Sat. April 6, L.A.: Arthur presents RADIO UNNAMEABLE screening with counterculture legend Bob Fass and doc filmmakers in special Q & A

FassAtWork

Arthur is very pleased indeed to present a special Los Angeles screening of the new feature-length documentary RADIO UNNAMEABLE about free-form FM radio pioneer Bob Fass and his ridiculously long-running midnight program.

For nearly 50 years, Bob has been heard on New York City listener-supported station WBAI, utilizing the airwaves for in-the-moment journalism, in-studio artistic performance, learned philosophizing and righteous mobilization, long before today’s innovations in social media. He is one of the original Yippies, whose outrageous/visionary actions helped sway pigheaded America in the late ‘60s toward eventual progress (or at least getting the hell out of Viet Nam). The film draws from Bob’s extraordinary personal archive of audio recordings—including appearances by Bob Dylan and Abbie Hoffman, and performances by Karen Dalton, Arlo Guthrie, Jerry Jeff Walker, Hamza El Din and more.

RADIO UNNAMEABLE opens at the Arena Cinema in Los Angeles on Friday, April 5 for a one-week engagement. Arthur is presenting the 7:30 screening this Saturday April 6. Journalist, counterculture scholar and longtime Arthur contributor Michael Simmons will introduce the film with his patented song-dance-and-groove approach. Directors Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson, along with subject Bob Fass, will do a Q and A afterwards.

Tickets and Info here: arenascreen.com

You can learn more about the film and watch a short trailer here: radiounnameablemovie.com

“He was spending as much time now in the Land of the Dead as in Lawrence, Kansas”: Iain Sinclair visits Burroughs

Burroughs shows us how to take refuge from the horrorshow as we near our end….

He was spending as much time now in the Land of the Dead as in Lawrence, Kansas. It was my impression that Burroughs chose this place in order to make that transition smoother; the twinned locations in the end were impossible to separate. Going out for eggs over easy, bacon, toast, coffee – and getting it, his order filled with a smile and a replenished cup – confirmed the fact that he was not yet in hell. …

Apart from an interest in alien abduction (he pays a visit to Whitley Strieber, author of Breakthrough), and sexual encounters of the third kind, Burroughs was most concerned with proving that the dogmas of science were meaningless or totally misguided. He couldn’t accept that nothing moved faster than the speed of light. He spoke of clicking a switch fifteen years ago and seeing lights come on in an unvisited room: today. Changing sets is a simple matter, he explained: Morocco, Martinique, Manchester, context is everything. The taste of a cigarette will do it, even a photograph of the cigarette, visible traces of rent boy saliva. One line from a book by Joseph Conrad will import, or predict, meteorological conditions. You can read yourself into a storm. But you can’t, when you’re asleep, conjure up a decent plate of ham and eggs. The dead are starving, but they can’t eat.

‘I have seen weather magic,’ Burroughs said. ‘I have even performed it. I stopped rain in Seattle.’

— From ‘Dream Science’: an account by Iain Sinclair of a 1995 visit to William S. Burroughs in Lawrence, Kansas, taken from ‘American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light’, which will be published by Hamish Hamilton in November, 2013. At the link is the chapter in its unedited (or: “raw state”) form…

iainsinclair.org.uk

Hmm

We’ve been notified that our humble rag is somehow one of four finalists for the 2013 Utne Media Award in the Arts Coverage category. Very generous of the jury. The press release adds:

Winners will be selected by the editorial staff over the next few weeks, and announced in a public ceremony at the Magazine Publishers of America’s Independent Magazine Media Conference in New Orleans on May 20.

So there you go.

NEW BROTHER JT FOR YOUR EARHAIRS

Hot damn. Brother JT of the United States of America returns to rock us after a few eternities in the wilderness of other-investigation. Here is the lead track from his forthcoming album on Thrill Jockey (info here).

Brother JT was featured in Arthur No. 8 (Dolly Parton cover), published several universes ago, with an interview by Jay Babcock and a guide to JT’s discography by David Katznelson. (Copies of this magazine still exist. You can buy one here.)

And, lookout Ma, JT’s started up his TRIPPIN’ BALLS series again. New episode here with guest MIGHTY TWIG HARPER…

A Poem by Oswald James

oswald james

the haunted elevator
by Oswald James

down to the basement bar
with the ghost vibes
and inflatable skeletons
out on the terrace
we overlook the antennae
a calliope drones in the distance
and the drunks stumble
down the river walls
a fog lifts the bridges
the suburbs don’t exist
a fire fades forever
and an inner flame
collides with a sonic fortress
that no one ever visits
but is well photographed, nonetheless

Oswald James owns and operates Alta Real Pictures, a film/video production company based in Austin, TX

ON ANARCHO-OCCULTISM, THIS CAPITALIST PLANET AND COUNTERPOWER (Arthur, 2013)

Here is the entirety of the “Applied Magic(k)” column by The Center for Tactical Magic in Arthur No. 34/April 2013. The illustration below is by Aaron Gach.

Screen Shot 2013-03-19 at 7.51.46 PM

Anarcho-Occultism or, A Society Gets All the Magic(k) It Deserves

Like some digital cauldron, our email was all a-bubble this past month with some particularly savory notes. “Do you believe in occult conspiracies?” “How can I meet others who are interested in magic(k) and aren’t batshit crazy?” And, perhaps our favorite of the bunch: “What’s the relationship between magic(k) and anarchy (or anti-capitalism)?” Any one of these questions is worthy of inspiring a volume in its own right; however, we’re going to use a bit of invisible thread to tie them altogether at once.

First off, there’s not one, single relationship between magic(k) and anarchy, in part because there are many different aspects of anarchism and many, many magic(k)s. As a starting point, let’s use some of the principles of stage magic. Capitalism is an illusion. Or, more properly put, it is a system based on illusory means and ends. In the current economic paradigm, corporations increase their wealth through several illusions: by manufacturing and marketing phantom “needs” (i.e., the magician’s “force”), by the engineering wizardry of planned obsolescence (i.e., the use of gimmicked props), by conjuring commodities out of basic necessities (i.e., misdirection), and by manipulating public policy to ensure that would-be costs are mysteriously transferred to taxpayers via so-called “externalities”, often in the form of weakened labor laws, cut-rate resource extraction, government subsidies, and environmental loopholes, to name but a few (i.e., the use of “dupes”). These sleights are but parts of the capitalist repertoire performed in a much larger theater of conflict. The grand illusion is the one that aims to convince the audience that the status quo is the only show in town.

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