Friday

September 29, 2006

Edward Dmytryk, Walk on the Wild Side (1962).

Schmidt: You said last time you wrote poetry.
Hallie: I only echo it.

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Wednesday

September 25, 2006

THURSDAY Sept. 28th
at ArtSF, 16th and Capp 5th floor
(go a little down capp st and dial 5-0-0 on the gate)

Dead/Bird
Newton
Spider Compass Good Crime Band
Core of the Coalman
Head Boggle Domo in Auralsize
Therac 25

Special Guest: DJ Sick as a Dick

Show starts at 8pm and end by 11pm. $5

Tuesday

September 25, 2006

first published in Life Nanjing (Jan 2005)

Well Under the Radar: Live Music in Nanjing
An Interview with Xu Feng

Life: Can you please describe the music scene in Nanjing?

Xu: Right now in Nanjing there aren’t so many bands that can put a show on. So right now we’ve been inviting bands in from Beijing to come down to play a show. Right now we have some bands from Austria and some punk bands lined up to play shows in the near future. We’re looking to negotiate with some sponsors for the show coming up at 82 Bar and also trying to put a show together featuring International Noise Conspiracy from Sweden sometime soon.

Life: You organize a lot of concerts. Can you go into the details of just how you get a show together? How you find the bands? Which bar owners are more open to live music?

Xu: There aren’t so many bars in Nanjing for us to put shows together in. Stupid Bird asked us for a 1000 kuai to rent out the space. The bands playing sold the tickets, but only made about a thousand kuai. So most of the money from that show went to the bar and not the bands. The show at 112 Bar, the bar wanted to have a show to help sell more alcohol, but in the end they didn’t sell that many drinks; so the next time we do a show there they’re going to ask for some money. Right now, I’m working with 82 Bar for the Brain Failure show on New Year’s Eve. The owner there is a friend of mine. If the show there is good, then we will probably put more shows on there in a sort of long-term collaboration. So not so many bars in Nanjing are willing to put on shows and not so many bars have the facilities to do it. Most bars don’t have the equipment necessary to put on the bigger shows.

Life: You held a show at Librairie Avant-garde. What other places other than bars have you had bands play at?

Xu: Right now we have different styles of bands playing in Nanjing. Last year, Stupid Bird was just opening up so they put up shows for free as a sort of advertisement to get people in the door. Now that they’ve become more successful they don’t really care. They are like the big boss and now you have to pay. Last year and the year before last, some bands came down from Beijing not punk bands but bands like Wooden Horse came to Nanjing to play. Next year, I hope to have everything become more systematic, more formally organized. Have more shows and different kinds of bands. Right now, we’re focusing on punk because the bands are my friends and it’s more convenient for me to organize show with them.

Life: Who makes up the audience for live shows?

Xu: The first part is mainly students who have come to Nanjing to study. The second part is people that actually like rock music, rock and roll, punk. They’re usually aged 18-about 30. And the last group is foreigners.

Life: Talk about the bands a little bit. Their relationships with each other.

Xu: In Nanjing, the place isn’t that big so everybody knows everybody. They’re friends. Sometimes it’s like this guy plays with them, they mix. The people know each other and are pretty supportive. It’s not like Beijing which has a lot of bands that scatter around and form their own communities. Beijing bands often have conflicts with each other. Nanjing is much more true friendship kind of scene.

Life: Can you tell us a little bit about the history of the Nanjing music scene?

Xu: In 1991 or 92, Beijing had, I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, the Black Panthers; they kind of started the thing. So the kids in Nanjing started buying guitars. Over near Wutaishan, there was a place, an old bomb shelter, and the kids would go in there and play songs which the famous bands had played, just try to practice. And PK-14 is a Nanjing local band. I use to be a member of that band. Yeah, they played a little bit then moved to Beijing and cut their first album. I stayed in Beijing for three years and came back. PK-14 is constantly changing members. I came back and there were more kids playing punk rock so we widened the bomb shelter. We tore everything out to make room for more bands to play. So there were more and more bands.

Life: How many working bands are there right now in Nanjing?

Xu: It’s a problem. There’s only three or four bands that play out. Angry Jerks, the Great Cocks, some of their band members have left. So you know. They have fill-ins play. One lacks a bass; one lacks a drummer, he went back home. So there’s a constant problem with continuity.

Life: The guitar player for 7.16 also plays bass for another band. Does that happen a lot?

Xu: The different bands may want to try different styles. This band wants to try this style; the other band wants to try this style. So people play in different bands to test things out. Right now in Nanjing, it’s hard to fill positions. How to say? They’re not that great.

Life: I disagree. The Angry Jerks guitar player was better than all the Beijing guitar players at the Stupid Bird show.

Xu: The guitarist’s name is Gao Feng. There’s a lot of bands that have no clue as to what they’re doing; they’re lost. But Gao is pretty sure about it.

Life: Are there record labels in Nanjing? Because it seems that PK-14 left to go to Beijing, all these bands are in Beijing. Does Nanjing have recording labels?

Xu: Right now, Chinese indie labels probably want to sign up abroad with a foreign label because it’s cheaper. They probably want to start a company and have some records and publish a zine. Right now my studio we can’t afford it, but we want to develop it.

Life: Is the Nanjing music scene right now healthier than it was say five years ago?

Xu: I was born in the 1970s, and those of us probably think that the best music in Nanjing happened between 1996 and 2000, because back then the people just really loved the music. The music was really pure. But right now, people like it because it is fashionable. They don’t like the music because of the music.

Life: Do more people come out for the shows than before?

Xu: The old crowd that used to go to the shelter a lot, right now they’d rather stay at home. Unless the band is really good, then they will come out. Right now it’s more kids. The scene has lost a lot of older people and gained more new people. There was a place called Wheaties no 3, it was a little bar and back then there was a band called 7 and 8 club (it was a really great band, better than PK-14). If they would have gone up to Beijing, Modern Sky would have signed them. They were a much better band, but they disbanded. They used to play a lot and do a lot of impromptu jams .

Life: If you could wish for five things to change in the Nanjing music scene, what would you ask for?

Xu: I don’t have a lot of faith. I just want to continue to do what I’m doing. I wish for more good bands, but that’s out of my control. I can’t do anything about it. I would like the bands to be more creative, not following other people. Create their own new thing. The problem now is that the bands are now more or less the same. Thirdly, it would be nice if people actually listened to the music. Not just superficially but listened for a deeper meaning.

—(dhh with Liu Shasha)

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Monday

September 24, 2006


from espn.com:

The [Detroit] Tigers fought off their late-season slump and clinched their first playoff berth since 1987, scoring nine runs in the second inning Sunday and coasting to an 11-4 win over the Kansas City Royals.

Sunday

September 24, 2006

Adam Bock, The Typographers Dream (Encore Theatre Company w/ Shotgun Players @Ashby Theater)
&
Tom Stoppard, Travesties (American Conservatory Theater)
I've recently been rereading Johnn Berger's Ways of Seeing which has quite possibly framed all of my media & arts related experiences in the past couple of weeks. For example, Adam Bock's Typographer's Dream features professionals whose jobs it is to create written and visual historical records: a typographer, a geographer, and a court reporter. Each job seems innocuous, until you factor in how each of these by necessity frames the information of the products they produce, privileging (forcing) one reading over others possible: Why is Poland always pink? Once you factor in all the subjective decisions that these professionals make and couple that with a Benjaminian understanding of reproduction, suspicion begins to fall on everything claiming to be a record of something else. Enter Stoppard's Henry Carr, a mid-level diplomat in Zurich during the Great World War. Wheelchair bound and elderly, Carr begins to spin a yarn that puts him near the center of Zurich's incredible avant-garde and revolutionary activity, placing Tristan Tzara, James Joyce and Vladimir Lenin all just one degree of separation from each other. The problem is that Carr's failing memory and his propensity for self-aggrandizement aren't to be relied upon. Could he have really stopped Lenin from catching the train to Russia after the revolution if only he hadn't fallen in love with a reference librarian? What ensues is a multi-perspective discussion of art and revolution and the value and purpose of both. Is Tzara another product of lickspittle imperialism? Joyce another bourgeois in pauper's mismatched clothing? Lenin doesn't get Mayakovsky? Really? Really really?

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September 24, 2006

Mr. Carreira's marching band begins:

Free Percussion Workshop in Downtown Oakland Join us for a free percussion workshop – mixing the precision and fun of a Samba bateria with the scrappy inclusiveness of a protest band - at RPS Gallery in downtown Oakland beginning on Sunday, September 24 from 3 to 4 PM.
Visit here for info about RPS and for workshop details visit here.

September 23, 2006


"Poetry by Computer," Avant Garde 4 (1968): 30-1.

Produced by an IBM 360 (pictured above) in 1968:

THE STEEL

VEINS ROUSE THE STEEL
JOY PROTRACTS THE DIRECTION

MIST UTTER THE SLATHES
RED FIRE WEAVES LOVERS

NAKED PLEASURES BEGIN
THE STEEL

ASTRONOMY

TASTE AND TOUCH BRIGHTEN SPRING SNOW
WEEDS BROUGHT THE REFUSSAL
UNBEARABLY

WEEDS LOITERED WESTERN STARS
THE EARTH CATWALKS THE EAST RIM
LESS VIVID

TO REST THE EARTH
TO HAVE FOG-BREATH
THE WESTERN LITTLE STARS FOUGHT

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Wednesday

September 19, 2006

"People unkowingly say beautiful things all the time."

--Daniel Handler
9/19/06 Mills College

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September 19, 2006

SEAN FINNEY & RODNEY KOENEKE read from their poetry

THURSDAY, SEPT. 21 @ 8 p.m.
ADOBE BOOKS 3166 16th Street (bet. Valencia & Guerrero)
SAN FRANCISCO

Sean Tumoana Finney is a poet and erstwhile resident of Hawaii who now works in San Francisco as a copywriter. He is the author of The Obedient Door (Meritage Press, 2005) and eminence grise of the Canteen Literary Banquet series, about which you can Google.

Rodney Koeneke is the author of Musee Mechanique (BlazeVOX, 2006) and Rouge State (Pavement Saw, 2003). I.A. Richards once went to China and there was Rodney eighty years later to write about it. A native of Omaha, he now makes his home near the Glen Park BART stop.

Tuesday

September 18, 2006



Rather than grading papers like I ought to be doing, I'm checking out what Matthew Lusk is up to at the Sculpture Center in Queens.

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Monday

September 17, 2006

hay(na)ku
is not
its own genre

it
is a
recent poetic form
______
see Crag Hill's Poetry Scorecard ( July 10, 2005):"We'll harken back to this series as a classic of the hayna(ku) genre."

Sunday

September 16, 2006


Valerie Hegarty, Still Lives with Crows (2006)

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September 16, 2006

from the nytimes:

Officer Putz says San Francisco has also always had a place in the graffiti underworld, in part because landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge tempt graffiti glory-seekers. “Who wants to tag some Podunk town no one has ever heard of?” he said.

Saturday

September 15, 2006

Dhooswan Saymi, The Eclipse, trans. Tejratna Kansakar (Kathmandu: Nepal Press, 1967). 203 pages.

Originally published in Newari in 1956 and translated into Nepali in 1963, it's hard to tell what kind of impact this book might have had on its original audience. Somewhat similar in scope and tone to Mariamba Ba's Une Si Longue Lettre, Eclipse tells the tale of an unnamed female narrator in a country deeply devided by class and gender. Setbacks and social mores lead the narrator to go from being part of one of the most respected and privileged families in the neighboorhood, to running an illegal bar and whoring to ensure the economic stability of her mother and brother. The book opens and ends with the brother (now older, well-educated and married) with his wife and child vacating the narrator's house to safeguard the morals of his daughter lest she become like her aunt, thus ensuring the dignity of the family name in society.
Powerful and incisive. It is a shame that only three libraries in the US own this book. Eclipse could easily fit into many university syllabi and open up many different discussions.

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September 15, 2006


Friday

September 15, 2006

Posted recently over at Tougher Disguises:

Congratulations to Robert Paredez, whose first book Mayflower will be published by Tougher Disguises in 2007.

With the exception of Mayflower, Tougher Disguises will be on hiatus until 2008, during which time, we plan to print a second edition of Deer Head Nation and maintain a healthy supply of our other titles.

September 14, 2006

Tonight:

At New Langton Arts : Opening reception 7-9 pm. "Nothing Stands Still" explores migration and displacement through the video works of Juan Manuel Echavarria (b Columbia, lives in Bogota and New York), Adrià Julià (b Spain, lives in Los Angeles), and Adrian Paci (b Albania, lives in Milan). The artists reflect on three different regions of the world: Albanians that have migrated to Italy, Colombians displaced within their own borders, and earlier migrations of Basques to southern California, in works that are both political and poetic.

New Music at the Luggage Store: Set1: Satellite (Steini Gunnarson, Liz Meredith & Travis Johns); Set2: Leif Shackelford; Set3: French guitarist David Fenech. 8 PM. $6-10 sliding scale.

At CCA: Artist talk: Architect and theorist Lebbeus Woods explores new forms of space and energy that characterize contemporary society. Focusing on zones of geographic crisis, economic uncertainty and social conflict in cities like San Francisco, Havana and Sarajevo, Woods's provocative visions of possible realities make him one of the most imaginative and internationally respected architects practicing today. His wildly experimental theories and projects inspire architects, artists and students to reach beyond traditional limits of practicality to reconsider innovative means of understanding architecture's relationship to the human condition.7 pm, Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco campus. Free.

At Simple Pleasures Cafe: Chris Stroffolino, Yonatan Gat, Julian Brolaski acoustic music extragavanza. 3434 BALBOA @ 35th ST. All ages show. 8-10PM. Free


Friday:

SPT at CCA: 7:30 p.m. World Premiere of THE WISHING WELL, a play by Kevin Killian & Larry Rinder. $10.

At New Langton Arts: Artists Talk: Adrian Paci and Adrià Julià. 7 pm. $5.

Mills College: Concert Series: L'Esprit Nouveau: Music by Milhaud, Satie, Poulenc, and Tailleferre. 8 pm. Free

Sunday:

21 Grand: New Yipes! - Ugly Duckling Presse presents Stan Apps & Elizabeth Reddin w/ films by Kirthi Nath. 7pm. $4.

Tuesday:

At Mills College: Contemporary Writers Series: Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snickett. 5 PM. Free.

RSP at Lobot: Screenprinting Lab: RPS hosts a weekly open screenprinting lab at LoBot Gallery. This is for folks with previous screenprinting experience but a lack of access to proper printing facilities. Someone from RPS will be around to monitor the lab and help with lightweight troubleshooting. The lab will provide each person with one screen to use, emulsion, emulsion remover, and tools (drying racks, exposure unit, squeegees, tape, etc). You will need to bring your own image on a transparency or acetate, ink, and paper or fabric to print onto, and be prepared to clean up after yourself. You must sign up to attend, 5 person max, $10 for the 4 hour session. Lobot Gallery is located at 1800 Campbell Street in Oakland. Any Questions? email us! rpscollective@yahoo.com or call 510-238-9171.

Thursday

September 13, 2006

“PARTICULATE MATTER” at Mills College Art Museum

“Particulate Matter" brings together the work of six contemporary American and European artists who address conditions of overload in modern life: Andrea Bowers, Chris Finley, Karl Haendel, Florian Maier-Aichen, Danica Phelps, and Pamela Wilson-Ryckman. The show runs Sept 9–Dec 10.

“Particulate Matter” will also include a series of rotating solo exhibits by emerging artists whose work relates to the larger themes of the exhibition. The first one features Daniel Tierney, Sept 9–Oct 8.

Two participating artists will give lectures about their work to accompany “Particulate Matter,” Karl Haendel Sept 27, and, Pamela Wilson-Ryckman Nov 13. The lectures take place at 7 pm in Danforth Hall, Art Building, on the Mills campus.

All events are free and open to the public at the Mills College Art Museum, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94613.

September 13, 2006

Ron Silliman today on Stephanie Young's Telling the Future Off here.

Wednesday

September 12, 2006

Liu Ding (Beijing), Wang Wei (Beijing), Won Ju Lim (LA) & Shirley Tse (LA), "The Amber Room" at the Luggage Store.

&

Graffiti Archaeology in San Francisco

&

Bruce Lee in Oakland

&&&

Yatta G-R-double E-N Leaves

September 12, 2006

from the Lucipo list:

New Narrow House full length release: Garrett Caples, Surrealism’s Bad Rap

Born in Lawrence, MA, Garrett Caples is a freelance writer living in Oakland, CA. He is the author of two collections of poetry, The Garrett Caples Reader (Black Square Editions, 1999) and er, um (Meritage Press, 2002). He receieved a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003. A collection of articles on hip hop, The Philistine's Guide to Hip Hop, with an introduction by Shock-G of Digital Underground, appeared in 2004 from Ninevolt Magazine. He currently writes on Bay Area hip hop for the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Anthology appearances include Fetish (4 Walls 8 Windows, 1998), Isn't It Romantic? (Wave Books, 2004), and Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006). Among his current projects, he is editing a lost manuscript of Philip Lamantia's called Tau, along with the poems of John Hoffman, which will be published together in a single volume by City Lights in 2007.

listen here.

September 12, 2006

Guillermo Deisler, "Poetry" (Chile, 1974)

Monday

September 11, 2006

Any reports from this weekend's San Francisco Zine Fest?

_____
By the way, check out zinewiki.

September 10, 2006

New York: Street Poets & Visionaries: Selections from the UbuWeb Collection September 7 - October 14, 2006

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7, 6-8pm

Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery is pleased to announce STREET POETS & VISIONARIES: SELECTIONS FROM THE UBUWEB COLLECTION, an exhibition of posters and ephemeral writings from the streets of New York City.

In the tradition of Jim Shaw's "Thrift Shop Paintings," this collection of street posters, mad scribblings, political screeds, religious rants, and paranoid raves expands our notion of the Outsider arts to include the written word.

Formally striking, emotionally charged, and bizarre beyond belief, these graphical works dovetail with the historic traditions of concrete poetry and art brut. Seamlessly melding text and image, their obsessive quality evokes Adolf Wölfli and Henry Darger's visionary works.
Featured in the exhibition will be the work of David Daniels, a 73 year-old Bay Area artist, who has been creating insanely complex visual poems using only Microsoft Word. Works from two of his epic series, "The Gates of Paradise" and "Years" will be featured.

Coinciding with the exhibition will be three public events. On Saturday, September 23rd at 2 p.m., author Irwin Chusid will deliver a lecture on Outsider Music called, "Songs in the Key of Z." On Saturday, September 30th, renowned poets and performers Eileen Myles, Edwin Torres, Vijay Seshadri, Kenneth Goldsmith and Shelley Hirsch will stage a reading of Outsider writings. On Saturday, October 7th, a panel, "Outside In" will explore the transmigration of Outsider aesthetics and practices influencing and entering into the mainstream. Panelists include Wayne Koestenbaum, Alissa Quart and David Grubbs. All events are free and open to the public.
UbuWeb (ubu.com) is the Internet's largest resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts, featuring thousands of MP3s, films, books, scholarly papers, and poems.

Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery is located at 621 West 27th Street, on the ground floor. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11-6.

For further information or images, please contact the gallery at 212-255-0979 or visit our website at www.oliverkamm.com.

Wednesday

September 6, 2006

where the brain forms meaning
&
new organization giving $50,000 grants to artists
&
cooling out--on the paradox of feminism
&
meskot: an ethiopian online literary journal