Artwork by Joseph Remnant
Originally published in Arthur No. 28 (March 2008)
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“SLOW DOWN”: Erik Davis’s “The Analog Life” column (Arthur, 2008)
Originally published in Arthur Magazine No. 32 (Dec 2008)
“The Analog Life”
by Erik Davis
Illustration by P.D. Hidalgo
SLOW DOWN
Is it really so horrible to imagine the planet down-shifting for once?
You can hardly blame anyone for feeling the fear and panic that helped drive October’s near financial meltdown. Scanning the headlines or the newsfeeds, our eyes greeted a steady pulse of bummer lingo. “Global Recession.” “Great Depression.” “Financial Collapse.” Serious words for serious times. But there was another phrase I kept stumbling across, less apocalyptic certainly but still delivered with a grim fatalism, that struck me differently. The economy, we were warned, was showing signs of a significant slowdown.
Slowdown? I don’t know about you, but I could use a bit of a slowdown right about now. Take things easy, not run around so much, maybe poke around the garden and restring that guitar. Hold a neighborhood potluck, learn emergency response, can some tomatoes. I haven’t finished rebuilding the office, and haven’t even cracked The Man Without Qualities.
OK, I am being a little facetious. After all, “slowdown” describes the debilitating stuttering of capitalism’s endless Big Bang-like expansion, an enormously powerful wave of transformation that in some manner or another floats almost all of our boats. If this immense flow of nested feedback loops, production networks, and capital flows starts to slow, then things don’t just mellow out. They start to fall apart, like a Chinese acrobat—scratch that, American acrobat—whose spinning plates lose their momentum and inevitably fall to the floor even as the poor fellow keeps his balance. That means families get pushed into poverty, small businesses close, poor folks grow desperate and rich folks even more selfish and mean.
Continue readingByron Coley and Thurston Moore's "Bull Tongue" column from Arthur No. 32 (Dec 08)
BULL TONGUE
by Byron Coley and Thurston Moore
from Arthur No. 32 (Dec 2008)
Of all the fucked up, nasty ass, deliriously damaged rock bands in the recent history of the American underground wonderland (particularly Texas), none come close to the squirm and hellacious sqwunk of Rusted Shut. From the incinerated skum of Houston weirdness improv outfit Grinding Teeth arose Rusted Shut in 1986. Their shows were a notorious mess, drunken and fueled by cheap-jack acid. After years of slovenly survival they’ve been somewhat rescued from universal distaste by the current noise legions. The Emperor Jones label released the Rehab CD in 2003 and AA Records did a sick lathe (“Bring Out Your Dead”) last year and their notorious “Fuckin’” track off the 2006 End Times Festival live comp is still the only loop that matters (check their myspace page for that one). It was with some apprehension of being held up by knife point that we unzipped their new Hot Sex EP (Dull Knife). But goddamn if this is not a great goddamned beast of a record. The core duo of Don Walsh and Sybil Chance (the original still alive members of Grinding Teeth) and Domokos (on drums and ‘earthscreamer’) just lay it out in an unctious smear of rawk n roll decimating any obvious pretence of hardcore, black metal, death metal, sludge, punk, avant improv goop etc.—shit is the REAL amerika full on. Salute and die.
Nigel Cross’s British label, Shagrat, only releases extraordinary material. He doesn’t bother with anything else. That means it’s always a label to watch and their newsy release, the Mariachi Riff Live and Free Music LP by Formerly Fat Harry, is a case in point. FFH were an ostensible Country Joe offshoot band, based in England, who recorded a lone laid-back, country-fried album for UK Harvest. It never struck us as wildly interesting, but Brits who saw the band live were always blowing spit-bubbles about how psychedelic they were. Some of that material finally surfaced on the Hux CD, Goodbye for Good, but this LP has the essential jewel—a 25-minute West Coast jam pinnacle that can match any ballroom band for sheer acid flash. An amazing record! The flip has two free-form pieces the band recorded earlier and they too are mind-blowers. If this material had surfaced while the band was still extant, they’d be legendary. As it was, they were so arcane only a few true believers like Pete Frame, Colin Hill (who wrote the fantastic liner notes) and Nigel had any idea that there even was a grail to seek. Easily the best archival find of the year, and an incredible record by any standard.
“Real Eyes”: Greg Shewchuk’s “Advanced Standing” column for Arthur (2008)
This is the text of the “Advanced Standing” column for Arthur No. 32 (2008, online-only):
Real Eyes: What Are We Skating Towards?
by Gregory Shewchuk
Illustration by Joseph Remnant
“To know the truth of one’s Self as the sole Reality, and to merge and become one with it, is the only true Realization.” – Ramana Maharshi
One indication that I am not quite an enlightened being is my temper—I can get very angry and lose touch with my higher purpose. As much as I enjoy skateboarding, when things are not going well I occasionally lose my shit: throw my board, punch myself, scream at the heavens, and curse myself for even trying to ride the thing. It’s not always fun and games. In addition to the physical challenge, skateboarding can be highly emotional and often takes me to the edge of some very unpleasant feelings: doubt, frustration, depression, seething anger. Yet I keep coming back to my board, to roll around and delve deeper into the process. After 20 years of sidewalk surfing, I’ve started to understand what I am looking for.
I received my first skateboard—a Sims Kamikaze—in third grade in the rapidly developing suburb of Columbia, Maryland. I was a child with a toy. I played on my skateboard, hung out with friends, rode bikes and built ramps and listened to music and played video games. As I entered middle and high school and became more independent and physically capable, skateboarding became more of a lifestyle.
MAGIC(K) IN THE STREETS: Applied Magic(k) column by the Center for Tactical Magic (Arthur, 2008)
An Open Invocation
by The Center for Tactical Magic
illustration by Cassandra Chae
originally published in Arthur No. 31 (Oct 2008)
“Magic(k) works.” This declarative statement was recently hurled in our direction with a cautionary tone rather than a celebratory one. The sender of the warning was concerned that we didn’t take magic(k) seriously enough; that we were advocating its use willy-nilly like some sort of fun, new fad. But fear not. Although we don’t believe that fun and magic(k) are at odds with one another, we are nonetheless advocating its use very pointedly and with much consideration. And we are advocating its use precisely because it works.
As we’ve said in the past, one of the primary reasons why people don’t engage in magic(k) in the first place is out of a sense of dismissal. They dismiss magic(k) because they doubt it will produce results; and, they dismiss magic(k) because they fear it will produce results. Indeed, much of the bullshit that fertilizes the grand magic garden reeks of these airs of dismissal. Occult conspiracy theorists will even tell you that such bullshit is built up to protect the fruit from those who would dare set foot in the garden at all. Layers and layers of foul fluff and rotten rhetoric are woven into a formidable pile of vapid New Age-isms, Hollywood cheese, religious warnings, and occult elitism.
Continue reading“KEEPING IT LOCAL”: Trinie Dalton visits BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT (Arthur, 2008)
Nabob, photographed by Trinie Dalton
KEEPING IT LOCAL
Two transplants from the Heart of Dixie who went west to the land of mesas, pueblos and geodesic domes, Rachael Hughes and Nathan Shineywater have found a way to thrive beyond society’s mad dash to survive. Trinie Dalton travels to New Mexico to meet BRIGHTBLACK MORNING LIGHT, and hear their stunning new album in the pair’s natural habitat.
originally published in Arthur No. 31 (Oct 2008), with photographs by Lisa Law
Leaving Brightblack Morning Light’s northern New Mexico deep wilderness enclave, I finally get their obsession with the local AM radio. The daily monsoon moves in as I fly down the hill from their town in my red rental car. Mexican cumbia, a variation of the upbeat Colombian pop music, sounds interplanetary crackling through the fuzzy AM distance. I imagine it transmitting from some far off Mexican star, a star I’d like to visit. Crank the cumbia, see what it can do in a storm. Brightblack Morning Light’s Nabob Shineywater says AM is like Sun Ra. Yesterday morning, just after I’d arrived, we were hiking up a wash and Nabob asked, “Who are we to say Sun Ra wasn’t from another planet?”
The sky gets dark as wind kicks up. With the first lightning crackle and boom, the radio shorts and cumbia cuts out—quiet for a moment, then back up, hissing, scratched, and damaged. Have I blown the speakers? Has the radio station’s tower been struck? Each lightning bolt slicing vertically down the flat horizon causes more disruption. Nabob also mentioned that in Los Alamos, scientists recently disproved Einstein’s theory that light travels fastest. Radio waves now win that contest. Two days after the anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt of 1860—a big deal in these parts—thunder means the obliteration of human sounds. Recognizable dance beats are exchanged for something Frankenstein-ish: a live, electric orchestration so weird and marvelous it could only have been invented by Nature, the omnipresent force in this sandy region.
Continue readingIs the “planetary consciousness” of neotribal psytrance gatherings just window dressing for the same old hedonism?
Trance Planet
by Erik Davis
originally published in Arthur No. 31 (Oct 2008)
Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal
This August, around 25,000 people hauled their kits and caboodles down a long hot narrow road in the middle of the Portuguese nowhere to camp like migrants along the shores of a lake not far from the Spanish border. They made the trek to attend Boom, a biannual electronic dance music festival that has grown into a large and successful event that eschews corporate sponsorship and keeps its roots in the underground alive. There were all sorts of people at Boom, but the dominant vibe of the weeklong festival was neotribal: a rave-inflected millennial florescence of hippie shit like long hair, fashion exotica, hardcore psychedelia, trance dancing, healing arts, and pagan-ish New Age mysticism with an apocalyptic thrust. There were chai shops and vegan grub vendors and massage centers and drug information booths, plus four music stages that provided everything from cheesy breakbeats to live world fusion to ambient driftworks. But the core genre was psytrance, an intense and sometimes unnervingly trippy form of electronic dance music whose pulverizing, brain-synching and monotonous beats that embody a ferocious psychedelic aspiration that makes dancing at Boom as much a ritual as a party.
Continue readingWhat transcendent things might you learn on a skateboard? (Arthur, 2008)
Burn Yourself Completely
by Gregory Shewchuk
Illustration by Joseph Remnant
“Advanced Standing” column originally published in Arthur No. 31 (Oct 2008)
The other day in Echo Park I came across a familiar scene: a cop standing over a group of adolescents while his partner ran their background checks. These kids — I’m guessing they were 12 or 13 years old — had climbed a fence into a schoolyard, presumably to ride their skateboards. Now the boards were scattered at their feet and they were face down on the pavement, most likely wondering what the fuck is wrong with this world.
I could relate to the little monsters because, sadly, even as a grown man I find myself hopping fences and skating spots at risk of being caught by actual gun-toting policemen. There’s not many places to skate in a congested city (oh wait, they just had the X-Games downtown, maybe those millions in revenue will trickle their way towards another tiny, over-regulated, overcrowded skatepark in a distant corner of LA) and a schoolyard is a decent place to cruise around in the open air to practice my craft, without worrying about getting hit by a car or endangering pedestrians and business-goers.
So hop and hustle I do, like I have since I was 13, to skate in relative peace until the cavalry rolls through. It’s embarrassing and laughable and scary. And as a taxpaying citizen, concerned as we all are about the state of our union, the conditions of our schools, gang violence, and so on, I can’t help but stagger at this irony that has been perpetuated in every American city for the past 30 years: kids are racking up criminal records, fines, and sentences for BREAKING INTO SCHOOLS TO PURSUE PHYSICAL EDUCATION. Aren’t our children fat and sad enough yet? Are physical challenge and creativity really that threatening to our society?
Continue readingAMERICA'S VICTORY IS INFINITE: Dave Reeves goes to Vietnam
American victory in Vietnam! That’s right! Iraq too! We always win!
by Dave Reeves
originally published in Arthur No. 31 (Oct 2008)
Hanoi, Vietnam: I’m in Vietnam picking out a baby for my Prius. Problem is, the damn babies all look the same. Needing to calm down, I pay fifty bucks for what looks like weed and smells like weed; but when rolled into Bob Marley blunts only gets me high enough to watch television. I’m mad, until I realize that getting ripped off for illegal drugs in a supposed Buddho/communist country indicates a total victory of the Judeo-Christian/capitalist cause.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t declare victory over nothing. It’s not about fifty bucks. I consider occasional rip-offs to be like union dues in the underworld. I’ve paid money for a baggie of gravel in Amsterdam, purchased placebos purporting to be mescaline in Texas and ingested sheets of Georgia rat poison acid. Besides, I get ripped off for real back in California all the time, what with the rolling blackouts, profit prisons and wars without end.
It’s the constant miracle of Hanoi traffic that got me open to the hustle. Vietnamese people tend to ride their mopeds at full speed, in a scrum, about as far from one another as you are from this page. The stoplights are but suggestions, hidden behind the foliage, way up on the periphery behind the “go” sign. The side of the road a driver chooses is dictated by whimsy. Nonetheless, at each intersection the masses of mopeds weave through each other unscathed,with no cursing, nor shots fired.
I thought this symbiosis indicated that Buddhism was The Answer, because it’s about respect for the value of human life and yadda yah. It only takes one terrible joint to realize that the reason the Vietnamese people can ride like that is because their weed sucks. Don’t try that shit back in California. Those motherfuckers are high.
Continue readingNO MONEY DOWN: Rushkoff on the rigged credit system (Arthur, 2008)
NO MONEY DOWN
by Douglas Rushkoff
Illustration by Arik Roper
from Arthur Magazine No. 31, Oct 2008
I poked my head up from writing my book a couple of months ago to engage with Arthur readers about the subject I was working on: the credit crunch and what to do about it [see “Riding Out the Credit Crisis” in Arthur No. 29/May 2008]. I got more email about that piece than anything I have written since a column threatening to defect from the Mac community back in the Quadra days.
Many readers thought I was hinting at something under the surface—a conspiracy, of sorts, to take money from the poor and give it to the rich. It sounded to many like I was describing an economic system actually designed—planned—to redistribute income in the worst possible ways.
I guess I’d have to agree with that premise. Only it’s not a secret conspiracy. It’s an overt one, and playing out in full view of anyone who has time (time is money, after all) to observe it.
The mortgage and credit crisis wasn’t merely predictable; it was predicted. And not by a market bear or conspiracy theorist, but by the people and institutions responsible. The record number of foreclosures, credit defaults, and, now, institutional collapses is not the result of the churn of random market forces, but rather a series of highly lobbied changes to law, highly promoted ideologies of wealth and home ownership, and monetary policies highly biased toward corporate greed.
It all started to make sense to me when I attended Learning Annex’s Wealth Expo earlier this year—a seminar where teachers of The Secret, the hosts of Flip This House, George Foreman, Tony Robbins and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan [pictured above in banner from Learning Annex website] purportedly taught the thousands in attendance how to take advantage of the current foreclosure boom.
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