Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces “Live”

Please join your friends at the ARChive as they present their first event up at Columbia University - Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces: Live

Thursday, November 19, 6 pm
Free and open to the public
Altschul Auditorium, 417 International Affairs Building (SIPA), 420 West 118th Street

In Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, Greil Marcus delved into the cross-currents, tangles, and whirlpools that made such vastly different movements as dada, lettrism, the Situationist International, and punk part of a single current. To mark the just-published 20th-anniversary edition of the book, Columbia University presents Greil Marcus in a one-man performance of Lipstick Traces.

This will be smart AND fun!

A book signing will follow the event. Lipstick Traces: Live is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Columbia Libraries, the ARChive of Contemporary Music, and the Arts Initiative at Columbia University.

In addition, the Music & Arts Library at Columbia University will display books by Marcus, books that influenced him, and posters, records, and other materials courtesy of the ARChive of Contemporary Music. The exhibition will be on display from November 1 to December 15, 2009 at The Gabe M. Wiener Music & Arts Library, 7th floor of Dodge Hall, at 2960 Broadway.

Here’s a simple bibliography of Greil’s work:
* Rock & Roll Will Stand (1969), edited anthology
* Double Feature: Movies & Politics (1972), co-authored with Michael Goodwin.
* Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music (E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1975/2008).
* Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (1979, editor and contributor)
* Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989/2009), a book on 20th century avant-garde art movements like Dadaism, Lettrist International and Situationist International and their influence on late 20th century countercultures and The Sex Pistols and Punk Movement.
* Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991), about the phenomenon of Elvis Presley in the years since his death
* In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992 (1993, published in the US as Ranters and Crowd Pleasers)
* The Dustbin of History (1995)
* Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (1998; also published as The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, 2001), an account of American folk culture, seen through Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.
* Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2001)
* The Manchurian Candidate (2002)
* The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2004, co-edited with Sean Wilentz)
* Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005), a “biography” of the Dylan song
* The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice (2006)
• A New Literary History of America (2009, with Werner Sollers, Harvard University Press)

call or e-me if you have any questions :  B. George 212-226-6967  arcmusic@inch.com=

DIRECTIONS  -  International Affairs Building (SIPA) / Altschul Auditorium

Getting to Columbia’s Campus:
The main entrances to Columbia’s campus on Morningside Heights in Manhattan are at Broadway and 116th Street (where the subway station is) and at Amsterdam Avenue and 116th Street.

Public Transportation:
The best way to reach campus is using the subway. Take subway line number 1 or 9 local to 116th Street (Columbia University) station.

Parking:
You may park on the street or use the local parking garages. The 512-520 Garage is located at the corner of 112th Street and Amsterdam; the Riverside Church Parking Garage is located on 120th Street between Claremont Avenue and Riverside Drive.

Finding Altschul Auditorium on Columbia’s Campus:
The International Affairs building (also known as SIPA) is on the eastern side of Columbia University’s Morningside Campus. The building is at 420 W. 118th Street, on the south side of 118th Street between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Avenue (closer to Amsterdam). Altschul Auditorium is located in the lobby of the building on the first floor, room 417.

Entering From Campus:
From the main campus entrance (right by the subway stop at 116th Street and Broadway) walk east all the way across College Walk (116th Street) to Amsterdam Avenue. Go north two blocks to 118th Street and cross Amsterdam; the International Affairs building is there on the corner. The entrance is on 118th Street (south side).

We Built This City On…

It is a little known fact that the ancient Nabataeans were early adaptors of new sound recording technologies.  They began with cylinder discs (called columns) but found them awkward.  Later, around 70 BC, they sliced the cylinders into wafer thin segments, well thin for the time, and began recording on the flat side.  Thwarted by a region-only spindle size and fierce competition from the Hittites (every tune a Hitt!) and the Phoenicians (the original Purple Reign), they were soon forced out of the market.  Not to mention the freight, as these babies were 33 1/3 tons.  Alas, here at Petra, unshipped goods, in a format that defies migration, linger still.

But, I may be mistaken about all this.  What I do know is that the walk through Al-Siq, and the first glimpse of the Treasury through the slice of rock, luminous pink curtained black, is a remarkable thing and well worth a trip through time.

All I can think of is our last administration, and the inability to tackle any problem successfully, and how everything was ‘hard work”   Please.  Have a look at Ajunta, Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, Petra.  Imagine signing off on 40 years to carve a rock facade and we can’t rebuild twenty rows of wooden shotgun houses in New Orleans!   Disgrace, I mean I digress.

I’ve spent the last 10 days here in Amman Jordan setting up the first stages of Muslim World Music Day (formerly the Muslim Music Crash Course) at Columbia Universities Middle Eastern Research Center.  It has been a whirlwind of meetings, show-and tells, planning, report writing and visits to archives, schools, libraries, embassies, musicians and government offices.  The project director handling things from Jordan – the man with ALL the contacts – is Kareem Talhouni.

If you don’t know, Muslim World Music Day is an attempt to catalog all the relevant recording in the world, in one day, and surround this core database with informational and entertaining content, online.  Read all about it at our pre-website blog  www.arcmmcc.wordpress.com

One nice find was a thesis, written in English, but only published in Arabic, on Jordanian music, written by Prof Abdel Hamid Hamam the Dean of the College of Art and Design, University of Jordan.  Written in Wales no less.  We will excerpt it in both languages on the Muslim World Music Day website.

Equally amazing is the work of Dr. Mohammed Taha Ghawanmeh , Music professor and Dean of fine art @ Yarmouk University, Irbid, Jordan.  Dr Ghawanmeh has spent his life collecting the traditional music of Jordan, and the result is a 500 cassette edition, each cassette one hour long and accompanied by a booklet of lyrics, notation and explanatory notes.  This is hard work at its very best.  Only two sets of the series now exist and I can only hope that some scholars or universities that read this could find this work useful for their institution of scholarly pursuits.   Here’s the contact for the fine arts dept :  fac_finart@yu.edu.jo and Arabic speakers can call +962 79 574 3535

By the way on the road to Petra I has coffee, and after a 800 step climb rested in a rock solid tea room overlooking the rose red monestary.  Life used to be so hard…

My favorite reaction to the project was from a woman at the Center who wanted to know if every whore and slut who parades nearly naked on the TV, shaking her stuff, and singing in Arabic would be a part of the website.  She then showed me a few of Nancy Ajram’s videos (mild by my standards) and then exclaimed with a smile, “This is my favorite!”  And shaking her shoulders, “I love to dance to this one.”   Hey, Nancy was on Ophra last month!

With downloading so prevalent and pirating commonplace, music shops have all but disappeared in Jordan – one small chain, The Music Box, holding its own.  Plus the visual versions are very seductive as DVDs and music on TV predominates.  Live music is scarce in formal performance.  This photo is from a concert at Al Hussein Cultural Center taken by Robert Reeder, an ex pro photographer visiting Amman.   Musically, it was the kanoon playing of Tewfik Mirkham (sp?) that was luminous.

My endless search for actual music collections was finally rewarded on the last day of my visit to Amman with a trip to The Jordan Radio and Television Corp.   Our animated host, Ms. Hala Zureiqat, Director of Jordan Television, listened to our pitch, conferred with her Director, then nearly shouted, “We’re in!”   What has made this trip rewarding is that so many people in the region are willing to support the Muslim World Music Day -  a new idea, on first hearing – so enthusiastically.

In one of the rehearsal rooms we were treated to a short concert by 73 year old singer Mohammed Wahib – sweet, toothless and energetic.  The song is, “Slaima.”

The station has saved nearly its entire history since the 60s on reel to reel tape, and it is mostly catalogued.  The recent past is digitized and can be called up inhouse, electronically.   But for me the real fun was to finally see some real vinyl – 45s, LPs and a full shelf unit of approx 4,300 seventy-eights.

We will work to make sure this material is cataloged for the project and who knows what trash or treasures we will unearth.  Maybe an early Nabataean disc?

ARC Partners with Columbia University

It’s taken a while, but here’s the text of the official press release from Columbia University.  Yes, were changing the face (facade) of academic study!

Columbia Forges Partnership with ARChive of Contemporary Music
Collection of be-bop, bluegrass, blues, country, jazz, rap, reggae, rock, zydeco
and other forms to be made available for research and education

NEW YORK, April 6, 2009 — Columbia University has joined in a cooperative agreement with the ARChive of Contemporary Music, the largest collection of popular music in the world, to integrate the resources of the archive into arts programming at the university and other educational and scholarly activities.

The partnership is between the archive, Columbia University Libraries and the Arts Initiative at Columbia. Holdings of the archive include the Keith Richards Blues Collection, endowed by Richards, and the 50,000 disc World Music collection.

“The ARChive is excited to partner with Columbia to create innovative academic initiatives and online content to help with the study, understanding and enjoyment of popular music from all over the world,” said Bob George, director of the archive. “One of the first projects under this new partnership will mount the ARChive’s catalog online, for both students and the general public to access. This initial database, the International Discography, will provide data on a half-million recordings in the collection of over 2 million sound recordings.”

The New York-based archive is supported by a remarkable board of advisors which includes David Bowie, Jellybean Benitez, Jonathan Demme, Ellie Greenwich, Jerry Leiber, Youssou N’Dour, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Nile Rodgers, Todd Rundgren, Fred Schneider, Martin Scorsese, Paul Simon and Mike Stoller.

“The archive is an extraordinary resource and it is an honor for Columbia to make the collection available for education and scholarship,” said Jim Neal, vice president for information services and University Librarian. “We welcome this opportunity to advance wider availability and use of the archive.”
As part of its continuing commitment to engagement in the city, University Libraries and the Arts Initiative will work with the archive to reach out to interested communities to develop programs and projects that support the work of the partnership. The Arts Initiative will work to develop and implement public programming which highlights the work of the collaboration and brings visibility to the archive.

“The Arts Initiative is especially happy to have collaborated with Jim Neal in the expanded access to this remarkable collection,” said Gregory Mosher, director of the Arts Initiative and adjunct assistant professor of theatre arts. “Connecting the arts with other ways of understanding the world is central to the Arts Initiative’s work, and Bob George’s collection is a unique way of understanding the American, not to mention international, experience as expressed through its most popular art form. We look forward to working with Bob, the library, Columbia’s scholars and artists, and artists from around the world to create unique and compelling programming in the coming years.”

The ARChive of Contemporary Music is a not-for-profit archive, music library and research center located in New York City. It collects, preserves and provides information on the popular music of all cultures and races throughout the world from 1950 to the present. Now in its 24th year, the archive consists of 2 million sound recordings and approximately 3 million photographs, books, press kits, videos, memorabilia and related ephemera.

The Arts Initiative was launched by Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger in February 2004 to re-examine the role of the arts in the university and the university’s role in the arts. Under the direction of Gregory Mosher, the Arts Initiative strives to enliven the arts on campus, connect the campus to the city’s culture, and link the arts with other ways of understanding the world. It collaborates with student and faculty partners across the campus, unconstrained by academic field, and works regularly with the city and national and international cultural partners to make the arts a part of every Columbian’s education and life.

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services is one of the top 5 academic research library systems in North America. Its collections include over 10 million volumes, over 100,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources, manuscripts, rare books, microforms, maps, graphic and audio-visual materials. The services and collections are organized into 25 libraries and various academic technology centers. The Libraries employs more than 550 professional and support staff.

About Columbia University
A leading academic and research university, Columbia University continually seeks to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to foster a campus community deeply engaged in understanding and addressing the complex global issues of our time. Columbia’s extensive public service initiatives, cultural collaborations and community partnerships help define the University’s underlying values and mission to educate students to be both leading scholars and informed, engaged citizens. Founded in 1754 as King’s College, Columbia University in the City of New York is the fifth oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.

The Oldest Playable Phonautogram. Ever.

 

The New York Times has a new article about the newly recovered, mid-nineteenth century recordings of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian “tinkerer” who invented a recording device called the Phonautogram YEARS before Edison (that bad bastard) ever even thought about recording.  This phonautogram of “Au Claire de la Lune,” which dates to 1860, is now considered the earliest playable recording in existence:

Scott’s technology – and the technology used to recover it – are amazing.  A really worthwhile read.

ps. the article mentions Jonathan Sterne’s The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction.  It’s a fabulous book and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants insight into the history of sound recording and a better understanding of how technology changed the way people listened to the world.  It’s all about the ensoniment, folks!

pps.  the article also mentions Archeophone, an amazing company that preserves, remasters and reissues recordings of the acoustic era of the recording industry.  All of their releases are worth having.  (My favorite is the Billy Murray album, but the Bert Williams releases are mind blowing too.  If you’re into popular music history, this stuff is de rigueur).

Dance Fever

File this as Part Two in an examination of the wonderful world of K-Tel as an instrument of dance education. The kids loved Dan’s previous Pop and Lock post featuring Breakdance (K-Tel NU3360) which helped spread the good word about the hip hop revolution way back when. Today we present Disco Fire (K-Tel TU2590) another hot one one from the folks at K-Tel. It’s a double album of top disco hits with instructions in the gatefold on how to do the “Hot Chocolate”. Never heard of this particular dance craze, though I was decidedly in the anti-disco camp when this hit your local bargain bin, so forgive my ignorance if the Hot Chocolate is in fact your all time fave rave. For you disco newbies here are the steps you’ll need to add the Hot Chocolate to your disco line dance arsenal.

And here’s what you’ll look like, with a little practice. Try whistling “The Hustle” while you watch.

Now, boogie down, my funky chickens!

– J.

Hey You Guy-ys!

Sure, we all watched the Electric Company at one point or another. Chock full of famous actors (Bill Cosby, Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman were regulars while folks like Gene Wilder, Victor Borge, Mel Brooks and Joan Rivers all popped in now and then). But what do we know about the people who provided the music? As I was poking around today, I came across the site of 150 Music, a small, independent record label. One of the people who established 150 Music is Gary William Friedman, whose claims to fame include a long list of film, theater and TV credits that includes having been the Electric Company ’s musical director for a season. He wrote about 40 songs for the show’s fourth season, among them the awesome Spider Man theme. Check it out in Spidey Meets the Yeti, in which Spidey must save the day Mighty Mouse style from a serial food-sitting yeti menacing the community:

Friedman was just one of the shows great musical directors. The Electric Company’s first – and probably most important – was Joe Raposo. He had the job for the show’s first three seasons. Raposo was a student of Nadia Boulanger, he wrote music for Dr. Seuss, he wrote for Sesame Street (Many credit Raposo for making Sesame Street a more musically diverse place; if you’re under 40, you probably have him to thank for your musical taste. Remember ” ‘Being Green?” That was him too.), he scored Three’s Company (yes, that Three’s Company) and his song “Sing” – originally recorded by the Carpenters – was reprised on the 2005 episode of South Park called “Wing.” He also was awarded Grammys and Emmys, and was nominated once for an Oscar for his song “The First Time it Happens” in the Great Muppet Caper. Raposo, a Harvard graduate, was probably the one who recruited fellow alum Tom Lehrer for the Electric Company. Lehrer wrote about 10 songs for the show, including “Menu Song,” “Silent E” and my favorite, the “L-Y Song”:

Raposo produced and wrote or co-wrote most of the music for the Electric Company’s Original Cast album (Warner Brothers BS 2636, 1972; below left):

The record – this copy from the ARChive’s collection – is a lavish affair. A gatefold sleeve with a comic book insert, a “crypto-spectometer” volvelle (à la Led Zeppelin III) and art by Jack Davis, I can’t imagine how anyone in their right mind would have given this to a child. It was reissued in 1974 (Sesame Street Records CTW 22052), but the later version was not as cool. CTW cut costs with less interesting packaging and art, and all of Cosby’s songs were removed.

The 1974 album was far more exciting than the album of Electric Company songs Disney put out (Songs From the Electric Company TV Show, Disneyland Records STER 1350, 1973; above right). It puts the television right on the cover, sending a great message to kids that it’s all about the TV. They sapped all the soul out of Raposo’s songs as well. Good going Disney!

dtn