esque narrative in which an outsider is oppressed by society, but not defeated. The protagonist is put on trial without knowing what the charges against him are. The judge is sympathetic, but powerless. The jury finds the protagonist guilty, but he is saved through divine intervention when the courthouse is struck by lightning. The protagonist is able to escape as his persecutors fall to their knees in prayer. Dylan leaves the orientation of the protagonist and the deus ex machina ambiguous. The protagonist could be a prophet freed by God, or he could be a false prophet freed by the devil. Several commentators have pointed to parallels between the song's story and Dylan's own experiences around the time he wrote the song. The drifter does not understand the charges against him, just as Dylan did not understand the criticism he received for moving from folk music to rock music. ..."
Wikipedia
W - John Wesley Harding (song)
Bob Dylan: Drifter’s Escape, John Wesley Harding
whosampled: Drifter's Escape
DailyMotion: John Wesley Harding

The Last Bookbinders of Cairo

"On a small pedestrian street behind Cairo’s iconic Al Azhar Mosque, the Abdel Zaher binding shop stands out with its elaborate signage. As one makes their way through the alley, they are met with everything that is modern day Cairo: centuries-old structures are juxtaposed with a modern day market selling fruits, vegetables and ‘Made in China’ goods. Closer to the shop, the products on sale transform to paperback books, and established shops with wooden fronts begin to appear. Abdel Zaher's shop has a modern full-glass front, with the shop's name elegantly engraved. The shop boasts two parallel stacks of handmade paper-based products: notebooks, photoalbums, sketchbooks, calendars and paper boxes and file holders. The designs vary, from leather-bound pieces to cloth and marble paper hardcovers of different shapes and sizes. The two other rooms in the shop host a workshop space full of materials and metal engravers, and a regular touristic bookshop selling novels, academic and coffee-table books. ..."
Atharna

Introductory Loop-Making

"Another little weekend project straight out of any Electronic Music 101 textbook: make a tape loop with an old cassette. I’d never done this before. The cassette tape is from an old batch of unused 90-minute Maxells I have on hand. The loop was recorded on a Panasonic Standard Cassette Transcriber RR-830, a relic of when I’d record interviews on physical cassette and then transcribe from those cassettes. That Panasonic device has a foot pedal, which used to make the start/stop process of transcription a tiny bit more bearable, especially because it can micro-rewind an adjustable amount with each pause. ... And if you want to try it out, the tape-oriented musician who goes by the name Amulets has a helpful video on YouTube. There’s also a good tutorial at instructables.com."
Disquiet (Video)

2018 April: Slow Awakening - r beny, 2018 February: why tapes matter, 2017 September: Terry Riley On Tape Loops, 2017 October: Blank Tape: Electronic Cassette Culture

Eddie & Ernie - Lost Friends

"Eddie & Ernie's discography is quite a diaspora, spanning about a decade, 15 singles, almost as many labels, and some releases under names other than Eddie & Ernie. This CD does an admirable job of pulling together 24 tracks (seven of them previously unissued) from their disperse output, forming a good though not great collection of punchy period soul with good harmonizing. It doesn't matter a great deal, but a few of the cuts weren't billed to Eddie & Ernie: there's a 1963 Eddie & Ernie single, both sides of a 1967 single by Ernie Johnson, one side of a 1967 45 by Eddie Campbell, a 1964 side they did under the name the New Bloods, a previously unreleased early-'70s number by their early-'70s group Phoenix Express, and a 1962 single by Little Worley and the Drops on which the pair sang backup. Unsurprisingly, the stylistic range is wide enough that it's difficult to summarize. Eddie & Ernie sang deep soul-styled songs that might appeal to fans of Sam & Dave, but they also did some lusher, poppier close-harmonized duos that wouldn't have been alien to the studios of Detroit, Chicago, or Philadelphia. ..."
allmusic
Holland Tunnel Dive
amazon
YouTube: Bullets Don't Have Eyes, I'm a Young Man, I'm Going for Myself, Lost Friends, We try harder, Outcast

Escaping Wars and Waves - Olivier Kugler

"While on assignment between 2013 and 2017, often for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Olivier Kugler interviewed and photographed Syrian refugees and their caregivers in camps, on the road, and in provisional housing in Iraqi Kurdistan, Greece, France, Switzerland, and England. Escaping Wars and Waves is the astonishing result of that record keeping—a graphic novel that brings to life the improvised living conditions of the refugees, along with the stories of how they survived. Kugler captures the chaotic energy of the camps through movement-filled drawings, based on the photos he took in the field, that depict figures, locations, and seemingly random details that take on their own resonance. He also gives precedence to the voices of the refugees themselves by incorporating excerpts from his many interviews and portraits sketched from thousands of reference photos. What emerges is a complicated and intense narrative of loss, sadness, fear, and hope and an indelible impression of the refugees as individual humans with their own stories, rather than a faceless mass. Escaping War and Waves is an unnervingly close and poignant look at the lives of those affected by the Syrian war and the doctors and volunteers who tend to them."
PSU Press
Forbidden Planet
Bookanista
amazon

Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music - David Stubbs

"On 2 August we will publish Mars by 1980, an exhaustive history of electronic music from David Stubbs, the acclaimed author of Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany. Electronic music is now ubiquitous, from mainstream pop hits to the furthest reaches of the avant-garde. The future, a long time coming, finally arrived. But how did we get here? In Mars by 1980, David Stubbs charts the evolution of electronic music. It is a tale of mavericks and future dreamers overcoming Luddite resistance, malfunctioning devices and sonic mayhem. Its beginnings are in the world of avant-classical composition, but the book also encompasses the cosmic funk of Stevie Wonder, Giorgio Moroder and unforgettable eighties electronic pop from the likes of Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys and Laurie Anderson, right up to the present day innovators on the underground scene. ..."
Faber Social (Video)
amazon

The 52 Places Traveler: The Trickiness of Being a Woman in Tangier

"'Siéntase, siéntase' — sit down, sit down, she said, patting the seat next to her. I had already noticed her in the terminal of the 11 p.m. ferry we were taking from Tarifa on the southern tip of Spain to Tangier on Morocco’s northern coast. Among all the young, cosmopolitan Spanish tourists in their linen palazzo pants, she stood out. She was wearing a traditional black head scarf and a black embroidered tunic, and looked to be about 40 years older than the next-oldest person there, who might have been 40-year-old me. Her name was Mina, she said in Spanish. When I asked how to spell it, she gave me her passport, because she can’t read or write. The only words not in Arabic were her last name, M’rabet, and her birth year: 1939. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: 52 Places to Go in 2018 list

The apartment rooftop that hosted Henri Matisse

"French Modernist painter Henri Matisse has many of his still lifes, figures, and landscapes on display in New York’s most distinguished museums. But there’s only one place in Manhattan where a little-known framed photo of Matisse is always on display, with the Depression-era city skyline behind him. You can see it yourself if the doorman decides to give you a peek. The black and white photo, from 1930, is in the small lobby of 10 Mitchell Place, a charming 13-story prewar apartment house built in 1928 that was originally called Stewart Hall. Never heard of Mitchell Place? It’s a secret sliver of a street running from First Avenue to Beekman Place in a quiet neighborhood of old world charm—perfect for an artist more accustomed to Nice than New York. ..."
Ephemeral New York
NY Times: A Walk Through the Gallery
[PDF] Matisse in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art - MoMA

99 Records

"The nondescript exterior doesn’t show it but musical history was made at 99 MacDougal Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. The address currently houses a couple Indian fast-food joints, one specializing in a sort of Punjabi burrito, but three decades ago a different kind of cultural fusion was being cooked up. Downstairs, in what is now another faceless Village comedy club, was the headquarters of 99 Records, a record-store-turned-record-label vital to the evolution of New York dance music, post-punk and hip hop. Despite only 15 releases in less than five years of existence, 99 was among the most influential independent labels of its era, and that influence still reverberates today. ... The label’s sound was both distinct and diverse, touching on post-punk, disco, dub reggae and even avant-classical, highlighted by the exhilarating experiments in dissonance, repetition and volume of guitarist/composer Glenn Branca; the mesmerizing minimalist art-funk of ESG; and the percolating, polyrhythmic grooves of Liquid Liquid. ..."
The 99 Records Story (Video)
W - 99 Records
Gallery: A visual history of 99 records
Something Like A Phenomenon: The complete 99 Records story (Video)
Discogs

V.S. Naipaul, Who Explored Colonialism Through Unsparing Books, Dies at 85

The author V. S. Naipaul in 1991. He was compared to Conrad, Dickens and Tolstoy, but was also a lightning rod for criticism.
"V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel laureate who documented the migrations of peoples, the unraveling of the British Empire, the ironies of exile and the clash between belief and unbelief in more than a dozen unsparing novels and as many works of nonfiction, died on Saturday at his home in London. He was 85. ... Compared in his lifetime to Conrad, Dickens and Tolstoy, he was also a lightning rod for criticism, particularly by those who read his portrayals of third-world disarray as apologies for colonialism. Yet Mr. Naipaul exempted neither colonizer nor colonized from his scrutiny. He wrote of the arrogance and self-aggrandizement of the colonizers, yet exposed the self-deception and ethical ambiguities of the liberation movements that swept across Africa and the Caribbean in their wake. He brought to his work moral urgency and a novelist’s attentiveness to individual lives and triumphs. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: V.S. Naipaul, a Writer of Many Contradictions and Obvious Greatness
Jacobin: V. S. Naipaul and the American Right
Wikipedia
W - A House for Mr Biswas, W - The Mimic Men, W - A Flag on the Island, W - In a Free State, W - Guerrillas, W - A Bend in the River
Guardian: V. S. Naipaul
amazon

Young, Latin & Black

Baseball on the beach in the Dominican Republic.
"The 'trap' strain of American hip hop, out of the Black American South, is at the moment the most popular rhythm in the world. I know that statement seems hyperbolic, but if you think back to the previous contenders for that title—New York’s strain of hip hop, techno, reggae, disco, jazz—its not hard to look around and see that trap’s rhythm and sonic aesthetics make up a musical cell that currently holds a singular place at the top of Black Atlantic musical food chain. (The globalized version of dancehall being carried around the world by anglophone West Africans is probably the closest contender, and may eclipse trap by the end of this year.) Because of its popularity, trap and its surrounding culture have also become the signifier for that quintessential African American cultural element called 'coolness' that so many young people around our hyperconnected world desire. ..."
Africa is a Country (Video/Audio)

Hedge Walking: The Land Art Of Andy Goldsworthy

"Sometimes when walking in nature something uncanny may reveal itself. A group of trees might momentarily form a straight line from a particular angle as you walk past, a shaft of light may find passage through a valley cut to hit a single pool of water, stones may emerge from the ground that appear to be some planned passage or pavement. We are creatures of pattern, and we look for such suggestions of structure and order in the apparent chaos and clutter of the natural world around us. But sometimes, just sometimes, that hint of order is actually man-made, because where you’re walking may have previously been visited by British land artist Andy Goldsworthy, subject of a new documentary by Thomas Riedelsheimer. ..."
The Quietus
Guardian - Branching out: why artist Andy Goldsworthy is leaving his comfort zone
5 Lessons Creatives Can Learn from Andy Goldsworthy
Leaning Into The Wind: Andy Goldsworthy (Video)
If Andy Goldsworthy Climbs a Tree and There's No One There to Hear Him... (Video)
amazon

2007 November: Andy Goldsworthy: Roof, 2012 March: Rivers and Tides, 2012 June: Andy Goldsworthy 1987 Grizedale, 2017 September: Rivers and Tides: Working With Time - Fred Frith (2001)

The Wailing Souls - Wailing Souls / Soul & Power

"Wailing Souls (CD): This neglected classic from 1974 gets a timely reissue in both CD and vinyl formats. The original vinyl release is quite difficult to find and something of a collectors' item so this will be welcomed by more than a few Studio One aficionados. The CD is supplemented with two bonus tracks, Things & Time and Without You, and includes extended versions of Back Out With It and Row Fisherman; whereas the vinyl reissue comes without the two bonus tracks but with extended versions of Back Out With It, Real Rock and Got To Be Cool. It is unusual (even for Studio One) that the two formats should be so different. But, whether your preference is for vinyl or CD, you won't be disappointed. The Wailing Souls were early stars of Coxonne Dodd’s legendary ‘Studio One’ record label, originally recording under ‘The Renegades’ and releasing a set of highly sought after 7”s. Studio One is widely considered to be the Motown of Jamaica, led by visionary producer Lloyd ‘Coxonne’ Dodd with his house band ‘Sound Dimension’ housing, at different points, some of the greatest musicians ever to grace the island. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs - The Wailing Souls, Discogs - Soul Power
YouTube: Pack up, Got To Be Cool, All alone, Trouble Maker, EQUALITY

William Corbett (October 11, 1942 – August 10, 2018)

Wikipedia - "William Corbett (October 11, 1942 – August 10, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, editor, educator, and publisher. Corbett's work and public readings acknowledge the influence on him of jazz, modernist and imagist poetry (especially William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound in his later work), the group of poets in Donald Allen's seminal anthology The New American Poetry 1945–1960, many of them from the Black Mountain College community (most notably Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, his friends Robert Creeley and John Wieners, and his mentor, Charles Olson), classical Chinese poets (mainly Li Po), and French poetry of the mid-19th to early 20th centuries (especially Guillaume Apollinaire). ..."
Wikipedia
Jacket Magazine - William Corbett: On West Broadway
Jacket Magazine - William Corbett - Ric Caddel
Jacket2: A few words on James Schuyler - William Corbett
amazon: William Corbett

Where Fans of Rare Retro Soul Get Their Groove on

Every Wednesday at Botanica, Matt Weingarden, center, the host of “Downtown Soulville,” a radio show on WFMU, plays music from his personal collection of 45s.
"Matt Weingarden was running late. Clutching a box of records, he asked the couple in the window seat at the candlelit bar to relocate. He bussed a pint glass from their table, set up two turntables and a mixer, and set his records up on the windowsill. Switches were flipped. Knobs were turned. A green light blinked on. Finally, he put the needle down. 'I’m Drunk and Real High (In the Spirit of God),' a single by the little-known crooner Ada Richards, poured lo-fi, up-tempo beats into the room. About 15 people milled about. Some snapped fingers. Some clapped hands. A group started dancing. Every Wednesday for the last 23 years, at around 9:30 p.m., whether there’s a blizzard or a heat wave, Mr. Weingarden, a.k.a. D.J. Mr. Fine Wine, shows up at Botanica, an unassuming bar on East Houston Street with a music-rich past. Here he plays obscure vinyl, mostly soul, from the 1960s and ’70s. He plays seven-inch singles exclusively. ..."
NY Times (Video)
WFMU - Downtown Soulville with Mr. Fine Wine: Playlists and Archives (Video)

D.J. Mr. Fine Wine, a.k.a. Matt Weingarden, travels with a box and two bags of records on the subway to East Houston Street in Manhattan for his gig at Botanica.

Jazz Jams With Harvey Pekar

"For most of his adult life, Harvey Pekar held a day job filing medical records at Cleveland Veterans Administration Hospital. Perhaps the attention to detail in that endeavor helped him with his more famous vocation, as the creator and writer of American Splendor comic books. When he was sixteen, Pekar began collecting jazz records, saying, 'I loved jazz and listened to it closely and analytically.' When he started writing his comics, he had such graphic masters as Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, and Alison Bechdel illustrate his workaday tales of life in Cleveland. In 1995, he teamed with Joe Sacco, an artist known for his comics journalism (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde), to collaborate on an illustrated reminiscence with the jazz guitarist Bill DeArango, who, like Pekar, was a Cleveland native. ..."
Voice

Let Us Now Praise the Radical Women of New York

"It has been six weeks since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley in the Democratic Primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District. Ever since, the nation’s thinkpiece writers have been working overtime, spilling untold barrels of ink in the pursuit of explicating, denigrating, or emblematizing her. Just this week, a piece at CNN seemed to lay blame at her feet alone for the failure of several progressive candidates in Tuesday’s special and legislative elections. The extraordinary focus on a neophyte nominee is in part due to the unusual circumstance of an incumbent being dislodged at all in America’s top-heavy system, much less by a very young woman of color. But critics keep returning to just one way in which Ocasio-Cortez has distinguished herself from the multitude of Democratic candidates this cycle: She identifies as a socialist. ..."
Voice

Catch the Perseid Meteor Shower at Its Peak

The Perseid meteors appear to stream away from the shower's radiant point near the border of Perseus and Cassiopeia.
"'Stars fell like weaving in the south, unceasingly through the night.' So a city gazetteer printed in Shanxi, China, described the sky above Fenyang on August 10, 1862. Calculating backward, scholars have determined that the 'weaving stars' witnessed by the townspeople were in fact Perseid meteors, falling at a time when the shower’s radiant, the point from which the meteors appear to emanate, lay low in the sky. The Perseids are associated with the short-period Halley-type comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which was independently discovered by American astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle as it approached perihelion in July 1862. When Earth crosses Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, bits of dust and rocks left behind by the comet hit the planet’s atmosphere, creating the light show we know as the Perseid meteor shower. In years when Swift-Tuttle reaches perihelion, the number of visible meteors significantly increases, which explains the dramatic display of August 1862. Since the comet has a 133-year orbital period and last visited the inner solar system in 1992, we’ve got another 107 years to go before that possibility arises again. ..."
Sky & Telescope
10 Things: How to Photograph a Meteor Shower (Video)

This composite image is made of several exposures shot at Sunset Crater, Arizona, over nearly 2 hours on the morning of August 12, 2016. The image shows 48 Perseids — including two spectacular fireballs — and 5 sporadics (meteors not associated with the Perseids, identified by the trails not in alignment with the majority).

#2 Acid Arab • DJ Set • Le Mellotron

"Acid Arab is a French duo on a mission to combine what they call 'Eastern music' with acid house and techno. It’s a tricky task. How do you take sounds and ideas with such a vast (and vague) set of signifiers and make it anything more than a gimmick? Inspired by a trip to Tunisia, Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho set out to do just that, and they’ve brought some of their friends along for the ride. The duo’s 'Theme' is probably the best thing on the EP, and, thankfully, it isn’t just Arabic melodies pasted onto acid house. The duo sends a wafting melody through a sieve of percolating hand percussion, with the acid manifesting in satisfying bursts of harsh resonance. Crackboy tries his hand at attacking the source material directly with a remix of Omar Souleyman’s 'Shift Al Mani.' His attempt is wildly unhinged, as the hammering drums struggle to contain the original’s monophonic fury. Boys In The Oud—a collective that includes Versatile boss DJ Glib’R—get dubby on 'Cosmique Arabe.' Like a journey through some trippy Shangri-La, the group places melodies and furiously plucked guitar on a foundation that leans towards disco house. With 'Le Bon Vieux Temps,' French dance magnate I:Cube is the only one who takes the predictable route. Essentially boilerplate acid house saddled with Middle Eastern motifs, it’s serviceable but feels like the simplistic pastiche that everyone else managed to avoid."
Acid Arab & Banda Panda at KC Grad (Video)
Mixcloud (Audio)
Soundcloud (Audio)

2018 July: #1 - Le Mellotron: Mehmet Aslan • DJ Set

Van Gogh’s Art Now Adorns Vans Shoes

"While museums remain free for the most part in Europe and still so popular that they are loved better than luxury brands (according to this one article), funding is not what it used to be. As you might have seen with our posts on Hieronymus Bosch on (Dr. Marten’s) Boots, wearable classic art is kind of a thing now. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced a series of limited-edition Vans (Van Gogh, Vans shoes, get it?!) featuring patterns based on his paintings: 'Skull' (1887), 'Almond Blossom' (1890), 'Sunflowers' (1889) and van Gogh's 'Self-Portrait as a Painter' (1887-1888). There’s even a shoe that uses writing from one of his letters, including stamp and address, as a pattern. ..."
Open Culture

August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special

Jasmine Hughes and Terry Bellamy in "Jitney" at Penumbra Theater in costumes by Mathew LeFebvre
"MN Original celebrates the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and his impact in our community through the years he spent in St. Paul. This special includes a rare interview with August Wilson from 1997 program Literature and Life: The Givens Collection, profiles featuring director Marion McClinton and Penumbra Theatres Artistic Director Lou Bellamy and perspective from Star Tribune theater reporter Rohan Preston."
Twin Cities Public Television
Q&A: Penumbra Costume Designer Mathew LeFebvre on Costuming the Plays of August Wilson
YouTube: August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special

"Youngblood" from Jitney by Mathew LeFebvre

2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992), 2018 July: Pittsburgh Cycle

Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick (1975)

Wikipedia - "Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period drama film by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. It stars Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Hardy Krüger. The film recounts the early exploits and later unraveling of a fictional 18th-century Irish rogue and opportunist who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position. The wry and doleful unreliable narrator Michael Hordern occasionally voice-overs the story. The film's cinematography has been described as ground-breaking. Especially notable are the long double shots, usually ended with a slow backwards zoom, the scenes shot entirely in candlelight, and the settings based on William Hogarth paintings. The exteriors were filmed on location in Ireland, England and Germany, with the interiors filmed mainly in Kubrick's adopted home city of London. The production was troubled; there were logistical, political (Kubrick feared that he might be an IRA hostage target), and weather-related problems, while the relationship between Kubrick and O'Neal was especially fraught and difficult. O'Neal's performance and perceived lack of on-screen depth and ability to portray a character arc have been repeatedly criticised, even by those who consider the film as one of the director's major successes. ..."
Wikipedia
All hail Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon,’ a masterclass in bringing a unique filmmaker’s vision to life (Video)
Roger Ebert
Guardian - Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon: ‘It puts a spell on people’ (Video)
YouTube: Barry Lyndon (New Trailer 2016), Recital Scene, Barry Lyndon and Art | BFI, Barry Lyndon and Literature | BFI

2008 August: Stanley Kubrick, 2010 September: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2011 February: A Stanley Kubrick Odyssey - A Tribute, 2011 April: Killer's Kiss (1955), 2011 December: Chicago (1949), 2012 October: Dr. Strangelove (1965), 2013 April: Stanley Kubrick - LACMA, 2018 June: Through A Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs (2018)

In Colour: Polychrome Sculpture in France 1850-1910

Henri Lombard, sculptor and Jules Cantini, marble worker. Helena
"Relatively unknown, 19th century polychrome sculpture is one of the key facets of the history of the discipline. Until the beginning of this century, the only colours permitted in statuary were the white of marble and the monochrome patina of bronzes. But the discovery of the use of polychromy in ancient architecture and sculpture changed people’s perspective, as well as generating heated debate. The question of applying colour to contemporary sculpture superseded archaeological debates, and pioneering sculptors like Charles Cordier began to specialise in this technique from the 1850s. Once the controversy had died down, colour began to establish its legitimacy of the Second Empire thanks to its decorative character, prevailing under the influence of Symbolism and Art Nouveau as of the 1880s. ..."
Musée d'Orsay

Paul Gauguin - Be mysterious

What You Need To Know About Democratic Socialism

"In the month since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking primary victory in New York’s 14th Congressional District, the term 'democratic socialism' is everywhere. While Stephen Colbert declares that God’s a socialist on late-night television, Bret Stephens warns from the New York Times that democratic socialism is 'Dem doom.' In the same publication, Michelle Goldberg insists that the 'Millennial socialists are coming,' and that centrism won’t win, while on The View, Meghan McCain screams that she doesn’t want socialism to become 'normalized,' shouting Margaret Thatcher quotes at Joy Behar. Media spectacle aside, there are many questions floating around. What’s going on with these socialists in the Democratic Party? How is socialism different from capitalism? And just what do democratic socialists actually believe? ..."
In These Times
The Atlantic: The Progressives’ Plan to Win in 2018
New Yorker: How the Democratic Socialists of America Learned to Love Cynthia Nixon and Electoral Politics

Ten newly found recordings of poems performed by Ashbery

"Thanks to Anna Zalokostas, we at PennSound have just now located recordings of ten of John Ashbery’s poems. They had been preserved in a Segue Series audio tape, dating from a 1978 reading Ashbery did with Michael Lally at the Ear Inn. We had left the Ashbery portion of this reading not quite identified, and have now corrected that oversight. On Ashbery’s PennSound page now, and on the Segue series page, you will now see — and can hear — these segments. ..."
Jacket2

Black Classical History Of Spiritual Jazz 1955-2012

“There’s been a slow but steady resurgence in the interest of the deep spiritual jazz sound of the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more record labels strive to find and reissue obscure private press and long out of print works to meet the insatiable tastes of record collectors and modern-day music historians. Labels like London’s Jazzman Records and Universal Sound imprints, the Parisian Heavenly Sweetness, and Porter Records based out of Wisconsin, USA have all recently put out compilations or completely remastered releases of long-lost (or highly sought after) records that remain relevant in a genre that often is deemed to have lost its way. ... Luckily, however, we have the man Black Classical on hand to shine a little light into that chest with this mammoth 12 hour selection of spiritual jazz music, curated from his collection and featuring an absolutely astounding number of artists and tracks from this most in-demand of sub-genres. …”
the jazz meet
Archive: Spiritual Jazz 1955 - 2012 (Video)
NTS: Black Classical charts the history of spiritual jazz through a 12 hour mega-mix. (Video)
Open Culture - The History of Spiritual Jazz: Hear a Transcendent 12-Hour Mix Featuring John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock & More (Mixcloud)

The Strange - Jérôme Ruillier

"Jérôme Ruillier’s latest graphic novel, The Strange, his first translated into English, opens cinematically with a masterfully compressed pre-title sequence. The story begins in medias res, with a bird’s-eye view of a townscape rendered in thick lines and set against a dense red background. When the nameless central character speaks, his language of unfamiliar symbols is translated for the reader. We had decided to leave, he says. After paying a local fixer a large sum to supply him with a fake passport and tourist visa, he rushes to board a plane to an unspecified country in search of 'a better life' for him and his family. In this moment of airborne transition, what little we do know of him recedes, and we hit the book’s title card, which marks his new identity: This undocumented individual is a 'strange.' ...”
The Atlantic: The Graphic Novel That Captures the Anxieties of Being Undocumented
Drawn & Quarterly
Guardian
amazon

Wide Awake: Song of Summer

"... For Nixon, the summer of 1974 was an ending. For me, a beginning. It was a heady time for music, a summer when new genres were just taking form and competing for national attention. In the cities, disco was rearing its head for the first time, at the same moment the Ramones were making their CBGB debut. ... Classic rock, folk, disco, and punk were all facing endings and beginnings that summer. ... The song that was everywhere in the summer of 1989 had no such rheumy-eyed notions of the past. 'Fight the Power' by Public Enemy was as angry, sweaty, and claustrophobic as the Spike Lee movie (Do the Right Thing) that made it famous. ..."
Voice (Video)