Arthur presents…
New Energy Music Sesh with djs Arrok and Paulus
Tonight!
Thursday June 7th 10pm
at Little Joy 1477 W. Sunset Blvd.
Paulus is inclined towards heavy moves and hesher rock.
This probably means Steeleye Span, Savage Rose, Cactus, and early Scorps.
Arrok favors ethno-psych and water brother vibes. He’ll be busting out
Moroccan hippy beat, California laid-back, and revolutionary French dropout rock primarily.
From an Arthur contributor:
Womanspirit Magazine
The first magazine of feminist spirituality, WomanSpirit chronicled the exciting exploration of women’s changing lives through the decade 1974-1984. WomanSpirit showcased art and writing from women all over the world, from the academy to alternative cultures. Produced in forested Southern Oregon by an open WomanSpirit of volunteers, inspired and sustained by editors Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, it was published quarterly as the seasons turned.
WomanSpirit explored creating women’s culture, ecology, ritual, healing, psychic abilities, feminist politics, women’s life stages, wicca, divination, death and dying, goddess myths and traditions, and many other topics. Gorgeous artwork, photographs, songs, stories, articles, discussions, poems, letters, and book reviews sparked and connected the international web of contributors and subscribers.
Simply and beautifully bound, this magazine is a snapshot of a different (?) era of identity based politics, where folks were developing incredible vernacular cultures, languages and spaces for their own cultures to thrive in, outside and far beyond the dominant culture.
When a magazines and the cultures they speak for get this wonderfully rich , we certainly begin to depart from any kind of traditional patriarchy.
“Dear Convention Guests,
Tomorrow,
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 6th
we stage the entertainment portion of our trade show.
The venue is:
LA CITA
(3rd/Hill St. Downtown)
Shuttle will be running every half hour from all our partner-hotel-properties.
Frankie Delmane & his TEENAGE FRAMES perform!
JIMI HEY DJs!
Be sure to wear your official placard at all times to guarantee admission.
Meet & Greet, light refreshments, and marketing seminar to take place simultaneously on the patio.
This is your one-stop networking dream!
Thank-You
-Your convention hosts
RAH-RAH-RAH”
BULL TONGUE
Exploring the Voids of All Known Undergrounds Since 2002
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore
Trans Industrial Toy Orchestra’s Alzheimer Underground LP (Ti Prod) [www.transindustriell.de] is a pip. They are a German troupe where the decidedly fluxus membership play and record by reading words without “e” with nuts cracked in a nut cracker and reading backwards while tearing a sheet. They also utilize record players in aurally illegitimate ways. Sounds dada, bizarre, unlistenable? Actually yes and no: it is indeed a fucked up thing but quite alluring in its tribute to brain blankness.
Very nice slab here from Liverpool’s Solar Fire Trio (Invada) [www.invada.co.uk]. Formed in ’05 by Spiritualized saxophonist, Ray Dickaty, alto player Dave Jackson and drummer, Steve Belger, their eponymous debut LP is classic squee-pileage in the post-ESP tradition. Unlike some Euro players, these three base their sound on loose sonic collisions and and interwoven blather in ripely extended fire-form, all revolving around theories of meat and its ability to burn. Solid, savage blurt.
Debut release by Weak Sisters is a cassette called Subterfuge (Basement Tapes) [myspace.com/boilerroomemissions]. Awesome cut up screams and dead-time pronouncements make this release unbearably savage. The fact that it’s not just wank but pretty taut and focused nihilist sense-slicing makes for killer listening. Weak Sisters is basically a solo spurt of Will van Goern of Other People’s Children and word on the streets of Fort Collins, Colorado is that this tape don’t come close to his live actions. Hopefully, we shall see.
The great Marcia Bassett is rightfully hailed around the globe for her work with Double Leopards, Hotogitsu, GHQ and plenty more. She’s been responsible for some beautiful visual projects as well, but we are here this time to praise her new solo LP, recorded under the monniker Zaimph. Mirage of the Other (Gipsy Sphinx) [myspace.com/gipsysphinx]. This album seems much more flowing and less harsh than the last Zaimph CD (not that flowing necessarily trumps harsh, it’s just different). The combination of voice and guitar here has lots of raspy edge, but there’s a deep gorgeousity to it making the record seem like it’s glowing when it spins. Long lunar notes have rarely sounded so fresh. Gipsy Sphinx also has a fine album by Bear Bones Lay Low [hets.tk] called Djid Hums. This is another solo album, cut by an 18-year-old Venezualan ex-pat living in Belgium. Guitar drones and tape loops pile up higher than kites and there are blasts of fuzz that will tweak every psychedelic bones in yr body. Beware!
An exhibit about the liminal, substanceless, and static space of automotive transience at The Center For Land Use Interpretation. Exhibit hours: Fri, Sat, Sun noon – 5pm or by appointment
First Casualty in Santa Monica
Political theater for the 00’s.
“this reenactment hits you so hard when you see it up front like this”
San Francisco Chronicle – May 20, 2007
Summer of Love: 40 Years Later
Peter Berg and Judy Goldhaft
PETER BERG AND JUDY GOLDHAFT, directors of Planet Drum, a grassroots ecology outreach program that encourages regional sustainability around the world. THEN: Peter Berg and his wife, Judy Goldhaft, were original members of the Diggers, the Haight-Ashbury community group that served free food daily in the Panhandle, operated the Free Store and so much more.
BERG: 1966 was the Digger year. Emmett Grogan walked into the San Francisco Mime Troupe when I was the assistant director and Judy had been there a long time.
GOLDHAFT: I directed things and performed in things.
BERG: We were involved with the idea of taking theater off the stage and into people’s hands. So I had evolved a concept of guerrilla theater, and guerrilla theater was to actively engage people in some action, or witness some event that would make them sort of a conspirator. [The couple had participated in early guerrilla theater pieces during the Free Speech Movement protests at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza in ’64]. I had cast Emmett in a couple of small cabaret things, and it became obvious to all of us that the next step — you know, in the theater it’s called breaking the fourth wall — the next step was to have actors doing things that acted out alternatives. The label I put on that was ‘life acting.’ And by the way, Emmett was not a very good stage actor, but he was a hell of a life actor! He was a pretty charismatic person. He and Billy Murcott went on top of the building during the Fillmore riots [triggered by the September, 1966 police shooting of an African-American teenager suspected of robbery] and they saw this acting out of, one could say, revolution, maybe with a small ‘r.’ What it inspired them to do was to make a kind of manifesto for people who weren’t involved with the black struggle, that was on an equal footing. And to them it was to be communalistic and altruistic. Billy Mercott had been reading a book about (Gerrard) Winstanley, the leader of the English heretical, communalistic group — and very Christian, by the way — called the diggers. So Billy said, ‘Well, you know, dig, like to dig, dig this, man. Together they made a manifesto that they tacked up on the front door of the Mime Troupe on Howard Street, next to that journalists’ bar, the M&M. This was like [Martin Luther] tacking the 99 thesis on the cathedral door.
I looked at it, and I saw the life-actor potential in it. Which was, a group who called themselves Diggers could begin acting out a lot of the positive alternatives that the Left presumed would occur if there was a successful, small ‘r’ revolution. And for me, those were more anarchistic, than they were ideologically Lefty. It goes something like this: If you say something is wrong, then you can propose something that’s better. The better thing needs to be seen to be believed. So, we thought, if you act out the ideas — a lot of people collaborated on the ideas, ‘everything is free, do your own thing.’
Continue readingWriting, Social Change & Revolution: A Talk with Poetry and Music by Edward Sanders
(download as PDF here)
Keynote Address, New York College English Association Spring Conference SUNY New Paltz, April 13, 2007
I’m happy and honored to be here. What an exciting era! The very structure of the nation seems at risk, yet somehow we take resolve and rise up to protect the Bill of Rights, personal freedoms, and are more determined than ever to create a world without war.
My subject is Writing, Social Change and Revolution, and if I say anything that seems outré or what they call beyond the pale, I hope that you will receive it as coming from a long time activist who is determined not to allow a great nation to sail into a right wing quagmire. These war-mad, fear-drenched anguished times require all of us to stay alert, get into action, and put our shoulders to the wheel.
I will try not only to be theoretical, but also very practical, and I’ll bring some poetry and music to the presentation also.
One of the main points of my beliefs comes from a quote from a poem by Allen Ginsberg written after his friend Jack Kerouac passed away in 1969:
Well, while I’m here I’ll
do the work—
and what’s the Work?
To ease the pain of living
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow
(from “Memory Gardens” Oct. 22-29, 1969)
One of the biggest problems in an era of senseless warfare, erosion of rights, global warming, lack of health care, polluted water, the mania of privatization, plus thousands, literally thousands of other pressing issues, is the lack of time.
How can we, as activists, find the time to face the right wing onslaught that threatens the very core of a great nation?
How can we carry on our regular work, in our homes, in our jobs, as scholars and teach- ers, keep up our friendships, while at the same time doing effective work to forge a new direction for America, and a new direction for Gaia, the small planet on a small arm of a small spiral galaxy upon when we briefly dwell?
Continue reading“Good Riddance Attention Whore”
by Cindy Sheehan
Mon May 28, 2007 at 09:57:01 AM PDT
I have endured a lot of smear and hatred since Casey was killed and especially since I became the so-called “Face” of the American anti-war movement. Especially since I renounced any tie I have remaining with the Democratic Party, I have been further trashed on such “liberal blogs” as the Democratic Underground. Being called an “attention whore” and being told “good riddance” are some of the more milder rebukes.
I have come to some heartbreaking conclusions this Memorial Day Morning. These are not spur of the moment reflections, but things I have been meditating on for about a year now. The conclusions that I have slowly and very reluctantly come to are very heartbreaking to me.
The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a “tool” of the Democratic Party. This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our “two-party” system?
However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the “left” started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of “right or left”, but “right and wrong.”
I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?
I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither. If an individual wants both, then normally he/she is not willing to do more than walk in a protest march or sit behind his/her computer criticizing others. I have spent every available cent I got from the money a “grateful” country gave me when they killed my son and every penny that I have received in speaking or book fees since then. I have sacrificed a 29 year marriage and have traveled for extended periods of time away from Casey’s brother and sisters and my health has suffered and my hospital bills from last summer (when I almost died) are in collection because I have used all my energy trying to stop this country from slaughtering innocent human beings. I have been called every despicable name that small minds can think of and have had my life threatened many times.
The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.
I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions.
Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people. However, in five, ten, or fifteen years, our troops will come limping home in another abject defeat and ten or twenty years from then, our children’s children will be seeing their loved ones die for no reason, because their grandparents also bought into this corrupt system. George Bush will never be impeached because if the Democrats dig too deeply, they may unearth a few skeletons in their own graves and the system will perpetuate itself in perpetuity.
I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.
Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too…which makes the property even more valuable.
This is my resignation letter as the “face” of the American anti-war movement. This is not my “Checkers” moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or any more people that I love and the rest of my resources.
Good-bye America …you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.
It’s up to you now.
Phil Ranelin Rules!
by Wayne Kramer
Los Angeles is a city of many secrets. How is it that Phil Ranelin remains one of LA’s best-kept secrets? It’s certainly not for lack of effort on his part.
There are restaurants and shops you might only discover for the first time after decades in this town. There are festivals, openings, plays, concerts, movies, lectures, debates, sporting events and scholastic competitions, that come and go that most folks almost never track. Not to mention the natural offerings of mountains, deserts and the ocean, all in a few hours drive. The fact that there are unlimited prospects at hand to enjoy is a blessing, but gifts can get lost in the dust of the chase. Phil Ranelin is one such gift.
Ranelin — trombonist, composer, arranger, bandleader, producer and educator — has been a graceful and humble fixture on the LA music scene since relocating here in 1977 from Detroit. Since his days with Freddy Hubbard, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Pepper, Marcus Belgrave, Sarah Vaughn, Roy Brooks and so many others in appearances at jazz festivals around the world, he has earned the reputation of a respected, diehard, straight-ahead trombonist of the J.J. Johnson tradition. In the modern age, he has moved contemporary music into the avant garde with his work as co-founder of Detroit’s famed TRIBE Records.
Phil works all over town in a dozen different groups from duos to orchestras. And last year he ran a series of lectures through the LA Library system with headings like: Who Is Hampton Hawes? Who Is Dexter Gordon? Who Is Horace Tapscott? Who Is Eric Dolphy? These events were designed to educate people on that greatest of American inventions: Jazz.
His ubiquity was connected with another of LA’ best kept secrets: Barnsdall Art Park. I’ve only lived here since 1994 and I’d never heard of the place. Last Friday, Barnsdall Gallery Theater was the location of one of the best musical events of the year. L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Department presented the Phil Ranelin Jazz Ensemble in concert and it was magnificent. A bravura concert in a superlative setting.
Ranelin was also awarded the 2007 C.O.L.A. Individual Artist Grant, as well as a grant from the Durfee Foundation to compose new works. He unveiled his ”Sweets For Melba” to an adoring audience at last Friday’s premier concert. It was Phil’s loving tribute to the great Los Angeles lady jazz legend and trombonist, Melba Liston, who died in 1999. Ranelin says in his concert program, “Not only was she a solid player in the trombone section of the Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie and Gerald Wilson orchestras, she was without a doubt THE most heralded of all female trombonists and one of the truly great arrangers of 20th century creative music.”
The master musician’s salute took the form of two suites with an intermission. The band featured young piano genius Tigran Hamasyan, drummer Don Littleton, percussionist Taumbu, Nedra Wheeler on acoustic bass, fellow Detroiters Buzzy Jones on woodwinds and Wendell Harrison playing clarinet & tenor saxophone. It was a collection of artists and musicians performing at the very highest level. This was state-of-the-art live music. Way above and beyond the usual retro bop that passes for jazz today. Ranelin’s compositions covered a wide range of feeling and commitment to the imagination that deserves to be heard by much larger audiences.
Today’s “jazz” or “Smooth Jazz” or whatever marketing label is used just doesn’t carry the weight of work that can transcend the status quo. We’re hammered with mediocrity on the airwaves of “jazz” radio. Ranelin is the antidote for the sad state of music. He’s the real thing. A truly artistically refined composer and soloist with something to say, and he expresses it masterfully.
At one point, the music swung hard in the Kansas City tradition with an almost obscenely funky bass solo from Wheeler. Tigran Hamasyan, rising star and winner of this year’s Thelonius Monk International Jazz Competition, drew repeated spirited responses from the jazz-savvy crowd for his forceful and brave explorations. The drummers were understated and propelled the music forward with sturdy rhythmic power, especially on the Latin-tinged themes. Multi-instrumentalists Jones and Harrison provided dynamic musical firepower on every solo outing. Both men are students and masters of the free jazz ethic and they were ambitiously moving it forward into tomorrow’s music. The ensemble sections were singularly innovative, never hackneyed or derivative.
Nedra Wheeler in particular was firmly grounded in the jazz bass style of hard bop, but she skillfully rose up out of tradition to propel the band into stronger and more compelling rhythmic arenas. This lady swings hard.
But it was Ranelin himself who really shone over the course of the night’s music. His solos were like travelogues through history. Not only of jazz, but also of American cultural history. I heard city street corners, fried food, conversations, trends and styles of musics that have come before, but that were now being recontextualized into a living message of who we are. Like the griot he is, Ranelin tells his stories, but they are our stories. Just when you think you know where he’s going, he throws something unexpected at you. This is the joy of art that is so rare in contemporary music. It is the unique expression of the well-considered original thought.
The full house was cheering, whooping and hollering in the way that real music fans will respond when the artist truly delivers the goods. We cannot help ourselves.
I’m shouting it from the rooftops. Phil Ranelin rules!
courtesy Wayne Kramer
Arthur Magazine 