Monthly Archives for December 2006

Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio: “I don’t want to be a commercial for the death machine.” (Arthur, 2006)

From Arthur No. 25:

Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio talks about his band’s anti-Bush song “Dry Drunk Emperor” and their recent tangles with U.S. militarism.

“Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher”—a crucial line from an Allen Ginsberg poem, directed to Walt Whitman, that poet-scholar Lewis MacAdams recently pointed out—couldn’t help but remind me of finally meeting TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone recently at a Massive Attack/TVOTR/Gang Gang Dance show at the Hollywood Bowl—as the Massive Attack set unfolded across the vast fogspace, I spotted Kyp walking across the Bowl’s midpoint transom, taking in the scene—and I ran after him, to ask him what had really gone down in Boston in August, when his band made the news because of their repeated anti-military recruiting statements from the stage—and to find out why the band’s “Dry Drunk Emperor” wasn’t included on the band’s new album—It’s a song was recorded and released instantly onto the internet via Touch N Go in October 2005, in the immediate wake of the Bush government’s disastrous handling of Katrina—Its beautiful fury, soul-deep sadness and sensible proposals (“what if all the bleeding hearts took it on themselves to make a brand new start/…/paint murals on the White House/feed the leaders LSD”) put TVOTR squarely in that foundational American tradition of courage-teaching graybeards—I caught up with Kyp, the song’s co-author, and owner of a graying beard, and we conferred—and the next night, after a TVOTR show at the all-ages Glass House in Pomona, we got the following convo on tape—
[Jay Babcock]

Arthur: Why isn’t ‘Dry Drunk Emperor’ on Return to Cookie Mountain?

Kyp Malone: We were right at the end of doing sessions for the album. Me and Dave [Sitek] had been passing back and forth this piece of music about the war in Iraq and living in a situation where the government had taken us into a war over a lie. An obvious lie, that we have to live with for the rest of our lives. [smiles] Unless some magic superhero from some other dimension comes down and changes it.

Then Hurricane Katrina happened. We were in the studio and our friends in New York who have family in the Gulf Coast were coming by. We stopped working to watch the news and console our friends. When we started working again, I finished the lyrics and then we had it.

Dave and I felt really strongly about that song. It’s super-naïve now, but at the time it seemed very realistic that if we waited to put it on the album, it would be an irrelevant song because the person that it was directed to—George W. Bush—would be out of power. Because how could the whole nation watch what was happening with the war started over lies? There was no way that he could NOT get impeached. IF there was a reason to go to war—if there ever was in my lifetime—then maybe Afghanistan made sense. But they fucked that up and they went to Iraq for obviously selfish reasons. And then the biggest port in America gets crushed by a hurricane? Obviously they knew it was going to happen eventually. And then they fumble that. It’s important to take care of the biggest port in America. That’s important if you care about the country—if you’re a ‘patriot.’ But they fucked it up, and they fucked a bunch of people who historically had been fucked…

If we get to the next phase and people remember this country, I really wonder what they’re gonna think about this time. And about race in particular. Pretending nothing is fucking wrong, when it’s so blatantly obvious that it’s fucked. I’m not saying nothing has ever been cleaned up since the inception of the country, [but] the fucking institution of slavery hasn’t been cleaned up. Hasn’t been cleaned up! And if you talk about it, people get bummed out because it’s boring and uncomfortable and it makes people feel weird and ‘you’re just being sensitive’ and not with the times.

A: What happened after Katrina, in the spring?

Kyp: We were invited to open up for the Nine Inch Nails/Bauhaus tour—both bands I listened to a lot as a kid. It was pretty thrilling for me, and I learned a lot playing amphitheatres and House of Blues and Live Nation, which is the new Clear Channel. There was a really good communal feeling amongst all the bands.

But at some point in Texas a week and a half into a three-week stint, me and Jaleel (TVOTR drummer/multi-instrumentalist) were walking past one of the big screens and they had a commercial running for Army or the Marines. Jaleel pointed it out to me and we were both aghast—what the fuck is that about? We walked out into the crowd and found the Marines were recruiting kids at the show. On the grounds. Right next to beer and taco stands and ice cream—the Marines! They had a contest: ‘Come on! Let’s see how many pull-ups you can do!’ I couldn’t believe it. I felt sick to my stomach.

Why did you feel sick?

Kyp: Because I don’t want to be a commercial for the death machine. I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t think that there’s any place at all in our creative community for that bullshit. It’s anathema to what I believe in and to what I’m trying to do. So I got really uncomfortable. I called management to say if this is anyone’s idea of a good idea then we can’t be on this tour. Trent [Reznor] freaked out. He didn’t know [the Marine recruitment stations were there]. No one knew. It was actually in the contract that the Marines COULDN’T be there. But the Marines offer so much money to promoters that the promoters think maybe they can just slide it by and no one will call them on it. So Trent had them kicked off. And the venues were charged $20,000 apiece to give to a non-profit working-for-peace organization, which is a pretty awesome way to handle it.

And that brings us to what happened in Boston in August when you played the WFNX-sponsored show headlined by your friends the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in City Hall Plaza to 12,000 people.

Kyp: No offense to anyone who’s born there, because we don’t get to decide where we’re born. But there’s a James Baldwin quote about Boston which I find to be apt. He said, ‘In Boston, when they shit on you, they hand you a towel—so that you can wipe their ass.’ We got there and we were playing outside of Boston City Hall. And I’m looking around at all the corporate logos. I’m getting uncomfortable, but I’m used to it. I’m used to playing festivals. I’ve seen it a number of times. I’ve had the Verizon logo shine on my face at the House of Blues. [laughs] There’s a lot that I’ve come to stomach, in this game, on this level. And then I see a Marine recruiting tent. I point it out to Dave. We’re on the side of the stage. I don’t know what to do about this. I still want to play for these kids that came out and I want to play with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We’re about to go on. The DJs for this radio station that put on this show come onstage and they say, ‘We want to introduce you.’ We’re like, ‘We don’t need you to introduce us.’ I don’t want them to talk about us. They don’t know us. But they were really insistent. Like, ‘It’s our job.’ Okay, do your thing.

So they start talking, [in dumb voice] ‘We wanna thank this corporation, and we wanna thank this corporation, and let’s have a big round of applause for the Marine Corps.’ At which point simultaneously me and Tunde grab the microphones and Tunde’s like, ‘We will walk. We will walk away from this right now. Don’t applaud that shit. They don’t belong here. They don’t have any right to be here. We’re not here for them. That is SEPARATE from us. That is separate from what we’re doing. We want NOTHING to do with that.’

But I still felt like it was attached to us. Just the mere mention. Then I think, the US military is probably doing this in any place they can find right now—they’re trying to get inside. The militarization of everyday life in this country. Which is pushing us closer and closer to totalitarianism.

What was happening in the crowd?

Kyp: Welll… It got confusing for people. A crowd can have its own opinion, which is why people get tomatoed off of stages. But people are also conditioned to ACCEPT certain things. They accept [that] someone standing above them with a microphone is a voice of authority. And people who spend their lives speaking on the radio have that NAILED. Then I was just ANGRY. And before every song I was like, ‘This song is about not joining the Marines. And this song is about not joining the Marines. And this song is about not joining the Marines.’ [laughs] It could have been a lot more fun for everybody, but what are you gonna do? The energy was different. The whole time I was trying to ERASE the idea that they’d turned us into a commercial for an institution that is engaged in something immoral and horrific.

What happened when you walked offstage?

Kyp:The security and the cops who were working the event started vibing us really hard. I was talking to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, trying to tell them about what happened, because I didn’t think they were even cognizant of any of it. The head of security was all up in Jaleel’s face and Timmy [our guitar tech] and Gerard’s face and the cops were standing behind him. Like [in deep voice] ‘You’re not welcome here anymore. You’re not welcome in Boston. You need to leave.’ There’s a lot of great people in Boston, I want to be able to play in Boston. But it’s always going to be BOSTON.

I talked to the DJ afterward. He was like, ‘What, are you guys pacifists or something?’ I went, ‘Uh, no, not really. But that’s not the point at all. I don’t want to be a commercial for the Marines—or anything else, but particularly not the Marines.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, well, you know they pay a lot of money and we gotta pay you.’ And I go, Well, let us know where the money’s coming from. Because if it’s coming from the Marines, we’re not gonna play the show.

ARTHUR EMAIL BULLETIN No. 0060

“COMMAND PERFORMANCE”

The Arthur Magazine Email Bulletin

No. 0060

December 6, 02006

Website:

http://www.arthurmag.com

Comments:

editor@arthurmag.com

1. FINALLY AVAILABLE AFTER A DIFFICULT BIRTH… ARTHUR NO. 25.

Geez Louise, sorry dudes for the delay, but it’s here now. This issue features:

* An epic-length profile of California harper JOANNA NEWSOM by author Erik Davis, with exclusive photos of her geniushood by Eden Batki. When we started ARTHUR back in 2002, this was EXACTLY the kind of article we were hoping to run regularly: a feature about an exciting contemporary or historical artist, written by a fantastic writer, photographed by a on-it photographer, at a length, depth, tone and approach appropriate to the subject. We are beyond pleased to have the privilege of publishing this 11,000-word-plus piece. Dig it.

* “Bog Venus vs. Nazi Cock-Ring: Some Thoughts Concerning Pornography” by author ALAN MOORE (Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta, Lost Girls). This is a brand-new,  eight-page, 12,000-word essay/manifesto from Mr. Moore (cover star of Arthur No. 4 back in 2003!), profusely illustrated with appropriately bawdy imagery, surveying TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND YEARS OF PORNOGRAPHY in the Western world — a hairy-palmed story of the sexual imagination that ranges from the Venus of Willendorf to “Anal Virgins IV,” with appearances by Greek sculptors, Roman muralists, Dark Age Christians, Chaucer, Shakespeare, de Sade, William Blake, Victorian pornographic playlets and periodicals, Swinburne, J.K. Huysmans, Annie Besant, Ernest Dowson, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, early 20th-century German devices to keep pubescent boys from having wet dreams, “Tijuana Bibles,” Maurice Girodias’s Olympia Press, D.H. Lawrence, W.S. Burroughs, Harvey Kurtzman, City Light Books, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Lenore Kandel, David Meltzer, Charles Bukowski, Barney Rossett’s Grove Press, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Sharon Rudahl (aka Mary Sativa), Spain, Traci Lords, “Deep Throat,” “Off Our Backs,” Britneyh Spears, Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin, Russ Meyer and Kitten Natividad, Kathy Acker, Angela Carter and Felicien Rops. Amongst others. We think this is a landmark piece, and are, again, grateful to be able to publish it in this time of relentless lame sexvertising and galloping militarism. We come in peace — over and over again.

* Kyp Malone of the courageous NYC rock band TV ON THE RADIO talks candidly with Arthur editor Jay Babcock about directly confronting USA malign negligence (Katrina) and rampant militarism — on record, on a recent tour with Nine Inch Nails and Bauhaus (military recruiting booths!?!), and most notoriously, onstage in public this past August in front of 12,000 people at Boston’s City Hall. If you were there, you know what we’re talking about. If you weren’t, please read this account of speaking truth to power. 

* Chuck Dukowski (Black Flag, Chuck Dukowski Sextet) on the deeper, civilizational issues surrounding all-ages shows, illustrated by Geoff McFetridge. This is part 2 of our continuing series on ALL-AGES SHOWS. 

* “New Herbalist” columnist MOLLY FRANCES on the pagan roots (and herbs) of Christmas…

* “Do the Math” columnist DAVE REEVES on why AK-47s beat M-16s.

* DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF on visionary thinker Robert Anton Wilson.

* LISA ANNE AUERBACHi’s Abbie Hoffman-inspired knitted sweaters photographed by Justine Kurland on the occasion of her show at White Columns…

* Nabob Shineywater (of Brightblack Morning Light) on musicians SANDY BULL and Hamza al-Din…

* Chris Ziegler on brand new albums by WHITE MAGIC and SUNN O))) & BORIS…

* “Bull Tongue” columnists BYRON COLEY & THURSTON MOORE on oodles of underground culture forms from Kommissar Hjuler & Mama Bar, Silvester Anfang, R.O.T., Sammy Harkham’s Kramers Ergot, Private Stash, Comic Art, Arf Museum, Drawing Hand, Alex Nielson, Alastair Gabraith & Richard Youngs, Oren Ambarchi, Scott Horscroft, Hado Ho, Henry Kaiser, Noxagt, Ultralyd, S. Clay Wilson, Crown Now, Bone Rattle, Dreamhouse, the Halflings, M.O.A.C., Coco & Fiend Friend Mononoke, Hello Trudi, Dave Newman, Shuffleboil edited by David Meltzer and Steve Dickinson, Ong Ong, Macronympha, C. Spencer Yeh, Jim O’Rourke, Two Dead Sluts One Good Fuck, Helios Creed, Outtakes, Sub City Girls, Trockeneis, Harrius, WZT Hearts, Michael Layne Heath, Wesley Eisold & Charles Rowland, Carol Lewis & Regine Polenz, Haunted George, Demon’s Claws, The Golden Boys, Evil, Enema Syringe, Commando Laarz, Drap En Hund, Ports Bishop, Hurray, Timo van Luyk & Kris Vanderstraeten, Sarah Becan, Jerusalem and the Starbaskets, Skarekraouradio, Child Pornography, Quem Quaeritis, Copper/Yellow, Mudsuckers, and Paul Flaherty/Chris Corsano/C. Spencer Yeh.

* A full-color full-page of “Strings” comics by PSHAW…

* And so much more, etc etc. 

More info on where to get Arthur for free, how to buy Arthur for cheap (individula issues or subscriptions), etc at

arthurmag.com

2. SOLD OUT

We are sold out of the Ira Cohen-“Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda” DVD and the Devendra Banhart-curated 2004 “Golden Apples of the Sun” anthology CD. You *may* be able to find copies of either at retailers. We will get them back into print if we are able.

3.  HEY BIG SPENDER.

ARTHUR COLLECTION — All 25 Issues, A Very Special Limited Edition.

50 Sets of the Complete Arthur Magazine (issues 1-25) Collection are now available.  Each order comes with Arthur Fest (by Arik Roper, full color) and  Arthur Nights (by Maya Hayuk, full color) posters and includes special out-of-print back issues not available until now. These limited sets  will not be made available again once they’re sold. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Makes a great holiday gift!

USA: $200.00

Canada: $250.00

Europe: $300.00

Asia & Australia: $350.00

http://www.arthurmag.com/store/bastet_other.php

4. HEY MODEST SPENDER.

ARTHUR EVENTS POSTER SET — 3 posters at an unbelievable price.

Includes the legendary Arthurfest 2005 poster designed by Arik Roper, a hand-silkscreened South By Southwest Arthur party poster, and the previously unavailable Arthur Nights 2006 poster designed by Maya Hayuk. This set is close to a steal. You save over 50 percent and the recipient of this gift will love you 100 percent more. You do the math. Or don’t. 

USA: $20.00

Canada: $25.00

Elsewhere: $30.00

http://www.arthurmag.com/store/bastet_other.php

5. ERIK DAVIS SPEAKS TO YOU THIS WEEK IN NEW YORK CITY.

Erik Davis, author of the Joanna Newsom story on the cover of the new Arthur, is in NYC this week for two speaking engagements:

a.

Visionary Art and Architecture: A Conversation between Alex Grey and Erik Davis

An evening event: Thursday, December 7th, 7pm, $20

Location: Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, 540 West 27th Street, 4th floor

“This evening, one of the world’s greatest contemporary visionary artists, NYC’s own renowned Alex Grey, and the San Francisco cultural critic Erik Davis will engage in a spirited dialogue about the role of visionary art and architecture. Grey will discuss the history of sacred art and the aspirations embedded in his own work, ranging from his extraordinary paintings and sculptures to his design of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Davis will draw from his brand new book, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, which weaves deeply informed text and stunning images into a compelling narrative of religion, architecture and consciousness in California. Don’t miss this meeting of two dazzling minds.”

b..

The Visionary State: The Legacy of California Consciousness

Erik Davis

An evening lecture and slide presentation: Friday, December 8th, 8pm, $20

Location: NY Open Center, 83 Spring Street

“California has served as ground zero for an emerging spirituality based on ecology, the body and the technology of human transformation. The state’s ebullient spiritual landscape has spawned the likes of neopaganism, televangelism, UFO cults, austere Zen Buddhism, Esalen, mavericks such as Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, popular visionaries such as Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, and the nightmarish Charles Manson and Jim Jones. In this slideshow and talk, based on his fascinating new book, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, Erik Davis will take us on a wild ride, exploring the history and legacy of ‘California consciousness.’”

6. IT’S BEATNIK BEACH FILM NIGHT IN SAN FRANCISCO.

Thursday, December 7, 2006    

7:30 p.m. ’til 11 p.m.

Roxie Cinema

3117 16th Street at Valencia, San Francisco

(415) 431-3611

“Authors Domenic Priore and Brian Chidester (Beatsville, Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece, Dumb Angel #4: All Summer Long) will present a unique one-hour slide show documenting the Beat Generation’s long stretch over the Greater Los Angeles area between 1956 and 1966, via visuals of coffeehouses and Jazz joints from the Sunset Strip to Malibu, Venice and Newport Beach.  Legendary locations only heard about in books or in liner notes, from the Gas House and nearby Venice West, to the Unicorn and Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, the Lighthouse and Insomniac Cafe in Hermosa Beach, then all the way down to Cafe Frankenstein (owned, operated and painted by Burt Shonberg) in Laguna Beach.  Artists from John Altoon to Eric “Big Daddy” Nord gave these places a colourful splash, as did the wide variety of Folk singers and poets who performed on their stages.  Accompanying the slideshow will be a rare screening of Dirty Feet (1965), shot primarily at the Prison of Socrates coffeehouse in Balboa.  Special guests TBA and, there will be another short Beat film or two (including The Beat, a color one shot inside Venice West), plus a few new routines by San Francisco’s own Devil-Ettes to jazz the room.”

More info:

http://www.dumbangelmagazine.com/06-12_news.htm

7. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES VERSUS CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION.

“With many of the planet’s remaining natural resources on indigenous lands, traditional indigenous practices of biodiversity preservation have, ironically, made these lands targets for global corporations seeking the last forests, genetic and plant materials, oil, and minerals to feed their unsustainable growth. But native peoples refuse to be victims. Their stories of resistance and growing success are inspirational.

“In the new book _Paradigm Wars:  Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization_, best-selling author Jerry Mander (_Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television_) partners with one of the world’s most celebrated indigenous leaders, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, to gather powerful firsthand reports on a momentous collision of worldviews that pits the forces of economic globalization against the Earth’s indigenous peoples.

See the authors live for FREE at:

* Dec. 10 Elliot Bay Book Company (Seattle) 2pm

Jerry Mander, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, (Jeannette Armstrong)

* Dec. 12 Third Place Books (Seattle area) 7:00pm

Jerry Mander, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, (Jeannette Armstrong)

* Dec. 13 St Johns Booksellers (Portland, OR) 7:30pm

Jerry Mander, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, (Jeannette Armstrong)

More info at

International Forum on Globalization

www.ifg.org,

8. ARTHUR MAGAZINE MAINTAINS AN EXTREMELY LIMITED PRESENCE IN MURDOCHSPACE STRICTLY FOR OUTREACH PURPOSES.

We send out bulletins to myLittleSpace nerdniks from

myspace.com/arthurmag

9. MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC.

Won’t you join us for music and spirits at the Little Joy Public House in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles for

The Echo Park Social(ist) & Pleasure Club

Thursday, Dec. 7

and every Thursday night

9:55pm-close

at

Little Joy

1477 Sunset Blvd in Echo Park

FREE

21 & up

At recent EPSCs, this music was played for the enjoyment of all:

*Lady Eden Batki – DJ * Nov. 30, 2006

space ballerinas-strawberry child

althea and donna-uptown topranking

sybille baier-tonight

aretha franklin-so swell you well

brigitte fontaine

dorothy ashby-soul vibrations

young marble giants-the taxi

candy staton-lovin you lovin me

bonnie and wendy-walk alone

los juventud folklorico-el gato de la fiesta

celebration-holiday

bow wow wow-jungle boy

margo guryan-hold me dancin

electrelane-right steps

the go team-ladyflash

lizzy mercier descloux-hard boiled babe

neila-vertical trees

sheila e.-toy box

luv’d ones-stand tall

quixotic-lord of this world

yma sumac-hampi

space ballerinas-johnny spaceship

the organ

dolly parton-here you come again

hortense ellis-come closer to me

nina simone-to love somebody

* Sir Peter Relic – DJ  * Nov. 30, 2006

Amy Winehouse – Rehab

Co-Real Artists – What About You?

Djay & Shug – It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp

Lil Flip – Check (Let’s Ride)

Three 6 Mafia – Side2Side

G(irls) T(alkin) S(hit) – Skin Tight

Lily Allen – Knock Em Out

Kwest Tha Madd Lad- Disk&Dat

Lord Finesse & DJ Mike Smooth – Bad Mutha

The UN – Ain’t No Thang

Nas – Halftime

Ohmega Watts -That Sound

Mac Mall, Mac Dre & E-40 – Dredio

RZA, WC & E-40 – When The Guns Come Out

Mike Jones feat. Bun-B & Lil’ Keke – Know What I’m Sayin’

Ice Cube – Check Yo Self

Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock – Joy & Pain

Steel Pulse – Prodigal Son Dub

* Sir Richard Pleuger – DJ * Nov 23, 2006

XuXu Fang – These Days

Steve Morgen – Purple

Sub – Ma-Mari-Huana

Trash – Living In A Garden

Armageddon – Paths…

Mystic Tide – Psychedelic Journey p. 2

German Oak – Siegfried and Kriemhild

Tomorrow – Shotgun And The Duck

Simply Saucer – Nazi Apocalypse

Luzifer Was – In The Park

Egor – Street

Damnation Of Adam Blesing – In The Morning

Kahva’s Jute – Up There

The Deep – When Rain Is Black

The Fallen Angels – Look To The Sun

Nick Cave & Bad Seeds – Let Love In

Exmagma – It’s So Nice

Coloured Balls – G.O.D.

Brain Donor – Pretty Face (live)

Pentagram – Life’s Blood

Damnation Of Adam Blessing – Driver

Luzifer Was – Asterix

Coloured Balls – Human Being

Blue Cheer – ( I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

Los Psychos – (Fugitivo De) Alcatraz

Fallen Angels – Didn’t

Kisses and best wishes,

Arthur Sweethearts

Atwater Village // Philadelphia

Omnibus Review by Peter Lamborn Wilson of Recent Publications from Shivastan Press of Woodstock and Kathmandu

(Note: all new titles are $10, except the two Louise Landes Levi translations are $15 each, and the Charles Henri Ford/ Indra Tamang book is $40. Please check www.shivastan.com for more information)

Omnibus Review of Recent Publications from Shivastan Press of Woodstock and Kathmandu
by Peter Lamborn Wilson

“Full disclosures” are all the rage nowadays, so I should immediately admit that Shivastan Press published one of my own favorite works, Atlantis Manifesto (2004). But why did I want to be published by Shivastan in the first place? Because I think it’s the coolest poetry press in the Hudson Valley, because I too am an “old India/Nepal hand” like so many Shivastanis, and because the books, printed in Kathmandu on Nepalese rice paper are beautifully crafted, are throwbacks to great designs of “my” period, the sixties. (One of them- I won’t say which- even has charas flowers pressed inside the rice paper.) And because of the exalted company, which includes Ira Cohen, Ed Sanders, Andy Clausen (with intro by Ginsberg), Janine Pommy Vega, Lawrence Ferlinghetti….

Shiv Mirabito, the Ganesh-lookalike proprietor of Shivastan, Woodstock’s resident saddhu, naturally publishes himself too. Recently he’s produced Transcendental Tyger (2004) which begins with his fine “Homage to Ganesh” the elephant god, and contains his rousing anti-war screed, “Real Men”. The illo’s include several charming Tantrik tigers Blake would’ve loved. Welcome to Freaksville (2nd ed., 2005) has a foreword by Ed Sanders and ends with the sharp devotional lines:

My fat body
and white ash
seem so different
but it’s all the same
A blackened skull
has no name

Poet/translater Louise Landes Levi contributes two books with spines to the list, both of them exemplars of her important on-going many-year project to save major French writers from undeserved obscurity in AngloAmericaland. Toward Totality (2006) by Henri Michaux contains selections from most of his poetry collections, charming photos of him as boy and man, facsimiles of original corrected manuscripts, and the lines:

The world is not round, not yet. No, we must make it round.
* * *
In a hundred years or so, I am sure, the world will be large. Finally, we will communicate with the animals, we will speak to them.
* * *
Will we soon bomb the angels?

Rene Daumal, author of Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, should also be better known and respected as a Sanskritologist with great flair; and <i .Rasa, or Knowledge of The Self: Essays in Indian Aesthetics and Selected Sanskrit Studies (2nd ed., 2006) is–as far as I know–the sole accessible English translation of Daumal’s Indian essays. The only drawback is the small type, but that’s the price you pay for getting so much in one little book.

Laynie Browne’s Original Presence (2006) combines Ernstish and very clever collages with the laconic and mysterious story of Salt Girl:

I went to see the girl of salt
She gave herself to water…
She was dissolution
Will you seek her?

I read this work as Hermeticism, and I suspect the rabbi to whom it is dedicated of kabbalistic tendencies.

Pacing the Wind (2006) – a Taoist reference? – by Roberta Gould has no illo’s but a nice constructivist cover design. There seems to be something Taoistic in
Verification
Nothing happened
It didn’t achieve anything
But that feather did

Loosed from the bedding
It gloried around the house
All afternoon

Sainte Terre, or the White Stone (2006) by the prolific bard of Bard, Robert Kelly, is that rare bird, a successful long poem. The amount of erudition packed into this text paradoxically allows it a lyrical directness. Cuttyhunk Island, off Massachusetts, becomes Atlantis and perhaps the Isle of Prospero, a holy land where the Grail (the white stone) takes on various guises. Kelly’s recent work has been developing a strange alternate Christianity (“Christ was sly”) seen through a Hermetic lens (“Bruno, Paracelsus, della porta”).

only desire gets beyond the image
in the dark of possession, being taken,
locked inside the moment of

and it is dark. Electric lights began the reign of
Antichrist.
* * *
The grail found is no grail at all- the heart’s
ease is in the seeking.

In Where is The Woman? Letters and Poems from California (2006) we have the mystical remains of Enid Dame, Jewish mythographer and cofounder of Home Plant News– the last dying words of this somehow already saint-like poet.

Because I am lonely in California
Because no one speaks my language
Because I don’t speak it either.

So she wrote from her hospital bed. Few deaths have inspired so much elegiac poetry, but this is Enid’s own self-carved tombeau:

My friends, I offer you this poem
in return for your prayers.

The biggest and deservedly most expensive of Shivastan’s 2006 crop is by the late (d. 2002) unjustly neglected unique home des letters and American surrealist Charles Henri Ford. Operation Minotaur is oversize and packed with witty and interesting photos by Ford’s Nepali friend Indra Tamang- but I wish Shiv (or whoever) had included captions. I recognize Ira Cohen, Raymond Foye, Grace Jones, Anne Waldman, Ginsberg and Patti Smith, Brooke Shields and Andy Warhol, the Dalai Lama, Burroughs, Julian Beck and Judith Malina- but other obviously famous faces (not to mention various charming-looking Nepalese people and gods) escape me. Ford’s haiku ought to be called “lo-ku”, since they’re all made of words and images clipped from advertisements and are quite funny:

The world’s running out of
Substitutes
Step forward and you’ll be asked
IN

A highly collectable volume, and a perfect example of Shivastan’s high standards of taste and beauty–and fun.

(Note: all new titles are $10, except the two Louise Landes Levi translations are $15 each, and the Charles Henri Ford/ Indra Tamang book is $40. Please check www.shivastan.com for more information)

Erik Davis in New York.

Erik Davis, author of the Joanna Newsom story on the cover of the new Arthur, is in NYC this week for two speaking engagements:

1.
Visionary Art and Architecture: A Conversation between Alex Grey and Erik Davis
An evening event: Thursday, December 7th, 7pm, $20
Location: Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, 540 West 27th Street, 4th floor

“This evening, one of the world’s greatest contemporary visionary artists, NYC’s own renowned Alex Grey, and the San Francisco cultural critic Erik Davis will engage in a spirited dialogue about the role of visionary art and architecture. Grey will discuss the history of sacred art and the aspirations embedded in his own work, ranging from his extraordinary paintings and sculptures to his design of the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. Davis will draw from his brand new book, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, which weaves deeply informed text and stunning images into a compelling narrative of religion, architecture and consciousness in California. Don’t miss this meeting of two dazzling minds.”

2.
The Visionary State: The Legacy of California Consciousness
Erik Davis
An evening lecture and slide presentation: Friday, December 8th, 8pm, $20
Location: NY Open Center, 83 Spring Street

“California has served as ground zero for an emerging spirituality based on ecology, the body and the technology of human transformation. The state’s ebullient spiritual landscape has spawned the likes of neopaganism, televangelism, UFO cults, austere Zen Buddhism, Esalen, mavericks such as Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, popular visionaries such as Starhawk and Carlos Castaneda, and the nightmarish Charles Manson and Jim Jones. In this slideshow and talk, based on his fascinating new book, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape, Erik Davis will take us on a wild ride, exploring the history and legacy of ‘California consciousness.'”

“Erik Davis (www.techgnosis.com), a San Francisco-based cultural critic, is the author of The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape and Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information. He has contributed to dozens of books and magazines and has given lectures and workshops at universities, conferences and festivals all over the world.”

Corrections to Arthur 25.

Page 12
A set of production errors resulted in Erik Davis’s article on Joanna Newsom being published without some minor changes he had made to the text, and with the entire first paragraph garbled. That paragraph should read:

Last February, in Los Angeles, Joanna Newsom took to the stage at the ArthurBall and performed, for the first time in their entirety, the five loonnggg songs that make up her new album Ys. Many folks present were already chest-deep in the cult of Joanna, a fandom that made 2004’s The Milk-Eyed Mender a leftfield indie hit and that turned Newsom herself into the sort of music-maker that inspires obsessive devotion as well as pleasure. At the time I admired Mender, but was, as of yet, no acolyte. I dug a handful of songs, but like many listeners, I found the eccentricity of Newsom’s voice sometimes rather grating. I also feared that the outsider waif thing was just an underground pose stitched together with lacy thrift-store duds and an iPod stuffed with mp3s of the Carter Family and Shirley Collins.

Yikes. Our deepest apologies to Erik, and to our readers. The complete, correct version of the article is now available here.

Page 32
The Rops artwork is reversed.

Page 33
The visuals on this page have been incorrectly identified in the caption. They are actually, from left to right: a photo of Oscar Wilde, a photo of Aubrey Beardsley and a drawing by Robert Crumb.

Page 34
The “Pricksters” comic strip at the top of the page is by Robert Crumb.
The correct title of the Aubrey Beardsley drawing is “Examination of the Herlad.”
The covers of the Tijuana Bibles appear to the right of the caption.

Page 42
Chuck Dukowski’s wife is named Lora (not “Nora”).

Also, we should’ve printed a special thanks to John Coulthart, Arthur’s Man in Manchester, for his generous work in providing appropriate images to illustrate the Alan Moore essay. Cheers John!

What We Want, What We Believe: The Black Panther Party Library DVD

“The invaluable Movement documentaries Newsreel produced furthered the work of the Black Panther Party and now provide the essential visual record of the Party’s early days. This new dvd collection offers an extraordinary compilation that includes historic behind the scenes details taken from a wide range of interviews and contemporary events as well as the classic Newsreel films.”—Kathleen Cleaver, Communications Secretary, Black Panther Party, 1967–1971

For the first time on DVD, AK Press is proud to present three acclaimed Newsreel Films on the Black Panther Party: Off the Pig; Mayday; and Repression.

Formed in 1967, the Newsreel film collective was dedicated to chronicling and analyzing current events. In their time, they produced more than three dozen films throughout the US and abroad. By working directly with the Black Panthers, Newsreel was able to explore realities often ignored by traditional media outlets, while producing documents that the Panthers and other activists could use in organizing their own communities. The results speak for themselves and stand as true testimonials to the spirit of community self-defense and political savvy the Panthers are celebrated—and were targeted—for.

Accompanying the Newsreel films is a massive quantity of rare and exclusive materials culled from Roz Payne’s extensive collection of FBI documents, correspondence, and interviews with Black Panthers and their supporters. It’s all here, the government-sponsored repression, the trials, exile, triumph, and reunion.

What We Want, What We Believe is not a straight-forward documentary—the additional materials are like Roz Payne’s home movies—but more like a tapestry woven from fragments of cloth. As a whole, these fragments present a rich and provocative history, straight from the mouths of Panthers, their supporters, and even the agents charged with neutralizing them.

These materials—over 12 hours—are crucial to our continuing understanding of the Black Panther Party and their legacy. Any student of American History, Black Studies, Political Science & Law, Film Studies, or Civil Rights struggles will find a wealth of valuable information in the Library.

A portion of the proceeds from this project will go to support Black Panther Prisoners through Books Behind Bars, the Jericho Movement, and the Human Rights Research Fund. We urge you to seek out these groups and donate time and resources to their ongoing work.

This 12-hour DVD features three films on the Black Panther Party and additional footage on their history and legacy.
Special bonus features: Documents from the Roz Payne Archives chronicling the movement and repression against it. English Language, Region Free

Disc One:
Three Newsreel Films, Interviews with Field Marshall Donald Cox, Footage from 35th Anniversary Reunion

Disc Two:
Interviews with Former FBI Agents discussing COINTELPRO tactics, Footage from the Wheelock Academic Conference on the BPP

Disc Three:
Interviews with various movement lawyers discussing Panther cases

Disc Four:
Interviews with Newsreel members, DVD-Rom extras from the Roz Payne Archives

“…a total Black Panther immersion.”—Orange County Weekly

PATTERSON ON LENNON, SINCLAIR, OCHS, ROBESON, THE WEAVERS, GUTHRIE & THE DIXIE CHICKS

Power to the people

When John Lennon announced a US tour in 1971, the White House set out to stop him. But, as John Patterson discovers, he wasn’t the first musician to have the The Man on his case – and he wouldn’t be the last

Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian

The author of the following words was FBI Director J Edgar Hoover. Try and guess who he’s talking about in this memo to Richard Nixon “[He is]… a paradox because he is difficult to judge by the normal standards of civilized life … His main reason for being is to destroy, blindly and indiscriminately, to tear down and provoke chaos …”
Ho Chi Minh? Mao Tse-Tung? Charles Manson, even?

Wrong. He’s warning the White House about that renowned subversive and enemy of the state, John Lennon. Hoover’s bizarre and paranoid outburst is one of the many secrets and revelations that enliven David Leaf and John Scheinfeld’s The US Vs John Lennon. Their documentary focuses on Lennon’s political activities in the early 1970s, in the period after he moved to New York, and on the hysterical reaction of the FBI and the Nixon White House to the “threat” of a man whose benign political worldview was plainly stated in his widely-available music.

Lennon first caught the interest of Hoover and Nixon – allies since the McCarthy witchhunts – in late 1971, when he made a $75,000 donation to an outfit called the Election Year Strategy Information Center, which was gearing up to register voters for the 1972 US Presidential election. With the Vietnam war still in full swing, Lennon’s donation was the first move of a planned US tour, during which he hoped to set up voter-registration booths in concert-venue lobbies and get as many young people signed up as possible, in the hope of voting Nixon out. In previous years this would have gone unnoticed, but the recent passage of the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution, which lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, meant that there might have been a discernible effect on the election. No one at this point knew that, thanks to the energetic “ratfucking” activities of his political operatives in 1972, Nixon would win in a landslide, and since this would be Lennon’s first US tour since the Beatles quit touring in 1966, it was conceivable that the kids could sign up and throw the Trickster out.

If you can judge a man by the quality of his political enemies, then Lennon was a titan. The White House first got wind of his tour from the ghastly racist dinosaur Strom Thurmond, the segregationist presidential candidate of 1948, who tipped off US Attorney General (and future jailbird) John Mitchell. CIA director Richard Helms meanwhile sent a similar memo to Hoover. And thus a plan was put into motion to have Lennon deported from the USA on a minor visa violation as a way of silencing him.

It won’t spoil this interesting, if occasionally wishy-washy, VH-1 documentary (released on the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s death) to reveal that the Hoover-Nixon effort failed. But the movie is fascinating as much for its historical and contemporary echoes as it is for its many revelations of this forgotten saga.

Hoover, his agents, and those on America’s political right had by 1971 built up a long and disgraceful record of harassing musicians and singers who dared to speak up against social injustice, racism and government criminality. Lennon had Beatle money, celebrity and top-notch lawyers to hide behind, and was thus well-insulated against the day-to-day abuses that the FBI and the US government often wielded against left-wing dissidents with emptier pockets.

John Sinclair, the manager of Detroit’s politically radical MC5, was jailed for 10 years, ostensibly for the possession of two joints, but really in order to silence the leader of Detroit’s political freak-scene, prompting Lennon’s solo single Free John Sinclair and his appearance at a 1971 benefit. Also appearing there was folkie-activist Phil Ochs, a veteran of the Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy campaigns of 1968, a co-founder of the Yippies, and proud possessor of an FBI file that ran 410 pages to Lennon’s mere 280.

Ochs was far more politically active than Lennon, and given to such wised-up conceits as “If there’s any hope of a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara.” When he was brutally mugged in Dar Es Salaam in 1973, he speculated that the US government was behind the three men who choked him and caused him to lose the upper three notes of his vocal range. Perhaps he was being paranoid about this. That’s what people thought when he claimed the FBI had a fat file on him, though, and he was right about that.

None of this was new. Back in the 1940s and 1950s the black singer Paul Robeson, a communist sympathiser and an outspoken foe of racism in America and imperialism in Africa, was stripped of his US passport, barred from performing, and hounded by the FBI. The most famous instance of The Man harassing Robeson and his ilk came in August 1949, when he gave a concert at Peekskill in upper New York state, attended by 25,000 fans. Peekskill was a notoriously reactionary community, with its own active Ku Klux Klan chapter. After the open-air concert, the local police, all 900 of them, deliberately channelled the exiting concertgoers down a rural access road lined with jeering rightwingers. All along the four-mile road, police stood by as hundreds of thugs, screaming “Run, you white niggers!” and “Jew! Jew! Jew!” hurled bricks through car windows, pulled men, women and children from their vehicles and beat them. One man was blinded and hundreds injured as folk singers including Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Lee Hays tried to escape.

Seeger and Hays were also members of The Weavers, a folk quartet who charted in 1950 with a version of Lead Belly’s Goodnight Irene before a mention in the commie-baiting tract Red channels (used by TV executives to keep left-wingers off the air) put them on the blacklist, killing their career and losing them their recording contract.

If you believe this sort of nativist fascism has disappeared in George Bush’s America, think again. The new documentary Shut Up And Sing! outlines the travails of the Dixie Chicks after singer Natalie Maines told a London audience on the eve of the Iraq war that “We’re ashamed the President of the United States comes from Texas.”

In scenes that recalled the aftermath of Lennon’s “Bigger than Jesus” remark in 1966, Dixie Chicks CDs were burned across the South, and they were blacklisted from 1200 radio stations owned by the Clear Channel conglomerate – which early in the war drew up a do-not-play shit-list of songs that included Imagine. At a filmed Senate hearing, senator John McCain takes the CEO of Clear Channel apart over his risible claim that his stations all acted independently, when memos prove exactly the opposite. The Chicks went from being Red-state superstars to left-wing cult artists almost overnight, but surprisingly, they found they liked it. At the end of the movie, it’s inspiring to see Maines belting out her answer-song to the fanbase that abandoned her: “I’m not ready to make nice/I’m not ready to back down …”

It’s tempting to think that the Dixie Chicks inspired Bruce Springsteen this year to record an album of protest songs made famous by Pete Seeger, as if to prove that nothing, not Peekskill, not Red Channels or Clear Channel, not Nixon or Hoover, can be allowed to shut up a dissenting singer’s voice.