“COMMAND PERFORMANCE”
The Arthur Magazine Email Bulletin
No. 0049
August 31, 2006
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1. TONIGHT AT LITTLE JOY TONIGHT
Arthur Magazine and The Journal of Aesthetics and Politics
present
THE ECHO PARK SOCIAL(IST) & PLEASURE CLUB
tonight (August 24, 2006) and every Thursday night
9:55pm-close
at
Little Joy
1477 Sunset Blvd in Echo Park
tonight’s topic:
nudism
tonight’s bartender:
Arthur “Do the Math” columnist Dave Reeves
tonight’s DJs:
it’s a mystery, charlie brown
SPECIAL TIP OF THE GOBLET TO LAST WEEK’S ROYAL DJs…
Arthur contributor Daniel Chamberlin, Tiffany Anders and Lucas Nothislastname
WHO PLAYED MUSIC BY ARTISTS INCLUDING…
Lole y Manuel
FJ McMahon
Magma
Arthur Verocai
Novac
Cilla and the blacks
Nelson Angelo and Joyce
Brian Eno
Wipers
Kyuss
Gun Club
Kate Bush
Beau Brummels
Mamas and the Papas
Sandy Denny
music from various Sublime Frequencies compilations
2. THE SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES ON ARTHUR’S NEW “INVASION OF THE THUNDERBOLT PAGODA” DVD…
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/27/movies/27gadd.html
“Long, Strange Trip for a Hypnotic Film”
By JAMES GADDY
IT took 38 years, but Ira Cohen’s cult film, “The Invasion of
Thunderbolt Pagoda,” which was first screened in 1968 at the high
point of the psychedelic hippie head rush, is now commercially
available. Given the close calls, the long absences and his chaotic
archival system, Mr. Cohen, 71, is a little surprised himself.
“It didn’t really involve patience,” he said in his apartment on West
106th Street in Manhattan, surrounded by books stacked waist high. “It
was just reality.”
In 1961 Mr. Cohen built a room in his New York loft lined with large
panels of Mylar plastic, a sort of bendable mirror that causes images
to crackle and swirl in hypnotic, sometimes beautiful patterns. After
a few years experimenting with the technique in photographs, he
invited his friends from the downtown scene — like Beverly Grant, Vali
Myers and Tony Conrad — to make a film.
The finished product sets languid images of opium smokers (in
fantastic makeup and costumes) against a droning, chanting,
tabla-beating soundtrack by Angus MacLise, the original drummer of the
Velvet Underground. Xavier Garcia Bardon, film curator at the Palais
des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, said the film is an important artifact of
the era.
“It’s like going on an ecstatic journey to another planet, full of
magical beings, animals and plants,” he said. “It’s a hallucinatory,
almost trance-inducing experience.”
Mr. Cohen left New York in 1969, shortly after the film’s first
screening, for art- and drug-filled travels in India, Ethiopia and
Nepal. He roamed through the 1970’s and 80’s. While he was away, the
film’s legend grew, even as the original few copies slowly
disappeared.
Mr. Cohen said he dropped off the original print at DuArt Film
Laboratories before he left; the staff reached him in Kathmandu in
1978, asking for $300 in storage fees. He asked the lab to send the
print to the Museum of Modern Art, but the museum has no record of
receiving it.
“If you have money, you can store it any way you want,” he said
ruefully. “But for some people, $280, $300 changes the way things turn
out.”
It wasn’t until a compilation of Mr. MacLise’s music came out in 1999,
20 years after his death, that interest in distributing the film
began. Jay Babcock, editor of the underground magazine Arthur, and
Will Swofford, a composer who was then studying at Wesleyan
University, independently tracked Mr. Cohen down.
Mr. Babcock said he was curious to see how Mr. Cohen’s early Mylar
photographs would look like in a film. “I had dreamed for years what
it would look like,” Mr. Babcock said. He began pressing for
distribution rights.
Meanwhile Mr. Swofford had persuaded Mr. Cohen, whose health has been
failing (he’s had two strokes in the last year), to let him operate as
an archivist and agent. Mr. Swofford eventually found 40 cans of
unused outtakes in a green trunk, buried beneath books, papers, slides
and assorted creative runoff.
“No one had touched the film for 25 years,” Mr. Swofford said.
Because the original version lasts only 22 minutes, he began beefing
up the content for the DVD age. Mr. Cohen wanted to use part of the
found film, an eight-minute section in which he is buried in mud, as a
prelude; Mr. Swofford used the nearly four hours of outtakes to
fashion “Brain Damage,” a 30-minute coda. The DVD also features a
slide show of Mr. Cohen’s photographs, audio recitations of his poetry
and two alternate soundtracks to the film.
One of these versions was by the band Acid Mothers Temple, which had
recorded a live soundtrack to the film at the music festival Kill Your
Timid Notion, in Dundee, Scotland, in 2003.
“I had no idea what a DVD could be,” Mr. Cohen said. “I would have
just put the film on there.”
The film was released last month, the result of a collaboration
between Bastet, Arthur magazine’s music and video label, and
Saturnalia, Mr. Swofford’s label, with distribution limited to the
magazine’s Web site (www.arthurmag.com) and a few independent music
retailers. Thanks to labor donated by both parties, the initial
1,000-copy print run cost about $8,000.
But $8,000 is still a lot of money for a magazine like Arthur, a
break-even labor-of-love venture. “It’s shameful, with the hundreds of
millions of dollars spent on movies every year in Hollywood, it’s left
to a penniless publication to put this out,” Mr. Babcock said.
Yet he remains optimistic. The film received positive reviews when
screened at the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Next month Mr. Bardon will hold
a screening with live music in Brussels, and Tony Conrad, now a
professor in the department of media studies at the University of
Buffalo, will screen the film in Atlanta.
Mr. Babcock is already making plans to release Mr. Cohen’s two other
films if Arthur can recoup the investment on this one. “We hope this
is just the beginning,” he says.
“Invasion” is available from retailers and from Arthur directly:
3. JUST IN TIME FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR: ARTHUR MAGAZINE LAUNCHES NEW ALBUM, CURATED BY JOSEPHINE FOSTER, TO BENEFIT COUNTER-MILITARY RECRUITING CAMPAIGNS AND PROGRAMS
With wars raging across the Middle East and prospects for peace dimming, the youth of America have wised up and are starting to stay away from military recruiters in droves. Said recruiters have retaliated with aggressive–and often criminal–tactics.
An eye-opening study issued this August by the Government Accountability Office reported that “allegations and service-identified incidents of recruiter wrongdoing” increased almost 50 percent between 2004 and 2005. 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 below for more information.]
Musician Josephine Foster is joining forces with Bastet, our publishing imprint, to help give America’s kids and parents the tools they need to protect them from the depredations of the nation’s many unscrupulous military recruiters.
On August 29, we released So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh, an 18-track, multi-artist compilation CD curated by Foster featuring exclusive contributions from some of the more outspoken members of the nation’s burgeoning psychedelic folk scene, including Devendra Banhart, Feathers, David Pajo and members of Espers and Spires That in the Sunset Rise. Musicians from earlier generations of the underground, such as Michael Hurley, Kath Bloom and Angels of Light, are also present.
All profits from sales of So Much Fire… will be distributed to specific counter-military recruitment and pacifist organizations and programs who effectively advise high school students and other Americans at risk of being taken advantage of by the military’s recruiters and omnipresent big-budget marketing campaigns.
“All of the musicians represented on So Much Fire… are American citizens,” said Josephine Foster. “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.”
“I am deeply grateful to everyone involved in this gesture; from every musician, to Fred Tomaselli for use of his incredible painting as the cover art, to Laris Kreslins at Arthur. In the end, all of the labor was donated, including the manufacturing.”
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.
So Much Fire… is available for order from Arthurmag.com and, starting August 29, from record stores across North America.
Track listing:
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS – “Dragonfly” (live)
FEATHERS – “Dust”
MICHAEL HURLEY – “A Little Bit of Love for You”
MEG BAIRD – “Western Red Lily (Nunavut Diamond Dream)”
ANDREW BAR – “Don’t Trust That Man”
GOATGIRL – “President Combed His Hair”
DEVENDRA BANHART – “I Know Some Souls” (demo)
KATH BLOOM – “Baby Let It Come Down On Me”
CHARLIE NOTHING – “Fuck You and Your Stupid Wars”
DIANE CLUCK – “A Phoenix and Doves”
JOHN ALLINGHAM & ANN TILEY – “Big War”
JOSEPHINE FOSTER – “Would You Pave the Road?”
ANGELS OF LIGHT – “Destroyer”
RACHEL MASON – “The War Clerk’s Lament”
PAJO – “War Is Dead”
MVEE – “Powderfinger”
KATHLEEN BAIRD – “Prayer for Silence”
LAY ALL OVER IT – “A Place”
ENDNOTES
Read the GAO report, “Military Recruiting: DOD and Services Need Better Data to Enhance Visibility over Recruiter Irregularities” here:
http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/summary.php?rptno=GAO-06-846&accno=A58199
High school students, their parents and friends can learn more about their rights when confronted by recruiters at
http://afsc.org/youthmil/militarism-in-schools/High-school-students-rights.htm
4. SUN RA AKRESTRA, MORE ADDED TO ARTHUR NIGHTS FESTIVAL – OCT. 19-22 IN LOS ANGELES.
ARTHUR NIGHTS
at The Echo, The Ex_Plx and Rec Center Studio in Los Angeles
Oct 19-22, 2006
Presented by Arthur Magazine and The Echo Presents in association with Spaceland Productions
****All artists will perform full sets****
Thurs. Oct. 19, 6pm – ALL AGES WELCOME – $24
Devendra Banhart
Bert Jansch
Espers
Watts Prophets
Jackie Beat
Belong
Yellow Swans
Buffalo Killers
Grouper
plus more TBA
Friday, October 20, 6pm – ALL AGES WELCOME – $24
Tav Falco & the Unapproachable Panther Burns
Boris
Heartless Bastards
The Hidden Hand
Be Your Own Pet
Awesome Color
The Howling Hex
Charalambides
Tall Firs
plus more TBA
Sat., October 21, 3pm – ALL AGES WELCOME – $24
Sun Ra Arkestra
OM
Money Mark
White Magic
Six Organs of Admittance
Ruthann Friedman
Mia Doi Todd
Living Sisters (Inara George, Eleni Mandell & Becky Stark)
Josephine Foster
Residual Echoes
Future Pigeon
Noel Von Harmonson
plus a dance party DJed by The Numero Group
Sun., Oct. 22, 3pm – ALL AGES WELCOME – $24
Comets on Fire
The Fiery Furnaces
The Sharp Ease
Michael Hurley
Archie Bronson Outfit
The Nice Boys
SSM
The Colossal Yes
plus many many more TBA
Tickets are now online at
type in “arthurnights” in the “Keyword” window in the Search box
Or use the link to the specific Ticketweb page available at
5. 3. ARTHUR MAGAZINE IN THE AUG. 15 BOSTON PHOENIX
http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid20235.aspx
The New New Age
The movement pulls away from the mainstream and gets apocalyptic
By: JAMES PARKER
..What most viscerally separates the New New Agers from the old is their crisp and eager apprehension of imminent system crash — what our inheritors, stumping for food in the poisoned mud flats, may well call The Great Unraveling. Take, for example, the words of eco-philosopher Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame, in a recent interview. Asked if he truly wants civilization as we know it to fall, Jensen responds: “If civilization had come down 200 years ago, the people who live here would still be able to support themselves. But if it comes down in another 30 years, 50 years, 60 years
So even from the purely selfish human perspective, yeah, it would be good for civilization to end. The sooner this civilization goes, the better, because there’ll be MORE LEFT.”
Jensen gave this interview to Arthur magazine, a lavishly appointed free bimonthly out of LA whose columnists include Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. Since October 2002, Arthur’s editing/publishing team of Jay Babcock and Laris Kreslins has been busy streaming the revelations and imperatives of the New New Age into pop culture, where the kids can get at it. Arthur, called “the American counterculture’s answer to the New Yorker” by the London Guardian, has become the place where the ideas meet the music; where Jensen’s freefall apocalyptics can sit with total aptness beside a piece on nouveau hippie swooners Brightblack Morninglight. 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: the same rumble of tribal disturbance is heard beneath the dragon-groan of SunnO))) and the fey, brilliant stylings of harpist/singer Joanna Newsom. A tastemaker and an advocate, Babcock has probably done more to promote and consolidate this intangible consensus than anybody else. He calls it [after Devendra Banhart] “naturalismo”.
Daniel Pinchbeck used to write for Arthur, as (full disclosure) did I. I stopped because I could no longer afford to write for free; he — rather more nobly — was fired, after submitting a post-Katrina column in which various apocalyptic scenarios of military clampdown were hypothesized.
Babcock smelled “Art Bell–style” paranoia (referring to the conspiracy-mongering host of radio’s Coast to Coast AM), and wouldn’t print it; Pinchbeck recoiled, hurt. “I think Jay’s aiming more at the mainstream,” he says. “He wants his magazine to be the new Rolling Stone.”
What is beyond dispute is Babcock’s commitment to reaching “every generation of bohemian currently living.” “When we run a piece about the MC5,” he says by phone from LA, “it’s not just to educate the youth or to remind ourselves of something. It’s also to say to the original people: your work wasn’t forgotten, and maybe you should pay attention to the kids who are interested in what you did. I think they’re going to start to come back, the ones that went back to the land and just disconnected from contemporary culture for the last twenty years — and they’re gonna find that they have more in common with these kids in their teens and twenties than they do with their fellow retirees at this point. And I don’t even KNOW where that could lead.”
Babcock’s most recent and widely-broadcast prank was an interview showdown with Sully Erna, over the use of Godsmack music in Army-recruitment ads. Unimpressed with his own generation’s efforts at protest, he is trusting to demographics to get the job done: “By 2010 we’ll have a youth bubble, a huge population under 25. And they’ll be stronger, more willing to take risks, to cope with transformation — even to demand it. Who will be their leaders? What kind of culture are they going to inherit? So that’s part of what we’re doing — to try and preserve, elevate, incubate if you like, these ideas.”
The imminent crisis, the next initiatory level — Pinchbeck’s “prepared containers” and Babcock’s wised-up and transformation-ready youngsters. What the New New Agers all agree on is that change is not over there, but here: vast, cruelly accelerated, streaming with possibility. “I’m trying to define this transformative process,” says Pinchbeck, “but it’s already under way.” “Right now,” says Babcock, “we’re like the Beatniks of the Fifties — a little isolated, a little dispersed, driven a little crazy by the culture.
“But different, too. Because unlike the Beats, we have the benefit of knowing that the hippies are coming.”
Please join us if you can,
The Usual Gang of Arthur Idiots
Los Angeles, California
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