new york
The king of New York, at home, in exile.
“The minute you have to raise one dollar, you’re in a world of compromise,” Ferrara says. “But I’m never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that’s gonna stop me.”
The Black Keys take Manhattan
“It’s the Akron curse: you’ve gotta get out to win,” Auerbach concludes. Will he leave too? “Thought about it. Thinking about it. The only thing keeping me there is my family.” At gigs, he makes a point of telling the crowd “we’re the Black Keys, from Akron, Ohio.”
The Jazz Loft Project
A new exhibition at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts offers insights into the midnight ramblings of some of the greatest jazz musicians ever, including Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims, Charles Mingus and Roy Haynes, who were all recorded and photographed by Eugene Smith, as they jammed after hours at his loft.
A portrait of Elizabeth Peyton
Her oil on board portraits are elegant miniature and trashy fanzine, like Edouard Manet in the NME. They are rarely bigger than a sheet of A4 and often considerably smaller. In daring, broad brushstrokes that explore the boundary between realism and abstraction, they depict her imagined relationships with Liam Gallagher, Jarvis Cocker, Jackie and John Kennedy, Oscar Wilde and his lover, Bosie.
Jeffrey Lewis - indigenous New Yorker
Lewis is as neurotic about success as he is about rejection. He sometimes feels like he’s becoming gentrified, like his old neighbourhood, both gaining and losing something in the process. A fortnight ago, he went into his friend’s studio and recorded a batch of songs the way he used to: “one take, solo acoustic, roll the tape and you get what you get.” It felt good.
Repetitive Beats
Back in the early days of BBC 6 Music, there was incredible scope for creative programme-making. Budgets were minimal, but it says a lot for the pioneer spirit of the network that I was given the chance to write, produce and present a four part documentary. Its title was Repetitive Beats: A Social History Of Electronic Dance Music.
