The Cocktail Party that Could Be a Political Party

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The full documentary on Glenn O'Brien's classic NYC public access show TV Party (1978–1982) is on YouTube. Of course it is. Another must-view if you ain't seen it.


Full first episode of the show here.

The Straight-Arrows that Nonetheless Get It

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Glenn O'Brien (right) with Jean-Michel Basquiat during a filming of O'Brien's TV Party

On this week's installment of The Sound of Young America, Jesse Thorne interviews Glenn O'Brien, most recently the author of How To Be A Man. It's worth a quick listen – at this point in his life, with all of his various experiences, O'Brien is on the level of Vince Aletti or Steven Heller as both a primary and secondary source of interesting information. Click here to check it out.

Manly Arts

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Glenn O'Brien on the topic of how to be a man, which also happens to be the title of a forthcoming book, How To Be A Man by Glenn O'Brien (Rizzoli).


You know what, actually? JUST CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT, because while Jay-Z's personal mythology may now include having a blog, it apparently does not include clean code for embedding video.

(via Jay-Z's blog and, as per usual, DJ Suspence)

You Are Downtown

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At Purple Diary, Glenn O'Brien on Dash Snow.

Dash was a beautiful person and a genuine artist. A lot of people didn’t get the genuine part because to them he was a gossip star, all image. But he was the real thing, and sometimes his real was so in your face that people thought it must have been an act. It was an act, of course, but it was a real act. When you live in a world that’s inside a television there are no other options. But Dash and some of his friends were re-inventing what it is to be an artist, because that’s something every generation has to do. They had gotten the lay of the land and were responding accordingly.

Read the whole thing here.

"This is on for your education...we're gonna re-educate you."

Via Jen Graves at SLOG, The Guardian has posted its list of the top fifty arts videos on YouTube. James Dean and Paul Newman screen testing for East of Eden, Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road, Nirvana practicing in an Aberdeen garage circa 1988, Marcel Duchamp's Anemic Cinema, Aretha Franklin's Lady Soul TV Special – the list is heavy. Here are two videos that make 1970s New York City feel like a small town:

Martin Scorsese's 1973 short on the inspiration for Mean Streets:


And Jean-Michel Basquiat on Glenn O'brien's TV Party, 1978:


48 more things to look at here.

Point of View

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Congratulations to Christopher Bollen, who is leaving his long-held post as V magazine's editor to take the helm at Interview for its forthcoming re-launch, along with the dream team of Fabien Baron and Glenn O'Brien.

I have been obsessed with magazines since I can remember. As a kid I would take the bus to the University of Washington bookstore and spend hours browsing through the gigantic newsstand; at one point I remember my mom making a rule that I was not allowed to spend all my paper route money on magazines. Interview was the first one I really connected with (not counting, of course, much earlier interest in Ranger Rick's and BMX Action).

The variety of people within the pages of Interview opened entire new worlds to me and outlined a high-society-meets-punk-rock aesthetic that has influenced countless followers. In recent years, attempting I suppose to compete in the increasingly rough and tumble print media world, it has become more of a celebrity rag. It seems to me, however, that the so-called death of print actually presents an opportunity for a magazine like Interview to own a niche by re-creating or referring to its original spark. On some level, Chris Bollen has been referencing that vision and its high/low mix better than just about anyone out there with his work for V, The New York Times Magazine and others. In my time as a designer at V, I always enjoyed finding out what he would put in the next issue, and I can't wait to see what he does with Interview.