Here is a 20-minute mini-documentary about the festival by filmmaker Michael Johnson.

BONUS CLIP: An excerpt from one of Derek Bailey’s final USA performances, at Tonic in NYC with the Shaking Ray Levis in 2003…

Stream:

Download: “Lion Dance” — Glass Rock (mp3)

One of ten beauties on Glass Rock’s debut, Tall Firs Meet Soft Location, out now via Ecstatic Peace (more info…).

film still from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Pali Kashi

Charlie Horse Gallery presents:

Time Tunnel

Curated by Pali Kashi

Mira Billotte
John Brattin
Eric Copeland
Jeff Davis
Spencer Herbst
Pali Kashi
James Kendi
Adam Marnie
Keith McCulloch
Rich Porter
Leif Ritchey
Arik Roper
Francine Spiegel
Ruby Sky Stiler

The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and highest energy particle accelerator, and lies in a tunnel 175 meters beneath the Franco-Swiss border. Physicists hope that the LHC will help answer the most fundamental questions in physics, concerning the basic laws governing the deep structure of space and time.
–Brian Greene reporting for The New York Times

“Time Tunnel” proposes a collision of art-making traditions with the uncertainty of time and space. The collective unconscious is infused with ritual and mysticism, and has become dislodged and reinterpreted. The reformed amalgam of paint, wax, clay, sand, and plaster that is presented here are artifacts of this convergence. Totem poles are now made of monster masks, images of prairie women have paint splattered on them, Roman relics are fractured, sand mandalas are blurred, and our spirit animals have been unleashed into the wild.

Mira Billotte is an artist and musician (White Magic) interested in the “Music of the Spheres”; the belief that the planets of the solar system and stars beyond each create a tone in perfect harmony. Mira’s installations and sand mandalas reference transcendental rituals practiced throughout time.

John Brattin is a multi-media artist who uses sculpture, drawing, and painting to further inform his personal stories and myths which are eventually made into short films. He is currently working on a western.

Eric Copeland’s collages are visual remnants of his pondering of the moon, phallices, faces, and piles of trash. His abstracted compositions use repetition and disjunction much like the music he is known for making.

Jeff Davis’s two-dimensional work usually takes on “mysteriously ceremonial and often orgiastic configurations”. His totem-like structures are made from casting rubber halloween masks with multi-colored wax.

Spencer Herbst’s dadaist videos are a microscopic look into our everyday surroundings. His magnification of objects strewn about his apartment, salt crystals lying on a countertop, and wood grain in the floorboards are examined so closely that they take on an other-worldly reality.

Pali Kashi’s work presents the natural world through the power symbol of the triangle, which grants the viewer a new kind of portal into frozen moments of time.

James Kendi’s photographic process begins with asking people what their spirit animal is. He then creates a mask of that animal and photographs his subjects wearing the mask in the animal’s natural environment.

Adam Marnie is a mixed media artist interested in the sculptural presentation of images. By splicing traditional still life painting with pornography, he can sharply pierce us with flashes of flesh where we are expecting to see stems and roses.

Keith McCulloch’s watercolors meander through a maze-like interior filled with strange yet familiar apparitions.

Rich Porter depicts an array of primordial figures, focusing on the unseen molecular network between our bodies and landscape.

Leif Ritchey is an archaeologist of the sublime accumulations of his everyday surroundings. The objects he extracts from puddles near a sewer or broken glass hidden under a bush are taken back to his studio to be corralled into his futuristic vision.

Arik Roper’s work depicts a fantastical reality filled with mythical warriors, smoky terrain, and decaying skulls. His paintings breathe life into our uncharted history.

Ruby Sky Stiler rummages the storage cellar of historical artifacts to incorporate classic iconography into the context of her own relics. Her fragmented reliefs of ancient Greek and Roman imagery question the potency of sculpting the human form.

Francine Spiegel’s performance, The Curse of the Century Old Egg, which took place at Deitch Projects this last fall, was a literal mish-mosh of the past and present. The eerie happening gathered six women together in a curious ritual of transformation. The repetition of slime-dumping and paint-slinging turned these prairie-esque women, in ruffled regalia, into monstrous beasts over the course of an hour.

Time Tunnel will be on display from March 5, 2010 – March 17, 2010
Opening reception will be from 7-9 pm on Friday, March 5, 2010
Live Performances by Mike Bones and Luke Roberts

Charlie Horse Gallery
28 Marcy Ave
between Metropolitan and Hope
Take L or G train to Union Ave stop, walk down Metropolitan Ave 3 blocks and make a right onto Marcy

Stream:

Download: “Tell Me Thing” — Dios (mp3)

From the fellas’ new album We Are Dios, available in a large variety of formats from the band via topspin at http://www.wearedios.com/…

The original guerrilla TV pioneers return! See Lily Tomlin, Bill Murray, Steven Spielberg, Abbie Hoffman and a host of other personalities as the TVTV guys invade the 1975 Academy Awards, the Superbowl, presidential conventions and anywhere else they can bring their radical comedy. Join us for a one night only show of rare footage with the original members in person…

March 4, 8:00pm

A Night With TVTV
Co-presented by Arthur Magazine
Buy advance tickets here: $12

Before The Daily Show sent their “reporters” out into the world for satirical newscoverage, before Christopher Guest and This is Spinal Tap utilized cinema verité’s natural deadpan to devastating comic effect, and before American Movie and Heavy Metal Parking Lot popularized the comic documentary form—there was TVTV. Radical, hilarious and influential, “Top Value Television” was an ad hoc collective of documentarians whose pioneering use of portable, low-tech video gear allowed them unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to everything from presidential conventions to the Super Bowl.

Their philosophy,articulated in co-founding member Michael Shamberg’s 1971 manifesto Guerrilla Television (wikipedia, Amazon), was to “demonstrate the potential of decentralized video technology” as a means to break free from the ideological stranglehold broadcast technology had on American culture—forecasting the media free-for-all that’s rapidly becoming our day-to-day lives.

Tonight, the Cinefamily, Cinema Eye and Arthur Magazine celebrate the TVTV spirit, and the top-notch documentary filmmaking they produced, with a panel discussion/reunion of TVTV members, a video “primer” of past works, and a screening of Lord Of The Universe, an expose of 16-year-old Guru Maharaj Ji and “Millennium ‘73,” a three-day national gathering of his followers at the Houston Astrodome.

This evening marks the first time that all principal members of TVTV have been reunited at a retrospective event—do not miss it!

Buy advance tickets here: $12

Via Crystal Vibrations

From March 1, 2010 Newsweek…

…Standing on the hill at dawn, overseeing a team of 40 Kurdish diggers, the German-born archeologist waves a hand over his discovery here, a revolution in the story of human origins. Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn’t just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,500 years ago—a staggering 7,000 years before the Great Pyramid, and more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge first took shape. The ruins are so early that they predate villages, pottery, domesticated animals, and even agriculture—the first embers of civilization. In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember—the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Göbekli Tepe—the name in Turkish for “potbelly hill”—lays art and religion squarely at the start of that journey. After a dozen years of patient work, Schmidt has uncovered what he thinks is definitive proof that a huge ceremonial site flourished here, a “Rome of the Ice Age,” as he puts it, where hunter-gatherers met to build a complex religious community. Across the hill, he has found carved and polished circles of stone, with terrazzo flooring and double benches. All the circles feature massive T-shaped pillars that evoke the monoliths of Easter Island…

Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/233844

http://www.photographarecruiter.com/

WIZARD WEDNESDAYS takes place first and third Wednesdays of every month at Footsies at 261 N. Figueroa in Highland Park.

February 17 special guest is DJ Nobody!

Poster by Alia Penner

Poster:
http://www.justseeds.org/09prism.html

More info:
imaginarycompany.org

“This print is the first in a series that Becky Stark and I are making together. We write slogans and turn them into prints and videos. This is the first print and is designed in collaboration with Jacob Ciocci.

Jacob is a founding member of the art collective Paper Rad and plays in the band Extreme Animals. Becky is the lead singer/songwriter of the folk pop band Lavender Diamond. We’ve been longtime collaborators and friends. We live across the country from one another and write these slogans via text message. It’s fun to get a random positive message, and our intent is for people who come across these posters to get the same feeling of unexpected joy.

Our work together is about giving off healing vibrations generated by humor and beauty. We hope it makes you smile.

Your Heart Is A Prism!”
—Peter Glantz

Wikipedia:
Roky Erickson
13th Floor Elevators

Definitive 13th Floor Elevators biography, published 2008 by Process:

Definitive 13th Floor Elevators ten-CD boxset, released 2009 by International Artists:

And, just for kicks, here’s Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Spacemen 3, wearing his Roky shirt on the cover of Arthur in 2008:

SHARE YOUR BIKINI KILL STORIES

Bikini Kill has set up an official archive online:

http://bikinikillarchive.wordpress.com/

We are collecting stories of how people got into the band/shows they saw/memories/testimonials etc.

It would be awesome if you wanted to contribute. It doesn’t have to be fancy or well-worded, we’d just like you to leave a record of your experience and get an idea of what Bikini Kill means to you. Maybe it’s your reaction to a song we wrote, something weird that happened at one of our shows, a personal anecdote or just WHATEVER. Send yr story to bkillarchive@gmail.com and we will post it or just leave a comment somewhere on the site. You can also send us images to post.

Please help us spread the word. To document the history (or herstory) of the band it is necessary to include an oral history from “the fans”. We say fans for lack of a better word–a more expansive term would be inclusive of friends, peers, comrades, co-conspirators and imply participation rather than an audience separate from the band–which is what we hope to achieve with this interactive approach.

Also, if you have video/film footage of the band, please contact us, Thanks!

“Kingfisher”: another new song from Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming tripler Have One On Me, via the good folk at Drag City of Chicago.

Stream:

Download: “Kingfisher” — Joanna Newsom (mp3, 10.3mb)

Previously:

Stream:

Download: “Good Intentions Paving Company” — Joanna Newsom (mp3)

Stream:

Download: “‘81″ — Joanna Newsom (mp3)

Previously in Arthur Magazine:

“Forty-Six Strings and Some Truths”: JOANNA NEWSOM’s first ever major interview, by Jay Babcock, from Arthur No. 10 (April 2004)

“Always Coming Home”: How California harper JOANNA NEWSOM’s masterpiece album Ys grew from a time of personal turmoil, ambitious collaboration and eating hamburgers again. By Erik Davis, from Arthur No. 25 (Nov 2006)

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Off their recent “Drop a Deuce” seven-inch single… self-styled “regressive rock” marijuaniacs Mighty High of Brooklyn reel off a primo green riffer for the masses. The centerfold for this single (see it on their site) is worth your remaining five dollars alone. Dudes play the Jan Kotik annual memorial concert this Sunday, February 7, at Union Hall…probably in the late afternoon.

Stream:

Download: “Hands Up! (Live N Nasty)” – Mighty High (mp3)

Iranians celebrate ancient Persian fire fest
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
The Associated Press

Sunday, January 31, 2010; 12:17 PM

CHAM, Iran — Thousands of Iranians gathered at dusk against a snowy mountain backdrop to light giant bonfires in an ancient mid-winter festival dating back to Iran’s pre-Islamic past that is drawing new interest from Muslims.

Saturday’s celebration was the first in which the dwindling remnants of Iran’s once plentiful Zoroastrian religious minority were joined by thousands of Muslims, reflecting a growing interest in the strict Islamic society for the country’s ancient traditions.

The festival, known as Sadeh, celebrates the discovery of fire and its ability to banish the cold and dark, and it is held in the frigid depths of winter.

Sadeh was the national festival of ancient Persia when Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion, before the conquest of Islam in the 7th century. Now it is mostly celebrated just in the homes and temples of Iran’s 60,000 remaining Zoroastrians.

Recently, however, there has been an upsurge of interest among Iranian Muslims – more than 90 percent of the population – in their ancient heritage, when vast Persian empires held sway over much of central Asia and fought Greek warriors and Roman legions.

“I’m proud of Sadeh because it is part of Iran’s cultural heritage,” said Mohammed Saleh Khalili, a Muslim Iranian who traveled from Meibod, a town in central Iran, to join the celebrations. “Once it was a national festival and for centuries it has been restricted to Zoroastrians but there is no reason why Muslim Iranians shouldn’t celebrate the event.”

Zoroastrianism is a monotheistic religion predating Christianity and Islam and is believed to have influenced those faiths – and Judaism as well – being one of the first religions with a strong notion of good and evil.

Zoroastrians believe they must fight evil through good deeds, words and thoughts, including charity and service. Fire plays a central role in worship as a symbol of truth and the spirit of God. Prayer is often performed in front of a fire, and consecrated fires are kept perpetually burning in major temples.

The religion was founded in ancient Persia about 3,000 years ago, according to some scholarly estimates, by Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, whom the faith considers a prophet.

Zoroastrians once numbered in the millions but were persecuted and forced to convert after Muslims rose to power in Iran. A small number fled to India and their descendants became known as Parsis, or people from Persia.

According to some estimates, there are only about 150,000 Zoroastrians in the world today.

After the 1979 revolution brought in a hard-line religious government, many Zoroastrians emigrated to the U.S. and their festivals were strongly discouraged. However, they have one lawmaker in Iran’s parliament.

On Saturday, in the small mountain village of Cham in central Iran, an estimated 5,000 people – more than half of them Iranian Muslims – gathered for the festival, as white-robed priests recited hymns in ancient Persian from their holy book and children danced to lively music.

The ceremony climaxed with men and women dressed in traditional dress carrying torches and lighting the massive bonfire.

There was even a police band on hand playing the national anthem and other patriotic music, evoking wild cheers from the crowd of people, who made V for victory signs with their hands.

The band’s presence marked a once unheard of official stamp of approval for the festival by the government, which used to strongly discourage anything to do with fire worship.

“It appears that Sadeh once again will be a real national festival in Iran,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, also a Muslim.

Organizers held the festival outdoors this year because of the massive amount of interest from Muslims in the celebrations.

“We are proud of inheriting this great heritage from our ancestors. Celebrating Sadeh is celebrating the greatness of our homeland,” Ardeshir Kameh, a local Zoroastrian leader, told the cheering crowd.

Although Islam has been dominant for centuries in Iran, its Zoroastrian past has left its mark on the people through festivals and traditions still celebrated to this day.

The most well known is the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, celebrated in March, when people light bonfires, set off firecrackers and dance in the streets to put their failures behind them and start the new year with prosperity.

At the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, Iranians buy fruit, nuts and other goodies to mark the feast of Chelleh, also known as Yalda, an ancient tradition when families get together and stay up late, swapping stories and munching on snacks. Sizdeh Bedar, or public picnic day, on April 4 is another legacy from the pre-Islamic era.

Both were discouraged by authorities in the early years after the Islamic Revolution by the conservative clerical establishment, but without success.

Image credit and copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis

From spaceweather.com:

If you think tonight’s Moon looks unusually big, you’re right. It’s the biggest full Moon of 2010. Astronomers call it a “perigee Moon,” some 14% wider and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons of the year.

Johannes Kepler explained the phenomenon 400 years ago. The Moon’s orbit around Earth is not a circle but an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. Astronomers call the point of closest approach “perigee,” and that is where the Moon will be Friday night through Saturday morning.

A good time to look is around sunset when the Moon is near the eastern horizon. At that time, illusion mixes with reality to produce a truly stunning view. For reasons not fully understood by psychologists, low-hanging Moons look unnaturally large when they beam through foreground objects such as buildings and trees. Why not let the “Moon illusion” amplify a full Moon that’s extra-big to begin with? The swollen orb rising in the east may seem close enough to touch.

And what’s that bright orange star right beside the Moon? IT’S MARS! In a coincidence of celestial proportions, the Moon and Mars are having close encounters with Earth at the same time. Moreover, the two will spend Friday night gliding across the sky side-by-side…

Readers with backyard telescopes should train their optics on Mars. It looks bigger through a telescope now than at any time between 2008 and 2014…

More at spaceweather.com

And—JAY REATARD remembered by Sir Andrew Earles:
http://www.spin.com/articles/jay-reatard-remembered

Off debut album “Smith Westerns” by band Smith Westerns from fantastic label Hozac Records of Chicago (also home of Arthur faves Wizzard Sleeve).

Not in the mood for a middleman? Buy it direct here.

Smith Westerns West Coast tour starts TONITE. Dates: Smith Westerns

courtesy Chris G.!

“THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN”

curated and designed by DEVENDRA BANHART
(Arthur 0004)

Available direct from Arthur: the acclaimed 2004 compilation of current underground folk music, as selected by Devendra Banhart.

This is more than a compilation–it’s expertly sequenced and paced, like one long, slow flow of a particularly rich vibe. Liner notes are by the artists themselves, paying tribute to each other, all handlettered by Devendra, who also provides artwork on cover, back cover, sleeve, tray and the disk itself.

“Essential.” — Mojo, September 2004

“Sparkling.” — The Wire, July 2004

“8.6 (out of 10): [Its] sprawling landscape presents a persuasive case for the depth of a scene that seemingly sprung up (like mushrooms) overnight.” — Pitchfork, July 8, 2004

Track listing:

1. Vetiver (with Hope Sandoval) – “Angel’s Share” (from the “Vetiver” LP)
2. Joanna Newsom – “Bridges and Balloons” (from “The Milk-Eyed Mender” LP)
3. Six Organs of Admittance – “Hazy SF” (previously unreleased)
4. Viking Moses – “Crosses” (from “Crosses”)
5. Josephine Foster – “Little Life” (prev. unreleased home recording)
6. Espers – “Byss & Abyss” (from “Espers” LP)
7. Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart – “Rejoicing in the Hands” (from the “Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress” LP)
8. Jana Hunter – “Farm, CA” (prev. unreleased)
9. Currituck Co. – “The Tropics of Cancer” (from “Ghost Man on First”)
10. White Magic – “Don’t Need” (from the Drag City EP)
11. Iron and Wine – “Fever Dream” (from “Our Endless Numbered Days” LP)
12. Diane Cluck – ” Heat From Every Corner” (from “Macy’s Day Bird” LP)
13. Matt Valentine – “Mountains of Yaffa” (previously unreleased)
14. Entrance – “You Must Turn” (prev. unreleased home recording)
15. Jack Rose – “White Mule” (from “Red Horse, White Mule”)
16. Little Wings – “Look at What the Light Did Now” (from “Light Green Leaves”)
17. Scout Niblett – “Wet Road” (from “Sweet Heart Fever”)
18. Troll – “Mexicana” (from “Pathless Lord”)
19. CocoRosie – “Good Friday” (from “La Maison de Mon Reve”)
20. Antony – “The Lake” (from “Live at Saint Olaye’s With Current 93″)

Go to the ARTHUR STORE to order direct from Arthur via PayPal, credit card or debit card.

BULK ORDERS: Contact Arthur staff (editor at arthurmag dot com) for quote.

lowerdeck Gallery features Ecotones – A Painted Windows Event

Where: 2295 3rd Street, San Francisco CA 94107 (Dogpatch)

When: January 22nd and 23rd (Friday and Saturday) two performances

Time: Festivities start at 8pm and go until they end

Painted Windows presents Ecotones, a curatorial collaboration between painters, filmmakers, writers and musicians revolving around the fleeting, ever-changing notion of home. An all-immersive environment sprung from a collage of individual takes, the exhibition will approach the idea of natural habitat through sculpture, painting, interactive installations, live music, language, diverse performances, and unique beverages. From Christy Chan’s films of insurgent wild life reclaiming Marin’s defunct military bases to Sonya Genel’s multi-layered paintings to a bathroom full of stuffed animals to a “shitty house,” Ecotones will present a latticework of fantastical wilderness and urban mythology.

Also:
-Experience an interactive ritual
-Sip some yerba mate cocktails
-Watch two films simultaneously
-Hear a concert by NewVillager who will debut songs from their upcoming self-titled album.
-Listen to the absurd language of an “absurd MC”
-Read a wall
-Draw on a wall

Stream:

Download: “Party In The Pines” — Woods Family Creeps (mp3)

WOODS FAMILY CREEPS, which is/are Woods in exploratory, long-form instro-mode mood, play two sets (8p, 1030p) in Brooklyn on January 18 at Monkeytown. Reservations at: http://www.monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html. Ooh, it looks like they’re sold out already. Well, lower the lights a bit, light one up and make do with the above jam. Healing tones for troubling times.

Woods: http://www.myspace.com/woodsfamilyband

Woodsist: http://www.woodsist.com

bloggy: http://rearhouse.blogspot.com/

From Harvest Records:

Brightblack Morning Light/Lungfish 7″
Harvest Recordings 003

We are excited to finally have this record ready to roll. There is one Brightblack Morning Light track, “Another Reclaimation”, recorded live in 2008 at the South Paw in Brooklyn, NY. The Lungfish track is “You are the War” off their Feral Hymns release. The record is spun at 33 1/3rpm, comes on red/clear vinyl, and is limited to 500 copies.

This is an Anti-War release fueled by Nabob’s continued objection for the ongoing wars overseas; both tracks on the record exist to resist these wars. Nabob says the 7-inch’s purpose is “to make it known the current wars should end & peace should begin by our decisions.”

http://www.harvest-records.com/recordings.php

(above: cover of sold-out Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal No. 7)

From White Columns:

ECSTATIC PEACE POETRY JOURNAL – ISSUE #10
Edited By Thurston Moore with Byron Coley and Eva Prinz

White Columns is proud to present Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Issue #10: an exhibition, publication, and a series of readings and performances.

Artist, musician, poet and publisher Thurston Moore began editing and producing Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal in 2001 as a forum to publish poetry by individuals who intersected the worlds of poetry, music and art. A dynamic range of writings, with various pages of visual work by Gerard Malanga, Richard Meltzer, Chan Marshall, Dennis Cooper, Kathleen Hanna, John Sinclair, Richard Hell, Jutta Koether, Gus van Sant, Rick Moody, Kim Gordon, Anne Waldman, Bill Berkson, Anselm Berrigan, Gary Panter and many others were published in eight issues in as many years.

Moore was inspired to publish Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal after years of appreciation, study and relentless archiving of post-war poetry publishing focusing on the activity of the “mimeo revolution” of the ’60s and ’70s. The stapled mimeo poetry journals produced from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Peace Eye Bookstore in New York City, and Asphodel Bookstore in Cleveland, Ohio, as well as a myriad of other subterranean centers of shared post-beat writing, rage, meditation and experimentation continues to inform the publication of Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal.

Issue #10 of Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal will be published and presented at White Columns as an expanded event/exhibition. A stapled issue will be created during the show. Pages from each of the ten journals will be exhibited as enlarged wall pieces, including the heretofore unpublished issue #9, [in keeping with the journals every-third-issue a theme issue, i.e., #3 was themed “cunnilingus,” #6 was “punk,”—with #9’s theme “pot”]. The main gallery space will feature a selection of historical poetry publications from the last fifty years culled from Moore’s own library, including original editions of Amphora, Change, Coldspring Journal, Copkiller, Fervent Valley, Free Poems Amongst Friends, Gaslight Poetry Review, Kauri, Klactovedesteen, LA-BAS, Outburst, Stance, Sum, The Willie, Trobar, Yowl and more.

Working as co-editor on many aspects of Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, including this exhibition is writer Byron Coley, formidable musicologist, essayist, poet and producer of music and literary arcana, ephemera and beyond. Select pieces from Moore and Coley’s catalogue will be reprinted in limited states for this exhibition. Eva Prinz, editor, co-publisher of Ecstatic Peace Library and curator of Radical Living Papers: Free Press 1965-75 (2007) brings additional organizational and creative force to Issue #10 as a gallery event.

Reading and performance schedule:

Friday January 15th:
6-8pm. Opening performance: Northampton Wools (Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano, Bill Nace)

Saturday January 23rd
7-9pm. Reading: John Giorno, Byron Coley. Performance: Thurston Moore

Friday February 5th
7-9pm. Reading: Edmund Berrigan, Anselm Berrigan. Performance: Thurston Moore

Friday February 19th
7-9pm. Reading: Richard Hell, Dorothea Lasky. Music: Thurston Moore + guest

Thursday February 25th
7-9pm. Reading: Thurston Moore and Anne Waldman accompanied by musicians Ambrose Bye and Devin Waldman

All performances and readings are free, admission on a first-come basis.

Contributors to Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal No. 1-9:
Holly Anderson, Alan Arenius, Barbara Barg, Bill Berkson, David Berman, Bree, Wallace Berman, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan, Noel Black, Douglas Blazek, Carla Bozulich, Jack Brewer, Lenny Bruce, Christina Carter, Lisa Carver, Sharon Cheslow, Ira Cohen, Byron Coley, Loren [Mazzacane] Connors, Clark Coolidge, Dennis Cooper, Diego Cortez, Steve Dalachinsky, Georganne Deen, Niki Elliot, John Fahey, Pat Fear, Marie Frankland, Stefano Giovanini, Kim Gordon, Tom Greenwood, S.A. Griffin, Chris Habib, Kathleen Hanna, Twig Harper, Richard Hell, Nick Henry, Ione, Angela Jaeger, Elaine Kahn, David Keenan, Anne-Laure Keib, Richard Kern, Tim Kerr, J. D. King, Kira, Gary Kizer, Jutta Koether, Richard Kostelanetz, Maria Kozik, Richard Krech, Tuli Kupferberg, Kyle Lapidus, Lyn Lifshin, Linda Lerner, Louise Landes Levi, Alan Licht, Karen Lollypop, Lydia Lunch, Ian MacKaye, Gerard Malanga, Dave Markey, Chan Marshall, Gillian McCain, Vince Meghrouni, Richard Meltzer, Maria Mirabal, Rick Moody, George Moore, R. Moore, Thurston Moore, John Morton, Heather Leigh Murray, Eileen Myles, Bill Nace, Ian Nagoski, Hoa Nguyen, Pete Nolan, Dave Nuss, Dylan Nyoukis, Patty Oldenburg, Jeni Olin, Paulin Oliveros, Roberto Opalio, Maurizio Opalio, Gary Panter, Savage Pencil, Charles Plymell, Charles Potts, Edwin Pouncy, June Price, Lee Ranaldo, Joanne Robertson, Gus van Sant, Lynne Savitt, Dan Seward, David Shapiro, Ally Sheedy, Wally Shoup, Leni Sinclair, John Sinclair, Dale Smith, Tom Smith, TV Smitm, Fiona Smyth, Mali Thep, Susie Timmons, Kitty Tomahawk, Chris Touchton, Laki Vazakas, Janine Pommy Vega, Anne Waldman, Weasel Walter, Wooden Wand, Matthew Wascovich, Mike Watt, Valerie Beth Weber, Valerie Webber, Jocko Weyland, Nathan Whiting, A. D. Winans, Joanna Yas, Emma N. Young

—Chrissie Hynde, as told to Oliver Hall, September 2008

Read Oliver’s interview with Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders from the [online-only] Arthur No. 32

The invite:

Join volunteers and friends of Clowns Without Borders for an evening of laughter, wonder and amusement as we bring our dreams (and maybe yours) to life. At this event, we ask the question: how do we live our dreams? And how can we inspire each other to dream? Join us for a night of fantasy and amazement featuring world-class performers from Portland and abroad.

Clowns Without borders offers laughter and enchantment to relieve the suffering of all
persons, especially children, who live in areas of crisis; including refugee camps, conflict zones, and territories in situations of emergency around the world. This event benefits Clowns Without Borders USA for the upcoming trip to Chiapas, Mexico and this year will mark the 7th year of touring in Chiapas. For the first three weeks in February several clowns will be traveling to Zapatista schools and villages to bring performance, laughter and merriment to all we encounter. Other projects of Clowns without borders include Haiti, Southern Sudan, Kenya, Southern Africa, Colombia, India, Mexico, Ethiopia, Guatemala and around the domestic USA.

Clowns Without Borders needs your support, so pull out your wallets, dig into your pockets, search the sofa cushions… whatever it takes! With the help of many energetic volunteers, generous sponsors and the beautiful space at the Bamboo Grove Salon, we’ll provide the party.

We invite you to arrive in costume and bring your dreams to life, in the company of aerial artists, stilt walkers, jugglers, physical theatre performers, and more…

The event is 21+, Doors at 7pm, show at 8pm.
The Bamboo Grove is a mixed use art, performance, and practice space dedicated to the connection between asian and american arts. They have over 3500 feet of space available for meetings, workshops, film viewings, parties and events. see our rental space page for details.

134 SE Taylor St. Portland, OR 97214 (entrance on 2nd street between taylor and salmon) – www.bamboogrovesalon.com

photo by Karl Johnston, via spaceweather.com

Above: artist’s representation of longtime Arthur music reviewers C and D by Pete Toms. C and D have been absent without leave since August, 2008, when they were last spotted driving a cloudy ‘95 Ford Aspire around Atwater Village, wearing rainbow capes [unconfirmed].

HAVE YOU SEEN THESE “MEN”?
PLEASE POST ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR CURRENT WHEREABOUTS IN COMMENTS…

Stream:

Download: Sade — “Soldier Of Love” (mp3)

Burned, but still somehow optimistic: from her forthcoming album, Sade’s first in ten years. Listen to the veteran.

More info: sade.com

Stream:

Download: Moon Duo — “Stumbling 22nd St” (mp3)

Nice new seven-minute numbing rumbler number from Moon Duo, a new band featuring Ripley from the sainted Wooden Shjips on guitar and vocals, and Sanae Yamada on keys.

“Stumbling 22nd St” will appear on the band’s forthcoming “Escape” record (pictured above), out in February via the good people of Woodsist.

A previously released EP, Killing Time, is available direct from Sacred Bones Records.

The Moons are playing January 12, 2010 at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco.

From the Arthur inbox:

A reminder that this Tuesday, December 29th, 8pm, Union Pool in Brooklyn is hosting a show to prep you for New Years’ sloughing:

Adam from Company and Andrew from Home will be unveiling a new project inspired by Hubble space psychedelia, DEEP FIELDS. Mind melting live visuals and special guests, you ask? Perhaps.

San Francisco-based MERIDIANS have been mining microtones to bring you hypnotic guitarmony, and TOM CARTER of Charalambides, a shimmering axe transcendence. He might save you from yourself. Opening the night is CHARLEMAGNE: Carl Johns and Emily Farrell have been channeling the reverb of East Kilbride via Berlin and they’re in town for a one-night performance!

The doors are at 8pm and the show starts at 8:30! I am being real with you on this. Transcendence can’t wait.

Come now, you are amongst friends: shake those holiday demons. There will be cookies if you haven’t moved on.

“The Trip Glasses blink lights and pulse sounds at brainwave frequencies that follow the sequence for meditation. Not only will this synchronize your brain to a meditation sequence, but you hallucinate beautiful colors and patterns along the way.”

Terminator 2009
Judgment Days in Copenhagen
By Rebecca Solnit

For Isaac Francisco Solnit, born December 17, 2009

It’s clear now that, from her immovable titanium bangs to her chaotic approximation of human speech, Sarah Palin is a Terminator cyborg sent from the future to destroy something — but what? It could be the Republican Party she’ll ravage by herding the fundamentalists and extremists into a place where sane fiscal conservatives and swing voters can’t follow. Or maybe she was sent to destroy civilization at this crucial moment by preaching the gospel of climate-change denial, abetted by tools like the Washington Post, which ran a factually outrageous editorial by her on the subject earlier this month. No one (even her, undoubtedly) knows, but we do know that this month we all hover on the brink.

I’ve had the great Hollywood epic Terminator 2: Judgment Day on my mind ever since I watched it in a hotel room in New Orleans a few weeks ago with the Superdome visible out the window. In 1991, at the time of its release, T2 was supposedly about a terrible future; now, it seems situated in an oddly comfortable past…

Read on at TomDispatch.com

‘A giant of American music opens the book on his wrenching professional and personal journeys, paying tribute to the vanishing Appalachian culture that gave him his voice. He was there at the beginning of bluegrass. Yet his music, forged in the remote hills and hollows of Southwest Virginia, has even deeper roots. In Man of Constant Sorrow, Dr. Ralph Stanley gives a surprisingly candid look back on his long and incredible career as the patriarch of old-time mountain music. Marked by Dr. Ralph Stanley’s banjo picking, his brother Carter’s guitar playing, and their haunting and distinctive harmonies, the Stanley Brothers began their career in 1946 and blessed the world of bluegrass with hundreds of classic songs, including “White Dove,” “Rank Stranger,” and what has become Dr. Ralph’s signature song, “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Carter died in 1966 after years of alcohol abuse, but Dr. Ralph Stanley carried on and is still at the top of his game, playing to audiences across the country today at age eighty-one. Rarely giving interviews, he now grants fans the book they have been waiting for, filled with frank recollections, from his boyhood of dire poverty in the Appalachian coalfields to his early musical success with his brother, to years of hard traveling on the road with the Clinch Mountain Boys, to the recent, jubilant revival of a sound he helped create. The story of how a musical art now popular around the world was crafted by two brothers from a dying mountain culture, Man of Constant Sorrow captures a life harmonized with equal measures of tragedy and triumph.’

“Rudolph Wurlitzer is the author of the novels The Drop Edge of Yonder, Quake, Flats, and Slow Fade, as well as the nonfiction memoir Hard Travel to Sacred Places. He wrote the screenplays for such classic films as Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Two Lane Blacktop, and Walker, among others, and co-directed the film Candy Mountain with Robert Frank.”

Read the introduction to the new edition of this “headventure” classic by Arthur columnist Erik Davis: download PDF

“In 1950s California, and especially in Los Angeles, there existed few venues for contemporary art. To a whole generation of California artists, this presented a freedom, since the absence of a context for their work meant that they could coin their own, and in uncommonly interesting ways. The careers of Ed Ruscha, Wallace Berman and Ed Kienholz all begin with this absence: Ruscha turned to books as a means of dissemination, Berman pioneered mail art through his magazine Semina and in March 1957, Ed Kienholz, in collaboration with curator Walter Hopps, co-founded one of California’s greatest historical galleries, Ferus. Within months of opening, Ferus, which is Latin for “wild,” gained notoriety when the Hollywood vice squad raided Berman’s first–and, in his lifetime, last–solo exhibition, following a complaint about “lewd material.” Shows by Kienholz and Jay DeFeo followed, but 1962 was Ferus’ annus mirabilis, with solo shows by Bruce Conner and Joseph Cornell, and the first solo shows of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol on the west coast. The following year, Ferus also hosted Ed Ruscha’s first solo exhibition. After Kienholz and Hopps parted ways—Hopps went on to mount the first American Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Musuem—the reins were handed to Irving Blum, who got Ferus out of the red and ran the gallery until its closure in 1966. A Place to Begin is an illustrated oral history of this heroic enterprise. With 62 new interviews with Ferus artists and more than 300 photographs (most previously unpublished), it retrieves a lost chapter of twentieth-century American art. Edited by [longtime Arthur contributor] Kristine McKenna, noted expert and co-editor of the critically acclaimed Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle.”

2010 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints
Radical Heroes for the New Millennium
by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

32 pages, 12 x 16 inches, saddlestitched, $9.95

Hundreds of radical cultural and political heroes are celebrated here, along with the animating ideas that continue to guide this project — a reprieve from the 500-year-long sentence to life-at-hard-labor that the European colonization of the “New World” and the ensuing devastations of the rest of the world has represented. It is increasingly clear — at the dawn of this new millennium — that the Planetary Work Machine will not rule forever!

Celebrate with this calendar on which every day is a holiday!

Go to Autonomedia to order

[Huxley] reminded me that drugs are beneficial if they provide the only access to our nightlife. I realized that the expression “blow my mind” was born of the fact that America had cemented access to imagination and fantasy and that it would take dynamite to remove this block! I believed Leary’s emphasis on the fact we use only one percent of our mind or potential, that everything in our education conspires to restrict and constrict us. I only wished people had had time to study drugs as they studied religion or philosophy and to adapt to this chemical alteration of our bodies.

[LSD's] value is in being a shortcut to the unconscious, so that one enters the realm of intuition unhampered, pure as it is in children, of direct emotional reaction to nature, to other human beings. In a sense it is the return to the spontaneity and freshness of childhood vision which makes every child able to paint or sing.

—Anais Nin, The Dirary (Vol. 6?), as quoted by Dale Pendell in Pharmako Gnosis: Plan Teachers and the Poison Path

From Eli Smith at Down Home Radio Show, coming to you out of New York City:

The show’s been going on now for more than 3 years. Its been a great project; a quick look through the archives will show you the depth and scope of what has been aired on Down Home Radio – dozens of in depth radio interviews with well known elders of the folk scene as well as many great new performers you won’t hear about anywhere else, articles, archival materials, tons of amazing old recordings drawn from obscure sources, plus lots of hard to find out-of-print LPs, digitized and posted for your pleasure and convenience, all for free.

But I can’t continue to do the show without your support. Increasing demands on my time from other projects and the rigors of getting along in New York City make it hard to find time for Down Home Radio anymore. If you value this show/archive, recognize it as something unique and much more than just a blog, please support what I’m doing. Down Home Radio needs funds to replace broken equipment, to pay for all the technical, logistical and office expenses involved with the program and to continue to bring you the coverage only DHR can.

With your support DHR can not only continue but will be able to expand its programming and produce new shows of all kinds on a regular basis, as well as pay for ads in magazines and generally increase its profile and listenership. I have not set a specific monetary goal for this fund drive, but rather hope that listeners will show their appreciation for the shows already produced and donate an amount that will offset to a significant degree the cost of its continuing production and progress for a years time.

Check out today’s show to hear music from some of the awesome new performers I would like to have on the show in the future, plus live recordings from the 2009 Brooklyn Folk Festival, sponsored by Down Home Radio and organized by yours truly. I also have a number of great interviews already recorded that I can’t find the time to get to, including Jack Elliott, Del McCoury, Peter Rowan, Jody Stecher, Larry Hanks, as well as Archie Green, Harold Leventhal and Jim Longhi – very important figures in folk music history who are now deceased. That’s why I have staged this fund drive, in an effort to muster the resources to continue this unique voice in the media and add this important material to the public archive that is Down Home Radio.

Down Home Radio is live from the grass roots of the folk revival that’s going on right now. If you appreciate this kind of coverage, please make a tax deductible donation to Down Home Radio, and receive any or all of the 3 awesome premiums listed below.

Thanks. Your host,

Eli

Stream:

Download: Naked With You (mp3)

Available on Turbo Fruits‘ debut Echo Kid from Fat Possum Records (purchase options here). Main Fruitie used to be in Be Your Own Pet.

White Hills – Dead from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Available from the Arthur Store

INDOOR THUNDER: Landscaping the future with Brian Eno
by Alan Moore

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics.

The first half of the twentieth century saw all energies and the agenda that had driven Western culture from its outset reach their logical albeit startling conclusions in the various fires of Auschwitz, Dresden, Nagasaki, after which we all sat stunned amongst the smoking fragments of our worldviews, all our certainties of the utopias to come revealed as flimsy, wishful, painted sets, reduced to vivid splinters, sharp and painful. There was scorched earth, there was shellshock, there was no Plan B. Hiroshima rang through the traumatized and anxious mindset of the 1950s, through Jeff Nuttall’s Bomb Culture, its shuddering reverberation somewhere between funeral knell and warning seismic tremor. Our response to the bad news carved a division through society, between flat denial on the one hand, paralyzed hysteria upon the other; between those who doggedly refused the notion that tomorrow might be different from today, and those fixated by the mushroom clouds who scorned the notion that there might be a tomorrow. Both these attitudes, you’ll notice, have conveniently avoided any need to think creatively about the future, have dodged any obligation to consider the Long Now. Tomorrow is today with smaller radios or it’s strontium and ashes, and in either case there’s no need to prepare.

Throughout the 1950s there was very little ground between these two terminal visions, one complacent in its sense of stasis and the other in its sense of doom, but such ground as existed was staked out and cultivated by the era’s artists, by its avant-garde musicians, its Beat poets. By the middle ’60s they had turned the thin conceptual corridor between Eisenhower/Macmillan monotony and Oppenheimer Armageddon into thriving, fertile territory where the future tense could once more be employed with meaning, where future itself could once more be imagined, could take root. In England, grown up from the ferment and foment of the moment, an exuberantly progressive Art School scene together with a network of experimental and impromptu Arts Laboratories were the psychedelic backdrop that the next wave of creative talent would emerge from in the early 1970s, once all the counter-culture crackle of the previous ten years had run its course. The fairground ozone glitterfog of Glam Rock with its twilight sexuality and its somehow nostalgic futurism boiled up from the dayglo debris in bohemian basements, happened happenings, a rich mulch of dreams crashed and trampled and ploughed under. David Bowie and Steve Harley sprang from Arts Lab roots in Beckenham. Brian Eno spent the 1960s soaking up the influence of tutors such as the composer Cornelius Cardew or Tom Phillips, author of the treated masterpiece A Humument. At its deepest and most interesting subterranean extremes the hippie underground became the velvet goldmine.

The peculiar electricity that sparked back then amongst the leopard skins and sequins came from tensions that went further than the obvious sexual ambiguity of heterosexual bricklayers in lippy. There were also stress lines spanning past and future, the subculture caught between them like a lurex Janus, one face with its yearning Garbo gaze trained on a celluloid romance of yesterday, the other staring through its greasepaint thunderbolt into the alien dazzle up ahead, dynamic conflict that was evident in Bowie’s mismatched eyes, in the fraught brilliance of the period’s most emblematic pop group, Roxy Music. Here the sound was tug-of-war taut, stretched between the MGM lounge-lizardry of Bryan Ferry’s retro-fitted vision and the squelchy sci-fi shimmer that Brian Eno dressed it in, Noel Coward on the set of Logan’s Run. When the rope inevitably snapped, the synthesizer artist/non-musician, suddenly cut free from the opposing pull of any gravity, seemed to rise instantly to a conceptual stratosphere remote and previously unglimpsed, dragging the decade with him by its iridescent quiff.

It’s difficult to overestimate the manner in which Eno’s subsequent solo career has impacted with culture, in terms of both its complexity and the sheer breadth of its blast radius. Back in the first flush of the ‘70s his manifesto, yet to be unpacked, was nonetheless there to be read in “Baby’s On Fire”’s two-note minimalist flourish, in the cascading metal vistas of his work with Robert Fripp. It could be seen in the inventive pilfering from Chinese picture-story propaganda that engendered Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, in the thinking behind the ingenious, endlessly useful deck of creative prompts labeled Oblique Strategies that he and Peter Schmidt released in January 1975. It was even apparent in the mantelpiece clutter of Here Come the Warm Jets’ picture sleeve, the pornographic playing card that referenced the album’s title, the sly and understated sense of humor. Rapidly transcending his considerable status as Glam icon Eno became instead the most coherent and most capable example of a cutting edge that pop culture had witnessed, became something new and without precedent, something refusing definition save in its own self-invented terms.

If there is anything that’s more authentically remarkable than Eno’s almost total single-handed transformation of the way we think about our entertainment culture, more striking than his casual invention of the sample or of ambient music, then it is the quietness and above all discretion with which he’s accomplished everything. It is the unobtrusiveness with which he carries out his dynamitings and his demolitions, the delicacy of his bulldozers that clear way the parlor walls while everybody’s having tea, and no one notices. We pass the sugar and try not to mention the roof’s gone. Many of his pop contemporaries, perhaps mindful of the fact that ultimately they have little that’s original to say and no expectation of effecting any noticeable change within society will compensate by flaunting ersatz dangerousness in their lyrics, their appearance or their lifestyle, whereas Nature tells us that the genuinely dangerous beasts lie low in the grass and do not choose to advertise their presence until it’s all far too late. Working at culture’s liminal extremes, deep in the social utlra-violet, he is taking Tiger Mountain by stealth. Implacably intelligent and utterly unsentimental, he got the job because he was so mean, while somehow appearing so kind.

His function, frequently, is catalytic, sparking a profound reaction in which only he himself will not be noticeably changed. Eno’s collaborations with his former Glam associate David Bowie later in the 1970’s, most notably on Low, were massively important to the shaping of the Punk and New Wave movements without ever being seen as part of those phenomena. His sampled TV news report of Dutch industrialist Hans Martin Schleyer’s death by R. A. F. provided House music with all its aural furniture by way of an anonymous charity shop donation. Even throwaway remarks such as his comment that while only a few hundred people ever listened to the Velvet Underground they all formed bands are endlessly recycled without any real awareness of their source, and yet his sphere of influence continues its expansion unabated. His ubiquity would seem to imply that while only a few hundred people ever paid attention to Brian Eno’s work, they all formed countries.

Propaganda for a state wholly of mind, his oeuvre acts upon the world around it like a beneficial virus, ideas that infect the host, transform it to a vector by which the infection may be further propagated. As with all successful viruses, there is a strategy by which the host’s immune defenses and resistance to the ideas can be circumvented, and in Eno’s case that strategy is one of simple beauty and necessity. His notions, packaged irresistibly within a haunting and transporting drift of notes and tones are simply too profoundly lovely, are too vital and too obviously true to foster any opposition, any barricades. Whether it’s the elegiac end-of-season seafronts of “Some Faraway Beach” or the mesmerizing glass-and-raindrop crawl of “Thursday Afternoon,” the final “It’s the stars…” refrain that ends his wonderfully cross-purposive collaboration with John Cale, Wrong Way Up, or The Shutov Assembly’s tingling, thrilling “Ikebukuro,” there is a sublime, uplifting presence that informs each piece and brooks no opposition, an enlightening eunoia, beauteous thought that changes people and their landscape from the inside out.

Avoiding all classification and restriction by defining himself doggedly in terms of what he’s not, the non-musician has been able to ignore all boundaries, can access areas where musicians are not usually encouraged: futurology and film and fashion. Perfume. Politics. He is tomorrow’s perfect occupant, the model for what humans can achieve when unencumbered by the luggage or the language of the self-set limitations of our prison past, and better yet he makes it all look like such fun. Upon the one occasion when I had the privilege of meeting him, at the recording of an interview for Radio Four’s Chain Reaction series, he turned up wearing the clothes he’d worn the previous day after his daily consultation of the Oblique Strategies pack had admonished him severely to “Change nothing.” Having buffed my shoes up to a fine sheen in an effort to impress him even if the toying with my hair and simpering failed, I was surprised when he insisted upon polishing his own shoes just before we went on air. I pointed out that this was wireless and that nobody would notice, to which he replied by asking if I didn’t think that an impression of one’s dusty shoes could somehow be transmitted over radio? I was transfixed, and honestly had no response to this spontaneous Zen koan. What’s the sound of one shoe gathering dust?

Brian Eno is one of our modern culture’s brightest lights, never more radiant than in that culture’s most obscure and interesting corners, someone we should all be grateful we’re alive at the same time as. He’s the ambient motor hum, the alpha wave harmonic barely audible behind civilization. We should all sit quietly and listen.

* * *

BEFORE AND AFTER SILENCE
On the eve of the release of his first solo album of vocal songs in decades, pioneering musician-artist-thinker BRIAN ENO speaks with Kristine McKenna in a conversation as wide-ranging and profound as his singular career.

I’ve met lots of charming people in my life and Brian Eno may well be the most charming person I’ve ever met. What’s the secret of his devastating charm? It comes down to a few things. He has impeccable manners. He gives you his full, undivided attention when he speaks with you. He’s interested in everything under the sun. He has a wonderful sense of humor. Finally, and most importantly, he has an incredibly light touch. What I mean by that is that he can discuss just about anything and be genuinely involved without getting hot and bothered. Eno so relishes the process of examining things from various angles that he can’t be bothered to take it personally if you don’t agree with him. He’s fun.

One thing Eno hasn’t done for quite a while is sing, so the release of Another Day on Earth—his first record of songs in more than two decades—is something of an occasion. This was the ostensible reason we recently hooked up to chat, but as is always the case with Eno, our conversation roamed far and wide. Herewith, a few of the high points.

Arthur: What seemed desperately important to you as a young man that no longer seems quite so pressing?

Brian Eno: I’ve somewhat lost faith in art and the cultural world because I think it has no faith in itself. Culture is the most important thing we do, but it seems to me that we don’t take it seriously, and the visual arts in particular are in very dire straits at the moment. I don’t think any of it makes much difference, although there are some painters working now that I like very much. Lari Pittman, for instance, makes beautiful paintings that absolutely blow me away.

Arthur: If you could own any artwork, what would you want?

Eno: There’s a room at the Museum of Modern Art that has a beautiful Rothko, two de Koonings, and a huge Monet Water Lilies. I’d be happy to have that room.

Arthur: What aspect of middle-age weren’t you prepared for?

Eno: That women would find me more attractive. I’ve never thought that highly of myself so this came as a bit of a surprise. Perhaps it’s just that as you get older women are more inclined to tell you how they feel. When people are young they tend to beat around the bush a lot of the time.

Arthur: How many times have you been in love?

Eno: Maybe half a dozen times.

Arthur: What do you know about romantic love today that you didn’t know ten years ago?

Eno: That women are much more romantic than they care to let on—the old clichés are much truer than people care to admit. I would add, however, that notions of romance seem to become more potent for men as they age, too, and it starts to seem like more of the reason that you’d want to do it. You get into the joy of the process more as you get older and care less about the cum shot.

Arthur: Why does love die?

Eno: It often happens that you love someone because they reflect you particularly well, and you basically like the person because they like you. This is a rather slender basis for building a relationship but it’s a trick people use to intrigue you—they look very interested so you think gosh, what a clever person! They’re really interested in me!

Arthur: How do you explain the aversion to aging that’s an intrinsic part of western culture? Is it simply a fear of death?

Eno: I don’t think it’s fear of death so much as fear of the loss of one’s powers. For instance, I notice it in my eyesight. I hate the fact that I can’t see as well as I used to, I’m aware that I’m not seeing the detail I used to see, and I miss that visual side of my life everyday. It’s interesting that as you get older your vision treats your contemporaries better. You look at people your own age and think O.K., she looks nice, then you put your glasses on and think, good lord, do I look like that?

Arthur: What’s the greatest privilege of youth?

Eno: The fact that nobody wants anything from you, you’re free to do anything and you’ve got every avenue open to you. When you’re young you have this capacity to roam, which just disappears. When you’re older either you’re not successful, and many avenues have consequently closed to you, or you are successful and there’s a huge pressure to do more of what you’ve done before. I know so many musicians who’ve told me that when they were young words just flew out of them—sometimes they didn’t even know where they came from—because when nobody cares, you don’t have all these voices in your head saying “that’s immature, you’ve been there before, we’ve heard so-and-so do that.” Because there are no critical voices in your mind it just throws out stuff. I’ve lost that freedom as far as lyric writing goes.

Arthur: Your new record has a very wistful quality; were you feeling that way when you made it?

Eno: Yes, it is something of a getting older record. The other thing I hope it conveys is the idea that each day will pass as all the others have, and it will be just as amazing and disappointing as all the others have been.

Arthur: The feeling you just described has to do with the fleeting and ephemeral nature of existence, and yet the work you do with the Long Now Foundation is predicated on notions of permanence and longevity.

Eno: Yes, Long Now is about thinking long term and was conceived to pose the question; if you really believed there would be people on earth 10,000 years from now, how would that affect how you live today? Most of us live as if there isn’t going to be a future, and few of us are conscious of how heavily we tread on the earth and what we leave behind. These are hard questions to ask ourselves, of course, because essentially they ask you to unpick your life. We’re born into intensely constructed lives that involve high energy consumption, the eating of expensive food—all the things I do along with everybody else I know.

We all live in varying states of denial of the fact that there are a number of converging crisis bearing down on us right now. One of them is the increasing prevalence of really nasty diseases spread by air travel—I have a theory about air travel, by the way. I think we’ve reached the peak of air travel and that it will go into decline for three reasons. One is that it will become associated with the spread of diseases people will be unwilling to expose themselves to just to go on holiday. People will either drive somewhere or they’ll stay home. Two, there will be a few more spectacular terrorist incidents, and we all remember the effect that had on air travel last time. Three, sooner or later governments are going to have to tackle the fact that air travel is the hugest producer of pollutants we have. There’s been a big debate going on in England about a wind farm they’re thinking of building in the north of the country, and the argument for it is that it would prevent 250,000 tons of pollutants going into the air per year. That sounds good until you realize that one plane doing a London to Miami route for a year releases half a million tons of pollutants into the atmosphere per year. I’d be quite happy if there was a credible world movement against travel because communities would begin to return and people would start to rediscover where they are now. And needless to say, the romance of travel is diminished dramatically by the fact that no matter where you go there will be a Gap store.

Arthur: Who makes you feel star struck?

Eno: No stars do—it’s funny but I’ve never been impressed by those kind of celebrities. The closest I’ve come to being star struck is by the biologist Richard Dawkins. I’m so impressed by the work he’s done that when I met him I found myself wondering what I could say that would possibly be of interest to him.

Arthur: What do you long for?

Eno: Discipline and some kind of routine. There always seem to be so many things going on in my life and I’m never quite prepared for any of them. Take a simple thing like collecting cuttings out of the newspaper—you’d think that would be a pretty easy thing to organize. I’m always cutting things out, and there are little stacks of clippings all around my studio, but there’s never any time to create a filing system and actually file them. In my imagined life of discipline and routine there would be 20 minutes each morning to file clippings, then half an hour for a swim, which is something I actually do manage to do most days. I just wish there was more of that structure.

Arthur: What’s your idea of an important achievement?

Eno: Years ago my assistant bought a chair for a thousand pounds at a fishing lake owned by 300 fishermen, and nearly every weekend he goes there and basically meditates with a fishing rod in his hand—that’s what people are really doing when they fish. This strikes me as a great thing to achieve, probably because it speaks to my hankering for simplicity and routine. I also admire people who say ‘fuck this’ to the lot they’ve been dealt in life and demand something more for themselves. I have a nephew who has Lowe’s Syndrome and he’s got very poor eyesight and several other little things wrong with him, but this kid is so full of life, partly because my sister—his mother—told him ‘don’t accept your lot.’ She could’ve taken the attitude, ‘oh he’s disabled, he can’t do much,’ but she just sort of threw him into life. So, to make maximum use of what you’ve got is an important achievement. Take Lou Reed as a guitar player. The early records by the Velvet Underground have some of the most inspiring guitar playing I’ve ever heard, but I don’t think anyone would say Lou Reed is a great guitar player. He just knows how to use the gift he has to maximum effect.

Arthur: Which song is in your mind when you think of Reed’s playing with the Velvet Underground?

Eno: “What Goes On.” I almost included a cover of the Velvet Underground song “I’m Set Free” on this record. I did rather a good version of it, too, and I will release it, but I didn’t want to make a record that was too long because I hate long records and think people don’t listen to them. I remember working on Laurie Anderson’s album, Bright Red, and there was a song on there that was just gorgeous, but she made it track 13 and I’ve never met anyone who’s heard it. By the time people get to track 13 they’re off somewhere else.

Arthur: What’s your favorite song today?

Eno: I can never give one answer to any question, so I have a few. I spent the day digging a fish pond so I was listening to my iPod, and I’d programmed a song into it by a Turkish singer named Belkis Akkale who has the most erotic voice I’ve ever heard. It absolutely drives me mad and my hear leaps with joy when she sings. Funnily enough, there’s a song I did with Bowie on the record Outside, called “We Prick You,” which is amazing. When I heard it today I thought to myself, how on earth did we get that? I rarely listen to my old records and I must say, I was impressed. I’ve also been listening to an inspiring song by Me’Shell N’dege’Ocello called “Loyalty” that’s on a beautiful album she made called Bitter.

Arthur: What was the last thing you learned?

Eno: I’m reading a fabulous book at the moment called Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, by a guy called James Scott. The first section of the book deals with city planning, the science of forestry, the invention of surnames, and weights and measures, and it made me realize that everything in society is built on fundamental infra-structural divisions. They’re so deeply imbedded in the way we live that we’re often unaware that they’re at the core of many of the problems we wrestle with. That’s why the attempt to export free market capitalism to what was formerly the communist world hasn’t gone smoothly; there’s an intricate infra-structure of social agreements that must be in place for such things to work.

Arthur: The first time I interviewed you was 25 years ago, and thinking back to that time it seems the world was a much safer and slower place. Is it simply a trick of the mind that we tend to recall the past as somehow simpler, or is the world actually picking up ever greater speed and complexity?

Eno: I don’t think it’s a trick of the mind. A few years ago the U.N. published a graph that charted various indicators of human well-being like security, equality, freedom, employment, access to clean water—all sorts of things. It was interesting to me that there is objective evidence for the incremental changes people feel, and the rather alarming conclusion they drew was that western civilization peaked in 1976. I think it’s true that up until the early ‘80s people felt they were on an upward curve, at least in our culture. This isn’t true for every culture, but here in the west I think people believed things were getting better and globalization was a good idea. Today, most people seem to feel that the threats outnumber the promises and the dangers outnumber the freedoms.

Arthur: So what are the long-term implications of this U.N. graph? That man’s on the road to extinguishing himself?

Eno: I think there’s a very good chance of that, actually, and having young children I find it absolutely alarming to contemplate what kind of world they’ll be living in when they’re my age. There have been various points in human history when people felt the end really was near, but the difference now is that we’re more powerful than we’ve ever been. Any one of us as individuals is almost as powerful as whole nations were in the past, in terms what we can handle, damage and effect. Of course, we can do good things too, but those things are less easy to achieve single-handedly. Good projects require co-operation, but you can create quite a lot of damage all by yourself.

Arthur: An unfortunate shift in America’s political landscape is the fact that the will of the people no longer seems to mean much; our government does what it damn well pleases regardless of public response to their decisions.

Eno: I think that’s true. In the ‘60s people perhaps naively thought that democracy meant what it’s supposed to mean, but today, with Fox News and professional liars in politics, we’ve come to realize that democracy doesn’t mean anything really. As was evidenced in the recent U.K. elections, things aren’t quite so dire yet in England. Yes, Tony Blair was re-elected, but he won with a much reduced majority and a strong message from the people which was this: don’t fuck about with us. It became increasingly obvious to the British people that Blair had deceived them, and that the story of why we were going to war was untrue, and his re-election was essentially a vote of confidence for the Labor Party which has been a quite successful government in many ways—except for its alignment with Bush. England is basically a center-left country and I don’t think any members of the Labor Party approve of Bushism as a style. Bush is a very charismatic man, though, and I think Blair is a bit of a groupie. Obviously, Bush is an ignorant bully but he’s a confident man, and lots of people really go for that.

Arthur: What’s the first thing you’d do if you were running the world?

Eno: I’m a patron of this thing called the Global Ideas Factory that was founded 15 years ago, and it’s an organization that collects ideas about how to make the world a better place. These ideas range from what to do with dog pooh to how to solve the global energy crisis, and some of these ideas are totally amazing. The first thing I’d do would be to set up an international body to examine the feasibility of some of these ideas. We simply waste the wisdom of our great thinkers—it’s amazing how little we use of human intelligence—and creating an internationally funded global ideas bank committed to actually doing something would be a way of putting a world changing culture in place.

Arthur: To what degree do we inadvertently fictionalize our own past?

Eno: I’ve often thought that children should be taught how to watch television, read papers and listen to the radio, because most of our experience now is lived through media in one way or another. That’s particularly true in America where many people get most of their information about the world from television, which fictionalizes the past to a dramatic degree. That’s part of their raison d’etre, to tell us stories about the past.

Arthur: Towards what end? How does it serve us to fictionalize the past?

Eno: It doesn’t serve us at all. Occasionally, for the sake of family coherence, you might tell a story that you know is a rather rosy version of events, but generally it’s imperative to maintain as accurate a grip on the past as one can manage. Very few people seem to appreciate the effort the Germans have made to not fictionalize their past, and it really pisses me off when that idiot Rumsfeld talks about old Europe as if to imply, “What do they know?” Germany has made a huge effort to face its past and come to terms with the fact that it acted absolutely abominably, and this is something America never has done and never will do. America will never ever say the Viet Nam War was a terrible mistake and what happened to the Vietnamese people was a disgrace, but young Germans talk about World War II with genuine passion and honesty.

Arthur: There’s been quite an uproar about Downfall, the recent film about Hitler; many people have objected to the film on the grounds that it’s dangerous to humanize Hitler. Do you find any merit in those objections?

Eno: No, I think this is an important aspect of not fictionalizing the past. It’s a dangerous fiction to regard Hitler as a one-of-a-kind monster. I read an interesting book last year called Defying Hitler: A Memoir by a German historian named Sebastian Haffner, who was born in 1906 and grew up in Berlin where he watched the growth of the Nazi phenomenon. What becomes terrifyingly obvious in reading his book is how easy it is for a society to slip into barbarism. It starts very gently with all the intellectuals and clever people saying ‘bloody Hitler, what an idiot, he’s not going to last.’ All the things we’ve been saying about Bush, who was regarded as just a joke when he first appeared on the political scene. Things get worse and people start saying ‘shocking, disgraceful, we must get rid of this guy, but I’m busy right now writing a book—when it gets bad we’ll all pull together.’ But by the time it reaches that point it’s too late and there is no easy exit.

This is why I’ve started to get political in the last few years—I think we’re at the beginning of a new kind of technocratic tyranny. The manipulation of public opinion is so easy now; for evidence of that look no further than the fact that in a matter of months it was possible to convince most Americans that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the Twin Towers. It was just incredible. A key strategy in the manipulation of public opinion is to get the public excited about moral issues that don’t really matter like abortion and gay marriage. In England the issue is immigration, which is a minor problem but is something everyone feels they must have an opinion about. Governments love those issues because while everybody’s arguing about them, they’re left alone to pursue the business of world domination.

Arthur: How did having children change you?

Eno: It certainly anchored me much more. I don’t like to be away from my children for too long because I hate the thought that I might miss some little part of their story. It also made me think about the future a lot more, and made me realize I had the capacity to feel absolutely unqualified love. One day a situation came up where there was some danger and I realized that without question I would’ve sacrificed my own life without even thinking about it. This came as a surprise to me because I’ve never considered myself a generous or altruistic person, and I don’t regard myself as brave in any way at all.

Arthur: Do you believe in destiny?

Eno: No, but I believe that if you believe in destiny it will make a difference in what happens to you. Some people think ‘I am chosen and I’m a favored person,’ and that gives them a confidence that has the effect of making them chosen. The reverse happens as well. Some people consider themselves cursed and believe nothing will ever go right for them, and of course, nothing does.

Arthur: What role does faith play in your life?

Eno: Last year I went to see Archbishop Desmond Tutu speak, and I was struck by the fact that on several occasions he made the observation, ‘You have no idea what goodness there is in people.’ This really impressed me, given that this was a guy who’d really seen some of the worst that people are capable of. He was talking about the Truth and Reconciliation Council and the great surprise of that endeavor was the incredible generosity of feeling people had, and their ability to forgive really awful things. So, I agree with Desmond Tutu’s comment, for the simple reason that I have faith in human intelligence.

We all know the arts need funding to survive. Fortunately there are philanthropic individuals, charitable foundations, and government institutions who recognize this need and provide support.

The Need
Most independent artists, however, including countless small or new arts companies, lack the all important 501(c)(3) tax status that makes those donations legal and desirable. That’s where fiscal sponsorship comes in.

In a Nutshell
Fiscal Sponsorship is a financial and legal system by which a legally recognized 501(c)(3) public charity (such as Fractured Atlas) provides limited financial and legal oversight for a project initiated independently by an artist. That “project” might be a one-time project or an independent artist or even an arts organization that does not have its own 501(c)(3) status. Once sponsored in this way, the project is eligible to solicit and receive grants and tax-deductible contributions that are normally available only to 501(c)(3) organizations.

The Catch
Anytime you’re dealing with the IRS (which regulates these issues), you can bet there are going to be some complicated legal issues involved. Many well-intentioned, legitimate organizations across the country provide fiscal sponsorship programs for artists. Very few of them are doing it legally, though, and most don’t even realize the danger in which they’re putting themselves and their sponsored projects. If the IRS ever decides to crack down, they could lose their 501(c)(3) status, and their sponsored projects could be forced to return any money raised under the arrangement.

The Solution
Fortunately, Fractured Atlas is here to help. Our fiscal sponsorship program is legal, efficient, and affordable. Our program is open and accessible to artists and arts organizations nationwide and in every discipline. We won’t judge your work’s artistic quality or merit; that’s for others to decide. Our job is to give you the tools you need to raise the money to make it happen.

How We’re Different
Fractured Atlas’s fiscal sponsorship program offers many benefits that other fiscal sponsors simply don’t have the resources or infrastructure to provide. Here are just a few of the perks that we think make us special:

* Online donations by credit card (up to $5,000 per transaction) with no additional fee for credit card processing
* Donors can make automatic recurring monthly donations
* We can accept and process non-cash donations of equipment and materials
* Fund release checks are issued weekly at the sponsored artist’s request
* Complete set of online tools for managing your sponsored fund (check your fund balance, view donation and fund release history, look up donor contact information, process new donations, etc.)
* Online profile and website link featured on our website
* Program is structured to ensure that you should never owe any taxes on money we disburse
* Fractured Atlas staff is friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable – a great ally as you pursue your work!

More info: http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/

Press release:

Motown had one, so did Stax. Three soul-deep acts and one smoking hot band to back them up. The triple-header of R&B: the soul revue. Once a mainstay of theaters, gymnasiums and VFW halls everywhere, the soul revue ultimately vanished in the late seventies as recorded sound pushed live performance out of the limelight and onto car stereos and refrigerator-sized boom boxes. The performers returned to their day jobs and the world was the poorer for it.

That is, until April 4th, 2009, when your Numero Group mounted the first Eccentric Soul Revue, packing Chicago’s Park West Theater with soul-hungry acolytes, satisfying them and then some with the real thing: a 17-piece band backing The Notations, Renaldo Domino, The Final Solution, Nate Evans, and Syl Johnson, putting on a show that combined 70s slick with revival-meeting fervor.

It was a magical evening, as the past lived and breathed and got on down, right here in the present. Those in attendance went home that night knowing they’d seen something that just wasn’t done anymore. And wanting more. If you live in Columbus, Ohio, New York, Brooklyn, or Washington D.C., the wait and the want is over. The Numero Group is taking this show on the road.

Eccentric Soul Revue hits the East Coast in November with the totally explosive Syl Johnson, the silky smooth Notations, and the man with the voice like Domino sugar, Renaldo Domino, plus special guests, a slide show, and an autograph line.

There is absolutely nothing else like The Eccentric Soul Revue. A ticket is a time machine. Be there.

November 7th 2009
Lincoln Hall
Chicago, IL

Special Guest:
Sharon Clark | Linda Ballintine
T.L. Barrett

18+ / Doors at 8PM
Tickets:
Lincoln Hall

November 8th 2009
Crofoot Ballroom
Pontiac, MI

Special Guests:
Velma Perkins
Bobby Cook

All Ages / Doors at 7PM
Tickets:
Ticketweb

November 9th 2009
Lincoln Theater
Columbus, OH

Special Guests:
Marion Black | Four Mints

All Ages / Doors at 7PM
Tickets:
Lincoln Theatre | Ticketmaster
Tickets in person at Wexner, CAPA boxoffice or Ohio Theatre are much cheaper than via Ticketmaster
November 10th 2009
9:30 Club
Washington DC

All Ages / Doors at 6PM
Tickets:
930 Club | Brown Paper tickets

November 12th 2009
Grand Ballroom, Manhattan Center
New York, NY

Special Guests:
Missy Dee

All Ages / Doors at 7PM
Tickets:
Grand Ballroom | Ticketmaster
Tickets (CASH ONLY) in person at the Mercury Lounge are much cheaper that via Ticketmaster

November 13th
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY

Special Guests:
Missy Dee

18+ / Doors at 8PM
Tickets:
Music Hall of Williamsburg | Ticketmaster
Tickets (CASH ONLY) in person at the Mercury Lounge or Music Hall of Williamsburg are much cheaper that via Ticketmaster

Press release from the organizers…

Montague Phantom Brain Exchange #21
Wednesday, October 28th, 9pm Five Bucks!
at the Rendezvous
78 3rd St
Turners Falls, MA 01376

Sord
Erin Schneider
video by Torsten Zenas Burns + Darrin Martin
lecture on OULIPO by Laura Duetsch
DJ Scott Seward

Hello! Please forgive our badly-needed, two month pause, but Phantom Brains are back with this stack of wild cards, greasy with the excitement of french fries. I implore you to read on:

Sord:
Brattleboroan bad-deal-sufferers Sarah and Zach are turning their
lives around with music, stage-play, and antic participation games. Of
the two, Sarah suffers the worst. Their debut cassette “REBUKING THE
DESPOILER” on the OSR/Dax Bills imprint is a flush with panic-rock and
crumpled postcards from faded ecuadoran villas. When i think of
telling you to look at myspace or say anything about Gerty Farish, i
become despondent. Build your own models of utopia & stick to them.
Zach did a wonderful job curating the September MPBE Replacement
Night, so expect nothing more than excellence.
http://www.myspace.com/sordord

Erin Schneider is a westcoast accordioniste who rips inna northern
swedish folk stylee, occasionally banking into doowop/gurlgroup
vocalese & improvising over spilt flower vases. Last year, she was
subjected to stereoscopic visions of life in Northern Sweden while
living an actual life in Northern Sweden. She also happens to be half
of the driving force behind the Snaps & Claps phenomenon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYk-pVwjFV0
http://www.myspace.com/snapsnclaps

Video artist, curator, & emerging local troublemaker Torsten Zenas
Burns is coming upstream from Holyoke to share with us what appears to
be a pleasantly processed gob of process video. If the tongue ain’t
in the cheek, then it’s definitely making some unsettling slurping
noises, from his spiel:
“‘Learning Stalls: modular syllabi and organic exchange’ A unique
edit of the artists’ 33 chapter installation Learning Stalls: Lesson
Plans, modular syllabi… utilizes video as a trans-disciplinary
curriculum exploring diverse speculative fictions and reimagined
educational practices. Psychic surgery meets physical therapy as
matter and anti-matter merge under the guidance of astral professors.
In the search of new mind/body experiences, Burns, Martin, and other
workshop participants enact paranormal interactions, intersexual
dynamics, pseudo-testing methods, and staged quasi-therapy sessions.”
http://holyokeresearch.blogspot.com/
http://www.darrinmartin.com/recallathon.html

Part-time Grey Matter Scholar Laura Deutsch will be delivering a
sure-to-be-rousing lecture on ‘Potential Literature.’ She told me
this: “The OULIPO, or Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, is a group
founded in France during the 1960s, which produces strict constraints
that writers may use to construct their literary products. These
logical constraints are used to generate creative pieces, which end up
leaving the final piece with multiple ways of being understood. The
infinite potentiality of literature lies at the heart of this
combination of logic and chance. What systems are authors forced to
follow when they attempt to extract a piece of fiction from the
continuum of universal literature? Is it truly possible to experience
creative freedom when applying constraints constructed in a
mathematical paradigm onto the process of creative writing? As an
Oulipo member has said, the drive behind this sort of work is “to
build the maze from which we will attempt to escape.” And, in my
opinion, it is only in the escape that true freedom is felt.”
http://lauradeutsch.com/

Our esteemed guest DJ this month is Scott Seward, a complicated man
who recently moved here with his family to escape some horrible
honky-and-tick-infested island. He ha been improving the vibes in
Greenfield by setting up the best damn record (and flotsam) store
north of Rte 116: John Doe, Jr. He also writes a column reviewing
noise releases in a glossy metal magazine called Decibel. (bring/send
him your tapes!)
http://www.johndoejunior.com/

It’s good to be back & husbanded.

Montague Phantom Brain Exchange is a place where bodied & disembodied
brains & nonbrains can safely gather to deconstruct solutions & create
problems while soaking in an envigorating bath of provocative
entertainments. Last wednesday of every month, 9pm to midnight, at the
Rendezvous (bar with food!) 78 3rd St Turners Falls, MA. A typical
evening will include 2 – 3 performing acts, a 15 minute lecture and a DJ.

http://phantombrainexchange.suchfun.net/

Stream:

Download: “Surf Solar” (edit) – Fuck Buttons (mp3)

This is an excerpt from “Surf Solar,” the final song on the Buttons’ newie…

…produced by Andrew Weatherall, who old beardheads will remember as the newvisionary who made Primal Scream sound like future/now geniuses during their Screamadelica period. Dudes are touring with Growing dudes across North America in a minute. Doobie duo dudes unite! ¡Muy bueno!

Fuck Buttons website: http://www.fuckbuttons.co.uk

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

From MaybeLogic Academy website:

The Magickal Realism of H.P. Lovecraft

Once an obscure figure, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) is now widely recognized as a pulp visionary of the highest order—a prophet of the darkside imagination that everywhere surrounds us now. In this six-week course we will unpack Lovecraft’s unique blend of fantasy, materialism, and meta-fictional play. Linking the revolutionary “outsideness” of Lovecraft’s brand of horror to his scientific materialism, we will also explore the occult potentials of his fictional universe, and its relationship to his own rich dreamlife. The class will close with a group web research project devoted to tracking the “magickal reality” of Lovecraft’s so-called “Mythos” and its central grimoire: the Necronomicon.

WEEK ONE: Meet the Man
An introduction to Lovecraft through a selection of his fascinating letters.

WEEK TWO: The Moldering Past
HPL’s relationship to the past, both literary (the Gothic; occult lore), regional, and genetic.

WEEK THREE: Mad Reason
How HPL fused and contrasted modern scientific rationality and supernatural horror.

WEEK THREE: Writing the Dream
HPL had a remarkable dream life that seeped into his fictions, which often engage the parallel world of dreaming.

WEEK FOUR: Fictional Magick
What elements within Lovecraft’s texts allowed later occultists to turn his fictions into magickal material.

WEEK FIVE: The Meta-Mythos
How the mythos has spread beyond HPL, into other fictions and a widespread subculture of fandom.

WEEK SIX: The Dread Tome
We will spend our last week tracking the magickal reality of Lovecraft’s ultimate grimoire.

Erik Davis is the author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information (Five Star Paperback) and The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape. Besides his popular Maybe Logic classes, Erik has taught courses at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Pacifica, and the California Institute of Integral Studies.

More course info: http://www.maybelogic.org/courses.htm

seedy sunday is THIS SUNDAY!

it’s autumn and seedy business is all around us!
you’ve been growing and now it’s time to swap seeds!
sooooo…
__________________________________
sunday OCT 25th, 3-8pm
SEED ‘SWAP N STORE’ potluck!
—————————————-
please bring your home grown, viable seeds that you have gathered, stories about growing, and
a beverage or dish to share!

THE SEED ARCHIVE
2446 south sawyer avenue
chicago 773.762.0277

***for more info about seed saving***
http://www.salvationjane.net/seedarchive.php

Shivastan Press presents the “Small Press Revolution!”
book release & readings for “wildflowers- a Woodstock mountain poetry anthology”
featuring Lee Ann Brown, Donald Lev, Janine Pommy Vega, Andy Clausen, MJ Lamontagne
(+ special guests! – hopefully Ed Sanders)
followed by a celebration of the new release of “Atlantis Manifesto”
featuring Robert Kelly & Peter Lamborn Wilson.
hosted by Publisher Shiv Mirabito, info 679 8777
admission only $5

From http://www.roguefilmschool.com/about.asp:

1. The Rogue Film School will be in the form of weekend seminars held by Werner Herzog in person at varying locations and at infrequent intervals.

2. The number of participants will be limited.

3. Locations and dates will be announced on this website and Werner Herzog’s website: www.wernerherzog.com approximately 12 weeks in advance.

4. The Rogue Film School will not teach anything technical related to film-making. For this purpose, please enroll at your local film school.

5. The Rogue Film School is about a way of life. It is about a climate, the excitement that makes film possible. It will be about poetry, films, music, images, literature.

6. The focus of the seminars will be a dialogue with Werner Herzog, in which the participants will have their voice with their projects, their questions, their aspirations.

7. Excerpts of films will be discussed, which could include your submitted films; they may be shown and discussed as well. Depending on the materials, the attention will revolve around essential questions: how does music function in film? How do you narrate a story? (This will certainly depart from the brainless teachings of three-act-screenplays). How do you sensitize an audience? How is space created and understood by an audience? How do you produce and edit a film? How do you create illumination and an ecstasy of truth?

8. Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics.Self reliance.

9. Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.

10. Related, but more reflective, will be a reading list: if possible, read Virgil’s “Georgics”, read “Hemingway’s “The short happy life of Francis Macomber”, The Poetic Edda, translated by Lee M. Hollander (in particular the Prophecy of the Seeress), Bernal Diaz del Castillo “True History of the Conquest of New Spain”.

11. Follow your vision. Form secretive Rogue Cells everywhere. At the same time, be not afraid of solitude.

…

At the end of the seminar, each participant will receive a certificate of participation and a signed copy of Werner Herzog’s “Conquest of the Useless”.

Remember … The Second Annual Frisco Freakout Psychedelic Dance Party is THIS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2009, 2 to 2 at Thee Parkside in San Francisco …

THEE SCHEDULE:

Thee Parkside: 1600 17th St San Francisco, CA 94107
Tickets are only $15 and available now from thee venue
Proceeds go to Creativity Explored! http://www.creativityexplored.org

MORE INFLOW:
http://www.friscofreakout.com
http://www.myspace.com/friscofreakout
http://www.secretserpents.com

The official poster for this year’s Frisco Freakout is entirely hand drawn and inked by the legendary Alan Forbes.

Forbes and Secret Serpents are working with Monolith Press to hand-silkscreen a limited run of this mindwarping poster in a large format, hand-numbered and signed by the artist, which we will have available at the festival.

HEAVY LODE is also proud to present “FRISCO FREAKOUT 10-11-08″ – a LIVE compilation of the best of the First Annual Frisco Freakout Psychedelic Dance Party – featuring all your favorites from those golden days of your misspent youth: Earthless, Wooden Shjips, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Crystal Antlers, Greg Ashley, The Bad Trips, Art Lessing & The Flower Vato, Sequin Trails, and Ascended Master – 60 minutes of the First Annual Frisco Freakout LIVE on limited edition bootleg cassette. Also available at this year’s festival.

The Frisco Freakout is brought to you by the letter F … and by the good people at the following fine establishments:

KUSF-FM http://www.kusf.org
ARTHUR MAGAZINE http://www.arthurmag.com
AQUARIUS RECORDS http://www.aquariusrecords.org

in conjunction with
HEAVY LODE

PROMOTIONAL TEXT:
“On October 16-18, the folks at Circle of Hope in Philadelphia will host activist theologian and author Ched Myers for a biblical exploration of nature, civilization and feral faith. The conference will focus on Sabbath/hunter-gatherer economics, rewilding and resistance, and engage our biblical origin stories for signs of hope in the midst of the current economic and environmental crises.Additional speakers will also present on a range of topics, from primal parenting to practical rewilding…
The cost of this event is free.”

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16
Noon
Intro and welcome—Jay Beck
Griot Ancestral Lineage Litany—Blew
Opening Ceremony with Altar, Fire lighting ritual, acknowledgment of the elements and the four directions and invocation of the Holy Spirit — led by Ched and worship band

12:30-2:30pm
The Ecological Endgame of Industrial Civilization as a Crisis of/for Faith — Ched Myers
Nothing in the conversation about Anarcho-Primitivism and Christianity makes sense unless and until we face squarely not only our culture of Domination, but the specter of environmental collapse that haunts our history. The ideology of Progress has been an article of faith in modernity, deeply shaping North American Christianity (both conservative and liberal) for the last three centuries. How might we “monkeywrench” this bankrupt paradigm, and how might old biblical stories help us reimagine faith, culture and politics?

Regathering — Charity

3:05-4:30pm
“A Woman’s Faith Journey into Anarcho-Primitivism — Miranda Duschack
No language!? No gardening or menstrual pads!?! How does anyone embrace the liberating and brilliant truth of anarcho-primitivism? This address is one woman’s story of radical discipleship. Miranda will discuss her emotional and intellectual journey to the merging of Christianity and AP into practice. A report of the Women’s Circle at Plow Creek will also be given; Miranda was an originator and co-organizer of this important 3 day event. Women have a place in this Movement; learn how we define our role within radical community.

Regathering — Tim Reardon

4:50-6:15pm
How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go? The Gospel of Social Darwinism and the Biblical Account of Origins — Ched Myers
This talk will summarize and contrast the Enlightenment narrative of “civilization as ascent” and the Genesis Creation/Fall tale of “civilization as decline.” What are the implications of this divergence for Christian thought and practice, and what are the touch points with emerging “primitivist” perspectives?

6:15-6:50pm: Q&A (talk back)

7:00-8:00pm: Dinner

Regathering — Seth Martin

8:00-9:15pm
Camden Labyrinth prayer walk led by Andrea Ferich

9:15-11:00pm
Informal acoustic songshare, fellowship, closing ceremony including communion at bread oven fire pit in Eve’s Garden in Camden.
————————

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17
9:00 am: Opening ceremony (relighting the fire, litany, gathering song)

9:15-10:45am
Naming God as Mother, Rediscovering the Divine Feminine — Andrea Ferich
Certainly there is a correlation between feminine god imagery and sustainable living. Throughout history when women are confined to the household or treated as property with no feminine goddess in that society, the earth becomes tamed, destroyed, and commodified. The indigenous wisdom of our ancestors holds two principles in common; feminine deities and the care for all Creation as brothers and sisters. The age of nomadism and pastoralists gave rise to patriarchy and the domination of women. This age laid the foundation for the monotheistic faiths and the perpetuation of patriarchy, vilifying indigenous wisdom and goddess imagery. Through an eco-feminist lens we will explore the feminine side of God through the Bible as naming God as Mother and the great liberation of all of Creation that labors and waits in eager expectation to be revealed. Please bring your wisdom to share.

Regathering — Aimee Wilson

11:05am-12:35pm
Native Tradition and Neo-colonialism — Jenn LeBlanc
This presentation will be a general overview of the historical effects of colonialism on traditional knowledge and how this has laid the foundation for neocolonial exploitation. It is Jenn’s understanding that neo-colonialism continues to pervade the relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. By way of the overview, obvious examples of colonialism will be pointed out to the audience; moreover, less obvious examples of neo-colonialism, even unconscious utilization of traditional knowledge without permission, will be brought to the fore. As a result of colonial and neo-colonial behaviors, indigenous peoples have had to struggle for the reclamation of their traditional knowledge and life ways. Part of this presentation will be a discussion of the ways in which the North American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies and iEmergence (iE) and the World Christian Gathering of Indigenous Peoples are attempts at this reclamation for indigenous people globally.

12:35-1:35pm: Lunch

Regathering — Powwow worship led by psalters and theillalogical spoon

1:35-3:05pm
“Jesus’ Vision Quest and Abel’s Primal Cry: Indigenous Blood and Feral Faith in the US and the Philippines.” — Jim Perkinson and Lily Mendoza
In this talk Jim Perkinson will examine Jesus’ time in the wilderness—using it to push the idea that return to the land is through the history it carries on its back. That is to say, going feral requires coming to grips with who has been there before us and what happened to them: indigenous experience and/or disappearance as a requisite engagement for responsible “re-wilding.” Jesus returned to the land and “heard” history. He had to get clear on how his people came to be in that geography historically, at whose expense, and figure out his response to the deepest moments of gifting and wounding that history encoded. Then Lily Mendoza would share some of her experience in struggling to recover from colonial history by working to retrieve/reinvent some of the indigenous practices and orientation co-opted or shattered in the colonial project.

Regathering — Lesser Beggars

3:25–4:00pm
“Rewilding Panel”
A panel presentation of folks who have been learning practical skills and “rewilding” including:

* Neil Gynther — braintanning clothes and making tools from roadkill
* Joel and Charity Cimarron — Goat walking
* Amanda — herbal medicine
* Daniel and Billy — identifying edible wild plants
* Rachel Summerlot — Doula and midwifery
* Andrea Ferich — urban gardening, soil reclamation, seed saving, rain water
catch systems
* Melissa Delong — loomweaving
* Abigail Kahler–blacksmithing with scrap metal from a home forge and anvil

Regathering — Jon Felton

4:20–5:20pm
Resistance is Fertile-Following the Path of Primal Parenting — Charity and
Joel Cimarron
In our hyper-civilized, pathologically adolescent society, how do we go about raising the next generation of resisters? Drawing on the wisdom of indigenous cultures and affirming our own ‘primitive’ instincts, primal parenting offers the possibility to rewild our own domesticated selves and, in turn, become the parents that the children in our lives need us to be. We’ll be tracing the steps that have taken us down this particular path of resistance, offering resources and ideas to help others on their own journey.

5:20-5:40pm
Q&A with Charity and Joel

5:40-6:40pm: Dinner

Regathering — Lesser Beggars

6:40-8:00pm
Attend to the Wildflowers and Birds!” Primitive Jesus — Ched Myers
The New Testament reasserts the prophetic tradition, clear-eyed about the Fall and fiercely hopeful about a reinhabitory Eschaton. We’ll reflect on Luke 12:13-34’s teaching about earth cosmology and Sabbath Economics. Then we’ll consider Paul’s intriguing notion of Christ as the “eschatological ‘adam” in Rom 5:12-19.

8:00-8:40pm: Q&A (talk back)

9:00-11:00pm
All Out apocalyptic mystic feral exorcistic worship release to the God of Liberation — psalters and theillalogical spoon
————————

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18
9:00am: opening ceremony —psalters and theillalogicalspoon

9:15-11:00am
It’s a Long Way Back: Concerns about Presumption, Privilege and Political Marginalization among Putative Primitivists — Ched Myers
A Christian hermeneutic in conversation with anarcho-primitivism contains far more questions than answers. Paradigm shifts don’t happen in a generation, and there are lots of contradictions in the practices of primitivism. Nor can we afford to ignore the lessons of past social movements of resistance and renewal as we struggle to re-vision what it means to be a feral church.

11:00-11:45 am
Closing Meditation: “There we saw the Nephilim—and we seemed like grasshoppers to them…” (Num 13:32f) — Ched Myers
Industrial civilization is a Goliath, and we are armed only with the slingshot of David. Resistance is not futile and renewal is not a pipedream—but we must be in it for the long haul. Anarchist and Primitivist Christians are also called to a discipleship of the Cross, which is about improvisational creativity, revolutionary patience and longsuffering grace in the face of long odds.

11:45-Noon: Closing Ceremony — led by Ched and worship team

Noon to 1:00pm — Clean up
Everyone must be out of building by one–so that Circle can prepare for its evening worship meetings. Ched will be giving the sermon at both the 5pm and 7pm meetings.

Linda Perhacs and Friends
World premiere
Wed 10.07.09 8:30 pm
at REDCAT

Co-presented with Draw Pictures and dublab

Stream:

Download: “Parallelograms” – Linda Perhacs (mp3)

“[Parallelograms is] one of the most mystifying and beautiful moments of the psychedelic era, on par with any outré work of the time.” LA Weekly

“This evening of experimental exploration is the first-ever public performance by enigmatic folk singer Linda Perhacs, whose legendary 1970 album Parallelograms is an uncanny, ruminative masterpiece of psychedelia. She is joined by an eclectic mix of artists, who chime in with projected artwork, film, dance and musical interpretations of her work. Perhacs and her collaborators also highlight ideas from the book that inspired Parallelograms: the Theosophist manifesto Thought-Forms, written by Annie Besant in 1901…”

NEW interview with Linda Perhacs by Daiana Feuer at LARecord: http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/10/07/linda-perhacs-interview-we-have-great-powers/

Stream:

Download: “Caroline” – Espers (mp3)

From the forthcoming ESPERS album, III, available October 20, 2009 from the good folk at Drag City Records of Chicago and Wichita Recordings of London.

Marvelous album cover artwork by Xavier Schipani of Baltimore.

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

“GRADY’S RECORD REFUGE is a new & used record store located at 2546 E. Main St. in Ventura, CA. We buy, sell & trade LP’s, CD’s, cassettes, 78’s, 45’s, DVD’s, vhs, reel-to-reels, 8-tracks, laserdiscs, and more……we also sell needles, cartridges & belts for turntables, and do PHONOGRAPH REPAIR………we also sell used stereo equipment….. especially RECORD PLAYERS!”

http://www.myspace.com/gradysrecordrefuge
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ventura-CA/Gradys-Record-Refuge/138504304331

p.s. Grady Runyan was in MONOSHOCK and is in LIQUORBALL. Follow each link to see what Julian Cope says about the bands. He knows more than you do.

25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom, with text by Alan Moore, edited by Eva Prinz, is out in hardcover now. It is adapted from Alan’s 12,000-word essay on the subject from the sold-out Arthur No. 25, “Bog Venus Versus Nazi Cock-Ring: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography.”

The promotional text from Abrams:

“Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”—Alan Moore

With each new technological advance, pornography has proliferated and degraded in quality. Today, porn is everywhere, but where is it art? 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom surveys the history of pornography and argues that the success and vibrancy of a society relates to its permissiveness in sexual matters.

This history of erotic art brings together some of the most provocative illustrations ever published, showcasing the evolution of pornography over diverse cultures from prehistoric to modern times. Beginning with the Venus of Willendorf, created between 24,000-22,000 bce, and book-ended by contemporary photography, it also contains a timeline covering major erotic works in several cultures. 25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom ably captures the ancient and insuppressible creative drive of the sexual spirit, making this book a treatise on erotic art.

Lyrics:

[Sagan]
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch
You must first invent the universe

Space is filled with a network of wormholes
You might emerge somewhere else in space
Some when-else in time

The sky calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will one day venture to the stars

A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
The rising of the milky way

The Cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature

I believe our future depends powerfully
On how well we understand this cosmos
In which we float like a mote of dust
In the morning sky

But the brain does much more than just recollect
It inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes
it generates abstractions

The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
Has an elaborate logical underpinning
The brain has its own language
For testing the structure and consistency of the world

[Hawking]
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit

From the big bang to black holes
From dark matter to a possible big crunch
Our image of the universe today
Is full of strange sounding ideas

[Sagan]
How lucky we are to live in this time
The first moment in human history
When we are in fact visiting other worlds

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we’ve waded a little way out
And the water seems inviting

thank you Melissa P.!

More info: http://endciv.com

Derrick Jensen official site: http://www.derrickjensen.org

Come On In My Kitchen:

MF Doom’s Villainous Mac & Cheeze

We wish there were more rappers like Daniel Dumile. Back when he went by the name of Zev Love X, Dumile and his twin brother Sub Roc made records as KMD, a near-perfect fusion of early ’90s hip-hop. Their music was as wacky and open as a tongue-waggling gas face, and as militant and aggravated as the blows rained on up-jumping punks. They were signed by Elektra, but the label refused to release their masterpiece, Bl_ck B_st_rds. In 1993, with a career-defining piece of music stuck in limbo, Sub Roc died in a car accident. With his life seemingly in the shitter, Dumile did what most of us would’ve: He went to the park and got drunk for a few years.

In 1998, he re-emerged as MF Doom, a black, bastardized version of Marvel Comics arch-villain Dr. Doom. He dropped a beautiful album of painfully sincere, complex and sometimes hilarious stories laid over weird ’80s R&B and Scooby-Doo samples called Operation: Doomsday. Since then Doom’s done great work with heavily-blunted L.A. hip-hop producer Madlib, released several hazy instrumental albums in the Special Herbs series. His new full-length on Rhymesayers is the finger-licking Mm..Food. Arthur asked for one of the MF Doom house specials. Here’s what we got…

Ingredients
5 cups cooked macaroni (approx. 4 cups uncooked)
1 stick butter
1 cup bread crumbs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1tbls sugar
One minced fresh garlic clove
2 cups milk
1 8 oz package Colby/ Monterey Jack cheese
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Cook the macaroni until done as usual Add sugar and garlic to water.Do not overcook it. Drain macaroni in strainer.
Place macaroni, butter, salt, pepper, milk, Colby/jack cheese, and 3 cups of cheddar cheese in a pot boil slow add bread crumbs.
Cover everything with aluminum foil and cook for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.
Uncover and add extra cup of cheddar cheese across the top. Bake uncovered for another 15 minutes.

“Macaroni and Cheese is an ol’ time classic but Villainous Mac & Cheeze was concocted by wifey about three years ago. It took a couple years to perfect and you must follow the recipe exactly or else. Now Villainous Mac & Cheeze has become an MF family favorite, perfect for any holiday or special meal…enjoy and don’t forget your potholderz…”—MF the Super Villain

Stream:

Download: “No Mongo” – Wizzard Sleeve (mp3)

Sticky new one by Dave Reeves’ Alabaman glue-wave faves WIZZARD SLEEVE, off their debut LP Make the World Go Away (pictured above) out October 2 from the mighty HoZac Records of Chicago, Illinois. The Sleeve will be playing a record release party in Chicago at something called “Mortville warehouse” on October 2. You know what to do.

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

hipped to this by R. A. Pleuger!

poster by David V. D’Andrea

Tour dates, mp3, more after the jump…

All North American dates are with Lichens supporting.

Sep 17 Neumo’s Seattle, Washington
Sep 18 Biltmore Vancouver, BC
Sep 19 Doug Fir Portland, Oregon
Sep 24 The Independent San Francisco, California
Sep 25 Echoplex Los Angeles, California
Sep 26 Casbah San Diego, California
Oct 6 Bottom Lounge Chicago, Illinois
Oct 8 Magic Stick Detroit, Michigan
Oct 9 Wrongbar Toronto, Ontario
Oct 10 La Salsa Rossa Montreal, Quebec
Oct 11 Europa Brooklyn, New York (with Six Organs of Admittance)
Oct 12 Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Massachusetts (with Six Organs of Admittance)
Oct 13 Bowery Ballroom New York, New York (with Six Organs of Admittance)
Oct 14 Johnny Brenda’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (with Six Organs of Admittance)
Oct 15 DC9 DC, Washington DC (with Six Organs of Admittance)
Oct 16 Cat’s Cradle Carrboro, North Carolina (with Six Organs of Admittance)
Oct 17 The Earl Atlanta, Georgia (with Six Organs of Admittance)

Dec 10 Asylum Birmingham, UK
Dec 12 All Tomorrow’s Parties Minehead, UK
Dec 14 Koko London, UK

Above: Page from article on Om in Arthur No. 22, published May 2005. Photograph by Lars Knudson, design by W.T. Nelson. Bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros on left. Drummer Chris Hakius, pictured right, has since left the band. Note Black Sabbath altar.

Here’s the closing instrumental cut from the forthcoming Om album, God Is Good, out September 29 via the great Drag City Records of Chicago. Emil Amos, of Grails fame, is Om’s new drummer…

Stream:

Download: “Cremation Ghat II” – Om (mp3)

Om’s Al Cisneros and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny in conversation: The Way of the Riff, from Arthur No. 27.

A new song by Six Organs of Admittance, “Bar Nasha,” is featured on Al Cisneros’ multi-artist 2009 compilation for Arthur, Transmissions From Sinai, now available from Arthur’s easy-to-use mail-order store.

Also featured on Transmissions From Sinai is “Kopernik Trip Note,” a new song by Lichens, who will be opening for Om’s entire tour, and “Acid Rain,” by Grails. Yeah!

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Canadian country-folk musician Doug Paisley’s debut album was released late last year through No Quarter Records, its understated beauty capturing the admiration of Arthur’s C and D, who were scheduled to review it in their column in the tragically unpublished Arthur No. 32. The album’s been kinda underheard since, but whatever, that’s the underhearers’ problem, right?

In any event, this month Mr. Paisley (who is now being “managed” by Arthur’s Jay Babcock) will be traveling to California to perform as a solo artist for the first time ever in the Golden State at a bunch of affordable, all-ages shows. (Some folks may have seen Paisley before as one-half of the Dark Hand and Lamplight duo with artist Shary Boyle when they opened for Bonnie Prince Billy on a California jaunt in 2006.)

Catch this rich-voiced Torontonian troubadour, mustachioed or otherwise, at the following time-space coordinates:

Mon Sep 21 2009 8:00P at The Echo w/ Leslie & Badgers Los Angeles (free!) (see poster above) (presented by Arthur, put together by the great When You Awake blog)
Tue Sep 22 2009 8:00P The Crepe Place Santa Cruz
Wed Sep 23 2009 8:00P Rickshaw Stop San Francisco
Thu Sep 24 2009 8:00P Cafe Coda Chico
Fri Sep 25 2009 8:00P Henry Miller Library Big Sur
Sat Sep 26 2009 8:00P McCabe’s Guitar Shop w/Stan Ridgway Santa Monica
Sun Sep 27 2009 8:00P Che Cafe San Diego

Doug Paisley myspace: myspace.com/dougpaisley

Live in San Diego, with Devendra consigned to a seat by a broken rib… Imagine this song with him at full power…

Above: Page from article on Om in Arthur No. 22, published May 2005. Photograph by Lars Knudson, design by W.T. Nelson. Bassist/vocalist Al Cisneros on left. Drummer Chris Hakius, pictured right, has since left the band. Note Black Sabbath altar.

Ah! The closing instrumental cut from the forthcoming Om album, God Is Good, out September 29 via the great Drag City Records of Chicago. Emil Amos, of Grails fame, is Om’s new drummer…

Stream:

Download: “Cremation Ghat II” – Om (mp3)

Om are playing shows over the next couple of months, including a seven-date East Coast jaunt with Six Organs of Admittance, who also have a new album out on Drag City. (Listen to new Six Organs music here.)

Om’s Al Cisneros and Six Organs of Admittance’s Ben Chasny in conversation: The Way of the Riff, from Arthur No. 27.

A new song by Six Organs of Admittance, “Bar Nasha,” is featured on Al Cisneros’ multi-artist 2009 compilation for Arthur, Transmissions From Sinai, now available from Arthur’s easy-to-use mail-order store. Also featured on Transmissions is “Kopernik Trip Note,” a new song by Lichens, who will be opening for Om and Six Organs on the aforementioned East Coast swing, and “Acid Rain,” by Grails. Yeah!

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

“World Destruction” by Time Zone

Afrika Bambaataa: vocals
John Lydon: vocals
Bernie Worrell: organ
Nicky Skopelitis: guitar
Aiyb Dieng: drums
Bill Laswell: bass, production

Truly one of the greatest videos ever made, for one of the most visionary songs of the time… it still singes!

Video link courtesy Peter Vogl!

Stream:

Download: “I Can’t Leave You Loving Me” – Tim Buckley (live, NYC, March 6, 1967) (mp3)

Here’s a live, stunning blister-on-the-fingers rendition of a previously unreleased Tim Buckley composition (or is it an adaptation of a traditional song? info please…), one of six such apparently abandoned tunes available for the first time ever on Live At The Folklore Center, NYC, March 6th, 1967 released a coupla weeks ago via the good folk at Tompkins Square Records of New York City. Who woulda thunk in 2009 that there was still some unreleased Buckley lurking in the archives? We are blessed…

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Stream:

Wailing tough-funk first cut off Between My Head and the Sky, the new Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band studio album out September 22, 2009 through Chimera Music of New York City.

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band is:

Yoko Ono: vocals
Sean Lennon: acoustic and electric guitars, piano, keyboards, bass, drums, percussion
Keigo “Cornelius” Oyamada: guitars, bass, Tenorion, programming, percussion
Hirotaka “Shimmy” Shimizu: guitars, percussion
Yuko “mi-gu” Araki: drums, percussion
Shahzad Ismaily: guitars, bass, drums, percussion
Yuka Honda: Pro-tools editing, sampler, e. piano, organ, percussion
Michael Leonhart: trumpet, vibraphone, percussion
Erik Friedlander: cello
Daniel Carter: tenor saxophone, flute
Indigo Street: guitar

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band official website: http://www.YOPOB.com

Yoko headlined the second night of ArthurFest in 2005, and was interviewed at length by Arthur “Bull Tongue” columnists Byron Coley & Thurston Moore (and photographed by Eden Batki) in Arthur No. 26 (Sep 2007). (Read the whole article here.)

Also! Yoko does a great wisdom-flow on Twitter: twitter.com/yokoono

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Live CRAMPS at City Gardens (Trenton, NJ circa ‘81 maybe ‘82) show, courtesy the network of Cramps fans and the folks at Tequila Sunrise Records of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Original source is unknown.

“WHAT I GET FREE/YOU HAVE TO BUY”

Stream:

Download: “Primitive” – The Cramps (live at City Gardens) (mp3)

Nance Klehm says:
No need to mince words on this one, the answer is totally ‘yes.’ There is no such thing as too many ‘love apples’! Unless you have loads, the gift outweighs your total energy out: $20 of canning jars plus two hours or less of your time (or even much less if you have a friend helping), plus some good music to chop and simmer to = the best sauce, tomato juice, salsa, whatever. Your tomatoes will speak to you for all the dead of winter…

Comments or questions regarding this post should be posted in the “Comments” section below

Nance Klehm website: spontaneousvegetation.net

From the Hermitage Beacon website:

Hermitage is located in Beacon NY alongside the Hudson River 60 miles north of Manhattan. The actual structure is a house nearly 100 years old. It resides between a Spanish church and two coal silos no longer in use. In the near background lies a defunct railroad track and a creek which empties out into the Hudson. Mt. Beacon stands in the background of all this. This description was a signal to come here and plant seeds.

What is Hermitage?

Hermitage is a context. It was created from a lack of situations and spaces where books, art, & culture are gathered, displayed, and presented in a way that goes further than curation. The feeling is more of intention. To create a space that a specific one would choose to be a part of instead of remaining quiet for lack there of.

As a bookshop the focus is heavy on American poetry between the 1950s-60s. The small press movement that centered around the Don Allen-edited anthology “The New American Poetry” published by Grove Press in 1960 is heavily represented here. American Luminaries such as Robinson Jeffers and Kenneth Patchen who preceded these poets are represented here. American underground renegades who didn’t fit into a grouping like Wallace Berman and d.a. levy are represented here. The feeling of what has been done in America in the 20th Century that is beautiful and against restraint of conforming to conservative social, political and religious norms is present here. European writing from the early to mid 20th Century in original tongue and translations are given a space alongside in their influence and relation. Art monographs and books designed by visual artists who were tapped into poets and correspondence amongst poets and other artists are found here.

The idea behind running a bookshop like this is to hand pick every book that is chosen to a part of a collection, and made available to anyone who may walk through the door. To shed light on materials that should be seen. An area of Hermitage is designated to exhibits on specific Presses, Books, and moments in time related to the collection, and having them right alongside the bookshop. Artists working in the form and concept of the book, and making new worthy additions to this tradition are given shows here to be a part of this lineage. Close comrade and maker of books, Kensie Duffy currently working in this area, has stated his two primary principles in his book works to be “modesty & dignity”.

“Yes I’ll Buy That”

Modesty and dignity are two principles that are key to the practice of Hermitage.

- Jon Beacham. Proprietor.

Official Hermitage Beacon website: hermitagebeacon.com

Chris Corsano and Mick Flower will be touring the East Coast of the USA later this year as a duo force.

courtesy Brooke!

via LAObserved

KOSMOS: MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

AN INSTALLATION BY MIRA BILLOTTE
AUGUST 21st – SEPTEMBER 4TH
THE CREATIVE ALLIANCE AT THE PATTERSON
3134 EASTERN AVENUE, BALTIMORE, MD
WWW.CREATIVEALLIANCE.ORG • 410.276.1651

Artist and musician Mira Billotte (White Magic), focuses on the harmony of the divine ratio between ourselves and the Kosmos. The installation transforms into an environment of spiritual exaltation, a place of ritual, a temple of commune with the Kosmos, bringing forth an ancient instinct, theurgy; the ritual practice of uniting with the divine.

As within us there is a microcosm, so created in this space, a microcosm of the divine macrocosm; sand, sand paintings, Mandalas, fabrics, elements, incense, projections, altar objects, plants, other organic materials and esoteric symbols create a secret diagram of the Universe.

Led by the haunting vocals of songwriter Mira Billotte, with Sleepy Doug Shaw on guitar, NYC based (and Baltimore connected) White Magic was formed in 2003 and has toured with the likes of Animal Collective, Sonic Youth and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, and has released two EPs and one full length album on the Drag City label, among other limited releases. The band covered “As I Went Out One Morning” for Todd Haynes’ recent Dylan film, as well as appearing on Hal Wilner’s “Rogue’s Gallery” compilation last year. Tonight Billotte offers new spectral sounds, complete with visuals and full regalia, celebrating the close of her mystical exhibition in the Main Gallery. Zomes (with Asa Osbourne from Lungfish) and Daniel Higgs open. Doors @ 8pm. Show @ 9pm. $10. All ages. $8 mbrs, stus.

myspace.com/whitemagicmusic

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Stream:

Download: “Bumper Up Raw” – White Rainbow (mp3)

Adam Forkner aka White Rainbow sez:

“this is something i recorded on monday august 24th live in the marriage studio just letting it roll. no edits. raw as fuck. i had just downloaded all of these hip hop drum sample packs on http://4thehood.blogspot.com/search/label/Samplez got the manny fresh, polow da don and three 6 kitz, hence all the killer hand clap samples”

White Rainbow’s next release is New Clouds, a 2LP/1CD/MP3 via Kranky out October 19, 2009.

White Rainbow blog:
http://urbanhonking.com/whiterainbow

White Rainbow myspace:
myspace.com/whiterainbowwhiterainbow

Statement at Om website:

September 29th will see the release of the new studio album by OM. The album is titled God is Good.

Thebes
Meditation is the Practice of Death
Cremation Ghat I
Cremation Ghat II

The album was recorded March 2009 by Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, Chicago.

A bushel of sawdust and a low-tech composting toilet used for compost collection.

Your Crap, Our Compost: Squat and the earth shall grow
.
By Sisi Tang
In These Times

Poop. 


A generally fecal-phobic society reacts to the thought with a mix of snickering interest and fearful aversion, all dispatched in a single flush. But Nance Klehm, 43-year-old urban forager and grower, transforms human excrement into nutritious soil one bucket at a time. 


Klehm’s Humble Pile, a local do-it-yourself human waste composting project, introduces a backyard alternative to the machine-churning, power-draining waste-processing facilities tucked away in remote locations. 


“I’m not treating it chemically. I trust microorganisms to do it for me,” Klehm says. 


In early 2008, Klehm sent letters and humorous surveys to households in six Chicago neighborhoods, calling on potential participants to help “transform waste into fertility, pollution into resource, and isolation into connection.”

With no need for “Compost 101” instruction, complex machinery, electricity or water, Humble Pile asked its 22 volunteer “nutrient loopers” to opt for dry buckets with snap-on toilet seats when nature calls. 


To the surprise of Lora Lode, whose household participates in Humble Pile, her two teenage children Kira and Charlie were the most eager to take part in the minimalist procedure. The family of four made room for a bucket in the bathroom and for storage drums on the back porch of their Logan Square apartment. “I was interested in this as an experiment,” says Lode, who works with artists to combine art, activism and environmental concerns. Her 19-year-old son Charlie is not put off. “I just think that if I didn’t have a house, this is what I would do,” he says.

In place of the routine flush, Klehm supplies the “nutrient loopers” with sawdust to cover stools after each deposit, both to dispel odor and to facilitate composting.

In the summer of 2008, Klehm personally collected the feces from the Lodes and other households and composted the material in 32-gallon drums, stored at a secret location outside the city so as to avoid prosecution for violating ordinances on waste disposal and storage. 
”As an ecologist, I don’t expect law to keep up with me—it’s more important to get this done,” Klehm says.


Nature doesn’t seem to heed law either: Shit happens, and then goes through a two-year-long natural composting process that burps out nitrate-rich soil that smells like wet basement. The soil will cycle back into Chicago gardens, which include a 5,000-square-foot greenhouse at a homeless shelter and several additional gardens scattered throughout the city. 


“I’m just interested in people understanding that their body is producing soil all the time,” Klehm says, “and there’s no reason not to return it back to earth.”

According to Klehm, the locally produced Humble Pile compost is as nutrient-rich as sludge “fertilizer” from municipal sewage plants. “Good soil is so hard to have in the city. I’m concerned about the state of our soil—they’re affecting our health, they’re depleted, or they’re contaminated or poisonous,” Klehm says. 


Deemed a fertilizer by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the controversial sludge is a concoction of everything that goes down the drain—a heavy-metal laden medley of industrial, pharmaceutical and human waste. (In an attempt at linguistic detoxification, the EPA renamed sewage sludge “biosolids.”)


Klehm’s composting method has another home: an abandoned World War II-era U.S. airbase. In the salt flats along the Nevada and Utah border, Klehm and other artists and researchers of the autonomous living system Clean Livin’ use urine-diverting dry toilets and a combination of composting and dehydration to process their waste for later agricultural use. 


Long before Humble Pile, the waste-to-fertilizer process was discovered inadvertently by our nomadic ancestors, who flung waste onto piles that eventually became fertile soil. Later, the Sumerians and Romans hired delivery boys to carry feces in “honey wagons” to nearby fields for fertilization. The Chinese even commoditized “night soil” from wealthier households as a valuable good—the feces of the rich being more abundant in nutrients due to their better diets. 


But now, just as the Western commode is making its widespread debut in China, Klehm is showing at least two U.S. communities that there may be a better option than the water-hungry modern flush toilet. Producing soil and fertilizer locally helps conserve energy and water, and whereas the composition of municipal sewage sludge is to a large extent a mystery, what goes into Klehm’s buckets are participants’ own work. What’s more, Klehm ensures that her DIY fertilizer is safe by testing it for E. coli bacteria.

For Klehm, Humble Pile is not a novelty. “I’ve been doing this for four years,” she says. “Other people think it’s crazy. I just accept it as a way of life.” 

Subscribe to Arthur’s iTunes Podcast and receive music automatically: click here

Stream:

Download: “Bonds II (excerpt)” – Axolotl (mp3)

Karl Bauer of Axolotl writes:

“This is an except from a track from my forthcoming Catsup Plate LP, Of Bonds in General. (The track is 15 minutes long in its full form…) It’ll be available in October/Novemberish as a vinyl LP with some complicated packaging courtesy of Mr. Rob Carmichael of Cplate/SEEN, and will come with a download card. It will also be available for download via Catsup Plate. No CD, the world doesn’t seem to need them anymore.

“This record has been in the works for a long time, the title coming from a text by Italian heretical monk/philosopher/magician Giordano Bruno on the doing and undoing of erotic bonds through magical manipulation of images. The record is the result of three years, two bad break-ups with Gemini women, a sample of 15th century Franco-Flemish composer Josquin Desprez, and massive consumption of Steve Reich, Theo Parrish and Metal Machine Music, all mixed in the Central Fire.

“I have also formed a band with poet and 50 Ft. Women member Elaine Kahn, who I accompanied last summer on the No More Bush tour. We’re called Coelom. We’re working on our first two records right now.”