Rudy Wurlitzer and Gary Indiana
Nog and The Shanghai Gesture
(Two Dollar Radio, 2009)
Originally published in 1969, Nog became a universally revered cult novel and symbol of the countercultural movement, famously inspiring Thomas Pynchon to declare that “the Novel of bullshit is dead.” In Wurlitzer’s signature hypnotic and haunting voice, Nog tells the tale of a man adrift through the American West, armed with nothing more than his own three pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere.
The Shanghai Gesture is internationally acclaimed author Gary Indiana’s sixth novel, and his first since 2003- Do Everything in the Dark. While the signatures of Indiana’s prose style are at play in this work- his aggressive satire and the astounding poetry of his language- they are turned to an altogether new frequency, that of the notorious, the diabolical, Fu Manchu. The Shanghai Gesture is a clever, hilarious, and daringly perverse new tale in which Gary Indiana reasserts himself as a true original.
Seating is limited, please call 212.255.4022 for reservations.
“Territory BBQ and Records is the new restaurant-slash-record-store from Tony Presedo and Curtis Brown—formerly of Tee Pee Records and the band Bad Wizard, respectively. They will stock heavy music and serve heavy food prepared in part by heavy chef [and longtime Arthur “Do the Math” columnist] Dave Reeves.”
May 21– IOAN CULIANU
Martyred Romanian historian of religion, philosopher, magic.
MAY 21, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Feast of the Triple Scoop.
ALSO ON MAY 21 IN HISTORY…
1471 — German artist Albrecht Dürer born, Nuremberg, Germany.
1690 — John Eliot, “Apostle to the Indians,” dies.
1844 — “Douanier” Henri Rousseau born, Lavalle, Mayenne, France.
1886— Universologist Stephen Pearl Andrews dies, New York City.
1904 — Jazz musician “Fats” Waller born, New York, New York.
1926 — Black Mountain, Beat poet Robert Creeley born, Arlington, Mass.
1935 — Hull House founder, social activist Jane Addams dies, Chicago, Illinois.
1956 — First aerial test of H-Bomb makes Bikini Atoll unlivable.
1991 — Romanian religious historian Ioan Culianu assassinated, Chicago, Illinois
Comics and history go together so perfectly, and we’ve got the pictures to prove it. Check out Michael Deforge’s website for more artwork and awesomeness!
A Deeper Shade of Doom How do the drone-metal bands Earth and Sunno))) get something out of nothingness?
By Brian Evenson Photography and layout by W. T. Nelson
Originally published in Arthur No. 20 (Dec 2005)
EARTH: BLACKING OUT In 1993 the Olympia, Washington-based band Earth released their second album, Earth 2. No drums, no voices, two guitars, nothing else. It was ambient music done by a demon on downers—highly lugubrious, with slowed-down underwater metal riffs. Earth 2 traded in the glam, stagy evil of classic heavy metal for a brooding darkness, simultaneously a descent into hell and a sort Buddhist chant pushing you toward either Nirvana or nothingness (you choose). It was the kind of wandering super-vibrating music that makes your leg tingle where you’d broken it ten years before. Not only was it something you couldn’t dance to, it was something you couldn’t move to. It slowly shut you down. And with each of its three tracks over fifteen minutes long, by the time you’d finished the album you felt like you’d never start back up again.
Earth 2 is the ur-album of drone metal (it’s probably not a coincidence that their name is the same one originally used by Black Sabbath). It’s nothing at all like the grunge stuff—Nirvana and Mudhoney for instance—that their then-label Sub Pop was putting out then. But after Earth 2, the band—really just guitarist Dylan Carlson and whoever he wanted to partner with at the time—moved in different directions. Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions, a hard-to-find album from 1995 that you can pick up on disk for around $90 (or at itunes for $9), added one more guitarist and, for one track, a drummer. 1996’s Pentastar (In the Style of Demons) was still drone-y but just a hair away from being a rock album: cleaner sound, drums on all the tracks, deliberate shapes to the songs (most of which ran around five minutes), and even some vocals.
I’M NOT ALLOWED TO WEAR TIE-DYED CLOTHING. My girlfriend and those friends of mine who truly have my best interests at heart forbid it. For most people this is an obvious and easy style rule to adhere to. But during certain times of the year I am overwhelmed by the Grateful Dead. I listen to nothing but live recordings of Dead concerts while immersing myself in books detailing the minutiae of their 30-year career. I search through David Dodd’s “Annotated Grateful Dead Lyric Archive,” reading up on the roots of “Fennario,” a made-up world of timber forests and treacherous marshland mentioned in two of my favorite songs, “Dire Wolf” and “Peggy-O.” Judging from the number of Dead recordings in my collection one can draw an easy conclusion that I am a certifiable Deadhead.
This is a problem because alongside New Age or contemporary country, “Grateful Dead” is a genre of music with acknowledged questionable merits. This has something to do with the schizophrenic quality of said music: the May 14, 1974 “Dark Star” performed in Missoula, Montana sounds like “In A Silent Way” as interpreted by Sonic Youth but nearly every performance of “Lazy Lightnin’” sounds like coke-snorting yuppies getting funky in tie-dyed Izods. The Dead toured with both Love and Waylon Jennings in the ‘70s but were collaborating with Bruce Hornsby and Joan Osborne by the ‘90s. I hear their influence on classic Meat Puppets and latter-day Boredoms albums, but their official inheritors are cornball bands like The String Cheese Incident and Phish. They count among their fans legions of Hell’s Angels as well as Tipper and Al Gore. There are a lot of ways to listen to the Grateful Dead. As legendary concert promoter and longtime Dead booster Bill Graham once put it, “They’re not the best at what they do, they’re the only ones that do what they do.”
Mostly though, the Dead’s bad reputation is due to their fans. My latent Deadheadism causes my girlfriend to worry that at a certain point of saturation, she’ll come home from work to find me reeking of patchouli oil, clad in vibrant pajama bottoms and a tank top decorated with capering bears, my dilated pupils being the only reason I haven’t yet found something to juggle. “Fukengrüven, sister!” I’ll say as she comes through the door.
My most recent Grateful Dead binge kicked off when Islamic militants decapitated Nicholas Berg on the Internet. Oh yeah. No more NPR for me. Instead, a free-falling relapse into this December 26, 1969 Dead show at Southern Methodist University. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann is late getting to the venue, so Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir lay down this sublime acoustic set of murder ballads and old Christian folk songs that they refer to as “sacred numbers.” It’s the only known recording of their version of “Gathering Flowers for the Master’s Bouquet,” which is really something to be excited about for a closet Deadhead like me. The show provides a wonderful escape—the Dead always seem so detached from reality and that’s exactly what I’m looking for.
I was looking for a similar kind of escape in 1991 while en route to my first Grateful Dead show. I wanted to see if the Deadheads might offer a more organic, hedonistic alternative to the existentialist discomfort of my central Indiana high school experience.
A lot of people I know have recently fallen victim to head colds, cough, flu and other maladies that keep us all back from doing what we need to do every day. After fighting off a bad cold for the last few days, I thought it would be helpful to share a recipe I put together to combat it, because nobody wants to be sick. This just might keep you from falling to the wayside…
Apple Ginger Mint Juice
2 apples, chopped (I recommend Fuji, but use whatever you want)
1 heaping tablespoon ginger paste (found at most Indian grocery stores, helps with consistency)
1 handful chopped mint (cheaper if you grow it yourself, great in the summer)
1 teaspoon Maca Powder (If you’re into that sort of thing…)
1 big squeeze of lemon juice
2 cups orange juice (or substitute part water until liquidy enough to fit your taste)
1 cup ice
Blend it all together – and voila! Your immune system will be better equipped to fight anything that crosses its path.
Arthur Magazine 