"They all, without any exception are AGAINST, I say, are AGAINST what I am doing."

I was uploading this anyway, so in case anyone's interested, here's a 8 1/2 minute sound piece I made about 10 years ago for a show at the refusalon. 'Spitting Out Our Medication' includes a soliloquy from a tape recorded by Wilhelm Reich in Orgonon just before he was put in prison, an homage to Spike Jones, samples from a 70's radio program on the anti-psychiatry movement, and so much more.

The original audio tape is still available from the Wilhelm Reich Museum at Orgonon, where you can also purchase reproductions of Reich's paintings (below, 'Swirl' 1951) or rent a cottage, in addition to a wealth of resources detailing Reich's theories and research - much of it unavailable elsewhere.

Last Chance for Griffinity

Sunday September 30th is the last chance to view "Heart & Torch: Rick Griffin's Transcendence" at Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach. The show (shamefully) won't travel, and many of the pieces included will probably disappear forever back into private collections after it closes. The awesome catalog is almost sold out, as are the vintage limited edition silk-screen reproductions of classic Griffin psychedelic posters and 4 different tee-shirts produced by Hurley specifically for the show. Be there or be everywhere.

Above: Griffin paints the bus 'Motorskill' in John Severson's classic "Pacific Vibrations"

Below: Rick's mystic eye.

The Mists of Abalone

"While Spence deploys his signature post-photorealist airbrush technique to its full fuzzy luminosity in the new works, they have grown significantly in scale. And the recombinant mash-ups of “Afterlife” have been distilled into their discrete constituent ingredients. Almost every one of the large canvases consists of a single misty photographic re-reproduction, some found, some altered, some staged with models. A couple of these depict the kind of totemic handcrafted figurative sculptures commonly arising out of a clinical art-therapy session — the wonky cardboard toilet-paper-tube family of 'Gaggle' and the (deliberately) awkwardly installed, strangely Magritte-like 'Figure', which the artist copied as a sculpture from an art-therapy book before rephotographing it for its eventual transubstantiation into Real Art."

My latest LA Weekly piece looks at "Art Therapy," the current show by LA painter Brad Spence at Shoshana Wayne Gallery.

Above: 'Boundary'; below: 'Remedy'

Some One Needs To Do This In Chinatown... Bubbles

The 4th annual Soundwalk was held in downtown Long Beach last weekend, organized by the artist collective FLOOD. It was great to see such a complex event being pulled together with almost no money, and so many different people checking out experimental music and sound art. There were something like 50 artists providing performances, installations, sound sculptures, etc. spread over 4 blocks. I did a few recording tours and edited together a 13-minute virtual experience.
To the best of my ability I've figured out who made what sounds on here - anyone with further info or corrections please share it in a comment. Sorry for the crappy sound. But I dig crappy sound.

1. Midnight Gardeners' lovely drones in the Dome Room of the Lafayette (pictured above)
2. Unidentified (and unseen) blues guitarist on corner of Linden & Broadway
3. Doug Pearsall's funk on the opposite corner
4. Lewis Keller's robot drumming orchestra in a vacant storefront
5. Daniel Corral's amazing meta-musicboxes in the Lafayette kitchen
6. Robert Strong's mutant kettle drum in another room of the Lafayette kitchen
7. Miha Ciglar's video feedback sound in the Dome Room
8. Adam Overton's touch-activated human ensemble on Koo's stage
9. Christiaan Cruz's shrubbery shrouded installation - I didn't get a chance to inspect it closely but I liked the racket.
10. Mike Chang & Allie Bogle's open access FOR SALE piano in a flowershop entrance and unidentified roving horn ensemble
11. MLuM's fig leaf & veil extravaganza in the Cooper Arms
12. Gary Raymond's very popular feedback delay shipping crate on the corner of Linden & First
13. Markle & Strauss's ouija board electronics in the back of an art gallery
14. Fluorescent Grey's dense loopy collage in the Dome Room
15. Mannlicher Carcano's dense loopy collage in the Dome Room (with live cell-phone air couple from Canada)
16. Tom Skelly's random recombinant sampledelic jukebox on the street in front of the Best Western.

Tom Skelly (pictured below) creates an awesome live sound collage radio program every Sunday from 7 - 10 at www.kspc.org when not bringing art to the prisons.

Mannlicher Carcano Live Saturday Night

Mannlicher Carcano are participating in this year's SOUNDWALK festival in Long Beach CA. Porter Hall and Gogo Godot will be participating from Canada via telephone. Really Happening, Herr Schurdt, and whoever else shows up will hold down the fort at this end.

Mannlicher's set (entitled 'Bong Leach Wound Sock') will run from 9 - 10 PM in The Dome Room of The Lafayette at 528 E. Broadway

On September 22, 2007, the Long Beach artist group, FLOOD, will present SoundWalk2007, featuring artists from the Southland and the international scene. This event operates under the concept of a one-night aural/visual experience as provided by a walking-tour of sound installations and soundmarks located in various indoor and outdoor spaces situated throughout the East Village Arts District in Downtown Long Beach. The artworks will combine in multiple ways a wide range of visual, performative and audio components. There will be sculptures, environments, installations and performances. More details can be found at www.soundwalk.org



Also, those in search of great deals on all kinds of fabulous film and video equipment, supplies, resources, VHS rarities and inexplicable knicknacks should be sure to check out the Echo Park Film Center's ANNUAL RUMMAGE SALE! – Saturday, Sept 22 – 11AM – 5PM. Here is a picture of Nigel and EPFC svengali Paolo D contemplating one of the last category of objects. What the hell is that thing?!

"It's times like this that I'm glad to be a robot."

Truer words were never spoken. The Coalition for Cinematic Conservation and Preservation - Southern California Chapter (CCCP-SCC) is the umbrella organization under whose aegis the Thrift Store Movie screenings at the the Hammer and numerous programs at The Echo Park Film Center (including Mormon Media and Wienergeist 1: The Cinema of the Hot Dog) are organized. On occasion our organization will endorse a film of not particularly ephemeral or educational nature. One such film is 'Starcrash' (original title: 'Scontri Stellari Oltre la Terza Dimensione'), a 1979 Roger Corman-produced Italian Star Wars ripoff that was found on VHS in a thrift store in Oroville.

Starring Marjoe Gortner, Hammer beauty Caroline Munro, permanently beleagured Christopher Plummer, and featuring the screen debut of David Hasselhoff, 'Starcrash' has been reissued on DVD and developed a considerable cult following, as evidenced by this dissertation on salon.com, this page featuring downloadable sound samples and stills as well as a tart but glowing review, and this over-the-top fansite. All questions of condescending "so bad its good" critiques aside, some of the visuals in this film are transcendent in their beautiousness. And I'm an art critic. (And I think I'm getting an idea for my next curatorial project... Omaggio a Armando Valcauda!)

Gortner's B-movie career was kicked off by the Oscar-winning documentary 'Marjoe' which followed the former Pentecostal child evangelist in his ambivalent attempt to reconcile his youthful experiences with his adult counterculture worldview through an awkward return to the revival tent circuit. His last role to date was as a preacher in Walter Hill's 'Wild Bill' (1995). He was briefly married to Candy Clark, on whom David Bowie vomited in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'. Most recently Gortner has been sponsoring charity golf tournaments.



The Great John Barry - who was tricked into scoring 'Starcrash' - later reused the haunting theme music for 'Out of Africa', which earned him an Oscar. All roads lead to the Academy.