“Originally released in 1971, Raga: A Film Journey into the Soul of India documents the life of sitar master Ravi Shankar in the late 1960s and early 1970s, following him on his return to India to revisit his guru, Bengali multi-instrumentalist and composer, Baba Ustad Allauddin Khan. It further explores Shankar’s life as a musician and teacher in the United States and Europe, initiating those in the West to the exceptional world that is Indian classical music and culture. Through rare and candid footage shot in both India and the United States, Raga sheds light on Shankar’s influences and collaborations, from Allauddin Khan to his famed dancer brother Uday Shankar, to his associations with Western musicians Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison. Fully narrated by Shankar himself, Raga reveals music as the soul of India and of Shankar’s life. The premiere DVD release of Raga features a digitally re-mastered 35mm print optimized to modern color range resolution and standard and a fully re-mastered audio soundtrack.”
Where mama nature gets your soil back in a form she can actually use!
The Great Giveback was the last and final phase of Humble Pile Chicago, a collective human nutrient recycling project.
Two years ago I invited 35 households to compost their poop using the simple 5-gallon bucket dry toilet and composting pile system. Twenty-two people accepted the invitation and for three months I delivered toilets, storage barrels and sawdust to them, picking up their full bins as needed, taking them to a secret location to compost their contents.
After two years the humanure had transformed into lovely nutrient-rich soil. (Samples taken to an environmental lab tested free of all coliforms.)
The original bucket-pooping participants received handsewn yellow-and-brown canvas sacks of their transformed nite soil. Each sack is silkscreened with THE GREAT GIVEBACK, a drawing of the digestive system (esophagus to rectum) and a turd.
Deliveries were made by bicycle. The remainder of the collective pile is being used to enrich disturbed city soils.
* * *
THE GREAT GIVEBACK t-shirts
$20 including shipping while supplies last! All t-shirts were obtained from thrift stores. A few dago-tees exist, the rest are short-sleeved. Some are yellow, but most are brown. Illustrations were done by the delightfully thoughtful Edie Fake.
Superheroes from some weird feminist alternative reality: JD Samson, Johanna Fateman, Kathleen Hanna
Life On Their Island Oliver Hall talks utopian pop and practical politics with electro-dance bullhorn radicals LE TIGRE
Originally published in Arthur No. 13 (2004)
The October issue of Harper’s reprints something I haven’t been able to get out of my mind for days now: a passage of instructions, from a handbook for members of a Japanese student club, for gang-rape. The men of Super Free, “a now defunct club for students at elite Japanese universities,” gang-raped hundreds of women between 1995 and 2003. “Take away the woman’s shoes, purse, and cell phone so that she cannot get away before we have finished,” it says. “Take photos or a video of the rape and threaten to expose the woman publicly if she opens her mouth about what happened.”
To say nothing of rape, shame and humiliation are the secret weapons the powerful use in the everyday battles lost by women—and queers, nonwhites, the poor, weirdos. “Are you gay?” asked a girl I had just met at Club Screwball a few weeks ago; I was too drunk to articulate Gore Vidal’s thesis that “gay” and “straight” properly refer to sexual acts, not people, so I just said, “Well, not really.” “Then why are you funny? You must have been beaten up at school.” “Yes.”
Unlike Kathleen Hanna’s previous band, the great and legendary Bikini Kill, the band that inspired the thrilling Riot Grrrrrrl movement of the early ’90s even as it distanced itself from that movement, Le Tigre is not a punk band suspicious of its audience. All the members of Le Tigre, as I interviewed them independently from their locations in New York—JD Samson in Brooklyn, Johanna Fateman uptown, Kathleen Hanna downtown—spoke of their audience with a kind of awe, and I sensed that providing a special, free place for all those who have had to develop a sense of humor to live in the world, who have to cherish joy because it is a privilege rather than a right for them, gives all the members of Le Tigre a lot of pleasure.
This Island, Le Tigre’s new album and its first ever for a major label, is the kind of pop music you haven’t heard coming from your radio or TV in years—not retro, just painted in primary colors—but that’s where it belongs, making the carwash fun again. “X-out all self-supervision, get your keys out now start the ignition / We’re on the verge of. . .” what?
Rumors are circulating that there will be a Le Tigre float at next year’s New York Gay Pride parade. I begged JD to give me the details, but she said I’d just have to come see it. See you there.
ARTHUR: Your single “New Kicks” uses sounds JD recorded at the February 15, 2003 Iraq war protest in New York City. I was there, but I couldn’t get to the speakers’ stage where much of “New Kicks” was recorded. The police held us immobile between barricades, diverted the march away from the stage, and beat up a lot of people. Was the protest as fun as the song makes it sound?
JD: I think of the song as cinematic, dramatic—kind of an anthem in the sense that it’s for all the people that were there and have been protesting in the past few years, but I don’t really see it as a celebration-type song. My experience was more positive than some of my friends who were arrested and had mace in their face. I just kind of jumped over fences and tried to make my way to where I could hear the speakers. That was kind of my number one quota that day.
The part in the song where [Amy Goodman from Democracy Now]’s naming the list of places, that’s pretty exciting. That was actually from the radio broadcast of the event. When I came across that I was like, “Oh my god! What a good build.”
JOHANNA: What was amazing and made me really happy was realizing how huge it was. That’s what was sort of exhilarating about it, is that we felt really unstoppable and it was really out of the control of the police or anyone, and it felt like it couldn’t be denied because a whole huge section of the city was shut down. I don’t know if I feel like the song is a celebration of that, but we didn’t want it to be, like, a bummer song [laughs]. The song was actually played on Democracy Now. That felt good, it sort of came full circle.
Le Tigre’s appearance on Carson Daly’s late night show is one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen on TV. What was that like for you?
KATHLEEN: We were really bummed when we got there, we were totally exhausted. You have to bring your equipment to that shit at like ten in the morning? And we don’t really have a crew, so we were doing it ourselves, and we got stuck in traffic for like two hours, and we hadn’t slept cuz we played a show the night before — we were just totally exhausted, and we were like “Why are we doing this? It’s so ridiculous.” And then we look on the TV monitor, and Carson Daly goes, “. . .and Le Tigre!” and we hear everybody scream! And they pan the audience, there were all these friends of ours that we hadn’t seen in forever that showed up, there’s all these girls in mustaches, and we’re like “Okay, we can do this.”
Tomorrow is the start of the annual Camper van Beethoven/Cracker Campout at Pappy and Harriet’s Palace in Pioneertown. Tonight, Arthur welcomes Ventura buoyant beardo Seth Pettersen and his uptempo surfin’ buddharock to the High Desert. Sand to sand. Free, all ages, tuneful and awesome. Join us, stay late to see the stars and cool air…
Here’s the office singalong favorite off the beachgoers’ summertime hit parade that is Seth’s new album, So Fully, available from iTunes…
LOS LOBOS, BABY! Same lineup for the last 26 years (or 37 [!], if you subtract Steve Berlin, who joined in ’84). This is the a live take on the title song off their beautiful new album, Tin Can Trust…
Bros are touring. Respect your (m)elders. See these dudes.
August 25 Los Angeles, CA – Amoeba Records
August 28 Eagle, ID – Eagle River Pavilion
August 29 Monroe, WA – Evergreen State Fair
August 30 Vancouver, BC – The Fair at the PNE
September 1 Edmonton, AB – Winspear Centre for Music
September 2 Calgary, AB – Jack Singer Auditorium
September 3 Regina, SK – Casino Regina Show Lounge
September 4 Laramie, WY – Snowy Range Music Festival
September 24 Reno, NV – Silver Legacy Casino
September 25 San Antonio, TX – Plaza Guadalupe
September 26 San Jose, CA – Mariachi Festival – HP Pavilion
September 28 Universal City, CA – Mariachi Festival – Gibson Amphitheater
October 3 Gretna, LA – Gretna Heritage Festival
October 8 Kansas City, MO – Folly Theater
October 9 Clear Lake, IA – The Historic Surf Ballroom
October 13 Davis, CA – Mondavi Center For Performing Arts at UC Davis
October 14 Ventura, CA – Habitat For Humanity Benefit – The Majestic Ventura Theatre
October 15 Riverside, CA – University Theatre at Univ. of California Riverside
October 17-24 Rhythm & Blues Cruise
November 4 Cleveland, OH – Cleveland Masonic Auditorium
November 6 Chicago, IL – Vic Theater
December 1 Dallas, TX – Granada Theatre
December 3 Austin, TX – One World Theatre
December 31 New York, NY – City Winery
I’ve called the cops on him,
friendly guy next door who sneaks
pork fat to my cat, cookies
to my daughter. He tends
with the vigilance of love
a red van hunkered on the curb,
paint flaked and pale U.S. flag
sealing the rear window. He sings,
then weeps when he’s had one
too many beers.
The night he swears to kill
his wife–sobs and curses
through the screen jangle me
from sleep–police come fast,
five white cars block the street,
two men vault the broken gate
to pound the door and wake
with a flashlight in his eyes
the old man whose house it is,
whose son.
Morning, I ask how she is
through the fence where she rests
an elbow; thumb caressing
her bluing cheek. She says
with disbelief that someone
called the cops, she thinks she might
know who, she’ll kick their ass.
Later in full sun and heat
a different neighbor stops.
“I wish they’d get it over with,”
she sighs, “and shoot each other so
the rest of us could sleep.”
Matthew Valentine’s Child Of Microtones imprint was one of the first labels to fully explode the CD-R format, combining deluxe packaging with exploratory psychedelia and extended rural glam. He was the brains and the conceptual clout behind Brattleboro’s legendary Free Folk Fest in 2003, an event that was pretty much ground zero for the contemporary underground and that gathered alla the emergent tribes in the same spot for the first time. But really MV has been a key player since back in the day, with Tower Recordings being a central component of Siltbreeze’s first wave while his editorial duties on the sadly-defunct Cock Displacement buzzed a whole bunch of brains. But it’s his work with partner Erika Elder that has best brought together his various obsessions, minting a recording process known as Spectrasound that exposes the most sidereal aspects of the jam while fusing Dead/Allman Brothers-style improvisations with free jazz, raga, folk and blues in order to mint a visionary take on underground modes. MV is free folk. He’s also a wordsmith par excellence, an inspired writer (check out his first novel, Small As Life & Infinitesimally As Pure) and filmmaker (The Temptation To Zoology) and an active proponent of the up country good life. We’re lucky to have him. Here he’s reminiscing about the April 2010 No Floor Tour in anticipation of his headlining shot at VT’s Subcurrent 2010 fest. Look out for the winner of the top ten middens….
Plus, here’s VT on the latest MV & EE releases, which VT is vending here:
MV & EE
Not Only Wine But It’s Oblivion I Pour
Heroine No Cat
CD-R
£6.99
”Duo set from Matthew Valentine and Erika Elder from the European leg of their UK/Europe tour back in February 2010 recorded at Viseu, Portugal. A set which connects strongly back to the aesthetic of the American singer/songwriters of the Troubador and coffee shops in the mid-60s with more of a focus on song, melody and vocals. The guitars are more stripped back and cleaner on this one with the vocals much higher in the mix. Only the mid-set raga induced meanderings of “Environments” breaks rank from the other numbers. A set which runs “Satisfied”, “Anthem of the Cocola Y&T”, Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street, a jam of “Environments” into “Cold Rain” and closing with the ‘hit the road’ anthem of “Feelin’ Fine”. A great set for those who prefer their MV&EE up close and personal. Appropriate locational cover with a blurred snap of the Sé de Viseu. Recommended.” – Andrew Ross.
MV & EE w/Willie Lane
Blazed Corndog, ‘Ham Bone (Turn The Heat Up!)
Heroine No Cat
CD-R
£6.99
”I love this particular incarnation of the MV&EE family with the trio of Matthew Valentine, Erika Elder and Willie Lane. Set from the same series of shows that gave us the previously released “Ready for another house” from May 2009. A very similar set which runs “Hungry Stones”, “I Got Caves in there” into “Cold Rain” and closing with “Weatherhead Hollow” into “Environments”. Overall, this demonstrates the beautiful art of guitar weaving between all three players, with guitar runs and melodies getting interlocked into one taking the listener on a totally unique magical experience. I particularly like the version of “I Got Caves In There” with the more song based version replaced by a version where guitar weaving around the song’s melody takes centre stage. The sets opus is the 20 minute spectrasound workout of “Weatherhead Hollow” and “Environments”. Great sonic transmissions on this one. Highly recommended.” – Andrew Ross.
Arthur Magazine 