Bookmarks for December 19th to 27th [del.icio.us]
![Bookmarks for December 19th to 27th [del.icio.us]](http://www.paulbailey.us/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/4205075037_834d367e72_b1-150x150.jpg)
Bookmarks from December 19th to December 27th
- Los Angeles Eat+Drink – Drowning, Not Eating – page 1 – “Tortas cubanas are almost as common as burritos in Los Angeles. Mexico City–style pambazos rule the world of street food. The muscular cemita Poblano commands a fleet of trucks extending as far as the Westside. But the king of Mexican sandwiches is the mighty torta ahogada — drowned sandwich — a mass of bread and sauce and meat that is less a foodstuff than a way of life. You do not nibble at a torta ahogada; you dive straight into it, trusting that you will come out alive. I had always thought that roasted goat was the emblematic dish of Guadalajara, but tortas ahogadas joints there outnumber birria parlors at least 20:1…”
- Four New Images by Street Artist Banksy… “Four new images by the elusive street artist Banksy have surfaced over the weekend, with one seemingly attacking global warming sceptics. Banksy graffiti. Photo: Londonist.com The pieces follow the Copenhagen summit. Photo: londonist.com The latest designs were discovered by londonist.com along the banks of Regent’s Canal. It found the first beneath Camden Street Bridge – “almost in the back yard of the British Transport Police building”. The second and third pieces were etched under and next to the Oval Road Bridge in the direction of Primrose Hill. The most provocative simply has the words: “I don’t believe in global warming”, with the writing gradually disappearing into a canal.”
- “Alt-Classical”: Is This the Future? “Hot on the heels of James MacMillan’s red-hot piece in these pages calling Emperor’s New Clothes on Pierre Boulez, plus Dilettante Music’s digital composer-in-residence contest, and Norman Lebrecht’s poll of the living composers creating the most durable work (John Adams is no.1, then Part, then Reich), here’s more contemporary food for thought. Greg Sandow of Artsjournal’s blog about the future of classical music has run a post about the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s two new composers-in-residence. They are Mason Bates and Anna Clyne. Not likely to be familiar names if your view of new music is simply what the BBC Symphony Orchestra…”
- Richard Lainhart: Puremagnetik interview dec 2009“The Ondes Martenot is a very expressive electronic instrument – Maurice Martenot, who invented it, was a cellist, and wanted an electronic instrument that could be played with the same degree of expression as a string instrument. Oraison is a piece I’ve always loved – I first heard it years ago as a student – and when I got the Buchla/Continuum system, I realized that the Continuum would let me play the piece myself, as it’s a superbly expressive controller, with the advantage that it’s polyphonic, unlike the original Ondes. So I spent some time transcribing the piece from the original score, then spent a lot more time practicing it. The Buchla let me program a sound that was similar to the Ondes, but with even more expression in the timbre control, and that’s what I used for my version. So, my own realization is a kind of analog-digital homage to the original – analog in the sound-producing domain, but digital in the control domain.”
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The Pushbutton Web: Realtime Becomes Real – Anil Dash “Pushbutton is a name for what I believe will be an upgrade for the web, where any site or application can deliver realtime messages to a web-scale audience, using free and open technologies at low cost and without relying on any single company like Twitter or Facebook. The pieces of this platform have just come together to enable a whole set of new features and applications that would have been nearly impossible for an average web developer to build in the past”
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Orson Welles and His Brief Passionate Betacam Love Affair – Orson Welles – Gizmodo“In January 1985, the phone rang. The caller announced that he was Orson Welles and that he wanted to have lunch with me. Thus began one of the most extraordinary and bittersweet adventures of my life.” Sometimes the journeys we take through this life begin and end in the most unexpected ways. My encounter with Welles in the last days of his life centered on a common interest: Sony’s new one-piece camcorder, the Betacam. It had just come to market and Welles, always the genius filmmaker, had big ideas for what he could do with one. With Welles there were no limits. “You can’t do that” wasn’t in his vocabulary. This was a short, but very passionate story
Bookmarks for August 9th through August 17th [del.icio.us]
Bookmarks from August 9th through August 17th:[del.icio.us]
- TRIUMPH OF HIS WILL: GQ Feature on Quentin Tarantino – “You can lie about a lot of things,” he says, “but your filmography doesn’t lie. It’s right there. And it doesn’t give a shit about why you did it.”
- Clare Graham’s Wonderama – LA Times Magazine -”As for the question of art versus craft, Graham comes down definitively on one side. “I don’t like the terms outsider art, or naive art. What I do is craft,” he insists. “Fine art has a need to communicate something. My work is about simple processes done to the nth degree until the accumulation is significant.”
- Lefsetz Letter » Amanda Palmer email; the new art of twitter and blogging – “BUT this is, hands fucking down, also why people listen, why they search, why they want art. connection = primary. music/art = secondary.”
- Ready for the devil we don’t know -LA Times endorses a constitutional convention to fix CA budget mess -”A single initiative to end the current rule requiring a two-thirds supermajority of the Legislature to adopt a budget may be doomed at the ballot box. But opponents are more likely to accept the change if they can keep the supermajority to increase taxes and are assured that future taxes will no longer be disguised as “fees.”
- Fieldnotes from a Rock Band Bar Night | – “Much to my surprise, the scene reminded me of the participatory tradition that was the focus of my first major research project: Sacred Harp singing, an American vernacular hymnody tradition that is open to anyone, regardless of perceived musical expertise, and that revolves around drop-in community “singings” rather than rehearsed performances for an audience. “
- Views on Music and Life from an outpost.: Making the case for the musical amateur. -”think to say that people simply need more exposure to jazz, to classical music, etc- is only half-right. I think that people need to be directly involved. Make people an active part of any activity, and they are much more likely to stay engaged.”
- This Blog Will Change the World: No neon arrows – “What we need here is a third option, one which avoids asserting the absolute superiority of any one musical style without sliding into relativism.”
- YouTube – GAMEBOY FOOT CONTROLLER DEMO + 8BIT GUITAR -
joey mariano [animal-style] demonstrates his GBC Gameboy Foot Controller
- How American Health Care Killed My Father – The Atlantic (September 2009) -”Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis.”
- A music lesson for LACMA’s film program | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times – “It is not without a twang of envy that I watch the film community react to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s announcement that the 40-year-old film program would go the way of the even older Monday Evening Concerts, which was thrown out on the cold street three years ago.”
- Cal State Fullerton abruptly begins canceling classes – College Life OC – OCRegister.com -”Cal State Fullerton officials say the university has begun canceling classes, including those that were already underway, because its being required to make tens of millions of dollars in cuts to help the state balance its budget.”
- WATTS ENSEMBLE: IF WE ALL GOT MOHAWKS -”What would I call the next punkest classical record? Fuck. I could tell you probably the Andy Kaufman of classical music, which is probably Terry Riley’s ‘In C.’ Don’t get me wrong—I love the piece but it almost feels like it’s daring you to like it. ‘In C’ is typically 45 minutes to an hour long and it’s everyone playing the phrases at the same tempo—but they play it staggered so it creates all these different patterns. It’s an amazing piece. But I’ve shown it to people before and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, this is driving me insane—I can’t deal with it.’ It’s kind of the same thing with Andy Kaufman. Some people were like, ‘Wow, this is fucking amazing’ and other people were like, ‘I can’t stand this guy.’”
- The Fun Music Company Ultimate Flashcard Set -”In the Ultimate Instant Print Flashcard Set you get a comprehensive selection of printable flash cards that you print yourself, right from your computer.”
- Create Digital Music » Hexagonal iPhone Sequencer-Rhythm Machine from Jordan Rudess -”Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess and noise.io developer Amidio have made a crazy-looking hexagonal sequencer for the iPhone. It comes with plenty of samples and factory sessions if you just want to play around…”
- Terry Teachout Asks, Can Jazz Be Saved? – WSJ.com -”No, I don’t know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: Any symphony orchestra that thinks it can appeal to under-30 listeners by suggesting that they should like Schubert and Stravinsky has already lost the battle. If you’re marketing Schubert and Stravinsky to those listeners, you have no choice but to start from scratch and make the case for the beauty of their music to otherwise intelligent people who simply don’t take it for granted. By the same token, jazz musicians who want to keep their own equally beautiful music alive and well have got to start thinking hard about how to pitch it to young listeners—not next month, not next week, but right now.”
