Check out the new December 2008 issue of Arthur (download here as a PDF) for “American Beauties,” an expanded photo essay from Eddie Dean and Leon Kagarsie’s Pure Country. Full details for tonight’s show after the jump.
August 27, 2006 – Sunday New York Times
Long, Strange Trip for a Hypnotic Film
By JAMES GADDY
It took 38 years, but Ira Cohen’s cult film, “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda,” which was first screened in 1968 at the high point of the psychedelic hippie head rush, is now commercially available. Given the close calls, the long absences and his chaotic archival system, Mr. Cohen, 71, is a little surprised himself.
“It didn’t really involve patience,” he said in his apartment on West 106th Street in Manhattan, surrounded by books stacked waist high. “It was just reality.”
In 1961 Mr. Cohen built a room in his New York loft lined with large panels of Mylar plastic, a sort of bendable mirror that causes images to crackle and swirl in hypnotic, sometimes beautiful patterns. After a few years experimenting with the technique in photographs, he invited his friends from the downtown scene — like Beverly Grant, Vali Myers and Tony Conrad — to make a film.
::: NY EYE & EAR: Record Fair and Music Fest :::
== December 12 & 13 ==
. Presented by The Pendu Organization (www.pendu.org) .
-A Benefit for Showpaper-
WWW.NYEYEANDEAR.COM
2 Days! 36 bands & 30+ record labels celebrate NYC DIY!
WEDNESDAY, 12/10
Process Books and Arthur Magazine present
PURE COUNTRY: THE LEON KAGARISE ARCHIVES, 1961-1971
A very special evening with the First Lady of Banjo
RONI STONEMAN
plus
THE TALL PINES
THE JONES STREET BOYS
A celebration for the release of the book Pure Country. The show includes rare color slides of hillbilly stars and their fans from the ’60s music park scene, along with stories by the book’s writer Eddie Dean and a live performance by legendary banjo picker (and Hee Haw star) Roni Stoneman. Both will sign books after the show.
7:30pm
ALL AGES / $10
The Bell House
149 7th St (between 2nd Ave & 3rd Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11215 (718) 643-6510
http://www.thebellhouseny.com
http://www.processmediainc.com
Buy tickets here:
http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=648054
ABOUT THE BOOK “PURE COUNTRY”…
Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, country music’s most legendary performers played backwoods stages in outdoor music parks, live and unfiltered. It was a time when Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline and George Jones mingled up close with fans like kin at a mountain family reunion. These dollar-a-carload picnic concerts might have been forgotten if it hadn’t been for Leon Kagarise. An audio engineer by trade, he began recording the live shows on reel-to-reel tape and shot hundreds of candid color slides of the stars and their fans.
Music journalist Eddie Dean spent many hours interviewing Kagarise before his death in early 2008. His introduction and accompanying text tells how an obsession created a view into a lost world that challenges easy assumptions about Country and reveals a secret history of Country music in the ‘60s, when the industry largely turned its back on its rural roots and produced a slick, studio-centric product known as the Nashville Sound.
Forced into commercial exile, traditional country performers scratched out a living in the outdoor-music park circuit, where Kagarise served as their unofficial court photographer. With a meticulous and loving eye, Kagarise captured dozens of classic country and bluegrass artists in their prime, including June Carter, Dolly Parton, Bill Monroe, Hank Snow, The Stanley Brothers, The Stonemans, and many others.
Over a decade, he amassed an archive of over 600 color slides and 4,000 hours of pristine-sounding live performance as well as radio and television recordings, some of the only known surviving documents of the era. Pure Country presents 140 of Kagarise’s stunning color images, most never seen in print, from an archive now considered by historians to be one of the richest discoveries in the history of American music.
Eddie Dean, who wrote the foreword and the text of the book, will be narrating a slide show of images from the book of such country legends as George Jones, Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Dolly Parton, Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl amongst others.
From Yes! Magazine, Summer 1997:
Money: Print your Own!
Beyond Greed and Scarcity
by Bernard LietaerFew people have worked in and on the money system in as many different capacities as Bernard Lietaer. He spent five years at the Central Bank in Belgium, where his first project was the design and implementation of the single European currency system. He was president of Belgium’s Electronic Payment System, and has developed technologies for multinational corporations to use in managing multiple currency environments.
He has helped developing countries improve their hard currency earnings and taught international finance at the University of Louvain, in his native Belgium.
Bernard Lietaer was also the general manager and currency trader for one of the largest and most successful offshore currency funds.
He is currently a fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources at the University of California at Berkeley.
YES!editor Sarah van Gelder talked to Bernard about the possibilities for a new kind of currency better suited to building community and sustainability. He can be reached to discuss this topic via an Internet conference at: http://www.transaction.net/money/
SARAH : Why do you put so much hope into the development of alternative currencies?
BERNARD : Money is like an iron ring we’ve put through our noses. We’ve forgotten that we designed it, and it’s now leading us around. I think it’s time to figure out where we want to go – in my opinion toward sustainability and community – and then design a money system that gets us there.
From Machine Project (Arthur’s favorite artspace in America)….
Dear Friends,
We love pizza, don’t get us wrong, but sometimes we wish we could get other favorite things to show up at our doors on demand, too. Like our friend Joshua Beckman. Reading us a poem.
Luckily Joshua is our December Artist in Residence, and in the spirit of giving this holiday season he and Machine Poet Laureate Anthony McCann are offering free door-to-door poetry deliveries at certain times throughout the month. The first installment of the Poetry Delivery Service will be this Sunday, December 7th between the hours of 1-5pm. Deliveries will be made exclusively on foot to homes or other locations within a 1 mile radius of Machine Project. If you want to order a pizza first and time it so that they arrive at the same time, then have a pizza / poetry party, even better!
Joshua will be in residence at Machine for all of December, presenting events like a lecture on pie theory, working with us on a soldering workshop, and more.
More info and the number of the Poetry Phone request line here:
http://machineproject.com/events/2008/12/05/poetrydeliveryservice
love,
Machinep.s. Fry-B-Q is coming up on December 14th!! And this time, there’s pie.
An appearance on a European TV show…
The promotional film for the song…
Arthur Magazine 