Jordan Swartz- The Rad Times #5

While working this past weekend I was streaming the X Games on my laptop off to the side, when it caught my attention that a 9 year old was competing and trying a 900 at that. I couldn’t not watch and with in a few tries Ema Kawakami landed it, with Tony Hawk being the commentator no less. I remember watching Tony Hawk attempt it 25 years ago at these same X Games, slamming over and over and until he finally landed it. I still get chills thinking about watching it and running downstairs to the garage of the house my dad rented and trying to explain to him exactly what I had just seen. Progress is a wild beast, it marches on regardless of us. I heard something recently that a piece of art is never complete it’s just merely the next step in the line; we learn, we grow, and we take all of that info with us to wherever and whatever we do next. Instead of being afraid of the progress be happy you were a part of it at all.

Thanks for hanging!
Be good to each other.

Shulman who runs the Anonymous Project, noticed many of the photos in his collection had an empty seat, seemingly from the photographer taking the photo, but also that most of these photos were taken during the time of the Civil Rights movement in America. Diop, who often works in self portraiture, and Schulman worked together to select the images for this project where they photoshopped in Diop. Some are mundane, White Sands and a picnic, while others are more loaded in relation to the time of the original images making, at a public swimming pool or at a busy bar. The images also flip the script on a predominately white narrative, Diop becoming the subject we do know, with the other subjects becoming unknown.

This one’s a long one but bare with me. The life of art is something that often consumes me and can easily send me down a deep twisting rabbit hole. Maybe it’s an A.D.D. brain but I connect pieces continuously and love the spiderweb path that art and culture can take.
I recently saw a screening of Spike Lee’s classic “Do The Right Thing” (if you’ve never seen it, do yourself a favor and bail now. Stop reading this and go watch it immediately.) After seeing the movie I wanted to know more so I listened to an episode of The Rewatchables about it and in their conversation they mention another Rosie Perez movie that maybe didn’t get its due credit, Untamed Heart. The next morning I streamed Untamed Heart, early in the movie a song played that immediately grabbed me attention. A woman almost humming over an English dance beat when words chime in, a lyrical narrative that feels more like a short story than a hit song. It is a song called Tom’s Diner, originally written and performed by Suzanne Vega. In the next ten minutes this is the info I proceeded to learn.
1. It is about Tom’s Restaurant in New York at the corner of Broadway and W. 112th Street. Tom’s later became famous as the exterior shot of Monk’s Diner from Seinfeld.
2. In 1990 it was remixed by the British group DNA (this is the version in Untamed Heart) without Vega or her labels knowledge. When Vega found out she convinced her label to purchase the song and release it instead of suing the group for copyright infringement, eventually earning both Vega and her label a large sum of money.
3. In the early ‘90s the a capella version of Tom’s Diner was used to test a new technology called MP3’s! It was tested in various digital compression schemes to see how they handled the human voice. They would listen over and over making sure the compression did not affect Vega’s voice, eventually becoming the first MP3, and landing Vega with the nickname "Mother of the MP3.”
This is the life of one song and all because at the last minute I went to see a showing of a 1989 Spike Lee joint. So go make art, novels, movies, music, whatever. Put something into the world and you never know where it may end up.

A great movie in it’s own right and one I watched repeatedly on cable back in the day, it’s real lasting effect on me was it’s soundtrack. Green Day was my favorite band around this time so the soundtrack having an unreleased song was enough for me, but it also contains an amazing mix of songs and a great snapshot of pop punk in the mid ‘90s. As well, I know nothing of Love Spit Love other than this song but it’s one of my favorite songs of all time.

Tucked in the Hollywood Hills this 1926 Mediterranean-style home is everything I love about classic Hollywood. A ton of indoor/ outdoor space, reading nooks, natural light, a kitchen trapped in time- breakfast nook and all, the cherry on top is the curved wood fireplace in one of the bedrooms. I love when a home’s character is preserved. Every inch of this house looks amazing.

This one is wild to me. Recorded by a teenager from a North German radio station, the j card from the time has the songs before and after it listed but a ? for this one. In the early 2000s the search for who wrote the song began and to this day there’s no definitive answers.