On my radar: Marc Ribot’s cultural highlights

The guitarist and composer Marc Ribot was born in New Jersey in 1954. He played in garage bands as a teenager and, after moving to New York, became part of no-wave outfit the Lounge Lizards. His idiosyncratic work on Tom Waits’s 1985 album Rain Dogs boosted his reputation and he became a go-to guitarist for the likes of Elvis Costello and John Zorn. Ribot fronts various bands, including Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos, and has released more than 25 solo albums, the latest of which is Map of a Blue City. Ribot plays the Jazz Cafe in London on Thursday.

Trieste

I like Trieste because it’s Italy in the summer but Austria-Hungary in the winter. Half my family are from what was once the Austro-Hungarian empire, and I still feel like I’m communing with my ancestral roots when I hang out there. What that means is nice old bars and cafes with really cynical, somewhat abrasive people in them. Caffè San Marco is a good example. There’s a nice intimacy to the place, and a beautiful stretch along the sea where everybody hangs out in the summer.

In the Swarm by Seabrook Trio

I really like this record. Brandon Seabrook plays guitar and banjo, which is an instrument that is really easy to annoy people with, but he manages to make it work. He records with Cooper-Moore, who is a great keyboard player, and Gerald Cleaver, one of the most inventive drummers out there. Seabrook is doing something very difficult, which is creating a new voice for guitar. I don’t know how he does it – I keep listening in the hope I’ll figure it out.

The Condition of Postmodernity by David Harvey

This is an amazing book about the big picture of postmodernity. I got interested in it because the dreaded “postmodern” label was attached to some of my own playing and that of people I was working with. At some point I decided to read about it, and Harvey’s conclusion was, well, it’s kind of a disaster. He was looking at it very broadly across the arts, but in music he helped me understand how corporations got around unions via indie labels, which were created to make artists more free. It’s a great book.

Several Tremendous by Richard Siken

I read this poem in Bomb magazine, which said that a book would be forthcoming, but that was over a year ago. I keep running to my local bookshop saying, “Is it out yet?” I haven’t been this excited to see a new publication since I was into Spider-Man comics aged 12. Siken had a major stroke and this poem was part of his attempt to write his way back into language. You see him struggling here, and it’s stunning. I named my new band Hurry Red Telephone after a line in it.

Lampada Annuale by Alighiero Boetti

I saw this at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gallery in Washington DC in the early 2000s and it’s stuck with me. It’s basically a giant light bulb in a box. The light goes on once a year at a random time for 11 seconds. It could be at night or on a day the museum’s closed. What I like about it is that, in its normal state, it’s kind of nothing. But if it switched on while you were looking, it would change your life. I like having that very ambitious, “this will change your life” aim as the goal of art.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (dir: Radu Jude, 2023)

Radu Jude is one of my favourite film-makers; he’s like Godard but funnier. Most of this film is a young woman driving around Bucharest making videos featuring victims of industrial accidents. She’s employed by the industry that crippled them, and the intent is to use these videos to avoid further liability. But the people don’t know this, and they all want to be on this show where they get to talk about how terrible it is that they were injured. It’s brilliantly done.

Photographs by Getty Images