Do me a favor, in memory of the great Jimmy Cliff (RIP). Next time you need your mood lifted—and who doesn't these days? —just listen to this song. Pure, unadulterated joy

LA palette cleanse: really great graphic design deep dive into the Ruscha Sunset archive by @goodspeed.bsky.social focusing on the evolution of the signage www.sunsetoversunset.org/stories/signs

nostalgia for one night in 1995 with friends on shrooms and walking through the plaza we discovered the fountain was still on. you could go out that walkway and feel like you were inside the thing: the roar of the water, the lights in the green murk and the texture of the concrete!

“Cheney Piñata” The Bad Plus, 2004, composed by @ethaniversonpiano.bsky.social youtu.be/gNeefGl5azw?...

Carrie Mae Weems, From the 'Roaming' series, 2006 2

just saw Herbie Hancock at the Strathmore. played almost exclusively progressive jazz, went ~1 hour over time, much of the overage stemming from a nearly 40m lecture on evolution, compassion, & futurism done entirely via vocoder, and saved almost all the accessible fusion for post-lecture. the GOAT!

this blender, a can of whole tomatoes, garlic or shallots, red chili, salt. olive oil. and you never buy Rao’s again.

favorite SNL skit of all time: “Whee (Genuine)”

Jack DeJohnette, just one of the deepest musicians ever, and a personal hero. Here is my obituary for NPR Music.

I love this K. Abe photo of Jack DeJohnette with his daughter Farah, taken at the Hollywood Bowl on July 30, 1972 #RIP

read this a few weeks ago and after this week feel like I should read it one more time

Harry Bertoia’s Untitled (Broccoli) (c. 1965), patinated bronze

You know what rules? Wayne Shorter’s solo on “The Chess Players” youtu.be/fI0S6ioserI?...

In September 1958, Columbia threw a jazz party at the Plaza Hotel. Ralph Ellison wrote afterward to Albert Murray about "poor, evil, lost little Miles Davis" and his band. "These cats have gotten lost, man. They're trying to get hold of something by fucking up the blues." 🤨 youtu.be/_PrJhAERZlQ?...

Grateful to have my essay linking Confederate monuments to Nazi rhetoric of "degenerate art" included in the exhibition's catalogue—and can't wait to see the show when out in LA next month www.artforum.com/columns/mich...

Pharoah Sanders - "Kazuko" - Live In an Abandoned Tunnel in San Francisco (Marin Headlands - close to the Golden Gate Bridge) 1982

Take 2 Define jazz? Sure: Art Blakey's shuffle beat. youtube.com/watch?v=vE4i... Blakey was born 10/11/19

Happy Birthday to Sphere. All the jazz greats knew what they were doing, but Thelonious Monk REALLY knew what he was doing. It was Precise. iverson.substack.com/p/tt-442-bri...

Slightly Damaged Chair, Malibu, 1973 by David Hockney

Eugéne Atget, Café, Avenue de la Grande-Armée Paris, France c. 1924/25

national gallery of art is closed as of tomorrow (10/5), which is too bad because the photography and the black arts movement show is incredible www.nga.gov/exhibitions/...

Ansel Adams, Basketball game at an Internment Camp for Japanese American citizens during World War II

made a Marcel Duchamp fan fic video. Sora’s default tone is so upbeat and schmaltzy. sora.chatgpt.com/p/s_68dd9d49...

in the Smithsonian archives yesterday, I learned when the Hirshhorn bought Wolfgang Tillmans' Concorde Grid in 2006, they also got an exhibition copy, so they could show it with the lights turned up, like the artist likes it, without frying their 56 fragile C-prints greg.org/archive/2025...

stared at this Richard Diebenkorn gouache-crayon on paper (Untitled #37 from 1981, 23 x 28 inches) for more time than i thought i would

great example of a film that is so much better than the book it’s based on (at least the English translation)

I love this William Claxton photo of John Coltrane at the Guggenheim Museum, 1960 The painting is by Pierre Soulages.

art exhibit poster seen in grocery store in Sausalito, California- IYKYK youtu.be/YQqxWrBHWxM?...

If you need a break from the present, may I recommend these flashback interviews on Fresh Air with Johnny Otis and Etta James. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f...

🎂 100 B.B. King, how about this live performance in Zaire 1974 (seen in the classic doc “When We Were Kings”) youtu.be/UOnzDKvn7YI?...

things look pretty dire for the Vaillancourt Fountain, but the Thrasher Magazine skate history video linked in this article is an essential slice of SF culture

if you need something much stronger than a timeline cleanse, this album 🤯

me, a Philly native, reading a positive review of the new Calder space on the parkway...

San Francisco, get thee to the de Young to see Rose B. Simpson’s Tewa-style lowriders.

there’s a good Wojnarowicz documentary, streaming free youtu.be/18X5dBp06Qs?...

Owen Simmons' 1902/03 The Book of Bread tumblr'd by today, and I took a moment to look again at the incredible silver bromide prints of the deluxe edition. s/o @shannonmattern.bsky.social for bringing it up in 2023 greg.org/archive/2023...

this mode of art writing, the attempt to parse an artwork, never reaching a conclusion, while documenting the experience of reading, online digressions, disorientation (complimentary) and second takes feels incredibly relevant, even if you’ve never heard of the artists Greg’s writing about.

The fantasy of running your own independent radio station epitomizes the potent, naive optimism of the early internet in 90’s San Francisco. Rusty actually made it real - running the servers for 25 years! Thank you! somafm.com

share Mark's view that this is perhaps the greatest jazz recording, a pinnacle of 20th century art. and celebrate the miracle that SR is still with us 🙏

Not enough people know about the conceptual masterpiece “Voice of Harold,” in which MS read the lyrics directly from the liner notes on the back of an old gospel album youtu.be/-kkLuSlOE3U?...

"Animation of a lightning event from April 2019 as detected by the LOFAR radio telescope in the Netherlands. Includes three separate flashes in less than 2 seconds. The pulses are colored by age, with bright white pulses fading to shades of blue and purple over time." sketchfab.com/3d-models/li...

fact check: true so good! youtu.be/m1GheMJ59yc?...

Hans Memling, 1483

what were they thinking when they would coat books with thin plastic to give a glossy look (and inevitably peel off)? (Duane Michals: Warhol, Joseph Cornell, Duchamp)

The Hilma af Klint exhibition at MOMA "What Stands Behind the Flowers" is stunning. Allow an hour and be sure to use the provided magnifying glasses! The detail in the work, the technical skill involved, is mind boggling. Feels very intimate, like visiting her studio. www.moma.org/calendar/exh...

in a great example of the blog medium, there’s a bunker hill specific history blog and the author did an incredible deep dive to locate the exact spot this photo was taken bunkerhilllosangeles.com/2021/12/23/r...

picked up Tyler’s “Carleton Watkins: Making the West American” as a bio of a great American artist, but it’s also one of the best histories I’ve read of 19th century California and San Francisco

trying to get into using an e-ink reader, comparing options, figuring these are mature products, but they are both mediocre in slightly different ways. kindle has the amazon ecosystem stink, UI looks bad, even when paying more for no ads. Kobo device feels flimsy and the UI is painfully slow

Hot Pynchon Summer continues on page 180 of Vineland: “…the thousand bloody arroyos in the hinterlands of time that stretched somberly inland from the honky-tonk coast of Now.” I mean, that’s fucking HEAVENLY.