R. Crumb Gets a Show in Paris Musee

PARIS — R. Crumb, the American cartoonist, is said to be a timid, reclusive soul who doesn’t like visitors, photographers, reporters or even fans.

But here he was on Thursday, dressed in a smart black sport coat and trousers, posing for photographers and holding forth with journalists about fame, fortune, art, politics, music and death.

The occasion was the impending opening, on Friday, of “Crumb, From the Underground to Genesis,” an exhibition covering nearly five decades of his work, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and his first comprehensive museum retrospective.

The exhibition, on view through Aug. 19, brings together more than 700 original drawings and more than 200 underground magazines, many from Mr. Crumb’s private collection.

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Besides his work, of course, I Would be very anxious to see those more than 200 underground magazines he's collected.

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Earthling Society: Beauty and the Beast

Earthling Society: Beauty and the Beast

Painted in rainbows and ocean waves, Beauty and the Beast (4 Zero) is a willfully bedazzled tumble through bright '60s acid rock, bucolic '70s heat waves and one of the first worthwhile updates of unadulterated, melodic psych since the '80s Paisley Underground. For a band that's frequently been dark and intense in the past, mining ore from Krautrock and heavy space music, this comes as a happy surprise. The stare-at-it-for-ages, flower power artwork of Santa Cruz's beautifully gnarled Stacie Willoughby is the invitation to the bottled sunshine inside.

Even when the words are world weary, there's lift in the music. Singer-multi-instrumentalist Fred Laird calls this "a farewell to our more obvious space rock leanings, instead we have drun deep from the well of visionaries such as Syd Barrett, Todd Rundgren, Kevin Ayers and John Cale. Not to mention our increasing obsession with the seven classic Utopian albums that the Moody Blues created from '67-72." That they wrestle a wriggling approximation of their lofty influences armed only with their trusty 24-track porta-studio, "hell-bent on recording in every warehouse, kitchen and toilet," is extra impressive. Like the lip-smacking painting of a reclining, curvaceous Aquarian queen in a mini-dress inside, there is much that's resplendent and sensual about Beauty and the Beast (which makes a dandy, if irregular, alternate soundtrack to Jean Cocteau's 1946 film of the same name, especially when combined with a water pipe, apple flavored tobacco and voluminous floor pillows).

By the time you arrive at the lush, swirling final stretch of "Valerie A Tyden Divu," "A Playground Mystery" and a hidden track that could be lost Boards of Canada gold, Earthling Society has you in their tender fist. See, they wave a freak flag as well as anyone but they've got some bite, too. Guitars groan and all the black goo they've swam through to get to this stage still clings to the rocks along their coastline. It's that melancholy algae that gives these bright waters such a coppery glow. There is the tang of reality here, ache wrapped in echo and reverb, but there just the same. It's a lovely album, really. What more need be said?

This particular cd is a combination Moody Blues and Boards of Canada

link

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Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin’s Transcendence

Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin’s Transcendence

June 24 to September 30, 2007

Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin’s Transcendence, the artist’s first major retrospective and solo museum exhibition, opens on June 24, 2007. A cult figure that set the iconographic terrain for the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, in his art Griffin expressed idealism and hope along with a darker side that perfectly embodied the contradictions of the era with its mixture of hedonism, politics, and avant-garde expression.

The exhibition, which includes some 140 paintings, drawings, posters, album covers, and artifacts, surveys thirty years of Griffin’s work from the 1960s until his death in 1991. The accompanying 156-page catalogue, published in association with Gingko Press, is the first publication to address Griffin’s impact on the surf, psychedelic rock, and born-again Christian movements.

Sunday, June 24, 2007 - 1:00 p.m. Psychedelic Moment: The Big Five and Zap Comix in the 1960s

Griffin Lecture Series - This first panel on Griffin and San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury features the artist’s widow and internationally respected artists who initiated the psychedelic art and underground comix movements. With Ida Griffin, Alton Kelley, Stanley Mouse, Spain Rodriguez, and Robert Williams. Moderated by Jacaeber Kastor, founder of Psychedelic Solution Gallery, New York.

Related:
Read More» Laguna Art Musuem
Visit Griffin's MySpace site
Order Heart and Torch: Rick Griffin’s Transcendence
Rick Grifin: Wikipedia

(Rick Griffin | 1944-1991)

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Where Have All The Hippies Gone?

Some local Atlanta folks are organizing an exhibit of Life on the Strip. They wrote they would like to hear from:

People who were hippies or are interested in hippies or this era (1967 - 1977) of great change in The South. Do you have some memories you'd like to share? Or some pictures of folks on The Strip or in The Park during those days of change for Atlanta and the world? Does your older brother or your parents? We are interested in anything. Posters, film, recording, anything you think should be shared. Let's get our story down right before "The Man's" official version is the only one available to the future. No one of us has the story. The story was all of us at once. Can you contribute your part?

Visit TheStripProject.com still under construction.

I had my picture taken all the time on the strip during this period; maybe I can find something of me and my friends. On second thought, do I want to see some of those pictures?

Related:

* Voices From The Underground (Press) - History and images, featuring East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, The Seed, etc.

* "The Summer of Love lasted three years in the South. I tried to capture some of that spirit in these photographs. They were shot over a 30 month period and many were originally published in The Great Speckled Bird, Atlanta's underground / anti-war newspaper." Photography by Carter Tomassi, Berkeley, CA, who has also worked on many major film projects. (let us not forget The Cockettes) link

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RADICAL LIVING PAPERS

RADICAL LIVING PAPERS
A history of the free, alternative, counter-culture and underground press, 1965-75
Gavin Brown's enterprise at PASSERBY
February 2 - March 7, 2007

Covering politics, revolutions, evolutions of the planets, freak-outs, love-ins, support of green politics, gay liberation, power to the people, the peace parties, protests, the Panthers, peyote, LSD, pot, fiction, music, poetry, prose, prayers and more. Publications include: Actuel, Avatar, Berkeley Barb, Berkeley Tribe, Black Panther Papers, Digger Papers, Door, East Village Other [EVO], The Fifth Estate, Freep, Grabuge, Hobo-Québec, International Times [it], Los Angeles Free Press, The Oracle, The Organ, Other Scenes, OZ, Rat, The Realist, Re Nudo, Rolling Stone, The Seed, Ann Arbor Sun....more.

GBE@Passerby

Blogged with Flock
(from the inbox via: arthur)

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THE UNDERGROUND PRESS

Did you ever read/see any of the great underground newspapers of the late 1960's - mid 1970's in the US? There was The East Village Other (NY), The Great Speckled Bird (ATL), Black Panther, Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, CA), LA Free Press, The Paper, of East Lansing, Michigan, and many more?

I was a faithful Speckled Bird reader. We bought these most of the time from people on street corners in Atlanta; on the corner of 14th St, where all the other freaks hung out. As surely as you'd see a Bird vendor around there, you'd also see someone selling flowers for a small fee to wear in your hair or wherever. And you knew who was selling "what" "where". And someone was in a doorway playing guitar; a few bumming spare change passing by. All waiting for the next musical, sexual, or pharmaceutical experience.

Receiving The Last Whole Earth Catalog was a spiritual experience. Sort of a hippie Sears catalog and was one of the very few books we had at Peace Tree (a lakeside commune in Tennessee) when we first began. It was all about survival, metaphysics, learning to grow organic, live natural, how to build a shelter-- how to build or make just about anything. Stewart Brand (Burning Man) was the founder. We've still got one around the house someplace.

Many college libraries have some of these newspapers on Microfilm. Some are for sale on Ebay. Why are there no equivalent newspapers/websites? "Where is that one great progressive balls to the wall website that has it all?" Music, protest and boycott info, in-depth interviews, sex (& relationships), drugs, literature? more»

from the archives

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THE UNDERGROUND PRESS

Did you ever read/see any of the great underground newspapers of the late 1960's - mid 1970's in the US? There was The East Village Other (NY), The Great Speckled Bird (ATL), Black Panther, Berkeley Barb (Berkeley, CA), LA Free Press, The Paper, of East Lansing, Michigan, and many more?

I was a faithful Speckled Bird reader. We bought these most of the time from people on street corners in Atlanta; on the corner of 14th St, where all the other freaks hung out. As surely as you'd see a Bird vendor around there, you'd also see someone selling flowers for a small fee to wear in your hair or wherever. And you knew who was selling "what" "where". And someone was in a doorway playing guitar; a few bumming spare change passing by. All waiting for the next musical, sexual, or pharmaceutical experience.

Receiving The Last Whole Earth Catalog was a spiritual experience. Sort of a hippie Sears catalog and was one of the very few books we had at Peace Tree (a lakeside commune in Tennessee) when we first began. It was all about survival, metaphysics, learning to grow organic, live natural, how to build a shelter-- how to build or make just about anything. Stewart Brand (Burning Man) was the founder. We've still got one around the house someplace.

Many college libraries have some of these newspapers on Microfilm. Some are for sale on Ebay. Why are there no equivalent newspapers/websites? "Where is that one great progressive balls to the wall website that has it all?" Music, protest and boycott info, in-depth interviews, sex (& relationships), drugs, literature? more»

from the archives

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Good morning.
Blogger somehow misplaced my template Friday, so I had to reconstruct another one.

::Pot charge may lead to huge tax bill If a Haywood County man arrested this week is convicted of a marijuana-growing charge, he'll owe North Carolina $130,000 in taxes for the 30 plants. The excise law allows North Carolina to tax people convicted of drug charges based on the amount of drugs linked to them. Well, that just about sucks.

::Man Cuts Off Own Penis to Cure Sex Addiction
Police said the man did not want his penis to be reattached but were unable to say if doctors had complied with his wishes. I wonder if he left any heart-broken women behind because of his newfound surgical skills.

::The list of Fair and Balanced Web Sites continue to grow. What you going to do about it, Fox? Blah, Blah, Blah, is keeping score. Over 300 Weblog sites and counting.

::Carry On Together - Neil Young has joined David Crosby's CPR side project on the entertainment lineup for the 2003 Santa Ynez Valley Music Festival, which will take place Sept. 28 in Los Olivos, CA. I'd love to see them altogether again. The first thing I always play when I pick up a 12-string is "Helplessly Hoping".

::Oscar has a fun Anger Hostility Quiz on his site.

::A panel of critics has chosen the 50 worst artists in music history. All these tone-deaf pud pullers that have the gumption to rate musicians really amaze me.

::Voices From The Underground - features old images of issues from the Berkley Barb (Berkley, CA), The Great Speckled Bird (Atlanta, GA), Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC), and more.

Haiku
no way I can stop
smoking is my only vice
that and the whoring

Quote For Today
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. ~Oscar Wilde

Stop fucking with my power chor....

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