Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Sun Ra

sunra
May 22– SUN RA
Ark-Angel, musician from Saturn, via Birmingham.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NJ2oXwWEvw&feature=related

ALSO ON MAY 22 IN HISTORY…
1805 — Esoteric poet, proto-surrealist Gérard de Nerval born in Paris, France.
1845 — American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt born.
1885 — French novelist Victor Hugo dies, Paris, France.
1887 — Surrealist, pugilist Arthur Cravan born, Lausanne, Switzerland.
1895 — Indian religious leader Jiddu Krishnamurti born.
1914 — Ark-Angel, composer Herman “Sunny” Blount born, Birmingham, Alabama.
1925 — Indeterminate painter, sculptor Jean Tinguely born.
1948 — Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay dies, Chicago, Illinois.

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

May 28, NYC: Rudy Wurlitzer, Gary Indiana read at 192 Books

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From the 192 Books site:

Thursday, May 28, 7PM

Rudy Wurlitzer and Gary Indiana
Nog and The Shanghai Gesture
(Two Dollar Radio, 2009)

Originally published in 1969, Nog became a universally revered cult novel and symbol of the countercultural movement, famously inspiring Thomas Pynchon to declare that “the Novel of bullshit is dead.” In Wurlitzer’s signature hypnotic and haunting voice, Nog tells the tale of a man adrift through the American West, armed with nothing more than his own three pencil-thin memories and an octopus in a bathysphere.

The Shanghai Gesture is internationally acclaimed author Gary Indiana’s sixth novel, and his first since 2003- Do Everything in the Dark. While the signatures of Indiana’s prose style are at play in this work- his aggressive satire and the astounding poetry of his language- they are turned to an altogether new frequency, that of the notorious, the diabolical, Fu Manchu. The Shanghai Gesture is a clever, hilarious, and daringly perverse new tale in which Gary Indiana reasserts himself as a true original.

Seating is limited, please call 212.255.4022 for reservations.

192 Tenth Avenue at 21st Street, New York City

Rudy Wurlitzer was interviewed by Joe O’Brien in Arthur No. 29 ( 2008).

Read article online, here.

Purchase actual mag here.

Barbecue, beer and beards in Silver Lake…

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From L.A. RECORD:

“Territory BBQ and Records is the new restaurant-slash-record-store from Tony Presedo and Curtis Brown—formerly of Tee Pee Records and the band Bad Wizard, respectively. They will stock heavy music and serve heavy food prepared in part by heavy chef [and longtime Arthur “Do the Math” columnist] Dave Reeves.”

Read the whole article here…

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — IOAN CULIANU

culianu
May 21– IOAN CULIANU
Martyred Romanian historian of religion, philosopher, magic.

MAY 21, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Feast of the Triple Scoop.

ALSO ON MAY 21 IN HISTORY…
1471 — German artist Albrecht Dürer born, Nuremberg, Germany.
1690 — John Eliot, “Apostle to the Indians,” dies.
1844 — “Douanier” Henri Rousseau born, Lavalle, Mayenne, France.
1886— Universologist Stephen Pearl Andrews dies, New York City.
1904 — Jazz musician “Fats” Waller born, New York, New York.
1926 — Black Mountain, Beat poet Robert Creeley born, Arlington, Mass.
1935 — Hull House founder, social activist Jane Addams dies, Chicago, Illinois.
1956 — First aerial test of H-Bomb makes Bikini Atoll unlivable.
1991 — Romanian religious historian Ioan Culianu assassinated, Chicago, Illinois

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

MAY 21 —

A DEEPER SHADE OF DOOM: Sunn 0)))) and Earth, profiled by author Brian Evenson (Arthur, 2005)

A Deeper Shade of Doom
How do the drone-metal bands Earth and Sunno))) get something out of nothingness?

By Brian Evenson
Photography and layout by W. T. Nelson

Originally published in Arthur No. 20 (Dec 2005)

EARTH: BLACKING OUT
In 1993 the Olympia, Washington-based band Earth released their second album, Earth 2. No drums, no voices, two guitars, nothing else. It was ambient music done by a demon on downers—highly lugubrious, with slowed-down underwater metal riffs. Earth 2 traded in the glam, stagy evil of classic heavy metal for a brooding darkness, simultaneously a descent into hell and a sort Buddhist chant pushing you toward either Nirvana or nothingness (you choose). It was the kind of wandering super-vibrating music that makes your leg tingle where you’d broken it ten years before. Not only was it something you couldn’t dance to, it was something you couldn’t move to. It slowly shut you down. And with each of its three tracks over fifteen minutes long, by the time you’d finished the album you felt like you’d never start back up again.

Earth 2 is the ur-album of drone metal (it’s probably not a coincidence that their name is the same one originally used by Black Sabbath). It’s nothing at all like the grunge stuff—Nirvana and Mudhoney for instance—that their then-label Sub Pop was putting out then. But after Earth 2, the band—really just guitarist Dylan Carlson and whoever he wanted to partner with at the time—moved in different directions. Phase 3: Thrones and Dominions, a hard-to-find album from 1995 that you can pick up on disk for around $90 (or at itunes for $9), added one more guitarist and, for one track, a drummer. 1996’s Pentastar (In the Style of Demons) was still drone-y but just a hair away from being a rock album: cleaner sound, drums on all the tracks, deliberate shapes to the songs (most of which ran around five minutes), and even some vocals.

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