Brian Klein's Blog

Brian Klein aka The Machinist has a blog up for yr enjoyment at:

www.flostationdevice.blogspot.com

Give it a gander....

impossible map

I've been making music with a group here in Tucson called impossible map. Check us out on myspace at:

www.myspace.com/impossiblemap

I am the drummer on some of these tunes...

ADD US!!!!!

The history of ONO is online

Roctober posted the article/interview online. Go to:

www.roctober.com/roctober/ono.html

Hench Gives Metallica A Makeover

An old friend from Springfield who designed the silver wonder website has recently brewed up a storm of audio controversy.

Hench didn't like the mix of Metallica's newly released album so he made his own. Let's hope those guys don't employ the same lawyers W. Axl Rose does!!!

Check out the article in Wired mag at:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/controversial-m.html

Hench's website:

www.henchmusic.com

The history of ONO in Roctober Mag #45

The latest issue of Roctober mag features a history of one of Chicago's finest bands of noise/art terrorists, ONO. Pick up a copy online at:

www.roctober.com

or

www.dustygroove.com/featured.php?cat=33

Give P. Michael a visit at myspace:

www.myspace.com/onopmichaelono

There's a link there to 13 discs worth of downloadable live ONO!!!!!

Larry Welsh's website

Larry Welsh's website has been revamped and is looking great, so spend some time at Larryworld checking out reviews of his work and other goodies.....

www.lawrencewelsh.com

Calling all SST freaks...

If you are as big a freak for all things SST as I am then I highly recommend you head over to pay the Donut Duck a visit at:

www.heretoblast.blogspot.com

He's got a ton of audio there for folks to download, including some of those OOP LP's
like "Kill From the Heart" & "No Wishes, No Prayers" that will cost you plenty on ebay...

Go now to vote for who you think was the greatest vocalist for Black Flag. I voted for Dezzie....

Uncle Gibby

After a little false alarm earlier in the week, and a long labor last night, my sister, Amy had her baby. She had a son named Jackson Walter Scott and he was born around 9 pm here in Tucson. So welcome to the world little nephew!

don't miss out! Joe Carducci in Chicago August 2nd

I wish I could have timed it better and been able to attend but I'm urging my Chicago friends to not miss out on this event.

Joe Carducci, author of Rock & the Pop Narcotic, and Wyoming Stories will be at Quimby's answering questions and signing copies of his latest book- Enter Naomi. Regular readers of this blog will already know that I consider this man to be one of the most important writers on Music and Culture, so in other words, don't miss it!!!

Saturday August 2nd
7:00 pm
free

Quimby's Bookstore
1854 West North Avenue
Wicker Park- Chicago
773 342 0910
www.quimbys.com

They are also having Gary Panter instore earlier in the day. A hell of a day at Quimby's!

Kirkwood Artwork included in Sensational Fix Exhibit in France

If you would like to get up close and personal with Curt Kirkwood's artwork for the Lee Ranaldo Silver Wonder chapbook- Hello From the American Desert and you happen to be in France then you still have a chance.

Sensational Fix is an art exhibit focused around Sonic Youth and is running from June 18th-September 7th. It also features a live performance by the group August 9th.

There is talk of this exhibition traveling around Europe and the U.S. but I think the details have yet to be hammered out.

Other Kirkwood art includes the cover art from Meat Puppets II & Up On The Sun. Here is the list of the other stellar artists involved:

Vito Acconci, Rita Ackerman, Jerry Aronson, Olivier Assayas, Dara Birnbaum, Angelique Bosio, Joe Brainard, Glenn Branca, William S. Burroughs, John Cage, Ira Cohen, Tony Conrad, Sofia Coppola, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Earl, Barbara Ess, John Fahey, Jeff Feuerzeig, Marco Fusinato, Isa Genzken, Allen Ginsberg, Stefano Giannvanini, Jack Goldstein, Mark Gonzalez, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Matt Groening, Brion Gysin, Tim Hailand, Jeff Hartford, Todd Haynes, Dick Higgins, Ake Hodell, Jenny Holzer, Tim Irwin, Marc Jacobs, Cameron Jamie, Spike Jonze, Mike Kelley, Richard Kern, Jack Kerouac, Jutta Koether, Harmony Korine, D.A. Levy, Robert Longo, George Maciunas, Yukinori Maeda,Gerard Malanga, Manda, Christian Marclay, Paul McCarthy, Loren Mazzacane Connore, Jonas Mekas, John Miller, Maya Miller, Heath Moerland, Robert Mooney, Thurston Moore, Michael Morely, Bill Nace, John Olsen, Roberto Opalio, Jim O'Rourke, Tony Oursler, Steven Parrino, Raymond Pettibon, Edwin Pouncey, Richard Prince, Lee Ranaldo, Ed Ruscha, Gus Van Sant, Wilheim Sasnal, Dana Schutz, Jim Shaw, David Shrigley, Leah Singer, Mike Smith, Patti Smith, Robert Smithson, The Club In Shadow, Kathy Temin, Gokita Tomoo, Dennis Tyfus, Alan Vega, Jeff Wall, Mike Watt, Marnie Weber, Jamer Welling, White Columns Archive, Christopher Wool, Shinya Yamamoto, & Nate Young.

For more info:
LiFE- International Space of Emerging Arts
Submarine Base, Bay 14
Bd de la Legion d'Honneur 44600 Saint Nazaire
t: +33 (0)2 28 45 99 45
e: com@lelife.org
w: lelife.org

Copies of the chapbook Hello From The American Desert with Lee Ranaldo's Poetry & Curt Kirkwood's artwork are still available via www.silver-wonder.com

The other Larry=Welsh

All the Larrys in my life have been busy lately bringing the public the poetic goods...

La Alameda press in Albuquerque, New Mexico just released a stunner from Mr. Welsh entitled "Skull Highway" that's available for $12.00 at www.laalamedapress.com. This is the largest collection of his poems since 1999's "Rusted Steel and Border Town Starts". Needless to say this one comes highly recommended...

His latest chapbook- "Walking Backwards to Santa Fe" is available for $6.00 from us at www.silver-wonder.com and there is a new one on the way called "Del Rey Raga"

Also some anonymous fan has posted an alcoholics music site on myspace at www.myspace.com/alcoholicsla . Larry sang in this punk group from 1979-1982. They released a 7 inch single that recently sold on ebay for $165. You can hear 3 songs from the 5 song 7 incher on myspace.

There is also talk that artifix records (www.artifixrecords.com) which has recently reissued records from the bags among other LA punkers will be reissuing this choice chunk of vinyl for the youth of today to take a listen to.

So congrats to Larry for being so happenin'!

Speaking of Larry Sawyer & Eric Leonardson

If you are in Chicago tomorrow night then I highly recommend that you head over to brown rice to check out two Silver Wonder related artists in action!

Monday July 21st
8 PM

1st Set:
Larry Sawyer- Poetry
Dan Godston- Trumpet, Small instruments

2nd Set:
Eric Leonardson- Springboard
Laura Emelianoff- Open Harp

brown rice
4432 North Kedzie
Chicago Il 60625

Larry is the author of a fabulous new Silver Wonder chapbook called Disharmonium that is available now at our website.

Eric is featured on Liquid Sprays of Carabryl an upcoming Silver Wonder CD that is a live duo with Fred Lonberg-Holm from 2006. Available soon!

The Silver Wonder- What's new and what's on the way...

Right before I left Chicago I was able to release a new chapbook from Silver Wonder Press. The new one is- Disharmonium by Larry Sawyer. Larry is the former editor of Nexus and current editor of Milkmag.org. He also curates the Myopic Poetry reading series in Chicago. Recently Bill Berkson read there and soon David Meltzer will too. The chapbook also features cover art from Amy Evans McClure. It's available now for $10 from the silver wonder website at www.silver-wonder.com

You can find Larry's blog at: www.larrysawyer.blogspot.com

lots of things coming out soon too, both chapbooks and cd's.

The Mantis and other poems by Steve Dalachinsky should be out shortly. These are poems inspired by the man and music that is Cecil Taylor.

Liquid Sprays of Carabryl by Eric Leonardson & Fred Lonberg-Holm will also be released soon. This is a live recording from June of 2006.

and soon after...

Move Over and Give Them Some Room - Poems by Yours Truly

Tarnished Silver - Poems by Kenneth DiMaggio

and CD's from:

Fred Lonberg-Holm's Lightbox Orchestra
&
Magic Squares...

tumbleweeds=new address

anyone coming to this blog recently would have been confronted with a lot of nothing new, when in fact there's been a lot happening which i will get to updating ASAP.

first order of business. we have relocated after four years in chicago. if you would like to get in touch, have yr record reviewed, etc please contact me at the address below:

The Silver Wonder Press/Recording Co.
Abraham Gibson
1333 East Broadway Blvd
Tucson, AZ 85719

Magic Squares at Elastic Arts

Friends-

Please come out this weekend for the premier of my new group, Magic Squares- (featuring members of ONO, Druids of Huge, Plastic Crimewave Sound, and 8th Day Adventists)

The show starts at 9pm

Saturday March 15th
Elastic Arts
2830 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago
$7 suggested donation
www.elasticrevolution.com
byob

Magic Squares: Abe Gibson, P.Michael Grego, travis, Plastic Crimewave, Alex Wing, Ben Billington

Also on the bill:

Duchamp (www.myspace.com/duchampband)

& Our esteemed guest from Pittsburgh- (from DLBD, Vale and Year, etc)
David Bernabo plays in a duo with Paul Giallorenzo

see you there!

Silver Wonder Titles reviewed in Arthur Mag by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley

It's encouraging to see some of the better small presses keep it happening in these dreary days of virtual desire. Chicago's Pitchfork Press has wisely changed its moniker to The Silver Wonder Press but not before allowing one more Pitchfork rag to be constructed. It belongs to Gerald Locklin who has been writing strong and steady since the early '60's with over 3000 poems in print within 125 books and rising, including this fine stapled edition titled The San Antonio, Savannah, & Daytona Beach Poems. His is an eagle's eye on the American landscape of humanity and all its frenzied lassitudes and is worth reading for the sake of connecting to honest rumination in the face of TV death. Dig? Two issues under the new Silver Wonder imprint are one each by Guy R. Beining and Robert O'Neal. Beining has a long history of writing supersonic slices of minimalist poetry. Outside The End has some of his most choice new jams alongside some drawings and collages to help crack the sweet code. A few lines from "almost complete, 5/7/01-monday": "those golden notes/ are from a cave/ & the black acid drops/ come from the t.v./ where its widening/ white circle is lost/ in protraction of the skull./ why not bang another/ bone on the floor..." Robert O'Neal works somewhere in southern Indiana as a sweeper in a car repair joint. Perfect poet environment and he rips wicked lines left and right in both anger and solace in search of righteous juice. One poem rolls off into a litany of fuck declarations:"Fuck high fructose corn syrup/ Fuck computers dumped in the 3rd world/ Fuck dirty bombs & sanitized word bombs..." Fuck yes. (Newsbreak: Silver Wonder Press has just issued Hello From the American Desert, a 40-page collection of Lee Ranaldo's spam-inspired poetry, accompanied by artwork by the Meat Puppets' Curt Kirkwood)

Lee Ranaldo interviewed about "Hello From the American Desert" in Exclaim! Magazine

by Vish Khanna

In his new poetry book, Hello From the American Desert,Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo tweaks the phenomenon of email spam-based poetry. Instead of copy-and-paste word puzzles, Ranaldo draws ideas and imagery from internet spam he's compiled since 2004 to write wholly original poems.

Vish: Lee, I've come across a couple of other examples of poetry inspired by or drawn from internet spam. What exactly drew you to formulate, what is presumably an entire volume of such poems derived from spam?

Lee: Well you know, it's funny because it's only since the book came out that I had any notion that anybody else was treading in this area. I had no idea that there was a group of people working on this out there. There's even a book called The Anthology of Spam Poetry or something. I don't know if you've come across that?

Vish: Yeah, among other things.

Lee: You know, I stared these things back in 2004. At that time, I started getting all these weird emails that just started to intrigue me, partly because they had these really weird subject headings, but also because more than that even, after the body of the message there's just this profusion of random words at the bottom of the email> It looks like a dictionary exploded or something. I was kind of fascinated by that and I immediately started looking at it with some kind of poetic eye or ear, thinking that a lot of these words go together and beautiful sounding poetry, even the scrambled subject headings. So I started collecting the stuff. At this point, I have a couple of huge files of this stuff- one of just subject headings and one of all these different things in the body of the text. The ones that I love the most are just the crazy lists of words but there would also be emails that had what looked like like little excerpts of stories. It was hard to figure out where they were from but I got the impression that some of them were like economic reports, and others were short, fictional stories. If you got ten emails in a row, you'd actually find different bits of the same story with the same characters.I just started collecting all that stuff with the idea of using it as a jumping off point for poetry. Mostly what I do is, I'll find a good block of text that I'm intrigued by a lot of the words in, and then I'll just start free associating, combining words- there'll be three or four in a row that I like and then a couple I won't so I'll cross them out and add a word or two of my own- and they just start to shape into stories. Some of them are more narrative, some more abstract, and some of these actually have little fictions with characters in them and I'll work them from there, using them as a jumping off point.

Vish: Out of context, the book's connection to the internet and junk messages seems kind of loose. Like the choice of words and their order seem entirely abstract. You've explained this a bit already but can you discuss your process here, like what prompts you to piece these messages together to form these poems?

Lee: Well, like I said, I have these huge Word files with all these things copies and pasted in them. Usually, if I'm in the mood to start a new poem, I'll just go through my files and find a few blocks in a row- the equivalent of a few paragraphs- that intrigue me and then just start bouncing off ideas. I think I start by crossing out words I don't like to get weird combinations to come up. From there, general poetry principles take over, trying to get some kind of abstract, imagistic thing going and I free associate until I find something I like.

Vish: I see, so it's not just spam, it's your voice in these poems?

Lee: Oh, most definitely; I would say almost 100 percent. Actually this is interesting because when I finally got a hold of that spam Anthology recently, most of that stuff is pretty much taken from those emails and left alone- that Viagra and penis enlargement sort of stuff. So I didn't feel too much kinship with that Anthology, just because with mine, it's a jumping off point but, in the end, they are as much my poems as any other poems I've published and less indebted to the original emails except in the fact that, you read these subject headings- like one of my poems is called "Consumptive Detente Closeup" and it's this whole little world of crazy images right there. So, I kind of go from there and work off the subject matter inherent in those words but, by the time they're done, I've definitely put a lot of my own work in and really shaped them into poems in the traditional sense.

Vish: Okay, that explains it because it really doesn't seem like you were just copying and pasting them together.

Lee: You know it's interesting because like I said I started these in 2004, and some time later, The New York Times actually did an article about these weird spams that had this stuff in them. I guess the "stories" help them elude the anti-spam programs because it looks like a real email with the body of text. I didn't realize that at first- that that was the ploy they were using and why they existed in the first place. I just thought they were great. I loved reading them even as they were, even though I transformed mine. I've done a lot of poems in the past that I call shopping list poems that are just one or two words in a line and they free-associate with each other. So, I immediately found some kinship with what I was reading in these spams and those poems of my own for a number of years and it just seemed like a natural extension.

Vish: I'm wondering if there's a particular message you're trying to convey here. It seems to me that the notion of the book and poems really has a lot to do with language and maybe how it relates to our current cultural landscape or wasteland. Are you making any kind of comment on the content and flow of information we're now bombarded with?

Lee: Well, I think there's a little bit of comment, just in terms of lifting some of these subjects that are floating around in these emails. Whether they be financial notions or just notions of what's coming into our computers and therefore our minds via the internet in general. I'm not exactly going for any specific focused comment, as much as just presenting the subject matter of the day, as provided by the most random of sources- these internet spams.

Vish: And it seems to be coming from a place of appreciation rather than exasperation. Some of the other spam poems I've read seem to be about taking these words back. Like "We're so sick of this spam, we're gonna do something creative with it," like some kind of empowering stance. You seem to actually find it somewhat endearing.

Lee: Oh, I definitely do. When you're in the mood to read that kind of stuff< I find it a joy to open those things just because they're just so out there. I mean they're farther out than most of the so- called language poets. That's one thing that i love about them is that it gives you the liberty to play around with language and brings up words that wouldn't normally come to your head immediately to use in a poem, yet they're perfect. They're abstract to begin with so I'm just taking them out of one context and using them in another basically.

Beining's "Outside The End" Review from XYZ #45

OUTSIDE THE END Guy R. Beining, The Silver Wonder Press, PO BOX 146399, Chicago, IL 60614, 20PP, Saddle Stapled, $4.00

Spare, bleak in its consummate bleakness, harrowing in its sadness, an excellent palliative for congenital optimism. Some very good lines too. One among many:

I told this poet that he had fallen through earth
and that I would gather the pieces...
when you could fall from the earth
you finally begin to realize that
there is nothing there
and for that you have spent a lifetime waiting.

In combination with the artwork, done as usual by Beining, you feel like being in a downward trajectory of despair that yet somehow emboldens, invigorates and strengthens the mind. The downward descent into the ether of nothingness weighs upon the reader yet the predicament becomes funny in the knowledge of the desperate state of existence.

Amputate green, amputate red
Amputate dreams of the dead.

Walking Backwards To Santa Fe Article from El Paso Times

EPCC Professor Publishes 5th Book of Southwest Poetry

Lawrence Welsh has released his fifth poetry book, "Walking Backwards to Santa Fe."

Welsh, an English professor who teaches writing and literature at El Paso Community College, has been featured in many national and regional journals. The Los Angeles Daily Journal once described him as "one of the leading writers on life in the border towns."

His work deals mostly with the aspects of desert life along the border, the object of his writings since he first visited Texas 20 years ago.

A first generation Irish-American, Welsh moved to El Paso from California in 1994. His writing career began at California State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism. He worked as a reporter for several years before he started teaching English at the University of Texas at El Paso and El Paso Community College.

Welsh tells audiences that his writing took off when he hitchhiked across the United States in 1989." I found myself really soaking up the Southwest and enjoying it," he said.

In a previous work, "Believing in Bonfires," Welsh continued to display his affinity for the desert Southwest while staying close to his California roots. His other book titles include "Flying Burrito #1," "Downed Texaco" "South Central Serenade,""El Paso's Saddle Blanket Company,"and "Rusted Steel and Bordertown Starts."

Welsh also is a spoken-word artist, who has presented more than 50 readings across the Southwest.

At El Paso Community College, Welsh is one of the founders of the Poetry Jam, an annual event that highlights prominent poets during the college's annual art festival.

Welsh has won many journalism awards, including the Society of Professional Journalists Bill Farr Investigative Reporting Award.

2 titles reviewed in Iconoclast #97

A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion
Robert O'Neal

The Ginger Man runneth amongst us, splashing burning wit and satiric acid at our brains with much wordplay and jousting at religion and philosophy. In this brief poetry chapbook, we encounter someone well able to articulate our rage at the stupidity of 21st Century American life. Catch him if you can- and hope he returns for another round.

The San Antonio, Savannah, and Daytona Beach Poems
by Gerald Locklin

...'San Antonio' too has a picture of the poet: a photo on the back cover bathed in red. But the poems are more down-to-earth; how we deal with others (colleagues, lovers); our own habits and foibles. A little 'town and gown' here: academic conferences at expensive hotels (with poverty a few blocks away). Finally, Mr. Locklin recalls moments of his personal life and history.

Reviewed by Phil Wagner

Iconoclast
1675 Amazon Road
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547-1804

O'Neal reviewed in The 13th Warrior Review

from The 13th Warrior Review:

A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion
By Robert O'Neal (The Silver Wonder Press)

Why do middle class, middling, middle-of-the-road poets like Billy Collins get to be Poet Laureates while Robert O'Neal is all but unknown? Perhaps it's because, as the author himself says, "he'd rather be understood than accepted." Rebel to the core, O'Neal has the temerity to shake his fist at the existential dilemma and tell "the dictator" to go fuck himself. And no one does it with the same sardonic charm and masterful vocabulary -- he who ploughshares philosophical discourse into brain-piercing poetic bullets, an almost mystical defense against the duplicity of authority:

"I was there, tethered unaware,
the dictator's amniotic brainwash
percolating around me,
a cauled euteronaut traumatized
by the contradiction ushering him
from one darkness to a greater darkness..."

His anger and confusion resonates off the page and echoes the anger and confusion that many of us feel on our best days when we dare remove our heads from our hind parts and take a look around:

"God
is brushing slime on tapeworms.

Satan
has a name commensurate
with his monomaniacal ambitions.

They
feud over the span of years between placenta & crypt.

I'm
not sure which one continues to bless us
with Kalashnikov culture & pernicious viruses."

Or:

"Slipping
sliding,
Slobbering

out of a shaved vagina --

(The brow is always inaccessible!
Pelvic bones are the ignoble crowning
all of us receive in compensation.)

who
put us there

in the first place?

& why can't we refuse
to expose ourselves to uncompromising light?

& you wonder why
all newborns have clenched fists."

What else can be said about O'Neal's poetry? Whether one shares his world view or not, one must stand in awe of his ability to stroke the neurons and asshole at the same time. He certainly stands head and shoulders above many of the so-called poets out there slopping their ink to the white page. Certainly, he's worth the two bucks for this chapbook.

--reviewed by JCE

abe gibson/mayjabeen/brian klein at myopic jan 7th

A rare music performance coming up next monday. come out to myopic and check out the show. I'll be playing w/Brian Klein and Mayjabeen from Names.

Monday Jan 7th
7:30 pm
Myopic Bookstore
1564 N. Milwaukee Ave
Upstairs
Free Show

poem in the new Barbaric Yawp

my poem 'inching...' appears in the new issue of Barbaric Yawp (Volume 11, Number 3- September 2007)

you can get a copy for $4 at:

Bone World Publishing
John and Nancy Berbrich
3700 County Route 24
Russell, New York 13684