Take that, Georg Baselitz!

Chloe Bowie, NW3

Pleased to convey that Winway Pleats Please AKA Chloe successfully earned her NW3 title in Canine Scent Work (with two Pronounceds), which is arguably the terminal degree in that field, on Saturday December 27, 2014, in beautiful Palmdale, CA! We're still waiting for the final calibration to determine her placement overall and if she is, as we suspect, the first whippet to achieve this level of expertise, but in the meantime here are some dramatic magic hour shots of the graduate and her ribbons (also includes an NW3-E element title for exteriors). Thanks to Michael and Natalie McManus for hosting, CO Amy Herot, judges Ron Gaunt and Cindy Lowry, and all of Chloe's fans and supporters. Learn more about this exciting new dog sport at www.k9nosework.com and www.nacsw.net!

Outsider Xmas 4 - Now More Than Ever

I guess one of the reasons I haven't put out any more of these compilations is that I figured with the internet and all, everybody had all this stuff -- but I realized recently that not everybody spends all their spare time obsessively collecting weird-ass music. Nonetheless I should acknowledge the other obsessives that I cribbed off here, including wfmu's Beware of the Blog, Music for Maniacs, and God knows who else. Oh, and I snagged the image from Tom Recchion's FB page. (It's Ed Wood, unidentified lady, and Bela Lugosi.) Merry Xmas, y'all!

Click here to go to the free DL page. Tracklist in comments.

Also, these mediafire links sometimes get confused about the source material -- if you have trouble, return her and reclick the link. Reloading the page doesn't work.

(PS: The reason this is #4 is that #3 was a hipster version, and remains unfinished.)

Peachy Deal!

Hey, because of that movie, the Laguna Art Museum is selling the catalog for the 2000 show "Margaret Keane and Keaneabilia" by Tyler Stallings with essays by yours truly and Judy Vida M.D. for only $10. Dig: http://lagunaartmuseum.org/museum-celebrates-the-release-of-big-eyes-with-special-price-on-margaret-keane-book/

Outsider Xmas Reup 2014

As requested, I've re-upped the two anthologies of Holiday-themed outsider music (songpoems, celebrities, novelty, developmentally different, amateur, etc). It's strange to think I put the first one together 13 years ago. Even stranger that the track that I tacked on the end to coincide with the hot new blockbuster movie from Hollywood is more pertinent than ever. No promises, but if I get a few minutes, the long anticipated Vol. 3 may be forthcoming...

"You may order your pastels from Alaska,
Imported, as the Igloo, in review"
- Evelyn Christmas (songpoem, Vol 2 track 4)

Download Outsider XMAS Vol 1
Download Outsider XMAS Vol 2

Tracklists in Comments

The Ironing is Delicious

Winter Returns the Perfectly Good

Headboards that is! And Winter being Winter Jenssen, who most kindly took it upon himself to complete the "LA Wood" show Perfectly Good Headboards installation by re-releasing the PGH's into the wild, as documented here. Thanks again to China Adams for including my work in this excellent museum-worthy exhibit. EQC4EVER!

 

Kew. Rhone. 'pataccritically decoded.

I am honored to have been invited to participate in this amazing book about this amazing LP alongside fellow contributors Siegfried Zielinski, Jonathan Coe, Carla Bley, and Robert Wyatt! Not to mention the original perpetrators, Peter Blegvad and John Greaves and a host of others. Available any minute now from the equally formidable Colin Sackett:

http://www.colinsackett.co.uk/images/pdfs/Kew%20Rhone%20Press%20Release.pdf

If you don't know what I'm talking about, get thee to a wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew._Rhone.

http://www.discogs.com/John-Greaves-Peter-Blegvad-Lisa-Herman-Kew-Rhone/master/75382

Both Ox and Self Transcended

My performance on last night's Ear Meal is up on youtube: http://youtu.be/Bs5g0OzmyNU -- I always rely on synchronicity to make my art meaningful (less work) and true to form I just found out that yesterday was the exact 45th anniversary of the sentencing of Bobby Seale for contempt of court, the event reenacted on the LP I used in my single-source deconstruction. Mere coincidence?

WHo is that handsome fellow?!

And here are a few shots from The Spirit Girls at Festival Supreme's Circus of Death that include yours truly -- above, getting excited by Daniel Hawkins' persona repair facility (photo by Dani Tull); below, onstage with the band - DH gtr, DH kbrd, Marnie Weber vox bass, Tanya Haden vox cello, Debbie Spinelli drums, Dani Tull gtr, plus Lorri Wressel swinging one mean ax (photos by LeeAnn Nickel). Thank you Los Angeles, Jack Black, Steven Hull, Marnie Weber, and last but not least, thank you Los Angeles!

Behind the Scenes at the Circus of Death

Hurd Drove Through the Grapevine

Still one of the most refreshing painters around. Up for one more week

STEVE HURD: Paintings 1992 through 2014 September 13, 2014 - October 11, 2014

ROSAMUND FELSEN GALLERY, Bergamot Station B4, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

http://rosamundfelsen.com/exhibitions/

(photo by Young Summers)

Gerry Fialka on LARZ, followed by a Hiatus

This Sunday's guest on Doug Harvey's LESS ART RADIO ZINE is the incomparable Gerry Fialka, multimedia renaissance impresario behind the PXL THIS film festival (now nearing the quarter-century mark!) dedicated to work produced on the instantly obsolete PXL 2000 children's video system, which recorded lo-res B&W images on audio cassettes; the self-explanatory Marshall McLuhan-FINNEGANS WAKE Reading Club, which has been meeting regularly in Venice since the early 90's; the DIY experimental cinema venues 7 Dudley CInema and Documental; live Media Ecology Soul Sessions (interviews) and poetical funk at the Unurban Coffee Shop; a phenomenal array of workshops colliding such pertinent topics as art, advertising, experimental cinema, technology, fakery, culture jamming, hacking, social media, conspiracy theory, and the color blue; and many other virtuosic DIY/experimental syncretisms.

One of which is  Sunday evening's PSYBERNETIC DREAMING with RIA LIVE CINEMA (RIAPD) - a collaborative project with Will Erokan consisting of "post-hypnotic triggering and hyper-maximum multi-media live cinema event" which functions as a "media yoga session [that] enables participants to meta-analyze the dualities of form and content." We'll be asking Gerry what the hell he's talking about, and playing audio-collaged mashups of his experimental documentary soundtracks, or something. But don't wait to pencil it in at 7 PM Sun Aug 31 at Beyond Baroque 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, California 90291 - Free admission!

After this program, I'm going to have to put LARZ on hiatus, while we find a place to move to and move there -- no small undertaking after 15 years accumulating research materials in one location! So I'm going to be needing my Sundays. I swear to you, though, that LARZ will be back! If I feel like it...

Michael Uhlenkott & Damon Willick on L.A.R.Z.

ANOTHER Seagate external hard drive has crapped out, leaving me devoid of documentation -- this was after the brand new big one I got to back that shit up died while sitting on a shelf, unused for 3 months. So is it any wonder that I've not been blogging so much?

I will, however, break the silence to promote the upcoming episode of Less Art Radio Zine featuring Michael Uhlenkott and Damon Willick. Michael was a founding member of the 70s/80s L.A. art collective World Imitation (Products) and their auditory wing Monitor, one of the most beloved but misplaced post-punk bands of the era. Their single self-titled 1981 LP was finally reissued last year to not enough fanfare on the Superior Viaduct label.

Subsequently, Michael honed his songwriter chops leading the avant-cowpunk band The Romans through a couple of albums to near-glory, and has recently been devoting his energies to the preservation and perpetuation of Tiki culture -- the peculiar mid-century American translation of traditional Polynesian art, music, food, and lifestyle that captured the imaginations of many from the post-punk generation -- including frequent WImP collaborator Jeffrey Vallance.

So we have a lot of material to pick from to fill up the hour, and plenty of L.A. art and post-punk historical veins to mine. Tune in Sunday Aug 26th at 12 noon to www.kchungradio.org! And check back for archival links.

Jeffrey, Michael, and the other WImP operatives (most notably master collagist and Solid Eye member Steve Thomsen) are among the subjects -- along with Judith F. Baca, Hans Burkhardt, Karen Carson, John Divola, Scott Grieger, Channa Horwitz, Michael C. McMillen, C.R. Stecyk III, Rena Small, Benjamin Weissman, Robert and Suzanne Williams, and many others -- of Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley, ca. 1970-1990, a sort of San Fernando Valley riposte to the Getty's 2011/12 Pacific Standard Time extravaganza, curated by my other guest, art writer Damon Willick, Ph.D.

Valley Vista runs from Aug 25 – Oct 11, 2014 at the Cal State Northridge Art Galleries, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA, 91330-8299. It's open Mon-Sat 12-4pm, Thurs 12-8pm (closed Monday, Sept. 1) Public Reception: Sat, Sept 6, 4–7 pm; Gallery Talk: Mon, Sept 15 10 am; Panel Discussion: Sat, Sept 27 1pm. More info: http://www.csun.edu/artgalleries/

CC on LARZ Pt 01: Juvenilia Mix

This Sunday at Noon on Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine, I'll be doing a live uninterrupted hour-long mix of cassette recordings made by Christian Cummings as a young self-taught experimental audio artist over a decade ago. These tapes miraculously escaped the devastating studio fire by being in my possession.

F for CHAOS!

So much going on with Perform Chinatown 2014: CHAOS REIGNS! that I'll just use this one image to stand in for all the documentation that is to come - F will play live on the Mainstage at 8:30, and Chaos will never be the same again!

Virtual Solo Show of Flash Fudd Fashions

Cutting edge online fashionista destination artfuck.com invited me to contribute tee-shirt designs to their rapidly expanding array of auteur couture. I obliged with blown up fragments from my collage comic sequence Flash Fudd, which I have been working on since I was 11 years old! Here are a few examples, but there's plenty more to see over at http://www.artfuck.com/doug-harvey. Cheap at half the price!

Firesign Theatre's Phil Proctor & Archivist Taylor Jessen on LARZ!

Doug Harvey's Less Art Radio Zine is honored to host one of the last of the great radio artists, Phil Proctor of Firesign Theatre along with workaholic FT Archivist Taylor Jessen this Sunday July 20th at 12 Noon on www.kchungradio.org. The Firesign Theatre -- in the tradition of Stan Freberg, Max Ferguson, The Goons, Bob & Ray, and Henry Jacobs -- approached radio as an open playing field and a quintessential but (happily/criminally) unsupervised Modernist artform.

Simultaneously avant-garde and populist, collective and idiosyncratic, intricately crafted and improvisational -- The Firesign Theatre's work as radio innovators was overshadowed by their enormous success as Columbia Records' "Beatles of Comedy." Their 1971 LP I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus is the masterpiece of this period, and the subject of my newly-published chapbook from Insert Blanc Press, What’s Happening in The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus as Best as I Can Make Out.

With the recent release of Duke of Madness Motors -- Jessen's labor of love and a copiously illustrated account of the FT's radio career, including an 80-hour DVD of recently rediscovered audio transcriptions -- the FT's reputation as pioneers of postmodern radio art has been irrefutably solidified. All Hail Proctor and Jessen!

Let the CHAOS Begin! Ha ha ha ha!

The sixth edition of Perform Chinatown 2014, L.A.’s premier performance art gathering, will present over 40 performers, distributed across a host of Chinatown galleries and public spaces on the 26th of July between 12 Noon and 10 PM.

This year’s rendition pools the complementary curatorial talents of Doug Harvey, Lee Lynch, and Paige Wery.

Perform Chinatown 2014 : CHAOS REIGNS! stretches the boundaries of Performance Art to include live experimental music, historical reenactments, survivalist workshops, guided meditation rituals, chess tournaments, poetry, dance, video, and food – as well as the cutting edge New Genre happenings that define the field.

http://performchinatown.com/

Apparently Sisyphean Workout Pays Off!

It took 2 days to haul this 287 pound thrift-store treadmill up the concrete steps and down the narrow root-cracked walkway into the backyard (not to mention the months MA spent trolling craigslist and the trip to the depths of Huntington Park to retrieve it), but its worth it just to see the happy smiling whippet faces ready to start working off that flab!

White dust 'n' perished birds leaves its hex in the air?

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Insert Blanc Rabble celebration at Machine. My ritual slapstick sealing of the picture plane was preceded by various incantatory, satirical, and 'patacritical presentations by Alexandra Grant, Holly Myers, steve roden, and Tyler Stallings (with encouraging words from host Matthew Timmons). Special thanks to Daniel, Jenn, and Isabel, who sorted the inverted logistics and filled my pie-pans -- and to Jimmy Chertkow who did all that and took these photos. It was unexpectedly meaningful, as are the best things in life. Oh wait, that's "free." Oh well. Kudos to whoever inscribed that pie!

(PS: The performance consisted of me in a clown costume (Thanks Marnie!) backlit by blue video projection light, systematically pie-ing the front window of Machine Project from inside (audience on the street outside) until it was completely full, to the soundtrack of the climactic 6 minutes of the Firesign Theatre's I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus, which is the subject on my hot-off-the-presses Rabble pamphlet, entitled What’s Happening in The Firesign Theatre’s I Think We’re All Bozos On This Bus as Best as I Can Make Out.)