[Moshe]

http://www.sonicyouth.com/symu/lee/



Lee Ranaldo 2020 list

#BLM – first and foremost, the Black Lives Matter movement – the most important event(s) of the year, wipes away everything else, including covid-19 fear. it’s time for changes, for neccessary conversations. let’s see them happen.

books
Alison Mosshart – Car Ma
Cosey Fanni Tutti – Art Sex Music
Richard Powers – The Overstory
Allen Ginsberg – The Fall of America: Poems of These States – revisiting Allen’s auto-poesy (much recorded direct to tape recorder during cross-country trips thru late 60s amerikan scenarios. Oddly relevant this year.
John Giorno – Great Demon Kings
Kenneth Goldsmith – Duchamp Is My Lawyer

audio
Morton Feldman – his work provided a huge amount of covid at-home music this year. Listening to his long-duration music was perfect for the endless hours stuck inside. Such a body of work! Such a character too.
Magik Markers – 2020 – a most welcome return!
Thurston Moore – By The Fire
Espers – s/t and The Weed Tree reissues
Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters – one of the most inspired albums of the year, a feat.
Perfume Genius – Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
Michael Morley – The Never Quartet – although a flight snafu prevented me from seeing the early February Brooklyn performance, I love the IG vids, recordings, and installation concept of this piece.
Taylor Swift – folklore – I spent a week infatuated with this album, especially The Last Great American Dynasty, the lyrics of which unfold like an updated F. Scott Fitzgerald story, great writing.
Sarah Hennies – The Reinvention of Romance – feels a relative of Feldman, similar durational pleasures.
Einsturzende Neubauten – Alles in Allem
Cluster/Cluster and Eno
Harmonia – Musik von Harmonia
Alison Mosshart – Car Ma Sound Wheel LP – collagist spoken word movies, inspired and inspirational.
Yo La Tengo – We Have Amnesia Sometimes – a covid gift, direct from their Hoboken rehearsal space.
Steve Gunn & Cass McCombs – split single (my cover art for Steve’s side)
Beabadoobee – guilty pleasure. “the early stuff, man.”
Oh Petroleum – Disco 2020 – my friend Maurizio Vierucci from Puglia
Richard Young’s & Raül Refree – All Hands Around The Moment
Oneohtrix Point Never – Magic
John Luther Adams – ‘Become’ Trilogy – ambient orchestral environments.
Joni Mitchell – Archives Vol. 1 – The Early Years – finally an official release to these much bootlegged recordings.
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways – a radical adult licks godhead
Bob Dylan – Murder Most Foul. What a surprise single, what a monument!
The Rolling Stones – Their Satanic Majestey’s Request
Caetano Velosa – Araçá Azul – a perennial favorite
Lou Reed and the Tots – Alice Tully Hall 1973 – supposedly Lou’s first show in NYC since the VU ended. dunno if that’s true but it’s a raver!
Grateful Dead – The Angels Share, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty
Neil Young – Archives Vol. II: 1972-1976

ciné
early Fellini study, discovery of actress Giulietta Masina, so captivating in Nights of Cabiria! Also La Strada, I Vitelloni, La Dolce Vita
The West Wing and Shitts Creek – late-comer to both, totally obsessed w WW, Shitt’s Creek oddly pandemic in feel, and among the most generous of comedies.
Uncut Gems – Josh and Benny Safdie
The Cribs – Be Safe and I Don’t Know Who I Am – I participated in both of these covid-period songs and videos. I’ve known these guys quite a while now and it’s always great to do something with them. They’ve been very kind to me.
Isolation – I posted my video for this John Lennon song, which Epic Soundtracks and I recorded in 1991, in response to our strange times, with ‘isolationist images’ sent in by friends from all over the world – my small attempt to cope with the uncertainty of the moment.

livestream
CIrcuit des Yeux – Takeaway Show (072220) and Sad Songs (103120) the first of these, a captivating show both focused and rambling, each in the right degree, remains the best use of the ‘livestream’ concept that I’ve seen to date. with good sound and screen, no interruptions. so easy to stay with this one. Sad Songs also so well staged and concise.
Yo La Tengo – ‘The Night After the Last Night of Haunukkah’ stream – great to see them continue their annual tradition this year, even even in truncated form. Their lo-key set was a perfect elixir. Music zooms w/o good audio for listening aren’t worth much.
Neil Young – Fireside sessions

art
feb 6 – a return visit to Robert Smithson’s 1971 work Broken Circle Spiral Hill, out in the landscape in Emmen Holland. SY visited twice in the early 80s.
Shuzo Azuchi Gulliver’s Cinematic Illumination at MoMA – this multi-panel slide and audio work from 1969 was an absolute gift, as was the re-opening of MoMA, which felt like something magical. To visit those empty galleries, free of the normal crowds, was a further strange treat.
Jenna Gribbon – The Artist Eroticized Journal Gallery TriBeCa, dec 4-19
– what a great painter.
Amy Sillman – Twice Removed – Gladstone Gallery, sept 30-nov 14 – Amy’s bold spirited abstractions, and especially her flowers, have set me straight this year
To Jonas With Love – exhibition at 2 NYC gallery locations in tribute to Jonas Mekas. Leah and I contributed a video/sound work, Magnolias for Jonas, and particiapated in Brooklyn Rail’s livestream conference about Jonas and the show on dec 8.

my live 2020
feb 7,8 – Grauzone Festival, NL Short set with Leah’s films and a set with the Dutch group Wild Classical Music Ensemble with whom I’ve been playing with occasionally over the last couple years.
feb 21 – Names of North End Women, album launch party and performance-little did Raul and I know this would be the only opportunity we’d have to present even a portion of our just-released album before everything shut down and all touring was cancelled.
march 2,3 – For two days in early march cellist Leila Bordreuil and I had the keys to Issue Project Room’s reverberant vaulted space in downtown brooklyn, which was about to be shut for 2 years of acoustical renovation. we locked ourselves inside together for 2 afternoon-into-evening sessions, recording more than 8 hours of music and soaking in the loooong reverb that great space provided. I didn’t play ‘out’ much this year, but this stands out as the most magical live encounter for me.
march 5 – rehearsal performance at Pace Gallery, NYC with Dutch Studio Drift’s work Ego, a sculpture that moved in space like some animate creature. I wandered the space with guitar, interacting with the form and filling that great white windowed space with my sounds. the performance on march 12 would be cancelled and I would mark our lockdown from that day…

shout outs
cycling – really all i want to do was ride my bike. cycling kept me sane this year.
watercolors – i’ve spent most of my covid time (when not biking) paintings flowers – blooming, dying, dead – in watercolors. the other half of keeping sane this year.
bandcamp – this community-building service has been keeping it real for quite some time. I’m a happy latecomer and enthusiastic fan.
fuck off and goodbye – Tramp defeated. Amen. Four years of terror, chaos and treason finally coming to an end.

RIP
dear friend Hal Wilner, among many… His death in early April, after a year when I’d seen more of him than in ages, really drove the corona-virus crisis home to me.

[The Soup Nazi]

Wow, so many thoughts running through my head after reading Lee's lists... but it's 4:30 AM here, I'm on no sleep, and so I probably wouldn't do them justice in writing. Thanks for posting it all here, Moshe!

[greenlight]

wow. harmonia.

thanks!