Author Archives for Jay Babcock

Arthur editor’s quasi-manifesto for rural living, published in Wilder Quarterly

The new issue of Wilder Quarterly features a piece by me and my partner, Stephanie Smith, on our “off the pavement but on the grid” life out here in Joshua Tree: wilderness stewardship, structure rehab, edenification, permaculture, mutual aid, climate change mitigation,  urban outreach, stargazing, tortoise-beholding, etc. Here’s an image of the first two (of six) pages, with photography for Wilder by Elizabeth Weinberg…

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You can read the full text at our website: JTHomesteader.com/manifesto

We also have a Twitter: twitter.com/JTHomesteader

GREEN LOVE: PETER LAMBORN WILSON’S NEW BOOK, RIVERPEOPLE

New book from the great Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), now available to order via Autonomedia…

This “epic” mixed poetry and prose text about an area of upstate New York is organised around seven historical, geographical and aesthetic events that once took place along the euphoniously-named Esopus River, with which the author says he fell in “green love.” Peter Lamborn Wilson provides a literary and philosophical tour-de-force of local history, including the “cartolagic” documentations of the performances he conducted to commemorate and to “re-enchant these landscapes” so threatened by vulgar materialism and ecological devastation.

“Every map has its Night Sky because the Map is not the Territory — & yet it is….

Ordinary maps project ideological inscriptions onto the body of landscape — but a magical map would share essences with that landscape & engage in co-realization with it. Such a map could then act as a pilgrim’s guide to the Profane or— Secular Illumination — a pagan theory of Sacred Earth as cartomantic spell. Looked at this way, even ordinary maps possess an “invisible” or nocturnal dimension, or rather a set of stars & asterisms that replicate or mirror its topography & hydrography in the sleeping sky — ‘As Above, So Below’ — sciences that (as Novalis says) will then have been poeticized.”

SIGNS OF THE FANCY DUTCH

A barn with hex signs in Lehigh County (photograph by Nicholas A. Tonelli)

Fans of the band Earth, profiled by author Brian Evenson way back in Arthur No. 20 (Jan. 2006), will be particularly interested in this post by Melissa Marshall over at Atlas Obscura: Folk Magic: The Hex Signs of Pennsylvania

Don Cherry & Organic Music Theatre, live on Italian TV 1976

Via doom and gloom from the tomb …

Don Cherry & The Organic Music Theatre – RAI Studios, Italy, 1976

Well, this is wonderful: 40 minutes worth of Don Cherry and the Organic Music Theatre in 1976, posted over on Twitter by none other than Neneh Cherry in honor of what would’ve been Don’s 77th birthday today. Joyous, spiritual vibes galore.

EUROPE: MV & EE INCOMING

Arthur No. 34 coverstars MV & EE are coming to Europe. Dates:

New studio recording “Shade Grown” out now, self-described thusly:

Studio C.O.M.’s from MV & EE have been rare these days with recent rockets being in the form of the most righteous and mighty live excursions into unknown jam galaxies thru song form (dig the heroines, box sets and residencies!). However, time was when the Child Of Microtones sound worlds were exploding with the most unique and highly personalized solar systems of pre-war/post Takoma environs colliding like COMets with black ark pods from the tapers section. On “Shade Grown” sweet new MV & EE are back in that orbit fusing all that they can give and more to keep America beautiful. Go DIY army, this is greenspace…throw away yr armaments and trade the electric mower for headphones. This is perhaps the closest Spectra, Matt & Erika have come to dub, The ONE could get lost in these tunes/jams for many spins. Bring on hyperspace awareness, you could be in yr very own room beyond inside out and feel all they are right beside you, just like spectrasound wanted you to be.

Special guests/skypilots from the good ol’ Golden Road: Jeremy Earl (Woods), Michael Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra), Matt Lajoie (Herbcraft), Doc Dunn, Muskox, Paulie G, Rafi Bookstaber, Carson “Smokehound” Arnold, Rongoose (Blueberry Honey/Causa Sui/Sunburned Hand Of The Man).

LISTEN IN:

More info: mvandee.blogspot.com

FINAL GENE WEEN RECORDINGS

From the bandcamp site:

After 20+ years of near-fatal drug & alcohol abuse (thankfully culminating with intensive but successful rehab), AARON FREEMAN (aka Gene Ween) was left in a dire financial situation. All proceeds will go directly to Aaron, as he continues down the path toward creative freedom and personal health.

These demos represent the final writings and music of Gene Ween, before he departed and the inner FREEMAN emerged. On that note, we have received a two word personal statement from Aaron: “stay tuned.”

DESTINATION OUT: STEWART VOEGTLIN ON JOHN COLTRANE’S UNIVERSE SYMPHONIES (Arthur, 2013)

Originally published in Arthur No. 35 (Aug 2013)…

Artwork by BEAVER. Top: ASTRAL PLANE (L to R): Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, John Coltrane, Donald Garrett, McCoy Tyner. Bottom: MATERIAL PLANE (L to R): Sanders, Garrison, Garrett, Jones, Tyner, Coltrane.

GIANT STEPS
by STEWART VOEGTLIN

DISCOGRAPHY, 1965-1967
A Love Supreme Recorded Dec ‘64/released ‘65
The John Coltrane Quartet Plays Recorded Feb 65/May 65/March 65 released ’65
Transition Recorded May/June ‘65 released ‘70
Kulu Sé Mama (+Sanders, Garrett, Butler, Lewis) Recorded June 10-16/65 released ‘67
Ascension Recorded June 28/65 released ‘66
Sun Ship Recorded August ‘65 released ‘71
First Meditations Recorded Sept 2/65 released ‘77
Live in Seattle (+Sanders; Garrett) Recorded Sept 30/65/released ‘71
Om (+Sanders; Brazil) Recorded October ‘65 /released 68
Meditations (+Sanders; Ali) Recorded Nov 65/released 66
Interstellar Space Recorded Feb. ‘67/released ‘74
Expression (Sanders, Ali, Alice Coltrane) Recorded Feb. ‘67 & March ‘67/released ‘67

Forty-eight years ago the classic John Coltrane Quartet—along with tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and multi-instrumentalist Don Garrett—played a gig at a small Seattle club called the Penthouse. The show—130 minutes, professionally recorded, released later as Live in Seattle—came three months after the release of Coltrane’s monumental Ascension, two months before the leader’s penultimate farewell, Meditations. Standards and originals are played. Ponderous intros are atomized by ecstatic solos. Notes dissolve into noise. Noise dissolves into pure sound. Themes struggle within a framework so volatile it shares more likeness with a riot than music. Whether you choose to believe rumors the players gobbled up LSD before hitting the stage doesn’t change opinion turned fact: this quartet could summon chaos like no other. That night in Seattle, Coltrane & Co. ground away at reality and its tyranny of time until any semblance of form surrendered to the void.

Live in Seattle didn’t arrive at a pivotal moment. It was the pivotal moment. Coltrane had undergone a sort of gale force ideation; let himself go to creativity. He behaved more like a speedfreak archivist at the time than leader of the world’s most cataclysmic quartet. Recorded incessantly. In studio. Remotely. Pecked away at graphic scores. Scribbled down ideas. Gave sparse but impassioned instruction to players en route to studio or gig, establishing structure in the moment, assembling by chance, intuition, power. Live in Seattle was the final push towards the symbolic rebirth Coltrane had begun working towards with A Love Supreme in 1964. It’s Coltrane himself in an almost monastic light, striving for purity, elation, elegance, exaltation. His breath and its vehicle not of this earth, but of something we know not what. A Love Supreme is the undeniably practiced and ceremonial unification of the quartet. Live in Seattle its mindful and unceremonious dissolution. It’s the sound of the classic quartet coming completely apart at its core.

That night in Seattle the rhythm section either bashed away in protest, or stood agitatedly indifferent to Coltrane and Sanders, their horns a screaming phoenix struggling to get off ground with the weight of the universe in its talons. Bassist Jimmy Garrison, pianist McCoy Tyner, and drummer Elvin Jones surely tear through the set. But only Garrison sounds truly sympathetic, willfully adapting to Coltrane’s vision still in transition, shelving simple bass walks in lieu of strumming, plucking, coloring what sounds at times like blood ritual with strange flamenco and orchestral figures. Tyner alternately stomps and sprints up the keys, pointlessly competing with Jones who switches between raucous swing and athletic white noise. Ingredients are there. Forces in opposition. Each player pulling the music into a place he’s more comfortable with. Had it been a rock band it would’ve been salted with operatic whining and ego-oriented arguments that served no true end. All the quartet was doing was shaping its new sound. Crafting aesthetic. Loudly becoming. Here, within Live in Seattle, lies the set of directions for that sound, more cosmogony than loose aggregate of aped trope.

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