New York, New Music 1980–1986

 
John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards in 1979. Footage of the band is included in a new exhibition tracking the New York music scene from the era.

“During the early 1980s, New York experienced a community-driven musical renaissance. The result was an era of creativity and genre-defying performance that stands as one of the most influential in musical and cultural history. A wide range of music, from punk to pop to hip-hop to salsa to jazz, mixed in a dynamic arts scene that stretched across clubs and bars, theaters, parks, and art spaces. Together, they provided fertile ground for a musical revolution—one that continues to influence pop culture to this day. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of MTV, New York, New Music: 1980–1986 will highlight diverse musical artists—from Run DMC to the Talking Heads, from Madonna to John Zorn—as a lens to explore the broader music and cultural scene, including the innovative media outlets, venues, record labels, fashion and visual arts centered in New York City in these years. ...”

​Plan Ahead for the 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse — and a Visit to Dark Sky Parks

 
“This week Canada, Greenland, and Russia viewed a brief ‘ring of fire’ annular solar eclipse, which brought a crescent Sun to the northeast U.S. Occurring at sunrise in North America, the partial solar eclipse was low on the horizon and therefore difficult to see; meanwhile cross-border eclipse-chasing proved all but impossible. Fortunately, we’ll have another shot soon enough.So when is the next such eclipse? On October 14, 2023, an annular solar eclipse will again be visible from the U.S., this time from a roughly 125-mile-wide path of annularity that passes through Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas before it crosses Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil. Everyone in the Americas will see a partial solar eclipse that will last more than 2.5 hours. Remember: Eclipse glasses and solar filters will have to be used everywhere, and throughout the spectacle. ...”
 

Chicago '82: A Dip in the Lake (1982)

 

 
“Scattershot performances from the 1982 New Music Festival in Chicago, 1982.  This tape was done as a tribute to John Cage's 70th birthday.  Features cool folks like Glenn Branca ensemble (feat. Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo), Charlemagne Palestine, Harold Budd, Meredith Monk, and a long conversation between John Cage and Wim Mertens.  Most, if not all, of this stuff is live, but the liner notes aren't entirely clear. ...”

Glenn Branca -  Navy Pier, Chicago (1982)

​A Beautiful, High-Resolution Map of the Internet (2021)

 
“The beginnings of the Internet were uncharted territory, especially before the days of graphic browsers. You had a number, you dialed up to a location. ... There have been maps that overlay the internet’s main landlines onto the map of the earth—this Vox article shows the spidery web growing from the first four locations of ARPANET until the whole world is connected. But that’s not how we think of it. Surely Open Culture is always where you, dear reader, reside, and this writer’s undisclosed location has nothing to do with it. Maybe the internet is really the space that it takes up in our minds, in our lives, and in the amount of internet traffic. ...”

How America Fractured Into Four Parts

 
“Nations, like individuals, tell stories in order to understand what they are, where they come from, and what they want to be. National narratives, like personal ones, are prone to sentimentality, grievance, pride, shame, self-blindness. There is never just one—they compete and constantly change. The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up best to fact-checking. They’re the ones that address our deepest needs and desires. Americans know by now that democracy depends on a baseline of shared reality—when facts become fungible, we’re lost. But just as no one can live a happy and productive life in nonstop self-criticism, nations require more than facts—they need stories that convey a moral identity. The long gaze in the mirror has to end in self-respect or it will swallow us up. ...”

Cooking with C. L. R. James - Valerie Stivers

 
“The introduction to Mariners, Castaways and Renegades, a 1953 work on Herman Melville by the activist, critic, and novelist C. L. R. James (1901–1989), is electrifying to the Melville lover. It starts with an indelible line: ‘The miracle of Herman Melville is this: that a hundred years ago in two novels, Moby-Dick and Pierre, and two or three stories, he painted a picture of the world in which we live, which is to this day unsurpassed.’ That’s a huge claim, but readers of Moby-Dick know it to be as true today as it was when James’s book was first published. ...”

Patti Smith: Robert Miller Gallery - 1

 
“Patti Smith, represented by Robert Miller Gallery since 1978, began as a visual artist and has been making drawings and taking photographs since the late 1960s. In recent years, her practice has expanded to include installation. She was most recently the subject of Camera Solo, a survey of her photographs organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2011), which travelled to Detroit Institute of Arts (2012) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2013). In 2008, Smith was the subject of Patti Smith Land 250 at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporaine, Paris, and Written Portrait - Patti Smith at Artium Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. ...”
 
‘Transgressive, hypnotic, determinedly true to herself and her art’, Photograph: Robert Mapplethorpe
 
Platform at the 68th Street/Lexington subway station. Gerard Malanga took it in 1971.

UbuWeb: Sound - Patti Smith (Audio)

 
Patti Smith, Cherub, Fountain, San Severino, 2008, black-and-white photograph

​A metalwork dreamscape at a 1929 Gracie Square co-op

 
“Ever since the far eastern end of 84th Street was rebranded Gracie Square in 1929 (after Archibald Gracie, whose summer home is now the mayor’s residence four blocks north), this one-block stretch alongside Carl Schurz Park has (mostly) been lined with tall, elegant apartment houses. These buildings, off East End Avenue overlooking the East River, radiate a stuffy kind of luxury. But something very imaginative makes 7 Gracie Square stands out from its more staid neighbors. It’s the magnificent metalwork on the front doors and window grilles—featuring a bestiary dreamscape of elephants, gazelles, plants, leaves, and curlicue, wave-like motifs that looks like snails or shells. ...”

​Sheets of sound

 
Sheets of sound was a term coined in 1958 by Down Beat magazine jazz critic Ira Gitler to describe the new, unique improvisational style of John Coltrane. Gitler first used the term on the liner notes for Soultrane (1958). Coltrane, a saxophonist, employed extremely dense improvisational yet patterned lines consisting of high speed arpeggios and scale patterns played in rapid succession: hundreds of notes running from the lowest to highest registers. The lines are often faster than sixteenth notes, consisting of quintuplets, septuplets, etc., and can sound like glissandos. Coltrane invented this style while playing with Thelonious Monk and developed it further when he returned to Miles Davis' group. Coltrane used the ‘sheets of sound’ lines to liquidise and loosen the strict chords, modes, and harmonies of Hard Bop, whilst still adhering to them (at this stage in his musical development). ...”

Senate Report Details Security Failures in Jan. 6 Capitol Riot

 
U.S. Capitol Police officers hold off rioters loyal to then-President Trump on Jan. 6.

“Top federal intelligence agencies failed to adequately warn law enforcement officials before the Jan. 6 riot that pro-Trump extremists were threatening violence, including plans to ‘storm the Capitol,’ infiltrate its tunnel system and ‘bring guns,’ according to a new report by two Senate committees that outlines large-scale failures that contributed to the deadly assault.An F.B.I. memo on Jan. 5 warning of people traveling to Washington for ‘war’ at the Capitol never made its way to top law enforcement officials. The Capitol Police failed to widely circulate information its own intelligence unit had collected as early as mid-December about the threat of violence on Jan. 6, including a report that said right-wing extremist groups and supporters of President Donald J. Trump had been posting online and in far-right chat groups about gathering at the Capitol, armed with weapons, to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss. ...”

​Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

 
“I think I speak for many of us when I say that coffee fuels our greatest intellectual efforts. And even as we get the jitters and leave brown rings on our desks, we can take comfort in the fact that so it also went with some of the most notable philosophers in the history of the discipline. ... In the 19th century, Søren Kierkegaard would also get into a coffee ritual. He ‘had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee,’ writes biographer Joakim Garff. ‘Delightedly he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid.’ I always drink it black myself, but who among us dares think ourselves too good for the teeth-aching preferred by the author of Fear and Trembling? ...”

International thief thief

 
Queen Mother Pendant Mask, Iyoba, 16th century, Metropolitan Museum

In 1909, Sir Ralph Denham Rayment Moor, British Consul General of the British Southern Nigerian Protectorate, took his life by ingesting cyanide. Eleven years earlier, following Britain’s ‘punitive’ attack on Benin City’s Royal Court, Moor helped transfer loot taken from Benin City into Queen Victoria’s private collection and to the British Foreign Office. Pilfered materials taken by Moor and many others include the now famous brass reliefs depicting the history of the Benin Kingdom—known collectively as the Benin Bronzes. This is in addition to commemorative brass heads and tableaux; carved ivory tusks; decorative and bodily ornaments; healing, divining, and ceremonial objects; and helmets, altars, spoons, mirrors, and much else. ...”

​Liner Notes for Marcus Fischer’s Monocoastal

 
“The Portland, Oregon–based musician Marcus Fischer invited me to write liner notes for his album Monocoastal on the 10th anniversary of its release by the 12k Records label, run by Taylor Deupree. The reissue, on glorious vinyl for the first time, with a cover image by Gregory Euclide, will be released later this month, on June 18. 1. This Second Hum. There is music that one might hum, and there is another musical hum entirely. The latter is music as hum, music that approaches the quality, the substance, of hum itself — music that both envisions and enacts a deeper hum, something that the listener is not merely entranced by but ensconced within. ...”

​What Happened During the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, One of the Worst Episodes of Racial Violence in U.S. History

 
“In February 1915, Thomas Dixon, author of popular novel The Clansman, and D.W. Griffith, the director who adapted the book into the film Birth of a Nation, lobbied then-president Woodrow Wilson for a screening at the White House. The two were sure their story would get a warm reception from the ‘well documented racist’ and onetime scholar who produced a five-volume History of the American People, in which he portrayed the South as ‘overrun by ex-slaves who were undeserving of freedom,’ as Boston University journalism professor Dick Lehr remarks. ... The moment was pivotal for the birth of the Civil Rights movement, he argues in a recent book. Following the country’s entry into World War I, it also lit the fires of what novelist, composer and executive director of the NAACP James Weldon Johnson called ‘Red Summer’… a summer of lynchings, lootings, burnings, shootings and other violence. ...”

Freddie McKay / Augustus Pablo - I'm A Freeman (1973)

 
“... Never contracted to one label or producer Freddie recorded sparingly over the next few years. His second album, 'Lonely Man', released on Dynamic in 1974 and produced by Warwick Lynn and Neville Hinds featured a further version of 'I'm A Free Man'. Essential seven inch records such as the captivating 'Rock A Bye Woman', first released on Rad Bryan's Hot Rod label, helped to establish his legendary status. Versioned by Horace Andy and Jah Bull as 'Ital Vital' this ever popular record is regularly played out by discerning selectors. Another version of 'I'm A Free Man' for youth producer Leonald 'Santic' Chin (Leonald Chin), and complete with mournful melodica, proved massively popular and provided the rhythm track for one of Augustus Pablo's most memorable early outings 'Hap Ki Do'. Freddie's chilling version to Dennis Brown's monumental 'At The Foot Of The Mountain', produced by Eddie Wong, entitled Won't Get Away' was yet another certified classic from this period. ...”

​15 Essential Italian Neorealism Films You Need To Watch

Obsession (1943)

“In Italy, fascism and cinema had always been in a strange relationship. After millions of deaths, years of war and violence; fascism left only two positive things behind: Venice Film Festival and Cinecitta. Fascism, as a consequence of WWII, left thousands of people homeless in Italy; and of course, filmmakers studioless. Great Italian Studio Cinecitta, established by Benito Mussolini in 1937, was damaged significantly during the battles and bombings. This led the filmmakers to go into streets, to experience live action. ... From humanism to communism, from liberal to socialist, this new generation searched for new ways to tell stories of post-war Italy (even, Europe), to formulate a story by keeping the budget low and to hold Zeitgeist in palms of their hands. ...”

 
Bitter Rice (1949)

​The Impressionist Art of Seeing and Being Seen

 
Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight - Berthe Morisot (1875)

“The still of the seaside, away from the noise and gossip of the city. Lapping waves, gentle breeze. It's a bit overcast, but why complain? We’re on vacation. Impressionist paintings, after decades of auction records and print-on-demand posters, have become the most reliable crowd-pleasers of European art. Pretty light. Happy haystacks. Believe me: In 1875, they were hardly so soothing. They were views of a society rocketing through modernization, and losing its bearings as it accelerated. ...”

Impossible Owls: Essays from the Ends of the World - Brian Phillips

 
“In his highly anticipated debut essay collection, Impossible Owls, Brian Phillips demonstrates why he's one of the most iconoclastic journalists of the digital age, beloved for his ambitious, off-kilter, meticulously reported essays that read like novels. The eight essays assembled here--five from Phillips's Grantland and MTV days, and three new pieces--go beyond simply chronicling some of the modern world's most uncanny, unbelievable, and spectacular oddities (though they do that, too). ...”

Laurie Spiegel - Waveshaper TV. Part 1 of 3: Bell Labs

 
“This is the first in a 3-part video interview series with the seminal electronic & computer music pioneer. In Part 1, Laurie recounts her years working as an in-house composer, developer, and programmer at Bell Labs. Part 1 - Bell Labs (now streaming) = 9min 16sec. Part 2 - Voyager (Jan 28) = 7min 42sec. Part 3 - The Expanding Universe (Feb 04) = 7min 53sec. The full-length Laurie Spiegel interview is over 50 minutes long - it's practically a mini-documentary! - and it will be available exclusively to our Patreon members, who also get early access to all of our interview video Episodes. You can read up on Waveshaper TV on Patreon, and support our mission to document electronic music history. ...”

Habibi Funk: The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr - Jazz, Jazz, Jazz

“... This album happens to be my first conscious connection with Sudanese music. Habibi Funk must have already existed for a year or so but I had not yet come across any recording from Sudan that I felt fitting in the context we set for our self. I remember I did some quick research in the aftermath of the auction (which I obviously did not win) to gather some information about the band but apart from some vague bits and pieces I could not find anything. In most encyclopedic overviews of the Sudanese music scene of the 1970s the band appeared as a mere footnote. ...”

​Gowanus Canal

 

Ratzer Map, Discovery Editions

“The Gowanus Canal (originally known as the Gowanus Creek) is a 1.8-mile-long (2.9 km) canal in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the westernmost portion of Long Island. Once a vital cargo transportation hub, the canal has seen decreasing use since the mid-20th century, parallel with the decline of domestic waterborne shipping. It continues to be used for occasional movement of goods and daily navigation of small boats, tugs and barges. ... The canal arose in the mid-19th century from local tidal wetlands and freshwater streams. By the end of the 19th century, heavy industrial use had caused large amounts of pollutants to drain into the Gowanus Canal. Various attempts to remove the pollution or dilute the canal's water have failed. Even though most industrial tenants stopped using the Gowanus Canal in the middle of the 20th century, the pollution was never remedied. ...”

 
Gennaro Brooks-Church has converted his house into an ecological laboratory.

​Sans-culottes

 
“The sans-culottes (... literally ‘without breeches‘) were the common people of the lower classes in late 18th-century France, a great many of whom became radical and militant partisans of the French Revolution in response to their poor quality of life under the Ancien Régime. The word sans-culotte, which is opposed to that of the aristocrat, seems to have been used for the first time on 28 February 1791 by officer Gauthier in a derogatory sense, speaking about a ‘sans-culottes army’. The word came into vogue during the demonstration of 20 June 1792. The name sans-culottes refers to their clothing, and through that to their lower-class status: culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the 18th-century nobility and bourgeoisie, and the working class sans-culottes wore pantaloons, or trousers, instead. ...”
 
The uprising of the Parisian sans-culottes from 31 May to 2 June 1793. The scene takes place in front of the Deputies Chamber in the Tuileries. The depiction shows Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles and Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud.

Possessed - Laurel Halo (2020)

 
“Laurel Halo presents an album’s worth of score provided for the 2018 experimental documentary Possessed by Dutch design collective Metahaven, produced in collaboration with Rob Schröder and Dutch Mountain Films. Her first foray into writing music for the screen, the album provides a rich variety of sounds, from aqueous, subterranean drones, to plaintive folk pieces for violin and cello, to uncanny pseudoclassical piano mutations. It’s fitting for Laurel Halo to move into the score world. ...”

​Antares

Antares between τ (lower left) and σ Scorpii. Antares appears white in this WISE false colour infrared image.

Antares designated α Scorpii (Latinised to Alpha Scorpii, abbreviated Alpha Sco, α Sco), is on average the fifteenth-brightest star in the night sky, and the brightest object in the constellation of Scorpius. Distinctly reddish when viewed with the naked eye, Antares is a slow irregular variable star that ranges in brightness from apparent magnitude +0.6 to +1.6. Often referred to as ‘the heart of the scorpion’, Antares is flanked by σ Scorpii and τ Scorpii near the center of the constellation. Classified as spectral type M1.5Iab-Ib, Antares is a red supergiant, a large evolved massive star and one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye.  Its exact size remains uncertain, but if placed at the center of the Solar System, it would reach to somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Its mass is calculated to be around 12 times that of the Sun. ...”