Schwarz
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I've been writing love songs all my life, never rocking the boat. There were years that I paid no attention to the political process, times I never voted. The closest I came to writing music with any social and political connotation was "What the World Needs Now is Love." When that song was written 40 years ago, it was an important song.
And, now, it is a thousand times more so.
But starting with the 2000 election, things for me began to change. I watched as Bush basically stole the election, and other terrible situations occurred; and by the time 9/11 hit, I didn't feel like writing love songs.
dukesfest '06
Earlier in my life there seemed to be unlimited possibilities, but my mind was closed. Now, years later and with an open mind, possibilities no longer interest me. I seem content to be continually rearranging the same furniture in the same room. My concern at times is nothing more than establishing a series of practical conditions that will enable me to work. For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.
My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, “What about the man on the street?” At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street. The crazy artist of my generation was crossing the street at that moment.
If a man teaches composition in a university, how can he not be a composer? He has worked hard, learned his craft. Ergo, he is a composer. A professional. Like a doctor. But there is that doctor who opens you up, does exactly the right thing, closes you up—and you die. He failed to take the chance that might have saved you. Art is a crucial, dangerous operation we perform on ourselves. Unless we take a chance, we die in art.
Polyphony sucks.
Because I’m Jewish, I do not identify with, say, Western civilization music. In other words, when Bach gives us a diminished fourth, I cannot respond that the diminished fourth means, O God. . . . What are our morals in music? Our moral in music is nineteenth-century German music, isn’t it? I do think about that, and I do think about the fact that I want to be the first great composer that is Jewish.
“That means a bigger picture,” she says. “When somebody comes to somebody and says, ‘Do this project,’ if there’s been a study of that area, they know what kind of envelope they should have. But there doesn’t seem to be much study at all here. On one hand, it’s kind of refreshing in New York that every plan is autonomous and just goes up; on the other hand, you have a lot of ad hoc stuff that isn’t perfect.”
“People have tremendously emotional feelings about cities like Paris because it never changes,” I say. “I know Paris probably needs as many things as anywhere else, but a city like that, a completely beautiful place for centuries, why do anything there?”
“I think it’s a problem if we don’t change,” she says. “It’s beautiful, but it has no energy. Like Venice—it’s beautiful when you have the film festival or the Biennale, and it’s beautiful in winter. But it can’t grow. Paris is very even. But otherwise it’s quite dull.”
As I can’t agree, I drop it. I would rather live in a dull, beautiful place than a place where things “happen.” My own utopian ideas involve population control and scaling down the human presence on the planet. Architects think in terms of endless capitalist expansion, endless growth, endless everything; yet I feel certain we are coming to the end of endlessness. Still, Zaha Hadid is probably the only architect I’ve met who seems conscious of this, without necessarily acknowledging it. She has to build, so she needs to be positive. I have to write and have the luxury of skepticism.
We discuss the recent fracases over air rights and plot mergers, particularly in the West Village. “One could say it’s terrible,” she says. “But in Hong Kong they used to do illegal extensions, and sometimes they were nice. But I understand the problem, if you have something and it disappears. I used to come to New York a lot; my brother had a flat in midtown with the most fantastic view. And he thought he had the air rights to the next-door building. Then they decided to make a tower, and it wasn’t illegal, and suddenly it was like a blank wall in front of our faces. It’s a tragedy, but it was part of life in New York, I guess.”
vinalhaven maine in the times
IT takes a certain determination to visit the island of Vinalhaven, Me. Once you've made it to Rockland, halfway up the Maine coast along slow, winding Route 1, you're still a 75-minute ferry ride away. The ferry fits only 16 cars, and reservations are limited, so it's not unusual for motorists on a busy summer day to wait in line for two or even three of the six daily ferries to depart before securing a place on board.i hope no one read it
John Strausbaugh examines the history of race relations in American popular culture, from vaudeville to hip-hop, in Black Like You. (listen)
neptune crossing images
arthur lee and love on you tube
uuuuuuuummm kitchens
Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn.hufcoms
Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America. The Mexican trucks will cross border in FAST lanes, checked only electronically by the new “SENTRI” system. The first customs stop will be a Mexican customs office in Kansas City, their new Smart Port complex, a facility being built for Mexico at a cost of $3 million to the U.S. taxpayers in Kansas City.
you know like its not the real hood here. its more like the edge and then theres the deep hood. about a month or two ago i noticed a brand new form of sound pollution. a repeating loud beep with a little eco beep afterwards. its a younger set using them. cell phones with walky-talky action. man they can go on forever with that shit. deep into the night. beebeep, beebeep... yak yak yak beebeep...
the semiotics of fsbo
The Texas-Mexican Conjunto
. . . "conjunto" continues to represent an alternative musical ideology, and in this way it helps to preserve a Mexican, working-class culture wherever it takes root on American soil. Endowed with this kind of symbolic power, conjunto has more than held its own against other types of music that appear from time to time to challenge its dominance among a vast audience of working-class people.
--Manuel Pena
One of the most enduring musical traditions among Mexicans and Mexican Americans is the accordion-based ensemble known as "conjunto" (and as "musica nortena" outside of Texas). Popular for more than one hundred years, especially since its commercialization in the 1920s, this folk ensemble remains to this day the everyday music of working-class Texas Mexicans and Mexican "nortenos" (northerners). During the course of its long history, the conjunto evolved into a tightly organized style that speaks musically for the aesthetic and ideological sentiments of its adherents. In the process, this music of humble beginnings along the Texas-Mexico border has spread far beyond its original base, gaining a vast audience in both Mexico and the United States.
The diatonic, button accordion that anchors the conjunto made its first appearance in northern Mexico and South Texas sometime in the 1860s or '70s. The first accordions were simple one- or two-row models, quite suitable for the musical capabilities of the first norteno and Texas/Mexican musicians who experimented with the instrument. A strong regional style developed by the turn of the century, as the accordion became increasingly associated with a unique Mexican guitar known as an "oajo sexto." Another local folk instrument, the tambora de rancho (ranch drum), also enjoyed prominence as a back-up to the accordion. In combination with one or both of these instruments, the accordion had become by the 1890s the instrument of preference for working-class celebrations on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border.
In Texas, these celebrations were organized frequently--too frequently for some Anglos, who voiced their disapproval of fandangos, or "low-class" dances, in the newspapers. For example, the Corpus Christi Caller and the San Antonio Express on more than one occasion expressed Anglos' negative attitudes toward tejano music and dance. In one report, the Express equated music and dancing with idleness and concluded that "these fandangos have become so frequent they are a great curse to the country" (August 20, 1881). This typical attitude developed early on and persisted well into the twentieth century.
Despite Anglo disapproval, the conjunto and its dances thrived among tejano workers, eventually eclipsing all other forms of music for dancing. Yet, popular as it was, the conjunto remained an ad hoc ensemble until the 1930s. No permanent combination of instruments had been established prior to that time, perhaps because creative and material forces had not yet crystallized to spur radical stylistic development. To be sure, some changes had been wrought by the 1920s, as the button accordion and the bajo sexto by now formed the core of the emerging style, while such common European dances as the redowa had been regionalized and renamed. The redowa itself had been transformed into the vals bajito, in contrast to the waltz, which was known as a "vals alto." Indeed, most of the repertory for the dance, or fandango, was of European origin and included the polka, mazurka, and schottishe, in addition to the waltz and redowa. One regional genre from Tamaulipas, Mexico, the huapango, rounded out the usual repertory of conjuntos until World War II.
Beginning in the 1930s, an innovative surge rippled through the emerging conjunto tradition, as performers like Narciso Martinez (known as "the father" of the modern conjunto), Santiago Jimenez, Lolo Cavazos, and others began to strike out in new stylistic directions. This new surge of innovation must be attributed, at least in part, to the active commercial involvement of the major recording labels in the music of the Hispanic Southwest. From the 1920s, companies such as RCA Victor (Bluebird), Decca, Brunswick, and Columbia (Okeh) began exploiting the musical traditions in the Hispanic Southwest, hoping to repeat the success they had experienced with African American music since the early '20s. Under the commercial impetus of the big labels, which encouraged record and phonograph sales, radio programming, and especially public dancing (much of it in cantinas, to the dismay of Anglos and "respectable" Texas Mexicans), musicians like Narciso Martinez began to experiment. By the end of the 1930s, the conjunto had begun to evolve into the stylistic form the ensemble reached during its mature phase in the post-World War II years.
Without a doubt, the most important change came in the 1930s, when Narciso Martinez began his recording career. Searching for a way to stamp his personal style on the accordion, Martinez abandoned the old, Germanic technique by virtually avoiding the bass-chord buttons on his two-row accordion, concentrating instead on the right hand, treble melody buttons. His sound was instantly distinctive and recognizable. Its brighter, snappier, and cleaner tone contrasted with the older sound, in which bajo sexto and the accordionist's left hand both played bass-and accompaniment, creating a "thicker," drone-like effect. Martinez left bassing and chordal accompaniment to the bajo sexto of his most capable partner, Santiago Almeida.
Narciso Martinez's new style became the hallmark of the surging conjunto, just as Almeida's brisk execution on the bajo sexto created the standard for future bajistas. Together, the two had given birth to the modern conjunto, a musical style that would challenge even the formidable mariachi in cultural breadth and depth of public acceptance. Indeed, by the 1970s it could be said that the conjunto, known in the larger market as musica nortena, was the most powerful musical symbol of working-class culture. Martinez, however, remained an absolutely modest folk musician until his death. He never laid claim to anything but a desire to please his public. Yet, as Pedro Ayala, another of the early accordion leaders, acknowledged, "after Narciso, what could the rest of us do except follow his lead?"
rufus loves judy
Magic cities and other planes of there, all disguised as jazz - From sideman to mesmerizer to evangelical to interstellar space - Its as if Sun Ra planned the hopelessness of the task from the beginning. Pick the best of what might be an infinite number of recordings? Nobody has them all or knows how many exist. Find the recording dates of music made by people for whom time meant nothing, who often mixed together recordings from different years? Even the album titles are dicey, sometimes with a word or two wrong, or with the same title used on more than one recording, or with no title given at all. Sometimes there was no cover. It's all part of the Sun Ra mystique and also, incidentally, the force that drives all collecting: not just that you want to own them all, but that you'll never be sure if you have them all.
who killed the electric car
I might be movin' to Montana soon
Just to raise me up a crop of
Dental Floss
Raisin' it up
Waxen it down
In a little white box
That I can sell uptown
By myself I wouldn't
Have no boss,
But I'd be raisin' my lonely
Dental Floss
Raisin' my lonely
Dental Floss
Well I just might grow me some bees
But I'd leave the sweet stuff
To somebody else . . . but then, on the other hand I would
Keep the wax
'N melt it down
Pluck some Floss
'N swish it aroun'
I'd have me a crop
An' it'd be on top (that's why I'm movin' to Montana)
Movin' to Montana soon
Gonna be a Dental Floss tycoon (yes I am)
Movin' to Montana soon
Gonna be a mennil-toss flykune
I'm pluckin' the ol'
Dennil Floss
That's growin' on the prairie
Pluckin' the floss!
I plucked all day an' all nite an' all
Afternoon . . .
I'm ridin' a small tiny hoss
(His name is MIGHTY LITTLE)
He's a good hoss
Even though
He's a bit dinky to strap a big saddle or
Blanket on anyway
He's a bit dinky to strap a big saddle or
Blanket on anyway
Any way
I'm pluckin' the ol'
Dennil Floss
Even if you think it is a little silly, folks
I don't care if you think it's silly, folks
I don't care if you think it's silly, folks
I'm gonna find me a horse
Just about this big,
An' ride him all along the border line
With a
Pair of heavy-duty
Zircon-encrusted tweezers in my hand
Every other wrangler would say
I was mighty grand
By myself I wouldn't
Have no boss,
But I'd be raisin' my lonely
Dental Floss
Raisin' my lonely
Dental Floss
Raisin' my lonely
Dental Floss
Well I might
Ride along the border
With my tweezers gleamin'
In the moon-lighty night
And then I'd
Get a cuppa cawfee
'N give my foot a push . . .
Just me 'n the pygmy pony
Over by the Dennil Floss Bush
'N then I might just
Jump back on
An' ride
Like a cowboy
Into the dawn to Montana
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
Movin' to Montana soon
(Yippy-Ty-O-Ty-Ay)
zappa and the mothers w/ backing vocals Tina Turner & The Ikettes
Q. Can you help me find an unfinished Parsons table before I lose the will to live?
A. Now considered the Gap pocket T of American interior design, the Parsons table used to be a deluxe decorating item, available only to decorators and architects who had it custom-made by cabinetmakers. Even so it seems to have somewhat egalitarian roots.
In the most likely version of the story the French decorator Jean-Michel Frank, the undisputed master of luxurious minimalism, was lecturing at the Paris branch of the Parsons School of Design in the 1930's. According to an oral history in the Parsons archives, Frank challenged students to design a table so basic that it would retain its integrity whether sheathed in gold leaf, mica, parchment, split straw or painted burlap, or even left robustly unvarnished.
What grew out of Frank's sketches and the students' participation was initially called the T-square table, rigorously plain but with stylistic distinction: whatever its length or width, its square legs were always the same thickness as its top.
Stanley Barrows, a Parsons student who became one of the school's most celebrated professors, recalled that the student creation was brought to 3-D life in New York by a handyman janitor at Parsons. Exhibited at a student show, the table, whose designer remains unknown, quickly became a favorite of tastemakers on both sides of the Atlantic.
In America the first Parsons tables were mass-produced in 1963 by two leading furniture companies, Mount Airy and Directional. And since then the design has been knocked off at every conceivable price in every possible material, including plastic. Ikea makes the tables, as does West Elm, whose 36-inch-square coffee table, above, is veneered fiberboard; $199 at westelm.com or (888) 922-4119.
Unfinished versions, however, are more difficult to find. Gothic Cabinet Craft, a New Jersey company with locations in New York City and elsewhere, recently added an authentic Parsons-style coffee table to its range of unfinished furniture. Measuring 48 inches long, 24 wide and 18 high, it has a 3-inch-thick top and square legs that fulfill the classic Parsons formula. It costs $169 in unfinished birch veneer. Add $63 if you want it finished in one of nine optional stains, including Ipswich pine and walnut; gothiccabinetcraft.com or (888) 801-3100
Sixties architects wanted us to live like aliens. Our correspondent spies a parallel universe
Vision, vision, vision, it’s everywhere. Can’t move for it. Architects are living in one of those all-too-brief moments in which the world seems to be swimming with fat wallets — cities, Middle Eastern oil states, capitalist dictatorships — with the means and the egos to indulge in fantastical visions.Not in Britain, naturally. We prefer to get our visionary fantasies in the sale aisle at Matalan. No, it’s in China, of course, and Dubai, but also in culturally adventurous continental Europe, and even in the once architecturally cautious America, that experimentation is flourishing.
Next week a major exhibition, Future City: Experiment and Utopia in Architecture 1956-2006, opens at the Barbican. This vast survey of the avant-garde since the Second World War has been thrillingly designed by the modern-day experimentalists Foreign Office Architects as a labyrinthine city within what is the last old-school utopian complex built in Britain. Almost all the (living) architects in the show are building, and on a scale: FOA are co-designing the 2012 Olympic Park, if the shindig’s accountants allow them; Coop Himmelblau are realising their Sixties fantasy Cloud as a show complex for BMW in Munich; America’s king of crazy shapes Thom Mayne last year won architecture’s highest honour, the Pritzker Prize.
We can chuckle at the models’ fashions in the Smithsons’ House of the Future, the Austin Powers-style inflatable cells Haus-Rucker-Co thought of to expand Manhattan. But these dreams are coming true. There’s a market for Utopias these days. And yet they all began with one man.
Constant Niewenhuys died in August, at the age of 85. There were few obituaries beyond his home country, the Netherlands. True, the man hadn’t exactly been front-page news for a decade or three. But still, this was the intellectual leader of the Provos, those pot-smoking anarchists whose artsy pranks in the 1960s ushered in the stereotype of liberal, libertarian Netherlands.
Constant co-founded the Situationiste Internationale, too, Jean-Luc Godard’s “children of Marx and Coca-Cola”, inspiration for every sulky counter-cultural movement from Beatniks through May 1968 and punk to the anti-globalisation protestors. The man was also a leading light of CoBrA, whose paintings — great childlike scrawls designed to put a bat up the nightdress of bourgeois society — are today the kind more admired by art theoreticians than by anyone with eyes in their head. And he also happened to be the most influential architect since the war.
Of course you’ve never heard of him. The man didn’t lay a brick in his entire life. But his one great conceptual work, New Babylon, was so powerful a vision of the future, the true heir to great architectural fantasists on paper from Piranesi to Sant’Elia, that there are few architects since who don’t owe him an intellectual debt. New Babylon begat the swirling forms of Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid, the technopop of Archigram and Cedric Price, the playful naivety of Will Alsop, even the pragmatic high-tech of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, and certainly the provocations of Rem Koolhaas.
joan jet
Muayad Muhsin was both inspired and enraged by a photo of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld slumped on a seat with his army boots up in front of him.
thanks much to tom for jump-starting my artists page. basically, he used his main page as a template for mine. i will be filling in some older work with installation shots from shows. more recent work will follow too.