Author Archives for Jay Babcock

Emmett Grogan's Ringolevio back in print

Oh, yeah, Emmett sauntered and we all walked.

Essential reading from Diggers founder and international bohemian icon Emmett Grogan, now back in print courtesy of New York Review of Books Classics:

Ringolevio is a classic American story of self-invention by one of the more mysterious and alluring figures to emerge in the 1960s. Emmett Grogan grew up on New York City’s mean streets, getting hooked on heroin before he was in his teens, kicking the habit and winning a scholarship to a swanky Manhattan private school, pursuing a highly profitable sideline as a Park Avenue burglar, then skipping town to enjoy the dolce vita in Italy. It’s a hard-boiled, sometimes hard-to-believe, wildly entertaining tale that takes a totally unexpected turn when Grogan washes up in sixties San Francisco and becomes a leader of the anarchist group known as the Diggers. The Diggers, devoted to street theater, direct action, and distributing free food, were in the thick of the legendary Summer of Love, and soon Grogan is struggling with the naive narcissism of the hippies, the marketing of revolution as a brand, dogmatic radicals, and false prophets like tripster Timothy Leary. Above all, however, he struggles with himself.

Ringolevio is an enigmatic portrait of a man and his times to set beside Hunter S. Thompson’s stories of fear and loathing, Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, or the recent Chronicles of Bob Dylan, who dedicated his 1978 album Street Legal to the memory of Emmett Grogan.

Read Peter Coyote’s introduction to the 1990 edition here.

Arthur columnist Byron Coley on Tongue Theory, plus thumpstaffs + saxophones

MPBE11flyer.jpg

Montague Phantom Brain Exchange #11
Wednesday, November 26th, 9pm Five Bucks!
at the Rendezvous
78 3rd St
Turners Falls, MA 01376

Flaherty,Voigt, & Karetnick Trio
Blue Shift
lecture on Tongue Theory by Byron Coley
comedy by Shawn Smith
AlterDestiny DJs

read on:

Come get stuffed on this eve of thanks. Welcome our wmass ex-pats
home, and revel in plugging & unplugging our phantom brains with lost
theories, druggy beats, flopping tongues, & harmolodic reveilles.

Headlining our celebration this month will be the Flaherty, Voigt, &
Karetnick Trio, a cell of new england freedom fighters that have been
waging a guerilla campaign to spread around the urgent sound. From
west, former wmass representative Karetnick will lay out a
multidirectional pulse from the kit & various percussion. From the
east, bostonian Voigt will masterfully operate the thumpstaff with
abandon. From the south, hartford yeoman, good sir Flaherty will
launch lightning bolts from his saxophones. All three of these dudes
have fat dossiers on their work in jazz & improvised music circles,
and have collaborated independently with such artists as: Joe McPhee,
Raphe Malik, Chick Corea, Thurston Moore, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Keith
Jarrett, Bill T. Jones, Chris Corsano, Daniel Carter, Cliff White,
Sabir Mateen, Assif Tsahar, Tuli Kupferberg, Jemeel Moondoc. To
understate, “this should be a pretty sweet set.”
http://www.yod.com/hatedmusic.html
http://art-energy.org/johnmusician.html
http://www.myspace.com/benjaminkaretnick

Blue Shift is solo artist Cybele Collins, a former happy-valleyite,
she’s now reppin’ Providence with her hi-intensity violin shreddage.
Her string science is equal parts howling brutality & swooning fancy.
Check this vid of her in Antwerp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPJtYTN1YRs

Archivist of the obscure and insane, poet, critic, and Deerfield
slayer, Byron Coley will be presenting a lecture discussing Richard
Meltzer’s ‘Tongue Theory’ outlined in the 1970 book, “The Aesthetics
of Rock.” We have been assured that the fruits of Coley’s research
are of an adequately fermented paste. Here are the cliffsnotes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aesthetics_of_Rock

ex-Squidlaunch guitarist & co-editor of the infamous Drug Salad zine,
Shawn Smith will be rocking our very first microphone devoted to ten
minutes of comedy. This could become a regular feature of the Phantom
Brain Exchange or fall into disuse, now the pressure is on.

Twixt sets will be The AlterDestiny DJs – G-field’s Low Power FM duo
Ben Mocro & Andujar Rule, an indestructable tag team spinning the
sounds of space and the blood in yr skull.

Track & post weirdo events in wmass & vicinity:
http://happyninvalley.blogspot.com/

I’ll be taking a break over December, but will return in January for
our one-year anniversary! Until then, I’ve found the harshest noise
act ever: open up 4 to 8 windows of this website, crank, & listen:
http://www.myspace.com/officialdavidcook

Montague Phantom Brain Exchange is a place where bodied & disembodied
brains & nonbrains can safely gather to deconstruct solutions & create
problems while soaking in an envigorating bath of provocative
entertainments. Last wednesday of every month, 9pm to midnight, at the
Rendezvous (bar with food!) 78 3rd St Turners Falls, MA. A typical
evening will include 2 – 3 performing acts, a 15 minute lecture and a
DJ.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus = $45,000 in State Court

https://i0.wp.com/www.aclu.org/images/freespeech/frederickbanner.jpg

Starting Point

When the Olympic torch passed through Juneau, Alaska, in 2002, 18-year-old Joseph Frederick saw a chance at TV airtime. His tactic: a banner reading BONG HITS 4 JESUS. Not amused, Frederick‘s principal confiscated the banner and suspended him for five days. He shot back something about Thomas Jefferson. She tacked on another five.

Fever Pitch
Frederick took his free-speech argument to court, with backing from the ACLU. Five years later it was before the U.S. Supreme Court, with Kenneth Starr representing the school. The court ruled that since Frederick was holding the banner at a “school-supervised” (though not on school grounds) event, the principal had a right to restrict what he said about illegal drugs—even if his message was rather nonsensical.

placeAd2(commercialNode,’bigbox’,false,”)Present Day

Now 25, Frederick is learning Mandarin and teaching English in China. Although he is proud that he stood up for his rights, he regrets “the bad precedent set by the ruling.” His case was finally settled at the state level in November, winning him $45,000 and forcing the school to hold a forum on free speech.

Mary Beth Tinker, plaintiff in the 1969 Supreme Court free speech case Tinker v. Des Moines, discusses First Amendment rights with Joseph Frederick.

"The mainstream is too strong. It's flowing too fast. These little jagged things go in there and they get smoothed off straight away."

Jarvis Cocker profile in The Guardian:

Early on, [Cocker] says, he really did believe Britpop was a new dawn – not just musically, but politically. If the alternative, rather than the mass-produced, could be embraced by the mainstream in pop, maybe that would be the harbinger of social change. “I had high hopes that it would be some kind of revolution within English society. But I think the mainstream is too strong. It’s flowing too fast. These little jagged things go in there and they get smoothed off straight away.”

What kind of revolution had he envisaged? “What makes society and life interesting is diversity, so if something that embraced that diversity could be accepted in the mainstream that would mean mainstream society would be more open and accepting. And that’s what excited me about it. That that could happen.”

He says he’s always been a bit naive, and it was hardly the first time he had been pulled up short from his dreams. “I’m always going through these false dawns. It was the same the first time I went to a rave. I thought, this is fantastic, people are dancing all night, they’re all being friendly to each other, they’re not really drinking, it’s not about pulling birds or having a fight. And I thought, that’s got to have an impact on society. When they go home after being all loved up and talking to everybody and being really inclusive, how can that not have some knock-on effect in normal life? And yet it didn’t.” He smiles, baffled. “That was the last spontaneous youth thing. I can’t think of anything that’s not been stage managed since then.“

Please help ODETTA play the OBAMA INAUGURATION.

WILLIAM McKEEN, Professor and Chair
University of Florida Department of Journalism
P.O. Box 118400, Gainesville, Fla. 32611
http://williammckeen.com

Dear friends,

After hearing a rumor about Odetta’s health, I phoned her manager this
evening and he confirmed for me that Ms. Odetta is receiving treatment
in a New York hospital, where she will be for at least another week.

It’s Odetta’s goal to recover and be in good health so she can perform
as planned at Obama’s inauguration, Doug told me.

Odetta would appreciate cards and letters–please drop her a note if you
have the time. Please also forward this information to anyone you know
who appreciates Odetta. One note or card is a small joy… perhaps a
steady stream of them is something stronger. It sure would be amazing
for Odetta to perform at the inauguration, and a shame for her to have
to miss such an event.

Here’s the address:

ODETTA GORDON
Lenox Hill Hospital
Room 720
100 East 77th St.
New York, NY 10021

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odetta

courtesy Mike Watt