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

The Silver Wonder Press written about on Pitchfork website

I'm a bit slow to post news here but here's some pretty exciting stuff. The good folks over at Pitchfork did a really nice little article about Lee Ranaldo's "Hello From the American Desert" that we recently published. Here in the link to the article:

www.pitchforkmedia.com/page/news/47047-lee-ranaldo-pens-poetry-book
-based-on-e-mail-spam

We were also mentioned on the radio in Ontario recently when Lee did an interview in Guelph, and he also recently did a interview with Broken Pencil magazine about spam poetry that mentions the silver wonder-I'll post links to this stuff when it appears online....

Hello From The American Desert by Lee Ranaldo

It's been in the works since 1999 and has finally seen the light of day! I am so freakin happy to announce the publication of Lee Ranaldo's 'Hello From The American Desert'

This beautiful little chapbook features about 40 pages of poetry written between 2004-2007 which enlist spam received over the internet as a springboard for poetry.

The cover art and illustrations are from Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets and there is an introduction written by Todd Colby.

These are limited to an edition of 1000. There is also a lettered edition (a-z) of 26 copies signed by both Lee & Curt that will soon be available.

They are available now for purchase online at:

www.silver-wonder.com

new website up and running

zach hench put up a pretty beautiful website for me at:

www.silver-wonder.com

or

www.silverwonderpress.com

go check it out!!! All the cds and most of the chapbooks are available for sale online!!!

cruel november

folks I've spent most of this month very sick and have been unable to post here as much as i wanted to. some exciting things did go down and i managed to drag myself out of bed to do them...

november 9th the end of the world band joined p. michael grego & travis from ONO and played a set at plastic crimewave's four million tongues festival at the av-aerie.also on the bill:alela diane, heather leigh murray, outpost, alisdair roberts, and charlambides. someone told p. michael that we sounded like a riot!

november 20th the chicago guitar ensemble played at elastic. this time around it was:
me
alex wing
jesse thomas
cliff ingram
travis
brian klein
c.ezra lange
don ramon
bill mackay

brian labycz was gonna conduct this one but his gear wouldn't function so it ended up being a free for all!

labycz played in the opening set with his group-travelers and conquerors=labycz/zarzutzki/davis. aaron zarzutzki did some pretty incredible shit with a couple of cymbals and a no output turntable!

no new gigs scheduled for a bit. taking a little break to work on my meat puppets biography...

An Electric Prayer For Derek Bailey

Friends,

Tonight I get to make another one of my dreams become reality. When Derek Bailey passed away on X-mas day in 2005, I conceived a tribute to him called An Electric Prayer for Derek Bailey. It took almost 2 years to finally realize but tonight this show is happening.

I will be conducting a large improvisational ensemble that consists primarily of electric guitars, through written instructions and object cues, and have put together quite a talented group.

I hope to see ya tonight!

Friday October 26th
8 pm
South Union Arts
1352 South Union Avenue
Chicago Il
www.southunionarts.com

the group:

e gtars:
jesse thomas
bill mackay
dave bernabo
p. michael grego
travis
brian labycz
neil jendon
travers gauntt
don ramon

bass:
c.ezra lange
alex wing

horns/reeds:
jim ford
dean giavaras

drums:
charles rumback
ben billington

Lawrence Welsh Article in Tejano Tribune

Here is a link to a great article by Leslie Council......She talks with Lawrence Welsh about his new chapbook-Walking Backwards To Santa Fe.......

www.epcc.edu/ftp/Homes/elcon/092707f9.htm

love & death & teeth in the blood reviewed in Zen Baby #18

Another review of Todd Moore's bad mutha of a chapbook appears in the new issue of Zen Baby. You can get a copy for $2 from editor Christopher Robin at:

Zen Baby
PO Box 1611
Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1611

My review of Carducci's- Enter Naomi up at Smoke Signals Mag

This is my first published review so the excitement bubbles over here. Find out my thoughts about Joe Carducci's- Enter Naomi at:

www.smokesignalsmag.com

Todd Moore's Chapbook reviewed at Outsider Writers

Todd Moore's Love & Death & Teeth In The Blood was recently reviewed by Victor Schwartman on Outsider Writers. You can find it in the review section at:

www.outsiderwriters.org

Copies are still Available for $9 from
Pitchfork Poetry Press
P.O. Box 146399
Chicago Il 60614
Checks or M.O.'s payable to C.A. Gibson....

Abe Gibson/ Rotten Milk Duo Tonight!!!

i've got this going on at myopic bookstore tonight. it's supposed to be a duo with rotten milk but according to his recent myspace bulletin he's in missouri so if not i'll be bringing some solo e gtar action perhaps with a flying cymbal or two....

myopic bookstore- upstairs
1564 north milwaukee avenue
chicago illinois
7:30 pm
free show!!!

Lawrence Welsh reviewed in Saint Vitus

This is reprinted from www.saintvituspress.com:

CROWS AND RAVENS AND DREAMS: THE POETRY OF LAWRENCE WELSH
BY TODD MOORE

The bio note at the back of Lawrence Welsh's WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE informs the reader that he has already published five collections of poetry. Those readers who are currently familiar with Welsh's work know that his poetic base is the desert southwest and that he has already begun to mine much of the region from Los Angeles where he was born to El Paso where he is presently living and teaching.

Armed with those bare bone facts, one might assume that Lawrence Welsh is a poet strongly drawn to local color and the romantic Old West, but a close reading of his work only proves this assumption wrong. WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE is anything but a work of local color. And, while some of the poems tap into the rich tradition of the Old West, the thrust of these poems is toward something darker, something deeper.

The best poems in this collection ping pong between the personal and the hardscrabble life of mountain and desert. The elegy which opens the book, On The 15th Anniversary Of My Father's Death, is a homage to Welsh's origins, a kind of one off Kunitzian salute to a dead father. This is what you do as a good luck gesture so as not to disturb the old gods. This is what you do before entering the primal world of poetry and power.

This poem is a good introduction to what Lawrence Welsh is up to these days. The voice is clipped, elliptical, sometimes hermetic. The poem itself is a tip of the hat to Charles Olson obviously because of the open field way that the lines are displayed. And, of course, that influence extends through Olson to Robert Duncan. In fact, later on in the collection, in a poem entitled Elegy For John Wieners, Welsh refers to Olson and Duncan as well. This poem suggests the basic tension of the entire collection of the literary East with its lingering sense of High Modernism and Post Modernism and the ghost town deserterdness and near death darkness of the Old West.

an old timer says
keep your eyes open
study the shadows
el paso is all shadows...

from-The Elbo Room/Guadalupe

Welsh employs a clipped short line where the narrator is often felt to be hooded, almost invisible, and even when visible somehow withheld. The touch here is also of New York School and maybe just a hint of Language Poetry.

Welsh's voice and style also seem to be caught in that same tension of literary East versus the open hearted West. In the East the poet reveals nothing. He relies on allusion, he relies on aesthetic stance. In the West, the poet relies on the metaphor of the story itself and usually leaves out all the literary allusion. You can see the comparison very clearly in the poetry of Kell Robertson. Robertson tells stories laconically, elegiacally. Welsh suggests stories stoically and at an aesthetic distance.

Can such a tension survive as a recognizable style in a poet who live in El Paso, bordertown, gunfighter town, exile town, narco corrido town? It's a teasingly interesting question to consider. My take is he can, if he continues to maintain that tricky tension in both subject and style. However, my instincts somehow tell me that Welsh is a poet is search of a much larger subject. Maybe something all encompassing, a novel, a long poem, a sequence of shorter poems that somewhere in the future become a long poem, a metaphor is a long poem that somehow fuses Black Mountain, the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Charles Bukowski; Hart Crane first lost in the desert and then lost at sea, and the El Paso of Cormac McCarthy, Mariano Azuela, and John Welsey Hardin. These are all speculations, but poetry is haunted by all the best speculations. I Somehow have the feeling that Lawrence Welsh is searching for the secret metaphor that will define where he lives, where he writes, and where he dreams. A long poem that will define El Paso the same way that MAXIMUS defines Gloucester. And America. The grid for the poem and the myth for the dreams await him.

WALKING BACKWARDS TO SANTA FE is published by Pitchfork Poetry Press- www.pitchforkpoetryprojects.com and sells for six dollars

I Got Shows! Sunday & Monday!!

Friends and Neighbors,

I've got 2 shows this weekend. I've been hiding out in the apartment and haven't been doing a lot of hanging out with friends so I hope to see you at my shows. Both are free...

The first one is a doozy. Along with 124 other acts, The End of the World Band will be performing as part of the 2007 John Cage Musicircus at the Chicago Cultural Center.

Details:
Sunday October 7th Noon to Four p.m.
Chicago Cultural Center
78 East Washington Street
www.musicircus.chicagocomposers.org

we play at 2:15 pm on the first floor
at the Randolph Cafe East alcove 1e

Then on Monday night at 7:30 p.m. I'll be playing a duo with Rotten Milk at Myopic Books. This show is free and BYOB

Details:
Monday October 8th 7:30 p.m.
Myopic Bookstore
1564 North Milwaukee Avenue
Chicago
www.myopicbookstore.com

Daniel Carter in Chicago this weekend

it is my pleasure to let you know about 2 shows this weekend featuring NYC's Daniel Carter, in addition to being the James Joyce of the free jazz world he is also quite a musician. He belongs to the groups Test and Other Dimensions In Music. He has been performing for the last 30 years with folks like Alan Silva, Sun Ra Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Thurston Moore, Yo La Tengo, Antipop Consortium, and this weekend he'll collaborate with some of Chicago's young musicians.

Friday September 28th
9pm
Elastic Sound and Vision Gallery
2830 North Milwaukee Avenue
upstairs
$10 suggested donation- byob

Daniel Carter with The End of The World Band
Daniel Carter- reeds, horns
Abraham Gibson- Drums
Jesse Thomas- E Gtar

Giallorenzo/ Stein/ Daisy Trio
Paul Giallorenzo-Piano
Jason Stein- Bass Clarinet
Tim Daisy- Drums

Names
Mayjabeen- violin
Brian Klein- Electronics

www.elasticrevolution.com

Saturday September 29th
The Empty Bottle
1053 North Western Avenue
9pm
$15
Wire Magazine's- Adventures in Modern Music Festival

Daniel Carter- Reeds, Horns
Ben Vida- Gtar
Mike Reed- Drums

Headlining this evening will be photographers of their own poop- Deerhunter

www.theemptybottle.com

for Daniel info:

www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/dcarter.htm

www.furious.com/perfect/danielcarter.htm

www.aumfidelity.com

daniel carter chapbook review from smoke signals mag

Daniel Carter's WORK IN PROCESS #1 is a sliver of a chapbook, 4 81/2 x 11 sheets stapled and folded, with text from pages 5 to 16. But it could easily take as long to read as a novel, dense as it is linguistically. In 12-point font with inchy margins, there are about a dozen sentences, several running more than a page in length.

If you can call them sentences. They're more like DNA, strings of ideas that have a logic made of associations. These associations paint the inner life of author Daniel Carter, a musician living and performing today in New York City and around the world.

Daniel Carter (b.1945) has a good Wikipedia article at last glance. He is also a philosopher and a very strange sort of activist. He is very active seeking out and working with young musicians and artists and creating connections between them.

Carter started his musical career singing doo-wop in parking lots and schoolyards. His middle-class background has left him with a tolerant attitude; his African-American heritage expresses itself through a Cornel West-esque eloquence spiced with popular colloquialisms; and his graduate studies and prodigious lifelong reading habit have put him into a world of the mind that he, himself constructed from elements found among the texts he has read.

Reading Daniel's work should be a collaborative process. I have created collages from snippets of his work. It can be used as a script for theatrical or video productions; processed as source code for constructions. I think DNA sequencers should sequence some of it out and see what happens.

Despite his laid-back attitude about self promotion, Carter's work is fairly widely published. The work in process chapbook is part of an ongoing series by Abe Gibson's Pitch/The Silver Wonder Press (also publishers of some good stuff by Matt Sheahan, Doug Draime, and Gibson himself) that will eventually result in a sort of urban jazz Finnegan's Wake.

You should read this book at random, paging through and letting your eyes land where they may. Then your eyes skid along like skaters on ice when they hit something like:

eternity stood trembling, her stability thoroughly undermined by a creeping terror
that now burst beyond fashion into permanent policy and into the cold business
of everything shattering.

It's prophet-type stuff, so it's especially going to resonate with readers who enjoyed the Nag Hammadi Library and Old Testament books like Isaiah and Ezekiel. It will also appeal to fans of James Joyce, and maybe to some people who wouldn't mind a slightly more accessible version of Joyce; it's still musical, weird, and fun but Carter stays primarily within the English language.

Review by C.B. Coble
www.smokesignalsmag.com

this is available for $3.00

the silver wonder global h.q.
po box 146399
chicago, il 60614
checks payable to c.a. gibson

guitarkestra III

today i had the pleasure of taking part in the sonic maelstrom that is the plastic crimewave vision celestial guitarkestra orchestrated by steve krakow. we were the group that opened up the hideout block party at noon.
it felt great to be out in the sun being a part of this pulsing, klanging mass of guitars (and basses, and a violin, and a great freakin drummer). although we were about 60 shy of the hoped for 100 it is always a joy to be a part of (or even near) a beautiful large sound like this....
another highlight of the day was finally seeing mucca pazza who were even better than i expected, a rare occasion indeed! as the kids say-"these guys are the shit!"
and speaking of shit-art brut who played a bit later were shit, pure shit.in fact half way through their set i went and took a shit. bryan ferry's body double just wasn't cutting it for me folks-but that's what exits are for...

review of dalachinsky/connors cd

from downtown music gallery newsletter:

STEVE DALACHINSKY & LOREN (MAZZACANE) CONNORS- Thin air (Ltd-CD-R) (Silver Wonder;USA)

featuring the voice and poetry of steve dalachinsky and the electric guitar of loren connors.this was recorded live at the knitting factory in 2000 and took quite a long time to finally get released. after a flurry of activity, with some fifty+ discs of mostly solos and duos, loren connors has been laying low for the past few years, playing the area set and recording infrequently. the great local poet, scenester, cantankerous character and good friend to all of us other downtown freaks, steve dalachinsky has grown more busy in the past few years, doing more readings than ever, going to paris a few times a year and having more discs out than he used to. this duo has played here at DMG on a couple of occasions through the years and i savor each set.

thin air captures an entire 63 minute set from the new knit when friends of ours still played there regularly. steve's poetry is honest and apt as he describes his and ours lives here in the ever changing downtown scene. loren's spooky guitar is often sparse and a great match for steve's words. i like the way steve repeats certain phrases so that it gives us some time to let the observations sink in. loren also works his special magic by selecting notes often one at times and bending those strings to add some pain/punctuation to the stream of observations that steve slowly dishes out. it's funny how steve's brooklyn accent and the tone of loren's lonely/haunting guitar remind me so much of this scene i've been a part of for so many years.an hour may seem like a long time to loan yourself to this disc, but i find it to be like listening to a short story about my life, our lives here on the lower east side-BLG
cd $14 (limited edition of 300 numbered

downtown music gallery
342 bowery
nyc 10012-2408
http://www.dtmgalley.com

or you can order it direct from us for $8+ postage...

new chapbooks from todd moore and lawrence welsh

hey folks they have been a long time in the works, and i'm happy to announce the arrival of 2 new chapbooks from a couple of america's finest poets.

the first:
love & death & teeth in the blood
by todd moore
$9

todd moore has had more than a hundred books and chapbooks published since 1976. his work has appeared in more than a thousand zines since 1970. his style is unmistakably minimal and noir. he is best known for his long poem DILLINGER, based on the life and times of the legendary depression era bank robber john dillinger. hypnotic when read, cinematic in scope, DILLINGER has been compared to tom mcgrath's letters to an imaginary friend, john steinbeck's the grapes of wrath, and cormac mccarthy's blood meridian. he is one of the major voices of the outlaw poet generation.
love & death & teeth in the blood is his largest poetry collection since DILLINGER.

the second:
walking backwards to santa fe
by lawrence welsh
$6

lawrence welsh was born and raised in south central los angeles but has called el paso texas home since 1994.he is the former lead singer of seminal l.a punk band- the alcoholics.
he is the author of five collections of poetry, including believing in bonfires which i also published by hey sorry folks-it's all sold out. this is his best collection yet.

you can acquire these goodies by contacting me at

muggyfuggy@hotmail.com

or the silver wonder global h.q./ pitchfork press
po box 146399
chicago il 60614
checks and m.o.'s payable to c.a.gibson

the silver wonder recording company is open for biz

as mentioned in my previous post. this tuesday july 31st i'll be having a label showcase/ record release party at elastic arts in logan square. we will be celebrating the release of 3 recordings....

swr01 robert o'neal- shadowboxing
spoken word/ musical collaboration from robert o'neal and friends. like jello biafra fronting the magic band. edition of 100

swr02 steve dalachinsky/ loren connors- thin air
recorded live in nyc in 2000 here we find one of new york's hardest working poets performing a set with guitar shaman loren connors and magic ensues...edition of 300

swr03 abe gibson/paul giallorenzo/ brian dibblee- live at 3030
a live set from 2005 from three young chicago improvisers...edition of 100

all these are handmade cdr releases and are available for $8

for more info contact:

the silver wonder recording company
po box 146399
chicago, Il 60614
muggyfuggy@hotmail.com

mari akita in chicago

my friend mari akita will be in chicago and performing with the end of the world band:

july 30th
myopic bookstore
1564 north milwaukee avenue
7:30 pm
free show!!!

abe gibson- percussion, electronics
jesse thomas- gtar, electronics
mari akita- movement

she will also join the end of the world band the next night at:
elastic arts
2830 north milwaukee ave
9pm
$7 suggested donation
this is a cd release showcase party for my cdr label- the silver wonder recording company

also playing:
gibson/giallorenzo/labycz trio
fred lonberg-holm/eric leonardson duo

www.elasticrevolution.com

उप्कोमिंग shows

july 30th- myopic bookstore
w/jesse thomas & mari akita (austin)

july 31st- elastic
the silver wonder recording company presents:
gibson/giallorenzo/labycz trio
fred lonberg-holm/ eric leonardson duo
the end of the world band with mari akita

august 16th- south union arts
the end of the world band
names
cookies and dirt

august 19th- fireside bowl
the end of the world band
dbld (pittsburgh,pa)
cookies and dirt

september 8th- hideout block party
i will be performing as a member of plastic crimewave's vision celestial guitarkestra (100 gtars!!!)

oct 26th- south union arts
abraham gibson conducts!!!-
an electric prayer for derek bailey

nov 18th- myopic bookstore-
the silver wonder press presents:
readings by abraham gibson and larry sawyer
reading from my new chapbook-
'move over and give them some room'

all these events take place in chicago, ill...

abe gibson & andy stowers 9/11/2006

photo by john atwood

the bull's tongue

i thought that arthur mag was kaput so imagine my surprise when i was forwarded a link to a review written by mr. thurston moore in the bull's tongue review column that he does with byron coley. they say some really nice things about unicorn mountain #2 (i'm the fiction editor folks-send me something good!) and he also mentions - work in process - a chapbook by daniel carter that i published last year.

it's here at:

www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1904

Robert O'neal's A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion Now Available

We're really churning them out now folks! I'm happy to announce the latest release from the silver wonder press- Robert O'neal's A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction religion. This is O'neal's third chapbook and the second one of his I've published. It also features a cover photo by John Atwood and is available for only $2!!!!!

At the end of july O'neal's cd- Shadowboxing will also be available from the silver wonder recording company.......

He was recently featured in the online magazine gnome, with several new cosmic clown poems there. check it out at:

http://www.asteriusonline.com/gnome/issue08/oneal.htm

the silver wonder global h.q.
p.o. box 146399
chicago, il 60614
(checks and m.o.'s payable to c.a.gibson)

Tonight!!! Southside!!!

Some sick love from my group the end of the world band tonight!!!

We are playing a show at south union arts along with bill mackay's darts & arrows and one other act...

You can catch all the psychedelisized shronk action at this location:

south union arts
1352 south union avenue
chicago , il

show starts at 8 pm
cover is $5-10 (donation)

www.southunionarts.com

silver wonder chapbooks from robert o'neal & guy r. beining out now!!!

Even more chapbooks out this month from the silver wonder press. I'm happy to announce the release of two new ones.

The first is A Cosmic Clown's Science Fiction Religion from Robert O'neal. This is his third chapbook and he takes no prisoners-uttering the words "fuck high fructose corn syrup" (yes he went there) Be the first on yr block to get a copy with a cover photo by John Atwood...

The second is Outside the End by Guy R. Beining. This book is a beautiful mixture of Guy's poetry and art.

They are available thru yrs truly at:

The Silver Wonder Press
PO Box 146399
Chicago, IL 60614

O'neal= $2
Beining= $4
(checks and m.o.'s payable to c.a.gibson)

next week- Lawrence Welsh's Walking Backward to Santa Fe (pitchfork press)!!!!!!

the end of the world band on myspace

jesse and i have joined the cyber society of jerks, also known as myspace. now you can see and hear us online!!!! one click and you'll have proof that we are indeed yr friends.

add us!

www.myspace.com/theendoftheworldband

New Gerald Locklin Chapbook Available Now...

the avalanche of releases from the silver wonder/pitchfork press starts today with the release of P-019 Gerald Locklin's - The San Antonio, Savannah, & Daytona Beach Poems. It's the second chapbook I've released by Locklin, our first was -The Ultimate Pessimist & Other Poems. These are his "down south" poems...

You can get your copy now for seven bucks!!!
(Checks and M.O.'s payable to C.A. Gibson)

The Silver Wonder/Pitchfork Poetry Press
P.O. Box 146399
Chicago, Il 60614

stay tuned in the next 8 weeks for books from robert o'neal, guy r. beining, todd moore, lawrence welsh, & lee ranaldo. and cds from robert o'neal, steve dalachinsky/loren connors, and the gibson/giallorenzo/dibblee trio

plastic crimewave vision celestial guitarkestra at hyde park art center

folks,
i have joined up with plastic crimewave's vision celestial guitarkestra, a gtar group considerably larger than the jabberwhorl gtar ensemble. we will be performing as part of juan angel chavez's speaker project at the hyde park arts center this saturday june 2nd.
last time around the group was 70+gtars, this time i've heard young kids will be part of the ensemble. i've also heard we'll be playing in a giant speaker....

all the details are at:
www.hydeparkart.org
www.emptybottle.com

hyde park arts center
5020 s. cornell
chicago
saturday june 2nd- 3pm

zygote in my coffee #87

zygote in my coffee #87 hit the internet yesterday with my poem
-you don't believe me-
included in this issue so why don't you type:

www.zygoteinmycoffee.com

and check it out friends.

the end of the world band and other stuff

it's been a busy month and i haven't really had time to post on here as much as i'd like to.some notable things...

on april 17th i played in fred lonberg-holm's lightbox orchestra at elastic. the group was:me, brian labycz, vadim sprikut, aaron zarzutski, todd carter, michael colligan (on dry ice!), rob drinkwater, eric leonardson, & frank rosaly. this was my second show with the LBO and i had a blast.

some poems appear on the website strange road at www.strangeroad.com. they are oldies but goodies from my iowa city days

i've got a new band where i am playing the drums and singing. we are called the end of the world band

the lineup:
me:drums/vocals
jesse thomas: guitar
and for this show we'll be joined by
spencer heck on bass

we are playing our first show tomorrow night wednesday april 25th at the mutiny
2428 north western ave (at fullerton)
chicago il
i think it's a free show
starts at 10 pm
also playing:
the swinging richards
and spencer heck solo

the following day my daughter dolma echo gibson will be turning one. if the weather's good she gets to visit the zoo....

a poem in blind man's rainbow

a poem from my ukrainian village days- 'walking the dog'- appears in the new issue of blind man's rainbow (the winter 2007 issue aka volume XII, issue 1)

you can get yerself a copy for $4.00 from the editor at:
blind man's rainbow
p.o. box 1190
troy, MT 59935

their home online is at:
www.theblindpress.com

50 miles of elbow room

i meant to post this earlier but it slipped through the swiss cheese holes in my head.

adam lore has made daniel carter's- work in process volume one available through his website. so if you haven't bought a copy yet, you can get one, as well as a shit ton of carter records at

www.50milesofelbowroom.com

poems in two places

received a few things in my mailbox today.
one is issue #89 of free verse featuring a haiku of mine
available for $5 at:
free verse/marsh river editions
M233 Marsh road
Marshfield WI 54449

the second is issue #17 of zen baby featuring my poem: i have been away
available for $2 at:
zen baby
po box 1611
santa cruz ca 95061-1611

alottashittyness

it's been a totally shitty month and to be honest with everyone i'll be glad to see it go...i've been dealing with migraine headaches for most of the month-so i've spent alot of time in bed, then last weekend i fell down a flight of stairs- so i'm pretty jacked up lurching around like frankenstein's monster.i'm tired of the pain and ready to get on with my life already...

Can - Paper House (Beat Club 1971)

new issue of zygote in my coffee!!!

went to check the PO box today and found zygote in my coffee #2 with my poem 'the silver wonder' (metal version) in its groovey pages.

if you'd like to order a copy for yourself-a mere $7.50 or just wanna check out the e-zine go to:

www.zygoteinmycoffee.com

for the hardcore...

atonal boners show tonight has been postponed til feb 8th-hope you can hold yr load til then...

ATONAL BONER THIS WAY COMES

the fabulous sexy return of shronk rockers THE ATONAL BONERS!!!!
thursday jan 11th!!!!!

abe gibson-vocals!!!!!!!!&drums!!!!!!!!!
jesse thomas- gtar!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ezzy lange- bass/gtar!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bar vertigo!!!!!!!!!!
oh shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

future days and sounds

a lot of tumbleweeds blowing thru my barren blog but here's a little news...

i've got 2 shows coming up on monday the 8th of january.

the first is a duo w/fred lonberg-holm (vandermark five, peter brotzmann tentet)
i'll be playing acoustic gtar
& fred will be playing the cello
we start at 7:30 pm
at myopic bookstore (upstairs)
1564 north milwaukee avenue
chicago il
free show

i hope to see you all there.
for more info:
www.myopicbookstore.com
www.fredgigs.blogspot.com

then i'm headed over to elastic in logan square
to play in a sextet with:
paul giallorenzo-synthesizer
bill mackay (darts & arrows) -e gtar
brian labycz- electronics
jason stein (bridge 61) - bass clarinet
charles rumback (darts & arrows) - drums
i'll be playing e gtar for this one....
at 9:30 pm
2830 north milwaukee avenue
chicago, il
$5
www.elasticrevolution.com

a little later in the month the atonal boners will return with the sweet shronk live and at month's end i'll be reading in milwaukee so stay tuned friends!!!

poems online at word riot!!!

more of my restless wandering poems found a home, go check out 'flying into windowpanes' & 'miles of wires (and pipes)' at:
www.wordriot.org

two poems in the new OVER THE TRANSOM

the latest issue of OVER THE TRANSOM (#16)has arrived at my door with two of my poems included-'electricity' and 'whacking at spiders with an old shoe'. this issue also features work from: charles p. ries, john grey, guy r. beining, and arthur winfield knight...
if you'd like to purchase a copy send $5 to:

OVER THE TRANSOM
825 bush street #203
San Francisco, CA 94108

ways and means duo w/abe gibson & pamela osbey

i will be performing new and newer poems this evening(as will pamela osbey) at the muse cafe with the ways and means duo of dan godton and joel wanek making music along with us.

you can catch all the action tonight
tuesday november 21st
muse cafe
837 north milwaukee avenue
8-10 pm
$3

robert altman r.i.p.

i was just watching one of his films last night and this morning my computer is telling me that american film directing legend, robert altman has passed away.
for all of my cine-obsessed friends out there i highly recommend nashville, the player, and particularly his take on the stories of raymond carver- short cuts. if you haven't seen these films there is a gap there, folks.....

gibson/lange/thomas at myopic bookstore

3 dudes...3 electric gtars

monday november 20th
7:30 pm
myopic bookstore
upstairs
1564 north milwaukee ave
chicago, il, usa
free show

www.myopicbookstore.com

Neil Young - Tell Me Why

this one too...

Groove is in the Heart - Dee-Lite

the world needs a little of this on this monday...

malachi ritscher 1954-2006

from peter margasak's the meter column chicago reader nov 10 06:

A Final Protest

last friday morning during rush hour a man set himself on fire near the ohio street exit on the kennedy expressway. he hadn't been officially identified at press time, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they're certain it was malachi ritscher, a long-time supporter of the scene who recorded more than 2000 live shows. bruno johnson, who owns the free-jazz label okka disk, received a package monday from ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. johnson, a former chicagoan who now lives in milwaukee, started making calls and discovered that though police won't confirm it was ritscher until they get the results from dental tests, an officer told one of ritscher's sisters that all evidence points to the body being his. ritscher's car was found nearby, and he hasn't shown up for work since thursday.what's more, on ritscher's web site chicago rash audio potential, a compendium of invaluable show postings, artwork, and photography, are a suicide note and an obituary. both indicate that he was deeply troubled by the war in iraq, and pinpoint it as a motive for suicide (though no method is specified). a note found at the scene of the immolation reportedly read "thou shall not kill."

www.savagesound.com/gallery99.htm
www.savagesound.com/gallery100.htm

a memorial will be held at elastic
2830 north milwaukee avenue
sunday november 12th from 5pm to 8pm

myopic=gtars X 5

this monday november 13th i will be at myopic as part of a 5 piece gtar ensemble...

the players...

josh abrams
ben boye
cliff ingram
abe gibson
alex wing

the details...

myopic bookstore
1564 north milwaukee avenue
chicago
7:30 pm

Cat Power on Letterman

go ahead, throw yr birkenstocks at me

all right listen up van halen haters of the world-they are going into the rock and roll hall of fame and there is nothing you can do about it. I for one am fucking thrilled (this is david lee roth we're talking about here-not sammy)
what bothers me is what i'm reading from these PC rock writers who are outraged that van halen would be inducted along with their critical wet dream, R.E.M.
this is a no brainer. this is the rock and roll hall of fame not the VH1 hall of fame. Why is no one blinking an eyelid over R.E.M.'s induction?
this whole deal reminds me of an episode in neal pollack's book-never mind the pollacks- where he goes to a house party in athens with the minutemen and R.E.M. is there. Pollack removes michael stipe's tape from the deck and puts on van halen II. stipe is horrified and declares that van halen's music "promotes rape". yeah record nerd, go read it, it's awesome.
don't get me wrong, i've got a few R.E.M. records in the stacks but i refuse to lick their butts as so many "rock" writers do and kinda question their induction among other rock heavies who really deserve it like patti smith and the stooges.

Paul McCartney and Wings - Helen Wheels

nice one dumbfuck

the atonal boners, the greatest band in the world played their first show last night and you missed it!

i sing real good

tomorrow night i will be unveiling my latest group, a shronk rock ensemble by the name of the atonal boners-featuring myself on gtar and vocals, jesse thomas on drums, and chris lange on bass. other bands on the bill-the machinist (a.k.a. brian klein) and sounds happy+william sides...

bar vertigo
853 n western (a few blocks south of the empty bottle at iowa ave)
10pm
$5

i am the new fiction editor of unicorn mountain

you may remember me mentioning unicorn mountain a while back, it's a beautiful 200+ page anthology featuring comics, writing, and a compilation cd with every issue. well, i have become the fiction editor starting with the next issue #3, and this is what we're looking for...

UNICORN MOUNTAIN seeks creators who approach the world with a sense of optimism and child like wonder,people who love where they are from (especially Pittsburgh as the magazine has their global hq in that fair city)- we try hard to distance ourselves from the cynicism associated with "underground" art that can put people off and poison the well...

so kiddos please send your shorte(er) fiction my way at:
abe@unicornmountain.com

check us online at the hot webite designed by mister mike woodfill at:
www.unicornmountain.com

bob dylan - one more cup of coffee

there's a little mister fuckhead in us all

yeah folks you can catch my latest shenanigans as part of arvo zylo's group-mister fuckhead. we will be playing quite the blazing noise set opening for pommel and mcdonald's over at the fireside bowl on chicago's stinkin ass west side. so come on out and don't be a pussy-leave the earplugs at home.....

2648 west fullerton ave
chicago ill
sunday oct 15th
9pm

if you are religious about noise- then this will be an excellent way for you to get straight with the lord this sunday...

The Howling Hex

live at schuba's 9-21-06

chicago guitar ensemble has a myspace page now...

one of these days we'll all agree on a name, in the meantime we've settled on the generic-chicago guitar ensemble. there is now a myspace page up you can check it out at:

http://www.myspace.com/chicagoguitarensemble

right now there's a few photos and a short video of our show at elastic on 9/11/06 and there will soon be mp3's from our 6/23/06 spare room show...

pj harvey _ rid of me

the howling hex last night

had a pretty nice day off yesterday. My friend spencer recently moved to chicago from austin and is staying in a highrise on clark in lincoln park across from the zoo til his place is ready to move into. So i went over there yesterday and we sat on his balcony on the 36th floor and had a smoke watching the sunset and the city light up. needless to say-it was fuckin awesome-i'll even go so far as to say it was awesome to the max!!!!!to the extreme!!!!!!we listened to a bit of the new yo la tengo and bob dylan records and then caught the lincoln bus up to schuba's to see neil hagerty and the howling hex.
Neil had this weird bass/guitar thing going with two amps-playing all the bass parts on the top 3 strings and then soloing his ass off on the bottom three. he had a hot shit guitarist, playing an sg, that looked like one of marc bolan's turds and then a guy who sang, played the tambourine and recited a poem. he looked like that actor who played that speed freak david in drugstore cowboy.at one point he was shirtless...not good. An extra bonus of the night was nori tanaka on drums!
the set started strong with both neil and his other guitarist playing one incredible solo after another over tanaka's locked rhythms. things kinda fell apart in the middle but man they came with it for the last two songs both in a heavy VU vein (think guess i'm falling in love from the another view lp) and man neil's playing was so amazing i thought i might go into convulsions. the triple vocal thing got old quick but overall this was a pretty solid show from one of the most incredible guitarists out there-and i didn't have to wait long for the bus home...

Capain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Detroit '71

jandek at the empty bottle...

got home a little bit ago from seeing jandek play at the empty bottle as part of this year's wire magazine 'adventures in modern music' fest- he was supposed to make it last year but cancelled since he thought hurricane katrina was gonna wipe out his place in houston....never thought i'd be able to get tickets for this thing but it was pretty easy....the show wasn't superpacked like i thought i would be- jandek played first and some people might not have realized this and arrived later- i couldn't tell you who the group was (a bass player and drummer) couldn't tell you what they played which is the appeal of jandek i guess.

i went into this a little scared knowing that he planned to play for 2 hours. i thought it might end up being an endurance test after seeing footage of his scotland concert but actually it turned out to be pretty good-not amazing but i wasn't expecting that. anyone that tells you jandek is amazing or a genius etc-is either on heroin or severely brain damaged...he is what he is- interesting and inspiring to a certain degree but no genius. still though it wasn't predictable like i thought it would be and the band with him added alot and helped to hold the audience's interest. the two hours ended up a treat....

either way i just fucking saw jandek and i doubt the chance will arise again- something to tell my grandkids about after he is elected president of the mysterious sci-fi future...

there really is no reason to stress out

everything is fine

Boredoms - Vision Creation New Sun

not the full 60 minutes but this will do...

touch and go 25th block party

it's how i spent my wekend, it's why i took the time off. my homeboy andy and his lady adri flew in from lawrence kansas via kansas city to take it all in and well here's what i took in...

friday night: i saw all the acts and have to say that the girls against boys set was really the highlight. they did the venus luxure no:1 baby lp in its entirety plus kill the sexplayer and a few others...the shipping news wasn't bad despite a bass heavy sound man (duh, dude turn it down and give us some treble)....supersystem was a huge stinky one...ted leo did his typical thing...and !!! danced their asses off til i went home....

saturday: i caught killdozer who did king of sex as well as uttering the classic-you call this cup of shit coffee?...well i'd rather drink from the dick of a goat
then there was jon langford and kat from the ex's short set that wasn't bad despite an argument i got into w/a dude who spent alot of time manicuring his facial hair-the song i remember was called bouquet of barbed wire, i think...not bad
but really for me and andy and all of us central/southern illinois kids the real treat of the fest was the reunion of the didjits who did not disappoint delivering probably the most kick ass set of the festival. and the most clever insults.
after that i wasn't up close but heard negative approach's plummeling set followed by scratch acid's reunion as the sun set. man it was cold and all i had on was a t-shirt-i really wanted to stick around for big black's short reunion and shellac's set but was so cold and miserable that i had to bail out of there.

sunday: couldn't care less about this day....tara jane o'neill was not bad-had a few good moments towards the end of her short set...seam made no impression...todd trainer's brick layer cake was a damn shame to see...and finally the black heart procession played but even with a coat-it was shitty. so with the rain coming down and no bands to really get excited about it was bye bye to the touch and go fest which was fun but made this goofy mutha feel a little old, you know?....

Battle in Heaven (trailer)

oh my god, the best movie i've seen since 'black orpheus' go rent this now!

The Breeders - When I was a Painter

for all fans of pod era breeders...

jabberwhorl guitar ensemble september 11th!

but wait there's more....after the myopic show there's another one, a big one at elastic. last time we were called s.u.g.e. or gtar army but now we are officially- the jabberwhorl gtar ensemble. this time around the group will feature 15 guitarists from chicago. yeah you read right-15 guitars.

we'll be at elastic in logan square right up the road from the myopic gig-more accurately at:

2830 n milwaukee avenue
upstairs
10pm

not sure about an opener yet but it'll probably be a group bill mackay is putting together, so it'll be good...

their home on the web is:
www.elasticrevolution.com

the group:
abe gibson, alex wing, bill mackay, jayve montgomery, jesse thomas, minh nyguen, brian labycz, brian klein, chris lange, micheal silvestri, brian ashby, matt field, matthew daniel, cliff ingram, and arvo zylo.

so fuck going to see gnarls barkley at the rivieria, forget about vashti bunyan-she's got another show booked on the 12th-come out and see our ensemble...

duo with brian labycz at myopic

after the big touch and go records blowout-goddamn the didjits, and scratch acid reuniting and big black sort of too. not to mention ANDY!!!!!!!!!! so yeah after all this excitement-i'll try to make it continue with a little excitement of my own on monday september 11th...

there will be more music
free music
at 7:30 pm
the group is:
brian labycz: electronics
abraham gibson: e gtar

1564 n milwaukee avenue
upstairs
wicker park
chicago

www.myopicbookstore.com
www.savagesound.com

poetry in zen baby #17

i have a new-er poem appearing in the upcoming issue #17 of zen baby out of santa cruz. the poem is called -'i have been away'

you can get a copy of this mag for a mere $2 or a 3 issue subscription for $5, so why wouldn't ya? he's practically giving them away! get yours now at:

zen baby
christopher robin, editor
po box 1611
santa cruz ca 95061-1611

and for my chicago people- you can also get it at quimby's.....

EUGENE CHADBOURNE - WHERE'S THE STAGE

a documentary about one of the real guitar gods. enjoy this one folks!

music at myopic on august 14th

I'll be performing this upcoming monday evening at myopic books in my first duo with mr. chris lange, the president of the local chapter of the KISS army. come out and check us folks-

we'll be at
1564 north milwaukee avenue
chicago il
upstairs-7:30 pm
www.myopicbookstore.com

poems online in the latest zygote in my coffee

the good folks at zygote in my coffee have been so kind to publish two of my poems in issue #66 of their online poetry zine. you can check out "one for the history books" and "fame! i wanna live forever!" at:

www.zygoteinmycoffee.com

new "official" address

manoman it seems like things are moving slow here....at least we'll be moved into our new place soon......i know the constant address changes of the last couple of years have been a hassle for people trying to find us, so i've finally got a p.o. box that'll stay solid while we move around.....so, it you need to reach us or send me presents, here's the address:

the silver wonder and co.
pitchfork press
p.o. box 146399
chicago, il 60614

july- under the surface...the silver wonder

manoman june turned out to be quite a month, and while july won't be so hectic for me performance-wise, on the homefront there's a whole shitstorm of stuff brewing...

at the end of the month we'll be moving out of this loud ass roach motel and into a bigger quieter place on the far north side of chicago...so only one more month of putting up with constant distractions, lots of roaches, and a crosstown bus ride.

friends visiting-spencer from austin and david from boston-i'll try not to get too drunk....linklater's animated version of PKD's 'a scanner darkly' will hit theaters....and the silver jews will come to town at month's end....if only the cubs could win a fucking game already!

hopefully i can get michael c ford's chapbook 'to kiss the blood off our hands' w/ bonus mini chap 'the marilyn monroe concerto' out by the end of the month and follow it up soon after with steve dalachinsky's 'trust fund babies'.....

machines are humming here at HQ and finally after 10 years of big talk- i've finally got my record label up and running.....it's called the silver wonder recording co.

here's a list of our first releases:

swr01- robert o'neal- shadowboxing
swr02-steve dalachinsky/loren connors- thin air
swr03- abe gibson/paul giallorenzo/brian dibblee- live at 3030
swr04- abe gibson/alex wing/bill mackay/jayve montgomery/brian labycz-5 gtars
swr05-fred lonberg-holm/eric leonardson-tba

mike woodfill will be designing a website that we hope to have up pronto and you can purchase discs there. check out the other site mike designed: www.unicornmountain.com

so if all appears quiet this month- i assure it is not, under the surface of things, i'll be churning out the goodies to you fine folks.....

Luc Ferrari r.i.p.

i just heard luc ferrari referred to as the late luc ferrari, a sad and devastating thing to hear.

if you're not familiar with his work- i won't make an ass of myself here trying to describe the music he made, but i will urge you to check out some of his sounds

several years back blue chopsticks put out his-cycle des souvenirs (1995-2000) an incredible record full of whispers and firecrackers (literally).

there is a photo on the back cover of him sitting on a ledge in headphones w/tape recorder and microphone recording the desert

luc ferrari dead...why couldn't it have been wayne coyne instead? or that aging drunk ron wood? or eric "fartbag" clapton?

S.U.G.E.

folks a dream come true for ol abe- been working at it with alex wing for awhile now and we've managed to put together quite a guitar army.....

we are calling our group suge, or - subtext unleashed guitar ensemble and you can see us this friday night (june 23rd) in chicago at the spareroom
2416 west north avenue
chicago
8 pm

the first incarnation of suge will feature:

abe gibson
alex wing
bill mackay
jesse thomas
chris lange
brian labycz
jayve montgomery
matthew daniel
brian klein
ben boye
matt field

and we are still waiting for confirmation from several other guitarists.

fuckin exciting shit, eh?

jack "shitbag" white

Am i the only one who's had enough of this fucker?

I've never seen a person conduct himself in a more idiotic manner.

Hey, I'll be honest- I had problems with this weinerboy from day one. The first reason he gave me to wish ill of and on him was when he butchered "one more cup of coffee" a perfect song that should have been left alone.

Then there was the time i accidently saw the white stripes- i had a free sxsw wristband a few- shit , maybe five years back and went to room 710 for the sympathy for the record industry showcase- the headliner was a personal favorite-bob log and right before him were the bellrays (everyone was saying they were like the mc5 w/aretha franklin as their lead singer- they were alright) and before them were those sorry ass stripes. They played a sloppy shitpile of a set and frankly I felt that the drummer should have left stage embarrassed. And jack "shitbag" white (if that is his real name) wasn't playin shit.

Then there was his involvement with hachetfaced talentless texan actress renee zellwegger- which luckily didn't produce offspring.....

followed soon by a sickening display of ridiculousness of suing garage rock legend Billy Childish for plagarism. Which to me is like john denver suing bob dylan- I MEAN, COME ON. I read jack's stupid ass comments and you can too at:

www.theebillychildish.com

and now i'm hearing about some fight w/the von bondies and jackie boy trying to act hard (behind his lawyer) He marries a model and starts swinging his little dick around...

Jack, just because you are from Detroit doesn't make you a bad ass. I'll gladly take off these thick glasses and kick your ass all over the MTV video music awards.

You're a chump- you've burned all your bridges and there's no going back now.

Say hi to Neil Sedaka and Herman's Hermits for me in the bargain bin you hack because that's at the end of your road-Jack(ass)

Daniel Carter's 'Work In Process'

the churning continues here at HQ...yet another new chapbook to entice you good folks with. I am referring to work in process (volume one) by daniel carter who is an amazing writer and quite a musician to boot. He has played in Test and Other Dimensions In Music as well as in various ensembles including Matthew Shipp, Federico Ughi, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, & Alan Silva.

Two recent recordings featured Daniel that I highly recommend are "let's be still" on yo la tengo's 'summer sun' lp and the record he did with matthew shipp and the anti pop consortium is fuckin dynamite!

As far as I know this is the first collection of Daniel's writings to be published in a single edition, and it is planned that more volumes will continue this work in process....Get yours now for only $3! For order info contact me at:

pitchforkpoetrymag@hotmail.com

For more info on Daniel try these:

www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/dcarter.htm

www.furious.com/perfect/danielcarter.html

and check out his page on the aum fidelity site at:

www.aumfidelity.com

first public poetry reading since 1998!

alot of excitement in my life this week with the trio playing tomorrow night and then on sunday....

i'll be reading poems at myopic bookstore (mostly from my new colection-"the glass onion effect in the new millenium") with a guest, Charles P. Ries from Milwaukee who has appeared in the pages of the pitchfork poetry magazine...

you can catch all the action this sunday june 11th
at 7pm
myopic bookstore
1564 n milwaukee avenue
chicago

www.myopicbookstore.com

and for more on Charles click these:
www.literati.net/Ries/
www.pitchforkpoetryprojects.com/poetsphp?id=226

a splendid time is guaranteed for all

The Hits Just Keep On Coming!

here are the details on my upcoming show at elastic.......

the group:
paul giallorenzo-synthesizer
brian labycz- electronics
abe gibson- e gtar

also playing will be the duo of eric lenordson and fred lonberg-holm
tuesday june 6th
show starts at 9:30
at elastic
2830 n milwaukee avenue
logan square, chicago

www.elasticrevolution.com
www.savagesound.com

hope you see you there!

Matthew Sheahan's Poems For Toiling In Obscurity

I can think of few birthday presents nicer than getting some time to get some things done, and that's exactly what went down today folks as I celebrate 31 years here on earth with both feet on the ground....

After nearly two very freakin frustrating years, I am back in business with the release of Matthew Sheahan's "Poems For Toiling in Obscurity" from Pitchfork Press.

I highly recommend this chapbook (his first) from NYC's "polite new yorker" and member of the punk rock group, Blackout Shoppers.

They are available direct from me (or Matt) for only 3 dollars!!!!!

for more details, please contact pitchforkpoetrymag@hotmail.com

rumblings (towards june!)

had a fit of organization today in an otherwise scattered month- being sick, getting used to having a baby around, working extra hours, etc. i have been run down and it's been pretty quiet but do you hear those rumblings folks? sounds like old abe is ready to run his mouth some more and june proves to be a real hum-dinger (whatever a hum-dinger is. sounds kinda dirty)

anyway here's what you and I have to look forward to in the next few weeks:

I'll turn 31 in about 48 hours.
Dolma will be one month old in 4 days.

On June 6th I will perform some music with Paul Giallorenzo and Brian Labycz.
On June 11th I will be reading poems at Myopic Bookstore w/Charles P. Ries
On June 21st Jessica and I will celebrate one year of marriage.

Poems will appear soon on the wordriot website
and in Over The Transom Magazine out of San Francisco.

and Pitchfork Press will be releasing three new titles
P-015 Poems For Toiling In Obscurity by Matthew Sheahan
P-012 To Kiss The Blood From Our Hands by Michael C Ford
&
P-017 Work In Process (Volume One) by Daniel Carter

So stayed tuned here folks for all the juicy details!!!!!

Sweet Child O Mine