Hôtel Lutetia

“The Hôtel Lutetia (French pronunciation: [otɛl lytesja]), branded since 2025 as the Mandarin Oriental Lutetia, Paris, located on Boulevard Raspail, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is one of the best-known hotels on the Rive Gauche. Opened in 1910, it is noted for its architecture and historical role during the German occupation of France in World War II. The Lutetia was built in 1910 in the Art Nouveau style to designs by architects Louis-Charles Boileau and Henri Tauzin. It was established by Boucicaut family,^[1] owners of the Bon Marché department store, which sits opposite it facing Square Boucicaut. The Lutetia is located at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and rue de Sèvres, adjacent to Sèvres-Babylone metro station. The hotel is named for an early pre-Roman town that existed where Paris is now located. Famous guests over the years have included Pablo Picasso, Charles de Gaulle, Marianne Oswald, André Gide, Peggy Guggenheim,Fritz J. Raddatz and Josephine Baker. James Joyce stayed at the hotel in January-February 1940, and it was his final Paris address. Dawn Powell lived at the Lutetia for three months in the fall of 1950, during her only visit to Europe. In the late 1930s, the Lutetia was a frequent gathering place for anti-Nazi German exiles, among them Heinrich Mann, Willi Mutzner and the young Willy Brandt. In the Nazi regime’s propaganda of the time, these exiles were disparagingly called ‘The Lutetia Crowd’. The war began in September 1939, and numerous refugees fled to Paris from conflict areas and places occupied by German forces. The Lutetia attempted to accommodate as many as possible. Because of its reputation, it was filled with a number of displaced artists and musicians. However, the French government evacuated Paris beginning June 14, 1940 and the Germans entered and occupied the city. A number of the Lutetia’s residents escaped; others were captured by the Germans. The hotel itself was requisitioned by the Abwehr (counter-espionage), and used to house, feed, and entertain German officers such as Alfred Toepfer and the French collaborator Rudy de Mérode. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the hotel was abandoned by German troops and taken over by French and American forces. From then until after the end of the war, it was used as a repatriation center for prisoners of war, displaced persons, and returnees from German concentration camps. …”
W – Hôtel Lutetia
YouTube: Hotel Lutetia, the only palace on the Left Bank in Paris.

I’m Waiting for the Man – The Velvet Underground Live 1969

“Audio taken from October 19, 1969, End of Cole Ave. club, Dallas. Picture taken from October 15, 1969, Dallas Peace Moratorium. For such a groundbreaking band, the Velvet Underground has little footage of them performing live. That was why in 2019 is was extremely exciting to see Texas film archives uncover three films of the Velvet Underground performing at the Dallas Peace Moratorium on October 15th, 1969. These films where: a short 16mm documentary of the event with some audio and picture of the Velvets performing (and Sterling Morrison being interviewed), a silent 16mm B-roll of outtakes from this doc, and a silent 8mm home movie shot from the audience. I was curious, would it be possible to take all of this footage and try to sync it to a live recording for an approximation of what it would’ve been like to see the Velvet Underground perform live? Luckily only a few days after the event on October 19th, a fan would make one of the best live recordings of the Velvet Underground at the End of Cole Ave. club in Dallas. So now the hard part was, which song has the most footage them playing? From the doc there were sync sound snippets of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, ‘Beginning to See the Light’, and ‘I’m Set Free’. To figure out the silent footage, I had to do a lot of lip reading. And as luck would have it, most of the other silent footage was also of ‘Waiting for the Man’. With another stroke of luck, it appears like they performed ‘Waiting for the Man’ almost identically across the two shows. So with a little bit of fudging, I tried to get ‘Beginning to See the Light’, ‘I’m Set Free’, and all the other footage synced up to the best of my ability. It’s not perfect, but I’m very happy with the results. A big thanks to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, and the G. William Jones Film & Video Collection at SMU for posting such incredible footage!”
YouTube

Dirty Water · The Standells, The Who – Magic Bus, etc.

“‘Dirty Water’ is a song by the American rock band the Standells, written by their producer Ed Cobb. Recorded and released in 1965, the song is a mock paean to the city of Boston, Massachusetts, and its then-famously polluted Boston Harbor and Charles River. According to Standells keyboardist Larry Tamblyn, at least some of the song (notably the reference to ‘lovers, muggers, and thieves’) was inspired by a mugging of producer Ed Cobb in Boston. In addition to the Charles River, other local interest items in the song include the Boston University women’s curfew—’Frustrated women … have to be in by 12 o’clock’—and a passing mention of the Boston Strangler—’have you heard about the Strangler? (I’m the man I’m the man).’  The well-known guitar riff that opens the song was recorded with a Fender Telecasterthrough a Vox AC30 amplifier by Standells guitarist Tony Valentino. …” W – “Dirty_Water”
Dirty Water · The Standells
Tell Her No – The Zombies
Blues Magoos – We Ain t Got Nothin Yet
Canned Heat Woodstock Boogie
Ten Years After- I’m Going Home
The Doors – Road House Blues (Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970)
The (Young) Rascals – Groovin’
The Grass Roots – Midnight Confession
Cream’s Epic Farewell: “Sunshine of Your Love” Live in 1968
The Who – Magic Bus – Live At Leeds HQ
“‘Magic Bus’ is a song recorded by the English rock band the Who. It was written by their guitarist Pete Townshend during the time that their debut album My Generationwas being recorded in 1965.  … The arrangement for ‘Magic Bus’ uses a Latin percussion instrument called claves, which is a pair of small wooden sticks that make a distinctive high pitched sound when struck together. The Who used this instrument on the song ‘Disguises‘, which was recorded in 1966. The song makes use of the Bo Diddley beat. …”
W – “Magic Bus”

Artforum

“Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, the Artforum logo is a bold and condensed iteration of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, a feat for an American publication to have considering how challenging it was to obtain fonts favored by the Swiss school via local European foundries in the 1960s. Artforum is published by Artforum Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Media Corporation. John P. Irwin Jr. named the magazine after the ancient Roman word forum hoping to capture the similarity of the Roman marketplace to the art world’s lively engagement with public debate and commercial exchange. The magazine features in-depth articles and reviews of contemporary art, as well as book reviews, columns on cinema and popular culture, personal essays, commissioned artworks and essays, and numerous full-page advertisements from prominent galleries around the world. …”
Wikipedia

Bruised by War-Related Boycott, Artforum Seeks a Reset
“A skeleton crew of editors needed to take a hacksaw through the December issue of Artforum magazine. There were only a few weeks between the sudden firing of its editor in chief and a print deadline for the glossy’s annual ‘Year in Review’ issue. The fallout had been swift when Artforum’s owner fired the editor, David Velasco, after the magazine published an open letter about the Israel-Hamas war that supported Palestinian liberation and initially omitted mention of the victims of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. At least six members of the editorial team resigned and nearly 600 writers signed letters boycotting the magazine and its sister publications like ARTnews and Art in America. Regular contributors like the critic Jennifer Krasinski and the art historian Claire Bishop requested to have their articles pulled from the December issue. Others such as the filmmaker John Waters, the curator Meg Onli and the artist Gordon Hall also withdrew their writing. The ‘Year in Review’ issue that has begun arriving to subscribers is a week later than usual and noticeably slimmer. At 150 pages of articles and advertisements, it is about a third smaller than last December’s 224-page issue. …”
NY Times (2023)
The Resounding Influence of John Coplans’s Artforum
YouTube: Artforum

Soul Survivors – “Expressway to Your Heart” (1967)

“The Soul Survivors are an American, Philadelphia-based, soul and R&B group, founded by New York natives Richie and Charlie Ingui along with Kenny Jeremiah. The Soul Survivors are known for their 1967 hit single ‘Expressway to Your Heart‘, which was the first hit by Philadelphia soul record producers and songwriters Kenny Gambleand Leon Huff. The Soul Survivors first played together in New York under the name The Dedications, founded by Kenny Jeremiah, who released several singles under this name in 1962 and 1964. They adopted the name Soul Survivors in 1965. They signed to Philadelphia labelCrimson Records, who put them in touch with Gamble & Huff. ‘Expressway to Your Heart‘ was a #1 hit regionally in Philadelphia and New York in the fall of 1967, and the tune reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 nationally. ‘Expressway to Your Heart’ spent 15 weeks in the charts and sold over one million copies.  The follow-up was ‘Explosion in Your Soul’, which was not as successful (U.S. #33); a third release, ‘Impossible Mission’, also was a minor hit in 1969 (U.S. #68). They quit playing for a few years, but re-formed with a different lineup in 1972. They had one more hit, ‘City of Brotherly Love’ in 1974. In the 1970s, the group lost its record contract and its manager and eventually disbanded. Charlie Ingui became a landscaper, Richie Ingui became a house painter, Paul Venturini became a restaurateur, and drummer Joe Forgione owned an auto body shop. At that time, Steely Dan noted in their song ‘Hey Nineteen‘ It’s hard times befallen the Soul Survivors’. …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: Expressway (To Your Heart)

Disco Maghreb: The Legendary Raï Label That Revived Oran’s Musical Soul

“Discover the fascinating story behind Disco Maghreb, the iconic music label that shaped the sound of Raï and brought Oran to the world’s stage. Once dormant, this legendary brand has risen from the ashes to celebrate Algeria’s rich musical heritage and inspire new generations. A Musical Legacy Born in Oran: Disco Maghreb was founded in the early 1980s by Boualem Benhaoua in the Ras el Aïn district of Oran. Starting as a modest cassette and music shop called Maghreb Musique, it quickly transformed into a major label that discovered and launched the careers of some of the greatest Raï stars, including Cheb Hasni, Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami, and Hasni. Boualem’s exceptional ear for talent and passion for music turned Disco Maghreb into the beating heart of the Raï movement — a genre blending traditional Algerian folk melodies with modern rhythms and rebellious spirit. The Golden Era of Raï and Disco Maghreb: Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Disco Maghreb’s releases dominated airwaves and cassette players across Algeria and beyond. The label not only popularized Raï worldwide but also became a cultural symbol during Algeria’s turbulent decade of the 1990s — the ‘décennie noire.’ Even amid political unrest and violence, Disco Maghreb’s music remained a source of hope and expression for Algerians. The Decline and Revival: The rise of digital piracy in the early 2000s hit Disco Maghreb hard. With illegal downloads and free sharing online replacing physical sales, the label closed in 2005 after a quarter-century of success. But in 2022, global star DJ Snake, a French-Algerian with deep roots in Oran’s Raï scene, released a viral tribute song and video called ‘Disco Maghreb.’ The clip’s massive success sparked the label’s revival, inspiring Boualem Benhaoua to reopen the vintage boutique — now a nostalgic museum and symbol of cultural pride. Presidential Recognition and Cultural Impact: French President Emmanuel Macron visited Disco Maghreb during his 2022 Algeria trip, praising the label as the ‘epicenter of Raï’ and sharing a selfie with Boualem Benhaoua. His visit underscored the label’s ongoing importance in Algerian culture and its role in bridging Franco-Algerian friendship. Why Visit Disco Maghreb? Visiting the Disco Maghreb boutique in Oran means stepping into the birthplace of modern Raï music. The shelves still hold classic cassettes and CDs, echoing the spirit of a bygone era, preserved like a cultural museum for locals and tourists alike. …”
Visit Algeria
W – Raï: International_success
YouTube: DJ Snake – Disco Maghreb (Official Music Video)

The Harlem Trilogy: Cool Machine (2026)

“Cool Machine is the third novel in Colson Whitehead‘s Harlem Trilogy series. It was released by Doubleday on July 21, 2026. Cool Machine is the third and final novel in Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy, preceded by Harlem Shuffle, set in the 1960s, and Crook Manifesto, set in the 1970s. The book takes place in New York City, specifically Harlem, during the 1980s. This is a period with real estate development, homelessness, and high crime rates. The story centers on Ray Carney, a successful furniture store owner who also lives a double life as a part-time criminal fence, in other words, someone who buys and sells stolen goods. The novel is divided into three connected sections, each set in a different year of the 1980s. So, in 1981, after his wife Elizabeth is denied a bank loan to start her own travel agency, Carney decides to help fund her business by joining a crew for a major heist at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. In 1983, the focus shifts to Pepper, Carney’s noticeably older criminal associate. Elizabeth hires Pepper to act as a bodyguard for an art dealer transporting a valuable African mask. When the mask goes missing, Pepper searches the gritty East Village for it while dodging a violent hitman. In 1986, Carney is forced to use his criminal connections and skills to protect his nephew, Robert, the son of his late cousin Freddie, who is being framed for the murder of a corrupt lawyer.  In this book, the city becomes a character. Hence, New York City is central to the story, with its changing landscape that mirrors the characters’ lives and decisions. There are also themes of survival and morality. In other words, the book shows how the characters navigate a corrupt system. They have to juggle their family obligations and lives with their criminal activities to survive and protect the people they care about. According to Evan Kindley, writing for The New Republic, in recent decades, there has been a meaningful rebirth in the historical fiction genre. He says that it has become the most respected genre in contemporary literature. Kindley, citing a literary scholar, also points out that most of the novels nominated for major American awards since 2000 are historical fiction. …”
Wikipedia
NY Times: With His Latest, Colson Whitehead Pulls Off Another Score
YouTube: Colson Whitehead Talks New Book, Unusual Writing Process, More
amazon
1960s: Days of Rage – The Harlem Trilogy: Harlem Shuffle (2021), Crook Manifesto (2023)

Please Stand Clear of the Accidental Art Museum

“Over nearly two decades as a photographer for The Times, I’ve spent innumerable hours in the subway system. It’s not always the most pleasant place to work. Sometimes, as a diversion from the relentless onslaught of train clatter and the endless flood of humanity — hustling, jostling, trying to make it through the commute inside traveling bubbles of indifference — I stop to look for art. I don’t mean the excellent sculptures and mosaics commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to brighten up the commute. I mean the accidental kind. I look for the colorful scenes of decay on the tunnel walls, the rusted iron beams, patterns formed in crumbling tiles and peeling paint. I’m drawn to the strange forms found in discarded bubble gum and to the delicate sketches etched in HVAC soot. They appear to me as secret works of art just waiting to be noticed and appreciated. I like to imagine them under glass, on pristine white mats inside deep black wood frames on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art. I’ve come to think of it as the ‘M.T.A. Modern,’ a public museum open to all New Yorkers for a mere $3 — if only they knew where to look. Water is the key medium for much of the naturally occurring art within the subway. It acts as both builder and destroyer. As water permeates the surrounding bedrock, it picks up mineral passengers and slowly deposits them where it seeps through, streaks and evaporates. Shallow beds of milky white and amber crystals emerge, glistening, from the primordial solution. As water oxidizes steel, the chemical transformation creates streams of leathery ocher hues. The M.T.A. estimates that its workers — and 753 pumps — drain the equivalent of 15 Olympic-size swimming pools of groundwater every day. When there’s a storm or a water main break, the volume becomes almost unfathomable. It courses through an aging system, much of which still relies on its original infrastructure, sometimes more than 120 years old. It forces that water to surface in strange and surprisingly beautiful ways. It pushes its way under thick layers of ‘M.T.A. Green’ paint slathered on structural supports and emerges in bright orange streaks that seem perfectly picked from the opposite side of a color wheel. Several I-beams in Times Square Station display this kaleidoscope of texture and color. On a tunnel wall at 47th-50th Streets-Rockefeller Center, storm clouds stream down showers of acid rain against a foreboding night sky, while farther down the platform a form reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting blossoms from an ivory canvas. …”
NY Times

Bistro

At the Bistro, Jean Béraud
“A bistro or bistrot (/ˈbiːstroʊ/), in its original Parisian form, is a small restaurant serving moderately priced, simple meals in a modest setting. In a 2007 survey of national cuisines, a bistro is characterised as typically: a neighborhood restaurant where one can partake of French home cooking, typically robust, earthy dishes such as cassoulet …. Bistros are not temples of haute cuisine, but places for affordable and simple country food. A Paris newspaper in 1892 referred to dishes served at a bistro, including escargots, veal with sauce ravigote, navarin of lamb, hachis Parmentier, eggs, sausages and hot roast chicken. The Oxford Companion to Food comments that the idea of simple inexpensive food served in a French atmosphere has wide appeal, so that by the end of the 20th century the term had ‘begun to be annexed by more pretentious premises’. Plaque about the legend of the origin of the word ‘Bistro’ at La Mère Catherine, 6, place du Tertre, Paris. (English: On March 30, 1814, the Cossacks were the first to launch their very famous ‘bistro’ here and, on the hill, the worthy ancestor of our bistros was born. 180th anniversary. Tourist Office of Old Montmartre) The etymology is unclear. The Dictionnaire de l’Académie française dates the word from the 19th-century term bistro (‘innkeeper’) and suggests that it may be linked to the Poitevin word bistraud (‘little servant’) or to bistrouille (‘cheap liquor’). It recommends the spelling “bistrot” in preference to ‘bistro’. The word was used to describe a drinking establishment, estaminet (‘saloon’), or small popular local restaurant where alcoholic beverages were served. In the early part of the 19th century, the term ‘gargote’ signified a basic style of restaurant,^{[n 2]} but the term ‘bistro’ or ‘bistrot’ was not recorded until toward the end of the century. An early appearance of the term in print is in Les deux gosses by Pierre Decourcelle, published in 1880. A popular folk etymology, not attested by the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, claims that the word originated among Russian troops who, following the Battle of Paris in March 1814,occupied the city and visited these tiny places to drink a coffee. They might have shouted Bistro! Bistro! (Russian: быстро, lit. ‘quickly‘) when they wished to be served quickly. This etymology has been dismissed by linguists, because there is no attestation to the occurrence of the term until the late 19th century. …”
Wikipedia
What is a Bistro Restaurant?

Plaque about the legend of the origin of the word “Bistro” at La Mère Catherine, 6, place du Tertre, Paris.

The Storyteller – A Musical Tribute to Yusef Lateef – The Nat Birchall Quartet

“With 20 years passing since his first foray into recorded jazz, Nat Birchall now ranks as one of the premier saxophonists of his generation. With several highly acclaimed albums in the locker, he now returns with his most ambitious project yet – a tribute to the legend that is Yusef Lateef. When Jazzman Gerald first mentioned to me the idea of doing an album as a tribute to the jazz giant Dr Yusef A. Lateef, my first thought was ‘Where on earth do I start?’ Lateef was such a colossus of music, and his scope so broad, that I couldn’t hope to begin to cover his musical universe. He was a master of the tenor saxophone, a master of the flute, a master ballad player, a master blues player. Not to mention his skills as a composer and arranger and of course his exploration and use of musical methodology and instruments from all over the world. I’ve always been a great admirer of Lateef, and the challenge was intriguing, so I decided to give it go. We interpreted some of his own compositions (Brother John, Morning & Ching Miau) as well as some compositions by others that he made his own by careful arrangement and interpretation (Love Theme from Spartacus, Ringo Oiwake). I also wrote some original songs that, while certainly not written in his style, might be said to fall into his very broad approach to music making. I also wanted to utilise as many different instruments as possible, something I hadn’t explored too much until this album. So it was a nice opportunity to finally get around to playing some of the many small instruments I’ve collected over the years; the Turkish zurna, the mbira from Zimbabwe, the balaphon from Mali and the arghul from Egypt. We have also tried to use varied time signatures in the music, so we have songs in 3/4, 5/4 and 7/4 time, as well as the standard 4/4. Ultimately the best music tells a story to the listener and takes them to places they might not have imagined themselves. Yusef Lateef certainly did that, and as such was a master storyteller.’ – Nat Birchall
Bandcamp (Audio)

DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’ Explained

“To listen to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing is to hear sampling approached as a spiritual practice, an aural document of one man’s lifelong reverence for hip-hop and his communion with the history of recorded music. After years of bending over record crates and inhaling dust from decades-old vinyl in the basement of the Sacramento record store, Joshua Davis pulled hundreds of samples together to create a record that reimagined and expanded the possibilities of the art form. Producers had sampled for years, and perhaps the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique rivals the number of sources on Endtroducing, but nothing before Endtroducing had its sonic scope. The fact that Shadow was able to keep every musical fragment in his brain almost makes him seem more like a conduit than a composer. In the expansive, ethereal, and meditative world that is Endtroducing, The Meters coexist with Tangerine Dream (‘Changeling’), Pink Floyd plays on the same bill with Jimmy Smith (‘The Number Song’). Hip-hop, electronic, ambient, jazz, rock, classical, and more coalesce. Endtroducing was a hip-hop record that irrevocably blurred the lines between genres, exposing the reality that genre never really existed. It was a construct that DJ Shadow helped deconstruct one sample at a time. Endtroducing legitimized sampling as an art form unlike few albums before it. If ever anyone says sampling takes no skill, that’s it’s lazy theft, you can point to Endtroducing. The seamlessness and shape-shifting of Shadow’s sonic collages aren’t impossible to recreate, but they would take years of study and innate musical skill to get right. ‘By ’95, when I was really working on Endtroducing heavily, I was very much trying to make a statement about, ‘Why are we all abandoning this artform? What everybody else is doing is great, but I feel like there’s a lot of work left to be done in this discipline.’ And I wanted to create a record that pushed that conversation forward,’ Shadow told Westword. The album gave rise to the notion that hip-hop producers could create a full instrumental album, that they were more than composers for rappers. Without Endtroducing, the world might not have been ready to accept J Dilla’s Donuts, another brilliant work of sampling bricolage. Somewhere between Shadow’s Endtroducing and Dilla’s Donuts, you have the roots of the Los Angeles Beat Scene, the hip-hop and electronic music community that spawned Grammy-winning producers like Flying Lotus. There are decades of music that might not have happened if not for Endtroducing. …”
udiscover (Video)
W – Endtroducing….

A Renaissance painting inspired this New York photographer to take tender portraits of kids at play

“Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Arthur Leipzig traveled the world with his camera to document people and tell their stories, from Yiddish theater actors in Communist Romania to Sudanese fishermen battered by a storm. But it was his sensitive, evocative images of children at play on New York City streets that first won him acclaim. And the idea of capturing these ordinary kids engrossed in stickball, hopscotch, and other popular Gotham street games in the middle decades of the 20th century came not from a teacher or a trend but from a painting by a Flemish Renaissance master. That painting is ‘Children’s Games,’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (above). Dating back to 1560, it’s a richly detailed, bird’s-eye depiction of more than 230 children playing 83 different games in a town square, from hoops to blind man’s bluff to leapfrog. Leipzig spoke out about the effect Bruegel’s painting had on him shortly after he began documenting New York’s children’s games in the 1940s. At the time, he was a member of the Photo League, a cooperative of socially conscious photographers who chronicled the rougher edges of the Depression-era city. ‘When photographer Arthur Leipzig recently saw a picture of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s famous painting ‘Children’s Games,’ he was struck by the resemblance of games of nearly 400 years ago to those one sees today,’ according to the New York Times. The many similarities he noticed by watching children jump, run, swim, and hop from his own window proved ‘that boys and girls play in New York in 1950 about the same way they did in Flanders in 1560,’ continued the Times. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Leipzig documented the children’s games he observed, as well as the dirt lots and asphalt surfaces that inventive city kids turned into playgrounds, ball fields, and game boards. Like the cheeky youngsters in Bruegel’s painting, these New York children didn’t have specially made toys. Games could be played with chalk, sticks, hoops, or a box fashioned into a cart—most of which could be found discarded on the streets. Some of Leipzig’s photos share a similar vantage point with Bruegel. The first image in this post, ‘Chalk Games,’ features a bird’s-eye view likely from the first or second-floor balcony, window, or fire escape of a building on Prospect Place in Brooklyn. Yet Leipzig didn’t set out to copy Bruegel’s painting but take inspiration from it. He channeled its imagination and spirit from a dirt town square in Flanders to the black and white of New York’s midcentury cityscape. …”
Ephemeral New York

1970 Jazz: Free, Avant-Garde and Experimental (Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra)

“In previous articles about jazz music recorded in 1970, we featured albums on major jazz labels including Atlantic, Impulse! and Blue Note, with some of the releases showcasing free and experimental jazz by artists such as Chick Corea’s Circle Quartet, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. In this article we will review other recordings of the esoteric sides of jazz, all recorded in 1970 and released on various labels. We open with a free jazz royalty. In April 1968, as a shareholder in a co-op that purchased an old seven-story factory at 131 Prince Street in Soho, just south of Greenwich Village in New York, Ornette Coleman became the owner of the street-level and third floors in the building. ‘I was just trying to find a place where I could go and make music at any time,’ he said. The space soon became a hub for the free-thinking musicians community in the city. Drummer Rashied Ali remembers: ‘Ornette would give out the space to musicians. It wasn’t even about renting the space. He would give it to you for almost nothing. We would produce and perform our own concerts there. We were the producer, the performer, did all the leg work, the PR work and everything like that in order to get people to come.’ A precursor to the loft-scene that thrived in NYC in the early 1970s, the building served as a home, rehearsal and performance space for musicians associated with Coleman. He later named it ‘Artist House’. On Valentine’s Day in 1970, Ornette Coleman assembled a group of friends, neighbors and musicians to his loft to record a spontaneous performance in a community-gathering atmosphere. The resulting album was released on Bob Thiele’s newly-found label Flying Dutchman, aptly titled ‘Friends and Neighbors: Live at Prince Street’. … Coleman is joined on this album by the fantastic rhythm section of his classic quartet from the early 1960s – bass player Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell, plus tenor sax player Dewey Redman. The DownBeat review was much more complementary of their contributions: ‘Blackwell does a splendid job in the rhythm section. It’s a pleasure to listen to his dialogue with the soloists; he not only drives them but his playing is sometimes so sensitive and musical that he seems to be reading their minds. Haden also does a commendable job. He plays powerful and inventively yet unobtrusively, doing all sorts of interesting things behind the soloists but not drawing attention away from them.’ …”
MUSIC AFICIONADO (Video)

Art Ensemble of Chicago

MAGA’s Big, Beautiful Quest to Rename the Entire World – Brian Phillips

“If nothing else, you have to respect the commitment to laziness. Lake America. It’s a name that somehow combines the height of imperialist arrogance with an unshakable determination to leave work at 2:30. We’re going to conquer the world. Just don’t expect us to sit in traffic. I keep picturing Lake America’s origin story as one of those sitcom scenes where the protagonist has to come up with a pretend name on the spot and panics into grabbing words from his immediate surroundings. I’m, uh … Desk McLaptopman. … I’m walking into a trap here. I’m doing it on purpose. The executive order Trump signed on August 27 decreeing the renaming of Lake Ontario was primarily intended to distract us all from talking about anything more substantive. (Do you need a list? Rising prices, war in the Middle East, ICE raids, data centers, election rigging by the right, the normalization of corruption, the general feeling that reality itself is slowly dissolving into a corrosive slurry of precarity and grift, to name a few.) Every 10 minutes we spend yelling about the monikers of freshwater aquatic bodies is 10 minutes that Trump and his administration can spend rewriting federal guidelines to mandate death by firing squad for a poor person who eats an acorn or whatever. Yet here I am, yelling about exactly the freshwater moniker they want me to yell about. I’m a sucker! But I keep thinking about Trump’s obsession, and really the whole political right’s obsession, with renaming stuff. Not just the lake, but everything. Every political movement tries to influence language to some degree; the more totalitarian the movement, the more linguistic control it attempts to seize. When George Orwell wrote 1984, he made it clear that the Party’s most sinister act—more than the surveillance, the propaganda, the enforced scarcity, or the torture—was the rewriting of the language itself to make it harder for people to conceive of dissent. MAGA and its Republican forebears aren’t working on that scale, partly because working on that scale would require things like ‘foresight’ and ‘a plan’ and ‘hours of painstaking labor.’ But there’s still something revealing about the half-assed cartoon vision of Trump-led American dominance that they’re trying to rebrand the country around. Let’s run back the highlights of recent right-wing renaming efforts and see what they can tell us about MAGA’s agenda to co-opt the power of words, or as I call them, ‘America noises you can also write down.’ …”
The Ringer

Indochine (1992)

“Indochine (French pronunciation: [ɛ̃dɔʃin]) is a 1992 French period drama film set in colonial French Indochina from the 1930s to the 1950s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement. The screenplay was written by novelist Érik Orsenna, screenwriters Louis Gardel and Catherine Cohen, and director Régis Wargnier. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Pérez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards, and Deneuve was nominated for Best Actress. In 1930, Éliane Devries, a woman born to French parents in colonial Indochina, runs her and her widowed father’s rubber plantation with indentured laborers. She is the adoptive mother of Camille, a teenaged girl whose birth parents were friends of Éliane’s and members of the Nguyễn dynasty. Éliane meets young French Navy lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Le Guen when they bid on the same painting at an auction. He challenges her publicly and, days later, turns up at her plantation searching for a boy whose sampan he set ablaze on suspicion of opiumsmuggling. Éliane and Jean-Baptiste begin an affair. … Camille meets Jean-Baptiste by chance when, one day, he rescues her from a prisoner escape attempt. She falls in love with him. After learning of this, Éliane uses her connections with high-ranking Navy officials to get Jean-Baptiste transferred to Haiphong. He confronts Éliane about this during a Christmas party, and in the ensuing argument, slaps her in front of his fellow officers. For this, he is sent to Dragon Islet(Hòn Rồng), a remote French military base in northern Indochina. Éliane allows Camille to become engaged to Thanh, a pro-Communist Vietnamese boy expelled as a student from France because of his support for the 1930 Yên Bái mutiny. A sympathetic Thanh allows Camille to search for Jean-Baptiste up north. Traveling on foot, Camille reaches Dragon Islet and is imprisoned along with a Vietnamese family she travels with and other laborers. After seeing French officers torture and murder her traveling companions, she attacks an officer and shoots him in the struggle. Jean-Baptiste defies his superiors to protect Camille in the ensuing firefight, and the two flee. …”
Wikipedia
6 Facts About Indochine (1992): A Historical Movie About Vietnam That Won An Oscar
Excerpts from David Nicholls’ comments on INDOCHINE
amazon $
YouTube: Indochine

The Revolutionaries ‎- Reaction In Dub (1975), etc.

“The Revolutionaries (sometimes known as ‘Revolutionaires’) was a Jamaican reggae band. Set up in 1975 as the house band of the Channel One Studios owned by Joseph Hoo Kim, The Revolutionaries with Sly Dunbar on drums and Bertram ‘Ranchie’ McLean on bass, created the new ‘rockers‘ style that would change the whole Jamaican sound (from roots reggae to rockers, and be imitated in all other productions). Beside Sly, many musicians played in the band: Robbie Shakespeare on bass, JoJo Hookim, Bertram McLean, and Radcliffe ‘Dougie’ Bryan on guitar, Ossie Hibbert, Errol ‘Tarzan’ Nelson, Robbie Lyn or Ansel Collins on keyboards, Uziah ‘Sticky’ Thompson, Noel “Scully” Simms on percussion, Tommy McCook, Herman Marquis on saxophone, Bobby Ellis on trumpet and Vin Gordon on trombone. In 1976, The Revolutionaries attained further respect from the Sound System and dub fraternity when they recorded a track named after author Alex Haley‘s character, Kunta Kinte, which would become one of reggae music’s most recognisable riddims and which for many years was only played by selected sound systems on dubplate. The track Kunta Kinte was based on an earlier tune, Beware Of Your Enemies, released from Jamaica‘s Channel One. The 1976 dub version released by The Revolutionaries became a sound system anthem for many years on dubplate, and also inspired a UK version produced by Mad Professor in 1981. It has also inspired Drum and Bass and jungle covers, and was consistently played by Jah Shaka. The band played on numerous dub albums and recorded as a backing band for artists like B.B. Seaton, Carl Malcolm, Black Uhuru, Culture, Prince Alla, Leroy Smart, Gregory Isaacs, John Holt, The Heptones, Mighty Diamonds, I-Roy, Tapper Zukie, Trinity, U Brown, Errol Scorcher, Serge Gainsbourg among others. …”
W – The Revolutionaries, YouTube: The Revolutionaries ‎- Reaction In Dub, The Mighty Diamonds ‎- Dubwise, Meditation Dub, The Aggrovators At King Tubby’s Studio, Jah Shaka – Meets Aswad In Addis Ababa Studio, Scientist – The Dub Album They Didn’t Want You To Hear, Roots Radics Meet Mighty Revolutionaires – Outernational Riddim, Roots Radics featuring Gladstone Anderson ‎- Radical Dub Session, King Tubby’s Tribute To Augustus Pablo, Scientist vs The Professor – Dub Duel At King Tubby’s

Jeff Tweedy: Staying Warm at The Loft

“I’ve been in studios and rooms all over the world. I’ve seen where The Beatles spent hours creating masterpieces. I’ve been in the room where Buddy Holly’s hits were made. I’ve stood at the mics that Al Green used on many hits. I’ve been in several rooms that David Bowie spun his magic in. Many of these places have something special going on maybe those creative vibes soaked into the walls but almost all of them require the musicians to cart their instruments and gear in, as well as to spend some time sorting out and setting up. And, by virtue of the usual studio layout, many professional studios leave the musicians and engineers in isolation from each other, especially during overdub sessions. In contrast is The Loft, a third-floor warehouse practice space turned studio, where Wilco and Jeff Tweedy have created a musician’s dream. Racks of drums and other instruments fill the space, with the control room area (not “room”) taking up the front part of the building. There’s even a kitchen/dining area, a tech bench for repairs, and various little hideaway spots scattered all around the 5000 square foot room. My partner in Tape Op, John Baccigaluppi, noted that Jeff’s memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc., and a solo album, Warm, were being released, and he asked if we should have Spencer Tweedy, Jeff’s son, conduct an interview with his dad. Spencer has been in touch with Tape Op for years, letting us know about his wonderful boutique mic cable company, Fjord Audio [Tape Op#126], as well as suggesting some book ideas for us. So, I asked Spencer to do an interview, but Spencer and Jeff asked if I would come visit and do one in person. I’m very glad I did. I spent time interviewing Jeff and engineer Tom Schick [see his interview this issue] over the course of two days, and I was able to hang out with the rest of Wilco, even enjoying a lunch with them. The band was hard at work on an upcoming album; it was an honor to hang with them, as well as Tom, studio manager-and-more Mark Greenberg, and the enthusiastic and talented Spencer. …”
Tape OP
W – Being There
YouTube: Being There – Wilco 1 / 19

Dur-Dur of Somalia – Volume 1, Volume 2 & Previously Unreleased Tracks (Analog Africa Nr. 27)

“When Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb arrived in Mogadishu in November of 2016, he was informed by his host that he would have to be accompanied at all times by an armed escort while in the country. The next morning, a neighbour and former security guard put on a military uniform, borrowed an AK-47 from somewhere and escorted him to Via Roma, an historical street in the heart of Hamar-Weyne, the city’s oldest district. Although previous Analog Africa releases have demonstrated a willingness to go more than the extra air-mile to track down the stories behind the music, the trip to Mogadishu was a musical journey of a different kind. It was the culmination of an odyssey that had started many years earlier. In 2007 John Beadle, a Milwaukee-based musicologist and owner of the much loved Likembe blog, uploaded a cassette he had been handed twenty years earlier by a Somalian student. The post was titled ‘Mystery Somali Funk’ and it was, in Samy’s own words, ‘some of the deepest funk ever recorded’. The cassette seemed to credit these dense, sonorous tunes to the legendary Iftin Band. But initial contact with Iftin’s lead singer suggested that the ‘mystery funk’ may have actually been the work of their chief rival, Dur-Dur, a young band from the 80s. Back then, Mogadishu had been a very different place. On the bustling Via Roma, people from all corners of society would gather at the Bar Novecento and Cafe Cappucino, watch movies at the famous Supercinema, and eat at the numerous pasta hang-outs or the traditional restaurants that served Bariis Maraq, a somali Beef Stew mixed with delicious spiced rice. The same street was also home to Iftinphone and Shankarphone, two of the city’s best known music shop. Located opposite each other, they were the centre of Somalia’s burgeoning cassette distribution network. Both shops, run by members of the legendary Iftin Band, would become first-hand witnesses to the meteoric rise of Dur- Dur, a rise that climaxed in April of 1987 with the release of Volume 2, their second album. …”
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: Dur-Dur of Somalia – Volume 1, Volume 2 & Previously Unreleased Tracks

New York Amsterdam News

“The Amsterdam News (also known as New York Amsterdam News) is a weekly Black-owned newspaper serving New York City. It is one of the oldest newspapers geared toward African Americans in the United States and has published columns by such figures as W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and was the first to recognize and publish Malcolm X. From 1916 to 1938, the paper operated from the New York Amsterdam News Building on Seventh Avenue in Harlem. The building is a National Landmark. The Amsterdam News was founded on December 4, 1909, by James Henry Anderson in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. The newspaper takes its name from Amsterdam Avenue, the location of Anderson’s home where he first published the newspaper. An investment of US$10 in 1909 (equivalent to $358 in 2025) turned the Amsterdam News into one of New York’s largest and most influential Black-owned-and-operated business institutions, and one of the nation’s most prominent ethnic publications. It was later reported that James Henry Anderson published the first copy: ‘…with a dream in mind, $10 in his pocket, six sheets of paper and two pencils.’ The Amsterdam News was one of about 50 black-owned newspapers in the United States at the time it was founded. It was sold for 2 cents a copy (equivalent to $1 in 2025) from Anderson’s home at 132 West 65th Street, in the San Juan Hill section of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. With the spread of Blacks to Harlem and the growing success of the paper, Anderson moved the Amsterdam News uptown to 17 West 135th Street in 1910. In 1916, it moved to 2293 Seventh Avenue, and in 1938, it moved again, to 2271 Seventh Avenue. In the early 1940s, the paper relocated to its present headquarters at 2340 Eighth Avenue (also known in Harlem as Frederick Douglass Boulevard). …”
Wikipedia
Amsterdam News
YouTube: New York Amsterdam News

11 Creative Ways to Store Your Books

“A few months ago, my boyfriend and I reached a new relationship milestone: We moved in together. He’s also a writer, and a shared love of literature is one of the first things we connected over. In the early days of our courtship, we’d run fingers along the spines of each other’s collections, discussing favorites and lending what we thought the other might like. If you love literature, you’ll rightfully interpret this as foreshadowing for what comes next: two readers, two libraries, and one 850-square-foot apartment. Uh-oh. My mother warned me, in a hushed and serious tone, that if I were to ask my boyfriend to downsize, he’d ‘have the right’ to dump me. But I also knew that culling my own books down to only the most vital titles was a task easier said than done. Who could say whether Woolf was more precious than Wilde? Who could evict our old friends Carrie, Rebecca, and Emma. Stacked in boxes on the floor and shoved into our single closet, the books nevertheless demanded an answer. I was stumped. So I did what any reporter would do: I reported. After interviewing four designers and then talking to colleagues and friends, I realized something: With a bit of creativity, your books can become a design element in your home, bringing warmth, color, and texture, whether you live in a small apartment or a sprawling house. As for my own little apartment? In the end, my boyfriend and I didn’t have to get rid of our books. Instead, we took the advice of interior designer Corey Damen Jenkins, who told me: ‘A shelf that showcases the things you love tells a story about who you are, and that is always worth making room for.’ Now, our little library feels exactly like that — like us. Here are 11 expert-endorsed strategies you can put to work to display your own collection creatively and personally, no matter its size. Maximize vertical space: When it comes to storing just about anything, experts agree: There’s usually ample space if you just look up. Books on a wall can also function decoratively and bring visual interest, much like a wall sconce or a framed print would. Install floating shelves: Floating shelves allow you to make the most of your home’s vertical space without sacrificing the functional space below. Thanks to their gravity-defying appearance, they also give your space an airier look than bookcases that are anchored to the floor. These shelves work well over a desk, a couch, or any other low furniture, so you won’t risk bopping your head. …”
NY Times

The Harlem Trilogy: Crook Manifesto (2023)

Colson Whitehead Returns to Harlem, and His Hero Returns to Crime: “Returning to the world of his novel ‘Harlem Shuffle,’ Colson Whitehead’s ‘Crook Manifesto’ is a dazzling treatise, a glorious and intricate anatomy of the heist, the con and the slow game. There’s an element of crime here, certainly, but as in Whitehead’s previous books, genre isn’t the point. Here he uses the crime novel as a lens to investigate the mechanics of a singular neighborhood at a particular tipping point in time. He has it right: the music, the energy, the painful calculus of loss. Structured into three time periods — 1971, 1973 and finally the year of America’s bicentennial celebration, 1976 — ‘Crook Manifesto’ gleefully detonates its satire upon this world while getting to the heart of the place and its people. This is a story of survival without redemption, where the next generation loses some of the well-honed instincts that have built this world. Whitehead’s hero, the furniture salesman and opportunistic small-time criminal Ray Carney, is older than he was when we last met. He has retreated from his practice of working in the ‘secondary economy.’ But outside his successful furniture business’s showroom window, Harlem is stirring with the unease of change and oppression. The presence of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army has set a new edge to the age-old battle between the neighborhood and the white policemen riding roughshod down its streets. From behind his store’s plate-glass window Carney takes it all in: the thump of car engines, the shouts and taunts, the stand-downs of Black men being pushed against walls and searched by white police officers, the news headlines of police officers killed. Sirens cut through conversations; people traverse the powerful river of the sounds and smells that are Harlem. Carney wants to stay out of trouble, but his daughter, who feels lost to him through teenage angst, wants tickets to see the Jackson 5, a show sold out long ago. Whitehead uses that bittersweet pull of parental loss to plunge into a comedic — and deadly — journey. From here Carney revisits and rekindles connections he once had and paid dearly to leave behind. He blunders through criminals’ apartments, carries hot jewels in his briefcase and is forced to rob a poker game. …”
NY Times
W – Crook Manifesto
The Harlem Trilogy: Harlem Shuffle (2021)

Stockholm, Berlin 1966 – Albert Ayler

“Stockholm, Berlin 1966 is a live album by saxophonist and composer Albert Ayler, recorded in Europe in 1966 and released on the Swiss hatOLOGY label in 2011. The Berlin tracks were previously released on The Berlin Concerts – 1966 (Relyable Records), Albert Ayler Live In Europe 1964 – 1966 (Landscape Records), and the compilation Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70) (Revenant). All of the tracks were reissued on a 2021 Hat Hut release titled Albert Ayler Quintet 1966: Berlin, Lörrach, Paris & Stockholm. Revisited.  The Stockholm and Berlin recordings were made during Ayler’s thirty-day 1966 European tour, which lasted from November 3 through December 2.^[4] The tour, which also included Lörrach, Rotterdam, Paris, and Copenhagen, came about when Joachim-Ernst Berendt, director of the Berlin Jazz Festival, asked promoter George Wein to include Ayler’s group in his annual festival tour. (John Coltrane had also been invited to participate, but declined due to health issues.) Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray were unable to accompany the band on the tour, so Ayler asked bassist William Folwell and drummer Beaver Harris to join him. The group also included Ayler’s brother Donald on trumpet and violinist Michel Sampson. According to Ayler biographer Jeff Schwartz, the recordings show Ayler using a modular approach to his music, with thematic sections that can be reshuffled interspersed with improvisations, including brief solos by Harris and Folwell. Schwartz noted that Ayler’s vocalizations on Pharoah Sanders‘ ‘Japan’ on the European recordings are the first time he is heard as a singer. He also suggested that the singing may be an extension of the moaning sounds that Sunny Murray emitted while playing the drums. In a review for The Guardian, John Fordham wrote: ‘Ayler’s blazing shows were following sets by Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz and other more orthodox jazz artists, but his finales roused the European crowds to ecstatic acclaim just the same. Sometimes the music sounds like the work of a dishevelled Salvation Army band, sometimes like a series of strange, hooting operatic arias, in which jaunty themes Sonny Rollins might edge their way into the midst of big, rapturously lamenting harmonies. The repertoire is much the same from both gigs…, and has an even more emotional quiver for the addition of fine Dutch violinist Michel Samson, meshing evocatively with the vibrato and clarion lead-lines of Ayler’s trumpeter brother Donald.’ …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: ALBERT AYLER Quintet Live in Berlin, 1966 | THE JAZZ LIBRARY

Gloria Steinem (March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026)

“Gloria Marie Steinem (/ˈstaɪnəm/ STY-nəm; March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026) was an American journalist and social movement activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who remained particularly prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, and co-founder of Ms. magazine. In 1969, she published ‘After Black Power, Women’s Liberation’, an article that brought her national attention and positioned her as a feminist leader. In 1971, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, which provided training and support for women seeking elected and appointed office. Also in 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance, which until 1997 supported a network of feminist activists and worked to advance feminist causes and legislation. In the 1990s, Steinem helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, an occasion for young girls to learn about future career opportunities.^[8] In 2005, Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan co-founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that ‘works to make women visible and powerful in the media’.  She traveled internationally as an organizer and lecturer and was a media spokeswoman on issues of equality. In 2015, Steinem, alongside two Nobel Peace laureates (Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia) and other prominent women peace activists, undertook a journey from the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, to South Korea, crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone. … In 1972, Steinem co-founded the feminist magazine Ms. alongside founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Pat Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Mary Peacock; it began as a special edition of New York, and Clay Felkerfunded the first issue.^[33] Its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. Within weeks, Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and more than 20,000 reader letters.  In 1974, Ms. collaborated with public television to produce the television program Woman Alive!, and Steinem was featured in the first episode in her role as co-founder of Ms.magazine.  The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and served on the advisory board.  Also in 1972, Steinem became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club. Steinem spoke at the 1977 National Women’s Conference among other speakers, including Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordan, Cecilia Burciaga, Lenore Hershey, and Jean O’Leary. …”
Wikipedia
NY Times: Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92 (Video)
Guardian: Gloria Steinem personified America’s feminist movement
YouTube: Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Dies at 92, Feminist icon Gloria Steinem dies at 92

Deutsche Courage: The Boundary-Breaking Minds Behind Experimental German Music

“Thanks in large part to Kraftwerk’s weighty influence on synth-pop, hip-hop, and subsequent strains of dance music, German music has long since overturned the preconceptions that initially (and insultingly) went with the territory. Nevertheless, in certain quarters there is still a bewildering inclination to lump it all together. The common ground between, say, Scorpions and Faust is negligible at best, but the despised appellation ‘krautrock’ did little to encourage the expectation of stylistic diversity. (Faust, cheeringly, up-ended the term with their sarcastically monomaniacal ‘Krautrock,’ from the 1973 album Faust IV.) It’s perhaps fairest to suggest that the minds behind the most experimental German music in the transitional period between 1967 and 1976 shared a commonality of purpose. Out on a limb, and largely working in isolation from each other, they were nevertheless unified by a compulsion to forge ahead, to experiment with modes and means of expression, and consequently to establish an entirely new milieu. In so doing, they were tacitly seceding from the American and British rock, pop and soul archetypes that had previously held sway. That said, there were certain British and American totems whose influence fed directly into the development of Germany’s new music. Pink Floyd’s solemn galactic bleeps echoed right across the kosmische firmament; Jimi Hendrix’s sonic boldness heralded revolution, even if his scorching flamboyance found little purchase in the broader context of drone-based minimalism; and Frank Zappa’s subversive cynicism chimed with then-prevalent student insurrection – much to his distaste. Tellingly, appearing alongside Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention at the Internationale Essener Songtage festival in Essen, in September 1968, were three pivotal new German bands who pointed towards the future of German music: Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream and Guru Guru. The first of these were a loose collective, living communally in a house in Munich and intermittently flailing away at instruments. Their fitful, floating line-up included relatively accomplished players and some decidedly less competent accompanists whose presence represented a political or artistic gesture: as a result, the group unavoidably split into factions. …”
udiscover (Video)

Stepping Into A New Age 1980–2012

“There was always so much more to the legacy of punk than the orthodoxy that followed in its wake. Indeed, the seeds were sown right from the early days thanks to the punk’s interface with the reggae that soundtracked the early club nights as well as the covers that followed. Even Bob Marley gave his seal of approval. But while the less inspired purveyors that followed stuck to rigid formulas, the influence of reggae was keenly felt in the wave that immediately followed punk’s brief but seismic blast. Formed by The Slits’ Ari Up and reggae fan and producer Adrian Sherwood, New Age Steppers were a collective of sorts that included contributions from members of Aswad, The Pop Group, The Raincoats, and others who swan-dived into deep bass work-outs and dub-inflected dread to soundtrack the increasingly heavy times in which they were recorded in. This comprehensive boxset sees New Age Steppers’ first three albums – New Age Steppers (1980), Action Battlefield (1981) and Foundation Steppers(1983) – on vinyl for the first time since their release, as well as 2012’s posthumous Love Forever and a collection of outtakes and rarities in the shape of Avant Gardening. Presented together, they tell an intriguing story of musical development as well as the launch of the celebrated On-U Sound record label. The eponymous debut finds the collective at its most adventurous. Blending cover versions such as Junior Byles’ ‘Fade Away’ with righteous originals, this is a sonic feast that tests speakers and bowels in equal measure. Crucially, it brings to together the spirituality of Rastafari with political awareness, most notably on the spaced-out neo-dub of ‘Crazy Dreams And High Ideals’ wherein The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart intones, ‘We refuse to be the stepping stone / That paves the way for the small minority.’ But it’s the aural delivery that truly lingers as dub techniques are deployed and twisted to create a new, domestic vernacular of the form. From here on in, the albums become more song-based though no less arresting. Action Battlefield’s reliance on covers doesn’t count against it, not least as the playing and production are absolutely on point. Ari Up’s vocals on ‘My Whole World’ are some of the best she ever committed to posterity, while a pre-fame Neneh Cherry makes her presence felt on a sweet reading of BB Seaton’s ‘My Love’. The absence of Ari Up on Foundation Steppers is more than made up for thanks to Bim Sherman’s honeyed contributions though, as evidenced by the likes of ‘5 Dog Race’, Sherwood’s taste for studio chicanery was still firmly in evidence. …”
The Quietus
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: New Age Steppers

Hip-hop culture

DJ Grandmaster Flash 
“Hip-hop culture is an art movement that emerged in New York City, in the borough of the Bronx, primarily within the black community. Hip-hop as an art form and culture has been heavily influenced by both male and female artists. It is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing; other elements include graffiti, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip-hop language, and hip-hop fashion. Many cite hip-hop’s emergence as beginning in August 1973 when brother–sister duo DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell hosted the first documented indoor hip-hop party and culture event in the Bronx; Helping to spark the rise of the genre. However many hip-hop pioneers and historians contend that hip-hop did not have just one founding father. …  Since then hip-hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the United States and subsequently the world. These elements were adapted and developed considerably, particularly as the art forms spread to new continents and merged with local styles in the 1990s and subsequent decades. Even as the movement continues to expand globally and explore myriad styles and art forms, including hip-hop theater and hip-hop film, the four foundational elements provide coherence and a strong foundation for hip-hop culture. … In the 1970s, an underground urban movement known as ‘hip-hop’ began to form in the Bronx, New York City. It focused on emceeing (or MCing) over house parties and neighborhood block party events, held outdoors. Hip-hop music has been a powerful medium for protesting the impact of legal institutions on minorities, particularly police and prisons. Historically, hip-hop arose out of the ruins of a post-industrial and ravaged South Bronx, as a form of expression of urban Black and Latino youth, whom the public and political discourse had written off as marginalized communities. … Graffiti is the most controversial of hip-hop’s elements, as a number of the most notable graffiti pioneers say that they do not consider graffiti to be an element of hip-hop, including Lady Pink, Seen, Blade, Fargo, Cholly Rock, Fuzz One, and Coco 144.  … Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash has also questioned the connection between hip-hop and graffiti, saying, ‘You know what bugs me, they put hip-hop with graffiti. How do they intertwine?’ In America in the late 1960s, before hip-hop, graffiti was used as a form of expression by political activists. …”
W – Hip-hop culture
HIP HOP- A CULTURE OF RESILIENCE, RESISTANCE, AND REVOLUTIONARIES
HIP HOP HISTORY: FROM THE STREETS TO THE MAINSTREAM (Video)
YouTube: The Birth of Hip Hop, How ‘Apache’ Became Hip-Hop’s National Anthem
An aerosol paint can, a common tool used in modern graffiti

 

Bill Cunningham

“William John Cunningham Jr. (March 13, 1929 – June 25, 2016) was an American fashion photographer for The New York Times, known for his candid and street photography. A Harvard University dropout, he first became known as a designer of women’s hats before moving on to writing about fashion for Women’s Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune. He began taking candid photographs on the streets of New York City, and his work came to the attention of The New York Times with a 1978 capture of Greta Garboin an unguarded moment. Cunningham reported for the paper from 1978 to 2016. Cunningham was hospitalized for a stroke in New York City in June 2016 and died soon after. … Cunningham contributed significantly to fashion journalism, introducing American audiences to Azzedine Alaïa and Jean Paul Gaultier.^[12] While working at Women’s Wear Daily and the Chicago Tribune, he began taking candid photographs of fashion on the streets of New York. He was a self-taught photographer. He took one such photograph of Greta Garbo, though he later said he had not recognized her while photographing her nutria coat. … In 1977, Cunningham contributed a photo style feature to the SoHo Weekly News. He then published a group of impromptu pictures in the New York Times in December 1978, which soon became the regular series On the Street. His editor at the New York Times, Arthur Gelb, called these photographs ‘a turning point for the Times, because it was the first time the paper had run pictures of well-known people without getting their permission.’ Cunningham nevertheless joked about his role at the paper: ‘I’m just the fluff. I fill around the ads, if we have any.’ Although then-executive editor A. M. Rosenthal was virulently homophobic and consciously neglected coverage of the LGBT community during this period (precipitating editorial conflicts with the likes of fellow Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg), Cunningham helped to subvert this stance by photographing a fundraising event in the Fire Island Pines in 1979 and letting the perceptive reader interpret his photos without verbal clues. Following Rosenthal’s retirement from the role in 1988, Cunningham was able to integrate AIDS benefits, pride parades and Wigstock into his coverage. …”
Wikipedia
NY Times: Bill Cunningham, Legendary Times Fashion Photographer, Dies at 87 (Photo)
YouTube: The Times of Bill Cunningham | Official Trailer, How To Photograph Street Fashion Like Bill Cunningham

Canal Street station (IND Eighth Avenue Line)

“The Canal Street station (alternatively signed Canal Street–Holland Tunnel) is an express station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Canal Street, Vestry Street, and Sixth Avenue(Avenue of the Americas) in Lower Manhattan, it is served by the A and E trains at all times, and the C train at all times except late nights. There is also a New York City Police Department (NYPD) transit precinct at the station. … Most of the Eighth Avenue Line was dug using a cheap cut-and-cover method. The Canal Street station was to be one of three Eighth Avenue Line stations underneath Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan; the other two stations were to be at Spring Street and West Fourth Street. As part of the construction of the Eighth Avenue Line in Lower Manhattan, Sixth Avenue was extended south to Church Street starting in 1926. This required the demolition of dozens of buildings along the route. …When the IND Concourse Line opened on July 1, 1933, the C express train started operating, while all locals became CC trains to the Concourse Line. The E began using the local tracks on August 19, 1933, when the IND Queens Boulevard Line opened. One real-estate expert said the station’s construction had encouraged the construction of large developments around the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, such as the Holland Tunnel Plaza Building. … At either end of the station is a diamond crossoverbetween each local and express tracks. Northbound C and nighttime A trains cross from the express track to the local track past the north end of the platforms and southbound C and nighttime A trains cross from the local track to the express track past the south end of the platforms. The platforms are offset, and a signal tower is located at the south end of the southbound platform. The walls of the station contain cobalt blue tile bands^[33] with darker blue borders.^[34] Since Canal Street is an express station, it has a wider tile band than local stations.^[34] The tile colors are intended to help riders identify their station more easily, part of a color-coded tile system for the entire Independent Subway System. The tile colors were designed to facilitate navigation for travelers going away from Lower Manhattan; on the Eighth Avenue Line, the tiles change color at the next express station to the north. As such, the blue tiles used at the Canal Street station were also used on Spring Street, the local station to the north; the next express station, West Fourth Street, used a different tile color. …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: IND 8th Avenue Line: (A) (C) & (E) Trains @ Canal Street.(R160A,R160B,R179,R211A)
Detail of “A Gathering” sculpture on mezzanine

Building East-West Bridges in Tune

“Demonstrating the ways music has created connections among disparate cultures has become a minor industry within the classical concert world. Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project has ranged freely through musical history, reviving ancient works and commissioning new ones. Early-music specialists like Joel Cohen and Jordi Savall have taken a more scholarly but equally lively approach, and Mr. Savall’s offerings have been particularly ambitious. One area he has mined devotedly is the interaction among the musicians of Arab cultures — including the Sephardic Jews who lived in Muslim countries after they were expelled from Spain in 1492 — and those of Christian Europe. That relationship animates ‘Orient-Occident: A Dialogue of Souls,’ a program based on a 2006 recording, which he presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Tuesday evening. Mr. Savall’s choice of instruments told some of the story. He switched between the rebab, an Arabic bowed instrument with a timbre that can sound either raspy or lyrical, depending on how you play it, and its smaller, lighter-voiced European descendant, the rebec. Dimitri Psonis played the santur, a Persian dulcimer, and the oud, a fretless Middle Eastern cousin to the lute. And David Mayoral performed on drums and tambourines of various kinds, sizes and origins, usually with an appealing subtlety born of playing with fingertips and palms rather than sticks and mallets. This was a Middle Eastern ensemble at heart. But in the 14th and 15th centuries you might have found one like it playing in Spain or Italy. … Not that there were no differences between the Eastern and Western styles. The Arabic and Sephardic pieces tended to be more intricately modal and to allow for more extended, virtuosic improvisation, which these players essayed with their characteristic energy and nuance. The European pieces, including a pair of popular saltarellos and the 13th-century ‘Lamento di Tristano,’ by contrast, were generally brighter, zestier and more compact. The program’s political message — that coexistence is more durable than warfare — was not rooted entirely in antiquity. Introducing a section of the program that included a Sephardic song from Sarajevo and a traditional Armenian song, Mr. Savall said that the performances were in memory of the destruction of Sarajevo in the 1990s and the Armenian massacre of 1915. He offered a more personal and affecting dedication before the encore. Noting that he was performing this repertory for the first time without Montserrat Figueras, his wife, musical partner and muse, who died last November, he said, “She is still with us.” She was, electronically. A recording of Ms. Figueras singing ‘Una Matica de Ruda,’ a Sephardic song, was played, and after sitting quietly through the first verse, Mr. Savall and his colleagues picked up their instruments and provided a warm, graceful accompaniment. …”
NY Times
amazon

Orient-Occident: From left, Jordi Savall, David Mayoral and Dimitri Psonis at the Met Museum on Tuesday.

Masterpieces of Minimalism

“It’s easy to think of ‘minimalism’ as only the music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but the word also encompasses painting and sculpture and architecture—and beyond. Visual artists like Sol Lewitt and Donald Judd used simple materials and configurations; theater director Robert Wilson designed stagings with slow movements in austere settings, while musicians from Morton Feldman to Arvo Pärt worked with the bare minimum of plain phrases and rhythms. Paradoxically, minimalist works across all mediums are often maximal in physical size and scope, and duration. Obscuring definition and style, Judd, Reich, and others long objected to the term itself. Minimalism was never an ideology, and it emerged almost spontaneously—one of those mysterious, complex cultural shifts—in the middle of the 20th century. It became, after the fact, an essential part of the history of classical music. But not only did the classical music world reject it for more than a decade, the style itself began both inside the classical tradition (Glass and Reich) and outside it (La Monte Young and Terry Riley). In one way or another, each of these four foundational composers were inspired by non-Western musical and philosophical ideas. Working from different personal aesthetics and musical backgrounds, they ended up sharing a fundamental concept of extended repetition while using it in vastly different styles. And what styles! Minimalism has been one of the most powerful forces in all of music over the last 50 years. Glass has scored Koyanisqaatsi (1982), Candyman (1992), and other films and produced albums for the new-wave band Polyrock; the Orb sampled Reich’s Electric Counterpoint for ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’; Reich and Glass and Meredith Monk have been treated to remix albums; Terry Riley’s In C is played by every type of ensemble imaginable around the world; and on Metal Machine Music, Lou Reed acknowledged La Monte Young’s drone concepts. Not only are these composers still active, but the following post-minimalist generations of musicians continue to extend the style. The best explanation of minimalism still belongs to Reich and his short essay Music as a Gradual Process, published in Source magazine. …”
Bandcamp (Audio)
W – Minimal music
ALLMUSIC
YouTube: Top 50 Best Minimalism albums of all Time (RYM) Rate Your Music / Essential Minimalism Albums, Top 50 Best Post-Minimalism albums of all Time (RYM) Rate Your Music / Post-Minimalism Albums

Four-Color Revolution: Underground Newspapers Of, By, and For the People

An illustration from The Chicago Seed (1969).
“In his introduction to this superbly illustrated compendium of underground newspapers, editor Geoff Kaplan channels the 1960s’ exuberant ad-hoc vibe by referring to his book as ‘Power of the People,’ despite the title on the cover—Power to the People. The more inclusive of offers insight into the cultural power exuded by the 700 color reproductions gathered here, all culled from papers published between 1964 and 1974. Kaplan posits that the brash, sometimes outrageous graphic treatments used by underground designers represented a ‘vehement challenge to the dominance of official media.’ A revolution in information technology back in the mid-’60s made it possible for anyone to become a publisher — the only requirements were ‘an IBM typewriter with interchangeable typefaces, a lot of artwork (cartoons, photographs, drawings, illustrations) and an urge to express his or her social, political, or cultural point of view.’ A confluence of history and demographics helped give rise to this onslaught of smudgy newsprint. The Baby Boomers were confronted with an unpopular war, and, as one essayist in the book points out, ‘the friction between draft age (18) and voting age (21).’ Additionally, the use of LSD among many editors and designers ‘gave the social insurgency of the sixties, and the underground newspapers associated with it, their peculiar and distinctive stamp.’ With youthful fervor shaping the politics and psychedelic drugs driving the look of the underground press, readers expected, and received, visual invective: The New York–based Other Scenes depicted a naked woman’s rear end expelling the names of 1968’s presidential candidates — Humphrey, Nixon, Wallace — in curling, piled-up letters. Often just as polemical, the London-based papers Oz and The International Times featured complex typography entwined with vivid illustrations. Like Beatles songs, the graphics coming out of Swinging London were a mix of sterling talent and witty production—one Oz cover splattered red ink over the famous photograph of South Vietnam’s police chief executing a Vietcong infiltrator with a shot to the temple. (The caption ridicules President Johnson: ‘The Great Society Blows Another Mind.’) An International Times cover gave theorist Guy Debord’s seminal treatise, ‘Society of the Spectacle,’ the comic-strip treatment, with a female character proclaiming, ‘Culture? Ugh! The ideal commodity—the one that helps sell all the others!’ …”
Voice
An illustration from Old Mole (1969).

Halal cart

A halal cart in Jamaica, Queens, New York

“A halal cart is a food cart which serves primarily halal food, particularly in New York City, but also in other metropolitan areas in the United States. A halal cart platter consists of chicken shawarma or lamb gyro, yellow rice, and salad, with optional red and/or white sauce on top. The red sauce is believed to derive from harissa, while the white sauce may come khyar bi Laban (similar to tzatziki). The origin of the halal cart is disputed, but The Halal Guys was one of the first, starting off as a hot dog cart in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, before switching to halal food in the 1990s. As early as 2007, halal carts had already begun displacing hot dog carts as the city’s dominant form of street food. A Queens College study showed that there were 306 street vendors who immigrated from Germany and Italy to New York City in 1990, and none in 2005; over the same period, those from Egypt, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan had risen from 69 to 563. The ubiquity of halal carts in New York City has been compared to that of Taco trucks in Los Angeles.”
Wikipedia

The Best Halal Carts in New York
“… In New York, ‘halal’ has two meanings: There is halal food, made according to Islamic dietary laws, and there are halal carts, the rice-and-meat stands that are ubiquitous on city streets. The cuisine — chicken, lamb, rice, red sauce, ‘white sauce’ — is a mishmash of cooking from Trinidad, Egypt, Pakistan, and Greece, remixed into its own thing. The carts’ origins go back to 1990, and the most famous purveyor is the Halal Guys, which has expanded from a midtown cart to dozens of restaurants around the world. …”
Grub Street
YouTube: My Most Popular Recipe, Updated: Halal Cart-Style Chicken and Rice

Dennis Bovell – Mek It Run (1986)

“Dennis Bovell gave me the initial spark for my interest in Dub Thanks to: my enthusiasm for Linton Kwesi Johnson moved me in the early 1980s to buy an album that was still unknown to me: ‘LKJ in Dub’. The initial disappointment that I already knew all of the pieces soon gave way to fascination with the new form in which they could be heard here: as DubVersions. After that discovery, I bought all of the Bovell / BlackbeardDub-Albums that I could get hold of and fell in love with his style, Dubto mix s. It was finely balanced, highly precise, clear, tidy, harmonious, but at the same time surprising, full of tension and full of bass power. Now, 30 years later, the label Pressure Sounds, which specializes in old reggae, is conjuring up a new, old work by Bovell: ‘Mek It Run‘ (Pressure sounds). Allegedly, Bovell found a shoebox with raw recordings from 1978 to 1986 in his archive and was so impressed by them that he went straight to Neil Fraser, the crazy professor, bought a few days of studio time and worked on completing the previous one unfinished work. The result is 16 fresh Dubs based on well hung recordings, played by the best UK studio musicians of the time. And? Is the old craze for Bovells Dubs awakened again? I’m just wondering and I have to admit: not quite. Thirty years more extensive Dub-Consumption has left its mark on me. It will never be as beautiful as the first time anyway. In addition, the evolution of the Dub did not stand still, so that when listening to ‘Mek It Run’ the historical interest outweighs the musical. Perhaps Mr. Bovell left those recordings unfinished for a reason. …”
Dubblog
YouTube: Dennis Bovell – Mek It Run (Full Album)

Then Again – Henry Now (2025)

“Then Again is a 2025 live album by experimental music and free improvising group Henry Now. It comprises extracts taken from recordings of two of the group’s concert performances in Italy at Teatro President, Piacenza on 18 November 2022, and at Sala Michele Perriera, Palermo on 19 November 2022. The album was released on CD and LP in December 2025 by Italian musician and producer Max Marchini’s record label, Dark Companion [it]. Henry Now was formed in 2022 by four of the former members of Henry Cow, namely Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, John Greaves and Tim Hodgkinson, to perform at Teatro President, Piacenza, Italy during the Musiche Nuove a Piacenza Festival on 18 November 2022. The occasion was to celebrate Italian musician and producer Max Marchini’s 60th birthday. Then Again was derived from recordings made at this concert and their next live performance at the second Solo per Lelio (Only for Lelio) festival in Sala Michele Perriera, Palermo on 19 November 2022. The editing and mixing of the CD and LP releases of Then Again are slightly different. The CD release has seven tracks, whereas the LP release has only six. The CD and LP album cover art work is by Chris Cutler,^[8] which he described in the CD booklet. … In a review of Then Again in Exposé, Peter Thelen found the album largely ‘quite interesting and engaging’, with moments, as is often the case with free improvisation, when the group ‘struggles to get off the ground’. Thelen stated that, ‘depending on your like or dislike of free improvisation, this could be an interesting diversion into unexpected musical worlds, or a quick trip through hell and back.’ Reviewing the album in the Italian music magazine, Rockol, Franco Zanetti stated that Henry Now is not a Henry Cow reunion, and that on Then Again the four ex-Henry Cow members do not ‘recreate the past’ (ricreare il loro passato), but drawing on fifty years of experience, ‘improvise the present’ (improvvisare il presente). Zanetti added that Then Again ‘is proof that the old fire still burns’ (prova che il vecchio fuoco arde ancora), and that it offers listeners unfamiliar with Henry Cow an introduction to one of the most important experimental music groups. …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: Henry Now – Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Tim Hodgkinson, John Greaves (UK) – Jazzinec 2023

Behind the Mysterious Symbols Spray-Painted on Our Streets

“You may have registered but never stopped to think about all those colored markings around the city. The marks are everywhere, hiding in plain sight. A cross between hieroglyphics and graffiti tags, they’re mostly put there to tell excavators what’s below ground before crews start digging up the streets. Tom Wilson and I have spent this summer noticing them. Wilson began to photograph painted dots on sewer drains and then he started to focus on funny signs and words and small colored discs, called A-tags, embedded in the asphalt. Now, he says, he can’t notsee tags and markings whenever he’s walking around town. Subways are almost the least of what’s under the streets of New York City. Some 7,000 miles of water pipes providing a billion gallons of drinking water a day snake below ground. There are thousands of miles of gas mains, more than 100 miles of steam pipes and 7,500 miles of brick and ceramic sewers sluicing more than 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day. Add to that an untold assortment of tree roots pushing through asphalt and pavement; pneumatic mail tubes from the Flash Gordon era; abandoned tunnels; post-Sandy riverine flood walls, air raid shelters and ConEd’s 94,000 miles of electric cables. They’re all scrambled together, buried in dirt several stories deep — the largest, messiest bowl of plastic, concrete and metal spaghetti in America, dispersed in no sane order. And they require endless repair. Each year New York processes hundreds of thousands of applications for excavations around the five boroughs to fix what’s broken underground. If you live in the city and think your street is constantly victimized by jackhammers and street saws, you may not be wrong. All digs begin with spray-painted lines and dots on the sidewalks and streets that are akin to the surgical markings doctors draw on patients before operating. These excavators’ hieroglyphs were standardized decades ago by the American Public Works Association, after a breached petroleum pipeline in California blew up a city block, killing nine people. Now, across the country, prospective diggers start by dialing 811, a federally-mandated call center, which combines GPS and old records to geolocate pipes and wires in a dig area. …”
NYT (Video)

The Complete Guide To The English Premier League

“So, you think football is just a game? Think again! From Nottingham to Newcastle, Aston to Arsenal, The Complete Guide To The English Premier League is your ultimate passport into the wild, wonderful world of the most thrilling sports competition on Earth. Whether you’re a curious newcomer, a lapsed fan, or someone who once thought ‘Premier League’ was a subscription TV package, this updated book for the 2026/27 season is your backstage pass to 20 clubs, a hundred years of grudges, and millions of chanting, swearing, heartbroken fans. Written with love, and no small amount of mischief by Ross Carlisle and Joe Andrich, this is football with a pint in hand, not a calculator. Club-by-club, match-by-match, chant-by-questionable-chant, you’ll uncover the histories, rivalries, myths, magic and madness that make the Premier League a global obsession. Learn why learn why eagles hate seagulls, what Robin Hood has to do with Forest, why Villa fans still dream of 1982, and what it really means when someone yells ‘UTV!’ or ‘You Reds!’ in the rain. No dry stats. No tedious tactics. Just a proper love letter to football’s greatest soap opera. Because the Premier League isn’t just the only thing in life. It’s far more important than that.”
amazon

Battlefield Ghosts in Prospect Park

Haze drifts over the grassy curves of the Long Meadow at Prospect Park.
“I used to write a lot about Long Island and Queens, but it’s taken me a long time to write about Brooklyn. I’ve been living here eight years now, in the neighborhood variously known as Prospect Lefferts Gardens, north Flatbush or Little Caribbean. Brooklyn is where all my ancestors who came to New York City from central Europe once lived, but I never lived here myself until now. The May 2026 episode of the World BEYOND War podcast is where I finally start talking about Brooklyn, though I finished the episode a week ago and I don’t think I’m done talking yet. I had fun with this one, taking my listeners on a stroll into Prospect Park for a tour of an American Revolutionary War battle fought 250 years ago this summer. The weirdest thing about this history is that neither Brooklyn nor New York City nor New York State nor USA have ever made much effort to preserve or signify the battle whose grounds spread today all over Gravesend, Fort Hamilton, New Utrecht, Bensonhurst, Red Hook, Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Greenwood Cemetery, Kensington, Midwoods, Flatlands, Flatbush, Crown Heights, East New York, Jamaica, Woodhaven, Richmond Hill, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Fort Greene, Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights – the battle known as the Battle of Brooklyn or Battle of Long Island. I live near a wonderful and surreal famous city park, the beautiful Prospect Park, constructed gradually during the second half of the 19th century, led by the same team of architects that earlier created Central Park and were now intent on creating the best work of their lives. This is a beautiful, amazing park that I’m thrilled to live near. It’s also a terribly ahistorical park, though, because it was literally designed to obliterate the remains of the old battlefields of August 1776 that stood a century later among the busy farmlands of north Flatbush. I suppose it’s commendable that city planners managed to get a plan into play at all, especially when you consider that during this time Flatbush was not yet a part of Brooklyn or New York City, but just an old farm town outside the bustling city. Instead of signifying history with a plan to preserve the battlefield, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Faux and their massive team of builders did the opposite. They created Prospect Park by flattening the long, jagged series of hills that were the battle’s defensive line into two plateaus, the breathtaking Long Meadow in the north, and the area of the Nethermead and the large lake below. …”
Literary Kicks
This map showing the Prospect Park Lake and the peninsula resembling the boot of Italy is from hiddenwatersblog.wordpress.com

The Harlem Trilogy: Harlem Shuffle (2021)

“Harlem Shuffle is a 2021 novel by American novelist Colson Whitehead. It is the follow-up to Whitehead’s 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, which earned him his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The first book in Whitehead’s ‘Harlem Trilogy,’ it is a work of crime fiction and a family saga  that takes place in Harlem between 1959 and 1964. It was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021. … In 1959, Ray Carney lives in Harlem with his wife Elizabeth, with whom he is expecting a second child. Although descending from a criminal family, Ray makes his living working as an upstanding furniture salesman on 125th Street. However, he occasionally fences stolen goods through his furniture store, including those from his cousin Freddie. Whereas Ray has steered his way toward an honest living, Freddie is descending into Harlem’s criminal underworld. Freddie volunteers a reluctant Ray to fence the stolen goods in a robbery of the Hotel Theresa he and his associates, Arthur, Pepper and Miami Joe, are planning, to Ray’s fury. …”
Wikipedia

“Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Harlem Shuffle, is the epic and captivating story of Ray Carney—furniture salesman, family man, entrepreneur on the rise and a vivid, walking, breathing, living exemplar of that classic archetype, the striver. Harlem Shuffle is a bravura performance, an immersive, laugh-out-loud, riveting adventure whose narrative energy is boosted by its memorable hero and a highly relevant backdrop of social injustice. … When a job goes sideways, Carney gets taken for a ride by the formidable Pepper, a cold, calculating enforcer who happens to have been one of Big Mike Carney’s old cronies. Pepper is as enigmatic and charismatic a crook as any in modern fiction. His tentative, slow-burning partnership with Carney is one of the novel’s most engaging touches. Key to Whitehead’s accomplishment is his virtuosic handling of the distinct lingo and arcane codes of Carney’s various worlds. Pepper, especially, is portrayed with hard-boiled economy and delicious wit. …”
Harvard Review
Guardian: Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead review – a zinging wiseguy noir thriller
Esquire – In ‘Harlem Shuffle,’ Colson Whitehead Masters a New Genre: The Crime Caper
amazon – Bill’s Books
YouTube: Colson Whitehead talks about his new book ‘Harlem Shuffle’
‘The Waldorf of Harlem’: Hotel Theresa, July 1964.

How Often Do Air Conditioners Fall Out of NYC Windows and Kill People?

Hot town, summer in the city — only the baseball bobbleheads are keeping cool.
2011: “Ah, New York City in the summer!Generally, we really do love it, despite the on-the-way-to-work sweatiness and fish-in-an-old-sweat-sock smells. But with summer comes air conditioners, and with air conditioners come inept installations into apartment windows, and with inept installations come the occasional, every so often, reports that an air conditioner has fallen from the sky and bashed someone in the head. Which would be awful. Truly, truly awful. So, how much should we worry about this, really? We took to the Internet, place of great knowledge, to find out. … But should we be so easily placated? After all, it’s only THE INTERNET. So, we carried on with our research. The 2006 post on Gothamist reveals that a woman was indeed hit by an air conditioner unit falling out of a window on East 104th Street, as reported by the Post. Her ‘right leg was crushed, the bone shattered. She also suffered broken ribs, a broken pelvis, fractured vertebrae, and internal bleeding.’ She was, fortunately, expected to recover. Another person, on the mixed martial arts forum of Sherdog, suggests that there might be a greater conspiracy at work with regard to plummeting air conditioners. And lo, we recall that in September of last year there was another air-conditioning incident, near Village Voice HQ, in fact. We even wrote about it. … Just a couple of months later there was another A.C. plummet, this one in West New York. As reported by the Jersey Journal, 24-year-old New Jersey man Esidra Valles was hit by an air conditioner that fell 15 stories and struck him in the head. … The New York Times was worried about air conditioners falling out of windows and hitting people back in 2004, as related to co-op liability. Earlier this year, EV Grieve reported on a piece of an air conditioner that had fallen on East 10th Street, prompting a response from the FDNY. Air conditioners have also struck people in London and Chicago (they — the people, that is — survived). In fact, in our admittedly unscientific search, we found zero confirmed cases of death by air conditioner, and only a few mentions. A child was critically injured when he fell from a window (that lacked bars, which had been removed to put in an air conditioner) and landed on another air conditioner unit. But, air conditioners can save lives, too. So what’s the deal? Has anyone in New York City ever been killed by a falling air conditioner? …”
Voice

In the dark days of the Depression, a Jazz Age artist captures a luminous, magical New York

“He’s hardly a household name today. But Utah-born John Held, Jr. helped create the popular imagery of the 1920s. Held made Jazz Age icons out of bobbed-hair flappers, college guys in raccoon coats, sporty women wielding tennis rackets, and tuxedoed partygoers dangling cigarette holders from their lips. His gently satirical drawings depicting a carefree and exuberant era appeared on dozens of national magazine covers as well as inside periodicals and newspapers. His distinct style of work even made it to the book jacket of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age. Then came the stock market crash. Held turned 40 in 1929, lost a lot of money, suffered a nervous breakdown, and found that his once-constant and highly lucrative artwork commissions had mostly dried up. He was now free to do what he came to New York in 1912 for: to pursue the fine arts and become a watercolor painter. Then came the stock market crash. Held turned 40 in 1929, lost a lot of money, suffered a nervous breakdown, and found that his once-constant and highly lucrative artwork commissions had mostly dried up. He was now free to do what he came to New York in 1912 for: to pursue the fine arts and become a watercolor painter. A watercolor painting depicting a city skyline with tall buildings, featuring a prominent structure with a green roof and others in varying shades of blue and white. In the Depression of the 1930s, when the city’s new skyscrapers might look to some like tall gray husks, Held depicted them as magical and luminous—radiant under the lavender, pink, blueish-white skies of dawn and dusk. They’re a radical departure from his work a decade earlier, which featured stylish youth drawn in exaggerated angular proportions that suggest motion and energy. His watercolors, on the other hand, depict no people at all. …”
Ephemeral New York