I found this thanks to Jesse Rifkin's recent book, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City. Loved the book, highly recommended to anyone interested in NYC, late 20th century music scenes, and the concept of "scenius" (mentioned on pg. 13!) in general.
Very well organized (loved the $100 equivalency chart across the decades), very pragmatic (venues that didn't depend on music turning a profit were able to take more chances in booking, free or cheap food for artists helped foster community), and comprehensive including lesser documented scenes like loft jazz and anti-folk in addition the better known folk, disco, and punk ones.
(I was also fortunate enough to take one of Jesse's NYC punk walking tours which was utterly amazing and informative and really gave me a physical context to the scene i.e. "a lot of these places were really close together" :D)
It doesn't get much better than Carl Barks!! Excellent points on a balanced view of technology.
Beautiful quote from Dyer — will be keeping carrying that with me for a while
Lastly, thank you for the Free Play recommendation from last week!! I've read through most of it and it's simply wonderful. A beautiful view on how creative practices are the playground which we cultivate a greater intuition for our daily lives.
Was just reading Questlove’s *Creative Quest* (which is great), and he also cites David Byrne on the value of knowing what you are not. A little serendipity in my readings this week, thank you!
I need a vinyl LP of nothing but great cartoon theme songs from my childhood. Duck Tales would be at the top followed by the banger that is the Gummy Bears theme song.
FYI, the link for #5 (comic book explosions) is requiring me to have an account on X to view it. I can see the post briefly start to load before the redirect to sign in appears. Not sure if this will happen for everyone without an X account, but wanted to let others know just in case.
OTOH, and without a Twitter account, I often follow links to Twitter from other Substack newsletters. My experience has been that a link to a specific tweet gets in, but a link to a username account does not. For example --
I often find myself watching movies in 22-minute chunks, partly because of being a parent and partly because of having a short attention span lately. I do TV shows with act breaks, so 3 or 4 breaks as I watch where commercials would be. It's been liberating to realize I can do this.
I may be missing the point of the Dyer quote, but didn't Frida Lawrence do exactly that-- the grand life changing event-- when she left her husband and three children and ran away with David Herbert?
Related to your "Defined by negatives" post, here's a half hour clip of the Talking Heads as a 3 piece in early 1976.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fdLi_60SIQ
https://thekitchen.org/on-file/live-at-the-kitchen/ (background)
I found this thanks to Jesse Rifkin's recent book, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE: Music, Community, and Vanished Spaces in New York City. Loved the book, highly recommended to anyone interested in NYC, late 20th century music scenes, and the concept of "scenius" (mentioned on pg. 13!) in general.
Very well organized (loved the $100 equivalency chart across the decades), very pragmatic (venues that didn't depend on music turning a profit were able to take more chances in booking, free or cheap food for artists helped foster community), and comprehensive including lesser documented scenes like loft jazz and anti-folk in addition the better known folk, disco, and punk ones.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/this-must-be-the-place-jesse-rifkin
(I was also fortunate enough to take one of Jesse's NYC punk walking tours which was utterly amazing and informative and really gave me a physical context to the scene i.e. "a lot of these places were really close together" :D)
https://walkonthewildsidenyc.com
It doesn't get much better than Carl Barks!! Excellent points on a balanced view of technology.
Beautiful quote from Dyer — will be keeping carrying that with me for a while
Lastly, thank you for the Free Play recommendation from last week!! I've read through most of it and it's simply wonderful. A beautiful view on how creative practices are the playground which we cultivate a greater intuition for our daily lives.
Oh, and +1 for movie intermissions! No kids yet, but we just like splitting movies up for the drama of it all.
Was just reading Questlove’s *Creative Quest* (which is great), and he also cites David Byrne on the value of knowing what you are not. A little serendipity in my readings this week, thank you!
I need a vinyl LP of nothing but great cartoon theme songs from my childhood. Duck Tales would be at the top followed by the banger that is the Gummy Bears theme song.
FYI, the link for #5 (comic book explosions) is requiring me to have an account on X to view it. I can see the post briefly start to load before the redirect to sign in appears. Not sure if this will happen for everyone without an X account, but wanted to let others know just in case.
Hmm I didn’t realize that. I should just stop linking to that site all together
Same for New York Times.. People living outside USA probably don’t sign up for it and miss reading a lot of things you share (I do for sure!)
That may be a good plan!
OTOH, and without a Twitter account, I often follow links to Twitter from other Substack newsletters. My experience has been that a link to a specific tweet gets in, but a link to a username account does not. For example --
https://twitter.com/(username)/status/(long number)
I don't think you need the ? and everything that follows it.
I often find myself watching movies in 22-minute chunks, partly because of being a parent and partly because of having a short attention span lately. I do TV shows with act breaks, so 3 or 4 breaks as I watch where commercials would be. It's been liberating to realize I can do this.
I may be missing the point of the Dyer quote, but didn't Frida Lawrence do exactly that-- the grand life changing event-- when she left her husband and three children and ran away with David Herbert?