Tag Archives: New York
Mon Ami, Mekas
Filmmaker, poet, critic and philosopher Jonas Mekas passed away on January 23 at the age of 96. The wildly creative and willfully cantankerous Mekas was a champion of experimental cinema and a film critic whose taste and style was ahead of its time. Mekas is credited with getting Andy Warhol to try his hand at [...]
Red Redo
Back in the late 1990s one of the most impressive sites in Nashville’s art scene was the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel. The kiddie ride was designed by Nashville artist Red Grooms and it featured whimsical and even grotesque chimeras like Captain Tom Ryman fused with his own steamboat or H.G. Hill monstrously combined with one [...]
Punks and Poets
I once read an essay by music critic Simon Reynolds where he pointed out that the fundamental difference between punk music and the new wave and no wave music that followed it is that new wave and no wave bands were formed by art school kids, but punk music was always rooted in literary inspirations [...]
Cowpunkgirl Blues
Trying to sneak in a few more birthday notices before the year’s up, 2016 marks the 40th birthday of Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. It’s also the 30th birthday of John Cale’s third album which borrowed its title from Robbins’ novel. Cale’s Cowgirls is a live record/time capsule that captures the New York [...]
Lou’s Clues
I dedicated one recent Halloween post to the all too real ghost of Lou Reed who died three years ago this past October, 27. I’ve had a productive week this week: I handed in a final proposal for a community arts grant; I turned in a feature story about the challenges of being homeless in [...]
TAXI DRIVER at 40
Three years ago I reviewed Steve Schapiro’s book of Taxi Driver photographs. Here are some of those words… Of all the brilliant gems of 1970′s America’s New Hollywood Cinema, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver may be the grimiest and goriest. Beyond Paul Schrader’s loneliness-crazed script or Scorsese’s street-level shooting, it’s Robert DeNiro’s portrait of the mohawked, [...]
Howard and Bill
Burroughs: The Movie is a 1983 documentary by Howard Brookner about the author William S. Burroughs. Brookner shot the film for five years with Burroughs’ full cooperation. The two became good friends before Brookner died of AIDS in 1989. In 2012 Brookner’s archive was discovered in a variety of locations, and the filmmaker’s nephew, Aaron [...]
Horses at 40
Following up on my last Patti Smith post, I realized the other night that 2015 is the 40th anniversary of Smith’s debut classic, Horses. I’ve seen lots of notices in the news this year about the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run which also came out in 1975, but I don’t think I’ve [...]
Early Lynne Sachs
Experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs will be coming to Nashville from her New York home next week to screen a selection of experimental films from her 30 years in cinema. Originally from Memphis, one of Sachs’s earliest movies was a music video of a kind that she made for her pal, Memphis musician Randy Brand. The [...]
Nina Simone: The Legend
I first heard about Nina Simone while reading Sam Shepard biographies which always mention his working as a busboy at the Village Gate, refilling the diva’s ice water glass during her performances in New York in the 1960′s. It was only years later that I fell under her spell and I still think her take [...]
