Tag Archives for Bob Dylan

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

Singing poetry: Jim Dickinson reads "The Congo" by Vachel Lindsay

jimdickinson

Birdman Records’ David Katznelson writes:

World Boogie Is Coming: If you were ever fortunate enough to get a letter or package from legendary record man Jim Dickinson (November 15, 1941 – August 15, 2009), it would end with those four words.

 It is the way he ended his first note to me, which contained the recording plans for the Texas Tornadoes (the project that facilitated our meeting). It is the way he ended his last words to his constituency as a mortal on this planet (see his message at zebraranch.com).



World Boogie Is Coming: It was his motto, his mantra, his mission — something he’d developed through the decades, from when he was a young boy, witnessing Elvis and the merging of music cultures in 1950s Memphis; to his years as a working musician, blowing away boundaries with his jug bands and session work with The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder and the Flaming Groovies; to his work as a producer for artists as varied as Big Star, Toots and the Maytalls, The Replacements, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, The Sugar Cube Blues Band, Screaming Jay Hawkins and Mudhoney.



Jim Dickinson saw sound as the vibration that would and could bring us all together. He believed that some of the finest music is that which we cannot hear. He believed some of his best production was done in absentia. He talked about the red and dark green sounds that vibrated the warmest through the soul. Jim Dickinson literally saw music… smelled music, and created his own world—a studio in Independence, Mississippi—where he could capture the music….if only for a brief second….and revel in its piety. Over the past few years, as he felt the burden of his own finite time on this planet, he would weigh heavily every time he punched the RED button—that magic portal to recording the molecules vibrating in the room—because he had but a limited number of punches left, and each one had to count. Jim lived his life ferociously fighting for the truth and purity that well-intentioned music promotes; he did not have patience for anyone or any sound that did not fall in line with his mission.



In Jim’s final note, he wrote: “I will not be gone as long as the music lingers.” And with that, he has left an amazing body of work, a family that is continuing his pursuit of world boogie, wonderful stories (many of which can be found in Robert Gordon’s book It Came From Memphis) and the extensive memoirs that his wife Mary Lindsey, his son Luther and I will be compiling.



I became a disciple of James Luther Dickinson a long time ago, believing wholeheartedly that there would be FREE BEER TOMORROW and that world boogie was just around the corner. Working with him on records was such an incredible experience for me that I would contrive projects for us to do together, whether it was sending ex-Spacemen 3er Sonic Boom to Mississippi to collaborate (cf. Spectrum Meets Captain Memphis—”Indian Giver”)…or having him do a spoken word record where he read from passages written by his favorite Southern writers. And while the latter experiment might seem the most eclectic, check out the following track, a reading of American singing poet Vachel Lindsay‘s “The Congo,” and hear the might of the man they called DICKINSON.



World Boogie IS coming, and when it does come, the mountains WILL come together and Jim will be the first soul to be flying towards the party…

Stream: [audio:http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/01-The-Congo.mp3%5D

Download: Jim Dickinson — “The Congo” (mp3)

Purchase mp3: ilike.com

From Fishing with Charlie & Other Selected Readings by Jim Dickinson, available on cd direct from Birdman Records and Amazon

TRIGGER HIPPIES: Dave Reeves on sensitive weapons that even a vegetarian can use

TRIGGER HIPPIES
“Do the Math” column by Dave Reeves
originally published in Arthur No. 23 (July 2006)

Blackout. Summertime. Populace accepts that utility companies have again fried the grid for profit. Hours go by. Americans go without television, SUVs, flash-fried food. Coffee runs out. Shortages of chronic and chronic shortages. Rumor becomes news. Alcohol reserves are drunk away and the rabble seethe in the street, commiserating about how it was this very publication that printed the recipe for the diabolical bomb that left the assholes standing but killed their precious machines. [see our Q&A with Derrick Jensen from Arthur 23 – ed.]

Emergency personnel stay at home because, like that great American Bob Dylan said, “The cops don’t need you and, man, they expect the same.” The National Guard is busy on the border, the French Quarter and Iraq. Everyone is a suspect.

“There he is! I saw him reading that Arthur!” the mob yells.

And then, dear reader, you realize that when the transistors are dead, the world is run by a lower phylum of machine: the gun.

Now I’m not saying you need to get one, but you can never be too careful what with this Arthur magazine monkeying around with these new-fangled technology bombs. Of course you are scared of guns because the liberal media constantly portrays people misusing these valuable tools. The smart hipster won’t let crappy television writers’ abuse of the pistol as a modern day Deus Ex Machina divert her from the path of preparedness. Just think of a gun as one of those “Talking Sticks” at a Rainbow Family Gathering: if you have a Talking Stick, you get to say something and people have to listen, and if you don’t have one you have to shut the hell up.

Here’s a list of “sensitive weapons” that even a vegetarian could use in the near future, cribbed in these last precious moments while this computer still works. I’ve listed them in the order that they should be purchased, so that you may gradually warm to the idea of being a citizen capable of doing what it takes to keep America on course.

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