from http://www.extragolden.com/

January 6 , 2008

“As many of you are probably aware, the political situation in Kenya is extremely volatile right now. There was a general election on December 27 whose pro status quo results have been universally condemned as rigged by the international community. Even the incumbent’s hand-picked election manager is unwilling to confirm his boss’s re-election as honest and fair. While the integrity of Kenya’s fragile democracy is at stake, it is the people who are suffering the most. Violence has spread throughout the country, with hundreds already murdered. Businesses that haven’t been destroyed are shut.

“Opiyo Bilongo, Onyango Wuod Omari and Onyango Jagwasi are three members of Extra Golden who live in Nairobi. They all have large extended families for whose well-being they are entirely responsible. Of course, as musicians, that well-being is provided for through nightly work at clubs. With dusk-to-dawn curfews in place, these men are all unable to work, and a subsistence that was already hand-to-mouth has become non-existent. They have been forced to leave their homes, which have subsequently been looted. Their families have almost no food and no clean water. Even with the swiftest possible resolution to the country’s debilitating political situation, it is hard to foresee a time in the near future when these men will be able to go back to work.

“As the bandmates and friends of these exceptional men, we are used to helping them out of financial jams but, as musicians ourselves, this critical situation is one that is simply beyond our own means. While the plights of Bilongo, Omari and Jagwasi are by no means unique in a country full of desperation, it is within our power to help them and their families directly. We are asking for donations of $5. Of course we will accept any amount you can muster, but we believe that with enough contributions of $5 we can make a huge difference in our friends’ lives.

“To make a donation, please use the donate button [at http://www.extragolden.com/] or go to www.paypal.com and choose “send money”. When asked for the email address of the recipient, enter service@kanyokanyo.com. Please feel free to forward this message. We thank you in advance for your compassion and we hope that your help will enable us to compose a song of thanks for our next album.”

FARMER DAVE’S TOP 21 FOR 2007

1. Otto Hauser (musician) and Brandy Flower (visual artist)
Two really great men who’ve never met, but were my 2007 favorites for the same reasons; they are really talented and humble, and they both travel where they’re needed and just lay it down, making them pillars of their respective communities.

2. persimmons
I was astonished to eat this thing for the first time… like a dessert bread… heard if you freeze them, it’s like ice cream.

3. local media in Los Angeles
L.A. morning TV news, papers, and radio stations… I’ve really been enjoying tuning in to see what everybody’s watching and hearing.. never used to do that, but I like the immediacy of receiving something at the same time as millions of other people around you… I’d forgotten that feeling after spending so much time on more obscure books, news sources, music, and movies that you usually watch alone or with a couple of other people tops… (Channel 9 News, News 980, LA Times, KPFK, KXLU, Dublab.com, Classical 91.5 fm, Latino96.3, Indie 103.1–Jones’s Jukebox and Rollins’s show)

4. NYC
I spent more time there this year than I ever have before, and really enjoyed it. Thanks to all my people over there for taking me under your wings, especially Miss Carol Sharks xox

5. Traveling
See the world, get around, gather no moss, get oxygen

6. Symphonic software
Nowadays you can get really decent sound programs that run on your computer and turn you into a one-person orchestra…I’ve waited years for this technology to develop to the point where quality sampled sounds are affordable and accessible to people everywhere ….faster computers have really helped out, as have the people behind some good new products like MOTU ( Mark of the Unicorn) Symphonic, and M-Tron…

7. nocturnalism
I spent more of 2007 in the night than the day. This kind of living has it’s downsides, but between the hours of 1 am and 5 am, I was way too happy to care. If you’re out on the town, there’s plenty of excitement; if you’re at home, there’s a beautiful stillness and quiet to the world, and sounds float more easily..

8. Marvin Gaye-
There’s a live DVD that came out last year…. the footage and music video for “What’s Goin On?” is really moving and heavy.

9. skateboarding again
A big ’80s deck, big Shogo Kubo wheels, rolling around like they never invented the Ollie and having a great time all year… and I stopped worrying about finding good parking spaces… thanks to Eric Shea in SF for getting me started again…

10. surfing on moving buses/subway trains
don’t hold on to any hand rails, bend the knees, and roll with the bumps and sudden jerks.. place one hand in the air to act as a vibe antenna… it’s a fun practice, and lifts you up….

11. Megauploading
lots of big information flying around really fast between good friends is awesome.

12. Pynchon’s “Against the Day”
This 1,000 + page book could be a real chore sometimes, but filled with plenty of enjoyments for the Arthurian reader; it deals with some really fun concepts from the world of the late 1800s through the First World War. You get aeronauts and aether, Robber Barons, Icelandic Spar, and a lot of Tesla, amongst many other things.

13. Pandora
Spins a good thread based on your entered area of musical interest

14. Anchovya the Cat
I’ve been very happy with this cat.

15. Left hand—
develop brains in both hands, try and switch even the most meaningless activities to the other hand… in my case, I want the left hand to be a good low end piano player. Also switched mouse to left hand to avoid repetitive stress…

16. Heatwarps
Good musical source of information

17. J.J. Hat Company in NYC
A fine shop with really classic hats. Thanks to Otto Hauser (see #1)

18. Mexico
A nearby faraway place you can still dream in, but staying aware when you’re there is a must….

19. Elliptical Machines
A good workout for the body without taxing any joints too badly or getting too ripped,
muscle-wise.

20. Voice development
This life-changing practice involves producing sound via the different resonating chambers of your head and torso…. really fun and rewarding, great at first in shower and car, then carries over into everyday social life, increasing energy and confidence, alleviating boredom, and boosting conversation skill… just start humming!

21. Aging
Getting on in years, more patience and tolerance, greater perspective… Also, inner depths become vaster, brighter/darker, and way more controlled/chaotic. I’ve really enjoyed marking these changes in myself, friends and relations…

There’s a reason everybody loves Farmer Dave.

2007 list, Joe Carducci

These aren’t all of the year exactly or by a long shot but I’ve spent good time with them in the past year and recommend them:

FILMS:
Ford at Fox, Silent Epics: Just Pals / Four Sons / The Iron Horse / Hangman’s House / Bad Men. This is a four-disc John Ford mini-box that is available separately from the massive complete collection. The films are from the 20s and are in excellent condition and Ford’s eye for setting up a shot is even better here when he was in his early thirties. And the title cards don’t allow for as much malarky.

Spirit of the Beehive, 1973 (Victor Erice)
Cria Cuervos, 1975 (Carlos Saura)
Two great Spanish films from the late Franco years reissued to dvd, both starring non-professional child actress Ana Torrent as the death-haunted little girl both filmmakers seemed to require to look at their own culture clearly. These and recent Iranian and Chinese films suggest there might be worse things for art than censorship.

TCM whenever they’re showing anything made between 1920 and 1935; just leave it on.

BOOKS:
It’s hard to keep my head above the newspapers and magazines to get to the books but these two are great:

–Monsters from the Id – The Rise of Horror in Fiction and Film, by E. Michael Jones. Pull quote: “To recapitulate the past forty years of film history, which was in its way a recapitulation of the past two hundred and fifty years of the Enlightenment: they wanted sex but got horror instead.”

–Wittgenstein’s Vienna, by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin.
Lightbourne forced this one on me; pull quote: “After studying nineteenth-century Habsburg history, one can hardly deny the charm of Hegelian dialectic, as a mode of historical explanation; for in it one continually sees situations begetting their own opposites. The effort to introduce German in place of Latin, so as to streamline Imperial administration, begat Hungarian and Czech cultural nationalism by reaction, and this in due course developed into a political nationalism. Slav nationalism in the politics and economics in turn begat German economic and political nationalism; and this in its turn begat anti-Semitism, with Zionism as a natural Jewish reaction. All in all, it is enough to cause one’s head to spin.”

NON-RADIO TUNES:
-Grandpa’s Ghost “Bardot I-IV”
Finally in release as part of the GG document dump of 2 double albums, a quadruple album and an ep last month. These four rock drones roar along and can make even Nebraska look like Wyoming going by; I just tried it.
-Michael Hurley “Knockando”
A perfect Hurley solo tune as its clockwork-like melody hinges on its pokey rhythm. Seems to be about some kind of Michael Finn.
-Darker My Love “Post Mortem Post Boredom”
Blurred fuzzed trudge; be nice if there were a twenty minute version.
-The Places “Program Ten”
From Amy Annelle’s earlier Places album this piece of folk strum is run against noise interference and a backing vocal chorus that seems to come in via bleedthrough from a shortwave band, yet perfect to kick it into another dimension.
-Souled American “Libertyville”
It’ll be on their next album they say. I heard it twice at the Upland Breakdowns last August. I’m guessing its about a stone casualty: “He, he must have seen it all” is the chorus punchline.

RADIO TUNES:
-Miranda Lambert “Famous in a Small Town”
This is about as much as Nashville will concede to Memphis and that’s pretty good.
-Tim McGraw “When the Stars Go Blue”
Ryan Adams delicate ballad on Nashville steroids; ham-handed, maybe even gruesome, but awesome as well.
-Good Charlotte “Don’t Wanna Be in Love”
Its keyboard-imbued guitar chords reprise hair metal pop strategies. There’s always a classic or two in any genre haystack but don’t tell them that.

RELAPSES:
Robin Trower in the 21st century. You can’t read about these or hear them on the radio but when I checked one out I bought all his recent stuff:
-“Go My Way”
This is his best album, even better than 1973’s “Twice Removed from Yesterday.” Very clean under-driven psychedelia that starts with a nine minute work out over great drumming.
-“Living Out of Time”
Almost as good; a ten minute song is at the end of this one.
-“Another Days Blues”
Without the wah wah pedal it’s Albert King trending Brit blues-rock although Trower was always pretty intimate for arena rock.

-Black Sabbath “The Dio Years”
I saw this at Wal-Mart in a nice package and since I don’t pull out the vinyl often I bought it. It’d be hard for this to have the same resonance that it does for we who lived within earshot of Black Flag, Global and SST. But “Heaven and Hell” and “Mob Rules” were their second wind and this comp has three new tunes to launch their third wind which puts them right up there with Anita O’Day or somebody, right? It was common knowledge around Global that Carmen Appice’s little brother Vinny was the better drummer and the title track from “Mob Rules” displays beautifully how he could trade a dropped beat for massive pick-up power. And Geezer’s little prelim bend is just unfair; it’s up there with “Supernaut” as musical thuggery (to use Jeff Beck’s term).

LAST TOWER RECORDS PURCHASES Dec. 2006 in Las Vegas, where they never quite got the café opened in the Wow Center, and in Torrance:
-“Legends of Country Blues” (5xCD, JSP, $22): Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Tommy Johnson, Ishmon Bracey.
-Memphis Minnie “Queen of Country Blues, All the Published Sides 1929-1937 in Chronological Order” (5xCD, JSP, $22)
-Lonnie Johnson “The Original Guitar Wizard” (4xCD, Proper, $22)
-Secret Hate “Vegetables Dancing” (CD, .50). Lost gem from the Minutemen’s New Alliance label; nice to see it on CD. I could have bought 50 of them.

Joe Carducci, a former A & R force at SST, is an advisor and contributor to Arthur; he wrote an essay on contemporary culture in Arthur’s very first issue back in fall 2002, and “Charles Bronson, Dark Buddha” in Arthur No. 10. More importantly, he is the author of the justly celebrated “Rock and the Pop Narcotic,” recently reprinted on Carducci’s own Redoubt Press, and the new sorta-memoir of his SST Years, “Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That.”

ELISA RANDAZZO’S TOP PICKAROOS FOR 2007

Best place I played for the first time:
Smiley’s in Bolinas, CA

Best Activities & Places:
The Integratron sound bath & weekend in a geodesic dome
Nevada City gigs and relaxing at the swimming hole
Ortman Vineyard’s wine tasting
Bolinas, every bit of it
Bike riding in the mist outside Santa Barbara

Most Exciting Personal Moment:
Co-writing with Bridget St. John

Sad Happenings:
Our President
The closing of Village Music, Mill Valley, CA
Our President
Deaths of: Lee Hazlewood, Oscar Peterson,Max Roach, Ingmar Bergman, Marcel Marceau
Our President

Visual:
The Valerie Project showing -Got to hand it to them Espers & AM for sharing this with us!
The Power of Nightmares -by Adam Curtis -hard to watch because it’s so true…

Best old records discovered on Vinyl:
Don Nix
The Hotdogs LP, say what you mean [see cover above]

Best Archives released/Re-issues:
Neil Young – Massey Hall 1971
Stephen Stills Demos
Mark Fry –Dreaming With Alice
Emmy Lou Rarities Box- Songbird
Grateful Dead – Three From the Vault

Best Live Gigs:
Neil Young live at The Nokia
Ramblin Jack playing after the showing of his documentary at
EmmyLou live at The Derby

Most Ridiculous Night Out
Motley Crue, London

Culture Vulture Activities…..
Richard Serra exhibit
Surrealistic Things Exhibit @ V&A Museum
Dali in Film

ELISA RANDAZZO is a lady of considerable taste and talent, and a source of constant wonderment. She is currently designing for her Dusty of California line of clothing, writing music with Bridget St. John (!) and finishing a new set of Randazzo & Robinson songs. Plus she’s probably cooking..

DAVID KATZNELSON’S BEST OF 2007…

1. Folk Yeah Festivals in BIG SUR at Ferndale: The best environment for Arthurtastic musical warmth and great bands to fill it (Howlin Rain, Vetiver, Whalebones, Tarnation…).

2. Bruce Springsteen’s Magic: Yeah, I didn’t believe it either…and when Ethan Miller threw the disc at me, I stared it in the eyes for days before slipping it in the car stereo. But to play it is to hear the vibrancy and almost garage feel of the Boss engaging with his classic fifties roots with all the pop melodies that made his pre-Born in the USA albums classics.

3. The Shooting Gallery/White Walls: This radical art gallery is a high point of San Francisco culture bringing new artists to the public in ways that attract both the young and the old, the hipsters and the people I relate to…throwing the best jam-packed art openings on the block to give witness to some of the forward thinkers of this generation of artists (like: Mike Davis, Travis Louie, Eric Joyner, Ausgang, Andrew Schoultz, Jeremy Fish).

4. Aquarius Records: Still THE BEST PLACE for old-fashioned Mom And Pop-type store advice about the most crazed-out music of life. And their Internet lists are bi-monthly highlights as well, offering music with each review and a host of Black Metal cassettes to choose from.

5. Archive.org: The greatest place for LEGAL AND FREE downloadable movies. Sure they are pre-iphone and often pre-b movie fodder, but where else can you see NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, 39 STEPS, DOA, M, WHITE ZOMBIE, RASHOMAN alongside unknown gems like Maciste In Hell (1926), Heading For Heaven (with a pre Beverly Hillbillies Granny Irene Ryan), and Harold Diddleback (the final Preston Sturges picture)??

6. The Turner Family August BBQ (Senatobia, MS): Best one yet since patriarch Otha Turner’s passing. Featuring: R L Boyce, Lightnin’ Malcolm, R L Burnside Jr, Cedric Burnside, and the Rising Star Fife And Drum Band.

7. Os Mutantes at the Stern Grove Festival: thousands of people—ALL AGES–digging the craziest Brasília psych for the first time…for free…with guitars that blazed tones that Kicked Out The Jams in serious mid-’70s Detroit fashion.

8. “Life Is A Problem…BUT WHERE THERE IS LIFE THERE IS HOPE”…just ask this vinyl-only garage-gospel stunner on Mississippi Records.

9. La Tapatia: All other burritos are put to shame by this establishment in South San Francisco. I know those are fighting words for Mission-goers and Southern California Mexican Foodologists…but Tapatia puts EVERYONE to shame.

10. Jack Hirschman: A social justice oriented people’s poet who took the given title of SF Poet Laureate to new heights, throwing a true international poetry festival that brought the medium not only to life, but to fiery awareness in the Bay Area (imported poets included: Cletus Nelson-Nwadike, Agneta Falk, Alberto Masala, Maram Al-Masri and Aharon Shabtai).

11. Brute Force with Daughter Of Force at SXSW: Thanks to legendary record collector Geoffrey Weiss, I witnessed the craziest duo in pop history—the father being an ex-Token and big-time 60s songwriter– singing songs like TO SIT ON A SANDWICH and the John Lennon approved KING OF FUH with his daughter.

12. All the great meat consumed: Davis Grocery, House Of Prime Rib, Harris’, Jon Blaufarb’s Ribs, Dal Rae, Peter Luger’s, Acme Chophouse, Mom’s brisket, Meatshos, Como Steak House, Interstate BBQ, Sammy’s Romanian……..

13. Rock of the elder statesmen: Spiritualized at Bimbos, Flaming Lips in Tulsa, The Pogues at the Fillmore, Leon Russell in Tulsa (Tulsa rocks), John Fogerty at Glastonbury, Lester Chambers in Golden Gate park, Jimmy McCracklin in Golden Gate Park, Mavis Staples with the North Mississippi All-Stars in Santa Cruz, Crime at Lou Lou’s 16th birthday party. Blistering.

14. The Jim Ford lyric from his righteous 2007 reissue of Harlan County: “I’m Going To Make Her Love Me Til The Cows Come Home”…..

15. Last but most important: the continued resurgence of the ultimate medium of music recordings: VINYL!!!!!!

David Katznelson has a deserved reputation as one of the enduring Good Guys of the record industry, and always has his fingers in a lot of tasty pies. These days he’s running his label Birdman Records, working on the Reboot Stereophonic series, thinking hard for money, and officially appreciating San Francisco with the SFAS amongst other things. Good to know ya, Dave, and keep up the good, grand work!

Counterculture Decor: Abby Banks a photographer, documented 42 unconventional interiors for a new book, “Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy.”

January 3, 2008 New York Times

Anarchy Rules: The Dishes Stay Dirty
By PENELOPE GREEN

THERE are certain things you can count on in a punk house. A killer name: Anarchtica, Scribble Squat, Collective A Go-Go, Firebreathing Kangaroo. Lots of bikes and skateboards. Homemade tattoos. A tattered photocopy of “Soy, Not ‘Oi!’,” the vegan anarchist’s “Joy of Cooking.” Guests are always welcome in a punk house, if they follow the rules: “Don’t be a jerk!” reads a guest policy sign in one.

The punk house might be a trailer, a van, a warehouse or a bus. There are lots of treehouses, and more than a few squats. The old anarchist’s dictum — all property is theft — is part and parcel of the punk-house mindset, which is lovingly chronicled in a new book of photographs by Abby Banks, a 29-year-old artist. Ms. Banks found all 42 of the houses collected in “Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy,” out last month from Abrams Image, the art and pop culture imprint of Harry N. Abrams, in the same way: by phoning a few friends.

The punk house is a curious and sometimes beautiful habitat, the expression of a music scene and do-it-yourself culture that went underground decades ago, in an attempt to opt out of just about everything that smacked of the mainstream: cities, clubs, bars, alcohol, processed foods, agribusiness and the record companies, for example, not to mention all media larger than a photocopied zine. With its roots in old-fashioned counterculture communes (like Findhorn in Scotland, but really messy, and with a thrash-hardcore beat), the punk house is a multifunctional dwelling: typically a place for like-minded males in their 20’s to live and to make and hear music. This is not to say that there aren’t all-female punk houses (there are) or ones with girls living among the boys. As with punk itself, the punk house eludes a tidy definition. “Punk Is (Whatever We Made It To Be)” is the title of a song from the Minutemen, a punk band in the early ’80s.

As Thurston Moore, a member of the art-house alt-punk bank Sonic Youth, who helped Ms. Banks find a publisher for her work and contributed an essay to the book, said recently: “It’s just a completely liberated aesthetic.”

You won’t find many punk houses in major urban areas because, as Mr. Moore explained, “you don’t go to the media eye of New York or Los Angeles to achieve success.” Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to live a punk life in areas with costly real estate.

Bands on tour don’t play gigs at the Meadowlands or even the Knitting Factory; they’re more likely to appear in basements and living rooms. There’s a preponderance of acoustic guitars: big amps might spook the neighbors.

Mr. Moore’s own successes are more commercial. In his essay for Ms. Banks’s book, he writes of his experience walking into a legendary punk house in Minneapolis wearing a nice winter parka and sneakers, whereupon he was promptly sneered at. “I didn’t know they let subversives in here,” sniped one resident wearing a leather jacket stamped with the Dead Kennedys logo.

Though she was once in a thrash-punk band called Vomit Dichotomy Ms. Banks has never lived in a punk house, but she has an enormous appetite for the aesthetic. “It’s self-expression in the living space, not just on their bodies,” she said, noting that punk-house interiors are logo-centric. As with T-shirts or tattoos, they contain lots of writing — hortatory, descriptive, diaristic — on walls, door jambs, stoves and toilets.

“I’m so goth I’m dead,” is inscribed on a wall of a punk house in Minneapolis. “Dead witnesses tell no tales,” is on the back of a toilet in another.

Ms. Banks grew up in a tidy 1920s bungalow in Claremont, Calif. Her mother is a city planner; her father a psychology professor and an aerobics instructor who was seriously into all kinds of music, including punk. “It was more than acceptable in our house to blast the Ramones,” she said. Ms. Banks’s own room was embellished with layers of stickers, fliers for shows, and blue paint. When she sent her mother a copy of the book, Ms. Banks reported, “she said, ‘Every room looks like your room!’”

She’d always made art but never a photograph, until one day after art school, when she had an epiphany. She’d been drifting, she said, working as a maid and dog walker for David Foster Wallace, who lived two blocks away from her mother’s house in California. She had friends at The Fourth Street House, a punk house in San Pedro. There was a show there one day; dueling bands were playing the kitchen and the living room and passing the mike back and forth.

The house was about to be sold, and its distinctive flourishes — the casket outside, the skate ramp out back — dismantled.

“I wanted to document it before it went away,” said Ms. Banks, explaining that despite their hoary history, many punk houses are ephemeral. “I just think they’re really important and beautiful. For some people it will be their lifestyle forever, but for others it’s just a phase.”

She called upon an old band mate, Timothy Findlen, and they embarked in Ms. Banks’s maroon Ford Ranger on a three-and-a-half month road trip.

The Ranger is an art project in itself, layered with stenciled images of figures impish, historical and arcane, like Herman Munster, Anne Frank, and one Mr. Findlen made of Harry Smith, the music ethnographer, mystic and Bohemian who died of natural causes at the Chelsea Hotel. As they toured cross-country, Mr. Findlen would play shows, and Ms. Banks would take pictures. They brought house presents — a case of wine, Two-Buck Chuck, from Trader Joe’s, and a box of silk-screen T-shirts with the slogan “I’d Rather Be Dumpster-Diving,” made by a friend of Ms. Banks.

When those offerings ran out, Ms. Banks said, “all we had was to be nice” — and the offer of Mr. Findlen’s dish-washing services.

The ephemeral quality of punk houses became clear a year after the photographs were taken, when Ms. Banks returned to her subjects with photographic release permission forms from her publisher. Many of the houses were gone, she said, resulting in a scramble to find the former residents.

Last week, Andee Grrr, a 28-year-old zine writer now living in Brattleboro, Vt., described her three years at one of the oldest punk houses in Ms. Banks’s book, the 309 House in Pensacola, Fla. (It was so old, Ms. Banks said, “there were fliers on the wall for shows the year I was born,” 1978.) The house was a clapboard five-bedroom bungalow with a fluctuating number of residents and one “filthy, filthy bathroom.” The rent for each member was $25.

Ms. Grrr, like most of 309ers, volunteered at the End of the Line vegan-punk cafe across the street, living on her tips. Food was mostly free: bread from a bakery Dumpster and vegetables from the supermarket’s Dumpster. “The good part was there was always someone to talk to if you were feeling bad,” she said. “I developed some really strong friendships. And the rent was so low we didn’t have to work much. I could write a lot. The bad part was no clear boundaries.” And the aged scurf of the house, which she said was dirty to the core. “It was kind of a hopeless situation.” Generations of punks, she said, had lived in that house.

“I thought of calling the book, ‘No Lease,’” said Ms. Banks, who herself lives without a lease in Brattleboro, part of an art collective called the Tinderbox that’s nestled into a cavernous old dance studio. The difference between an art collective and a punk house, she explained, is that in the former you’re pretending you don’t live there, and in the latter you’re pretending you don’t make music there. The rent is $1,000, which Ms. Banks collects from her studio mates (there are about 20, living and working in rooms called Shantytown and Vegetable Street). When the rent collection comes up short, they have a show, Ms. Banks said, or sell T-shirts.

“When rent is cheap or free,” she said, “it leaves time to make art or travel.” Ms. Banks, who has a wide-open face and a keen eye for the life-force inherent in the making of art, takes inspiration from the photographs of a train-hopping friend, Mike Brodie, who goes by the name the Polaroid Kidd and is a kind of Nan Goldin to his train-hopping, punk house set. Ms. Banks’s eye is intimate, to be sure, but her pictures are sly and funny. And despite the profound grunge of the punk-house milieu, her photos are never tragic: they reveal a focused, almost manic energy, like a straight-edge song.

That the idea of the punk house endured for so many years is heart-warming to one 40-year-old former punk house resident. Joel Olson is now an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University. Back in the day, as he put it recently — which is to say from the late 1980s to the mid-90s — he was a zine editor and the author, with Jack Kahn, of the “Soy, Not ‘Oi!’” cookbook, copies of which Ms. Banks spotted in every house she visited. His Hippycore Krew House in Tempe, Ariz., had Green Day perform in its living room, as well as a “lot of malnourished vegan punks,” he said.

Being a vegan, as he pointed out, was nearly a punk given, a political act against industrialized agriculture and pro-animal rights, “but it was hard work.” In those pre-Internet days, he collected recipes from punk pen pals. They printed 2,000 copies, and sold them all. (A few years ago, AK Press, a radical publishing house, approached Mr. Olson for the rights to reprint his book, and it is now available at Amazon.) “I’m glad the punk house is still thriving,” he said. “It makes perfect sense for young people who don’t have much money and want to make music. The downside is that it seems to me punk culture hasn’t really evolved or developed.”

Certain icons, however, have endured, like the punk bathroom. Perhaps the greatest, said Mr. Moore, was the be-stickered, be-fliered and graffiti-emblazoned black hole in the basement of CBGB, the legendary (and now defunct) punk rock club in the Bowery.

“That’s the one thing that sears itself into your memory,” said Mr. Moore, breaking his reverie. “It’s that toilet.”

NOTE: An extended excerpt from PUNK HOUSE, with new, exclusive commentary by author/photographer Abby Banks, appeared in Arthur No. 27 (Dec 2007).

OS BRASILEIROS: Part I

Brazilian Art and Music

Jan. 5 – Jan. 17, 2008

Opening reception with a live musical performance by Katia Moraes

Saturday, January 5, 2008 8 pm – 12 am

“Featuring some of the best street and outsider artists from all over Brazil including Akeni, Alexandre Anjo, Alexandre Yassu, Andre Firmiano, Binho Barreto, Binho Ribeiro, Bruno Kurru, Cena7, Ciro Schu, Dalata, Daniel Bileu, Dask Two, DOC, Does, Flavio Morais, Flavio Samelo, FLIP, Graphis, Hyper, Jana Joana, Jey, Kaleb, Marcella França, Mateus Bailon, Milo, Pankill, Pato, Paulo Ito, Petite Poupee7, Prila Paiva, Raquel Schembri, Rodrigo Villas, Sesper, Suzue, Tatiana Guid, Thais Beltrame, Thiago Syen, Tiago Fazito, Tikka, Vitché, Yá!, Zeila Trevisan and more!”

Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art
1257 N. La Brea Avenue
West Hollywood, CA 90038
(SW corner of La Brea and Fountain)

The gallery is open Wednesday through Friday 3pm to 8pm, Saturday and Sunday 2pm to 7pm. Call 323.969.0600 for more information.
www.carmichaelgallery.com

“Headquarters Galerie & Boutique is proud to present a new solo exhibit by Montreal favorite Christopher Ross. Quietly mesmerizing, this collection of all new works features newly developed techniques showcasing a light, ethereal feeling that is rarely seen in acrylic paintings. Ross has created a dreamscape in which animals, humans and “in-betweens” seem to melt out of strange moon-like landscapes of lush smoky colour. Part ghostly, part dreamy, the perfect show to stumble into on a wintry January evening. You may even find yourself wanting to take a piece of this calm world home with you.

“All are welcome to join us for a fun night of drinks, amazing art and music by DJ Garry Vickers.”

Opening Party/Vernissage
Saturday, January 5th , 2008, 6-11pm
Headquarters Galerie & Boutique
1649 rue Amherst Montreal
514.678.2923
www.HQgalerieboutique.com