About this document:
Idea-rich early announcement broadside (there will be more) for an event that happened on either April 2, 1967 or April 9, 1967. Author is anonymous, as most of the best Diggers documents are, but one would guess that Peter Berg, Lenore Kandel and (perhaps?) Peter Coyote and Emmett Grogan had something to do with the specific text laid down here. The concept of “life-acting” is made explicit; street theater is made literal; life becomes play.
About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.
Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”
Something to Rah-Rah-Rah About for Christmas
By STUART ELLIOTT
November 11, 2009
…The Gap campaign — created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami and Boulder, Colo., owned by MDC Partners — includes, in addition to the commercials, print advertisements, a presence on Facebook and a four-city tour by a troupe of cheerleaders and drummers who will “appear in unexpected places when you least expect it,” said Ivy Ross, executive vice president of marketing for the Gap brand at Gap in San Francisco. …
“We were very conscious of the environment we’re in,” she added, and the idea was to produce a campaign that was “optimistic and bold,” countering the concept that “some people say you can’t be happy this year because we’re going through a crisis.”
Because “we’re going through hard economic times,” Ms. Ross said, the goal was “to liberate our customers to celebrate the holidays.”
And “instead of holiday carols, cheers are the biggest call to action,” she added.
The fast pace of the commercials, and their choreographed cast members, call to mind successful Gap spots in the 1990s in which khaki-clad dancers performed to musical genres like swing.
“The element that is similar is the high energy,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s saying: ‘Smile a little bit, don’t be burdened by what you think you should be doing. There are no shoulds.’ ” …
The reason Gap will resume running Christmas commercials is that “we really felt we wanted to wait till we had something to talk about,” Ms. Ross said. …
To underscore those messages, one commercial will promote a “buy one, get one” sale on merchandise from Nov. 25 to Nov. 27.
The dancing cheerleaders spell out the retail acronym for such sales, chanting, “B-o-g-o!”
NOVEMBER 23 — GRACCHUS BABEUF
French Revolutionist, founder of the Conspiracy of Equals.
NOVEMBER 23, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Japan: NIINAME-SAI, harvest festival. ST. CLEMENT’S DAY: Processions of blacksmiths and (mad) hatters.
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 23 IN HISTORY…
1170 BC — First recorded strike takes place, in Egypt, by laborers working on a pyramid.
1760 — French revolutionary François-Noel Babeuf born, St. Quentin, France.
1883 — Radical Mexican muralist José Orozco born, Zapotlán, Jalisco, Mexico.
1888 — Film comedian Harpo Marx born.
1927 — American belle-lettrist Guy Davenport born, Anderson, South Carolina
About this document:
Another wisdom broadside from an anonymous pen; best guess is it’s Chester Anderson.
About this series:
Arthur is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.
Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”
This C & D session was originally published in Arthur No. 31 (September 2008)…
C & D Two confirmed schmucks grapple with the big issues.
C: Our work continues. D: Or at least our drinking does. Ahahaha. C: [frowns George Will-style] Let the record show that whatever we say from this point forward about any of these records that the Arthur staff have so carefully assembled will invariably be colored by what we’ve just been listening to: Born to Be with You by Dion, 1975, produced by Phil Spector, downloaded off the Heat Warps blog. We are basking in its rather substantial afterglow. D: A stone gem beaut of an album…which, by the way, has never been released in America! What is wrong with you people? C: Have some pity on a country in decline. And you full well know it’s (apparently) Mr. Spector himself that kept the record from ever being released here. But keeping to the point: the readers should know that not only did we just listen to it, we just listened to it three times in a row. We are smitten by this version of “(He’s Got) The Whole World In His Hands,” which just sorta echoes all over creation in a melancholy way… D: [muses] It is strange to feel so instantly nostalgic for a record you’ve never heard. And yet I have been having that distinct feeling for the last hour and 25 minutes as we have been watching the sun go down over the Manhattan skyline while listening to the wonderful, stirring, heartfelt, heretofore unheard-by-these-ears work of the incomporable team of Mr. Dion and Mr. Spector. I guess it’s what they call that old deja voodoo, eh? C: Ha, yes I suppose they do…
FELA! A New Musical at 37 Arts in New York City Book by Jim Lewis & Bill T. Jones D: So you went to a musical? C: Yes, I did. D: How did you like it? Did you laugh? Did you CRY? C: From the first minute when the actor playing Fela sauntered by, two rows in front of me, on the way to the stage in his pink jumpsuit, led by his dancer/singer/wives, as Antibalas played the opening to “Everybody Scatter,” I was weeping openly. D: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It is said that dancing by yourself in your living room to Fela Kuti music is the only known cure for depression. C: If it is that good, imagine what it must be like if you dance with others to it in public! The collective righteous joy is unbelievable. This thing broke me out of my post-David Foster Wallace suicide negative power zone. D: So it was a full-on simulation? C: Well… It’s not simply a tribute/costume concert, it’s an extremely brilliant musical-fueled biography of the man himself. The piece is two hours, 40 minutes and is set inside Fela’s club in Lagos, the Shrine. It’s 1976, I think, and he is onstage performing, and preparing to leave Nigeria. He’s had it with the ongoing corruption and idiocy in Nigeria. The government has arrested him, the military has stormed his commune, beaten and raped his wives and thrown his mother out of a second story window, leading to her eventual death. So he’s in and out of songs and monologues, reviewing his life to that point, smoking his big marijuana joints, laughing and crying and leading this band and this dance troupe, putting on this two-tier Afrobeat performance of… It’s spellbinding, just awesome, and I gotta say… As somebody who’s watched every second of available Fela Kuti footage out there, I thought I’d understood, as best I was gonna be able to understand in 2008, the man and the music. Well, I was totally wrong. D: Wouldn’t be the first time! C: Quiet. It’s one thing to see the pictures, to see the video, but to actually BE there, with the whole force of the music and the costumes and the VIBE in your face, at full volume, done with such love and care and attention to detail, with so much thought put into it… I don’t really understand how they did it, especially the guy who plays Fela, this brilliant actor named Sahr Ngaujah. Who inhabits him, completely, scarily. It’s enough to make you weep. D: Which you did. C: I should report that there is one major inaccuracy: the size of Fela’s rolled joints of Igbo, here it’s like a cigar but really they were more like torches. D: Like a baby’s arm? C: More like a bodybuilder’s. D: That’s something they can fix when it goes to Broadway. C: All the shit Fela talked about, it’s still true. More true. Bankers, government officials, colonial-minded lackeys, cowards, fools. Vampire Weekend? If only. It’s been a Vampire Millennium. And I can’t think of an artist alive today with the balls, and the trickster humor, and the anger, and the appetite for pleasure, and the gift for performance, and the raw charisma, the undeniable conviction, that he had. Did you know how musicians and other artists are not allowed to express views of the world in America? And if they break the rule, it’s cause for alarm and outrage and Drudge-shaming and record-banning and harassment and slandering and worse from the well-funded right-wing authoritarians. Don’t be political at the Oscars! Now is not the time! Nor at the Emmys. Oprah shouldn’t endorse! And so on. Because apparently they sometimes confuse the message from the government and break the entertainment moment that the viewer was anticipating, and indeed had every right to expect, given their school training and subsequent mediated experiences. The timing of Fela! is impeccable. He couldn’t believe the public would fall for this shit that the people in power were pulling. D: But we do. C: Over and over again.
NOVEMBER 22 — MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS
Mexican painter, author, bon vivant, adventurer.
NOVEMBER 22, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
ST. CECILIA’S DAY: as patroness of musicians her day is observed with a
variety of music festivals. START YOUR OWN COUNTRY DAY.
Climax, Georgia: SWINETIME. “This homecoming for past residents pro-
motes swine and raises funds for the Climax Community Club.”
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 22 IN HISTORY…
1718 — Pirate Blackbeard (Edward Teach) killed with 25 bullets.
1819 — British novelist George Eliot born, Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire.
1904 — Mexican painter, author Miguel Covarrubias born, Mexico City, Mexico.
1916 — Socialist novelist Jack London dies by his own hand, Glen Ellen, California.
1930 — Nation of Islam founded by Prophet Elijah Mohammed.
1963 — British Christian mystic, novelist C. S. Lewis dies, Oxford, England.
1963 — British novelist, psychedelic pioneer Aldous Huxley dies, Hollywood.
1963 — U.S. Prez John Kennedy assassinated in right-wing coup, Dallas, Texas.
From Shrinebuilder’s debut album available now from the good people at Neurot Recordings.
SHRINEBUILDER is:
Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om)
Wino (St. Vitus, The Obsessed, Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand)
Scott Kelly (Neurosis)
Dale Crover (Melvins)
Note: Al Cisneros’ 2009 Arthur CD “Transmissions From Sinai” is now available from the Arthur Store for $12US postpaid. Also, a few copies of Arthur No. 9, which featured Wino on the cover, are still available from the Arthur Store as well.
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