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“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 7 “LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 1, Ch. 13 “I want to be like him. He’s never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he’s the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you’ll finally get it.” – Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 2, Ch. 4 “At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.” “What’s your road, man?–holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.” “By the time fame crashed on his doorstep in 1957, Kerouac had already been done with On the Road for several years, but he hadn’t found much early success getting someone to publish the book. It could have been that America wasn’t ready for his stream-of-consciousness tale of jazz, sex, and fast, aimless driving on an open road. He would soon be a literary star, but on the eve of the book’s publication, Kerouac actually had to borrow money for a bus ticket to New York from his girlfriend at the time, Joyce Johnson.” – from NPR’s multi-media page for On the Road, |
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| Posted in: Beat & Experimental lit, Reading Group | No Comments » |
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This new book collects interviews with Sun Ra, his friends, associates, and contemporaries, regarding his prolific output, mystique, and philosophy. It includes essays by Wayne Kramer, Amiri Baraka, Sadiq Bey, and others. This book is in a series of titles that Sinclair has edited for Headpress publishers in London, England. Composer, bandleader, pianist and space philosopher, Sun Ra was a unique individual and one of the most colorful and enduring of musical legacies, transcending time, place and culture. From the mid 1950s until his death in 1993, Sun Ra led The Arkestra , a fluid collective that lived and played together under the despotic tutelage of their leader, who claimed to hail from Saturn. Their music was jazz, but avant garde compositions in which players were instructed to adhere to a space key improvising without regard for conventional tonal centers was symptomatic of an altogether different direction in sound: electronic music, space music and free improvisation. But Sun Ra s legendary status was earned as much for his eccentricities as for his unique artistic vision. He developed and propagated a mystifying sci-fi mythology which he weaved into both the music and Dadaist performances of The Arkestra (performances which inspired artists as diverse as George Clinton and MC5). This book collects together for the first time interviews with Sun Ra, the people that knew him, and his contemporaries, alongside illuminating essays and conversational pieces regarding his prolific musical output, mystique, philosophy, fans, and much more.
About the AuthorEDITOR BIO: In 1969, the poet-provocateur, MC5 manager and White Panther John Sinclair found himself the victim of that decade s draconian American drug laws, and facing a twenty-year jail sentence for the possession of two joints. The counterculture Sinclair helped create came to his rescue, however, when John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and others performed at a successful benefit gig to petition for his release. Since that epochal moment, Sinclair has travelled the globe and performed with some of the world’s finest musicians. He interviewed Sun Ra in 1966. Also available at this sigining will be a reprint facsimile of the “Poetry is Revolution” poster from 1967 by Leni Sinclair produced in a limited edition of 75 copies, and a reprint of Sinclair’s 1966 book Fire Music: A Record. Both editions have been printed by Book Beat.
The Endless Realm
I have nothing The idea of nothing I have the treasure of nothing |
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| Posted in: Author signings, Beat & Experimental lit, Book Signings, Detroit & Michigan, Music, Psychedelia | No Comments » |
Poet and blues scholar John Sinclair will be at The Book Beat on Thursday, August 5 from 7-8:30 pm to sign and discuss his newest book Sun Ra- Interviews and Essays. 
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| Posted in: Author signings, Beat & Experimental lit, Book Signings, Poetry | No Comments » |
Sunday, October 18th: Afternoon Discussion on the Detroit Artist Workshop Press with John Sinclair and Mike Jernigan
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| Posted in: Author signings, Beat & Experimental lit, Book Beat Gallery, Music | No Comments » |
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A cult figure associated with the Los Angeles punk rock scene, Raymond Pettibon has acquired a reputation as one of the foremost artists working with drawing, text, and artist’s books. Pettibon is as likely to explore the subject of surfing as he is typography; themes from art history and nineteenth-century literature appear in the same breath with the American politics from the 1960s. Raymond Pettibon is featured in the Season 2 episode “Humor” of the Art21 series “Art:21 — Art in the Twenty-First Century”. |
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| Posted in: Art, Beat & Experimental lit, Film & Video | No Comments » |
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A NOTE ABOUT ARTHUR MAGAZINE’S FUTURE, FROM ITS EDITOR/PUBLISHER. Hey gang– I am done with self-publishing Arthur, which I’ve been doing since July, 2007. It’s too much work for one person to edit, publish and manage a national magazine, month after month, year after year. If/when a publishing partner appears, and so on, Arthur will return to print. That could be in three days, three months or three years. Or never, given how the internet plus leveraged capital has hollowed out almost all existing analog mass media in favor of stuff that, in almost all cases, is qualitatively worse for almost everybody. Anyway, we’re gonna hibernate the mag for the time being, and focus on the stuff that doesn’t have as much financial risk or management burden. Thanks to the work of a lot of Arthur folks, the arthurmag internet presence will upgrade and expand greatly in the coming days. Also, two new cds and a dvd are being prepared, the book(s) are on the way, and so on. We’re staying busy, staying focused on what we can handle, and pushing homegrown counter-culture forward. We hope you can, too. And if you need more Arthur mags right now…well, there’s 31 back issues available in the store. All love and R.I.P. Ron Asheton, Jay Babcock |
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| Posted in: Beat & Experimental lit, Psychedelia, Publishing | No Comments » |
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