Monthly Archives: April 2007

Wikiwikiwiki

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pWX46lJc1Y]

Excuse the light posting recently. The reason being that I am converting Jahsonic.com to a MediaWiki which takes a lot of time. I would like to ask your help. I am especially looking for technically skilled people.

At this moment I am looking for someone to write a WikiMedia bot to automate some simple tasks.

Contact me at jwgeerinck at hotmail.com if you want to help out.

P. S. : the song is Newcleus’s Jam On It, “the theme song to Wikipedia” due to “the little chipmunk-funk voices” that go ‘wikiwikiwiki‘.

They’re so irritating, those lists

After 1001 Books (2006), 1001 Films (2004) and 1001 Albums (2006), it is now time for:

1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die (2007) – Stephen Farthing
[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

They’re so irritating, those lists of the best ten paintings, the best five novels… It’s ludicrous: if you’re ever in a position where your options are so reduced then the chances are you won’t have any choice. OK, you might be torn between which books to take on a long flight or for a weekend in the country but, asked to choose in some definitive way between Tolstoy or Dostoevsky the only reasonable response is “both”. Likewise, if you’re forced to choose just ten great paintings then what is at stake is probably not your personal preference but the fate of art and civilisation itself. –Geoff Dyer via http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

Does anyone have a digital list of the painting entries?

Related: paintinggreatnessvisual artslists

See also: 1001 Books (2006)1001 Films (2004)1001 Albums (2006)

Happy Easter (2)

To my girls, Bonnie, Fee, Fara (from left to right)

Easter at Jahsonic.com:

  • In 1950, one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God.
  • Then there are the Easter Islands of which anthropologists believe that they became depopulated because its warring tribes eventually cut down all of each other’s trees.
  • Recording engineer Herb Powers Jr. used to hide proverbial easter eggs inscribed on the records he pressed. For many record collectors, discovering their album has vinyl graffiti is like finding an Easter egg.
  • The flagellation of Rose Keller took place on April 3rd, 1768, Easter Day. The woman had been picked up by the Marquis de Sade and taken back to a house in Arcueil, where she was bound and flogged.
  • Easter Parade” (1982) is a song by Ingrid which can be found on Ultimate Breaks and Beats
  • There was a Wild Pitch party on a easter sunday in 1990 Tony and Disciple rocked.
  • René Guyon wrote the “The Pagan Easter“.
  • Penitential books stated that one could not engage in sexual activity 40 days before Easter

This is obscene art

LUX – The Chapman brothers at Tate Modern.

Lux is a television show on culture presented by my youth hero Luc Janssen. His radio show Krapuul Deluxe was highly influential and he has been described as Belgium’s answer to John Peel. Recently, Janssen has fallen out of favour, especially since an interview I read with him in De Morgen where he said something stupid about the identity-creating-capabilities of owning a Le Corbusier chair.

Latin hustles and European folksongs


Soul Jazz presents: New York Latin Hustle (2007) – Various
[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

New York’s melting pot of Puerto Rican, Cuban and Afro-American musicians led to stunning culture clashes in the 1960s and 70s when Latin styles mixed with Funk, Disco, Soul and Jazz to produce new hybrids such as Boogaloo, Latin Jazz, Disco and Salsa. All these are featured in Soul Jazz Records latest journey into Latin music, New York Latin Hustle.

The record features all the kings of Latin music – Tito Puente, Machito, Eddie Palmieri, Candido, Ray Barretto and many more, alongside rarer, lesser known names.
In the 1960s Fania Records and Tico Records released stunning Latin Boogaloo, Descargas, Latin Soul from the emerging New York Latin scene. In the 1970s, Salsoul Records similarly mixed Salsa, Soul and Funk to release stunning Latin Disco crossover material such as Candido’s ‘Dancin and Prancin’, which would go on to be a million seller.
New York Latin Hustle brings all this together and features Latin music from all these styles, labels and eras.

The album comes with extensive sleeve-notes and exclusive photography. –Soul Jazz

On an entirely different note, I’d like to introduce this album:


Brossa d’Ahir (1977) – Pep Laguarda & Tapineria
[Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

What do I know of this album? Nothing much except that it was produced or engineered by Daevid Allen (Soft Machine, Gong), that it sounds somewhat like this, that it’s sung in Mallorquí (Majorcan Catalan), that my brother discovered it via Jens Lekman and that it is recommended for Joanna Newsom fans.

Introducing Surreal Documents

Valter’s Surreal Documents is an excellent blog on subversive surrealism as professed by Georges Bataille and the Acéphale group. Recent subjects have included Alice Coltrane, Coffin Joe, books acquired and Nico. The blog can now be accessed from my blogroll.

I quote from the Acéphale post:

… the Jean Rollin who participated in this issue of “La Revue Acéphale” is of course not Jean Rollin, who was born in 1938 and couldn’t possibly have contributed any articles to this “La Revue Acéphale” (I just corrected the error in Wikipedia).

In fact, it was the filmmaker’s father who contributed to the publication. The father was also called Jean Rollin. Jean Rollin’s mother, Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, had an (extramarital) relationship with Georges Bataille from october 1939 to the end of 1943.

Tohill and Tombs’ “Immoral Tales. Sex & Horror Cinema In Europe 1956-1984” suggest that years later Jean Rollin (the filmmaker, that is), would remember the bedtime stories that Bataille told him, about ‘Monsieur le Curé’, a wolf dressed in the robes of a priest.

How I would like to have heard those stories!

More on Denise Rollin-Le Gentil:

On 2 October 1939, [Georges Bataille] meets Denise Rollin-Le Gentil, who is 32 and married with a young son, Jean. Surya writes, ‘She was beautiful, a beauty that would be described as melancholy if not taciturn. She spoke little or, for long periods not at all’. She joins him at his flat in October; thereafter, Bataille will spend time in her flat at 3 rue de Lille.

[In 1945, Maurice] Blanchot commences an apparently largely epistolatory affair with Denise Rollin, which will continue until her death in 1978.–Spurious and more at Google books.

From Surreal Documents’ first post which features a photograph by Boiffard and Valter’s manifesto:

This blog has been inspired by my visit to the exhibition “Undercover Surrealism” at the Hayward Gallery in London. The blog is intended to contain doctrines, fine arts, ethnography, variety. Expect dusty things, ethnographies of one-man-Cthulhu Cults, confused concepts, black and blackened musics, untruths.

Checking Valter’s blogroll (show me your blogroll and I will tell you who you are) you will find Jim Woodring, Monster Brains, the Wooster Collective, Esotika Erotica Psychotica, Giallo Fever, Groovy Age Of Horror, Mutant Sounds, Video Watchblog and the recent newcomer Ombres Blanches.

To conclude, some Coffin Joe:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXuVaA63Hbk]