Thread Of Time #3

For the much-delayed third installment of Thread Of Time, we present Delincuentes, a compilation of lost, boss Latin American '60s sounds. Released back in 2001 by Martian Records (apparantly the same folks that gave us the Ils Sont Fous Ces Galois! series), the comp includes a few bands well-known to trans-world '60s addicts, like Peru's godlike Los Yorks and Los Saicos, along with lesser-knowns from the likes of Mexico, Columbia, Uruguay and Chilé. Sure, there's the usual clutch of cover versions included, but overall the quality on this one is top-flight all the way, with tons of fuzz, stomp, lustful vocals, and cheap swirling organ sounds. Highlights include "Ya Se," the Mexican punk classic by Los Ovnis, the psychotic "El Loco" by the aforementioned Los Yorks, the scorching "Lo Sue Sera" by Chilé's Los Beat 4, Los Yaki's "Las Estatuas De Marfil" (think Bob Seger and The Last Heard as filtered through a haze of mezcal), and Los Shains' dance-floor raver, "Shains A Go Go." Muy caliente!

Dig: Thread Of Time #1: Tougher Than Stains

Dig: Thread Of Time #2: Echoes From The Wilderness

Quote Of The Week

"There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four."

I’m Only Passing Through

Don Devito

Rest In Peace

"Don DeVito was Dylan’s most important producer during the 1970s. Together they did four albums, starting with the absolute classic Desire in 1976, the two live albums Hard Rain and At Budokan, as well as 1978′s Street Legal including the hits "Señor" and "Changing Of The Guards." In the 1990s DeVito returned as a compilation producer for the Bootleg Series, Vol.1-3 boxset in 1991, the 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration in 1993, Greatest Hits Vol. 3 in 1994 and The Best Of Bob Dylan in 1997. In 2000 he produced the single "Things Have Changed," which won the Oscar in 2001 for 'Best Song.' Lately he was recording Supervisor of the Bootleg Series Vol. 5 and producer of the Hybrid SACD set." [Text via Positively Bob Dylan]

Grave Yard Trains

"The air conditioning never worked. People rode between cars because it was the only way to stay cool. And there was a way higher crime rate in the subway back then than on the streets. Everyone knew it. You avoided falling asleep at all costs." -John Conn

Bronx-born John Conn began his career at age nineteen as a United States Marine Corps photographer. Following his service, he earned a BFA in photography from the School Of Visual Arts in New York City, where he graduated with honors.

His work has been published in Time/Life Books, The New York Sunday Times, and in magazines including Nikon World, Hasselblad, Rangefinder, Studio Photography, Shutterbug, LensWork, and Popular Photography.

In the late 1970s while working as a freelance photographer, he captured the powerful black and white subway images that have become his signature collection. The artistry and historical significance of this work has earned it a place in the permanent collection of the Museum Of The City Of New York.

Dig: John Conn Photography

All photographs by John Conn

Quote Of The Week

"The worst fear is that I'll learn to be happy AT LAST and then get real sad when I see what I've missed."

These Little Town Blues

"I've got the greatest job in the world. There's no other job in government where cause and effect is so tightly coupled where you can make a difference every day in so many different ways and in so many different people's lives." -Michael Bloomberg, NYC Mayor

Video by Casey Neistat

Push On!

"Mightier than the tread of marching armies is the power of an idea whose time has come." -Victor Hugo

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2011

Quote Of The Week

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception... If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me." [from A Treatise Of Human Nature]

Death Of The American Family

Bil Keane

Rest In Peace

"Daily, for more than half a century, millions of readers have received a serving of Bil (he really did spell it with one "L") Keane’s traditional-value, homespun humor in his cartoon The Family Circus, published in recent years in nearly 1,500 newspapers." ... Story continues here: Bil Keane, Creator Of ‘The Family Circus,’ Dies At 89 (NY Times)

Dig: The Family Circus (official site)

Dig: The Dysfunctional Family Circus

Dig: The Nietzsche Family Circus

Cheers To Hitch!

Out Of The Shadows

Joe Frazier

Rest In Peace

"Finally, in death, it appears Joe Frazier finally stepped out of Muhammad Ali's shadow... After Frazier died Monday night after a long battle with liver cancer, the appreciation began to pour out for the man doomed to be the second half of the Ali-Frazier coupling since their three epic battles in the early '70s. But even as Ali's name hung close to the top of every story told about Frazier, it fell behind for a change. As Ali gracefully expressed his sympathy, respect and admiration for Frazier, others made the case for him as far more than Ali's foil." ... Story continues here: Remembering Joe Frazier, The Working Man’s Champion (NY Times)

Dig: A Life In Video Clips

Dig: Frazier's Miller Lite commercial

Download: Joe Frazier - "Try It Again"

Download: Joe Frazier - "My Way"

Quote Of The Week

"The metaphysical comfort — with which, I am suggesting even now, every true tragedy leaves us —that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable —this comfort appears in incarnate clarity in the chorus of the satyrs, a chorus of natural beings who live ineradicably, as it were, behind all civilization and remain eternally the same, despite the changes of generations and of the history of nations."

A.I.T.A. Hall Of Fame: Christopher Hitchens

"About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough — and even miraculous enough if you insist — I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?

Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others — while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity — so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities... but there, there. Enough." [from Hitch-22]

Dig: The Daily Hitchens
Dig: Hitchens Online Directory

Read: Martin Amis On Hitchens
Read: A Voice, Still Vibrant, Reflects On Mortality

Buy: Letters To A Young Contrarian

Buy: The Quotable Hitchens

Buy: Hitch-22: A Memoir

A Sign Of The Times?

Photography by Lee Greenfeld © 2011