#Brooklyn College

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Louis Armstrong, wearing a Brooklyn College cheer sweater, performing for celebrities, students, and faculty on the campus., March 12, 1941. The college honored him with the degree "Doctor of Swing."

Photo: Associated Press via the Allentown Morning Call

[sinceileftyoublog]

Liz Lamere on Alan Vega and Her Solo Career: Whatever Happens, Happens

Liz Lamere; photo by Jasmine Hirst

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Liz Lamere's got a story to tell, and one that won't end any time soon. The former Wall Street lawyer and boxer and current singer-songwriter is also the widow and former creative partner of the late, great Alan Vega, the visual artist and vocalist of landmark proto-punk duo Suicide. Since Vega's death in 2016, Lamere has, in conjunction with Jared Artaud of post-punk act The Vacant Lots, worked to bring to light a wealth of unreleased material from Vega's vault.

After the release of 2017's It, the final album Vega recorded before he died, Lamere and Artaud discovered the material that would constitute the 2021 release Mutator. In 2022, they unearthed the songs that would be released this past May as Insurrection (In The Red). It hasn't been until now, however, where there's been a simultaneous awakening of all things Vega. In addition to Insurrection, Artaud co-curated "Cesspool Saints", an exhibition of Vega's fine art works, which opened two months ago at Laurent Godin's Gallery in Paris. Lamere, meanwhile, co-wrote Vega's biography with Laura Davis-Chanin, entitled Infamous Dreams: The Life of Alan Vega (Backbeat Books). (The foreword? By none other than Bruce Springsteen.) With a rich collection of songs waiting for ears--material that Lamere and Vega recorded and Vega meticulously documented between actually released Vega solo albums throughout the 90s and 2000s--it's become clear that Vega's backlog rivals of those like Prince and Arthur Russell, full of albums that are contextualized by what was recorded before and after them but that stand alone as cohesive statements.

Lamere; photo by Jasmine Hirst

At the same time as everything Vega-related, Lamere has finally found not just the time but the will to release her own solo records, an artistic career that Vega always encouraged but never was able to witness. Her songs are certainly different than Vega's in terms of subject matter and aesthetic, but Lamere credits Vega's approach to music-making--be spontaneous and fearless and realize that nothing is a mistake--for informing her artistic process. She started working on her debut, Keep It Alive, during COVID lockdown, and finished the album in mere weeks. Her follow-up, One Never Knows (In The Red), released last month, took a little bit longer to make, understandably when Lamere was working on Vega's biography and Insurrection all at the same time. Thankfully, Lamere was able to separate the entities, another thing she took from Vega. "It wasn't too difficult to compartmentalize because I wore so many different hats and did so many different things, like Alan," Lamere said over the phone last month. "Alan could be hyper-focused on visual art, and then hyper-focused on music and sound. They might be different sides of the same coin, but whatever he was focused on, he was so in the moment and heavily focused on that creation."

To really understand Vega's perspective on art and life, you have to go far back into the oft-ignored details that inspired Lamere to start writing his biography. Vega was, infamously, 10 years older than everyone thought; various articles incorrectly referred to 1948 as his birth year rather than 1938, confirmed when the 70th birthday release of his recordings was announced in 2008. The parents of the man born Alan Bermowitz were Jewish immigrants. His first wife, Mariette Bermowitz (née Birencwajg), is a Holocaust survivor from Belgium; they met attending Brooklyn College. Lamere credits such a close familial proximity to persecution as a reason for the trauma Vega felt, and also why he chose to not use his birth name as his stage name. But such closeness was also why Vega chose to sing about difficult topics in his music. "Alan was always hypersensitive to any type of oppression or challenging situations," Lamere said. "He had tremendous empathy. He wasn't doom and gloom but more readily shining a light." Out of college, Vega worked for the Welfare Department, eventually quitting because he felt the menial work he was tasked with doing didn't allow him to make a true difference in the lives of the poor. But the experience helped him understand how to secure funding when working with the Art Workers' Coalition, and from the New York State Council on the Arts to help found 24-hour artist-run multimedia gallery MUSEUM: A Project of Living Artists.

Alan Vega; photo by Walter Robinson

Vega possessed the ability to apply what he learned from one effort to another, and his mind was well-rounded. He actually enrolled in Brooklyn College not for art, but for astrophysics, having received a scholarship as a result of his building his own telescope(!) But one day, the head of the Art Department witnessed Vega sketching portrait drawings in the cafeteria and immediately recognized Vega's artistic brilliance and convinced him to study art. (Vega's portrait drawings appear in the video for Lamere's "King City Ghost".) Vega ended up studying with legendary artists like Kurt Seligmann and Ad Reinhardt. When substitute teaching a class for Reinhardt during his senior year, Vega assigned students a self-portrait to be turned in the next class, but instead of collecting them, he told the students to rip them up. "When he was telling me the story," said Lamere, "He said, 'You should have seen the look on these kids' faces!'" But Vega viewed art as, in the words of Lamere, "coming from a pure place of expression," not of preciousness, and one worthy of consuming your life. Vega met Martin Rev and formed Suicide in 1970, garnering notice for their wild live shows throughout the New York punk scene. After they released their self-titled debut in 1977, they toured with The Clash, an infamous time during which the crowd, unable to understand the Suicide's artistic vision, would throw switchblades at the band. "Alan was willing to be...out there front and center and put his life on the line, literally," Lamere said. "He believed so strongly that what [Suicide was] doing was breaking new ground and important in its own right."

Vega had been releasing solo albums for a decade before Lamere came in the picture; he met her while making 1990's Deuce Avenue, the record that returned to the beloved electronic minimalism of Suicide. Though the actual release of solo albums was sporadic, he and Lamere never stopped making music. "When we were in the studio together all those years, I was very much the type of person thinking about releasing albums, whereas Alan wasn't structured in that way," Lamere said. "His thought was, 'We're going into the studio to create sound, and whatever happens, happens...' Part of his process was he would just keep moving forward. Unless I said, 'Hit stop,' so we could put out an album of what we'd been working on right at [that] moment in time, he would keep evolving and moving forward on new material." Vega constantly wrote poetry in his notebooks, often using what he wrote for ad-libbed song lyrics; Lamere was actively involved in mixing their recordings. At the same time, Vega was a staunch documenter. He would burn a CD of what he and Lamere had worked on in the studio and note down changes he thought they needed to make to each song. Even the titles of the songs from Mutator and Insurrection came from his notebooks.

Insurrection artwork design by Michael Handis

The extent to which, upon being done with a song or an album, Vega moved on, proved to be extreme, and would have ripple effects on Lamere's solo career. The two, along with French director Marc Hurtado, would tour Europe after recording a solo album and perform the unreleased songs they'd recorded. ("The Europeans have heard a lot of this stuff before," joked Lamere about Mutator and Insurrection.) For the songs that had been released, Vega would rely on Lamere to feed him lines so that he could give the audience at least something recognizable. "I would be chanting little phrases, he would hear that, and he would riff on it, and the audience would be happy even though the lyrics [were] mostly completely different," Lamere said. "I learned to 'sing' because Alan never wanted to rehearse anything...I kind of learned a little bit how to project my voice." Meanwhile, upon hearing it for the first time, Vega didn't even remember "Nike Soldier", a track long-time engineer Perkin Barnes had digitized and Lamere chose for a split single with The Vacant Lots in 2014. Lamere's the opposite. "When we first started mixing [Insurrection], I could literally remember and envision the days in the studio I was laying down [those riffs]." But the ultimate story comes from when Springsteen, touring Devils & Dust, invited Vega to one of his shows, as he had been covering Suicide classic "Dream Baby Dream" during the encore. "[Vega] literally was sitting with Jesse [Malin], they're waiting for the show to start, and on the PA comes the song 'Dujang Prang' that he and I had done in 1995," Lamere said. "Alan turns to Jesse and says, 'This is really good, do you know who this is?' Jesse said, 'Alan, that's your song.' That's classic Alan: been there, done that, don't wanna hear it."

It was during the release of The Vacant Lots split single where Vega gave Artaud and Lamere his blessing to unearth songs from the vault. The single happened when Artaud reached out to Vega, sharing The Vacant Lots' cover of Vega's "No More Christmas Blues". The two men became fast friends, as Artaud, living in Brooklyn Heights a subway stop away from Vega and Lamere in Lower Manhattan, often visited. "Jared would come over here and sit and talk to Alan for hours about everything," Lamere said. "He had listened to every piece of music that Alan had pretty much ever done. He understood Alan's philosophy of creation and the minimalism and the existential philosophers that Alan had studied." As for Lamere, Vega knew that her approach to producing his music was intuitive. "After Alan heard 'Nike Soldier', I said, 'Alan, you have no idea how much material is in the computer in the studio of what we've done over the years,'" Lamere said. "He said, 'I know. Once I'm gone, you should feel free to put it out because I trust your judgement. You've worked with me for so long, you're my co-producer.' I could go in and make these tracks sound completely different. But I make what Alan would want. He's still so present with us because he had such a strong influence on us. It's part of our DNA. That's the reality."

Lamere; photo by Jasmine Hirst

Insurrection was recorded in the late 90s, and you can hear its influence on the material that would make up 1999's 2007. The album is a snapshot of an era for Vega, New York City, and the world at large. Dante, Vega and Lamere's child, was about to be born, so Vega's mind was occupied with the post-Gulf War, pre-9/11 state of a city and country rife with racism and capitalistic rot. (The mention of 9/11 is not teleological; Vega literally had premonitions of a terror attack in New York City.) Songs like "Sewer" and "Invasion" sport thumping, propulsive beats and clattering, machine-like percussion, the most messed-up club songs you've ever heard, Vega chanting like a street urchin. The presciently titled "Murder One" and "Genocide" are circular, droning, and forward-lurching. The instrumentation is perfect for Vega's mantras and pleas to "Make a new reality!' Lamere's One Never Knows, though a personal album whose singles' videos feature Lamere sort of half-boxing, half-dancing, a callback to her earlier career, echoes Vega's idealistic spirit. "Don't destroy the dream tonight," she sings on the dystopian "If Only", an almost 50-year-later spiritual sibling to Suicide's best known song.

One Never Knows, like Keep It Alive, was engineered by Dante at their Dujang Prang home studio, where Alan held his sculptures. Before the pandemic, Dante had been working with hip-hop artists, but as they weren't coming in during lockdown, Lamere asked him to help her with her solo debut. Dante sang in The Choir of Trinity Wall Street for 10 years and purportedly has perfect pitch, whereas Lamere is not formally trained. "He wants to help other people with their vision," Lamere said of her son. "I do say to him once in a while, because I run a lot of sounds through the keyboard, 'What key is this?'...He knows I like dissonance, so he says, 'If you like it, it works.'" Lamere's taking a key from Vega and not wanting to get technical any time soon. "I'm sure Miles Davis had his pick of brilliant musicians to work with, but Alan used to say, 'Miles Davis liked working with people who weren't necessarily formally trained.' They didn't say, 'You're not supposed to do that,' or, 'This is what you're supposed to do here, this chord progression.' No! It's none of that. There are no rules," Lamere said.

Lamere; photo by Jasmine Hirst

Lamere's planning on taking the same approach to her recording as playing live, but with a little bit of her boxing knowledge thrown in. "When I was performing with Alan, I was always playing effects machines in the background. It's a whole different animal carrying the show front and center," she said. "For me, it's like getting in the ring sparring. You have to be hyper-focused. The adrenaline kicks in. It's a great feeling...It scares the shit out of me ahead of time. In the moment, I absolutely love it. Alan was the same way. He wouldn't even be thinking about getting on stage, but as soon as he did, he kind of embraced it."

As always, her musical endeavors will constitute at least some work with the Vega vault. For one, according to Lamere, there are about 4 or 5 albums worth of material from the 8 years between the release of 2007 and Station alone, from when they were first raising Dante, as well as even more from after Station, despite Vega suffering a stroke in 2012. "I love the opportunity for people to hear what I'm doing and discover what Alan did and is continuing to do," Lamere said. "I love the fact that he's still influencing people from beyond."

One Never Knows artwork: Jasmine Hirst

[robynochs]

More pictures, from last week's New York tour.

The first shot is from the Prideworks Conference with my fellow keynoter, Dale Guy Madison, who is a filmmaker.

The other two are from Brooklyn College, where I did my 'Getting Bi' program.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

The Squid and the Whale (2005, Noah Baumbach)

18/12/2024

[cow-stealin-gal]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brooklyn College SJP 🇵🇸 (@bc_sjp)

Students graduating from Brooklyn college spread awareness and solidarity for Gaza and Palestine on live camera.

Credit to @safiaaabdullah on Instagram

Description of the Instagram Reels reads as follows:

Brooklyn College administration is full of zionist puppets. Since October there has been constant repression and continued suppression of pro Palestinian activities. From kicking a student led demonstration out of campus which was instrumental in leaving the students vulnerable to the presence of councilwoman @inna_vernikov who openly brought a gun on to intimidate the students of Brooklyn College and Midwood High School. Enablement of increased policing and police presence at the predominantly black and brown college that has a history of infiltration, displays the underlying racism with the Anderson administration.

Palestine is at the heart of student life at Brooklyn College, yet the continued doxing, post 9/11 type of intimidation and surveillance remains present.

Student Intifada will continue and will not stop. It will spread to every university, every campus and every classroom.

End of description.

[sportzwireradio]

DAN BYRNES TO BE INDUCTED INTO THE SPORTZWIRE RADIO HALL OF FAME!

Media Alert: NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 1, 2024/THOMAS BRICE/– Sportzwire Radio the #1 global radio station is proud to induct into the Sportzwire Radio Hall of Fame Dan Byrnes Monday February 5th at 7:30pm EST.

Dan Byrnes, a 6 foot 6 forward played for the Brooklyn College Kingsmen men's basketball team the first and only team of the City University Of New York Athletic Conference otherwise known as (CUNYAC) in any sport to have played in the NCAA Final Four in 1982.

Dan Byrnes, a Brooklyn College graduate in 1984 played for the Kingsmen from 1980-83 including playing a key role on the 1982 Kingsmen team which finished #3 in the nation along with winning the men's basketball Eastern regional championship by defeating Roanoke College.

The Brooklyn College Kingsmen Men's Basketball Final Four team were inducted into the Brooklyn College Athletics Hall of Fame in June 2020 with the ceremony taking place in December 2022.

The 1981-82 Brooklyn College Kingsmen Men's Basketball team finished the regular season with an 18-8 record defeating #1 ranked the College of Staten Island which despite having a loss in the CUNYAC semifinals helped the team land an at-large bid in the NCAA Division III tournament. The Kingsmen went on to defeat Ithaca College, CSI then Roanoke College to win the Eastern Regional championship at a packed Roosevelt Hall gymnasium.

While the Kingsmen lost to defending National Champion SUNY Postdam by a single point in the semi-final game. The next day the Kingsmen defeated California's Stanislaus State University in overtime to claim the #3 slot nationally.

"I feel a great sense of pride to induct Dan Byrnes into the Sportzwire Radio Hall of Fame. Dan Byrnes role on the Brooklyn College Kingsmen men's basketball team goes far above his statistics on the court as Dan Byrnes played a valuable role on the team for his toughness, work ethic, selflessness, and leadership on the first and only team in any sport to have ever played in a NCAA Final Four from the CUNYAC. Dan Byrnes is not only a hall of fame player but also a hall of fame person off the court because of the example he has set throughout the years in being the voice which has kept the legacy of the Brooklyn College Kingsmen men's basketball team alive and well. It was once said that the only hall of fame Dan Byrnes and the Brooklyn College Kingsmen men's basketball team would be in would be the Brooklyn College Athletics hall of fame. However, not only is Dan Byrnes officially a Sportzwire Radio hall of famer but eventually the entire 1982 Brooklyn College Kingsmen men's basketball team will be inducted into the Sportzwire Radio hall of fame. I want to congratulate Dan Byrnes on being inducted into the Sportzwire Radio Hall of Fame."--Thomas J. Brice, owner of Sportzwire Radio

You can watch Dan Byrnes last year on Sportzwire Radio talk about the ceremony of being inducted into the Brooklyn College Athletics Hall of Fame in the link below.

You can also listen to Dan Byrnes talk about the announcement of the 1981-82 Brooklyn College Kingsmen men's basketball team being inducted into the Brooklyn College Athletics Hall of Fame in the link below at the 1:02:46 mark.

You can watch the induction ceremony of Dan Byrnes into the Sportzwire Radio Hall of Fame Monday February 5th at 7:30pm EST in the link below.

Sportzwire Radio is the #1 global radio station featuring over 12 podcasts covering all of the latest happenings in the world of sports and wrestling along with live music and talk. Sportzwire Radio has featured interviews with the likes of former MLB world series champions Mark Gubicza also a member of the Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame and Art Shamsky. New York Mets legend Glendon Rusch and longtime New York Islanders great Rich Pilon. Sportzwire Radio also features live wrestling coverage from around the world with the voice of all wrestling and the owner of Sportzwire Radio the Rev. Tom Brice. You watch or listen to Sportzwire Radio anytime via the watch now or listen live buttons at sportzwireradio.org.

Media Information and Availability For Sportzwire Radio:

Thomas Brice (347) 282-7735

Twitter: @ThomasBrice2017

Soundcloud: TheSportsReport2019

Instagram: @thesportsreport2021

Linked In: Thomas-brice-9994b61b8

Facebook: @sportzwireradio

Twitch: @sportzwireradio

Youtube: @sportzwireradio6579

[haitianqueen123]

Register for live and/or virtual: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0oceytqT8oG9JVPe0ZfFzA70gqWnzyBgQY#/registration

Volunteer: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScQSYtPuYuDqEhjVbXqQZ609PV_PKnSMJzK1BO8FuwxXGUDMw/viewform

[direwolfrules]

CUNY I swear to God…

[bbybisonn]

💌 Summer labs at BC pt.2

So happy I took this opportunity, I was intimidated by the fact it was a graduate course, but it wasn’t as difficult as I imagined it to be. This course really made me appreciate lab work just as much as field work and I can’t wait to apply to the DEP or EPA this fall for more experience. I’m so happy with my education thus far and can’t wait for what the future holds for my career!

[slapstikcomedyentertainment]

Social Media Comedian: Renny

Not only does Godfrey substantiate Renny’s comedic success...

“Ms. Johnson…” Renny shifts his lean as if the liquid of his head seeped suddenly to one side. “Let me ha’dat.” An audio voice-over is dubbed in sync with the gestures of a woman you can only see from behind. Ms. Johnson slaps him. The camera rushes in on nostrils and the whites of his eyes. Renny breathes with his whole body, mouth open enough for the flies to clear, teeth peering easily under…

[wanderlustfulmaniac]

Brooklyn College, 2018

[driftingoffthegrid]

my sister just informed me that she doesn’t like to watch shows on her phone

funny the variety you find even within families because watching sitcoms until 5 am was an essential part of my development that legitimately saved my life

[drsonnet]

Gadzooks Bazooka

@GadzooksB

Here’s a drawing in my sketchbook of NYPD beating people protesting in solidarity with Palestine yesterday. They violently attacked people and press members at random on the Nakba day protest in Brooklyn, punching and choking them for protesting genocide.

[sparklyshinyprincess]

in another life, i’m a college girl in New York in mid 2000s

none of the photos are mine, found them on pinterest

[brooklyn-alley-ratcat]

I genuinely need to know which it is because we have the Christmas party coming up and all of us are going to give him a trophy for being out of pocket but we need the best one to tell new hires about.

[do-you-know-this-adhd-character]

Do you know this (noncanon) ADHD character?

Evidence below the cut!

Overall, he is high-energy, impulsive, often has moments of fast changing emotions. He is loyal and uplifting, but often insecure and critical of himself. Has this (very stereotypical adhd-assigned) "golden retriever-vibe" He is childish, clumsy, and "random". But he is focused and alert in dangerous situations. He's a detective and is really good at solving cases, which he sees as riddles and doesn't take them seriously, they're a "game" to him, even horrible murders. He hyperfixates on his work/cases until they are solved. He doesn't sleep a lot and is majorly behind on chores. He is late almost every day and has time management issues and is very unorganized (for example really messy desk, misplacing case files, or his "mail-tub"; he stores all of his mail (which goes unread) as a huge doom-pile in his bathtub.)

Also, it is sort of a running gag that he has major trouble managing his finances. He owes thousands of dollars to his friends/coworkers, has horrible credit, buys a LOT of (expensive) sneakers, bought soon-to-fail NFTs or online currency that lost their value within a day, bought 6(!) Massage chairs for one room (for some reason), spends a few thousand dollars annually to win an halloween-themed in-office bet with his boss, …