Chris Ziegler and Kevin Ferguson visit veteran sui generis pop duo SPARKS in L.A. as they prepare to perform their entire 20-album, 240-song ouevre in a single three-week London engagement in May. "We're actually better than we thought," reveal the brothers Mael. Plus: an appropriately outsized 'Listener's guide to Sparks' by Ned Raggett. With photography by Jeaneen Lund.
ENDARKENMENT MANIFESTO: "The last agreeable year for us was 1941, the ideal is about 10,000 BC, but we're not purists. We might be willing to accept steam power or hydraulics." Arthur proudly presents poet/scholar Peter Lamborn Wilson's half-serious proposal for a political movement to uphold and propagate the ideals of Green Hermeticism--the "coherent spiritual movement that constitutes the only imaginable alternative to unending degradation of Earth and humanity." Wilson, using the pen name Hakim Bey, is the author of the Temporary Autonomous Zone concept, introduced in 1990...
The debut of "Advanced Standing," a new column by Greg Shewchuk which asks, What if we thought of SKATEBOARDING as a mind-body practice? Illustration by Joseph Remnant.
Joe O'Brien has a drink with RUDY WURLITZER, the legendary author (Nog, Quake, Flats), screenwriter (Two Lane Blacktop, Walker) and aimless wanderer.
New columnist NANCE KLEHM explains how to make dandelion wine and what to do with human pee. Illustration by Aiyana Udessen.
DAVE REEVES on why we can't let the President kill himself, with an illustration by Sharon Rudahl.
TWO PAGES OF FULL-COLOR ARTHUR COMICS, edited by Buenaventura Press, featuring new comics by Anna Sommer, Matt Furie, Kevin Huizenga, Jeffrey Brown, Anders Nilsen, Al Columbia, Tim Hensley, C.F., Ted May, Souther Salazar, Tom Gauld, Jonathan Bennett, Helge Reumann, Lisa Hanawalt, Dan Zettwoch, P.W.E. and Simon Evans.
"The Day Is Long": SPRING FASHION on a Los Angeles afternoon, with photography and styling by Molly Frances and Mark Frohman.
Why you've always wanted to TALK TO PLANTS, and some of the best ways to do it, according to the Center for Tactical Magic.
Artist Arik Roper on the art and inspiration of animator RALPH BAKSHI.
"Bull Tongue" columnists BYRON COLEY & THURSTON MOORE review choice finds from the deep underground including work by Jackie O Motherfucker, Cookie, Times New Viking, "Guitar Army" by John Sinclair, "Eye Mind: The Sage of Roky Erickson" by Paul Drummond, "Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue" by Robert Scotto, Uneven Universe, Mors Ontologica, Hall of Fame, Egypt Is the Magick #, Baretta, Log and Toilet, Toylit, Bill Nace, Daniel Higgs, Mouthus, Hive Mind, Aaron Dilloway, Psychatrone Rhonedakk, WFMU's "The Best of LCD," Ashtray Navigations, Slurp Dogs, Wally Shoup/Nels Cline/Greg Campbell, Wally Shoup/Chris Corsano/Paul Flaherty, Ghidra, "Ugly Things" No. 26, "Like, Misunderstood" by Rick Brown and Mike Stax, Sunburned Circle, Testicle Hazard, Trash Ritual, Chrome, "Duplex Planet" No. 180, San Francisco Water Cooler, Jorge Boerhringer/Core of the Coalman, Take Up Serpents, Usputuspud, Henry Kuntz, Opeye, "People Take Warning!" comp, Robert Martin and Bobb Trimble reissues.
The Magik Markers' ELISA AMBROGIO waxes enthusiastic about Blake Bailey's Richard Yates bio, Alex Nielson & Richard Youngs, Evolution of a Cromagnon by John Joseph, Joshua Burkett, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Spectre Folk, Joan Acocella, VizUSA, Donovan Quinn, Luc Sante, Mick Turner, Colossal Yes, Mick Barr (Ocrilim), Buckingham/Nicks, Tony Rettman, Jason Wambsgans, Joe Carducci, Mick Flower, and Falk, California. Plus other stuff.
The fake economy's parasitical relationship with the real economy isn't going to last much longer, says columnist DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF. Illustration by M. Wartella.
The government is obsoleting analog television in February, 2009. ERIK DAVIS examines what we are losing. Illustration by Chris Rubino.
PLUS: Noisician/author Gabe Soria reports from New Orleans, singer-songwriter-bandleader Stephen Malkmus updates us on OLIGARCHY '08 and Plastic Crimewave memorializes the late great KLAUS DINGER.
The magazine is out now in Los Angeles, and this coming weekend in the rest of the country.
You can download the complete 64-page magazine as a PDF in three parts:
In 1968, the Living Theatre troupe returned to America with that unforgettable psychedelic mystery play based on the Kabbalah and the I Ching--PARADISE NOW. They had become a traveling commune, the not-so-secret agents of a cosmic alternative. Wherever they went they turned whole cities upside down just by their presence. We would never be the same.
From THE LIVING THEATRE: ART, EXILE AND OUTRAGE by John Tytell (Grove Press 1995): "Doors singer Jim Morrison and poet Michael McClure actively participated in performances of Paradise Now at the [San Francisco Bay Area's] Nourse Auditorium.... McClure brought Morrison to visit at [Lawrence] Ferlinghetti's office. Julian [Beck, of the Living Theatre} was on and off the telephone to New York, frantically worried about the money to get the troupe back to Europe where engagements has been scheduled. Quietly, Morrison offered to assist with money.
"Morrison--who had read Artaud and Ginsberg in college--saw himself as a revolutionary figure. Agreeing that repression was the chief social evil in America and the cause of a general pathology, he was typical of the sectors of support The Living Theatre had received in America. His long improvisational song 'When the Music's Over' was a basic statement of apocalypse. Another of his songs proclaims, as in Paradise Now, 'We want the world, and we want it now.' Morrison had seen every performance in Los Angeles and followed the company up to San Francisco.
"On the day after his visit with McClure, Jim Morrison have Julian twenty-five hundred dollars for the trip home..."
"PARADISE NOW: A Collective Creation of the Living Theatre" DVD features rare, never-before-distributed films and revolutionary multimedia documents from The Living Theatre's historic and influential '68-'69 American tour. A fulminating art-meets-life installation brought to you by Arthur Magazine in collaboration with The Living Theatre and produced by Will Swofford for Universal Mutant
PARADISE NOW ANTHOLOGY DVD
LIMITED EDITION OF 1,000. direct from ARTHUR using PAYPAL - ORDER NOW!
USA - $29.95 postpaid
Canada - $34.95 postpaid
World - $39.95 airmail
01/16/2008 FREE DOOM SAMPLER FOR NEW ARTHUR SUBSCRIBERS!
We are pleased to announce that "Within the Church of Thee Overlords II," a multi-artist sampler CD from the doom record label Southern Lord, has joined our list of premiums available free of charge to new Arthur subscribers.
1. Om "Unitive Knowledge of the Godhead"
2. Weedeater "God Luck and Good Speed"
3. Burning Witch "History of Hell"
4. sunno))) "Orakulum" (edit)
5. Wolves in the Throne Room "Cleansing"
6. Glorior Belli "Manifesting the Raging Beast"
7. Tangorodrim "Justus Ex Fide Vivit"
8. Striborg "Psychedelic Nightmare"
9. Burial Chamber Trio "Only Vinyl Is Real (Ultra-Mega Death Throb Edit)"
10. Orthodox "Solemne Triduo"
11. Boris w/ Merzbow "Flower, Sun, Rain"
12. Earth "The Driver"
11/28/2007 SCENES FROM NOV. 17'S ARTHUR MAGAZINE-PRESENTED L.A. RIVER BEAUTIFICATION MEETING FEATURING NO AGE
photo by Richard A. Pleuger
On Saturday afternoon, Nov. 17, Arthur Magazine presented an L.A. River Beautification Meeting featuring a performance by NO AGE--a community gathering action in celebration of public space and nature amongst the urban sprawl, powered by a single generator we rented for $58 from a supply store.
Unfortunately, the beautiful, peaceful, all-ages, free public gathering was interrupted by sadly misguided Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority rangers who, working with a dubious understanding of the law, announced by megaphone 19 minutes into No Age's performance that the band and audience were not allowed to be in or near the riverbed. (Apparently we were supposed to be shopping at the mall or watching sports on television rather than gathering together down by the river as people were doing long before "Los Angeles" existed.)
Still, the event was a wonderful, worthwhile endeavor. Joshua Pressman shot some pix and wrote an account at LAist.com:
Mark Frohman & Molly Frances of colornational.com shot and edited a film of the event in a single evening. Here it is:
Part one: gathering and music...
Part two: more music...
Part three: busted...
"Did you know you can rent a generator for $52 and set up and play ANYWHERE until the cops come? So do it, do it and send me the pictures. It was such a radical spectacle. You forget that you can do this kind of thing. They made it through 4 songs. And then the cops showed up. Asking everyone who was in charge of this, and nobody knowing. A funny flurry of activity, people packing up and getting out of there. One of the more memorable moments of the Fall. A rich afternoon." Wonderful photos and account by Cali at teenageteardrops.abstractdynamics.org/archives/009882.html
"There is no other periodical I look more forward to arriving than the new Arthur."
Rick Rubin
"Arthur is really something singular and much-needed"
Dave Eggers
"Arthur [is] the most eclectic, thoughtfully designed periodical I have encountered. Arthur [is] clearly drawn to psychedelic music and [is] always a good place to look for fresh acts but to say it [is] a music magazine would be a misnomer. This free publication presents contemporary artwork, photography, political essays and literary reviews with admirable disregard for categorisation. I [have] never picked up a copy of Arthur without finding something intriguing and informative and I believe that magazines of which this can be said are all too few and far between.... In drawing attention to what is being produced under the radar and discussing its merits, magazines like Arthur have a nurturing effect on great music and art. They connect artists with audiences and provide an outlet for intelligent discussion and detailed criticism. While the internet can be used to a similar purpose, printed publications generally afford a greater consistency of quality still command greater attention on the part of the reader.... It would be great to see the example taken up [in Britain]."
Alan McGee, Guardian Music Blog, March 02007
"One of the best music magazines on the terrasphere is coming back... Now in full-color, Arthur remains all about...saving the parts of the planet worth saving. And: free. Life is short, art is long, Arthur isn't done."
RJ Smith, Los Angeles, Aug 02007
"[An] anti-Establishment icon... Edgy music mag that's now a cult collector's item." Domino, June 02007
"Back from the dead, this latest issue [No. 26] of the newly-resurrected American counter-cultural zine has gotta be their most solid read to date, with a real stand-out feature/interview/poetic appreciation of Yoko Ono by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore that focuses on the more obscure avant-garde activities normally eclipsed by endless Beatles wackery. Excellent. Great to have em back.
David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue, 12 Sept 02007
"The central voice of the new scene"
Will Hermes, The New York Times, 02006
"[Arthur has] its finger on America's eccentric and softly anarchic countercultural pulse"
The Sunday Times [London], 10 June 02007
"[A]n allure unlike any other magazine I have seen in my lifetime. [L]ike picking up a true document of a time and place in American culture, yet also removed from the present, harkening back to the utopian visions championed by the hippie free press... In any given issue, you can read about music, drugs, protest, meditation, metaphysics, sex, herbs, nature, communes, art, socialism, siphoning gasoline from SUVs, and hypnotizing cops by eating doughnuts in front of them...
Arthur seems to attract a readership numbed by the glut of too-slick music and culture mags, just waiting for something truly unique to emerge."
Brian J. Barr, Seattle Weekly (29 Aug 02007)
"(F)orceful and singular in its vision..." SFWeekly (9-15 Aug 02007)
"The American counterculture's answer to the New Yorker"
The Guardian
"Tracks," a French-German TV program, is featuring a segment on Arthur in its 12 July 02007 broadcast. Arik Roper, Vashti Bunyan, Brightblack Morning Light and Priestbird are also featured.
"Arthur is oversized, free, colorful, patchouli-scented but whip-smart, unapologetically political, sometimes silly, often anarchist and always willing to listen to voices way, way outside the mainstream. Above all, it is prophetic, usually about two years ahead of the rest of the country in its loves and obsessions."
Keach Hagey, The Village Voice, February 02007
"[Arthur] has been busy streaming the revelations and imperatives of the New New Age into pop culture, where the kids can get at it... Arthur has become the place where the ideas meet the music; where Derek Jensen's freefall apocalyptics can sit with total aptness beside a piece on nouveau hippie swooners Brightblack Morning Light. The same issue begins with a column about mint tea and ends with a list of 'sensitive weapons' (e.g., shotgun shells taped to the end of a BB-gun barrel) for use when the grid collapses and Devendra Banhart fans are called upon to defend their homes and woolly hats.... Arthur has saturated itself in the '60s, via features on the Weather Underground, the MC5, the 1967 March on the Pentagon, and also in the post-psychedelic slant of the music coverage. But there's nothing regressive here. From the freaky folkers to the acid rockers, Arthur bands have their eyes on the advancing historical horizon..."
James Parker, The Boston Phoenix, 02006
"[Arthur's first 25 issues featured] an admirable chunk of visionary muckraking and alternative journalism... This was not Spin or Blender's flashy, tastemaking colleague. More like its anarchist brother."
Audra Schroeder, Austin Chronicle, 02007
Print Fetish interviews Arthur editor/owner Jay Babcock. (June 2007)
Arthur was featured in the 29 June 02007 edition of Spanish daily El Pais. (No link yet, sorry!)
10/13/2007
YOUR POCKET OF THOUGHTS... MEET ARTHUR
need to get something off your chest?
have a hot tip you need get to the people?
want to create the perfect personal ad to attract a mate?
is that poem burning a hole in your pocket?
a great way to support Arthur
and reach out to your brethren
09/28/2007
ARTHUR FOR EVERYBODY ELSE
Our online drive to provide one-year subscriptions to Arthur
Magazine for everybody else
PRISONERS
In lieu of a proper education system America has instituted a special school for people of color called prison. Students learn a lot in prison, but are propagandized solely by corporate media, whose rotten message grows even more virulent in the nightmare that is life inside. As a consequence, Arthur regularly receives pleas from these captives to provide them with an untainted diversion at least.
If you are one of our 120,000+ readers who enjoys Arthur for free, please consider giving a prisoner the same privilege. Over two million people - one out of every 142 Americans - is now in prison. Almost 500,000 Americans are in jail for drugs-only offenses, and if they try to go to a record store or coffeehouse or nightclub to pick up a copy of Arthur, they will be shot and bit by dogs. These starving minds have got to get Arthur sent to them in a warden-approved manner, which costs thirty dollars a year. With your kind donation, Arthur will be able to give a lucky prisoner and their cellblock a free one-year subscription.
Provide a beacon for a guy who got caught today.
PUBLIC LIBRARIES
America's public libraries are criminally underfunded. You can probably guess why. When you buy a subscription to Arthur on behalf of a public library, you help to expand the public's consciousness while also providing vital financial support to the magazine itself, enabling it to continue its mission. Not too shabby for 30 bones!
SCENES FROM THE JUNE 27, 2007 ARTHUR BENEFIT PARTY
From LA Record: "Wednesday night's benefit was exemplary of what makes Arthur so great. In one of L.A.'s offbeat landmarks, a host of noise makers and poets and outsider freaks paid tribute to the best magazine that's been in existence of late.... Poets and musicians would take the stage and noise and dissonance and a singularly magical typewriter would add entertaining affectation to their performances (and there was that overwhelming Entrance set). It was a prolonged evening of entertainment and a beacon of hope from an already legendary magazine."
05/14/2007
NEW ALBUM CURATED BY JOSEPHINE FOSTER COUNTERS U.S. MILITARY RECRUITING CAMPAIGNS
"So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh"
Track listing:
1. THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS - "Dragonfly" (live)
2. FEATHERS - "Dust"
3. MICHAEL HURLEY - "A Little Bit of Love for You"
4. MEG BAIRD - "Western Red Lily (Nunavut Diamond Dream)"
5. ANDREW BAR - "Don't Trust That Man"
6. GOATGIRL - "President Combed His Hair"
7. DEVENDRA BANHART - "I Know Some Souls" (demo)
8. KATH BLOOM - "Baby Let It Come Down On Me"
9. CHARLIE NOTHING - "Fuck You and Your Stupid Wars"
10. DIANE CLUCK - "A Phoenix and Doves"
11. JOHN ALLINGHAM & ANN TILEY - "Big War"
12. JOSEPHINE FOSTER - "Would You Pave the Road?"
13. ANGELS OF LIGHT - "Destroyer"
14. RACHEL MASON - "The War Clerk's Lament"
15. PAJO - "War Is Dead"
16. MVEE - "Powderfinger" (Neil Young cover)
17. KATHLEEN BAIRD - "Prayer for Silence"
18. LAY ALL OVER IT - "A Place"
Curated by Josephine Foster
Cover artwork by Fred Tomaselli
Musician Josephine Foster has joined forces with Arthur Magazine to help give America's youth the tools they need to protect them from the depredations of the nation's many unscrupulous military recruiters.
"All of the musicians represented on So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh are American citizens," says Josephine. "Our voices join with many others across this land that freely question and openly oppose war. Hopefully we will raise a good sum of money to help fund the educational pacifist tasks these organizations do. They are dedicated to creating a positive counter to the rising tides of the war being waged. We hope to assist them in their efforts promoting peace and non-militarism in the United States."
The album's title is taken from a line by the poet Apollinaire, who died from wounds he sustained while serving in World War I.
An eye-opening study issued in August 02006 by the Government Accountability Office reported that "allegations and service-identified incidents of recruiter wrongdoing" increased almost 50 percent between 02004 and 02005. Criminal violations more than doubled over the same period of time. Increasingly common tactics used by the nation's 20,000 military recruiters range from lying about the financial benefits of service to threatening high school students with arrest if they back out of an enlistment process already underway. Military recruiters have also been assisting recruits in the falsification of documents to cover up conditions like autism, mental illness and serious drug problems that would bar them from service if reported. [See Endnotes.]
Proceeds from sales since this album's release last year have already been distributed to
SCENES FROM ARTHUR NIGHTS, OCT. 19-22, 2006 IN LOS ANGELES...
Ann Powers' BEST OF 2006 list in Dec. 17, 2006 Los Angeles Times: "Comets on Fire, Arthur Nights, Oct. 22: I was ready to bail before this final set in the fulfilling but draining multi-day festival. But something kept me in the back of the musty Palace Theater, and then this scruffy band I'd never heard before loped onstage and nailed me to the wall. Tempestuous psych-rock, verging on noise, with beauty shot through like glass slivers. This is the stuff that conjures Dionysus."
Steven Mirkin in Variety (Oct 22, 2006): "You have to hand it to the publishers of Arthur Magazine. The (more or less) monthly is not only one of the most interesting reads out there--a consistently surprising mix of truly underground music, politics and art--but in a little over a year (with an assist from local club Spaceland) they've become a force on the Los Angeles concert scene, staging three multi-stage festivals that impress with their almost impossibly broad and well-chosen line-ups..." continues
JOANNA NEWSOM at Feb. 25, 2006 ArthurBall, debut performing her entire new album 'Ys'--almost nine months ahead of its release... (photo courtesy icecreamman)
JOSHUA HOMME & CHRIS GOSS at Feb. 26, 2006 ArthurBall, in one-time-only duo performance as The 5:15ers (photo by Wendybird)
Tons more gorgeous pictures of ArthurBall performers and attendees at Ice Cream Man website.
06/14/2006
ARTHUR VS. GODSMACK (#1 band in the nation, pro-military/war statements to the press, music used in Navy recruitment commercials, war rally concerts staged in 2003, etc)
Above: YOUNG JAZZ GIANTS, from ArthurFest, Sept. 4, 2005
Photograph courtesy Ice Cream Man.
Above: Carrie Brownstein of SLEATER-KINNEY, from ArthurFest, Sept 4, 2005
Photo courtesy Ice Cream Man.
PRESS REVIEWS OF ARTHURFEST.
"ArthurFest yields an eclectic and bountiful crop, with Yoko Ono particularly vibrant." --Los Angeles Times
"Two days of transcendental psychedelia and mind-expanding musical machinations... There was the vibe, a commonality between so many bands looking to higher goals. The event definitely reverberated with a high-minded and spiritual and community-oriented, living-off-the-grid feeling so rare in the city of angles."-- San Francisco Bay Guardian
"At Arthur Magazine's inaugural gathering, youth and experience, the rough-hewn and the preening, dissonance and harmony all rubbed comfortably against each other." -- Pitchfork
"But for all the range, there was a unifying intelligence holding the festival's 41 acts together: a devotion to following their muses to the extreme and a near complete disregard for commercial appeal." -- Variety
"For two days at least, Arthurfest provided a relatively unruffled respite from the city below."--
Billboard
"Ono, the weekend's de facto veteran of disorder, seemed wholly nonplussed. After roughly sixteen hours soaking in ArthurFest's vivid goon-age daydream -- this spectrum of sublimity in the face of such a greater, tumescent ignorance -- so was everyone else. And all were better because of it." -- Dusted
"Looks like we've got an instant, de rigueur classic on our hands." -- LAWeekly
"This was the most peaceful and carefree festival I have ever attended." -- Valdas Kiralis, Ice Cream Man.com
11/27/2005 ARTHURPEOPLE TALKING ARTHUR SHOP TALK.
On Nov 2, 2005, the CalArts MFA Writing Program Visiting Artists Series invited Arthurpersons Trinie Dalton, Daniel Chamberlin and Jay Babcock to talk about Arthur stuff for an hour.
Listen here in streaming audio.
