Author Archives for Jay Babcock

"There is a head that is inside of another head and we all walk outside of a pair of eyes that is the backdrop to a theater's stage…"

A press release from The Unit Breed‘s Joseph Demaree that we thought merited posting:

joeunitbreed

I paint things – www.josephdemaree.com
I make music – www.theunitbreed.com
I myspace – www.myspace.com/theunitbreed
I like to share – www.idiomism.com

Top 3 dreams this month
1. Swimming with my dad while he explains how he will be island-hopping by holding onto a rope tied to a cruse ship. While he starts his journey I float off in my sleeping bag across the water to a suburban island. A friend of mine joins me and breaks into a house where two little kids live. Their father comes out and thinks I’m there to purchase porn. The real porn buyer shows up behind me and I back away and join the blacks down by the docks where we dance and drink while a live band plays the blues.

2. While walking along the sidewalk of a large city, possibly New York, I am with three beautiful women. A carnival is passing by. The carnival consists mostly of rocker kids in punk get-ups on top of burned-out cars playing trashy music and showing off their peacock feathers. One of the cars makes a harsh turn and the band on the roof falls to the street but continue to play.

3. There is a head that is inside of another head and we all walk outside of a pair of eyes that is the backdrop to a theater’s stage. The audience are in penguin suits. Everything empties out and I am standing alone in what once was an active beautiful theater but now looks as if it has burned down in the 1920s.

Top 3 brain foods
1. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! – 2008
2. Terry Gilliam – Brazil – 1985
3. Carlos Castaneda – The Art of Dreaming – 1993

Top 3 life-changing experiences
1. Smoking DMT
2. The death of my father
3. Losing the hearing in my right ear

Top 3 recent visions
1. There is a man who is following me. He is not part of this world. I’ve most recently seen him in my basement, at a close friend’s house in Portland, and the most pronounced appearance was at 4 am at the Gingerbread House in San Jose CA the day after Halloween where he walked up to me and vanished.

2. There is a doorway inside of my basement. I’ve only seen it once. It opened in the center of my room and someone’s shadow closed it.

3. The week following my DMT experience a white-haired goat creature began peeking into my window. He has not been seen since I spoke about him.

Top 3 stupid tricks imagination drugs lights shadows and mirrors can play on you
1. Dimensional non-understanding
2. The beginning and end of all things
3. Perfection’s simple wonder

SWALLOWED UP AND SPIT OUT

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/lost-army-of-cambyses/


http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/cambyses-lost-army-images.html
http://news.discovery.com/videos/archaeology-ancient-lost-army-found.html
http://www.archeologiaviva.tv/tv/video/80

Vanished 2,500 Year Old Persian Army Found In Desert?
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/cambyses-army-remains-sahara.html
Bones found in Egyptian desert may be remains of Cambyses’ army
“The 50,000 warriors were said to be buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C. According to Herodotus, Cambyses sent the soldiers from Thebes to attack the Oasis of Siwa and destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun after the priests there refused to legitimize his claim to Egypt. After walking for seven days in the desert, the army got to an “oasis,” which historians believe was El-Kharga. After they left, they were never seen again. “A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear,” wrote Herodotus. As no trace of the hapless warriors was ever found, scholars began to dismiss the story as a fanciful tale. Now, two top Italian archaeologists claim to have found striking evidence that the Persian army was indeed swallowed in a sandstorm. Twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni are already famous for their discovery 20 years ago of the ancient Egyptian “city of gold” Berenike Panchrysos. Presented recently at the archaeological film festival of Rovereto, the discovery is the result of 13 years of research and five expeditions to the desert. According to Castiglioni, from El Kargha the army took a westerly route: “Since the oasis on the other route were controlled by the Egyptians, the army would have had to fight at each oasis.” To test their hypothesis, the Castiglioni brothers did geological surveys along that alternative route. They found desiccated water sources and artificial wells made of hundreds of water pots buried in the sand. Such water sources could have made a march in the desert possible. At the end of their expedition, the team decided to investigate Bedouin stories about thousands of white bones that would have emerged decades ago during particular wind conditions in a nearby area. Indeed, they found a mass grave with hundreds of bleached bones and skulls. “We learned that the remains had been exposed by tomb robbers and that a beautiful sword which was found among the bones was sold to American tourists,” Castiglioni said. A number of Persian arrow heads and a horse bit, identical to one appearing in a depiction of an ancient Persian horse, also emerged.”


Buried Alive
http://mitchtestone.blogspot.com/2008/10/lost-army-of-cambyses-redux.html
“The primary source for the tale of Cambyses and his lost army is the ancient Greek traveller and historian Herodotus, an intrepid man who travelled all over Egypt just 75 years after the Persian invasion. Herodotus followed in Cambyses’ footsteps and recorded the local tales and histories of the invader. Unfortunately his impartiality is questionable; his Histories slander Cambyses remorselessly, painting him as a despot, madman and general ne’er-do-well. According to Herodotus, an army of 50,000 men was ordered to ‘enslave the Ammonians and burn the oracle of Zeus’. Led by guides, the army set off into the desert, reaching ‘the city of Oasis’, known to the Greeks as ‘The Isles of the Blest’ (modern-day Kharga), seven days’ march to the west. After this, they were never seen again, although the Siwans themselves were somehow able to give a rough account of what happened next. If Herodotus is right, the Persian army met a bleak end. The Western Desert is one of the hardest places in the world to be looking for lost relics. It is vast, covering about two-thirds of modern-day Egypt: an area of 680,000 square kilometres (263,000 square miles), equal to the combined size of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland. The conditions are incredibly harsh and desolate. Much of the area is restricted owing in part to the millions of landmines from World War II. And there is always the likelihood that any finds that are stumbled across will soon be covered up by the shifting desert sands.”

Better Than Drawing Straws + Eating Each Other
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1938822,00.html
“While these 50,000 Persian warriors disappeared in the desert, Cambyses didn’t fare much better. At the time, he was marching on a kingdom in Ethiopia, but provisions ran out beneath a scorching sun and his troops were forced to pick lots having divided into groups of 10. According to Herodotus, the unfortunate 1 of each 10 was killed and eaten by the other ravenous troops. Cambyses eventually withdrew, chastened by Egypt and its desert.”

Dissent
http://rogueclassicism.com/2009/11/13/cambyses-lost-army-found-dont-eat-that-elmer/
http://rambambashi.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/cambyses-not-so-lost-army/
“…The Persians controled Egypt for more than a century (from 525 to c.401) and there must have been dozens of occasions on which soldiers were sent to the west. All these expeditions may have found itself lost in the western desert…”


Sandstorms 101
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/sandstorms-on-earth/2353
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/1289311.html

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – LEO TOLSTOY


NOVEMBER 20 — LEO TOLSTOY
Christian anarchist, novelist of epic and historic scale.

NOVEMBER 20, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Mexico: REVOLUTION DAY. WRITING ON THE WALL DAY.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 20 IN HISTORY…
1752 — British poet, forger, suicide Thomas Chatterton born, Bristol, England.
1816 — Term “scab” born at Albany Typographical Society.
1884 — American socialist leader Norman Thomas born, Marion, Ohio.
1910 — Russian anarchist, novelist Leo Tolstoy dies, Astapovo train station, Russia.
1945 — Nuremberg war crimes trial begins.
1969 — 78 Indians from 20 tribes seize Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
1975 — Spanish fascist Francisco Franco dies. (And he’s still dead!)
1978 — Surrealist painter, cultural renegade Giorgio de Chirico dies, Rome, Italy.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective.

“Blurred + Spacey”: Brightblack Morning Light’s Nabob Shineywater on SANDY BULL (Arthur, 2006)

Originally published in Arthur No. 25 (October 2006)

Blurred and Spacey
By Nabob Shineywater

Sandy Bull
Still Valentine’s Day 1969: Live at the Matrix, San Francisco
(Water)

When I was living in Point Reyes, my closest friends became people in their sixties. They would share stories with me as I managed the community print shop. One day I was listening to Sandy Bull, and a visiting Vietnam vet shared a great story with me. One day back in the late ’60s he was riding his bicycle through Mill Valley when he heard very, very loud music. He was able to locate the house it was coming from, and sat on the porch and listened for about three hours. Then the music stopped and he knocked on the door to thank the artist. Two very tall African women opened the door, traditionally dressed and very gorgeous. Then Sandy appeared, and was friendly, but also severely spacey. The house was empty with white walls and carpet. My friend was already familiar with Sandy’s music, and had attended some of the shows in San Francisco that Sandy was doing. He rode away on his bicycle, surprised and happy.

Sandy lived in Berkeley, Mill Valley and Fairfax in the ’60s and his best friend was Hamza El Din, the oudist from Egypt. What a special time these men had together. Hamza had arrived in the United States after opening for the Grateful Dead at the Pyramids. He is best known for his ’70s release Escalay (translated as “The Water Wheel”), which features Sandy playing an ancient beat on an ancient drum. In Escalay, Hamza wanted to translate the feelings of the folks whose role it was to haul water to and from the well. It’s the best cinematic folk music I’ve heard—when you listen to it alone you actually arrive at his homeland. The oud is the most gut-pounding stringed instrument I’ve heard: it sends out depthful waves, resonations that have bass where you wouldn’t expect it.

Still Valentine’s Day 1969: Live at the Matrix, San Francisco is a live album from 1969, and the result of Sandy pushing the limits by using an electric oud through about four different Fender amps, all with heavy reverb and vibrato. I really enjoy the entire collection of songs, and have spent some high times with them lately. The songs feel a little more blurry and druggy than on E Pluribus Unum, the 1968 studio album where a lot of them first appeared. Which I appreciate: I am getting stoned a lot, so I am currently looking for items to reflect that, that I respect. Yet I know he was into the junkier side of drug experimentations. I feel if the tapes were mixed track-by track, that it could expose some more low-end that might be now missing. Sandy had a degree in classical bass; he was highly skilled, and his bass lines are sometimes just as interesting as his oud.

Sandy’s shows are another discussion, but briefly, he wouldn’t play with anyone. So he recorded all the instrumentation on analog tape, and then figured a way to synch up each tape machine. He would then haul this to a gig, press play on everything, then rotate between electric oud and pedal steel. Sandy bootlegs are amazing and even funny, as he was so interesting—Sandy had a great style and it is rumored that William Burroughs saw Sandy and immediately copied his fashion; the Beatles song “Come Together” is actually about Sandy; etc. Anyway, Sandy told obscure funny stories between songs. This release has a small dialogue about the live sound engineer ; the un-mastered version I have actually has a huge wallop of stage feedback due to the lack of understanding by the evening’s sound engineer of just what Sandy was attempting in relation to amplified reverb. The feedback is a painful-sounding slash across the speakers, not interesting at all, and isn’t approved of by Sandy. The same thing regularly happens today in live performance—this realm has not progressed much, and the truth of it is that it’s the fault of people’s stagnant exchange with audio psychedelia. There’s been a lack of progression or maybe a lack of respect for the trade of sound engineering folk.

If you get to know the songs you can actually feel Sandy become elated with tonality as he plays here. Some may think his jams are light, or even beatnik. I think his jams are of the heaviest order, and I believe him to be Northern California’s greatest artist ever because he wasn’t a contrived enterprise. This music is a reflection of what was the norm in NorCal back then. People were learning about the strength of folk culture around the world, and using that knowledge to justify dropping out … and to drop out in colorful, musical ways.

AGAINST EMPTY HISTORY: Steve Berra on the current crisis in skateboarding

What Steve Berra is talking about applies to other essential cultural sites/practices as well. Bookshops. Record shops. Coffeehouses. Magazine publishers. Book publishers. Record labels. And so on…

Excerpts:

“I receive emails almost every single day telling me about another skate shop or skatepark that’s going, or has gone, out of business. I get asked if there’s anything I can do to keep them from closing their doors or if maybe I can build a Berrics to take its place. With the U.S. unemployment the worst it’s been in 26 years, I get job inquiries from all over the country.

“And I want to give them a job. I want to build skateparks for you; I want to help skateshops open. I want skateboarding to survive the way baseball, and football, and basketball do here in America—but without it having to turn into them. Without it losing its autonomy to a board of directors inside big corporations who think the letter X was a label any of us liked because they didn’t understand the principles it was founded upon: principles that drew me to it, and have been carried forth through the years by skateshops and skateparks that existed long before television and mass retailers saw an upside to it.

“There’s a war being waged on small businesses. They’re being taxed on both the state and federal levels. They’re over-regulated, outspent and out-advertised by mall stores with deep pockets and empty history. And in the current economic climate, they don’t stand a chance without your support. Without the foundation of these kinds of skate shops, or skateparks, the skateboarding culture slowly dies in your area, and with it, so does skateboarding…

“A system can always estimate how close it is to being revolted against by counting how many smart and willing people it is excluding from participation. And [right now] there are quite a few smart and willing people being excluded from participation. So the Berrics Unified can be considered a revolt, of sorts…”

MORE INFO
Berrics Unified: http://www.berricsunified.com/
Steve Berra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Berra

hipped to this by Jesse Locks

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – HUTCHINS HAPGOOD


NOVEMBER 19 — HUTCHINS HAPGOOD
American author, journalist, anarchist, free love advocate.

NOVEMBER 19, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
GROUP RATES FOR GROUP SOULS DAY.         HAVE A BAD DAY DAY.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 19 IN HISTORY…
1493 — “Christ-bearing Dove” Christopher Columbus “discovers” Puerto Rico.
1915 — Labor organizer Joe Hill executed by firing squad in Utah.
1919 — Italian filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo born, Pisa, Italy.
1944 — American anarchist Hutchins Hapgood dies, Provincetown, Massachusetts.
1961 — Michael Rockefeller presumed eaten by cannibals, Asmat, New Guinea.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – MAN RAY


NOVEMBER 18 — MAN RAY
Surrealist photographer, radical social critic.

NOVEMBER 18, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
NED LUDD MEMORIAL MACHINE-SMASHING FESTIVAL.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 18 IN HISTORY…
1789 — Photography pioneer Louis Daguerre born, Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France.
1820 — Nathaniel Palmer discovers Antarctica.
1928 —Mickey Mouse born, Walt Disney Studios, Los Angeles, California.
1952 — French writer Paul Eluard dies, Paris, France.
1975 — Eldridge Cleaver, seven years in exile, returns to U.S. to face charges.
1976 — Surrealist photographer Man Ray dies, Paris, France.
1978 — Jonestown, Guyana: 913 party-goers; Kool-Aid shots main attraction.
1983 — Magic realist painter Ivan Albright dies, Woodstock, Vermont.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective.

November 23rd – Film screening of Sandy Bull doc in Greenpoint, BROOKLYN


A documentary screening slash musical showcase in commemoration of the legendary banjo-pickin’, oud-playing folk guitarist Sandy Bull. This lineup will surely satiate the soul of any wayfaring traveler…

Documentary screenings
Oma (16mm short) portrait of Daphne Hellman (Sandy Bull’s mom)
Sandy Bull: No Deposit, No Return Blues (45 min)

Live musical performances
Colin Langenus Acoustic Guitar Orchestra
D Charles Speer
Ramble Tamble

Free admission!

Monday, November 23rd, 8:30pm
18 Java St. / Greenpoint, Brooklyn 11222
(View map.)